Melody (15 page)

“I did most of the chores in our house in West Virginia,” I said firmly.

“You lived in a trailer, I understand,” he said, putting the chicken on May's plate.

“There was still lots to do, cleaning, washing, cooking.”

“I bet there was.” He shook his head. “Haille was never one for doing home chores.” He paused and turned to me. “What was that music I heard before?”

“I was playing my fiddle for May.”

Uncle Jacob raised his eyebrows as if I had said the most astonishing thing. “Who taught you how to do that? Chester wasn't musical.” He paused and then added, “Although Dad says his Pa was.”

“Papa George taught me,” I replied, quickly explaining who he and Mama Arlene were.

“So he was a coal miner, too?” He shook his head. “I don't know how anyone could shut himself inside a mountain for his daily bread,” Uncle Jacob said. “Especially someone who was brought up on the ocean, breathing God's freshest, cleanest air. It's what we were meant to do. We weren't meant to live like moles.”

“It wasn't something Daddy wanted to do,” I replied.

Uncle Jacob grunted. “You make your bed and then you lie in it.”

I was afraid to ask what he meant. We all started eating.

My uncle paused after a few moments and looked at me again. “This year, we're going to have our best cranberry crop. If you're still here in the fall, you can help harvest.”

“Cranberry crop?”

“We got a bog just over the hill here.” He nodded toward the north end. “Helps supplement what I make lobstering. That ain't what it was when my father had his fleet of boats working.”

He nodded at Cary. “Cary can tell you all about the cranberry harvesting. We're not millionaires, but it's easier than clawing black rocks from the earth's gut,” he muttered.

My eyes went to Cary. His eyes were on me. He shifted them quickly away and I looked at May. She smiled. The one bright spot at the table, I thought.

Then I looked at Aunt Sara. She hadn't yet eaten a bite of supper. She had been staring at me the whole time, smiling.

I helped Aunt Sara with the dinner dishes and silverware, then decided to take a walk. The entire time I was in the kitchen, Aunt Sara went on and on about Laura, describing how much of a help she had been and how good she was at making cranberry muffins and jams. Aunt Sara wanted me to learn how to do everything Laura had been able to do. I didn't mind, I suppose, but it was strange being constantly compared to my dead cousin. If I voiced any hesitation, however, Aunt Sara would stop whatever she was doing and smile at me.

“But you have to try, dear. Laura would want you to try.” She said it with such certainty. It was as if she could still speak to her drowned daughter. It gave me the willies.

Leaving the kitchen, I felt drained, but I had more tension ahead of me. I had to walk through the living room to the front door. Uncle Jacob sat in the rocker reading a newspaper. He looked up sharply when I appeared.

“Dishes done?” he demanded.

“Yes, Uncle Jacob.”

“Well, then take a seat there and we'll have our talk now.” He folded his paper and nodded at the settee across from him.

“Our talk?” I slowly entered the room and sat. He put his newspaper on the sea chest table, tapped the ashes from his pipe into a seashell ashtray, and sat back in his rocker, gazing more at the ceiling than at me.

“When Sara told me Haille wanted to bring you here to live a while, I was against it,” he admitted frankly. “It didn't surprise me none to hear that she was trying to avoid her responsibilities. That was the only Haille I ever knew. But Sara had her heart set on this, and Sara has suffered far more than a decent, hardworking woman
like her should. We can't question the burdens God gives us. We've just got to bear them and go on.

“Sara,” he continued, fixing his cold, steely gaze at me, “thinks God sent you here to help fill the hole in our hearts we got from Laura's passing. You ain't never going to fill that hole. No one can fill that hole. But Sara's got a right to hope, a right to put her tears to bed. Can you understand that?”

“Yes,” I said meekly. I held my breath.

“Good. I want you to promise never to disappoint Sara. You got off to a good start here helping out with dinner like you did without anyone having to tell you to do it. It's the way Laura would have behaved.

“Laura was a good girl. She read her Bible, said her prayers, did well in school, and never gave us none of the grief some of the young people today are giving their folks. I never caught her smoking . . . anything,” he added. His eyes burned with warning. “And she never drank beer or whiskey outside of this house. If she went on a date, she was always home the proper time and did nothing about which we would be ashamed to hear.”

I let out the breath I was holding. Surely, Laura wasn't a total saint, I thought. I dared not suggest it.

“This is a small town. Everyone knows everyone else's itches and scratches. What you do reflects on us and we'll hear about it, you can be sure of that.”

“I didn't get in trouble back in West Virginia, and I won't get in trouble here. I won't be in Cape Cod very long,” I promised confidently.

He grunted. “Good. I'll hold you to that. Do your chores, do well in school and mind Sara, then we'll all be fine.” He reached for his pipe and stuffed new tobacco into it.

“I didn't even know until today I was going to be staying here,” I said.

His eyes widened. “That so?”

“Yes. I thought we were coming here only to visit.”

He nodded, thoughtful. “Haille always had a lot of
problems with the truth. It was like hot coals in her hands.”

“Why don't you like my mother? Is it only because she didn't have ancestors that went back to the Pilgrims?”

“We're all sinners,” he said. “Our first parents, Adam and Eve, caused us to be cast from Paradise and wander the earth struggling with pain until we're granted mercy. No one's better than anyone else.”

“She said you treated her poorly because she was an orphan,” I threw back at him.

“That's a no-account lie,” he snapped.

“Then why didn't you and my daddy talk all these years?”

“That was his doing, not mine,” Uncle Jacob said. He lit his pipe.

“What did he do?”

“He defied his mother and father,” he replied, a hard edge in his voice. “It says in the Bible to honor thy mother and father, not defy them.”

“How did he defy them?”

“Your mother never told you?”

“No.”

“And my brother, he never said nothing about it either?”

“Nothing about what?” I asked.

He tightened his lips and pulled himself back in the chair. “This ain't a proper conversation for me to have with a young woman. The sins of the father weigh heavily on the shoulders of his sons and daughters, too. That's all I'll say about it.”

“But. . .”

“No buts. I've taken you in and asked you to behave while you stay. Let's leave it at that.”

I held back my tears.

He lit his pipe again, took a few puffs, and looked at me. “Sunday you'll meet my parents. We're going to their house for dinner. You be on your best behavior. They ain't happy I took you in.”

It was as if an electric shock had passed through me. What sort of grandparents were these? How could they hold a grudge so deeply?

“Maybe I shouldn't go,” I said.

He pulled the pipe from his mouth sharply. “Of course you'll go. You'll go anywhere this family goes as long as you're living under this roof, hear?” His eyes seemed to sizzle as they glared at me.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“That's better.” He rocked gently but continued staring at me.

I started to rise from the chair.

“It ain't proper to leave without first asking permission.”

I sat again.

“May I please go?” I asked in a brittle voice. I felt like bone china myself and feared I would shatter any moment.

“This place you lived in West Virginia—”

“Sewell.”

“Yeah, Sewell. It's in the back hills, ain't it?”

“Hills. Yes, I suppose.”

“Where those families have those rotgut whiskey stills and feud and marry their cousins.”

“What?” I started to smile, but saw he was deadly serious. “No, it was just a coal mining town,” I said.

He snorted with skepticism. Then he leaned forward, pointing at me with the stem of his pipe. “There are places in this country, havens for the devil where his own do his work. The fiend's at home there as much as he is in Hell itself,” he added. “It don't surprise me Chester went to such a place directly after leaving here with Haille.” He sat back again and took a puff on his pipe, rocking and thinking a moment. “Maybe Sara is right. Maybe God did send you here to be saved.”

“My daddy was a good man. He worked hard for us,” I said. “He was no sinner.”

Uncle Jacob continued to rock and stare. Then he
stopped. “You might not even know what a sinner is. You've been brought up a Godfearing girl?”

“I went to church with Daddy.”

“That so? Well, maybe Chester made his peace with the Lord before he was taken. I hope so for his soul's sake.”

“My daddy was a good man. Everyone in Sewell liked him. More than his own family,” I added, but Uncle Jacob was lost in his own thoughts. He didn't hear me.

He blinked and looked at me again. “Who was this man brought your mother here?” he asked.

“A friend of hers who knows people who can help her,” I offered weakly. He heard the doubt in my voice and shook his head.

“She know him before or after your daddy's death?” he asked, his eyes small and suspicious.

“She knew him before, too,” I reluctantly admitted.

“Thought so.” A wry smile was smeared over his lips.

I looked away so he couldn't see how thick my tears were getting. It stung my eyelids to keep them from flooding my cheeks. “May I please go now? I want to take a walk,” I pleaded.

“Don't go far or be out there long. Sara has to take you to school tomorrow and get you started.”

I rose. I wanted to turn and shout at him. I wanted to scream back and say “Who do you think you are? I thought you said no one is better than anyone else. What makes you so perfect and how dare you judge my daddy and mommy and say such things?” But my tongue stayed glued to the roof of my mouth. Instead, I fled the room and hurried out the front door. I felt like a coiled fuse attached to a time bomb. Sooner or later I was bound to explode. However, right now I wished I could run into my father's steel arms.

But there was only the strange darkness to greet me. Except for the light from the windows of the house, there was nothing to illuminate the street. Behind the house, the dunes were draped in thick darkness. A sea of clouds
had closed away the stars. The wind twirled the sand. Beyond the hill, the ocean roared.

This world was completely different from the world I had lived in all my life. I felt cold and alone, without the trees and songbirds and flowers of my past. Instead, I heard the scream of terns. Something ghostly white flapped its wings against the wall of night. Someone could have easily pluck my nerve endings and hear them twang like my fiddle's strings.

Embracing myself, tears streaking down my cheeks, I walked over the cobblestones to the driveway and then went a little way out toward the dunes and the sea. I stared up at the sky, hoping for sight of a star, just one star of hope and promise. But the ceiling of clouds was too thick. Nothing but darkness greeted me everywhere.

I wondered where Mommy was tonight. Was she thinking about me? Surely her heart was as heavy as mine was at this moment.

Or was she drinking and dancing and laughing with Archie someplace? Was he introducing her to so many exciting people that I never came to mind?

I wanted desperately for her to call me on the telephone.

I started to turn to go back into the house, when Cary appeared out of the darkness like some night creature. I gasped when his silhouette first took shape and then gazed with astonishment when he drew close enough to be caught in the dim light from the house windows.

He looked just as surprised to see me.

“What are you doing out here?” he demanded.

“I'm just taking a walk. Where were you?” I asked.

“I had to check something on the boat and didn't want to have to do it in the morning,” he said, walking toward me.

“But it's so dark out there.”

“Not for me. I've been back and forth over that piece of beach in storms and in darkness more times than I care to remember,” he said. “You get to know it as well as the back of your hand and your eyes get used to the
darkness.” He stared at me for a moment. “You look cold.”

“I am cold,” I said. I was shivering more from emotional ice than from the weather.

“So why don't you go inside?”

“I am going.”

“Fine,” he said curtly before continuing toward the house.

“Why don't you like me?” I asked. He stopped and turned back to me.

“Who said I didn't like you?”

“I did.”

“I don't know you enough to not like you,” he said. “Wait until I get to know you and then ask me again,” he added.

“Very funny.” I started back to the house. “How do I learn sign language?”

“You want to learn sign language?” he asked with surprise.

“Of course. How else will I communicate with May?”

He considered a moment.

“There's a book I'll give you,” he said.

“Could you give it to me now?” I followed quickly. He glanced at me again.

“Yes,” he said and continued toward the house. I was right behind him, but he walked quickly to stay ahead. When we entered, he went to speak to Uncle Jacob and I went up to my room where I found Aunt Sara waiting for me at the closet.