A Northern Light(54)

I was just bursting to tell someone that we had the country's most scandalous lady poet right in our midst. I could've told Weaver, but I hadn't seen him for days. He was up at the Glenmore already, helping get the boats ready and the porch painted. I could've told Abby, but I was worried she might tell Jane Miley, her best friend, and Jane might spread it around, and I thought it might be dangerous to Miss Wilcox if people knew who she really was, seeing as everyone was so up in arms over A Distant Music. I wanted to tell Royal most of all. I wanted to share it with him and have it be our secret, just ours, but he never gave me the chance.

"Look at that stretch of land right there, Matt," he said, sweeping his hand out in front of him. "Nice and flat, well drained, and a good stream besides. Make good growing land. I'd farm it for corn in a second."

The stretch of land he was talking about included Emmie Hubbard's property and a bit of my father's, as well as Loomis land. "Well, I think Emmie might have something to say about that. And my pa, too."

He shrugged. "A man can dream, can't he?"

And before I could say anything in reply, he asked me if I'd like to go riding with him to Inlet and back that very night. I said I would. And as soon as I told him yes, he let go of Daisy's rope, pulled me in under some maple trees, and kissed me. I guess the unspoken language of my body must've been pretty eloquent after all, because that was just what I'd wanted him to do. He pressed himself into me and kissed my neck, and it was as if everything strong and solid inside me, heart and bones and muscle and gut, softened and melted from the heat of him. For the first time, I dared to touch him. It must have been the beautiful May day that made me so bold. Springtime in the woods can make you half mad. I ran my hands over his arms and laid them upon his chest. His heart was beating slow and steady unlike my own, which was thumping like a thresher. I guessed it must be different for a boy than it was for a girl. I felt his hands circling my waist, and then one slipped down lower. To a place Mamma told me no one should ever touch, only a husband.

"Royal, no."

"Aw, Mattie, it's all right."

He pulled away from me and frowned and his face darkened and I felt I had done something wrong. My word of the day was abscission. It means an act of cutting off or a sudden termination. I felt its meaning as I looked at Royal's face, all clouded. I felt frightened and bereft, as if I had somehow cut myself off from the sun. He looked at the ground, then back at me. "I ain't playing, Matt, if that's what you think. I seen a ring in Turtle's."

I blinked for a reply, because I didn't understand what he meant.

He sighed and shook his head. "If I was to buy it, would you want it?"

Good Lord, that kind of ring. I thought he meant a ring for a harness or a pulley, but he meant a real ring. Like the one his brother Dan had given Belinda Becker.

"Oh yes! Yes, I would," I whispered. And then I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him and nearly sobbed with relief when I felt him kiss me back. I didn't think what it meant, saying yes. All I wanted was Royal right then, and I didn't think how saying yes to him would mean saying no to all the other things I wanted.

"All right, then," he said, breaking away from me. "I'll call for you after supper tonight."

"All right."

He picked up Daisy's rope and handed it to me, and I walked the rest of the way home by myself. And it was only much later, after he'd called at our place and asked Pa if I could go riding, and we'd been up to Inlet and back and I was upstairs in my bed remembering every one of his kisses, that I wondered if he was supposed to have said he loved me when he told me about the ring. Or if maybe that came later.





his ? pid ? u ? lous


"Bill Mitchell you know he kept our shanty. As mean a damn man as you ever did see..."

"Beth, don't curse."

"I didn't, Matt, it was the song. 'He'd lay round the shanty from morning till night. If a man said a word, he was ready to fight...'"

"Can't you sing a nicer song? How about the one Reverend Miller taught you? 'Onward, Christian Soldiers'?"

She wrinkled her nose. "I like 'Township Nineteen' better. The lumberjacks are more fun than Jesus. I never seen him work a jam and he can't bid, neither. Not in that nightshirt he's always wearing."

The nearest church was in Inlet and we hadn't been to it since Mamma died. She was the one who made us go; Pa wasn't one for religion. I wondered if maybe I should take my sisters on the coming Sunday.

"One morn before daylight, Jim Lou he got mad. Knocked hell out of Mitchell and the boys was all glad..."

I sighed and let Beth sing. The two of us were on our way to Emmie Hubbard's. We were walking close together under our mother's old black umbrella. A soft, pattering rain was coming down, the gentle kind that made the color and smell of everything around us—the grass, the dirt road, the balsams and violets and wild lilies of the valley—come up strong.

Beth finished her song. "Is Emmie going away, Matt?" she asked me. "And her kids? That's what Tommy said."

"I don't know. Maybe she'll tell us."

Tommy and Jenny had come for breakfast again that morning, and Tommy had been very upset. He'd told us about a letter that had come from Arn Satterlee. It was the second one Emmie had received from Arn. The first one—the one I knew about thanks to my aunt Josie but had to pretend I didn't when Emmie showed up on our doorstep to ask Pa what it meant—said that her land would be auctioned. Tommy said the second one had set August 20 as the date of the auction. He said the letter had his mother broken down and crying, and Weaver's mamma wasn't at home, because she was down to the railroad station selling her chicken, and would I please come.