“I can just tell, that’s all. I’ve been doing it a long time.”
He watched her pull up a few more. “I could do that.”
She scarcely looked up. “Why don’t you just go play, Josh?”
“Papa would let me.”
“Well, I’m not Papa, and I have a lot to do!” Laura went on weeding while Josh hung there beside her, his cheek now resting on a knee as he hummed tunelessly, poking in the dirt with one finger.
Laura moved farther down the row, and Josh continued to study her. A few moments later he came to squat beside her and proudly presented an uprooted plant. “Here, Mama, I can help ... see?”
“Ohhh, Josh,” she moaned, “you’ve pulled up a baby turnip.
“Oh.” He stared at it disconsolately, then flashed a bright smile. “I’ll put it back in!”
Impatiently, she retorted, “No, it won’t work, Josh! Once it’s pulled out, it’ll wilt and die.”
“It will?” Josh asked, mystified, and disappointed because he’d only intended to help.
“Yes, it will,” she answered disgustedly before returning to her weeding.
Josh stood beside her a moment longer, studying the turnip green, which was already growing limp. “What’s die?” he asked innocently.
Unbidden came the thought: die is what we thought your father did and why I married somebody else. Upset with herself, impatient with him, she snapped, “Josh, just throw it away and go find something else to do! I’ll never get done here if you keep pestering me with your everlasting questions!”
Josh’s little mouth trembled and he pulled at his cheek with a dirty finger. Immediately, Laura hated herself for being so short with him when he’d only meant to help. This had happened more and more lately, and each time it did, she vowed not to let it happen again. She wanted to be like Jane, whose patience with her mob of children was close to saintly. But Jane was incredibly happy, and happiness made a difference! When you were happy you could handle things more easily. But Laura’s growing tension sought a vent at some very unexpected times, and unfortunately her son often got the brunt of it. To make matters worse now, Laura realized Josh was right—Dan would have patiently shown him how to tell the weeds from the vegetables, regardless of how much efficiency he forfeited.
Josh was trying valiantly not to cry, but tears winked on his golden lashes as he studied the sad little turnip plant, wondering why his mama was so upset.
Laura sighed and sank back on her heels. “Josh darling, come here.”
He dug his chin deeper into his chest as a tear went rolling, followed by another.
“Josh, Mama is sorry. You were just trying to help, weren’t you, darling?”
He nodded his head forlornly, still looking at the earth.
“Come here before Mama cries, too, Josh.” He lifted his teary eyes to her, dropped the turnip, and rushed into Laura’s arms, hugging her fiercely, his sunny head buried in her neck. She knelt in the garden row holding Rye’s son tightly against her apron front, just short of crying herself.
I am changing, she thought, in spite of my fight to preserve equanimity in my marriage. I’m becoming short-tempered with Josh and unhappy with Dan, and I’m not treating either one of them fairly. Oh, Josh, Josh, I’m sorry. If only you were old enough to understand how much I love your father but that I honestly love Dan, too. She closed her eyes, her cheek against her son’s hair, his cheek pressed against her breast, where the busk was hidden even now. She rocked him gently, swallowing tears as she pushed him back to look down into his lovable face.
“You know, I really don’t feel like weeding the garden at all. Suppose we take that walk up to the mill. I do need to order some flour from Asa.”
“Really, Mama?” Josh brightened, tears forgotten just that quickly.
“Really.” She tweaked his nose. “But you’ll have to wash your hands and face first and comb your hair.”
But he was already four rows away, jumping turnips, beans, peas, and carrots on his way to soap and water. “I bet I can beat you!” he hollered as he ran.
“I bet you can’t!” And Laura, too, was up, skirts lifted, racing him through the backyard.
Chapter 10
IT WAS A glorious day, the sky as blue as a jay’s wing, a light breeze chasing through the grass. An afternoon hush lay on both land and sea, for few boats moved in the harbor below as Laura and Josh left the scallop-shell path and threaded their way toward the open moor and the gently rising hills beyond. Meadowlarks came to watch the mother and child passing, accompanying them with the sweetest music in all of summer. Field flowers seemed to be drying their cheeks as their faces arched toward the warm sun. Katydids droned lazily while an occasional gull wheeled overhead.
Josh stopped to examine an ant hill and Laura joined him, taking time to bask in the joy of watching him instead of the ants. His mouth formed an excited O and he exclaimed, “Look at that one! Look at the big rock he’s carrying!” Laura laughed, and looked, and shrank for the moment into the miniature world of insects, where a grain of sand became a boulder.
In time they moved on up the sandy path. All around, the treeless hills were trimmed with creamy heads of Queen Anne’s lace nodding in the breeze.
“Just a minute!” Laura called, and left the path to pick several stems of lace, adding a few brown-eyed Susans when they passed a patch, and later tucking wild yarrow into the bouquet.
“I see it! I see it!” Josh cried as the latticed vanes appeared at the crest of the hill. “Do you think Mr. Pond will let me ride the spar?”
“We’ll have to see if the oxen are hooked to it today.”
Laura was hatless and half-blinded as she turned her face toward the two-o’clock sun that formed an aureole behind the windmill. The vanes rotated slowly. And then a dark core seemed to separate itself from the sun and become distinct from it, and she shaded her eyes with a forearm to watch it take the shape of a man coming downhill in their direction.
He stopped when he saw them. Though she could not make out his face, she saw long, slender legs in calf-high boots and white sleeves billowing in the breeze. A moment later another dark shape moved around his ankles and stopped beside him. A dog ... a big yellow Lab.
“Rye,” she whispered, not realizing she had, the name coming to her lips as if in answer to a long-repeated prayer.
For a moment both man and woman paused, he with the grass feathering about his knees on the hill above her, she with skirts clutched in one hand and the shadow of a nosegay of wildflowers painting fernlike images across her features. The child scampered up the hill and the dog scampered down, but neither Rye nor Laura noticed. The breeze caught her pink calico skirt and held it abaft while two hearts soared and plunged.
Then Rye leaned forward and came down the hill at a dogtrot, half jumping, elbows lifting slightly as he took the decline with an eagerness that sent her hurrying upward, skirt caught up in both hands now. They met with Josh and Ship between them, exuberant child and overjoyed dog completely taken with each other, just as man and woman were. Josh fell to his knees while Ship wagged not only her tail but her whole body.
“Gosh, is he yours, Rye?” Josh asked, oblivious of all but the dog and the pink tongue he tried gaily to avoid.
“She,” Rye corrected, his eyes riveted on Laura.
“She,” Josh repeated. “Is she yours?"
“Aye, she’s mine.” the blue eyes took in nothing but the face of the woman before him.
“Boy, I’ll bet you really love her, don’t you?”
“Aye, son, I love her,” came the husky reply.
“You had her a long time?”
“Since I was a boy.”
“How old is she?”
“Old enough t’ know by now who she belongs to.”
“Gee, I wish she was mine.”
But to that came only the soft reply, “Aye.”
There followed a long, trembling pause, filled only with the sigh of the wind in a woman’s skirts and
the shush-shush of whispering grass. Laura felt as if the field of wildflowers had just blossomed within her breast. Her lips were parted, and her heartbeat leaped wildly within her bodice of pink calico. The hills of Nantucket embraced them, and for that moment all else was wiped away.
And suddenly she had to touch him ... just touch him.
She extended her hand to be shaken.
“Hello, Mr. Dalton. I didn’t think I’d ... we’d run into you out here.”
His palm enfolded hers, held it like a treasure while he gazed into her eyes above the golden head of their son, frolicking at their feet.
“Hello, Laura. I’m glad y’ did.”
His palm was callused, hard, and familiar. “We’re on our way up to the mill to order flour and bran.”
He slipped his index and middle fingers between her cuff and the delicate skin of her inner wrist, then covered the back of the hand with his other. Her pulse raced wildly beneath his fingertips.
“And I was at the mill takin’ an order for barrels.”
“Well,” she said, laughing nervously, “it seems everyone is out enjoying the sunny weather.”
“Aye, everyone.” Just then Josh scrambled to his feet, and only then did it strike them how long, how caressingly, they’d been holding hands. Immediately, Rye released hers. But Josh and Ship only leaped and cavorted in circles about them, leaving them to gaze at each other.
“Do you ... do you come up this way often?” she questioned.
“Aye, Ship and I, we do a lot o’ walkin’.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“Do y’ come up this way often?”
“No, sometimes on the way to Jane’s house is all.”
“And when you order flour.” He smiled into her eyes, and she smiled back. “And pick wild flowers.”
She nodded and dropped her gaze to the cluster in her nervous hands.
“I stopped by Jane’s myself one day,” Rye said.
“Yes, she told me. It was nice of you to bring gifts for the children. Thank you.”
There they stood, feeling as if they were smothering, talking of inconsequential things when there were a thousand things they wanted to tell each other, ask each other. Most overwhelming of all was the compulsion to touch. Laura let her gaze meander over his hair, his features. She wanted to reach up a fingertip and trace the new jutting line of the side whiskers that followed his hard jaw. She wanted to thread her fingers through his thick rye-colored hair and say what was on her mind: It’s gotten darker since you've been back, but I like it better this way, the way I remember it. She wanted to kiss each of the seven new pockmarks on his face and say, Tell me about the voyage. Tell me everything.
Josh interrupted their visual reverie to ask, “What’s her name?”
Rye pulled his eyes away from Laura and went down on one knee—safer that way; in another moment he would have reached for Laura again, but this time it would have been for more than a handshake.
“Ship.”
“That’s a funny name for a dog, ain’t it? You both got funny names.”
Rye’s rich laughter spilled across the flower-strewn field. “Aye, we both got funny names. Hers is really Shipwreck, ’cause that’s where she came from. Found her swimmin’ ashore when a bark piled up on the shoals.”
The dog was taking swipes at Josh’s face with her tongue, and he got her around the neck, giggling in delight. Then over they went, Josh on the bottom, eyes closed tightly while he giggled and the dog nuzzled and licked. Laura and Rye, too, joined in laughing as Josh curled up like an armadillo and the big Lab worried him.
Rye bent forward, resting an elbow on his knee, and smiled up at Laura. “If y’ don’t mind, Josh could stay here and play with Ship while you go on up and talk to Asa. We’ll be waitin’ when y’ come back down.”
She could no more have refused him than alter the changing of tides. Rye himself would have been invitation enough, kneeling in the strong sunlight, handsome and honed, with his shoulders slanted forward, sleeves flowing loosely as he held the back of one wrist with the opposite hand. His smiling eyes were raised to Laura, awaiting her answer.
Josh came out of his crouch to appeal, “Yeah, please, Mama! Just while you go up to the mill.”
Laura teased, “What about riding the spar?”
“The oxes ain’t hitched up anyway, so I wanna stay down here and play with Ship.” The two rolled over in the long grass.
“All right. I’ll be right back.”
Her eyes met and held Rye’s before he silently nodded. Then, seemingly of its own accord, her hand did a most surprising thing. It reached out to rest on the back of his neck—half on his hair, half inside his collar—while she passed behind him.
Rye’s head snapped around and his elbow slipped from his knee, blue eyes smoldering in surprise. But she had turned and was already making her way up the hill. He watched her retreating form, the way her pink skirt bunched at the hip as she took long, high steps in her climb. When she disappeared over the crest of the hill, he returned his attention to Josh and Ship. They cavorted together until Ship tired and flopped down to pant.
Soon Josh flopped down, too, beside Rye and struck up a conversation. “How come you know my Aunt Jane?”
“I’ve lived on the island all my life. I knew Jane when I was a boy not much older than you.”
“And Mama, too?”
“Aye, and your mama, too. We went t’ school together.”
“I get t’ go to school, but not till next year.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh. Papa already bought me my hornbook, and he says he’s gonna give his share of the firewood so I won’t have to sit far away from the fire.”
Rye laughed, but he knew it was true that those students whose parents donated firewood got the choicest seats, close to the fireplace. “Do y’ think y’ll like school?”
“It’ll be easy. Papa’s already taught me most of my letters.”
Rye plucked a blade of grass and put it in the corner of his mouth. “Sounds like you get along real well with your papa.”
“Oh, Papa’s better’n just about anybody I know ... ’cept Mama, o’ course.”
“O’ course.” Rye’s gaze wandered up the hill momentarily, then back to his son. “Well, y’re a lucky boy.”
“That’s what Jimmy says. Jimmy—” But Josh stopped, screwed up his face quizzically. “You know Jimmy?”
Rye shook his head, enchanted by the elfin child. He thought it best not to admit Jimmy Ryerson was a second cousin.
“Oh. Well, Jimmy, he’s my best friend. I’ll show him to you someday,” Josh said matter-of-factly, “if you’ll bring Ship along so Jimmy can see ’er, too.”
“It’s a deal.” Rye stretched out on the grass while Josh continued.
“Well anyways, Jimmy, he says I’m lucky cause Papa made me stilts and he says I’m the onlyest one he knows that’s got ’em. I let him use ’em sometimes, but Jimmy, he can’t stand up too good on ’em—not like me, ’cause Papa, he taught me to get the sticks behind my—” Josh stretched an elbow over his head, rubbed his armpit, and strove to remember. “What do you call these things again?”
Rye controlled the urge to laugh, answering most seriously, “Armpits.”
“Yeah ... armpits. Papa, he says to put the sticks behind ’em and stick your butt out, but Jimmy, he falls over, cuz he holds the sticks in front of him, like this, all the time.” Josh leaped to his feet to demonstrate. Then he dropped to his knees like quicksilver.
Delight filled Rye Dalton. The child was as lovable as his mother, quick-witted and spontaneous.
“Your papa sounds like a smart man.”
“Oh, he’s smarter ’n anybody else! He works at the countinghouse.”
“Aye, I’ve seen him there.” Rye plucked a new blade of grass. “Your papa and I went t’ school together, too.”
“You did?”
Josh??
?s eyes were so like Laura’s as they expressed surprise. “Aye.”
Josh’s expression became thoughtful before he asked, “Then how come you say aye and Papa says yes?”
“ ’Cause I’ve been on a whaleship and heard the sailors sayin’ it so much I don’t remember startin’ t’ say it m’self.”
“You talk funny, though.” Josh giggled.
“Y’ mean short-like? That’s b’cause on a ship y’ don’t always have time t’ give speeches. Y’ got t’ get things said fast or y’re in trouble.”
“Oh.” And a moment later, “You like it on that whaleship? Was it fun?”
Rye’s glance again swept the crest of the hill, then turned back to his son, finding an expression on the child’s face that he sometimes encountered in his own mirror when he was thoughtful. “ ’Twas lonely.”
“Din’t you take Ship along?”
Rye shook his head.
“Where’dshe go?”
Rye reached for the Lab’s big head and rested his hand on it. The dog opened lazy eyes and closed them again. It was difficult for the father to keep from giving the answer that was on his mind: Ship lived with your mother at first, and maybe even with you when you were a baby. Maybe that’s why you two like each other so much now. She remembers you.
Instead, he said, “She went t’ live with my father at the cooperage.”
“Then I guess you was lonely,” Josh sympathized.
“Well, I’m back,” Rye said brightly, flashing the boy a smile.
Josh smiled, too, and piped, “You’re nice. I like you.” Heady emotions sprang up within Rye at the boy’s words, so impetuous, so honest. He wished he could be equally free, that he could hug this child and have him know the truth. Josh was a lovable sprite, untarnished, unspoiled. Laura and ... and Dan had done a good job with him.
***
Laura stopped at the top of the hill as Josh and Rye came into view below. They were distant enough that Josh’s childish laughter carried only faintly on the breeze, then Rye’s could be heard more distinctly for a moment. They were stretched out on the grass alongside the dog. Rye lay on his side, ankles crossed, his jaw propped on a palm, chewing a blade of grass. Beside him, his son was sprawled with his head pillowed on the sleeping Lab, who’d collapsed beside her master with chin on paws, taking a breather. It was a scene of great repletion such as Laura had dreamed of countless times. The son she loved, beside his father, whom she also loved, and it took only herself to complete the family circle.