I made a picture in my mind of Pa, the lantern swinging in his right hand, climbing East Hill Road toward Quarry Hill. He was calling out, Elliot! Elliot! and then a little voice from the dark calls back, Here I am, Pa. And he takes Elliot by his big left hand and brings him home, rejoicing.
"I'll make some tea," Beth said, bringing me back to reality.
"Thank you, Beth," Ma said, her voice low with disappointment. "That would be nice."
We drank our tea. I put two large lumps of maple sugar into mine, stirred it as hard as if it was porridge, blew across it, and slurped it. Nobody corrected me, not even Beth. I wished they would.
At first we couldn't be sure. When you been listening for what seems like hours, your ears strained with the waiting and wanting to hear the sound that's not there, you hardly dare to trust them when it does come. Then, suddenly, we all jumped up at once and ran to the door. Our chairs clattered backwards to the floor, but we didn't stop to right them. Ma got there first and yanked the door wide.
There was Pa, bent nearly in half with the effort of carrying a long load of what we knew was Elliot onto the porch. Ma gave a sharp cry and was still. None of us could breathe.
"He's all right," Pa said quietly, answering the question we couldn't bear to voice. "Just very, very tired." He came on into the kitchen and gently laid Elliot's crooked frame down on the daybed we keep in there in case someone is sick and needs to stay close to the stove. Slowly Pa straightened up and kind of crunched his shoulders. "He was in the cemetery. I found him stumbling around the tombstones. He didn't seem to know why he'd gone up there. I asked him, but he couldn't seem to explain." He turned toward Ma. "It doesn't matter, does it? He's safe."
"Oh, Frederick," Ma said. "Thank God."
He kept looking at her for a minute, and then he went over to the door where she was still standing and, right in front of us children, he put his arms around her, laid his head on top of hers, and commenced to weep.
"I went all the way to the quarry....It was too dark to see anything down in the ... in the ... I was so afraid..." The words were coming out between the sobs. I may not have heard them just right, but I swear that is what it sounded like he said.
I shut my eyes. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears as well. How could I bear to witness it? My pa hanging on to Ma, crying like a baby. It did something to the pit of my belly. I was ashamed for him. Even when he humiliated me or carried on against war, I'd never seen him when he was anything less than a real man. But at that moment he was not the tall preacher that folks had to crane their necks to look up to, not only physically but in every way. He was a scared little boy. It was all I could do to keep from running out of the room.
"It's all right now, Frederick. It's all over now." Ma was patting his back and comforting him like he was Letty and not her husband. "It's all right."
Finally, Pa let her go and reached into his pocket for his handkerchief and blew his nose. He laughed in a funny, choked kind of way. "My," he said, "you'd think I was the lost one."
He blew his nose once more before pocketing his handkerchief and going over to the daybed. He bent nearly double to get his head as close to Elliot's as he could. "How're we doing, young man?" he asked softly.
"It's aw right, Pa," Elliot whispered back. "I wa' scare', too."
"Good thing we found each other then, eh, son?" His voice was so gentle, so full of love that at that moment I was seized with such a jealousy of Elliot that if I had been abiding by the commandments, I would have shattered the one on covetousness to powdered smithereens. How could Pa love Elliot that much? Elliot wasn't a son a man could take pride in. He was a poor simpleton to be pitied. He'd never grow up and accomplish anything in this world. Mercy. He'd never even be able to shoulder the duties of the stupidest farmhand or stableboy. Pa and Ma were likely to be taking care of him the rest of their natural lives, and then who'd have the burden of him? No one in his right mind would want it. But here was Pa worshipping his poor simple boy like a wise man come to the manger. Whatever else it all meant, I knew better than I knew my own name that I had never heard Pa speak to me in such a voice. He'd never cried for me.
Nobody was paying me the least attention, so I climbed on upstairs to my room—to Elliot's and my room—and went to bed. I couldn't sleep. I kept hearing the sound of Pa's crying in my head. At long last I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. He was carrying Elliot to his own bed.
"Night, Robbie," he said. "Thanks for helping."
I turned my face to the wall and pretended to be asleep.
5. Disturbing Revelations
I WAS UP NEARLY WITH THE ROOSTERS THE NEXT morning, up before anybody except Ma. Sometimes I wondered if she ever slept. There she was, the fire stoked up, stirring the porridge. It was the same Scots blood in her that had caused her to name me Robert Burns Hewitt that made her boil that porridge, summer or winter.
I didn't feel hungry, but I knew it made no difference to say so. I wouldn't get out of the house until I'd downed my bowl of it. It's not that bad, porridge isn't, but it's heavy and sticky, and if you don't happen to be hungry, it's like wading waist deep through a bog.
Ma watched while I poured about twice the usual amount of maple syrup on it, but she didn't object. She just stood there, her lips parted a little ways, no words coming out. She looked dog tired. In a way I was ashamed of behaving in what I knew was a defiant manner, taking all that syrup, but I needed it that morning—needed sweetening, I reckon, or just some kind of proof that I was worth something extra to her, if not to Pa.
"You're up early, Robbie," she said, turning back to the big iron stove that takes up a quarter of the back wall.
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Couldn't sleep too good."
"I guess it was a hard night for us all," she said. "But it's all right now. Elliot's safe and sound."
"Yes, ma'am." I chewed my way through another bite. Mercy, it was work to get through a whole bowl of porridge. I asked for another mug of milk. I needed help to wash it down. I stretched across the wide table to hand her the empty mug.
"I'm glad to see it hasn't hurt your appetite," she said, refilling my mug. Instead of reaching across, she walked around the table to give it to me.
I grunted, but she took it for a thank-you and patted my shoulder when she put the milk down at my place. Then she went to the stove, poured herself a cup of tea, and sat down at the table opposite me. Ordinarily I would have been pleased. She hardly ever took the time to sit down like that just with me. She bent her head over her cup and took a tiny sip. Then she sat back and stared into the space above my head.
It relieved me that she wasn't going to try to make conversation. I wasn't feeling chatty, and I still had half a bowl of porridge to work my way through.
"Your father's sleeping like a baby," she said finally. "I've never seen him so exhausted."
I nodded and swallowed and washed down what was still stuck in my throat. She sighed deeply and took another sip of her tea.
I took her distraction as a chance to escape. I got up and hastily washed out my half-finished bowl under the kitchen tap. "Wal," I said in a fake cheery voice, "I guess me and Willie will try some fishing before the day gets too hot."
She nodded and smiled absentmindedly. She'd quite forgotten to ask me if I had finished all my porridge. I hightailed it out of there as fast as I could grab my pole and basket and jump off the porch.
Just as luck would have it, Willie's aunt had him splitting wood for the cookstove. "You found Elliot okay, I guess," he said as I came near.
I shrugged a yes. "Wanna go fishing?"
"I ain't ate yet," he said, studying my face.
"Come when you can," I said. "Maybe I'll go up and check the cabin first anyhow."
"The cabin?" We always went up to our hideout together. We both knew that. "You okay, Robbie?"
"I don't know, Willie. I just need to mess around a little. See if everything's all right, dig a few worms up there in the woods." I tried to s
ound ordinary. "I'll get back down to the creek before the Weston boys think about getting up. Promise."
"All right, then. See you." He brought the ax down dead in the center of the log. The boy can sure split wood. You got to give him credit for that.
I started for the hill directly from Willie's, skirting the field where the Robertses had their bull penned, crossed their pasture, and headed toward the edge of the woods from there. It wasn't the best way to get to the cabin. It would have been easier to go back down School Street and go up from my house, but I didn't want Pa or anyone to see me. I really needed to be by myself, even though I wasn't finding myself particularly delightful company just then. I wished I'd brought a book to read, but for that I'd have to go back home. I wasn't going back home until hunger drove me to it.
The hay on the hill had been mowed just a few days before, and the stubble was prickly but not overly painful. If I have a good quality, in addition to my prodigious vocabulary, it is my feet. They are as tough as hippo hide. I can't help being proud of them. I bet I could walk on nails like those swamis in India should the necessity arise. When I hit the first line of trees, I walked along parallel to the woods until I could look far down the hill to the back of Mabel Cramm's house—she who started it all—then down to the Branscoms', the Wilsons', and, of course, the Websters' farmhouse, barn, and chicken yard. All the fields and pastures behind School Street belonged to them. Then there was the big, rambling manse, and below that the steeple of the Congregational church pointing upward to the empty sky. I sighed. It seemed lonely to be an apeist that morning.
I didn't spot any tiny figures outside the manse. Nobody splitting wood. There's never any need to split wood before breakfast at our house. Pa makes sure the wood box is full at all times. He's really faithful about that.
Sometimes, if people are out of work or needing help, he'll hire them to chop or split wood, but mostly he does it himself. "Get Robbie to give you a hand with that," Ma will say, but he'll just smile and shrug. "It's good for me," he'll say. I can't help but notice that whenever there's some little upset in the congregation, wood is just overflowing that box to the floor beside it, and the woodpile outdoors is taller than me.
I turned and put the morning sun, now high in the sky and drifting southward, at my back and entered the woods. Suddenly my world was dark and cool. Since the snow melted, Willie and I had worn the path down until it was nearly as smooth as Main Street. I don't know why we went to the cabin so much. Oh, we kept a little stuff there—some extra fishing gear, a couple of old shirts for warmth in a cold snap, some lucifer matches to make fires, a couple of homemade cob pipes, and some corn silks we'd dried in case we needed a smoke. From time to time we'd try to store a little food—green apples we'd pinched from the Websters' orchard, some butternuts we were planning to eat as soon as we took the trouble to smash them open. Mostly the squirrels and coons got into the food. I was always surprised, when I went up, if they'd left anything for us.
In the quiet of the woods the sound came into my head as clear as if I was really hearing it. The sound of Pa crying. It was so unlike him. I think that was what turned me inside out. So unmanly. Whatever some folks may think about preachers who work more with their heads than their hands, nobody ever accused my pa of being anything less than a real man.
All because of Elliot. Because he was lost and might not have been found safe and then was. I've tried all my life not to mind Elliot being my brother, not to let him spoil what is, by and large, a pretty good life for a boy. Once the Weston boys talked about him just loud enough to make sure I could hear them, wondering whether Elliot's "condition" was a family weakness or a family sin. I gave Ned Weston a bloody nose for that one. To me it was a questioning of my parents' honor. I couldn't let that pass. I'm proud to say that even when Tom got big enough to whip me, the Westons didn't hold that discussion in my hearing again.
When I was younger, Ma and Pa would sometimes urge me to play with Elliot. "You used to have such good times together," they'd say, hoping I'd remember how when I was a toddler I loved romping with Elliot. But by the time I was four, I didn't want to play with Elliot anymore. He was big and clumsy. He knocked over all my block towers and broke my toy boats. As I grew older, I passed him by in the race of life. We couldn't talk about books, because when I was devouring Robert Louis Stevenson, he couldn't even read the first primer. He could never catch any ball I threw him, and he was hopeless with a bat. Baseball only made him cry in frustration. If we walked down to the pond to swim, he was too slow to keep up. Nor could he get the hang of swimming, so if he went with me, I had to stay in the shallow water every minute for fear he'd wander out above his head and drown.
Usually he stayed home with Beth and Ma. Beth always liked Elliot better than me. I was too independent for her tastes. He worshipped her, trailed her around, and obeyed her. He loved the paper dolls she made for him and played with them by the hour. He never in his life sassed her or wished to heaven she'd never been born first.
Letty, when she came along, fit right in with the two of them. They made a great pet of her, and she adored them both. Sometimes Ma would rope me in to watch Letty, but usually I could slip out of the noose. I was the freest member of the family.
It's hard to see the cabin from any distance away. It has sort of folded itself into its surroundings. Only the chimney half is still upright. It's like a great toadstool with a chimney attached, which some giant has come along and stomped, crushing one end. I sometimes wonder if the smashed-in part of the roof might not just come crashing down on us someday, but I guess I'm not too worried about it, or I would have quit going there a long time ago.
I never fail to wonder what became of those folks who built our cabin. It dates back to the days when Revolutionary War veterans who had passed through this beautiful Vermont wilderness during the war came back, bringing their families up from the crowded lands of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Our soldier had come and chopped out a clearing and built his log house, full of hope as anyone who builds a house, I guess, and this is what it had all come to in hardly more than a hundred years.
I was standing still for a minute, thinking and quieting myself, listening to the birds and a couple of quarreling squirrels, when I heard a sound that made my heart collide with my Adam's apple.
At first it seemed like the angry snort of a large animal—a bear, or a moose, or a mountain lion (which was strictly my imagination, as none has been seen in these parts for years). When my heart settled down a bit lower than my wishbone, I realized that what I was hearing was a snore.
The growl of a mountain lion would have been less surprising. Was it man or beast? It couldn't be woman or child. Neither would be capable of that prodigious sound. I stopped being afraid. There's something near comical about a snore. How can you be shaking in your boots in the face of something that's producing a sound like that while locked, as my grandma used to say, in the arms of Morpheus?
So I started in, not stomping or anything, just sort of tippy-toe. I was really annoyed that something or someone would dare set up its bed in what was by all squatters' rights my cabin. Oh, all right, Willie's and my cabin, but he wasn't there to help me protest and run the varmint out.
The door, which was once in the center of the cabin, is now at the end of the side that has fallen in on itself. Fireplace and big chimney are to your left as you come in. I could see at once that the source of the noise was a huddled figure on the hearth—a figure under what had once been a bed quilt, so it was not any animal that runs wild in our mountains.
"Hey, you!" I yelled, stepping toward it, gripping my fishing pole like a baseball bat, just in case I'd need to swat whoever was lying there. I didn't get more than two feet or so into the room when splat! I was flat on my nose on the dirt floor, dry leaves stuck in my still-open mouth.
Pushing myself up to my knees, I looked about, a little dazed, to see what might have tripped me. It wasn't the snorer. He hadn't moved. He was just sawing away
as carefree as before. Blinking the stars out of my head and accustoming my eyes to the dark, I saw behind me to my right a small, skinny form. The light from the door caught the shape of a raggedy skirt, so I knew it to be female before I heard the giggle.
"Guess I gotcha," she said when she saw I was looking straight at her.
"What are you doing trespassing in my cabin?" I asked the question with as much dignity as I could muster while spitting out leaves, brushing off my clothes, and getting to my feet.
"Your cabin? It ain't been nobody's cabin for a coon's age until me and Paw took possession." Scrawny as her body was, her mouth was as sassy as an overfed cat.
"Me and Willie claimed it years ago," I countered. Two makes "years." I wasn't lying. Besides, the tres-passers couldn't have been here more than a few days at most.
"If it's yourn, why ain't you living in it?" she asked. "You left, and me and Paw come in and took over." She eyed me belligerently. "And don't think for one minute we're planning on leaving"—she paused and looked over at the snorer—"until we is good and ready."
"I ain't never seen you around these parts," I said. It seemed fit to match my language to hers.
"Yeah?" she said, meaning So what?
"That one your pa?" I asked, pointing to the snorer.
"Jest what business is that of yourn?"
"I told you," I said. "It's my cabin—me and Willie's. We come on it first."
"Prove it."
"Wal, it's got our stuff in it," I said.
"Yeah?"
I realized then that any apples or butternuts the animals had left would have been consumed by this pair of tramps. Likewise the corn silks. Extra fishing poles were, likely as not, part of that gray ash in the old fireplace by now. Our old shirts, dime novels, and pipes were nowhere in sight. There was no evidence I could point out, even if she'd allowed some of it to link Willie or me to this claim.
I sighed. "Wal, it is ours."
The snoring in front of the hearth turned into a series of snorts, a raspy cough, the loud clearing of catarrh from a clogged throat. The bundle sat up and shuddered. "Vile!" it bellowed. "Whar's my medsin?"