More Than You Know (29 page)

lovely island meadow, spending his days outdoors tending his boat

and his animals and his children.

“I don’t know that I see the point of looking all over when

you’ve already seen what you want.” As he said it he looked right at

me. “A gadder comes to grief,” he added. “That’s what they say.”

Of course, gadding was what we were doing to a fare-thee-well,

but I had never felt more flooded with joy in my life. Whatever grief

there might be waiting for us seemed to belong to some other universe.

That perfect, heartbreaking day. We thought we would store it in our

brains and bones for the long separation that was coming. That was

how I justified it, anyway. We weren’t doing any harm, and it would

give us so much strength for what was to come. As if I knew what

that was.

It’s lovely driving in the open air, because you aren’t looking

through the windows at a picture; you’re in the air, part of the picture,

able to feel the slight change of temperature on your skin in the shade

of tall pines, able to smell the sun on the earth, the spicy scent of

gardens, the aromas of farmyard. You could see into people’s lives as

well, the swings beneath the trees, the open parlor windows with filmy

curtains blowing, the clothes out back on the line. Most farmhouses

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were built close to the road so as to be easier to dig in and out of after

snow. Nowadays those old houses are often falling to ruin, unfashion-

ably near the road, but in those days when traffic was light, the road

was entertainment and company. People came to the window to see

what was passing.

Many working farmwives and playing children stopped to stare

as we sailed by. A car like the one we were driving was not as rare

as a circus wagon, but it was far from a common sight. We waved,

like royalty. At noon Connie pulled into a farmer’s yard and went to

the kitchen door to ask if we could picnic in their field. The farmer

came to the door in his overalls; he stared out at the car, gleaming

under his shade tree, incongruous as a runaway train. He looked Con-

nie up and down and then stared at the car some more. When Connie

came back to me he had a pint bottle of cold buttermilk and a plate

of fingerprint cookies filled with homemade jam.

“I told them we were on our honeymoon,” he said sheepishly.

“I tried to pay her, but she wouldn’t let me.”

“You are a terrible person.”

“So my daddy tells me,” he said, opening the door for me. Then

he opened the trunk of the car and took out a plush maroon blanket.

I saw a thing like a wicker suitcase in there too; Connie said it was

full of plates and cups and knives and forks and spoons, all packed in

special compartments and strapped in with little leather belts. We

looked at each other, tempted, but decided against it. What if we lost

or broke something?

We spread the blanket in the sun in a copse back from the road.

I produced the limp brown bag that held the lunch I had packed. It

suddenly looked rather modest. Sandwiches and bananas.

Conary took a bite of his sandwich and stopped to look at it.

“What’s in this?”

“Maple sugar.”

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He started to laugh.

“Well, I couldn’t find the jelly and I didn’t like to ask,” I said.

Conary tried to look solemn. “Good thinking,” he said and then

burst into laughter again.

It was true, I didn’t know much about cooking then, but I thought

these sandwiches were rather a success, and I said so. Conary passed

me the buttermilk, and from time to time through the rest of the meal

erupted in laughter again. I still don’t know what was so funny. Later

in life I came to put both the maple sugar and the bananas into one

sandwich. My children swore by them, and it made one less thing to

carry on a picnic. I’d put anything you could name into a sandwich if

I could hear Connie laugh like that again. I guess he wasn’t used to

girls who weren’t brought up in the kitchen.

The cookies were delicious. We washed the plate and bottle in

the stream and left them on the kitchen porch, and got back into our

chariot, fairly sure that everyone in the house was at one window or

another, memorizing the details of our equipage. It was a new expe-

rience for both of us to be the envy of anybody, and it was fun. I was

amazed at how much fun.

Once the story was told to the farm couple, it became our truth

for the rest of the day. We were on our honeymoon. We had done the

trick somehow, gotten cleanly away, with only sunlight and tipped

hats and purring engines and happiness before us. It was only a won-

derful joke, we knew that, but that made it better. We spent that af-

ternoon as if we believed the sun would never set.

We could see Bangor in the distance. It was the first city I’d

seen besides Boston. Bangor was very different from Boston; it had

grown up rough, a true boomtown, the market loggers boomed their

timber down the Penobscot. On the outskirts we passed huge white

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houses with wide porches and widows’ walks, and carpenter ginger-

bread all around the eaves, built by lumber barons and shipping mil-

lionaires in the great days of sail. I wanted to go explore the wicked

downtown, to see where Baby Face Nelson was gunned down by

G-men, but Conary wouldn’t take me. The fair was on the near side

of the river, and he said that was as close to the big city as he was

going, in that car anyway.

The fair, of course, was magic enough for one afternoon, or for

many of them.

We parked our car in a field in a long row of others. Men from

the sheriff’s department directed traffic. I was momentarily worried

they would take one look at us and the car and arrest us, but they just

tipped their hats and called Conary “sir.” There were a few Cadillacs,

and even another Packard or two, but nothing so fancy as ours. Along

the rows of Model T’s and A’s, of farm wagons and trucks, that car

began to draw a crowd as soon as we left it.

“Will it be all right?” I was fearful that someone would harm it,

or steal my lavender-scented gloves.

“Don’t worry. The sheriff will watch it. Mr. Britton just walks

off and leaves it. He always slips them something when he comes

back, though.” Conary had clearly learned everything he could from

the way Mr. Britton dealt with the world.

“Will you do that?”

“Depends how much money we have left.”

Money! Fairs cost money, of course. I knew that, but had for-

gotten it, since I’d never actually been to one.

“Do we have any?”

“You forget—I am the fastest blueberry rake in the county.” But

his blueberry money—I thought he had to turn that over to his father.

I decided not to ask.

Conary took my hand as we walked toward the gates to the

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fairground. Inside we could see rows and rows of sheds and stalls for

I didn’t yet know what, and beyond that the shrieks and music of the

rides and the grandstand and, crowning it all, the Ferris wheel.

We were in a different country. Nothing from the past could

follow us here. We were different people, beginning the future we

would live together. No darkness from Edith Gray or Tom Crocker or

anything else could have anything to do with where we were going.

That was the point of being in love. It washed you clean, made you

new, gave you a blank slate to write your life on.

Conary paid our way in, and as we started for the midway, bark-

ers began to call to us. There was a shed near the entrance with big

painted pictures on boards of what you would see inside.

“Con—look!” I was pointing at a picture of a baby with two

heads. One head was wailing, and the other, smiling and cooing. “Can

we see it?”

“No, it’s terrible. It’s not alive.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s in a jar. Pickled. It never was alive.”

He was marching me past the shed, but I found it hard to look

away from that picture. Now
there
was wickedness. The barker was

chanting, “See the amazing two-headed baby,” and a family with three

little girls in party dresses was paying for tickets.

We passed the hootchy-kootchy tent, where men were lined up

waiting to go in. There were paintings of beautiful girls dressed en-

tirely in feathers, or in highly colored silk veils. The barker there was

crowing about Seleema the Oriental Wonder.

“Are they in jars too?”

“No, but by Oriental they mean Skowhegan.” He put his arm

around me and the barker didn’t even bother trying to tempt him.

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We came to a row of games. Games of skill, games of chance,

Try your luck, little lady, Show the little lady how strong you are,

Duck the clown, Step right up.

Conary stopped at a game where you threw baseballs at wooden

milk bottles. “My wife wants to try,” he said, handing the man a coin

and receiving three baseballs, which he handed to me.

I wound up and heaved. A miss. I threw again and again, two

hits. The pitchman whistled as the milk bottles trundled along on a

little motorized track as if in a miniature dairy. Conary paid for three

more balls, and this time I scored all three.

“Any prize from the top shelf, take any prize you choose,” toned

the pitchman, not quite as pleased as before. I chose a teddy bear in

denim overalls.

“Our firstborn,” said Con as we walked away.

“Yes, and it’s a bear.”

“I don’t care, I always wanted a son with a lot of hair.”

“What shall we call him?”

“Earl. How are you at darts?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m wonderful at them. Let’s try for a daughter.”

We stopped at a booth where you threw darts at water balloons.

Connie bought us three darts apiece, but my aim was poor and he said

I threw darts like a girl. He bought himself another round and won us

a daughter in the shape of a pig.

“Do I get to name her, since you named Earl?”

“Of course.”

“Eleanor, then.”

“She has very nice eyelashes,” said Conary. “I like that in a

pig.”

He bought me some fried potatoes in a newspaper cone, sprin-

kled with salt and vinegar. We carried our babies over to look at the

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sheepdog trials, and then to the prize pigs and goats and rabbits.

“Don’t worry,” Conary whispered to Eleanor, “we’ll never put you in

the county fair.”

I said, “Conary—let’s run away.”

“We already have.” He put his arm around me and walked me

toward the grandstand.

“I mean—let’s not go back.”

He stopped walking and turned me to face him.

“Let’s not go back. Let’s leave the car at the train station and

go west. We can send a telegram to Mr. Britton telling him where

it is.”

We walked again. I was frightened now of what I had said be-

cause I didn’t know if it was part of the game or not. Anyone in the

village could have told you, you shouldn’t dare Connie to do a thing

if you didn’t want it done.

“Where would we go?”

I had no idea. I’d never been anywhere. I said, “Idaho.”

Connie laughed. “Idaho! What’s in Idaho?”

“Potatoes.”

“Oh great, potatoes! Do I look like a potato farmer?”

“Why not? You’re from Maine.”

Conary pulled me into the shadow of the grandstand and kissed

me. He kissed me for so long it was like a conversation. I could feel

yes, and no, and why not, moving from him to me, and I could feel

it through my body down to my knees. When finally he ended the kiss

and looked into my eyes, I waited and waited to know which choice

had won. And what did I hope for?

“Why not?” said Connie. And then we both laughed and

laughed. I could think of ten dozen reasons why not, and I knew he

could too . . . and yet . . .

We didn’t speak for a while after that. Connie led me around to

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the side of the track where the trotters would race at sunset. They had

an ox pull going on; oxen pulling wooden sledges loaded with boul-

ders. The driver would crack his whip and shout and the oxen lean

into the load and drag it down the track with the owner yelling and

yelling, trying to get them to keep it up, trying to keep them pulling

straight. When they stopped, three officials with tape measures ran

onto the course and measured the length of the pull. The strength and

patience of the animals was amazing.

Connie watched me watching. He liked it that I cared about farm

animals as much as about house pets. I was trying to imagine clearing

a meadow with such oxen, myself a farmwife going into the dark barn

made fragrant and warm by the animals’ breath in winter. We’d have

a barefoot daughter who could throw a baseball or drive a team, and

a son to go fishing with Conary.