The Root Cellar (9 page)

Susan nodded. Will took his hand from her mouth, but he held her arms firmly. “Are you promising?”

“Will, I.…”

“Both your arms,” he said grimly, staring fixedly into her eyes. “Both your arms.”

“I promise,” said Susan softly, “and not because of your stupid threats but because if it matters so much to you I’m not going to tell but, oh Will, why do you have to go and join up? It ain’t our war. We got no part in it. You heard what happened in Soames the other day. That Yankee got arrested for trying to recruit our boys. Right here to Collivers’ Corners. Benny Bother told Joey Heaton he was going to set his dogs on any of them Yankees that come here to fetch our Canadian boys to fight in the rebellion. It ain’t our war, Will!”

“It’s part mine, Susan, it’s part mine. My ma come from the States. Her country needs soldiers bad. The war’s been going on for three years and things is desperate. Steve told me last time he come here that him and Aunt Min and them all went down to New York City when Abraham Lincoln was there and they seen him. He says Lincoln’s all but a saint and I believe him. Lincoln freed the slaves from those rich people in the South—and you know yourself how some of them black peoples come across the lake to get away from being slaves and the terrible things they told about being beaten and put in chains and made to work like animals. Well, after this war there ain’t going to be no more slaves and, what’s more, them states in the
South ain’t going to be able to quit the United States just because they happen to feel like it.”

“Well, I don’t care if they do or don’t.”

“Well, I care, and Steve says just about all the boys from Oswego County who can walk have gone. One of the regiments was home in February and they was recruiting—and he’s going to go if I’ll go with him. And I’m going. I’m shipping out with the
Eliza Fisher
. She’s heading for Oswego today with a load of grain, and Captain Soames says he’s got a day’s work I can do. When I get there I’m going off with Steve to join up.”

“Will!” Susan took hold of his arms. “Who’s going to look after things for your ma?”

“Who’d look after ’em if I was dead?”

“I don’t know but you ain’t dead—not yet, you ain’t. Oh, Will!”

“Susan, I got to go. I made up my mind. It’s a thing I got to do.”

They were both silent, not looking at each other, not really looking away either. Finally Will took his hands from Susan’s arms. He shouldered the small pack that he had set beside him on the grass. “Good-bye,” he said. “I’d leave you something for a keepsake, only I don’t know what it’d be.”

“I got a bit of paper with a song you made written on it. I’ll keep that. Here, you take my
locket.” Susan reached up and undid the chain around her neck.

“Susan, you can’t give that! It was your gran’s.”

“Take it.”

Will stuffed the locket in his pocket. He grabbed Susan’s hands. “You remember what you promised,” he said and off he went on his long legs, not once looking back.

Susan stood unmoving as the trees. Then, with her head down, hugging herself tightly with both arms, she ran from the orchard.

Rose slowly came out from behind the tree, stupefied. She stared at the spot where Will and Susan had stood. How could this happen? How could they grow older like that and leave her behind? How could Will just go off to the war? She pounded the trunk of the tree furiously with her fists. She felt cheated, betrayed. Pale and shaking, she ran back through the orchard, past the sheep and the hens, down the steps into the root cellar, and back up into the world she hated so much.

A Song and a Silver Rose

T
he next afternoon Rose went down the root cellar steps with great trepidation. She was furious with herself for having run away. “Stupid, stupid,” she had told herself off and on all day. “How can I fix it if I’m not even there?” For she had determined to set her world to rights, to find out where Will had gone and get him back. She did not mean to return to the Henrys again, so she had packed her overnight bag with everything she felt she might need—her extra pair of jeans, shirts, socks, and underwear, her pajamas and her treasures—and she had gone to find Susan.

She came up the steps into a bright summer morning. The sky was pale blue. A breeze was blowing gently through the leaves of the big maple tree and faintly stirring the roses and wood geraniums beside the cellar door. Susan was hanging laundry out beyond the vegetable
garden. Rose stood uncertainly on the path, her suitcase in one hand. She felt a bit shy with this bigger, older Susan, but again, the knowledge that she was where she belonged made her bold.

She cleared her throat. Susan let out a shriek.

“It’s me—Rose. Did I scare you?”

Susan’s eyes grew big and round. Her mouth gaped open. She clutched at the clothesline for support.

“It’s just me,” said Rose again.

“It
is
Rose,” Susan whispered. “It is.… Lord’s mercy!”

“I came back.”

“I see that, but wherever did you come from? Oh, my, you did give me a start!” Susan shook her head. She began again to hang out the laundry, all the while looking nervously at Rose.

Rose was relieved to see that Susan didn’t look any older than she had the day before. All the same she asked, to make sure, “Where’s Will?”

Susan had finished her work but she had not moved. She still watched Rose warily.

“Will’s gone off, Rose.”

“I know that.”

“You know?”

“I was hiding behind a tree and I heard.”

“You was hiding behind a tree?”

“I came back to find you, and when I heard talking in the orchard, and it didn’t sound like
you, I was scared so I hid. When was it, Susan? How long ago, I mean.”

“You ought to know that if you was here.”

“I was here. Listen.” And Rose recited to Susan a good deal of the conversation she had overheard in the orchard. To her dismay it brought tears to Susan’s eyes.

“It’s just we ain’t heard from Will in eight months,” said Susan.

“Eight months!” Rose was. aghast. “How long ago did he go?”

“It was a year in April.”

“A year! Has he sent letters?”

“At first he sent ’em. He never told much, but they was letters all the same, and they told he was all right. I got ’em all saved. But there ain’t been none since January, and the war’s been over for four months now.”

“The war’s over?” Rose searched her memory for the date of the end of the war. “What year is it now, Susan?”

“It’s the 16th of August in 1865, and the war’s been done since April and poor Mr. Lincoln shot dead in the theater and cold in his grave by now, and they still haven’t caught that crazy Mr. Booth who done it. If you come from New York like you said, how come you don’t know that? How come you.…” Susan stopped. She studied Rose intently. “There’s something queer about you,” she said, then added quickly,
“I don’t mean nothing by that. I don’t think you’re looney or nothing. It’s just there’s things I can’t figure out about you. You come here three years back. You said you was running away and you wanted to stay here so bad. Then, quick’s a flick of a cow’s tail, you was gone. Will went in the house for no more than three minutes, and when he come out you was gone and we ain’t set eyes on you from that moment to this. And here you are as though it was yesterday you come, and you ain’t changed. Not growed, nor changed. Not a hair of you. You even got the same clothes on. It gives me the jitters.”

“I know,” said Rose remembering the day Mrs. Morrissay came through her bedroom wall. “I don’t understand it either, but I did tell you, Susan, I did. I told you and Will when we were having our picnic over in the apple trees, but you didn’t believe me. I do come from New York, only I come from New York more than a hundred years from now. You have to believe me because it’s true. It’s three years ago for you, but for me it’s only three weeks. I haven’t grown any because I’m only three weeks older.

“I didn’t mean to disappear that day. I ran down into the cellar because I was scared, and then I got stuck and it took me all this time to figure out how to get back. It was because of the shadow—don’t, Susan, don’t!” she begged,
because Susan was backing away, her eyes wide with fright. “I’m real. Really, I’m real. Stop looking at me like that! It’s just this thing with the root cellar!”

“What thing?” asked Susan, keeping a good distance between herself and Rose.

Rose set her bag down. She looked at the open doors of the root cellar and said slowly, “Well, it’s … it’s … I think it’s because of Mrs. Morrissay. I don’t mean Will’s mother, it’s another Mrs. Morrissay. She started it, but I’m not sure she knew she was doing it. Anyway, she showed up the day I came to live in this house, and she stayed until I found the root cellar. I told you about that. Then, after we had our picnic, Will’s mother scared me and I ran back down into the cellar. When I went back up the stairs I was in Aunt Nan’s time. I tried and tried to come back, but I only found out today how to do it. There’s a little hawthorn tree—it’s like that one over on the other side of the creek—and when the shadow from that tree falls exactly between the two doors that lead to the root cellar, I can open the doors, go into the cellar, and come up in your time. Do you understand now?”

“How old are you, Rose?”

“I’m twelve.”

“You said you was twelve when you came here before.”

“I was. I keep telling you, Susan, it was only three weeks ago for me. I wish it wasn’t because now you’re three years older and Will isn’t here!” She looked accusingly at Susan. In her frustration she felt that it was somehow Susan’s fault. “Anyway,” she said impatiently, “what we have to do now is find Will.”

Susan sat down on the ground, put her head in her hands, and burst into tears. Rose had never been with anyone crying before. She felt embarrassed and awkward. After a long, fidgety moment she put out her hand and touched the top of Susan’s bowed head. Susan jumped back in fright.

“You might be a ghost,” she whispered, and suddenly it all struck Rose as funny. Mrs. Morrissay, herself, Will, the whole Henry family, maybe they were all ghosts. She began to laugh, loud bellowing laughs such as she had never laughed before in her life. She laughed so hard she had to sit down, shaking with laughter.

“Do I look like a ghost? Or feel like a ghost? Susan, I’m not a ghost.”

“You don’t and that’s a fact,” said Susan. She dried her eyes on her apron and smiled her wide, warm smile. “No, you ain’t a day older nor a hair changed from what you was three years ago, and if you can get along with the queerness of it then I suppose so can I.”

Then Rose told Susan again how she had
found the root cellar. Together they marveled over the strangeness of it, and Rose told her how she felt that this world was where she really belonged. Then she said confidently, “I know Will’s alive somewhere. We have to find out where so we can bring him home.”

“We can’t do that,” said Susan. “We wouldn’t know where t’start. It was an awful big war, and them things can’t be as easy to sort out as eggs or apples.”

Rose jumped to her feet. “Yes, they can!” she cried. “Yes, they can. They can be if all you have to do is look in history books for them. Back at Aunt Nan’s or in the library in Soames or somewhere there must be a lot of books that tell about the Civil War.”

“But, Rose, them books, even if you can find ’em, ain’t going to say what happened to William Morrissay from the Hawthorn Bay, Canada West.”

“No, I guess not.” Rose felt deflated. Then she brightened. “Maybe old Tom Bother knows. He says his family’s always lived here.”

“Bothers lives up the road.”

“And they do on Aunt Nan’s road. At least, one does, and I can ask him, and maybe there are other people who might know. I’ll go and find out. I’ll come back tomorrow night.” Rose stopped short. “Susan, what if I come tomorrow night and another three years have gone or
maybe even more? How can we make it be the same time for you as it is for me?”

“I don’t know,” said Susan unhappily. “I don’t know, unless mebbe if we … no, I guess there ain’t a sure way to do it.”

“What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say there’s them believes if you give a promise and a keepsake, then you always come back when you say. But Will left me a keepsake and I give him one and he ain’t come back.”

“Did you say
when
though? I heard you doing that because I was behind the tree, and I don’t remember that you said when.”

“No, that’s so, I didn’t.”

“So we can try it. I could leave you my suitcase.”

Susan was doubtful. “That ain’t really a keepsake. A keepsake’s got to be something you care a good deal about. It’s like leaving a bit of yourself for the promise.”

“Here.” Rose reached up and undid the chain around her neck. “You gave Will your locket. So you have mine. It’s a rose for me.”

Susan took the silver rose and held it in the palm of her hand. “Ain’t it pretty,” she said softly.

“It came from someone a long time ago. My father gave it to my mother when they got married and my mother gave it to me when I was born. My grandmother told me. It’s what
I care most about in all the world, so if I leave it with you then it has to mean I’ll come back when I say. Here, I’ll put it on you.”