Authors: Barbara Michaels
I sat down—or up—on a high stool by the workbench. I was fascinated by his view of the world, and his even voice and relaxed attitude were soothing to my nerves.
“Why?” I asked. “Why do some live and others die?”
Jed shrugged.
“I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. Why should I
figure it out when all the great thinkers and teachers have failed? But that’s the question that keeps me from getting bored.”
I was about to speak when something stirred in a darkish corner of the shed. The object lifted and stretched itself, and paced out into the light. It was one of the coon cats, like those Will owned, but it was bigger and plumier than any of his—a big reddish-gold animal, looking like a miniature lion with its ruff and round golden eyes. The enormous tail, as long as my forearm, gave it a look of fantasy—a creature out of legend, a story-book lion.
“Isn’t he a long way from home?” I asked.
“She,” Jed said. “She’s not one of Will’s. Belongs to Bertha.”
“I thought she didn’t like cats.”
“Oh, she doesn’t mind cats. Always room for a good mouser. She just thinks Will goes a little bit too far.”
He scratched the cat under its chin and it raised its head, its eyes slitted in ecstasy.
“You’ve seen Will’s place?”
“Yes. I love the house. It must be very old.”
“Seventeen thirty. It was the original Fraser house, you know. Wasn’t till 1825 or so that Captain Hezekiah moved into the big house.”
“You’re doing it too,” I said.
“Doing what?”
“Looking…sideways…when you mention his name. Will had the same funny look when he talked about the Captain. What did the man do, for heaven’s sake?”
Jed’s pale eyes twinkled.
“Heaven had nothing to do with it.”
“So I gather. But my lord, I wouldn’t think any sea captain would be a very saintly character. What was so particularly awful about Hezekiah?”
Jed picked up an oily rag and began to wipe the gardening tools.
“He sold his soul to the Devil.”
“Oh,” I said, after a moment. “Is that all? I thought you New Englanders did that all the time.”
“Hmmph.” Jed seemed to be struck with this idea. “You know, you’ve got a point there. It does seem to crop up over and over, doesn’t it? Captain Ahab, and that young farmer whose soul was saved by the silver tongue of Dan Webster…The Hawthorne stories are full of it. Maybe New Englanders are too susceptible to Satan.”
“Stories like that must have circulated about a lot of self-made men. People hate to admit that their neighbors are smarter or more successful than they are.”
“That’s part of it, sure. Natural envy. But they didn’t invent tales like that about all successful
men. Old Hezekiah acted like a man who had intimate acquaintance with damnation.”
When I remembered the carvings on that horrible mausoleum, Jed’s phrase was singularly apt. I wondered who had done the carving. No local stonemason, I was willing to bet.
I said, seemingly at random,
“You take care of the graveyard, don’t you? Do you know about the grave outside the fence?”
“Sure. I set the stone up every couple of years. Keeps falling down; something peculiar about the subsoil, I guess.”
“It’s fallen down again,” I said.
Like a distant foghorn the stentorian voice of Mrs. Willard floated to my ears.
“Jed! Dinner’s ready!”
Jed scooped up the cat, which hung from his hands like a fur piece, blinking affably. I tagged along after him as he walked toward the house.
“Who was she?” I demanded. “Miss Smith?”
The urgency in my voice surprised Jed.
“Why, I don’t know as I ever gave the matter much thought. From the date on the stone she’d be from Hezekiah’s time, but—”
“A servant,” I said. “Governess or housekeeper?”
Jed came to a stop.
“Well, now, that’s odd,” he said slowly. “I never
thought of that. Figured—if I thought about it at all—that she’d be a stranger, a traveler maybe, who got sick and died here, so that all they ever knew about her was the name on her trunk. Somebody from a wrecked ship, maybe.”
“Of course, that’s much more plausible, isn’t it? There must have been many shipwrecks along this coast…. And naturally people in nearby houses would take in the injured who were saved or washed ashore. But wouldn’t they advertise, or try to notify the relatives if someone died on their hands?”
Jed shook his head.
“It wasn’t so easy in those days to communicate with people. She might not have had surviving relatives who cared anything about her. Or they might have been lost when the ship went down.”
“That’s true. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ve seen anonymous stones in old cemeteries, memorials to unknown seamen washed ashore after a shipwreck. That must be the explanation.”
“Maybe so…”
Mrs. Willard called again, and Jed started walking.
“It’s a curious thing, though,” he said thoughtfully. “Now you’ve got me wondering about it myself. You know, Jo, there’s a pile of old family papers, documents and diaries and such, in a chest upstairs. You just might find something there.”
“About Miss Smith?”
“Well, it’s not too likely, I’ll admit. But there ought to be some papers from Hezekiah’s time, since you’re so interested in him.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t pry into private family papers.”
“I don’t suppose Ran would take you to court,” Jed said drily. “He ought to look through the stuff himself, see what’s worth keeping, but I don’t suppose he ever will. He never gave a hoot for that sort of thing. He’d probably think you were doing him a service. Keep you out of mischief, too.”
We reached the house, so I didn’t respond to that last joking comment. Mrs. Willard was at the door looking exasperated, and Jed went off to wash up. The Willards had dinner about an hour before the rest of us had lunch. It was no notion of inferior status that made them prefer to eat alone; they stuck to the old custom of eating their big meal in the middle of the day, and Mrs. Willard thought nothing of cooking two sets of meals rather than succumb to the newfangled notion of dining on soup and salads at noon. So I left them to their meat and potatoes, and Prudence the cat to her dish on the floor, but I didn’t escape without a lecture from Mrs. Willard, and a bar of yellow soap, which she ordered me to use—all over.
On the stairs I met Mary. My conversation with
Jed had let me forget, for a time, the unpleasantness of the previous night, but the sight of Mary brought it all back to me. I felt so guilty I couldn’t look her in the face.
“Good heavens, Jo,” she said. “If you aren’t a living testimonial to the dangers of exercise. You should have stayed slothfully in bed, like me.”
“You certainly look great,” I said.
It was true. The sight of her, looking fresh and rested and elegant in her white sandals and expensive little print dress relieved my mind, though it didn’t make me feel any less guilty.
Mary didn’t seem to notice my discomfort. She caught sight of the bar of soap—it was not inconspicuous, by color or size—and burst out laughing.
“I see Mrs. Willard caught you. You ought to use it, though, if you’ve been in the woods. You used to be horribly susceptible to poison ivy. Remember the time we were camping in West Virginia and you got it on your bottom?”
“Do I,” I said. “How old was I, about six?”
“Seven.” Mary took my arm. “Come on, I’ll go up with you and make sure you don’t cheat.”
She continued to chat as I got undressed. To hear her talk, you wouldn’t have thought she had a care in the world. I even enjoyed hearing her scold me, she sounded like the old Mary.
“I’d have thought by now you would have
learned to take care of your clothes,” she said, holding up the shorts I had just discarded. “Look at this—a big rip. They look like new shorts, too.”
“They were cheap,” I said carelessly. “Four-fifty, on sale.”
“Oh, Jo.”
She looked so distressed that I laughed.
“Now don’t start that, Mary. I know I’m just a poor underprivileged orphan who can’t afford a decent mink. But you are not going to rush me off to Saks for a whole new wardrobe.”
“Your birthday is coming up.”
“Coming up! It’s in August, my friend, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“There are a couple of decent shops in the village. We’ll go shopping this afternoon. Gosh, Jo, do you realize how long it’s been since we had a good shopping binge together?”
There are more important things than pride, as Ran had said. I looked at Mary’s eager face and I wasn’t even aware of a mental struggle.
“Twist my arm,” I said.
5
RAN DROVE US INTO TOWN AFTER LUNCH. HE SAIDhe had some business at the dock—something to do with the boat he had bought and was having fitted up. I thought his behavior toward me was a dead giveaway, he was so awkward and overly hearty; but Mary didn’t seem to be aware of any nuances, though in her normal state she was keenly conscious of other people’s feelings. It wasn’t a pleasant ride, though; I was too self-conscious. For the first time I was glad to have Ran go away. He dropped us in front of one of the shops Mary had mentioned and asked where and when we wanted to meet him.
“We’ll need at least two hours,” Mary said with a smile. “You should see this girl’s wardrobe, Ran.
I’ll tell you, we’ll meet you at the Inn at four-thirty. You can buy us a drink before we go home.”
The shop was small but the clothes were cute. The prices horrified me, after my year of poverty.
“Forty dollars for a pair of slacks,” I yelped, holding them up. “And this stretch material is completely impractical, Mary; five minutes in those brambles and they would be pulled to pieces.”
The saleslady, a sleek elderly person with short gray hair, gave me a nasty look, but Mary just grinned. She bought the slacks herself; the lemony yellow color and the yellow-orange-rose print of the shirt that went with it looked pretty with her dark hair. I let her talk me into a couple of pairs of jeans and a dress—though the price tag on that simple little number set my teeth on edge.
It was fun, though; fun to come out onto the sidewalk carrying shopping bags and parcels; fun to stand blinking in the fresh air wondering what to do next; and knowing that there isn’t a single bloody thing youhave to do.
We sauntered along the sidewalk looking in all the windows. The shopping area was a funny mixture. There were older stores, like the drugstore and grocery and a store with things for boats—practical stores. Mixed in with them were the newer buildings which catered to the developing tourist trade. The Island Boutique, with its
fake antique facade, was one of them, and shortly I spotted another—my long-desired antique shop.
Mary laughed when I pointed it out.
“Sure, we’ve got plenty of time. You know who runs the place, don’t you? Will’s ex-girlfriend.”
“Sue?”
Mary eyed me.
“You remember her name, do you?”
“Yeah…So that’s why Will looked so supercilious when I talked about antique shops.”
“He acts like such a fool,” Mary said disgustedly. “This is a small place, people can’t avoid one another; but Will behaves as if that poor girl were Medea.”
“If she jilted him—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jo, that was years ago. Why can’t he forget it? She couldn’t have been vicious or cruel, she isn’t that kind of a girl.”
“You know her?”
“I only met her once, briefly; but she’s nice. You’ll like her.”
The proprietress was nowhere in sight when we entered the shop, which seemed dim and shadowy after the street. It was crowded with objects, just as an antique shop ought to be, but as I glanced at the assortment on the front counter I saw that there was an underlying organization behind the apparent clutter. Sue must be competent, whatever her other virtues might be.
The tinkle of the bell over the door produced no result, so Mary called out. After a moment there was an answer from the back of the shop—a call so muffled that it sounded as if it came from a deep cave. This was followed by a scuffling sound, and then a bright golden head popped up above a counter.