More Than You Know (6 page)

serious face, the deep eyes, as he had before.

“I didn’t know you were an orchardist,” she said for want of any-

thing better.

“I keep apples and pears at home,” said Danial. “I noticed last time

I was onto the main that Miss Clossy’s trees were about worn out, and

I thought a little pruning might encourage them.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

He shrugged.

“Is she kin to you?”

“No. But she’s got no one to do for her, and I like apple trees.

You don’t remember me, do you?”

They were standing in the sunshine, he with his saw in his hand,

and she with the apronful of apples he had thrown to her. Now she was

taken aback.

“Certainly I remember you. You brought me ice cream at the town

picnic.”

“I mean from when we were small.”

She was greatly surprised. He was right; she did not remember him,

at least not yet.

“I came into the village one winter when my mother was doctoring.

We stayed with the minister, and I went to the village school.”

She still didn’t remember.

“You were just a little thing. You sat up close to Miss Clossy’s

desk, in front of your sister Mary.”

Something was coming back to her. A boy the age of her brother

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Simon, but not nearly as far along in school. A boy who loved poetry . . .

who stood up in front of the class, so nervous he was shaking and her

heart had gone out to him. It was a lovely poem that she had remembered

and learned herself when she got bigger.

“You said the snow poem,” she said to him. It was like trying to

describe a dream that changes and disappears the moment you touch

words to it. But she could see that she was right . . . he was the boy who

had said the snow poem.

“The snow had begun in the gloaming,

And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway . . .”

She said with him: “With a silence deep and white.” There had

been a boy, as old as her brother Simon, who sat in back with the big

boys, but who kept to himself and seemed shy, and had long dark eye-

lashes and such dark eyes. He didn’t go to their church, and she hadn’t

known what his name was, but one day . . . this was so odd, it was like

the moment in Scripture when Mary Magdalene is looking into the empty

tomb, and yet when Jesus walks right up and speaks to her, she doesn’t

recognize him. How could that be, that she could look right at him and

not recognize him? That story had never made real sense to her before.

“You gave me a marble,” she said, and a slow smile came to his

face.

“I did. I won it from your brother Leander.”

“And then you were gone, you didn’t come to school anymore.”

“My mother was better, and my father came in over the ice and

took us back home.”

“I still have the marble,” Claris said, trying to shake off a feeling

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of unreality. She did, she kept it in a tiny Indian sweet-grass box along

with her locket and her collection of buttons. This was the boy, the

mystery boy, the quiet one, who had only one set of clothes, and didn’t

know the games the others did, who noticed her alone at the edge of the

circle of bigger children, and gave her his marble. All these years, when

her family was roaring away with their songs and their games and their

mock battles, and she didn’t want to belong to a herd, she wanted one

person who felt the same as she did, who would watch her with his dark

eyes, as this boy had done, she had thought of him and kept the marble.

Suddenly shy of him, she said, “We better go in to Miss Clossy.”

Danial put his saw in the crook of a branch and picked up the bag of

eggs and doughnuts she had left on the ground. She went ahead, holding

up her apronful of apples, into the low dark house.

Miss Clossy had never been a beauty, and age was not improving

her. She was big and bony, and her hair had gone very thin, but she didn’t

wear a cap as other women did, so you could see her scalp. In fact you

couldn’t avoid it. Her face was deeply pitted, and the scars were on her

scalp too; maybe that was why so much hair had fallen out. Her cottage

was very old-fashioned, without even a stove. Miss Clossy still cooked in

the open hearth, as people had in the old days. She had only two windows,

both small and high in the walls, so only a little light got in, and there

was no view out. It had the feeling of a fortified place, a tiny cave, well

defended. Miss Clossy herself, their old teacher, sat at a table. She seemed

to be doing nothing, though a large spinning wheel, the kind you stand

to use, stepping forward onto the treadle and back in a rhythm, stood by

the fire beside a large basket of carded wool, which filled the little house

with a lanolin smell. Claris guessed that the farmwives on the road gave

her some of their work so she could exchange finished yarn for cheese

and milk, or even a few pennies.

“Good day, Miss Clossy, it’s Claris Osgood, come with some eggs

from my mother, and doughnuts.”

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“We’ve brought in some of your apples for you too,” said Danial.

He walked over to the window and stood where the light would fall on

his face, so Miss Clossy could see who he was. She peered at him, then

ducked her head, as if to say, Good, it’s you, I know you.

Claris sat down at the table in Miss Clossy’s second chair (she had

only two). She began to talk of the neighborhood news, a little loudly,

as you talk to a deaf person, though as far as she knew there was nothing

wrong with Miss Clossy’s hearing. After a while she sputtered into silence,

frustrated by the lack of response, though Miss Clossy listened with ap-

parent interest, clucking a little, or ducking her head to indicate that she

was following. Her responses came as from a distance, as if an invisible

layer of some impenetrable stuff muffled her like quilt batting.

Danial leaned against the door, quiet and apparently content. Once

he said into the silence, “I’ve cut some deadwood out of them apple trees,

Miss Clossy. Ought to make pretty good kindling.”

Miss Clossy ducked her head.

“Want us to stack it there beside your door where you can get at

it?” Miss Clossy bobbed again. She kept her head to one side, as if she

could see better out of one eye than the other. Claris was growing more

and more uncomfortable.

After another silence Danial said, “We better get to it then, Miss

Clossy. I have to catch the tide, but I’ll see you the next time I’m in.”

Miss Clossy, smiling now, bobbed her head at them. They saw

themselves out, leaving her at her table. Danial went into the orchard and

began collecting apple boughs, and Claris went with him, grateful to him

for knowing just how to manage the visit.

Danial took a large heavy bough from Claris and sawed it into

smaller lengths. Claris gathered them and followed him, taking up the cut

pieces as he reduced the limbs to firewood.

“Do you see her often?”

“I try to whenever I come in. She was very good to me when I

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went to school. She made a shirt for me, seeing I had only one and the

boys were teasing me.”

Claris felt ashamed. She was sure the teasing boys had included her

brothers and cousins. She looked at his calm, sober expression, which

seemed to hold no rancor or self-pity. This was the boy who was teased,

but stood up and recited that snow poem. Who was he? What was he?

He worked in silence for a bit and then said, “I don’t think it

matters if folks are odd. What matters is what makes them that way.”

“There are so many tales told of Miss Clossy. But no one really

knows, do they?”

“I do,” said Danial.

“Can you tell me?”

“When she was a girl in Tomhegan, her mother took in a woods-

man who asked for a bed for the night. The next morning the woodsman

was dead of smallpox. One by one her whole family went down with it.

When Miss Clossy came to herself again, the rest were all dead. She

dragged the bodies into the woods one by one, then she walked away and

walked till she came to rest here.”

They worked in silence for a time. Finally Claris asked, “How do

you know that?”

“She told me.”

“Why?”

After a moment, he said, “I think she wanted to tell me people had

teased her too. She wanted me to see that they wouldn’t have, if they’d

known what they were doing.”

What a strange boy, Claris thought. She stood looking at him, and

he returned her gaze, open and frank, and hopeful.

“Claris, Claris, Went to Paris . . .” he said softly.

“My jump rope rhyme,” said Claris, and he nodded.

“Why did you give me the marble?” She surprised herself. She had

not known she would ask that.

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“Don’t you know?” he said softly.

She shook her head, her eyes locked on his. But she did know.

When she could take her eyes from his face, she said, “You’re a

strange boy,” and thought, not for the first time this afternoon, that he

kept making things come out of her mouth that she hadn’t meant to say.

“There’s a streak of it in my family. As far back as can be remem-

bered.”

She nodded. She didn’t doubt it.

“I had a great-great-uncle,” he said, “he went completely strange,

back at the time of statehood. In fact, when they drew the Maine border

and he found out his farm wasn’t in New Hampshire, he went right

downhill and nobody could snap him out of it.”

“Why?”

“He wouldn’t say. They asked him was he afraid of more taxes,

but he said no. They asked him if he didn’t care for the new state

government, but he said that wasn’t it.”

“What could it be?”

“They finally got it out of him. He said he dreaded them cold

Maine winters.”

She looked at his sober face for a moment, before she burst into

laughter.

k

The hook was now set in each mouth, and each would become a

barb through which the other would learn what life had to teach.

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The morning after I saw the old woman in my room, I told

Edith I wouldn’t spend another night there.

“I’m moving in with Stephen.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re too old for that.”

“That may be, but I’m moving. Either that or I’ll go back to

Boston.”

This threw her for a loop, briefly. “You can’t go back to Boston.”

“Why not?”

“Your father’s working very hard. There’s no one to look after

you.”

“I’m too old to need looking after.”

She waited a moment too long to retort, so I went into my room

and started cleaning out the dresser. She followed me to the door.

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“This is just nonsense, Hannah. Stephen needs more sleep than

you do, you’ll keep him up—”

“No, she won’t,” said Stephen. That was brave of him. The last

thing on earth Edith wanted was to find we’d formed a team, and she

wasn’t on it.

“Honey . . .” Her tone always softened when she spoke to him.

“You don’t know how late she stays up reading . . . the light will

bother you, sweetie.”

“I’ll use a flashlight,” I said, and went on to Stephen’s room

with my clothes in my arms.

When I was done, I went out and walked to the village, to the

post office. I knew the mail wouldn’t be ready, but I wanted to be

outside, in the bright light of the summer morning. The air had a sweet

crispness of balsam that seemed to wash me clean.

“Why, good morning, young lady,” said Mrs. Foss when I came

in. She had the most beautiful smile. She wore cotton dresses with

mother-of-pearl buttons, and she sat on a stool behind the counter,

holding court. It wasn’t in that new building we have now, with the

big parking lot in front so the summer people don’t bash into each

other on Main Street, backing into August traffic. The old post office

was in that little building by the millstream where the man sells picture

frames and fudge. When I was young it looked like the store it had

always been (and is now again). It had a counter and shelves and a

little woodstove in the middle of the room. Mrs. Foss had the mail

contract in those days because she owned the building; her husband’s

people used to sell dry goods and notions there as well as run the P.O.

Instead of fabric and buttons on the shelves, Mrs. Foss kept dime

novels that summer people left with her to give away, and when the

gardens started coming in, baskets of squash and beans and tomatoes

that everyone had too much of.

“Good morning, Mrs. Foss,” I said.

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“How are you this morning, Hannah Gray? You know Mr. Hor-

ton?”

Kermit Horton was sitting by the window with his feet up on

the cold stove. He had his dog Hoover with him. Hoover was a large

yellow mutt, with tragic eyes. He had been mistreated before Kermit