The Endless Forest
Page 56
When Elizabeth could put it off no longer, she got dressed to go down into the village. Adam and Nathan had been waiting for this, as it was their turn to go with her. She started off with the boys to either side of her, hindered by the mud and distracted by their antics. There was a long story about a honeycomb, the Savard cousins, Curiosity’s kitchen cat, and a wager. The story bounced back and forth between them, and Elizabeth grabbed what she could as it sped by.
“I believe you’ve just confessed to larceny and gambling. And beyond that, you’ve given away your very advanced and frightening grasp of the principles of hucksterism.”
The boys frowned at each other. Elizabeth could almost hear their thoughts: Grandmother Bonner had started to talk like a book, and so early in their outing too.
Adam said, “If you mean we cheated the girls, I guess we did.” Adam had a talent for the truth. Sometimes when she was talking to him, she remembered the stories she had heard about the father who had abandoned him before he was born, how strange the ways of nature when a seed from such a poor tree thrived and grew into something straight and strong.
“It wasn’t much of a wager,” Nathan said. Even at the end of a long winter his hair was almost white-blond. In their physical selves the two boys could hardly be less alike, but in mind and deed they were cut from the same cloth exactly.
Adam did his best to change the direction of the conversation by pointing out a towhee perched on a pine branch, raccoon tracks, the remains of a squirrel that had run into a dog and never run away again. He talked until Nathan worked up his courage to ask a question.
“Our folks won’t let us do anything or go anywhere since the flood. We haven’t even been to Lake in the Clouds yet. Why is that? The flood was so long ago.”
“To your way of thinking it was a long time ago,” Elizabeth said. “But you must think of those who still do not have a roof over their head. It won’t be much longer before school starts again.”
Nathan’s smooth face scrunched into thoughtfulness, and it made him look very much his mother’s child.
“What worries you so?” she asked him. And then, after a silence: “You needn’t tell me if it’s a secret. As long as no one is in danger, you needn’t tell me.”
“Is it a danger to make Aunt Birdie mad at you?” Adam asked, and Nathan flashed him a warning look.
“If it is, something is very wrong,” Elizabeth said.
The boys exchanged another glance, and then Adam spoke up. “Why doesn’t Birdie want to be in the same classroom with us? She’s only five months sixteen days older than Nathan, so why shouldn’t she be in the same classroom?”
For the rest of the walk into the village they discussed the family generations, where Birdie stood in relationship to her own brothers and sisters, and what it was like to be stuck between them and her nieces and nephews. By the time they had come to the Red Dog, the boys seemed much less agitated and more thoughtful. Elizabeth sent them off to say hello in the smithy and then to go watch the men building the new bridge, with firm directions on where they may go and where they may not.
The boys were off before the last word was spoken and Elizabeth turned toward the schoolhouse, trying to organize her thoughts and not getting very far. Both subjects she wanted to discuss with her son were difficult, and both were important. As she walked up the steps to the schoolhouse door, she was surprised and a little ashamed to realize she was holding her breath.
But Daniel wasn’t in the school. She walked from classroom to classroom to the apartment in the back that he had so vehemently denied Martha—the rooms swept and scrubbed now, and free of all traces of mud.
On the lane she asked Friend Emma Michaels, but Emma hadn’t seen Daniel and neither had any of the others Elizabeth stopped. In the shell of the new trading post the noise of hammering was so loud that she had trouble getting anyone’s attention. That gave her a moment to study the improvements.
There had been a large hearth and a Franklin oven, but those things were gone now. The men who had gathered here to exchange news and opinions about everything from crops to presidents had already begun to migrate to the Red Dog, but now they would have no choice. So many memories tied up with the old trading post, most of them good, some of them so funny that she smiled even now when they came to mind. It occurred to her for the first time that the only gaol Paradise had—Anna’s pantry, as they still called it—had been lost with the rest of the trading post. She wondered if they’d build another one, and where. It was a question she wouldn’t put to Tobias Mayfair, who was very difficult to draw into conversation even on topics as uncontroversial as the weather.
It was odd that the Mayfairs should be living here in Paradise for so long but still did not understand—or care to understand—the most basic of facts about their neighbors. They would build a larger and better lit and cleaner trading post, but their business would decline because they made no place for men to sit and talk. But maybe that was what Mayfair wanted; he might be hoping to bring in women, with pretty fabrics and ready-made clothes. The younger women showed little interest in spinning and weaving, after all, but just as much interest in fashion as their mothers and grandmothers before them.
The new sign, freshly painted, was propped against the wall to dry. In strong black letters it declared the place to be Mayfair’s Mercantile. Anna could have told him, if she were still alive, how fruitless it was to try to rename things in Paradise. She herself had tried to call the trading post an emporium, but had to give it up as a bad job when Magistrate Bookman asked her what she meant, if she was declaring all Paradise an empire or just her piece of it.
“I believe you’ve just confessed to larceny and gambling. And beyond that, you’ve given away your very advanced and frightening grasp of the principles of hucksterism.”
The boys frowned at each other. Elizabeth could almost hear their thoughts: Grandmother Bonner had started to talk like a book, and so early in their outing too.
Adam said, “If you mean we cheated the girls, I guess we did.” Adam had a talent for the truth. Sometimes when she was talking to him, she remembered the stories she had heard about the father who had abandoned him before he was born, how strange the ways of nature when a seed from such a poor tree thrived and grew into something straight and strong.
“It wasn’t much of a wager,” Nathan said. Even at the end of a long winter his hair was almost white-blond. In their physical selves the two boys could hardly be less alike, but in mind and deed they were cut from the same cloth exactly.
Adam did his best to change the direction of the conversation by pointing out a towhee perched on a pine branch, raccoon tracks, the remains of a squirrel that had run into a dog and never run away again. He talked until Nathan worked up his courage to ask a question.
“Our folks won’t let us do anything or go anywhere since the flood. We haven’t even been to Lake in the Clouds yet. Why is that? The flood was so long ago.”
“To your way of thinking it was a long time ago,” Elizabeth said. “But you must think of those who still do not have a roof over their head. It won’t be much longer before school starts again.”
Nathan’s smooth face scrunched into thoughtfulness, and it made him look very much his mother’s child.
“What worries you so?” she asked him. And then, after a silence: “You needn’t tell me if it’s a secret. As long as no one is in danger, you needn’t tell me.”
“Is it a danger to make Aunt Birdie mad at you?” Adam asked, and Nathan flashed him a warning look.
“If it is, something is very wrong,” Elizabeth said.
The boys exchanged another glance, and then Adam spoke up. “Why doesn’t Birdie want to be in the same classroom with us? She’s only five months sixteen days older than Nathan, so why shouldn’t she be in the same classroom?”
For the rest of the walk into the village they discussed the family generations, where Birdie stood in relationship to her own brothers and sisters, and what it was like to be stuck between them and her nieces and nephews. By the time they had come to the Red Dog, the boys seemed much less agitated and more thoughtful. Elizabeth sent them off to say hello in the smithy and then to go watch the men building the new bridge, with firm directions on where they may go and where they may not.
The boys were off before the last word was spoken and Elizabeth turned toward the schoolhouse, trying to organize her thoughts and not getting very far. Both subjects she wanted to discuss with her son were difficult, and both were important. As she walked up the steps to the schoolhouse door, she was surprised and a little ashamed to realize she was holding her breath.
But Daniel wasn’t in the school. She walked from classroom to classroom to the apartment in the back that he had so vehemently denied Martha—the rooms swept and scrubbed now, and free of all traces of mud.
On the lane she asked Friend Emma Michaels, but Emma hadn’t seen Daniel and neither had any of the others Elizabeth stopped. In the shell of the new trading post the noise of hammering was so loud that she had trouble getting anyone’s attention. That gave her a moment to study the improvements.
There had been a large hearth and a Franklin oven, but those things were gone now. The men who had gathered here to exchange news and opinions about everything from crops to presidents had already begun to migrate to the Red Dog, but now they would have no choice. So many memories tied up with the old trading post, most of them good, some of them so funny that she smiled even now when they came to mind. It occurred to her for the first time that the only gaol Paradise had—Anna’s pantry, as they still called it—had been lost with the rest of the trading post. She wondered if they’d build another one, and where. It was a question she wouldn’t put to Tobias Mayfair, who was very difficult to draw into conversation even on topics as uncontroversial as the weather.
It was odd that the Mayfairs should be living here in Paradise for so long but still did not understand—or care to understand—the most basic of facts about their neighbors. They would build a larger and better lit and cleaner trading post, but their business would decline because they made no place for men to sit and talk. But maybe that was what Mayfair wanted; he might be hoping to bring in women, with pretty fabrics and ready-made clothes. The younger women showed little interest in spinning and weaving, after all, but just as much interest in fashion as their mothers and grandmothers before them.
The new sign, freshly painted, was propped against the wall to dry. In strong black letters it declared the place to be Mayfair’s Mercantile. Anna could have told him, if she were still alive, how fruitless it was to try to rename things in Paradise. She herself had tried to call the trading post an emporium, but had to give it up as a bad job when Magistrate Bookman asked her what she meant, if she was declaring all Paradise an empire or just her piece of it.
