A Northern Light(10)

"I don't mean to discourage you, dear," she'd added. "Why don't you try to find a new subject? Something a little less unsavory. How about spring? There's so much you could write about spring. Like the new green leaves. Or the pretty violets. Or the return of robin redbreast."

I didn't answer her. I just took my composition book and left, tears of shame scalding my eyes. Weaver was waiting for me outside of the schoolhouse. He asked me what Miss Parrish had said, but I wouldn't tell him. I waited until we were a mile out of town, then I pitched my composition book into the woods. He ran right after it. I told him he had no business with it. I wanted it gone. But he said since I'd thrown it away it wasn't mine anymore. It was his and he could do as he liked with it.

Being the malignant weasel that he is, he kept hold of it and he waited. And then Miss Parrish's mother took ill and she left to go to Boonville and nurse her, and the school trustees got Miss Wilcox, who was renting the old Foster camp in Inlet, to take her place. And Weaver gave Miss Wilcox my composition book without even telling me. And she read my stories and told me I had a gift.

"A true gift, Mattie," she'd said. "A rare one."

And ever since, because of the two of them, Weaver and Miss Wilcox both, I am wanting things I have no business wanting, and what they call a gift seems to me more like a burden.

"Mattie...," Weaver said, still dropping fiddleheads into his bucket.

I did not answer him. I did not bother to straighten or look at him. I tried not to think about what he'd said.

"Mattie, what's your word of the day?"

I flapped a hand at him.

"Come on, what is it?"

"Abecedarian," I said quietly.

"What's it mean?"

"Weaver, she don't want to talk to you. Nobody does."

"Be quiet, Minnie."

He walked up to me and took my bucket away. I had to look at him then. I saw that his eyes said he was sorry even if his mouth wouldn't.

"What's it mean?"

"As a noun, someone who's learning the alphabet. A beginner. A novice. As an adjective, rudimentary or primary."

"Use it in a sentence."

"Weaver Smith should abandon his abecedarian efforts at eloquence, say uncle, and admit that Mathilda Gokey is the superior word duelist."

Weaver smiled. He put both pails down. "Draw," he said.





Mattie, what in blazes are you doing?"

Its Cook. She startles me so I nearly jump out of my shoes. "Nothing, ma'am," I stammer, slamming the cellar door shut. "I ... I ... was just—"

"That ice cream done?"

"Very nearly, ma'am."

"Don't ma'am me to death. And don't let me see you up out of that chair again until your work's done."

Cook is snappish. More so than usual. We all are. Help and guests alike. Snappish and sad. Except old Mrs. Ellis, who is furious and feels she's entitled to a refund because the dead body in the parlor is interfering with her enjoyment of the day.

I walk back to the ice-cream churn and feel Grace Brown's letters hanging heavy in my skirt pocket. Why did Cook have to come back into the kitchen just then? Two more seconds and I would've been down the cellar stairs and in front of the huge coal furnace. The Glenmore is a modern hotel with gaslights in every room and a gas stove in the kitchen, but the furnace, which heats all the water the hotel uses, burns coal. The letters would have caught immediately. I could have been done with them.

And ever since Grace Brown handed them to me, I have sorely wanted to be done with them. She gave them to me yesterday afternoon on the porch, after I'd brought her a lemonade. I'd felt sorry for her; I could tell she'd been crying. I knew why, too. She'd had a fight with her beau at dinner. It was over a chapel. She wanted to go and find a chapel, but he wanted to go boating.

She'd refused the drink at first, saying she couldn't pay for it, but I said she didn't have to, figuring what Mrs. Morrison didn't know wouldn't hurt her. And then, just as I was turning to go back inside, she asked me to wait. She opened her gentleman friend's suitcase and pulled a bundle of letters from it. She took a few more from her purse, undid the ribbon around them, tied all the letters together, and asked me to burn them.

I was so taken aback by her request, I wasn't able to answer. Guests wanted all sorts of strange things. Omelettes with two and a half eggs. Not two, not three—two and a half. Maple syrup for their baked potatoes. Blueberry muffins without any blueberries in them. Trout for supper as long as it didn't taste like fish. I did all that they asked of me with a smile, but no one had ever asked me to burn letters, and I couldn't imagine explaining it to Cook.

"Miss, I can't—," I'd started to say.

She took hold of my arm. "Burn them. Please," she whispered. "Promise me you will. No one can ever see them. Please!"

And then she pressed them into my hands, and her eyes were so wild that they scared me, and I quickly nodded yes. "Of course I will, miss. I'll do it right away."

And then he—Carl or Chester or whatever he called himself—shouted to her from the lawn, "Billy, you coming? I got a boat!"

I'd put the letters in my pocket and forgot all about them until I went upstairs later in the day to change into a fresh apron. I slipped them under my mattress, figuring I would wait to burn them, just in case Grace Brown changed her mind and asked for them back. Guests could be like that. They'd get cross with you for bringing them the butterscotch pudding they'd ordered, because now they wanted chocolate. And somehow it was your fault if their shirts were too stiff after they'd asked for extra starch. I didn't want Grace Brown complaining to Mrs. Morrison that I'd burned her letters when she hadn't meant me to, but Grace hadn't changed her mind. Or complained. And now she never would.