Caleb's Crossing (14 page)
S
o it went on, day following day, as the weather steadied and the early seeds stirred beneath the soil. At first, Caleb held himself aloof from Joel. He reminded me of a powerful dog, who will stand back, hackles raised, if he sees another approaching. Joel had always been a silent boy, coming and going with his father but saying little. In truth I had not passed above a dozen sentences with him through the years, and had formed no opinion of his character. His handling of Caleb’s wary manner revealed that he had a measure of his father’s self-possession and courage. He neither cowered before Caleb nor did he fawn upon him. But in diverse subtle ways he made it plain that he was a ready ally, helping Caleb betimes to the proper English phrase, correcting with a meaning look should Caleb seem likely to err in some matter of English manners. Because Caleb was quick and perceptive, oftentimes these subtle intercessions thwarted Makepeace, who stood ready to censure or mock any misstep.
Before very many weeks passed, Caleb and Joel were on easy terms with each other. This blossomed, before long, into a fast friendship, which was no strange thing for two boys who shared much with each other and so little with the others closest about them. Caleb’s confident spirit seemed to draw Joel forth, so that he spoke up more in company, and thus I grew to know him more fully, and to admire his gentle, generous spirit. They were, the pair of them, quite unalike, feature for feature. Caleb, product of the wilderness, had the long-legged, lean muscularity of a boy born to running after game and hastening through the woods beside long-striding warriors. His eyes were avid and his gaze intense. Joel was in all ways softer—heavier in build, his long-lidded eyes dreamy and contemplative. He was short of stature, like his father; an uncommon thing among that people, and one of the reasons Iacoomis had been shunned by their warrior class. But like his father, he had an agile mind and a determined spirit. Caleb and Joel were, the two of them, quick studies, and father was more than pleased at the profit they took from their lessons. As the weather softened, I would see them walking out together, two dark, cropped heads bent over some book or smiling at some private jest, and I felt a stab of envy for a lost intimacy that could not be mine again.
Truly, there was no place in my life for such a thing, even had propriety allowed it. I struggled with the many demands of the turning season, up much of the night to help a ewe with a difficult lambing, then up again before first light to work through the blur of daily tasks. Always tending to Solace, who needed an eye upon her at every minute lest she pick up some bright, sharp-edged tool thinking it a fine plaything, or pull a boiling kettle down upon herself—as Aunt Hannah’s seventh babe had done, and was scalded to death, the poor chuck. I looked forward to the day, not so very far distant, when Solace would become a helpmate, rather than a charge, able herself to feed hens and fetch eggs and the like small chores which I had done for mother with a high heart when I was barely more than a babe.
Oft times, as I bathed her or rocked her in my arms, I would look into her sky-blue eyes and wonder what her character might prove, in time, to be. I would let a finger stroke the line of her rounded cheek and tickle the folds of soft, creamy flesh beneath her chin. She would stare back at me with an intense, knowing gaze, and I would imagine her, a year or so hence, at my hem, as I had been at mother’s. I was, after all, the only mother she had ever known. I was determined to be worthy of the charge God had set for me. I let my mind run on ahead, seeing us together as she grew into her girlhood. She would be always at my side, and I would open to her the world and all that I had learned of it. If she wished to study her book, she would not be obliged to go to it alone. I would see to that. I would carve out the time to instruct her, no matter what father or Makepeace had to say of it. And I would not marry any man without wit and heart to understand that Solace was my sacred charge and the first of all my duties.
She played beside me as I thinned out the seedlings, picking up clods and mashing them in her tiny mittened fingers, then smearing her face with the mud. I had come to think that the Wampanoag, who dealt so kindly with their babes, were wiser than we in this. What profit was there in requiring little ones to behave like adults? Why bridle their spirits and struggle to break their God-given nature before they had the least understanding of what was wanted of them? So I smiled at her, and made faces, although I knew I would have to clean the muck from her clothing, and from her silky hair, and that there would be howls of protest when I did so. It was a small price to pay for the sound of her merry laughter.
That night, at board, I stole a look at Caleb, considering him. As I had learned from him, and changed my views about the discipline I should mete out to Solace, so he must have changed his views on so many matters. I recalled how he had vexed me with his hard questioning about the scriptures and I wondered what it was among the many things father might have said or done that had won him so fully. In every outward particular, he was now a Christian. But who could see into his heart?
I was wandering along this line of thought when father turned to me. “Do you not think so, Bethia?”
Since I had not been attending to the conversation in the least degree, I had no idea how to answer. But Makepeace broke in, and said, “Perhaps better we ask Caleb for his views. His people have age-old experience in this place and must know when the danger of frost is generally past. I am sure he will like to help Bethia in the planting of corn and beans when that time comes.”
It was the first time Makepeace had directed such an amiable remark to Caleb. Having been the target of my brother’s wit often enough, I felt sure there was some barb to it. And to hear him proposing that Caleb and I do something together seemed odd, given his supposed reservation concerning the enforced intimacy of our situation.
Father saw the trap before I did. “Surely not,” he interjected, turning his face to Caleb. “Planting is women’s work, is it not, among Wampanoag? The menfolk shun such tasks, I think?”
Caleb smiled, sensible of father’s kindness. “True. But since I eat at your board, how not help raise the food set down upon it?
Cum Roma es, fac qualiter Romani facit
.”
Father laughed so he had to wipe a tear from his eye. “
Faciunt
, dear boy,
faciunt
,” he said at last. “‘Do as the Romans do,’ plural, you see: do as they do.
Facit
would be ‘as the Roman does.’… But very well said, I am sure. We are each, in a sense, in Rome, are we not? You must learn the ways of our family, and we must learn the ways of your island. It would be a kindness if you would teach us.”
I glanced at Makepeace. The arrow of his wit has missed its mark and his expression revealed vexation. “I’ll not favor making our tidy English field into an unruly salvages’ hillock and an object for our neighbors’ jests.”
“Makepeace,” said father sternly. “I might be more inclined to note what you favor if you were more inclined to do your share of field work.” Father rarely rebuked Makepeace. But rudeness was a thing he never could countenance. “We will hear the advice of our young friend, and if our neighbors care to laugh, well then. We will see who laughs when the bushel baskets are counted.”
So it was that instead of ploughing up the whole field into straight rows and hauling hods of manure—all of which was back-breaking work—we left the earth be. We made small mounds and buried a herring in each, digging in handfuls of sea wrack that had the salt washed off it. When the soil was warm enough, we planted a corn kernel in each mound, and when it sprouted, we placed our beans all around to climb upon the stalks, saving the trouble of staking out air rows. We followed that with the squash as the heat increased, and presently the vines covered all the unploughed ground, smothering unwanted growth. If neighbors raised their eyebrows, I did not care. Their opprobrium was a small price for the many hours I no longer had to spend with a hoe, fighting back the weeds.
The one person who did not raise his eyebrow at our tousled field was young Noah Merry, who walked all around the plantings, praising the work and the robust growth and declaring that he had thought of adopting like practices, and our experiment emboldened him. Suddenly, it seemed, we saw a good deal of Noah Merry in Great Harbor. Whenever his family was in want of supplies or due to pay grandfather his share of receipts from the grist mill, it was no longer Jacob or Josiah who could best be spared from the farm, but always Noah. Whatever business brought him, he generally contrived to drive his cart past our dooryard just as I was setting board for dinner. Each time, father would tell me to make another place.
I do not say it was a hardship to have his company, such a lighthearted young man. On other nights, talk at board might go on in Latin, as practice for the boys, who sorely needed it, since they would be allowed to speak nowt else at college. Though I had ceased to try to advance myself in that language, I could follow well enough, and I liked to try to construe father’s questions and form answers in my mind, matching them against those my brother and Caleb brought forth. Even when they spoke in English the talk must be of scholarly things. But since Noah was clearly no square cap, conversation in his presence went on differently. The chatter might be of village matters: comings and goings to the mainland, a new family making the crossing to join us, a birth or a death, who had published their names to marry, who had bought a cow, and such small, pleasant bits of news. When Noah asked how someone did, he actually listened with attention to the reply. For his part, he spoke with greatest animation about his farm.
And this, also, was different: father and Makepeace were grown used to me sitting in silence, letting the talk pass around me. They rarely pressed me for an opinion or turned to me for comment, and Caleb had taken the lead from them in this. But Noah was another gate’s business. He was forever turning to me with a “Do you not think…?” or a “What do you say…?” and in courtesy I would stammer out something so as not to seem cold. He must have noted that I grew more animated once, when talk turned to the Takemmy otan that neighbored his farm, for the next visit he came supplied with information. He was full of a description of a mishoon he had observed in the making, praising the patient industry whereby a great log would be part-burned, day following day, the coals scraped out until the exact shape for a swift canoe was accomplished. He questioned Caleb closely as to how it had gone on in Nobnocket, whether the trees were chosen in like ways or whether each otan had singular practices. Caleb seemed out of sorts, and answered tersely. I thought this odd, until I reflected that talk of his old life might bring unwelcome memories. But then it came to me that he often was reserved when Noah joined us, no matter what the subject. I concluded that he had not yet learned to be at ease with any English person outside of our family. I could not see any other reason for his coldness.
Y
ester eve, when I wrote of the ordinary daily doings of those early summer months, a feeling of peace brimmed up within me. I dreamed of that time last night, and woke to disappointment. It is true that I was tired to the bone then. I often woke in the half-light wishing for more sleep above all things, my arms aching from the last day’s toil, so that it was all I could do to gather up Solace and carry her downstairs. Oft times during the day I would straighten up from the kneading trough or rest on my hoe and think how, a year earlier, I had been running free and wild with Caleb in the soft air, still innocent of the sin that had brought such affliction. For I was foolish, and thought my life a sad business that summer, and did not value the gifts of that season. I had not foreseen the loss and the hardship yet to come.
The wearisome chores of those days are as nought to my present labors here in Cambridge. This morning, letting down the bucket to draw water for the wash, I caught a glimpse of my face in the well. I did not at first recognize the gaunt, frowning drab gazing up at me. On the island I could revive myself with sweet air. There was never lack of clean water or of wood to warm the house. My tasks, though numerous, were various. Here, I am cold and clemmed, and all is drudgery. The late mistress of this house was elderly, and with poor eyesight. She had not maintained a godly cleanliness, so it took me some time to scour the floors, rid the corners and recesses of mouse droppings, and restore the dingy linens with blue starch and boiling kettle. It falls to me to launder all the scholars’ clothes and the threadbare linens, mending them as needed. Daily, I sweep the floors, scrubbing and sanding them every sennight as we did at home, though here, with the muddy boots of so many lads, the task is much the heavier. The master sets the boys to chop the wood, such as we have, but I am left to split bavins. We rely on gifts to build our woodpile and most times the supply is short. I cook the poor dinner and set out the scraps for bever and supper. I bake loaves, I boil a thin broth. I can do no more with such a frugal providence—a sack each of rye and Indian corn, a little yeast, some gristly cuts of meat and a turnip or two. When one of the pupil’s families comes with an offering—a neck of mutton or a brace of hens—it is a blessing, and I make the most of it, boiling the goodness out of the bare bones till not even a starving cur dog would trouble to carry them off. But times are hard for the planters, and such gifts have been uncommon this season.
The school faces on to Crooked Street, with a neighbor house pressed upon the other side. There is room for a garden on our small patch of earth, whose produce, even if just roots and herbs, might keep the boys in better health. I was much astonished, when I came, to find that nothing of the kind had yet been put in hand. There was space enough to keep a few hens at the door, and I thought to hatch some chicks once the weather warmed. Through the fall season I had walked the Cow Common and clipped sprigs of wild dill or gathered leaves for a salat, falling upon any berries other gleaners had missed and sprinkling them through a hasty pudding. But come winter there was no chance for even these small measures, and every one of us now is hollow-cheeked, with running nose or a wetness in the chest.