A Northern Light(12)

"Not sneaking off to the Waldheim to meet Ed Compeau, by any chance?"

Frannie's caught. She turns as red as a cherry. I expect Cook to scold her soundly. Instead, she takes Fran's chin in her hand and says, "A boy wants to go somewhere with you, you tell him to call on you proper or not at all. You hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Fran mumbles, and from the look on her face, and Ada's, I know they are as unsettled as I am at seeing signs of softness from Cook. I feel even worse when she brushes at her eyes on her way to the cellar stairs. "Weaver!" she bellows down them. "You fetching that coffee or growing it? Hurry up!"

I look at the thin gold ring with a chipped opal and two dull garnets on my left hand. I've never thought it pretty, but I'm suddenly glad, very glad, that Royal gave it to me. Glad, too, that he always calls for me at the Glenmore's kitchen door, where everyone can see him.

I go back to cranking the ice cream and embellishing my romantic and tragic story, writing it all out in my mind. Carl Grahm and Grace Brown were in love. That's why they were here. They were eloping, not sneaking, no matter what Cook says. I see Carl Grahm smiling as he reaches for the pond lilies, then I see the boat capsize and him struggle valiantly to save the woman he loves. I don't see Grace's tearstained face anymore or the tremble in her hands as she gives me her letters. I don't wonder what's in them or why they're addressed to Chester Gillette, not Carl Grahm. I start to think that maybe I never heard Grace Brown call Carl Grahm Chester at all, that I only imagined it.

I end my story with Grace and Carl being buried next to each other in a fancy cemetery in Albany and their parents being so sad they ever stood in the young lovers' way. I decide that I like it. It's a new kind of story for me—the kind that stitches things up nicely and leaves no ends dangling and makes me feel placid instead of all stirred up. The kind that has a happy ending—or at least as happy an ending as is possible with the heroine dead and the hero presumed so. The kind of story I once told Miss Wilcox was a lie. The kind I said I would never ever write.





mis ? no ? mer


Nothing on our entire farm—not the balky hay wagon, not the stumps in the north field, not even the rocks in the lower meadow—was as unyielding, as immovable, as adamant and uncompromising as Pleasant the mule. I was in our cornfield trying to get him to pull the plow. "Giddyap, Pleasant! Giddyap!" I shouted, snapping the reins against his haunches. He didn't move.

"Come on, Pleasant ... come on, mule," Beth wheedled, holding a lump of maple sugar out to him.

"Here boy, here mule," Tommy Hubbard called, waving an old straw hat. Pleasant liked to eat them.

"Move your fat ass, you jackass," Lou swore, tugging on his bridle.

But Pleasant would not be budged. He stood firm, dipping his head occasionally to try and bite Lou.

"Go, Pleasant. Please, Pleasant," I begged.

It was dry and remarkably warm for the start of April, and I was tired and dirty and dripping with sweat. The muscles in my arms ached and my hands were raw from guiding the plow and I was just as mad as a hornet. Pa had kept me home from school again, and I'd wanted to go so badly. I was waiting on a letter, one that was going to come care of Miss Wilcox if it came at all, and it was all I could think about. I told him I had to go. I said my exams were coming up. I said I needed to study my algebra. I told him Miss Wilcox was making us read Paradise Lost and that it was hard going and that I would fall behind if I missed a day. Didn't make a bit of difference. He'd been reading the signs—no fog in February, no thunder in March, a south wind on Good Friday—and was convinced the mild weather would hold.

Most people planted corn around Decoration Day, at the end of May, but Pa wanted to plant midmonth, at the latest, and he wanted to start working the soil early, too. There are only about a hundred frost-free days in the North Woods, and corn takes time to ripen. Pa was trying to build our dairy herd. He wanted to keep the calves if he could, rather than sell them, but we couldn't keep them if we couldn't feed them and we couldn't feed them unless we grew enough corn. I was to have two acres turned over that day, and I'd only gotten a third of the way through before Pleasant decided it was quitting time. If I didn't finish, Pa would want to know why. Plowing was Lawton's job, but Lawton wasn't around to do it. Pa would've done it if he could, but he was with Daisy, who was calving. So it fell to me.

I bent down and picked up a stone. I was just winding up to throw it at Pleasant's behind when I heard a voice behind me say, "Peg him with that and you'll scare him. He's like to run. Take himself, that plow, and you across the field and through the fence."

I turned around. A tall blond boy was standing at the edge of the field, watching me. He was taller than I remembered. Broad-shouldered. And handsome. Handsomest one out of all the Loomis boys. He had the rim of a wagon wheel resting on his shoulder. His arm poked through the spokes.

"Hey, Royal," I said, trying to keep my eyes from roosting on any one part of him for too long. Not his wheat-colored hair, or his eyes that Minnie said were hazel but that I thought were the exact color of buckwheat honey, or the small freckle just above his lip.

"Hey."

The Loomis farm bordered ours. It was much bigger. Ninety acres. They had more bog than we did, but Mr. Loomis and his boys had managed to clear forty acres. Wed only got about twenty-five cleared. The best land, where we pulled stumps and rocks, we used for crops. Hay and corn for our animals, plus potatoes—some to keep and some to sell. Places where the stumps were still charred and rotting, or where it was rocky or boggy, Pa used to pasture the cows. The worst patches were planted with buckwheat, as it is not particular and will grow most anywhere. Pa had hoped to clear another five acres over the summer. But he couldn't without Lawton.