The widow's war Read online

  “You saved me a much-needed pair of shoe buckles.”

  “I should have wrung his neck for them. And if it had stopped his speech an hour, I’d have considered myself well paid into the bargain.” He took a deep breath. “I beg your pardon, Widow Berry.”

  “You needn’t.”

  He reached for his pocket. “Widow Berry, if you would please allow me…until your husband’s affairs are settled…a small loan—”

  “Thank you, Mr. Freeman, but I cannot.”

  He paused, hand halfway in and halfway out, but at length he returned it to his pocket.

  “Very well, then. Good night.” He turned away.

  “Mr. Freeman?”

  He turned back.

  “In his speech, did Mr. Otis mention the women?”

  “He did not. I think the rumbling over the Negroes may have discouraged him.”

  “May I ask another question of you, Mr. Freeman?”

  “You may ask me anything at any time, Widow Berry.”

  “My husband met with you a month after our daughter’s marriage. Was it to change his will?”

  “It was.”

  “In the one before, how did he leave me?”

  “With life use of his house and lands entire, with title to his cousin Shubael.”

  House and lands entire. And then Lyddie’s daughter had married Nathan Clarke, and her husband had rewritten his will, and along with it Lyddie’s life.

  “What were Edward’s words to you, Mr. Freeman?” she burst out. “Why did he make such a change? Why didn’t he do under Nathan as he’d done under Shubael?”

  “And leave you a woman alone when you now had a son’s fine roof for shelter?”

  “Woman alone! How many months in the year was I alone? In spring my husband sailed for Carolina and in summer for Canada, in fall he went to Boston for weeks at a time, in ’44 he was pressed into service alongside a man-of-war and gone three months without warning. Do you think I don’t know how to be a woman alone? Do you think—” She stopped. She breathed in and out.

  Freeman cleared his throat. “When your husband made out his new will he expressed great relief to me that in the event of misfortune, you would now be secure in the bosom of your son’s family.”

  In. Out. “Yes,” Lyddie said. “Yes, of course he did. I thank you for your time, Mr. Freeman, and I’ll take no more of it. Good night.”

  “Widow Berry.”

  “No, no. Excuse me, please. Thank you for telling me of Mr. Otis, it was most interesting. Good night.”

  The lawyer said good night again. He appeared to have come on foot the three miles from his sister’s; he stepped out into the dark, and Lyddie watched him fade to nothing. She stayed where she was, thinking again of this curious man, James Otis. Had he caused this thing that burned in her? Would he at least understand it? Would his sister, or father, or sister’s husband? No, none of them. Because they still sat secure in their homes as so many princes in their castles. But Edward. Must she now say the same of Edward, of the man with whom she had come to share every strength as well as every weakness? Lyddie looked up at the sky, moonless and star-pocked. Oh, Edward, she thought, how could you possess such knowledge of my flesh and so little of my spirit?

  8

  When Solomon Paine died, he dictated in his will not only which shrubs his widow might use to dry her laundry and in which part of the meadow she might graze her cow, but also that a new entrance be built to his house so his widow might come and go in private. At the time Lyddie thought Mr. Paine had taken it a step too far, but now she saw his sense. Whenever Lyddie happened to stop on her way through the keeping room to aide Bethiah with a stitch or Jane with the washtub, Mehitable’s face took on a pink, slapped appearance. When Lyddie delivered a new pair of stockings or a pile of mending she got a tight-lipped “Thank you, you needn’t.” If she happened to be passing through when Nathan began to rail about the price of hay or Bethiah’s cough or the color of his toast, Mehitable looked at Lyddie as if her mother had just jammed a knitting pin up under his coattail. But in truth, Nathan did seem to launch into some sort of tirade whenever Lyddie was present, and after a time she decided that the best aid she could offer the household was to keep out of it.

  She took to walking. Most days she traveled along the sheltered path beside the creek, looking for early scouts among the alewives as they worked their way up the stream from the bay to spawn in the millpond above. But one day, after the wind had died down and the sun had actually stayed out long enough to give off a little heat, she turned the other way, toward Edward’s house.

  The grass remained a close, brown mat, the buds on the shadblow still curled tight, dried leaves and sticks filling the garden. Lyddie took several steps into the yard, thinking to clear away the debris, but stopped. Why bother? She returned to the road and kept walking, not the way she’d come, but forward, northward, past the woodlot, toward the landing. Ahead of her lay the Cowett house, and if Lyddie hadn’t seen Rebecca Cowett hanging her wash on the shrubs outside the door she might have thought it was any Englishman’s squat gray frame house. In dress, too, the woman might have been English, if one didn’t notice black hair and eyes in a town full of blond and blue.

  Lyddie paused as Rebecca Cowett hurried across the ground between them.

  “Widow Berry,” she said. “I wish to tell you my great sorrow at the death of your husband. My own husband greatly laments his failure to save him; I could not console him. I told him, God weighs things according to his own scale.”

  “Indeed,” Lyddie said.

  “Indeed, yes. But that was not how my husband answered. He said God must fill his scales with earth on one side and water on the other, as together the four men saved weren’t worth the one lost.”

  Lyddie searched for some word of response but could dredge up nothing.

  In turn, the Indian searched her face. “Forgive me if I’ve offended you, Widow Berry. I was raised a good Christian, but I’m afraid the same cannot be said for my husband. I should not have repeated his words, even to you. Good day and God bless you.” She returned to her laundry.

  Lyddie’s first thought was to follow the woman and say something to assure her that no offense had been taken, but on second thought she realized she didn’t want to. A small angry coal burned in her gut, like the bile at the end of a vomit. Why hadn’t the Indian saved Edward? What little amount of extra trouble or cold could it have cost him to save five instead of four, or, if only four, why not Edward first and then three others, any three others, of the rest of them?

  She walked on at a hard pace, unaware of her direction until she came to the water. It stretched out calm and thick like lead, its fickleness making the coal inside her burn harder. Why couldn’t the whales have swarmed to shore on this day, not the other?

  Lyddie strode to the lip of the wet and stared out across it. She wondered what Edward had thought of as he went down. Lyddie? The whales? The boat? The Indian who wouldn’t save him? She corrected herself. The Indian who couldn’t save him. The molten water turned to silver at the edge and ran up the sand toward Lyddie’s feet; she backed up and it backed up, rustling, whispering, mocking her.

  Lyddie made her way back to the landing road, and this time when she came to the door of her husband’s house she went in. She walked directly to the front room, sat down in Edward’s chair, closed her eyes, and tried to feel the old warmth of his flesh through her skirt. She felt nothing but hard, cool wood. She got up and went to his desk, spreading her hands flat on the burnished surface, but all was coolness there as well. She reached out and touched Edward’s pen, opened the drawer, and found nothing but her own journal. Of course, Nathan would have taken away Edward’s papers, just as, of course, he would leave behind Lyddie’s worthless drivel.

  Lyddie opened the book.

  Thursday 1 January. A still, mild weather; so far we are lucky. The fox got two more hens. Edward went out hunting it but got nothing. Have finished his coat and beg
un the waistcoat. Edward calls it too fine for plain living and would save it for Ned Crowe’s wedding.

  Lyddie remembered the rest of their conversation on that day, the part that hadn’t gotten into her journal. They had discussed Ned Crowe, and Edward’s assertion that it was imperative for all lusty young men to marry as soon as they were able, “in order to save wear and tear on that poor whore at the tavern.”

  “And what of the lusty young women?” Lyddie had asked, and Edward had answered, “You make a fair point. As they offer no such accommodation for the fair sex at the tavern, I shall take it on myself to visit them each in turn,” and Lyddie had said…What had she said? She couldn’t remember. But it had made Edward tip his head back and shout a great laugh at the ceiling.

  Lyddie picked up Edward’s pen, inked it, and wrote:

  Friday 2 January. Edward drowned this day.

  She reinked the pen, drew a line across the page, and closed the book. She stood up and tucked it under arm but paused at the stoop. The journal was not a part of her life as it was now; it was part of the life she had lived in this house. She went to the pantry, pulled up the cellar hatch, and backed down the ladder.

  Nathan had been as thorough below as he had been above: the entire winter store of peas and beans was gone, as were the salt meat and fish, the casks of Indian meal, the rounds of cheese and tubs of butter, all barrels of beer and jugs of cider. Some mushy apples and molded potatoes and squash had been left behind. Lyddie picked up the shingle she used to use to scrape the shelves clean, scratched a hole in the dirt floor, laid the book in, and covered it over.

  Lyddie walked to the water the next day and the next, without understanding why she did it, unless it was to count each day how the water lay, calm versus stormy, as if in the final tally she might comprehend something of God’s workings. The third day she saw the Indian woman out turning over her garden, and Lyddie forced herself to stop out of penance for her previous discourteous thinking.

  “Good morning!” she called across the field.

  Rebecca Cowett set down her spade and hurried over. “Good morning, Widow Berry.” She appeared about to say more, but didn’t.

  “You’ve set yourself hard work,” Lyddie said.

  “My boy used to help with the turning, until he came old enough to go with his father.”

  “How old is your boy now?” Lyddie asked.

  “I don’t know, Widow Berry. I don’t know if he’s living or dead. He went to Nantucket for a berth twenty-one months ago, and I’ve not heard from him since. Mr. Scotto Chase heard a boy went off the rigging at Hatteras—”

  “There are many boys, Mrs. Cowett.”

  “Not here in our little corner, are there, Widow Berry? I lost one to distemper and one at Annapolis; this boy was my last child, as your d aughter Clarke is yours, but you have grandchildren, which I do not. Of course, you have an added sorrow now, which I do not.” She stopped. “I shouldn’t delay you in your errand.”

  Lyddie was gratified the Indian didn’t ask what the errand was. She said good-bye, moved down the road to the water, and watched the lip run serenely up the beach as her mind churned over the bizarre collection of facts she’d just received. She hadn’t known about the Indian boy; she was surprised the woman knew so much about Lyddie’s children. Lyddie wasn’t sure she liked the idea; she was quite sure she didn’t like the other woman’s efforts to match their sorrows.

  9

  By the next week Rebecca Cowett’s length of ground appeared refreshed and readied for planting. Lyddie walked by it on her way to the landing but caught no sight of the Indian. On her return she found the woman just entering her house, and Lyddie called out a greeting. Rebecca Cowett answered back, and then, with some hesitation, she added, “Will you stop for tea?”

  Lyddie found in herself a curiosity to see the inside of the Indian’s house. She stepped up, and when Rebecca Cowett opened the door Lyddie saw nothing inside but what she might have taken pride in herself: a well-made table and chairs, a neatly banked fire, several gleaming copper utensils, freshly whitewashed walls, and sanded floor.

  “I’ve just finished the spring clean,” Rebecca Cowett said. “I could enjoy a cup of tea myself. Please, Widow Berry, sit.”

  But somewhere between the last minute and that minute a heaviness overtook Lyddie; it felt wrong to be there. “No,” she said. “I’m not able to stay. I just wished to say—” What? “I heard Seth Cobb is back from the south and I wondered if he had news of your son?”

  “He had none.”

  “I’m sorry, then. I’m very sorry. Good morning, Mrs. Cowett.” She hurried out and away from the Indian’s house, struggling against the heavy feeling, unable to put a name to it, in her struggle not thinking where she was going and finding herself on the path to her old door. But once she realized her location she continued forward, pushing open her door, and there it all came clear.

  In the ordinary course of events this was the time of year in which Lyddie would have done what Rebecca Cowett had just done: reordered her house after the winter’s abuse. Instead, she now stood facing sooted walls, salt-filmed glass, dirty hearth, dusty webs, and piles of seed husk and mouse droppings in all corners. She thought of Deacon Smalley looking on such a sight and Lyddie’s face burned with shame.

  That night Lyddie approached her son as he left his supper table. “What news of Deacon Smalley?” she asked.

  “The devil take Smalley. I’m on to Ned Crowe now. He means to marry in a month. He comes to view on Friday.”

  “I saw the house today. It stands badly neglected. If you would allow me—”

  Nathan turned on his wife. “What the devil is this? Have you not looked to the house?”

  “Please,” Lyddie said. “Allow me to tend it. If I took Jane we’d be done in a morning.”

  “Jane?” Mehitable cut in. “You would take Jane, and tomorrow my day to bake?”

  “Well, then, perhaps Bethiah.”

  The younger girl’s face lifted.

  “Yes, yes,” Nathan said. “Let her cough somewhere else for half a day, thank you. Just see that it’s done by Friday.”

  They packed a chicken pie and set out with the sun. The girl spoke little until they approached the house and Lyddie saw the tall form of the Indian ahead of them, making his way toward the shore; something must have triggered his awareness of their presence because he stopped and turned. Bethiah drew back. Lyddie fought her own instinct and kept her feet square in the road, even lifted a hand in greeting, but if it was returned she couldn’t tell. He moved off.

  “Oh, my!” Bethiah said. “What a fearsome thing he is! Mama says to keep away from him. But he’s so close to your house, Grandmama! Dare we go down?”

  “He’s well past. He won’t hurt you. Move along, now.”

  The girl skipped to catch up, her tongue at last shaken loose. “Nate says that the Indian’s the best whale man in Satucket. He says he’s so strong that he pulls the whales instead of the whales pulling him. He says Papa doesn’t like him. I asked Nate why Papa didn’t like him and he said it’s because he does as he pleases. I should like to do as I please. Mama says no one does as he pleases, but I said what of the Indian, and she said one Indian does not make the rule. I said who does make the rule and she said God and Papa. I think God or Papa should have told the Indian the rule, don’t you, Grandmama?”

  “Here we are,” Lyddie said. “Get the rake from the barn. You may start by raking the seaweed away from the foundation.”

  “Why do we put seaweed around the house, Grandmama?”

  “To keep out the cold.”

  “Then why do we rake it away now?”

  “To keep away the rot.”

  The girl bobbed off toward the barn, craning her neck for one last look at the Indian before he went around the turn.

  Lyddie drew water, went inside, and tucked up her skirt. She decided to begin with the cellar. She knocked down what cobwebs had managed to foil the round design of the
cellar, collected the bits of molded food, and scraped the shelves clean. Back upstairs she cleaned the glass and had just begun to wash down the walls when Bethiah came in, wild-eyed. The Indian. The Indian was coming. She dashed behind Lyddie and caught hold of the band of her apron.

  The door rattled under a hard pair of knuckles, and Lyddie stepped forward to open it, dragging the girl behind, her own heart accelerating. Which of us feeds the other? she wondered. And just what was it they feared in this Indian? His sheer power and size? His darkness? The fact that “Papa doesn’t like him”? Or was it that he “did as he pleased,” fearing neither God nor Nathan?

  He stood filling the doorway. “You’re back now?”

  “No, we’re cleaning. The house is to be sold, as I told you. Mr. Crowe comes to look on Friday. This is my granddaughter Bethiah.”

  The Indian moved his eyes without haste from Lyddie to the girl, but they didn’t linger. It seemed to give Bethiah courage to be so quickly dismissed; her grip on the apron band lessened. “My wife spoke to you,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “About your husband.”

  “A little, yes.”

  “I had him. A good grip. He was alive. I felt him take hold.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  “It tore.”

  “What?”

  “The coat tore.”

  “All right. Yes.”

  “He was in my hands and then he was under.”

  “Yes, Mr. Cowett. I understand. And I do thank you.”

  He didn’t move. “Ned Crowe,” he said, as if he were the subject all along. “Ned Crowe looks to live here?”

  “We have good hope of him,” Lyddie said. “Deacon Smalley proved a disappointment, but things are looking up now.”

  Silence.

  Would he never go? Or look away? In the end he did both together, in one graceful swing of his shoulders, and Lyddie’s “Good morning” struck at his back.