A Northern Light(47)

And so I closed my eyes and all I knew was his nearness. And all I wanted was my own story and no one else's.

And so I said nothing. Nothing at all.





glean


"Lou, stop."

"'...then comes Junior in a baby carriage "I said stop...'"

"'...sucking his thumb, wetting his pants, doin' the hula-hula dance..."'

"Lou!"

"You're blushing, Matt! You're sweet on Royal Loomis! I know you are!"

"Nobody's sweet on anybody. And stop saying so."

Lou started singing her stupid song again, but then something appeared up ahead of us on the road that interested her far more than tormenting me did. An automobile. It could only be some well-heeled tourist driving it, or Mr. Sperry, or Miss Wilcox. No one else could afford one. The driver saw us and leaned on the horn. The car veered across the road, directly toward us. I grabbed the back of Lou's coveralls and pulled her into the grass.

"Let go, Matt," she whined. "I want to see it."

The driver pulled up and cut the engine. It was our teacher. She tossed the cigarette she'd been smoking and removed her goggles. "Hello, Mattie! Lou!" she bellowed, her cheeks pink. She wore a tan cluster, gloves, and a flowered silk scarf over her hair.

"Hello, Miss Wilcox," we said together.

"Where are you two off to?"

"We're on our way home from Burnap's. Pleasant, our mule, cracked his bit. We had to get it repaired," I explained.

"I see. I, myself, have been for a drive. Up to Beaver River and back. First one since the fall. The roads are finally dry enough to allow it. It's beautiful up there! Such freedom! I'm famished now, though. Driving always gives me an appetite. Why don't you two hop in? We'll go back to my house and have some lunch."

I was frightened of Miss Wilcox's automobile. "I think we'd best get home, ma'am," I said. "Our pa will be looking for us. He needs the bit."

"Oh, come on, Matt! Pa won't mind," Lou pleaded.

"I'll tell you what ... come for lunch and then I'll drive you home. It'll save some time."

"Pleeeeeease, Matt?" Lou begged.

"I guess it's all right," I said, more for Miss Wilcox's sake than Lou's. For all her giddy, breathless excitement, she seemed a little bit lonely. And I was curious, too. I had never seen the inside of my teacher's house. She had such nice clothes and jewelry, and a real automobile, so there was no telling what she might have at home.

Miss Wilcox got out, crank in hand, and started the engine again. It coughed and sputtered, finally caught, then fired off what sounded like cannon shot. I jumped out of my skin. Miss Wilcox laughed at me. Miss Wilcox laughed a lot. I knew she was wealthy, and wondered if money made everything funny.

"Hear that, Matt?" Lou whispered, giggling. "Just like Pa in the outhouse!"

"Shut up, Lou!" I hissed, hoping Miss Wilcox hadn't heard. "Go get in the back." She did, but not before she'd stooped down, quick as a weasel, and picked up the remains of Miss Wilcox's cigarette. I put my hand out for it, but she shoved it in her pocket and stuck her chin out at me.

When we were seated, Miss Wilcox engaged the gears and we were off. "It's a nice car, isn't it?" she shouted, turning toward me. "Brand-new. I had a Packard before. When I lived in New York. But a Ford's better for the country."

I nodded and kept my eyes straight ahead. One of us had to.

"It's wonderful here in the woods," Miss Wilcox said, swerving to avoid a squirrel. "Such freedom! You can do whatever you like and no one minds."

No, but how they talk! I thought.

Glean, my word of the day that day, is a good word. It is old and small, not showy. It has a simple meaning—to gather after the reapers—and then meanings inside the meanings, like images in a prism. It is a farming word, but it fits people other than farmers. Aunt Josie never bent her back in a field one day in her life, but she is a gleaner. She combs other people's leavings—hints, hearsay, dropped words—looking for nuggets of information, trying to gather enough bits together to make a whole story.

Miss Wilcox drove us out of Eagle Bay and a mile and a half up the road to Inlet. The old Foster camp on Fourth Lake is a two-story log house with a stone foundation. Dr. Foster was a retired bachelor doctor from Watertown who loved the North Woods and built himself a large camp here. The word camp means different things to different people. To Pa and Lawton, it means a lean-to. To city people, it means a real house with all the comforts but tricked out like a cabin. Aunt Josie once told me that Mr. John Pierpont Morgan has crystal champagne glasses in his camp on Lake Mohegan, and a Steinway piano and telephones in every room and a dozen servants, too. And Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt has solid-gold taps on his bathroom sink at the Sagamore. Dr. Foster is dead now. His sister inherited the house and rents it out. Usually only in the summer and to big families with enough children and grandparents and aunts and uncles to fill up all the rooms and crowd the porch, but my teacher had been living in it all year and had it entirely to herself.

Miss Wilcox pulled into the driveway, which curves around in back of the house in a horseshoe shape, and then we went inside. The camp has a real doorbell and Lou asked if she could ring it, then kept doing it until I pulled her away. It was cool and dark inside and smelled like oil soap. There were carpets everywhere and wainscoring halfway up the walls and velvet curtains thick and heavy enough to shut out the whole world. There were pictures of deer and trout on the walls, and mirrors in frames, and pretty blue-and-white plates. It was very beautiful, but most of all, it was quiet. So quiet you could hear a clock ticking from two rooms away, and boards creaking under your feet, and your own thoughts inside your head. It was never that quiet in our house.