The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (10 page)

“Gray Cloud sounds more like an Indian’s name than a chicken’s.” Bill laughed.

“I think we should forget about the chicken,” Dalton said.

“Do you?” Bill turned sharply to Dalton and slammed his fist on the table. “I think I’ll talk about what I damn well please at my own goddamned table, by the Christ.”

Idella clasped her hands in her lap and watched her father and brother looking straight across the table at each other.

“I want to thank Idella for the beautiful cake.” Maddie spoke softly, breaking the silence. “I never had such cake.”

“I have a present for Maddie!” Avis pulled out from behind her chair a piece of blue sea glass.

“That’s from your treasure box!” Idella said. “We found that with Mother.”

“I know it. I couldn’t find anything nicer.” Avis handed it to Maddie. “I want you to have it.”

“
Merci,
Avie.”

“Petite Avie,” Avis corrected.

“Oui.”
Maddie smiled. “Petite Avie. I will have it forever.”

“She’s not that small,” Idella said. “She’s almost eight.”

“I’ve got a present for her, too.” Dalton spoke. “It’s for cooking with.” He pulled from out of his pants pocket a hand-carved wooden spoon and handed it to Maddie. “It’s maple. I was making it for you to cook with. Then it was your birthday, so I hurried up and finished it.”

Everyone stared at Dalton. Avis was openmouthed. “I didn’t know you could make stuff like that.”

“Well, isn’t that nice, Dalton.” Bill eyed the spoon with interest. “I guess that explains why the light in the barn’s been burning so late. I started to wonder about nighttime visitors of some kind.” Dalton blushed. “Just teasing you, boy.” He reached over and took the spoon from Maddie. “Now you can stir up trouble in style.”

“Thank you, Dalton.” Maddie took the spoon back. She reached over and touched his hand.
“Merci.”

“Well, if you’re all going boating in the morning, I want your asses up to bed.” Bill pushed his chair back from the table with a loud scrape.

“I’m not going in the boat,” Idella protested.

“But you’re going to town with me.” He winked at her. “We’ve got some business to take care of at the store, I’m thinking.”

“It’s full moon tonight,” Avis said. “I want to watch the gold light on the water.”

“You’ll see the full sun tomorrow. Now, do the dishes and up to bed with all of you ladies.”

 

Long after the girls had been prodded up the stairs, Bill poured his nightly glass of whiskey. The house was awash in a moony haze, and he poured it tall, for he felt an uncommon need of it. On nights like this, he missed Emma. She loved the moonlight on the cliffs and would drag him out at all hours to watch its jagged slash of yellow-white stagger across the bay.

He stood listening to the swoosh of wind nudging the shingles from below till they creaked, ruffling the curtains. He stepped into the pattern of moonlight glowing across the floor and looked down at his new boots. Their luster was heightened in the strange light. He lifted his foot and set it down with a dull thud. New boots. Emma’d always made him shine the old ones. “They’re shitkickers,” he’d say. “It’s no use.” And every Saturday night she’d give him a soapy bucket and the rag with polish and push him out onto the porch. “They’re also your Sunday best,” she’d call out to him. She’d be dragging him off to church in the morning. Church gave her pleasure. Going every Sunday was one of the few things she asked of him—so he cleaned the boots and went. He even enjoyed the singing, though he never said as much, or she’d be trying to get him into the goddamned choir.

He took a long drink from his glass and then went to the table and poured out more. He could hardly feel the burn of it. It was like water with no kick, no hum. If he lost that hum, what’d be left for him? He carried the bottle and the glass outside and onto the porch step. It creaked, always, under his weight. Emma would hear the creak of the porch and the clump of his boots when he dragged his ass back from a day of hauling some goddamn thing—traps or potatoes or piles of manure—and he knew that she’d smile to know he was soon coming through the door. She’d be standing in the kitchen with the table set, the food all ready, and the smile would be there when she saw him. He shook his head at the thought. His need to touch her sometimes made his fingers move on their own, clutching the air as though reaching for some part of her, any part—hair or blouse or the soft slope of her hip. His whole hand could mold itself over the curve of that hip. He sat on the step and drank, then poured more from the bottle.

These days he knew that the sound of his boots was a different thing. There was some poor French girl on hand to hear them. Or Idella and Avis, poor mutts, in there trying to scrape something together for his supper. He scared them all. He couldn’t help himself. It was seeing them scurry around the table trying to put food out, afraid to look at him for fear he’d light into them, that brought it on—the temper, the hurt, the anger at the goddamned world that had taken Emma away and left him alone. It wasn’t them he’d be mad at. But it was them that got the brunt.

He saw a light flickering under the barn door. Dalton was in there still, in his own world. Funny kid, carving Maddie a spoon like that of his own accord. Dalton would’ve done things like that for Emma if she’d lived, he supposed. He would have made her things on the quiet. He forgot sometimes that Dalton, too, had lost his mother. He was more conscious of it with the girls. Their needs for Emma were clear. His helplessness with them was so strong that it ate at him like a crow picking at an ear of corn, up one row and down the other. Bill let the whiskey pool onto his tongue and behind his teeth, feeling its rusty warmth. He watched the soft glow of the lamp’s light spill under the crack of the barn door. Then, as quickly as it came, the lamp went out and the barn was dark again. Bill shook his head. It felt suddenly heavy—with worry or whiskey, he couldn’t be sure. He emptied the bottle into his glass. Holding the glass carefully against his chest, he got up and walked slowly out into the yard.

The air was swollen with moonlight, drenched in a grayish glow. He went over to the cliff edge and looked down at the beach. The water was out, the pale sand exposed and bright. Waves, skimmed with a sheen like a sheer layer of ice you could crack with a finger, lapped at the beach below. He took a sip. Emma’s voice was in his ear. She would put her arms about his middle and pull him to the cliff edge to watch the water and the light. The air would lift her hair as it hung loose about her shoulders. She’d hold out her arms to it and let the breezes fill her long sleeves till he could watch it no more and grabbed her back again, not letting the wind have her for long.

He looked back at the house. Even it, gray and ragtag and solitary as it was, had an unearthly glow. Emma had died in there. He’d never be able to leave it without her. This godforsaken mound of nothing was his, and he’d be living off it till the end.

A sound drew him back. A sliver of song floated up from the beach, its clarity muted by the slushing of the waves. Someone was singing. He trained his eyes down onto the beach and saw, now, that there was a figure sitting in Dalton’s beached boat. A cloud skimmed across the moon, blotting the light. He focused on the dark shape till the cloud passed. It was Maddie, singing in French as she huddled in Dalton’s boat.

“Maddie, what the hell you doing down there?” He held on to the top of the ladder to steady himself.

“Oh!” She turned and looked up. He could make out the white of her face amid a tangle of darker hair.

He emptied his glass and dropped it to the ground, then lowered one foot onto the ladder. His body felt thick. His feet seemed twice as heavy in the big boots. “Goddamn, Maddie.” He lowered himself slowly. “This goddamned ladder is hard going on a clear day.” He lurched for the next step and tentatively tried his weight, clinging wobbly to the sides. “One of these goddamned steps waggles like a cow’s behind.”

“The one almost to the last!” Maddie called.

With a deliberate step, he lowered himself down, cursing. When his boots were finally on the sand, he looked over at Maddie. “Goddamn it, Maddie. I told you never to go down that ladder alone, never mind at night, for Christ’s sakes.”

“I was watching the light on the water. I am so excited to be going in the boat.”

“Come on. Get up and get over here. I’m responsible, God help us all.”

“Some minutes, please. Look at the water.”

Bill looked about him. “Well. It is something. It don’t seem real.” His boots crunched as he stepped across clusters of mussel shells to reach the boat.

“I can’t sleep,” Maddie whispered. She sat huddled on the plank seat and looked up at him. “I don’t sleep much in the night.”

“Like a raccoon, then? Or a fox?”

She looked away. “Too many things happen in the dark. I keep my eyes open.”

“You are a mystery, Maddie. You’ve got secrets, I think.”

She shrugged and looked out over the water.

“I ain’t interested in knowing your secrets. You keep ’em. I got some of my own, I guess. Hell. We all do.” He put his head back and looked at the moon. “Whoa. With the up and down and whiskey and light, my head’s spinning.”

“Sit.” Maddie patted the seat beside her. “It’s my practice ride.”

Holding on to the sides of the boat with outstretched arms, he sat across from her. “It’s bright as hell down here. I’d say we’ve got double-barrel moonlight tonight, Maddie.”

“Oui.”
She smiled. “It is so beautiful. I love it here.”

“ ’ Cause you’re looking at it in moonlight.”

“I have seen it in all kinds of light, even rain. I still think it is beautiful to live here.”

“You ain’t tried winter yet. It’s a rough go trying to live off land that don’t much want to be bothered. I just about push every goddamned potato through the ground with my bare hands. Rocks grow during the night. They go at it like rabbits.” He laughed. “They’re probably up there making more rocks right now for me to find in the morning. But my other seeds and plants go rotten or freeze or get done for by salt and wind and whatever else God cooks up in his wisdom.” He shook his head and sighed. “Potatoes keep us alive.”

“I love potatoes.”

“Glad to hear it. You must have some Irish in there with the French.”

Maddie looked down at her hands. “Maybe.”

Bill lifted a piece of torn net from the boat bottom. “And the herring runs, of course. We eat them little bastards the livelong year.” He pulled a tangle of seaweed from the weaving and tossed it overboard. “You ain’t been here long enough for that treat. We’re gone all night sometimes, the men. Whenever them fish are running, we’re running right along with them. We come back in early morning, before the sun.” He fingered the net. “The girls hold the lamps up. Right over there.” He pointed to a high place on the shore. “They scramble down that ladder, still warm from their little beds, and come to hold up the lamps. It’ll be dark yet, see, but we need to clean and salt and lay every damn one of ’em out to dry as soon as we land ’em. Supper or breakfast or both have to wait.” He looked over at her, holding up a portion of the net. “My girls’ arms are ’bout as thick as this here rope. But I need their help. Their little hands.”

Maddie sat silently and watched him.

“But I love it, too. This place. Who’s to explain? It’s the challenge of it. I’m stubborn, see, mule-assed. And when there’s something good here it’s like no other.” He stood and took a deep breath. “It’s like breathing in cold water when the wind blows across the bay.”

“I want to eat it!” Maddie said, opening her mouth wide. “Ahhhhhhhh.”

Bill laughed and straddled the plank. He faced the open water. “Going out in the boat, you know, with the lobster traps, in summer—that’s a prize God gave me on some days. To feel the water under me and the air about and to pull them damn ugly things up out of the water that people pay for down in the States. It makes me laugh. We sell ’em, you know, to the lobster factory.”

“I know about the factory. Too much.”

Bill nodded. He leaned over and grabbed a handful of stones. One by one he threw them into the water. They listened to each distant plunk until all the stones were tossed and his hands empty. For a long time then, they sat staring out at the water and the shimmery light coating its surface. Finally Bill turned to her.

“It’s hard for my girls up here. I see the sadness in their faces, looking up at me, waiting for something I can’t give ’em. And I lose my goddamned temper. It whips through me. You ain’t seen that yet.” He spoke quietly, looking at the shifting moonlit water.

“You miss her so much, your wife?”

Bill reached down and grabbed a stone and threw it hard. It cut through the air till it hit a rock and bounced. “What kind of God likes all them pretty songs on Sunday and then takes away Emma, leaving behind her babies? What kind of God would that be?” He looked down at her. “It don’t leave you,” he whispered, “that kind of hurt.”

“No.” Maddie shook her head. “No. It does not leave you.”

“I had me the best.” Bill sat, his head lowered. Maddie watched him till he spoke again. “If I’d stopped at three. Three kids.” She could hardly hear him. “Emma, we called the baby, to carry the name.” He looked up at Maddie. “She reminds me, the baby—when I see her. It’s all together—her being born and losing Emeline.” He paused, then laughed softly and hit his hand flat on the wooden plank. “Christ. The damn drink is gone.” He looked at Maddie. “So I give the baby to Beth to bring up. How could I take care of a baby, never mind the rest?” He stared out for a long time at the water. “I hurt what I love the most. I kill what I love.”

“No,” Maddie whispered, shaking her head. “No. This is not true, what you say.”

“As true as there’s rats in the barn, Maddie.” He stood. “Come. Time for sleep. Tomorrow you take to the high seas.” He stepped out of the boat and then reached down and grabbed her hands to pull her to standing. “Jesus,” he said, not letting go of her hands. “You got a pair of hands on you that’d make a mule skinner proud. These are work hands.” She pulled her hands away and buried them in her skirt. “Christ, I’m sorry. I meant it as a good thing. It come out wrong. Christ.” He gently took hold of her elbow, coaxing her from the boat. “Come on, now.” Maddie smiled. “That’s not much, but I’ll take it.” He laughed. Smiling now, Maddie let him guide her out of the boat and onto the rocky sand. She lifted up her skirt and walked over to the bottom of the ladder, then turned to wait for him.