A Northern Light(78)

"Jim'll wonder where on earth I've got to," Minnie said, rushing off.

"Cook wants us, Ada. Come on," Fran said, following her.

"Guess I must've stepped in manure," Royal said, watching them all go.

I looked at the ground but didn't see it. I saw something that had happened the day I'd rushed home to nurse my sick family. Something I'd forgotten about until now. I saw Tommy Hubbard. He was struggling with Baldwin. He was crying and hitting the calf. Someone had hit him, too. He had an ugly red welt under his eye. Royal hated Tommy. And Emmie. And all the Hubbards.

"Royal..."

"What?"

"Martha Miller just ... she just told me some things."

He snorted. "You believe what she says?"

I looked up at him. "Royal, are you the one fixing to buy Emmie Hubbard's land?"

He looked away and spat and then he looked right back at me with his beautiful amber eyes. "Yes, Matt," he said. "Yes, I am."





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"Jeezum, Mattie, you're in for it now!" Fran said. "Why'd you leave the broom out in the middle of the kitchen?"

"I didn't! I swept the floor and put it away!" I was folding napkins in the dining room, readying the tables for tomorrow's breakfast.

"Cook just tripped over it and dropped a whole pot of consomme. She said for you to get in there right away."

"But I didn't..."

"Go on, before she comes out here after you!"

Fran disappeared back into the kitchen. I just stood where I was, a lump growing in my throat, thinking how an earful from Cook would make a perfectly awful end to a perfectly awful day. 7^/was my word of the day. A standard of perfection, or something existing only in the imagination, was its meaning. The dictionary must have been playing a joke on me. There had been nothing perfect or excellent about this day. It was the fifth of July, my birthday. I'd turned seventeen and no one had remembered. Fran and Ada knew the date very well. So did Weaver. And not one of them had so much as mentioned it. I'd been blue about it all day. I'd been blue about other things, too. About the rotten things Martha Miller had said to me at the party the night before. And the fight I'd had with Royal. Right after I'd asked if he was the one buying Emmie's land.

"I don't want to talk about that," he'd said.

"Well, I do," I said. "Why are you doing it? It's not right."

He took my arm and led me away from the tables and the people and the noisy brass band playing "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." We walked a little ways into the woods.

"Why do you want to buy Emmie's land, Royal?" I said as soon as we were alone.

"Because it's good land. It'll make good growing land, good pasture, too."

I said nothing for a minute, trying to work up my courage, then I asked him, "Is that the only reason?" I was afraid of the answer.

"No, Mattie, there's another..."

I looked at the ground. Martha was right. It was Pa's land Royal wanted, not me.

"...I want Emmie Hubbard gone."

I saw Frank Loomis's hairy behind in my mind's eye and Emmie bent over the stove. "Royal, you ... you know?"

"For god's sake, Mattie. Everyone in the whole damn county knows."

"I didn't know."

"That ain't hardly a surprise. You're too interested in what Blueberry Finn and Oliver Dickens and all the rest of them made-up people are doing to see what's going on right around you."

"That's not true!"

He rolled his eyes.

"Royal, are you buying that land for us? To live on?"

"Yes."

"I don't want it, Royal. How can we start a life there knowing we took it away from a widow and seven children? It's all they've got. If you buy it and kick the Hubbards off, where will they go?"

"To hell, I hope."

"But Lucius..." I didn't know how to say it, so I stopped. Then I started again, for it had to be said. "That baby ... he's your half brother, isn't he?"

"None of Emmie's brats is any kin to me."

"He can't help how he got here; he's only a baby," I said softly.

He looked at me like I was Judas himself. Then he said, "What if it was your pa, Mattie? Taking the first milk of the year over to Emmie's when you and your sisters hadn't yet tasted any? Lying to your ma, leaving her standing in the barn crying? You think you'd give a damn what happened to the Hubbards then?" His voice had turned husky. I saw that it cost him to say these things. "My ma ... she can't leave the house some days, she's that ashamed. Them books of yours tell you how that feels? You keep reading, maybe you'll find out." And then he walked off and left me standing by myself.

I was upset the rest of the night. I didn't even hear the fireworks going off, and when the party was over and everything cleaned up and it was finally time for bed, I couldn't sleep. I'd stayed awake, turning it all over and over in my mind like a puzzle box, but I couldn't find an answer to any of it. I didn't want to see Emmie kicked off her land. She was a trial, but I liked her and I liked her kids. I loved Tommy. He was around so much he was almost like our brother. I felt for him and his family. We only had one parent, too. It could've been us in their shoes if Pa didn't provide as well as he did. But I could also understand Royal's feelings. If I were him and it were my father paying visits where he shouldn't and my mother crying, I'd want Emmie gone, too.