A Northern Light(41)

"Surely not, Mr. Gokey. I only visited with your wife on two or three occasions, but my reading of her was a woman who loved—"

"Your 'reading' of her?"

Oh, Lord, I thought. I nearly got to my feet, then realized he couldn't possibly have his peavey with him. Not in the parlor.

"People ain't books, Miss Wilcox. What's inside 'em ain't all typewrit on the page for you to read. Now, if you're about through, ma'am, I've got plowing to do."

There was a silence again, then: "I am. Good-bye, Mr. Gokey. Thank you for your time."

I heard Miss Wilcox's brisk step in the hallway, and then she was gone. She was the kind of woman who came and went through the front door, not the back.

"Oh, Mattie, don't go! You won't, will you? I'd miss you so," Beth fretted. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me with her sticky candy lips.

"Hush, Beth. Don't be so selfish," Abby scolded.

Next thing I knew, Pa was in the kitchen. We all scrambled to our feet. "I guess the four of you just happened to be coming down the stairs all at once," he said. "Wouldn't be you were listening in on conversations you had no business listening in on?" No one said a word. "Abby, you salt the butter yet? Lou, you muck out the cow stalls? Beth, have the chickens been fed?"

My sisters scattered. Pa looked at me. "You couldn't tell me yourself?" he asked.

His eyes were hard and his voice was, too, and all the soft feelings I'd had for him only moments before swirled away like slop water down a drain.

"What for, Pa? So you could say no?"

He blinked at me and his eyes looked hurt, and I thought, just for a second, that he was going to say something tender to me, but no. "Go, then, Mattie. I won't stop you. But don't come back if you do," he said. Then he walked out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.





ses ? qui ? pe ? da ? lian


"Sesquipedalian is a funny word, Daisy," I whispered to the cow. "It means one and a half feet in length, but it also means given to using long words. Its such a long word itself, though, that it is what it accuses others of being. It is a hypocrite, Daisy, well and truly, but I still like it. And I plan on dropping it into a conversation or two when I'm in New York City."

Daisy chewed her cud. If she had an opinion about my word of the day, she kept it to herself. My cheek was pressed into her warm belly, my hands were busy squeezing milk from her udder, and my lips were whispering all my secrets to her. I had told her all about Uncle Fifty and how he was coming back from Old Forge any minute now and bringing me the money I needed to go to Barnard.

It was near the end of April and twelve of our twenty cows had calved and we were drowning in milk. Morning and night, the milk was poured into wide, deep pans and allowed to set. When left long enough, the cream separated from the milk and rose to the top of the pan. Then it was skimmed off. The leftover milk went into large, two-handled cans for delivery. We sold some of the cream just as it was, the rest we churned into butter. The buttermilk—which is what was left after the butter came—was fed to our pigs and chickens. Nothing was ever wasted.

"Mattie?"

I turned my head. "Beth, don't stand right behind a cow. You know better than that."

"Daisy wouldn't kick me. She never would."

"But Pa will if he sees you that close to a cow's hind end. Now step over."

"But Mattie..."

"What, Beth? What's wrong?"

"Why isn't Uncle Fifty back? He said he'd be back from Old Forge by dinnertime today and it's already gone five. He told me he was going to take me to see the circus in Boonville. He said he was."

"He'll be back. He probably just got talking with someone and took a later train. You know what he's like. I bet he came across an old friend, that's all. He'll be back soon."

"Are you sure, Matt?"

"I'm sure," I said. I wasn't. I didn't want to admit it, not even to myself, but I was just as worried as Beth was. Our uncle should have been back hours before.

"Hallooo!" a man's voice shouted from the barn door.

"There he is, Beth! See? I told you!"

"It's not Uncle Fifty, Matt. It's Mr. Eckler," she said, skipping off to see him.

"Well, hello there, my girl! Your pa around?"

"I'm right here, Charlie," Pa called out. "You're up this end of the lake awful late, aren't you?"

"I am at that. Its so busy these days, I'm not getting back to Old Forge before six, seven o'clock at night. I brought you the bacon we traded for. It's a nice piece of meat. And I wanted to ask if I can get five cans from you tomorrow instead of four, and any extra butter you've got."

"I've got the milk. Cows are giving about fifteen pounds of milk a day each. Got plenty. Should have the butter, too."

"Glad to hear it. Well, I've gotta get back, but say ... I saw your brother this morning."

"What was he doing? Taking the slow train home?"

"No, not quite. He was on a fast train, if you take my meaning. Bound for Utica."

"Poleaxed?"

"Yup."

I felt all the breath go out of me. I leaned my forehead against Daisy and squeezed my eyes closed.