Blackstrap Hawco (49 page)

Jacob said nothing, his gaze on his mother's fingers twirling the clover.

Girlishly, Catherine looked at her son, her eyes gradually darkening while she dropped the clover into her apron's front pocket. She raised her hand threateningly, and Jacob leaned away. ‘Dun't 'av me ta smack da face right off ye. Involved in dat foolishness up at da store. 'N udder t'ings, too, I can see da lie in ye a'ready. Wha' else?'

Jacob shook his head.

Catherine stared for a while, until Jacob could stand the investigation no longer and gazed away.

‘Git,' said his mother. ‘Git in da 'ouse, g'wan.' She shooed him off, made a boot stomp toward him and flicked an arm in his direction. ‘G'wan.'

Backing away, and with his mother's fierce gaze still set on him, he turned and trod toward the back porch. He went through to the kitchen where he saw his mother out the window, stood in the same spot. She watched up the hill at the store, and dragged her sleeve across her brow. Then, straightening, as though newly aware of a presence, she spun and glared right at him with burning eyes, then raised her hand again as though to deliver upon him a sound clobbering.

 

Isaac Tuttle had come by the store with a box of holy cards, rosary beads and medals of saints to sell to Alan Duncan, and had been alarmed by the boarded-over window and the presence of the ranger. Any sort of altercation turned him into a fit of nerves, for he suspected that the trouble from it might be said to be the product of his indirect doing. And he could not be put in trouble's way. If the ranger ever darkened their doorway on his account, his mother and father would take turns thrashing him until there was not a trace of life left in him.

It was only to obtain an order from Mr. Duncan and then he would be off. Years before, when he was a boy, he had sold the holy items door to door in the area: Bareneed, Port de Grace, Cutland Junction, Shearstown Line. He travelled by horse and buggy, doing so since the age of ten when he had finished his schooling. But, now, with the convenience of the shops, he went about his sales in that fashion.

Even the voice of the ranger was a menace to Isaac. He would have fled the shop and endured none of it had it not been for Emily Duncan stood behind the counter, her face somewhat white from the shock of the violent action brought upon the store by the vandals. The names of those involved had been called out by her father, for he had seen every one of them from where he was secretly stood in the corridor leading to the back offices.

On the mention of Jacob Hawco's name, which was called out in the
gravest, most severe tone by her father, Emily appeared to wince and shift uneasily on her feet. Isaac took notice of this because he was aware of Emily's fondness for Jacob Hawco, having heard stories of how Jacob had protected Emily through the years.

The ranger took down the names and assured Alan Duncan that the perpetrators would be brought to justice and no further happenings of the sort would be expected or tolerated, by God, as he was now taking up residence in the community for the safety's sake of the Duncans' persons and property.

The ranger then left, tipping his hat to Alan Duncan, smiling assuredly at Emily Hawco, and casting a suspicious look toward Isaac Tuttle on his way out.

‘Tut, tut, tut,' said Isaac Tuttle, in an uncharacteristically bold manner. ‘Mischief makers.' He gave Emily a clumsy smile, hoping it might offer a bit of reassurance. Lifting his brown case onto the counter, the one he had been given as a gift for his twentieth birthday last month, he unfastened the catch and went about laying out his goods. Alan stared at the lot, his mind so occupied that he saw not a single object. Emily stared there too, her thoughts elsewhere.

‘Which would ye like?' Isaac enquired. ‘Dere's a fine market fer such icons in da holy persons of Bareneed. Ye knows me mudder were frum 'ere before we moved ta da Junction. We got relatives still 'ere. Ye c'n be sure 'a dat.'

‘Leave a bit of each,' Alan said shortly, and, distracted, turned for the back room. ‘Emily will look after you.'

With that, Isaac turned his sheepish eyes to Emily. He went over the words in his head:
I brung ye a present. I knows ye likes ta settle down widt a good read in da even'n.
Yet the more he shuffled through the words, the more convoluted they became until he blurted out: ‘Brung sumt'n good, ye likes reading, yes.' From his box, he daintily lifted out a paperback. It had a lurid cover that, now revealed in Emily's presence, took on a more vivid, explicit connotation and made him blush. When the book first arrived by mail, he had hidden it away, not wanting his mother to see it. He had ordered it expressly for Emily, for the woman on the cover resembled her to a certain degree. If his mother knew of the existence of the book or of his fondness for Emily, she would whip him fiercely for
his sinful thoughts and deprive him of meals for a week. His sinful thoughts were, she would scold, no different from intention and deed itself. One and the same. ‘Ye 'av sinned,' she would gravely state, watching his face as he passed into a room or sat at the dinner table. ‘I c'n see dat in ye. Dere's no hid'n injurous t'ought frum a wicked son's mudder.' And she would name the quote's exact place in the Good Book.

While studying the book cover all those days prior to his journey to Bareneed from Cutland Junction, he had looked upon the woman on the cover as Emily. The slip that the woman wore was cut low in the front and the hefty curves of her bosoms were pinkly apparent.

‘Oh,' said Emily, her tone implying that she was distressed by the cover.

Isaac gave a hard swallow. ‘Is a romance,' he mumbled.

‘Yes, I can see.' She raised her eyes from the cover to Isaac's grimacing face, and she smiled if only for the sake of soothing his obvious unease. ‘Thank you.'

‘I'm…' he stammered. ‘I got 'er…ordered in…I…' And he saw in her eyes something distant and plainly apparent, a question that tore at his very existence and made him flee the store, his body thrusting through the screen door, his boots jangling bits of broken glass on the ground. Away he went to the lane behind the store where his horse and carriage waited. He climbed aboard in sobbing hatred of his being, leaving all his holy icons in the cherished hands of his beloved, while he muttered a string of ugly sentiments against himself for all of that day and night, and into his sleep and the heartlessness of the waking morning.

 

That night, Jacob lay in bed watching the ceiling. From beneath him, through the vent in the floor, there rose the sound of his mother's low rhythmic muttering in the kitchen. Quietly, he tossed back the covers and knelt beside the vent, leaning for a view through the iron slats. There was his mother, knelt at the kitchen table, her hands joined in prayer and resting against the table edge. A length of rosary beads hung from her hands. The lantern was turned so low that the scene was golden.

At first, Jacob felt fear rise in him, fear of what God might think of
him, fear of the outcome of Zack Coffin's loss. But as he listened and let himself be guided by the undulations of his mother's prayers, he pleaded for forgiveness and experienced a calm. He remained on his knees with his head bent toward the grate and, with eyes shut, joined in with the pattern of his mother's recitation, for he knew it by heart, having heard it from the time of his infancy.

This way he remained, until the sound of his mother's voice shouted out to him: ‘Get da Christ back in bed.' And he leapt away from the grate and buried himself in the covers.

 

Emily Duncan continued to work at the store, for her father spent more time away, his nerves, no doubt, having been badly accosted by the attack. She had heard by letter that the window was soon to be replaced by an order from Mr. Bowering.

On the morning of the scheduled replacement, Emily stood on the step, having witnessed the ship's arrival through the unsmashed plate-glass window to the other side of the door. The large window was carried up over the valley by two men who had attentively taken it down the plank of the ship. Much to her surprise, she noticed Jacob Hawco, with cap on head and one hand in his pocket, the other holding the handle of a wooden toolkit, trailing up behind the two men.

Arriving in the store's yard, the men set down the glass, leaning it up against the side of the store, then tipped their hats to Emily. They surveyed the sign hung above the front door, one of the men checking the name against what was written on a piece of paper pulled from his back pocket. Satisfied, they went back to the boat, without further word to Emily.

Jacob, barely greeting the two men on their way down, continued on until he reached the store. He glumly tipped his cap to Emily and set down his heavy toolkit near the steps before studying the boarded-up window.

Emily was struck speechless by his presence. At first, she had been happy to see him and had even flushed with excitement, but now, for reasons unknown to her, her flush was tainted with animosity. She felt herself growing vexed with him. Folding her arms, she watched while he used a bar from his kit to tear the lengths of wood from where they were nailed over the window frame.
Shifting her eyes toward the distant wharf, searching for the other men to see if they might be returning, she noticed Jacob's mother stood out in her yard. She was faced toward the store and stared without movement, her body posed plainly yet with the tension of intent.

The noise of splintering wood drew Emily's attention back to Jacob's work. Questions stirred in her mind, and she desired clarification. Why had he come? Why was he doing this work? Was it an act of penance or an act from the heart? Were his acts genuine or spurred from the cold mechanics of obligation?

By the time the two other men returned with their toolkit, Jacob had removed all of the wood. The gape of the window hole intrigued Emily. It was a sight rarely seen, that remarkably clear view of the items in her father's store.

Jacob stood off to the side, while the two men gave him some consideration, but seemed inclined not to question him. They worked in silence, removing the bits of glass that remained jaggedly obtruding along the frame. They then went about retrieving the new, cumbersome piece of glass from the side of the store.

Emily had gone back into the shop to tend to a customer. Done with wrapping the purchase, she offered the change with her thanks and followed the customer out to the top step. A few men and a woman, along with several children, had gathered to watch the installation. Emily tried not to let her eyes drift toward Jacob, who stood off to himself, yet she could not prevent it. There he remained, watching the window be hoisted into place as though he were lord over it all, as though what the men were doing required his all-knowing approval. Perhaps he had come to smash this window. What was to prevent him? Emily checked toward her house up on a higher rise and thought of striding off to get her father, but that would only muddy things up. Her heart, betraying its basic physiological function, became nothing more than a torment to her.

Again, Emily peeked toward Jacob's yard to see Jacob's mother still positioned in her garden. A flock of birds flew overhead, drifting in varying formations of unison toward the north. A cat ran up the beaten path and then disappeared into the taller grass, lifting its paws higher. Nearer to her, a boy passed comment about the cost of candy. Emily
responded to him and he poked in his pocket, extracting a few coins and worrying over them.

Sensing Jacob's eyes on her, she flittered her gaze that way to catch him in study of her. He continued staring, boldly refusing to let up. Unable to hold Jacob's gaze any longer, Emily hurried back into the store.

When the men had finished sealing the window, they came to face where she lingered behind the counter and announced the completion of the task.

‘Thank you,' she told them, hoping they would go off and allow things to return to normal.

‘Come 'av a look,' said one of the workers, a thin man who was livelier and more forthright than the other. With a lopsided smile, he tilted his head toward the doorway and stepped off, checking back to assure that Emily was following after them.

Outside, Emily went down the step, noticing that Jacob was missing from his post. She faltered back, needing to shade her eyes from the blinding reflection of the sun in the glass.

‘Very nice,' she said.

‘A'right?' said the thin worker.

‘Yes, thank you.' She took a look at him.

He grinned and nodded, highly content to have her approval.

The other man had already wandered off down the trail and the thin man bowed his head, spoke his goodbye, and joined his partner. With the two men gone and the glare of the reflected sun still in her eyes, she was uncertain of the figure that emerged from the side of the store. She assumed it to be Jacob and stepped so that the glare might slide out of place.

Jacob Hawco trod close to the glass and seemed to be staring through it or at his own reflection. Emily could not be certain.

‘What are you watching there?' she said, hotly, finding her voice.

Jacob turned as though expecting the question. ‘I saw sum'n in reflection.'

‘Um-hmm.' She found herself tapping a foot. Again, she folded her arms across her chest.

‘Fleeting, it were. Dat's da word, I suspect. Fleeting.'

‘What was it?'

Jacob trod a few steps closer to her.

‘Some sort o' t'ing. A feeling it were.'

With the mesmerizing blueness of Jacob's eyes on her and with the lushness of his voice in her head, she thought she might be overcome. Her breath sank and sank as though dropped into the sea where she finally pulled it back with a deep sigh. In the position where she remained, the sun's reflection again brightly slipped in to startle the eyes, as the sun was travelling, or she had shifted in uncertainty, without knowing.

‘What sort of feeling was this?' Emily managed, dumbly shocking herself at having spoken the words, the flush high in her cheek feeling more and more like fever.