A Northern Light(13)

Royal looked from me to Pleasant and back again. He let the wagon wheel slide to the ground. "Let me have him," he said, taking the reins. "Giddyap, you!" he shouted, snapping them smartly against Pleasant's rump. Much harder than I had. Pleasant budged. Boy, did he. Tommy, Beth, and Lou cheered, and I felt as dumb as a bag of hammers.

Royal was the second-eldest boy in his family. There were two younger ones. Daniel, the eldest, had just gotten engaged to Belinda Becker from the Farm and Feed Beckers in Old Forge. Belinda is a pretty name. It feels like meringue in your mouth or a curl of sugar on snow. Not like Matt. Matt is the sound of knots in a dog's coat or something you wipe your feet on.

Dan and Belinda's engagement was big news. It was a good match, what with Dan so capable and Belinda sure of a nice dowry. My aunt Josephine said there was supposed to have been a second engagement. She said Royal had been sweet on Martha Miller, whose father is the minister in Inlet, but he broke it off. Nobody knew why, but Aunt Josie said it was because Martha's people were Herkimer diamonds—which aren't diamonds at all, only look-alike crystals that aren't worth a darn. Mr. Miller has a nice pair of grays and Martha wears pretty dresses, but they don't pay their bills. I didn't see what that had to do with engagements, but if anyone would know, it was my aunt. She is an invalid and has nothing to entertain herself with other than gossip. She is on every scrap of hearsay like a bear on a brook trout.

Dan and Royal were only a year apart, nineteen and eighteen, and they were forever in competition. Whether it was a baseball game or who could pick the most berries or chop the most wood, one was always trying to outdo the other. I hadn't seen much of them over the last year. I used to visit with them when they came to fetch Lawton for fishing trips, and we all used to walk to school together, but Dan and Royal left school early. Neither one was much for book learning.

I watched him as he plowed a row, turned at the end of the field and came back. "Thanks, Royal," I mumbled. "I'll take him now."

"That's all right. I'll finish it. Whyn't you follow along behind and pull the stones?"

I did as he said, traipsing after him, picking up stones and roots, carrying them in a bucket until I could dump them at the end of a row.

"How are you doing back there?" he called after a few rows, turning to look at me.

"Fine," I said. And then I tripped and dropped my bucket. He stopped, waited for me to right myself, then started off again. He moved fast and it was hard to keep up with him. His furrows were straight and deep. Much better than the ones I'd done. He made me feel clumsy in comparison. And flustered. Flumsy.

"Soil's good. Dark and rich."

I looked down at it. It was as black as wet coffee grounds. "Yes, it is," I said.

"Should get a good crop out of it. Why you call your mule Pleasant? He's anything but."

"It's a misnomer," I said, pleased to be able to use my word of the day.

"You call your mule Miss? Miss Pleasant? It's a boy mule!"

"No, not 'Miss Pleasant,' misnomer. It means a misapplied name. Like when you call a fat person Slim. Misnomer. It comes from mesnommer, which is French—old French—for 'to misname.' It's my word of the day. I pick a word out of the dictionary every morning and memorize it and try to use it. It helps build vocabulary. I'm reading Jane Eyre right now and I hardly ever have to look up a word. Misnomer, though, that's a hard one to use in conversation, but then you asked about Pleasant and there it was! My perfect chance to..."

Royal gave me a look over his shoulder—a wincing, withering look—that made me feel like the biggest babbling blabberer in all of Herkimer County. I closed my mouth and wondered what it was girls like Belinda Becker had to say that made boys want to listen to them. I knew a lot of words—a lot more than Belinda, who giggled all the time and said things like "swell" and "chum" and "hopelessly dead broke"—but not the right ones. I kept my eyes on the narrows for a while, but that got to be boring, so I stared at Royal's backside. I had never really noticed a man's backside before. Pa didn't have one. It was as flat as a cracker. Mamma would tease him about it and he'd tell her the lumber bosses worked it off him. I thought Royal's was very nice. Round and proud like two loaves of soda bread. He turned around just then and I blushed. I wondered what Jane Eyre would have done, then realized Jane was English and proper and wouldn't have gone around eyeing Rochester's backside to begin with.

"Where's your pa, anyway?" Royal asked.

"With Daisy. Who's calving. And Abby. Who isn't. Calving, I mean." I wished I could stitch my mouth shut.

There were more questions. What was Pa using for fertilizer. How many acres was he going to clear. Was he planting any potatoes this spring. What about buckwheat. And wasn't it hard for him to run the farm alone.

"He's not alone. He has me," I said.

"But you're still in school, ain't you? Why aren't you out yet, anyway? School's for children and you're what ... fifteen?"

"Sixteen."

"Where's Lawton? Ain't he coming back?"

"You writing a column for the paper, Royal?" Lou asked.

Royal didn't laugh. I did, though. He was quiet after that. Two hours later, he'd finished the field entirely. We sat down for a rest, and I gave him a piece of the johnnycake I'd brought and poured him switchel from a stone jug. I gave pieces to Tommy and Lou and Beth as well.