A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

  "Miss Wilcox, are you all right?"

  She nodded, but her eyes were red and she was trembling. "I'm fine, Mattie," she said, "but I think I'm going to lie down for a bit. Just leave the mess. I'll see to it. Help yourself to whatever's in the kitchen. Your money's on the table."

  I heard her speaking, but my eyes were on the broken glass and the scattered pages. He'd done this. Maledictions my word of the day. It means bad speaking, like a curse. I felt a shiver run up my spine and left the library to lock the front and back doors. When I returned, Miss Wilcox was on the staircase.

  "Will that man be back?" I asked her.

  She turned around. "Not today."

  "I think you should call for the sheriff, Miss Wilcox."

  Miss Wilcox smiled sourly at that and said, "He wouldn't come. It's not illegal, not yet at least, for a man to destroy his wife's home."

  I didn't say anything, but my eyes must have been as big and as round as two fried eggs.

  "Yes, Mattie, that was my husband. Theodore Baxter."

  "Baxter? Baxter! Then you're not ... then that ... that makes you..."

  "Emily Baxter, poet."

  ab • scis • sion

  According to the article I'd read in Peterson's Magazine, if you wish to attract a man, you need to be "attentive and receptive to his every word, put his own interests before yours, and use the eloquent, unspoken language of the female body to let him know that he is the very center of your universe, the primary reason for your existence." The first two bits of advice were clear to me. I had trouble with the third one, though.

  I thought it meant I should bat my lashes, but when I tried it, Royal looked at me with a puzzled expression, and asked if I'd gotten some grit in my eye.

  We were halfway down the Loomises' drive. Daisy had gone and smashed through their fence again. Pa was furious. Mrs. Loomis was, too. I pretended to be, but really I was glad, for it meant I got to see Royal without looking like I wanted to. He'd been in the barnyard, just as I'd hoped. He'd helped me get Daisy and Baldwin out of the pond again and then he walked me home.

  We met Will and Jim coming the other way. They had their fishing rods over their shoulders and a creel full of trout.

  "Oh, Mattie, dear, be mine until Niagara Falls!" Jim cooed.

  "I will, Royal, darling, until the kitchen sinks!" Will gushed.

  They were blowing kisses at each other when Royal slipped Daisy's noose off and cracked Jim on the ass with it. He took off howling, with Will right behind him. Then Royal picked up where he'd left off, telling me what turkeys ate and how they'd be good to raise alongside chickens and geese. As I nodded and smiled and umm-hmm'd and oh, my'd my way down the drive, I wondered if boys had any sort of magazine that told them how to attract women and, if so, did it ever tell them to put the girls' interests first?

  I was just bursting to tell someone that we had the country's most scandalous lady poet right in our midst. I could've told Weaver, but I hadn't seen him for days. He was up at the Glenmore already, helping get the boats ready and the porch painted. I could've told Abby, but I was worried she might tell Jane Miley, her best friend, and Jane might spread it around, and I thought it might be dangerous to Miss Wilcox if people knew who she really was, seeing as everyone was so up in arms over A Distant Music. I wanted to tell Royal most of all. I wanted to share it with him and have it be our secret, just ours, but he never gave me the chance.

  "Look at that stretch of land right there, Matt," he said, sweeping his hand out in front of him. "Nice and flat, well drained, and a good stream besides. Make good growing land. I'd farm it for corn in a second."

  The stretch of land he was talking about included Emmie Hubbard's property and a bit of my father's, as well as Loomis land. "Well, I think Emmie might have something to say about that. And my pa, too."

  He shrugged. "A man can dream, can't he?"

  And before I could say anything in reply, he asked me if I'd like to go riding with him to Inlet and back that very night. I said I would. And as soon as I told him yes, he let go of Daisy's rope, pulled me in under some maple trees, and kissed me. I guess the unspoken language of my body must've been pretty eloquent after all, because that was just what I'd wanted him to do. He pressed himself into me and kissed my neck, and it was as if everything strong and solid inside me, heart and bones and muscle and gut, softened and melted from the heat of him. For the first time, I dared to touch him. It must have been the beautiful May day that made me so bold. Springtime in the woods can make you half mad. I ran my hands over his arms and laid them upon his chest. His heart was beating slow and steady unlike my own, which was thumping like a thresher. I guessed it must be different for a boy than it was for a girl. I felt his hands circling my waist, and then one slipped down lower. To a place Mamma told me no one should ever touch, only a husband.

  "Royal, no."

  "Aw, Mattie, it's all right."

  He pulled away from me and frowned and his face darkened and I felt I had done something wrong. My word of the day was abscission. It means an act of cutting off or a sudden termination. I felt its meaning as I looked at Royal's face, all clouded. I felt frightened and bereft, as if I had somehow cut myself off from the sun. He looked at the ground, then back at me. "I ain't playing, Matt, if that's what you think. I seen a ring in Turtle's."

  I blinked for a reply, because I didn't understand what he meant.

  He sighed and shook his head. "If I was to buy it, would you want it?"

  Good Lord, that kind of ring. I thought he meant a ring for a harness or a pulley, but he meant a real ring. Like the one his brother Dan had given Belinda Becker.

  "Oh yes! Yes, I would," I whispered. And then I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him and nearly sobbed with relief when I felt him kiss me back. I didn't think what it meant, saying yes. All I wanted was Royal right then, and I didn't think how saying yes to him would mean saying no to all the other things I wanted.

  "All right, then," he said, breaking away from me. "I'll call for you after supper tonight."

  "All right."

  He picked up Daisy's rope and handed it to me, and I walked the rest of the way home by myself. And it was only much later, after he'd called at our place and asked Pa if I could go riding, and we'd been up to Inlet and back and I was upstairs in my bed remembering every one of his kisses, that I wondered if he was supposed to have said he loved me when he told me about the ring. Or if maybe that came later.

  his • pid • u • lous

  "Bill Mitchell you know he kept our shanty. As mean a damn man as you ever did see..."

  "Beth, don't curse."

  "I didn't, Matt, it was the song. 'He'd lay round the shanty from morning till night. If a man said a word, he was ready to fight...'"

  "Can't you sing a nicer song? How about the one Reverend Miller taught you? 'Onward, Christian Soldiers'?"

  She wrinkled her nose. "I like 'Township Nineteen' better. The lumberjacks are more fun than Jesus. I never seen him work a jam and he can't bid, neither. Not in that nightshirt he's always wearing."

  The nearest church was in Inlet and we hadn't been to it since Mamma died. She was the one who made us go; Pa wasn't one for religion. I wondered if maybe I should take my sisters on the coming Sunday.

  "One morn before daylight, Jim Lou he got mad. Knocked hell out of Mitchell and the boys was all glad..."

  I sighed and let Beth sing. The two of us were on our way to Emmie Hubbard's. We were walking close together under our mother's old black umbrella. A soft, pattering rain was coming down, the gentle kind that made the color and smell of everything around us—the grass, the dirt road, the balsams and violets and wild lilies of the valley—come up strong.

  Beth finished her song. "Is Emmie going away, Matt?" she asked me. "And her kids? That's what Tommy said."

  "I don't know. Maybe she'll tell us."

  Tommy and Jenny had come for breakfast again that morning, and Tommy had been very upset. He'd told us about a l
etter that had come from Arn Satterlee. It was the second one Emmie had received from Arn. The first one—the one I knew about thanks to my aunt Josie but had to pretend I didn't when Emmie showed up on our doorstep to ask Pa what it meant—said that her land would be auctioned. Tommy said the second one had set August 20 as the date of the auction. He said the letter had his mother broken down and crying, and Weaver's mamma wasn't at home, because she was down to the railroad station selling her chicken, and would I please come.

  I hadn't been able to go right away. There was too much work in the mornings then, with the cows giving so much milk. Plus, it was planting time and I had the cabbage seed to get in. The moon had been full the night before, and things that grow in a head have to be planted when the moon's full, so they'll take a similar notion and come up big and round. Right after dinner, though, I'd wrapped up the leftover biscuits and set off up the road. I'd made extra with the Hubbard kids in mind. We could afford to be more generous with food since we had milk money coming in.

  Beth chattered as we walked. She talked about Miss Wilcox's automobile and how the entire Burnap family was down with the grippe and that J. P. Morgan's Pullman car had gone through Eagle Bay yesterday, and that Jim Loomis had been playing tricks on tourist kids who wanted to go boating on Fourth Lake, telling them to go inside the Eagle Bay Hotel and ask the manager for Warneck Brown, he'd take them. And they actually did it and how dumb could city kids be when everyone knew Warneck Brown was chewing tobacco, not a person. Beth tended to flit from one topic to another faster than a hummingbird. "Mattie, what's your word of the day today?" she finally asked me.

  "Hispidulous."

  "What's it mean?"

  "Covered in short hairs. Bristly."

  "You got a sentence for it?"

  "It's have, Beth, not got, and no, I don't. I can't think of anything that's hispidulous."

  She thought for a few seconds, then said, "Pa's face is with his beard. So's the piglet."

  I laughed. "You're right," I said.

  She smiled at me and took my hand. "I'm glad you're not going to college, Matt. I'm glad you're staying here. You won't go, will you? You'll stay and marry Royal Loomis, won't you? Abby says he's sweet on you."

  "I'm not going anywhere, Beth," I said, forcing a smile. More and more, I was seeing my dreams of going to college as just that—dreams. I couldn't leave. I knew that. Deep inside, Id always known it. Even if I wasn't sparking with Royal. Even if I earned enough money working for Miss Wilcox to buy my train ticket and Pa personally escorted me to the railroad station. I had promised my mamma I would stay.

  I tried to think about the future now. A real future, not a dream one. I thought about what Royal and I might do for Decoration Day—hear the town band in Old Forge or go to a picnic in Inlet. And if I should spend a little of the three dollars I'd earned from Miss Wilcox on fabric for a new skirt or save it all to go toward household things.

  When we got to Emmie's, I was surprised to see that her kids were all outside. Tommy and Susie were standing under a pine tree with Lucius, the baby. Jenny, Billy, Myrton, and Clara were standing out in the muddy yard with their clothing soaked and their hair plastered to their heads. I looked at the chimney pipe sticking out of Emmie's bleak gray house. There was no smoke coming our of it. The poor things would be chilled to the bone and there would be no fire burning in the stove to warm them when they went in. They'd be sick in no time. Anger flared up inside of me. Mostly I felt sorry for Emmie, but she made me mad sometimes, too. She was a mamma seven times over, but she still needed a mamma herself.

  As soon as the children saw Beth and me, they swarmed us like kittens around a milk pail. There always seemed to be more of them than I remembered.

  "Why are you kids out in the rain?" I asked them.

  "Ma sent us out. She's busy," Myrton said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  "Busy with what?" I asked.

  "Mr. Loomis is here. He's helping her fix the stove. She said it's dangerous and she doesn't want us back in the house till he's finished," Tommy said.

  "That's silly. I'm sure it's fine to go in," I said. I couldn't see how fixing a woodstove would be dangerous.

  "Mattie, you can't go in. Don't." There was a lick of anger in Tom's voice. "They've got the whole stove apart; there's pieces all over the floor."

  "Cripes, Tom, it's just a stove. I'll be careful of it," I said, irritated. "I've come all this way in the rain because you asked me to, and I'm not going back again without seeing your ma."

  I trotted up the broken steps onto the porch. The house's one front window was right next to the door. I glanced in before I knocked, just to make sure there weren't any stove parts in front of the door, and what I saw stopped me dead in my tracks.

  Emmie was bent over the stove with her skirts up around her waist. Mr. Loomis was behind her with his pants down around his ankles. And neither of them was fixing anything.

  I turned around, grabbed Bern's arm, and yanked her off" the porch. "Ow, Mattie, jeezum! Let go, will you?" she howled.

  "Tommy ... tell your ma ... tell her I'll call on her a bit later, all right? All right, Tom? Here ... here are some biscuits. Take them in to her when ... when you can."

  Tommy didn't answer me. His thin shoulders sagged from the weight of knowing. I could feel the heaviness, too, and it made me angry. I didn't want it. Didn't want to carry it. Tommy took the food, but he wouldn't look at me. I was glad of it, for I couldn't have met his eyes.

  "Ain't we going inside, Matt? I thought you wanted to see Emmie."

  "Later, Beth. Emmie's busy. She's fixing the stove. It's dangerous."

  "But you said—"

  "Never mind what I said! Just come on!"

  Beth whined and rubbed her arm all the way home. And I tried to tell myself that I had not just seen what I had seen, for it had looked so ugly and rude and seemed more like barnyard animals than a man and woman. It didn't look like making love; it looked like all the filthy words I'd ever heard it called. I wondered if that was how Minnie got her babies. If it was how my mamma got us. I wondered if that's how it would be between Royal and myself when we were married. If it was, I'd tell him to keep himself to himself, for I wanted no part of it.

  Poor Tommy. His brothers and sisters hadn't seemed to know what was happening, but he did. I hoped Mrs. Loomis would never find out. Or Royal or his brothers. It would hurt them terribly. Beth hadn't seen anything and surely Tommy was much too ashamed to tell. It would stay a secret. No one else would ever know.

  As we finally turned in to our own drive, our shoes sodden and our skirts muddied, I realized I had figured out a way to use my word of the day after all. Mr. Loomis's shirrtails had not quite covered his bare behind, and I had seen, though I truly wished I hadn't, that it was pale, flabby, and horribly hispidulous.

  Put the letters away, Mattie, I say to myself. No, myself answers.

  You're no better than your aunt Josie. Reading other people's letters is something she would do. You're a snoop.

  I don't care.

  Stop this. Go to sleep. You know all you need to know.

  But I don't. I know that Grace was pregnant. And I know she got that way because of Chester Gillette. And I think that they came to the Glenmore to elope. There's just one thing I don't know, and if I can find it out, I will put the letters away and go to sleep: I don't know why Chester Gillette wrote Carl Grahm in the guest book, and until I find that out, I'm going to keep reading.

  South Otselic

  June 25, '06

  Dear Chester,

  I am much too tired to write a decent letter or even follow the lines, but I have been uneasy all day and can't go to sleep because I am sorry I sent you such a hateful letter this morning. So I am going to write and ask your forgiveness, dear. I was cross and wrote things I ought not to have written. I am very sorry, dear. I shall never feel quite right until you write and say you forgive me ... I am very tired tonight, dear, I have been helping mamma sew today ... I never l
iked to have dresses fitted and now it is ten times worse. Oh Chester, you have no idea how glad I shall be when this worry is all over ... I am afraid the time will seem awfully long until I see you, Chester ... Oh! dear, I do get so blue. Chester, please don't wait until the Last of the week before you come. Can't you come the first of the week? Chester, I need you than you think I do...

  I keep reading, but there's nothing in the letter about Carl Grahm. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. I put Grace's letter down and shuffle through the bundle until I find what I'm after—a few letters written by Chester. I open the first one.

  June 21

  Dear Grace,

  Please excuse paper and pencil, as lam not writing this at home and have nothing else here. I received your letter last night and was just a little surprised although I thought you would be discouraged. Don't worry so much and think less about how you feel and have a good time...

  There is more in the letter about a trip some of his friends are taking and that he cannot leave Cortland before the seventh of July, but nothing about Carl Grahm. I open the next one.

  July 2, 1906

  Dear Kid—

  I certainly felt good when I got your letter although I also felt mean as I hadn't written all week. Wednesday and Thursday I had to work on the payroll and Friday a friend came and stayed all night. Saturday I went up to the lake and am so burned tonight I cannot wear a collar or coat. We went out in the canoe and to two other lakes, and, although the canoe was heavy to carry, we had a good time ... As for my plans for the Fourth I have made none as the only two girls I could get to go with me have made other arrangements because I didn't ask them until Saturday...