The Endless Forest (17 page)

“Your bonnet?”

She looked around herself and shrugged. “Lost, I fear.”

“Well, one good thing came out of this little adventure, then.”

She was about to protest the idea that her bonnet was not worth saving when Uz Brodie came around the corner on his old mule, and Martha let out a resigned sigh. By noon everybody in Paradise would hear all about Martha Kirby standing in the crossroads, mud-covered, bare-headed, and half barefoot. Holding on to Daniel Bonner’s hand.

“Maybe he didn’t recognize me,” she muttered, taking her hand back with a jerk.

“If that makes you feel better,” Daniel said.

Martha stomped along beside him, as lopsided as she was mortified.

“I’m sorry we have got to do this in the kitchen,” Becca LeBlanc told Martha. They were standing between a screen and the cooking hearth, she and Becca and Callie, all of them peeling off layer after layer of mud-caked linen and cotton and wool.

Martha hadn’t imagined her visit with Callie this way; the whole situation was so absurd, she had trouble not laughing aloud.

Becca said, “Lift up your foot so I can get this skirt off you.”

“I really could manage on my own,” Martha protested, and Becca put her hands on her hips and pursed her mouth.

Martha lifted her foot. Becca was so lean and wiry that she seemed to have no bosom or hips at all. Mostly she was a cheerful sort, as anyone married to Charlie LeBlanc would have to be.

“I know this is embarrassing,” Becca said. “If I had a room free you’d have some privacy, but with the flood and all, every room I got to let is spoken for.”

“My goodness,” Martha said. “Please don’t apologize. This is very kind of you, and I appreciate your help.”

Alice LeBlanc poured another bucket of hot water into the hip bath and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. She said, “Talk is cheap.”

Callie jumped on her before Martha had even drawn a breath.

“Well now, Alice, maybe you can tell me. Has Martha here ever run up a debt she couldn’t settle? I’m asking because you talk like you know her to be somebody who doesn’t pull her own weight. One thing I know for certain, and that is that Martha could outwork you hobbled and half starved. But I guess you must have had some bad experience with her, some reason to talk to her like that, so rude and disrespectful.”

In her confusion, Martha turned to Becca, ready to offer payment for the use of the tub and the towels, but Becca wasn’t even looking at her.

“Alice,” Becca said. “Your mouth is hanging open. Close it. The next thing I want to hear is you apologizing to Martha here. You’ll apologize; otherwise, you and me, we’ll have a private conversation in the
washhouse. I don’t care how old you are, I won’t tolerate such rude behavior. As for you, Martha—” She paused to take a breath.

“I am glad to see you back here in Paradise, and I hope you’ll stay, though I’d understand if you didn’t, what with the welcome you’re getting.” She glared at her daughter. “I know you got some bad memories, but I’m a great believer in starting over fresh, and I think you could be happy here, I really do. Now Alice,” she turned back to her daughter. “You got something you want to say?”

The girl stood there with her arms crossed and her face turned to the wall. Her whole body trembled with anger.

“Alice!”

“I apologize if I was rude.” She spoke to the wall.

Becca flapped her apron. “Do you want me to take my hand to your backside?”

Alice turned to face them and Martha was shocked to see that she was trembling with anger. She couldn’t imagine why Alice LeBlanc would hate her so sincerely.

“I am sorry that I was rude to Martha. I shouldn’t have said what I said. But I can think it, and I do think it, and you can switch me to Albany and back again, Ma, but that’s the truth. Why did she have to come back here when—”

“Ah.” Callie’s smile could be frightening, and it was focused on Alice. “It’s that way, is it?”

The high color in Alice’s cheeks drained away just that easily. She turned and walked so quickly from the kitchen that she was almost running.

Becca was looking at Callie. “What do you mean, it’s that way? What way? Alice may be testy at times but she’s always been a good girl.”

“Good girls fall in love just like bad ones,” Callie said.

“Who is she supposed to be in love with?” Becca demanded. “Has she been making eyes at that Yarnell boy?”

Martha said, “And what does that have to do with me? Why is she so mad at me?”

Callie’s small, narrow face turned to her. There was a sadness there, and a good amount of resignation.

“It’s about Daniel. He’s a rare prize, and more than a few girls have set their caps for him. Nobody’s happy about you coming back and grabbing him for yourself.”

“Grabbing? I’ve been
grabbing
after Daniel?” Martha was horrified. “But that’s—that’s—”

She wanted to say it wasn’t true, but something held her back.

“It don’t matter if it’s true or not,” Callie interrupted her. “Alice thinks it is, and if she thinks it is, then everybody else does too. Now you had best get into that water before it’s cold again.”

Martha was relieved to be able to disappear, even if it was only behind an old carved screen. She needed to make sense of what Callie had said. She felt herself blushing. Completely irritated with herself, she stripped off her chemise—even that was muddy at the hem—and stepped into the hip bath. The water was blessedly hot, and she sank into it thankfully.

On the other side of the screen, Becca had come back into the kitchen and was proclaiming her thoughts on the whole matter.

“Foolishness,” she said. “I won’t have it. Those girls of mine will get an earful this evening, I promise you that. Chasing after a man who ain’t interested, like a, like a trollop! Did I raise my girls that way? No, I did not. I will see to it your brothers hear about this, you mark my word,” Becca called loudly. “They care about this family’s good name even if you don’t. Pete will set you straight, that he will. I’ll see to it.”

There was a sound of a stool scraping along the floor and then Callie’s voice from the other side of the screen.

“I have to say, Martha, you took your time coming down to the village, but then you did it with style.”

Martha closed her eyes and shifted so that the water came up to her shoulders. “I might as well have hired a drummer to walk in front of me.”

But she had to smile, a little at least. Sometimes the only thing you could do was laugh at yourself, and this seemed to be one of those times.

Callie was saying, “Flood dirt is stubborn. Here.”

A cake of soap came flying around the corner of the screen and plopped into the water.

“Don’t use it on your hair,” Callie said. “That coarse stuff would do awful things to it and that would be a shame.”

Martha slid down further into the water. “Callie?”

“Hmmm?”

“Have I ruined what good name I had?”

Callie barked a short laugh. “You worried about your reputation?”

Yes
, Martha should have said.
Yes, I am
.

“It’s none of my business anyway,” Callie said.

Becca called from the other side of the room. “Ain’t nobody asked me but I think Daniel could do a lot worse than Martha. And he ain’t getting any younger. But Martha, if you want to look around a bit, don’t you forget about my Roy. He’s the best worker at the mill, so says Marcus Reed; you can ask him yourself.”

Martha clamped her mouth shut hard on the urge to giggle, but Callie wasn’t amused.

“Why would you go putting ideas in her head?” Callie snapped. “Why is everybody so interested in pairing people up? Is there an ark somewhere I overlooked? Daniel is happy the way he is.”

“Is that so?” Becca said, mildly.

“It is so,” Callie shot back.

Martha raised her voice. “Could we please stop talking about Daniel Bonner? I am here to see you, Callie. Tell me how things stand.”

There was a short silence and then Callie made a sound deep in her throat. “Why would you want to talk about that sorry subject?”

“Because I want to know,” Martha said. “Because I’d like to help if I can.”

“You can come shovel mud anytime you got the urge,” Callie said, her dry humor coming to the surface again.

“Do you have to joke about everything? I’m serious.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Callie reeled off a list of things lost in the flood, from her home to her chickens.

“What about your stock?”

“I lost some trees. But the cider house came through fine, and no damage to the press,” she finished. “I could fix up a little place for myself right there in the cider house—there’s room for a bed—but Ethan Middleton has got it in his head that it wouldn’t be seemly—”

Martha laughed.

“Now what in the name of perdition is so funny about that?” Callie demanded, all sputter and spark.

“You. You are funny, always finding a way to deny yourself the things everybody is entitled to. A home, for one. And don’t try to tell me the cider house could be your home, because that argument would be beneath you.”

Martha reached for the linen towel and stood up. The water was a
deep gray-brown and she was nowhere near clean, but she couldn’t loll all morning in Becca’s hip bath and to ask for more water would cement her reputation as spoiled and wasteful.

Callie found her voice again. “I don’t want to talk houses anymore; it’s all I hear about. Now I have got to get back to work. I’m sorry we didn’t have much of a visit, but you’re welcome anytime. I come in about sunset. Becca, stop making faces. I do come in about sunset.”

“About a couple hours after,” Becca said. She seemed to be one of the rare people who was not in the least put off by Callie’s temper.

While they were arguing the point Martha was dressing as quickly as she could manage. Becca had loaned her an old-fashioned skirt and bodice and a white linen blouse soft with many washings. No stockings, but she would have to send for her second pair of boots and another pair of stockings anyway.

She stepped out from behind the screen feeling a little shy.

“Aren’t you a sight?” Callie said. She pressed one hand to her mouth, but she couldn’t hide her smile. “With that linen wrapped around your head you look like an old widow woman.”

Becca turned suddenly toward raised voices at the kitchen door. She said, “You two had best scat. That sounds like Charlie and he’ll pin you down talking all day if he finds you in the kitchen. Go on.”

There were five tables in the tavern where travelers could take food and drink, and Martha was relieved to find them all empty. In the normal way of things there would be a full room of people wanting to hear just what happened, and how, and why, and by the way, what was she doing back in Paradise, had she learned something about the wider world, and her place in it?

So she was thankful for the empty tables, but her good luck had its limitations: Daniel sat on a stool in front of the raised hearth, examining a book from the stack on the floor next to him. He looked up briefly and nodded. His expression was distracted and severe, and Martha had the idea that it might be a face his students saw quite often.

“Set by the warm,” Callie said behind her. “You can’t go back up the hill until you are good and dry, or Curiosity will give me the sharp side of her tongue, and she’d be right too. And I expect it will be a while
before Becca finds somebody to go fetch your dry boots. Daniel!” she called. “Scoot over, make some room. Maybe Martha can give you a hand with those books. And now I am gone, I have got to go look at Mayfair’s mule before somebody else buys her out from under my nose.”

Daniel had a great many things spread out over the apron of the hearth: buckets of water, piles of rags, knives, a scissors, and a whole range of brushes. Some of them looked like Lily’s paintbrushes, but she must be mistaken about that. Lily treated her tools with great care and would hardly give them up without an argument. She and Daniel had been very good at arguing, as she recalled.

As she watched, Daniel stood to hang a dripping book from a dowel rack over the hearth. Then he took each of the others hanging there one by one, gently shook the pages, and put it back to dry some more. He worked so quickly and efficiently that a stranger might not have noticed straight off that he worked without the use of his left hand.

“I won’t bite,” he said without turning around. “And I could use some help.”

His tone was matter-of-fact, and so Martha took an empty stool and accepted the primer that he offered her. It was damp and already smelled vaguely of mold, but the covers still opened and individual pages could be turned with a little coaxing. It might have been the very primer she used when she had gone to the Paradise school, when it was still halfway up Hidden Wolf in an old cabin.

Becca swept into the room with a tray. “Before he puts you to work you’ll drink down this tea. It’s Hannah’s recipe for a cold in the lungs.”

Martha accepted the cup thrust at her because there was no other option. “I don’t have a cold in the lungs.”

“Not yet, anyhow. You drink that; I don’t want to hear any excuses. Daniel, you need anything?”

“No, ma’am, but thank you anyway.” His attention had already turned back to the book in front of him.

The thing about Daniel Bonner—about all the Bonner men—was that they responded to a woman’s directions as if there were no differences between the sexes. In Manhattan things didn’t work that way, but the Bonners and some of the other people in Paradise had never learned the rules that people in the city lived by, and more, they seemed to do
fine without them. There was even talk that when the Quakers held their prayer meetings, a woman could stand up and preach like a man. Martha remembered talking to Teddy about that.

“That little village you come from is the perfect place for Quakers,” Teddy said. “They like forward women and Negroes and most likely Indians too. I can’t think of another group of whites who would be willing to live in such an unnatural setting.”

With time, Martha was remembering more about Teddy, things that she had somehow overlooked or failed to credit. Unpleasant things, most of them. Though he had been right about one thing: She couldn’t see herself preaching under any circumstances. Martha tried to decide what woman of her acquaintance would be comfortable in a pulpit and a few did come to mind: Curiosity, first and foremost; Elizabeth Bonner, if she were permitted to talk philosophy and rationalism. Jennet would tell stories that would keep the congregation laughing in spite of themselves. And the Mohawk women—if you gave any of them the chance, they would be fine speakers.