More Than You Know (26 page)

attract attention. If I got there and Connie was gone, I thought I would

lie down and die. At least I would be in the right place for it.

I found it easily enough. It was in a sheltered copse, off the road.

Once sunny, with a view of the bay over farmland, it was now set

around with tall evergreens, dark, and hardly visible from the road,

unless you went right in.

Connie was there. He had pulled his truck in on a spur of aban-

doned farm road, where it couldn’t be seen. He was sitting on a head-

stone, very composed, just waiting. I thought he was the most beautiful

man I had ever seen.

When we kissed, it felt as if the trees around us had grown there

just to give us a safe hiding place; we came together as if our thoughts

had kept pace and we had never once misread each other since the

moment we had parted.

When we could bear to let go of each other, we moved to a

spot in the late afternoon sun and sat on an almost illegible stone

slab. By tracing nearly vanished grooves in the stone with our fin-

gers, we read the name Mehitable, and the date 1801. I told Connie

everything that had happened to me on the night we were parted,

and afterward. He said that his father was violently angry; he had

never seen him stay so mad for so long. Edith had made him feel

like a servant.

“She wrote him a letter saying that it wasn’t suitable for us to

see each other, and she was sure he would understand.”

“Suitable!”

“Yes, well, that’s the word that’s done it. He’ll calm down for

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a long time and then something will make him think of that letter, and

he just goes off his head. He’s hitting the bottle pretty hard, and it

isn’t improving him.”

“Mary said he was keeping you in—I got the impression he had

you locked up.”

Conary shrugged. “He pretends to lock me in and I pretend to

let him. That house has more holes than a basket. I’ve been able to

get out since I was ten. But I try not to make it too obvious; I don’t

want him to get huffed and take it out on Mary.”

“Does he know you’re out now?”

“Yes. I’ve been released. He was forced to it, since the blue-

berries are coming in and he needs the money I earn. We’re raking

up on the Kingdom Road this week.”

I had tried to get Connie to talk about his family the day we

spent together, without much luck. Now it was like the kissing; once

he started telling me what he never told anyone else, he didn’t want

to stop. It was as if he wanted me to know everything about him so I

could keep his story safe and make it come out right.

“He wasn’t like this when our mother was alive. I think everyone

was so surprised she had married him, it gave him some pride he

needed.”

And what had she seen in him? I thought about Edith and won-

dered why my father had married her. Why did people marry people

who were mean?

I didn’t ever want to stop touching him, listening to him. “How

long can you stay?”

“Not long. It took me a while to find a place we could meet. Is

this all right?”

“Yes, I like it.” I did. It felt peaceful and safe. Conary kissed

me again, and time must have slipped a cog, because almost at once

the clearing was filled with long shadows.

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“We have to go,” he said, and we kissed some more.

“Can you come tomorrow? Can you get away?”

“Yes. They pay by the bushel, not the hour. If I want to leave

early it’s my lookout. Can you?”

“I’ll try to get off a little early. Connie—can I have something

of yours?” I had told him about Edith and the flannel shirt.

He grinned, that gorgeous smile, and unbuttoned his work shirt.

I was about to say I wanted something smaller, that I could hide, when

he stripped off the white undershirt he wore underneath and gave it

to me. It made me smile like a fool to see him standing there, pleased

to have been asked for something it was in his power to give. The

shirt had an intense smell of sun and sweat and him. They said raking

was hard work, and I believed it, and was glad of it.

Connie kissed me again, and when I put my hands on his bare

back, I was shocked at how different it felt from touching a body

clothed. I wanted to say something, but there were no words.

“We’ve got to go, or we’ll never get out again.”

“I know.”

We went on kissing.

Finally we parted and Connie put on his work shirt. He said, “I

forgot . . . I found something. Look at this.” I followed him across the

clearing. There were some almost unreadable headstones, many from

the eighteenth century, and then one much newer. It read, AMOS HAS-

KELL. 1862–1874. GOD IS MY MARINER.

I said, “But . . . I thought he was never found.”

“I thought so too. I had looked for him in the Haskell plot in

the new cemetery.” The new cemetery was opened just before the Civil

War.

“Maybe it’s some other Amos Haskell. Would the dates be right

for Sallie’s brother?”

“They would.”

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*

*

*

I thought about the grave marker all the way home. It was odd

enough for anyone to have been buried there at that late date. Could

the Osgoods, could Claris herself, have been so cruel as to withhold

from Danial the news that the body had come in? To bury Amos

privately, among Osgoods, so that . . . what? So that he would never

lie alone on a deserted island, instead of being where his relatives

could remember him and tend his grave? But Danial couldn’t have

agreed. If he had, the grave would have been in the new cemetery.

And no matter what he had done, he was still Amos’s father . . .

I was thinking there must be some kind of record of burials at

the church, and even considered stopping, until I saw on the steeple

clock the lateness of the hour. Edith would be furious, and suspicious

as a snake. If she guessed that I’d been with Connie, I didn’t know

what she would do.

Life is full of surprises. When I got home I found Stephen by

himself in the living room eating cinnamon toast and feeding Whitey

the crusts. From the mess in the kitchen, I knew he had made it him-

self. He was reading the
Bangor Daily
funnies and getting butter on

the carpet.

“Where is Mother?” I asked him.

“Upstairs,” he said, and then began to tell me about his excite-

ment of the afternoon. Kermit Horton had invited him to see his pig,

which had the thumps.

“She made a noise like this,” cried Stephen, and he began imi-

tating a pig with hiccups. “And you know what he told me? He said

the pig has a stomachache, and when Mrs. Foss has a stomachache,

she eats a spoonful of gravel! She got the idea from her chickens!”

We laughed and laughed, Stephen because it gave him the giggles,

and I because I was in love and felt as if I’d swallowed a planet full

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of joy. I had Conary’s undershirt hidden in the bag I carried with me

for my books, and my wallet and my diary. The smell of it utterly

thrilled me.

Edith appeared eventually and cleaned up the mess in the kitchen

without saying anything about it. She made us canned hash with

poached eggs on top for supper. She looked pinch-faced and puffy-

eyed. She had already heard about the pig, but she let Stephen make

the pig noise twice more, and even tried to laugh. Then she said, “I

have news, children. It’s quite exciting. Your father has been offered

an important job, and he’s moving to Chicago.”

That certainly stopped things cold. Stephen stared at her, chew-

ing with his mouth open.

I said, “We’re moving to Chicago?”

Edith looked at me with hard eyes. Trust you to find the painful

point and bring your weight down on it, the look said.

“
He’s
moving to Chicago. The company won’t pay to move the

whole family, at least not at first.”

“He’s moving away without us?” Stephen got the picture very

clearly.

“It’s a promotion,” Edith said. “We should all be proud. When

he gets established, we can join him.”

“I don’t want to live in Chicago,” Stephen said. “I won’t know

anybody.”

“If you have to, you’ll make new friends,” said Edith. That was

all that was said on the subject for the rest of the meal. Edith was

eager to get away and go upstairs, and Stephen wanted her to go, so

he could ask me what it was all about.

I didn’t know what it was all about. I wasn’t at all sure that the

cover story was the true one, but there was no way to find out. I did

know that Edith was plenty upset, and I wondered what would happen.

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Spring 1886

AllthewhilethepeopleofBealIslandwereinanuproarover

the murder, the three women who might have been presumed to know

most about it sat together in the upstairs room of the schoolhouse. The

men of the town could be heard rushing around outside shouting orders

at each other. It seemed to the still, silent women as if they were playing

some game out there. Someone had been sent to the main, and by after-

noon more men arrived from Unionville. There was a photographer and

Dr. Bliss, acting as coroner, and a couple of reporters from
The Citizen.

Naturally the crime scene had been thoroughly disturbed by people of

the village being officious and helpful. The rumor was already abroad

that Paul LeBlond had fled at dawn wearing women’s clothing. No one

seemed to be able to find much of anything telling except the disgusting

details which would later be released by Dr. Bliss about the contents of

the victim’s stomach.

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The women of the household, Mrs. Claris Haskell; her daughter,

Sallie; and the schoolteacher boarder, Mercy Chatto, were waiting quietly

when the men from the sheriff’s office got around to them. By then the

men were pretty excited about the foreigner Paul LeBlond and deep down

the rumor well about Sallie’s rows with her father. The early betting was

that if Paul had done it, with or for Sallie, she too might try to flee. An

ancillary theory was that Paul had gone ahead, and Sallie had killed her

father to keep him from following them.

The women, sitting silent together, had not guessed that that was

what would be said about them. They were all thinking about something

else. They were thinking that if none of them talked about what happened,

all the noisy ones outside would have to go away.

It had been said that the Haskells were arrogant, but had they

stopped believing that anyone outside themselves could judge anything

they did? Apparently. The sheriff’s man was ready to disabuse them.

A reporter from
The Citizen
described the scene. When the deputy

said he was placing Sallie Haskell under arrest, she started and turned to

her mother. That seemed natural. At such a moment, you would turn for

protection to the one who had always sheltered you before, even knowing

that you had done the unforgivable. Thousands read, the following Thurs-

day, of the terrible and suspenseful event. Later the reporter was made to

describe it again and again during the trials.

Sallie looked to her mother, and the reporter watched the dawning

horror in her eyes as she saw that her mother would or could do nothing

for her. Minutes later, the mother stood at the upstairs window of the

schoolhouse and saw her daughter being helped into a rowboat with her

hands cuffed together in her lap. The daughter stared intently from the

boat up at her mother with an expression that befitted a murderess. The

mother watching from the upstairs window returned the gaze, with a look,

the reporter thought, of one who was watching her whole world drawing

away from her, and quietly going mad.

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Edith’s concentration on my crimes and punishments had

been broken, and, with it, the blights of the summer seemed to vanish.

There were no more strange noises in the house, no fuses blown, no

doors latched at night found standing open in the morning. I spent my

days in freedom; I left the library early and came home late for supper,

and Edith didn’t seem to notice.

Mysteries that had been beyond my reach now started offering

their secrets, like jammed knots in a high wind that suddenly free

themselves, allowing the mariner to ease sail and avoid disaster. Mrs.

Allen asked me to take her in her husband’s car to Unionville; her

husband was in the hospital there with gallstones and she had never

learned to drive. I drove her there three times, and while she visited I

was free at last to wait in the Unionville library, poring over brittle

yellow news accounts of the murder of Danial Haskell and Sallie’s

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trials. The accounts were florid and repetitive, but reading them was