A Northern Light(2)

"Hush, Mattie. It's too late for that," Cook says.

I make myself look at her then. Her eyes are dull and empty. Her skin has gone the yellow of muscatel wine. There is an ugly gash on her forehead and her lips are bruised. Yesterday she'd sat by herself on the porch, fretting the hem of her skirt. I'd brought her a glass of lemonade, because it was hot outside and she looked peaked. I hadn't charged her for it. She looked like she didn't have much money.

Behind me, Cook badgers Mr. Crabb. "What about the man she was with? Carl Grahm?"

"No sign of him," he says. "Not yet, leastways. We got the boat. They'd tipped it, all right. In South Bay."

"I'll have to get hold of the family," Mrs. Morrison says. "They're in Albany."

"No, that was only the man, Grahm," Cook says. "The girl lived in South Otselic. I looked in the register."

Mrs. Morrison nods. "I'll ring the operator. See if she can connect me with a store there, or a hotel. Or someone who can get a message to the family. What on earth will I say? Oh dear! Oh, her poor, poor mother!" She presses a handkerchief to her eyes and hurries from the room.

"She'll be making a second call before the day's out," Cook says. "Ask me, people who can't swim have no business on a lake."

"Too confident, that fellow," Mr. Morrison says. "I asked him could he handle a skiff and he told me yes. Only a darn fool from the city could tip a boat on a calm day..." He says more, but I don't hear him. It feels like there are iron bands around my chest. I close my eyes and try to breathe deeply, but it only makes things worse. Behind my eyes I see a packet of letters tied with a pale blue ribbon. Letters that are upstairs under my mattress. Letters that I promised to burn. I can see the address on the top one: Chester Gillette, 17? Main Street, Cortland, New York.

Cook fusses me away from the body. "Mattie, pull the shades like I told you to," she says. She folds Grace Brown's hands over her chest and closes her eyes. "There's coffee in the kitchen. And sandwiches," she tells the men. "Will you eat something?"

"We'll take something with us, Mrs. Hennessey, if that's all right," Mr. Morrison says. "We're going out again. Soon as Sperry gets the sheriff on the phone. He's calling Martins, too. To tell 'em to keep an eye out. And Higby's and the other camps. Just in case Grahm made it to shore and got lost in the woods."

"His name's not Carl Grahm. It's Chester. Chester Gillette." The words burst out of me before I can stop them.

"How do you know that, Mattie?" Cook asks. They are all looking at me now—Cook, Mr. Morrison, and Mr. Crabb.

"I ... I heard her call him that, I guess," I stammer, suddenly afraid.

Cook's eyes narrow. "Did you see something, Mattie? Do you know something you should tell us?"

What had I seen? Too much. What did I know? Only that knowledge carries a damned high price. Miss Wilcox, my teacher, had taught me so much. Why had she never taught me that?





frac ? tious


My youngest sister, Beth, who is five, will surely grow up to be a riverman—standing upstream on the dam, calling out warnings to the men below that the logs are coming down. She has the lungs for it.

It was a spring morning. End of March. Not quite four months ago, though it seems much longer. We were late for school and there were still chores to do before we left, but Beth didn't care. She just sat there ignoring the cornmeal mush I'd made her, bellowing like some opera singer up from Utica to perform at one of the hotels. Only no opera singer ever sang "Hurry Up, Harry." Least not as far as I know.





So it's hurry up, Harry, and Tom or Dick or Joe,

And you may take the pail, boys, and for the water go.

In the middle of the splashing, the cook will dinner cry,

And you'd ought to see them hurry up for fear they'd lose their pie...





"Beth, hush now and eat your mush," I scolded, fumbling her hair into a braid. She didn't mind me, though, for she wasn't singing her song to me or to any of us. She was singing to the motionless rocker near the stove and the battered fishing creel hanging by the shed door. She was singing to fill all the empty places in our house, to chase away the silence. Most mornings I didn't mind her noise, but that morning I had to talk to Pa about something, something very important, and I was all nerves. I wanted it peaceful for once. I wanted Pa to find everything in order and everyone behaving when he came in, so he would be peaceable himself and well-disposed to what I had to say.





There's blackstrap molasses, squaw buns as hard as rock,

Tea that's boiled in an old tin pail and smells just like your sock.

The beans they are sour, and the porridge thick as dough—

When we have stashed this in our craw, it's to the woods we go...





The kitchen door banged open and Lou, all of eleven, passed behind the table with a bucket of milk. She'd forgotten to take off her boots and was tracking manure across the floor.

"A-hitching up our braces and a-binding up our feet."

"Beth, please!" I said, tying her braid with a ribbon. "Lou, your boots! Mind your boots!"

"A-grinding up our axes for our kind is hard to beat..."