Sweet Everlasting (34 page)

“I got it. It sounded … final.”

“Yes,” she agreed softly. “It is. So—if you’ve come—”

“I’ve come to say good-bye.”

“Oh.” She nodded, dry-eyed, not looking away. “I was just about to go home, but if you’re tired or you’d like to rest first—”

“No, let’s walk,” he said, and she thought he sounded relieved. “Besides, I left Louie in your house. I hope you don’t mind. And I hope he doesn’t disgrace himself.”

They both smiled, and set off together along the path he knew almost as well as she did by now, Carrie carrying the box with her little brown bat inside. The cicadas were deafening, taking turns trading their coarse, scratchy messages from tree to tree. When they came to Wet Weather Stream, she stopped to point out a bright island of goldenrod close to the far bank—so pretty, and sometimes Ty missed things like that. On the spiky ridge top, while a family of rusty crows scolded and complained, she showed him the small cleared spaces in the dead leaves, eight or nine of them, where a herd of deer must’ve slept last night. All together in a group, except for two spots a little ways away, next to each other. “Lovers?” she guessed, and Ty smiled back at her.

The soft, gentle rise and fall of the dark hills in the distance was lovely tonight, and as familiar to her as the lines in her own hand. Layer after layer of dark green fading to light, then disappearing into the sky. She’d live and die here, she expected, and never go beyond the hills. Well, there was safety in that thought. But sadness, too.

“How many days does it take to get to Cuba?” she asked, pausing by a tangle of wild blackberry vines on the steep side of the last ridge.

“It depends on the weather, but usually about five.”

Amazing, thought Carrie. It took her half a day to go to Chambersburg! “Do you sail from Philadelphia?”

“No, New York.”

“But you’ll go home first?”

“There isn’t time, I’m afraid.”

She thought of the formidable Mrs. Wilkes, and felt a stab of sympathy for her. “And what does your mother think of
that
?”

“She thinks I’ve lost my mind. She’s ready to wash her hands of me once and for all.”

But she could hear the fondness in his voice, and she knew he was joking. She thought of the elegant, smiling faces of the people in the photograph album—Mrs. Wilkes, Abbey, Sandy, and the others. Adele. They would miss him and worry about him while he was away. But they didn’t know how lucky they were, for they could wait for him at home, and no matter what happened, he’d always come back to them.

His rented buggy was tied up by Petey’s water trough, and the horse was dozing. Ty went to let Louie out of the house while Carrie pulled a bucket of water up from the well. They sat on the porch step because it was cooler outside, sharing the dipper and petting the dog till he settled down. She wondered if Ty was thinking the same thing she was—of the times they’d sat out on his back porch at night, watching the sky and talking and talking. There were long pauses between their words this night.

“Eppy said Frank gave you a gun to protect yourself,” he mentioned. “I told her that set my mind completely at ease.”

She smiled back, loving his sarcasm, and feeling a fierce rush of emotion because of the simple but precious fact that he understood her. “Don’t you think I could shoot somebody?” she teased.

“Oh, I think you’re a regular Jesse James.”

She laughed. “It doesn’t matter anyway, nobody’s going to hurt me. Artemis had enemies, but I don’t.”

“But you’ll be careful anyway, won’t you?” he said seriously. “They still have no idea who shot him.”

“Yes, I’ll be careful. But nothing was stolen. It wasn’t a vagrant, I’m sure of it.” She kept it to herself, but she was thinking about Willis Haight again. They’d passed on the mountain yesterday, she coming up on Petey, he going down on foot. He was a little, bald-headed man, strange and silent; he hardly ever said boo to anybody. But he’d touched his hat and said, “Carrie. So you’re back.” She decided to take that as an expression of sympathy, or at least an acknowledgment of Artemis’s death. Which she sincerely hoped he’d had nothing to do with.

“I wasn’t afraid at all last night,” she told Ty, after another pause. “It felt odd being here alone, especially at first. But I wasn’t frightened.”

They were sitting side by side; their shoulders touched sometimes when one of them moved. “And not lonely?” he asked presently.

“Oh, lonely.” She dismissed that with a smile. “Everybody’s lonely.”

He didn’t answer, and they fell back into silence. A peewee drawled in the hot woods and a wheezing, unmusical starling sang to its mate. Then Ty asked, “How will you live, Carrie?” and there was something in his voice that made her feel anxious to reassure him.

“I’ve thought it all out. I have my own house now—how many people are so lucky?—and I can live on very little. I’ll make a bigger garden next year and cut down on expenses for food. And there’s my book, don’t forget. I’ve only got a few more sketches to do before it’s finished, and then I can send it off to the publisher Mr. Odell knows. They’ll pay me for it, Ty. After that, maybe I can do another one, on wildlife or the flora in our area. There’s no way to know what opportunity might turn up. It’s the only thing I can do very well, and if the first one’s a success, who knows what might happen?” He nodded, but she couldn’t tell if he was just being tactful or if he agreed with her. “And—children like me, I could probably find work taking care of people’s babies if I wanted to.” She tried not to sound defensive, but she felt goaded a little by the idea that he might be humoring her. “What’s wrong with that?” she asked when, instead of reassuring him, her last suggestion made him frown.

He traced the outline of an old crack in the porch step with his long index finger. “I needed some clothes for my trip—work shirts and some socks—so I went to Patterson’s this afternoon. I saw some women poring over the catalogues at the counter. They didn’t see me. I knew one of them; you probably know them all.”

She had an inkling where this was heading. “Believe me, I don’t care—”

“They were talking about you. Not
me,
Carrie, you. Just you. As if I hadn’t even
been
there during the two nights we spent together. As if I had nothing to do with the ‘sin’ they’re so self righteously convinced we committed.”

She wasn’t surprised. Sorry, but not surprised. She pressed her hands between her knees and waited for him to finish.

“The point is,” he said more calmly, “I don’t think there’s much chance of the good women of Wayne’s Crossing hiring you to watch over their children.”

“Eppy would,” she said faintly. “She tried to get me to take money for it before, but I wouldn’t. If I really needed it—”

“It still wouldn’t be enough to live on,” he insisted.

She had to laugh. “Ty, I really don’t think you have any idea how little it’s going to take!”

He got up and stood over her. “Listen to me,” he said with his hands on his knees. “You didn’t hear them, I did. I don’t want to leave you here, Carrie, because they’ll rip you to shreds.”

“No, they won’t,” she said positively. “I won’t hear them, so it doesn’t matter what they say when my back is turned. I don’t care about them, truly I don’t.”

But she couldn’t help thinking of the time he’d taken her to Pennicle’s, and that lovely sense of belonging she’d felt. Proud to be with him, of course, but even more—proud to be a member of the community. A regular person. For one night in her life, she’d felt respectable.

She got up too and stood close to him, to emphasize her point. “Don’t waste time worrying about me because it’s silly. You’re going to do so much good where you’re going. I want you to go there with a clear mind and a heart that’s unburdened. Don’t think about Wayne’s Crossing or anything else except saving lives.
I’m so proud of you.
” She took his hand and held it. “I’ll be fine. I’m happy now, I swear it.”

He touched her, just the side of her throat with his fingertips, and she almost lost her careful balance. But she held his eyes without faltering, until finally he broke the spell by letting go of her and reaching into his pocket. “Take this.”

She looked down at a long white envelope. “What is it?”

“It’s money.”

“No.”

“Take it. If you don’t need it, don’t spend it.”

She wouldn’t let him put it in her hands. “Ty, I can’t,” she whispered, appalled.

“Yes, you can. Do it for me, Carrie. Yes.” He slipped it into her skirt pocket.

She kept shaking her head, almost weeping. “Please, I don’t want it, I don’t.”

“I know. Keep it anyway. Will you, Carrie, for me?”

She hung her head, wretched.

“Carrie?”

“All right.” She felt old and tired all of a sudden.

“Thank you.” He put a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Now I’ve got something for you you’ll like.”

She watched him cross the yard toward the buggy, and come back carrying something square and bulky wrapped in brown paper. Her foolish heart lightened; she wondered how old she’d have to get before she got over her childish love of surprises.

“Sit,” Ty ordered, and she sat. He laid the package in her lap.

“What could it be?” she wondered out loud, trying to gauge its weight on her thighs, rubbing her hands together like a miser.

“Open it and see.”

But she waited another full minute, loving the suspense, dragging out the anticipation as long as she could.

“Will you
open
it?” he finally barked, pretending to be exasperated.

So she did.

No amount of anticipation could have prepared her for what was inside. A book. No, not a book. A miracle.
Birds of America
was the title, by John James Audubon. She knew him, of course, had even read parts of his
Ornithological Biography
in the big library in Chambersburg. This was his
real
book, though, and what rested on her knees was the 1871 edition of the lithographs. Hundreds of them, life-size, the colors so real she could hardly breathe and look at them at the same time. She was afraid to turn the pages, but she did, and each view filled her fuller and fuller until she couldn’t bear it. Swallow-tailed hawk. Sparrow falcon. Snowy owl. Purple martin. Thrush. Herons, egrets, puffins and grebes, so many ducks. Dusky albatross! Goldfinches on pink thistles. A barred owl sinking silently down beside a doomed squirrel. Cardinals on wild almond trees, an Oriole family in a tulip tree, kinglets on a branch of laurel. Then she couldn’t see the pages anymore because she was crying.

“Carrie?” Ty was kneeling beside her, trying to see her face.

She lifted it, unashamed. “Oh, Ty. Oh, heavens, what have you done?”

“Like it?”

All she could do was move her head and make helpless gestures with her hands.

“I thought you might.”

She closed the book before a teardrop could wet it, and sat for a while staring at the leather binding and running her fingers over the gilt edges. “Thank you,” she managed at last. “I don’t know what to say. It’s beautiful—
beautiful.
You shouldn’t have, it must’ve cost—” She stopped on a half laugh, and waved her fingers in the air again. “I wish I had something to give you.”

He made some sound she couldn’t interpret. “Will you take Louie for me, Carrie? You don’t have to. If you don’t want him—”

“I want him.”

“Good.” He looked relieved. “He’ll get some sense one of these days, quit chasing birds and squirrels.”

“I’ll teach him.”

“I know you will.”

They stopped talking. Carrie finally laid her book aside with great care, and they both stood up. “When does your train leave?” she asked, feeling brave.

“In the morning. Early. Carrie, I wish …” He didn’t finish.

“I wish you happiness.” She smiled, trying to relieve the sorrow in his eyes. “It’s late. I guess you should go now, Ty.” Neither of them moved. “You could kiss me,” she whispered.

He did. Nothing but their hands and mouths touching, for a sweet, endless time, while inside she made herself say,
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye
to keep from holding him. And when she felt him start to give in to the same temptation, she was the one who pulled away.

“I’ll never forget you, Carrie.”

She put the words in a special place, to save for later.

“I’ll write to you from Quemados. I put the address in the envelope I gave you. If it changes, remember you can always reach me through my family in Philadelphia—I left that address as well.”

She said nothing.

“If you ever need me for anything, promise you’ll let me know. Promise.”

She nodded.

“No, say it.”

“I promise.”

The next silence was excruciating.

“If you don’t go now, it’ll be dark before you get home,” she reminded him.

He nodded once, impatient. “Carrie …”

“Be safe, Ty.”

He whispered, “Will you remember me?”

She had to look down at their clasped hands. She felt his soft breath on her hair, and heard him say words that sounded like, “Forgive me for that. Ah, Carrie. For everything.” Then he let her go.

She squatted down beside Louie, grabbing his rope collar and holding it so he couldn’t follow Ty to the buggy. A pink half-moon hung low, rising behind horizontal cloud wisps, but the shadows Ty’s long body cast in the dark yard were bluish. She watched him untie the horse and climb into the buggy, and back it till he was facing down the mountain. Turning around in the seat, he lifted his arm. She forced a smile and waved back. The dratted tears were falling down her face like rain. But she was in luck; it was dark, and he was too far away now. He never knew.

When the sound of wheels and harness finally faded into silence, she sat on the ground to comfort Lou, because he was confused. “Good dog, what a good boy,” she told him, while he licked the salty tears off her chin. Presently they both felt a little better; she even stopped crying. She started a game with a stick, and lured him inside the cabin with it before he could remember he didn’t like it in there. Lighting the lamp, starting the stove, straightening the table—everything she did sounded too loud; it hurt her ears, but the silence was worse. She kept busy, kept moving. What should she feed Louie? Her larder was low, and there was no meat in the house. She’d get him something in town tomorrow, but tonight he’d have to settle for table scraps.