A Northern Light(85)

I have read all of Grace's letters, all but the last one.





South Otselic

Julys, 1906

My Dear Chester,



I am curled up by the kitchen fire and you would shout if you could see me. Every one else is in bed. The girls came up and we shot the last firecrackers. Our lawn looks about as green as the Cortland House corner. I will tell all about my Fourth when I see you. I hope you had a nice time. This is the Last Utter I can write, dear. I feel as though you were not coming. Perhaps this is not right, I can't help feeling that I am never going to see you again. How I wish this was Monday. I am going down to stay with Maude next Sunday night, dear, and then go to DeRuyter the next morning and will get there about 10 o'clock. If you take the 9:45 train from the Lehigh there you will get there about 11. I am sorry I could not go to Hamilton, dear. Papa and mamma did not want me to go and there are so many things I have had to work hard for in the last two weeks. They think I am just going out there to De Ruyter for a visit.



Now, dear, when I get there I will go at once to the hotel and I don't think I will see any of the people. If I do and they ask me to come to the house, I will say something so they won't mistrust anything. Tell them I have a friend coming from Cortland; that we are to meet there to go to a funeral or a wedding in some town further along ... Maybe that won't be just what I will say but don't worry about anything for I shall manage somehow...



I have been bidding good-by to some places today. There are so many nooks, dear, and all of them so dear to me. I have lived here nearly all my life. First I said good-by to the spring house with its great masses of green moss, then the apple tree where we had our playhouse; then the "beehive," a cute little house in the orchard, and of course all of the neighbors that have mended my dresses from a little tot up, to save me a threshing I really deserved.



Oh, dear, you don't realize what all of this is to me. I know I shall never see any of them again, and mamma! great heavens how I love mamma! I don't know what I shall do without her. She is never cross and she always helps me so much. Sometimes I think if I could tell mamma, but I can't. She has trouble enough as it is, and I couldn't break her heart like that. If I come back dead, perhaps if she does know, she won't be angry with me. I will never be happy again, dear. I wish I could die. You will never know what you have made me suffer, dear. I miss you and I want to see you but I wish I could die. I am going to bed now, dear, please come and don't let me wait there. It is for both of us to be there...





She knew. Somehow Grace Brown knew that she wasn't ever coming back. She hoped that Chester would take her away and do the right thing by her, but deep down inside, a part of her knew. It's why she wrote about never seeing the things and places and people she loved again. And why she imagined coming back dead. And why she wanted her letters burned.

I slide the letter back into its envelope. I gather all the letters together, slip the ribbon around them, and carefully retie it. I can hear Grace's voice. I can hear the grief and desperation and sorrow. Not in my ears, in my heart.

Voice, according to Miss Wilcox, is not just the sound that comes from your throat but the feeling that comes from your words. I hadn't understood that at first. "But Miss Wilcox, you use words to write a story, not your voice," I'd said.

"No, you use what's inside of you," she said. "That's your voice. Your real voice. It's what makes Austen sound like Austen and no one else. What makes Yeats sound like Yeats and Shelley like Shelley. It's what makes Mattie Gokey sound like Mattie Gokey. You have a wonderful voice, Mattie. I know you do, I've heard it. Use it."

"Just look where your voice got you, Miss Wilcox," I whisper. "And look where Grace Brown's got her."

I sit perfectly still for a long time, just holding the letters and looking out the window. In another hour or so, the sun will rise and Cook will barge in and wake us. We'll go downstairs and begin readying the dining room for breakfast. My pa will arrive with his milk and butter, and then Royal, with eggs and berries. I'll feed Hamlet and walk him. The guests will come down for breakfast. And then the men from Herkimer will arrive. Cook will badger and yell, and somehow, in all the commotion, I will try again to get down the cellar stairs to the furnace.

I look down at the bundle in my hands. At the pale blue ribbon. At the loopy handwriting, so like my own.

If I burn these letters, who will hear Grace Brown's voice? Who will read her story?





ter ? gi ? ver ? sa ? tion


"Would you like a cup of tea, Mattie? How about you, Weaver?" Emmie Hubbard asked. Her eyes were calm and smiling and not the least bit crazy looking.

"Yes, all right. Thank you," I said, putting the chocolate cream pie I was holding down on the table.

"Yes, please," Weaver said.

Emmie took a tin of tea and some cups and saucers down from a shelf. As she turned, I saw a flash of white. It was the nape of her neck, pale as milk above her collar. Her hair was coiled neatly at the back of her head. Usually it was down or caught in a loose messy braid. I realized I'd never seen the back of Emmie Hubbard's neck before. Her faded cotton dress hung crisply from her narrow shoulders. It had been pressed. Maybe even starched.

Weaver and I glanced at each other. I could tell from the expression on his face that he couldn't believe what we were seeing, either.