A Northern Light(26)

I put John the Baptist down and picked up Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. The quality wasn't so good on that one. Jesus had an odd expression and a greenish cast to his face. He looked more like a man with stomach trouble than one who was about to be crucified. I squeezed him tightly to get his attention, then sent him a quick prayer to make my aunt amenable.

As I polished him, I wondered why on earth someone would collect such junk. Words were so much better to collect. They didn't take up space and you never had to dust them. Although I had to admit I hadn't had much luck with my word of the day that morning. Uriah the Hittite was the first word the dictionary had yielded, followed by stinkpot, then warthog. And then I'd slammed the book shut, disgusted.

After Jesus, there was a bible with THE GOOD BOOK written on it in real fourteen-karat gold. I picked it up and was just going to tell my aunt about Barnard and ask her for the money, when she spoke first.

"Watch you don't polish the gold off that," she cautioned me.

"Yes, Aunt Josie."

"You reading your bible, Mattie?"

"Some."

"You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm?"

I will tell Him that His press agents could have done with a writing lesson or two, I said. To myself.

I did not think the Good Book was all that good. There was too much begetting, too much smoting. Not much of a plot, either. Some of the stories were all right—like Moses parting the Red Sea, and Job, and Noah and his ark—but whoever wrote them down could have done a lot more with them. I would like to have known, for example, what Mrs. Job thought about God destroying her entire family over a stupid bet. Or how Mrs. Noah felt to have her children safe on the ark with her while she watched everyone else's children drown. Or how Mary stood it when the Romans drove nails straight through her boy's hands. I know the ones writing were prophets and saints and all, but it wouldn't have helped them any in Miss Wilcox's classroom. She still would have given them a D.

I put the bible back and started in on the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Greed. I had to stand on the step stool to reach them. They were on a shelf over one of the parlor's two windows.

"There's Margaret Pruyn," my aunt said, peering out the window and across the street to Dr. Wallace's house. "That's the second time this week she's been to the doctor's. She's not saying what's wrong, but she doesn't have to. I know what it is. She's as thin as a pike pole. Got that waxy look to her, too. Cancer of the breast. I just know it. Same as your mamma, God rest her." There was a sigh, and then a sniffle, and then Aunt Josie was dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. "Poor, dear Ellen," she sobbed.

I was used to these displays. My aunt didn't have much to distract her and she tended to dwell. "Look, Aunt Josie," I said, pointing at the doctor's house. "There's Mrs. Howard going in. What's wrong with her?"

My aunt honked and coughed and pulled aside the curtain again. "Sciatica," she said, brightening considerably. "Pinched nerve in the spine. Told me it pains her something awful." Aunt Josie loves a good illness. She can talk about signs and symptoms for hours on end and is considered to be something of an authority on catarrh, piles, shingles, dropped wombs, ruptures, and impetigo.

"There's Alma on her way home," she said, craning her neck. Alma Mclntyre was the postmistress and my aunt's good friend. "Who's she with, Mattie? Who's that talking to her? She handing him something?"

I looked out the window. "It's Mr. Satterlee," I said. "She's giving him an envelope."

"Is she? I wonder what's in it." She knocked on the window, trying to get Mrs. Mclntyre's attention, or Mr. Satterlee's, but they didn't hear her. "Arn's been seen up at the Hubbard place twice this week, Mattie. You know anything about it?"

"No, ma'am."

"You find out something, be sure and tell me."

"Yes, ma'am," I replied, trying yet again to find an opening in the conversation so I could make my request, but my aunt didn't give me one.

"There goes Emily Wilcox," she said, watching my teacher walk by. "Thinks quite a lot of herself, that one. She'll never find herself a husband. No one likes a too-smart woman."

Aunt Josie must be reading Milton, too, I thought. He says the same thing, only in fancier Language.

"You know, Mattie, I'm certain that Emily Wilcox is from the Iverson Wilcoxes of New York City, but its odd because Iverson Wilcox has three daughters—two married, one a spinster. That's what Alma said and she would know; after all, her brother used to be a caretaker at the Sagamore, and the Wilcoxes summered there—but Annabelle Wilcox is a Miss and Emily Wilcox is a Miss—Alma says the return address on her letters always say Miss Wilcox. And Emily teaches. She would have to be a Miss if she teaches. She gets letters from a Mrs. Edward Mayhew—Alma's sure that's Charlotte, the third sister, and she's obviously married—but if only one is supposed to be a spinster, why are two of them Misses? She also gets letters from an Iverson Jr.—that's her brother, of course. And from a Mr. Theodore Baxter—I don't know who he is. And from a Mr. John Van Eck of Scribner and Sons—a publishing concern. What's young woman doing corresponding with publishers? They're a very shady bunch. You mark my words, Mattie, there's something fast about that woman."