The Cape Ann (24 page)

“Papa is awake now,” she noted. “Would you like to learn how to use the stick?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“Come,” she told me, rising and heading to the back door. Out into the yard she led me, past the pump to the arbor, where the old man shuffled along, bent over the forked stick. “Papa,” she said, speaking a little louder, “Papa, this little girl would like to know how you find water.” The black braids, wound around her head like a crown, glistened in the light, as though diamonds were set among the plaited strands.

“Sure,” he said, studying me, “sure.” He pronounced the word “shooor,” not “sher,” as others did. His pronunciation lent it gravity and certainty.

The daughter smiled proudly on me, as if she were delivering to her papa an especially apt pupil. Her hand on my shoulder carried messages: You are a child who could learn these many things we know, if you would let yourself, if you would trust.

She knew that I was frightened. Did she know also that I was caught? That I would find my way back here? She walked away, leaving me with the old man, who smelled of garlic and tobacco and something else, something a little acrid but not at all unpleasant.

Grasping the forked divining rod in spotted, brown hands, whose veins were enormous and greatly articulated, he began again to make his way unhurriedly, methodically, up and down the backyard, which was considerable and almost completely given
over to cultivated garden and grape arbor. As he shuffled along, he moved the rod slowly from side to side, yet holding it loosely, giving it its way, as one might give a horse its way, confident that it knows the trail, where the burrows and sharp rocks are hidden.

From time to time, the old man cast a look sideways to see if I was observing the rod. Hugging his steps on his left, I kept my eyes fixed on the stick, only darting a swift glance now and then to be certain I wouldn’t mow down a row of tomato plants. Determined to catch any significant movement, to learn its secrets, I was as intent upon the dowsing rod as a scientist upon his microscope.

In the far, back corner of the yard, in the shadow of a wire fence where another variety of grape climbed and clung, the rod dipped as though an invisible hand had reached out of the earth and pulled it. Startled, I yelped and sprang back. The old man laughed, and his eyes nearly disappeared into leathery creases.

When finally he stopped laughing and wiped his face on the back of his sleeve, he said, “You are mad at me?”

Still quaking inside from the dip of the rod, the sudden and un-explainable sorcery of it, and chilled by tiny feathers that seemed to brush up and down my skin, I
was
angry at him for laughing, but how did he know that? I wanted to run away, back to Aunt Betty’s, but I wanted also to learn the divining rod.

“Don’t be mad,” he said, not unsympathetically, “or the stick won’t work.” He handed it to me. It felt as I imagined the old man’s face must feel. “Don’t hold it too tight,” he warned. “Let it talk to you.”

Slowly and with continued advice about my hands, we began making our way back toward the house. The sun beat down upon my back, warming my skin, but leaving my insides cold with wonderment. As the old man bent near, I realized that the sharp, not unpleasant smell I had detected earlier reminded me of Grandma Browning’s medicine cupboard, which was taller than Grandpa and contained many bottles with homemade labels and small paper bags filled with dried leaves and strange powders. When Grandma opened the cupboard, it gave off a cloud of evocation.

The dowsing stick was doing nothing unusual. It lay loosely yet securely in my grasp, but unexcited, so far as I could tell, by the earth below it. I did not have the magic. In my hands it was only a stick. I felt failed and foolish beneath the old man’s intent gaze.

When we reached the back steps, I handed the rod to him. “I’m
sorry,” I said. Again he laughed, and I thought he was rude. Opening the screen door, he followed me into the kitchen, where his daughter and McPhee still sat at the table.

“She is all right,” he said to his daughter, lowering himself onto a chair while she fetched him coffee. “She could learn.”

“The stick didn’t do anything,” I reminded him.

“There was no water. The only water is in the well,” he said, gesturing toward the pump beyond the window, “and out in the back corner.”

“Then why did we look in those other places?”

“For good reason,” he said. “For good reason.”

I didn’t understand, but timidity prevented me pressing.

“She’s a good girl,” his daughter observed. She lay a hand lightly on my head. “Like one of us. She could be one of us.”

By “one of us,” did she mean one of their family or their nationality or something else? There was a great deal to ponder in these people and their meanings.

“Well,” McPhee began, rising from the table, “I have more freight on the wagon.” He shook hands with the old man, who was not much his elder and, indeed, had less white hair than McPhee. “Don’t get up. Your truss come on the train. I expect you’ll be out for horseshoes on Sunday.”

“My truss, ah good. I’m no man without my truss.”

“Thank you,” I told my gnarled tutor, “for teaching me to hold the stick.”

He took my hand as if for warmth on a cold day. “Yes, yes,” he said. “You’ll come back.” His black eyes extracted a promise.

“Take these home,” the daughter commanded, handing me three kolaches wrapped in waxed paper.

As McPhee and I descended the porch steps, the woman probed, “You like us?” She wasn’t anxious, she was curious. Her gaze forced me to look her in the eye.

“Yes.”

“I thought so,” she said, and watched us rumble down the street.

McPhee made no mention of the pair we’d left behind. He had doubtless been acquainted with them for years and understood them or at least ceased puzzling over them. For surely they were puzzling. I couldn’t be the only person who found them exotic, could I?

Back to Main Street we rolled, and there turned right toward Aunt Betty’s house. As we made the turn, I was suddenly apprehensive. What time was it? How long had I been gone? I had a recollection of the bells ringing at St. Ambrose Catholic Church some while earlier, so it was past noon. Had Mama been out scouring the countryside for me? She was probably waiting with a switch in her hand. The skin on the back of my legs prickled in unhappy anticipation.

When we drew up in front of the German Woman’s house, McPhee stopped the wagon and hefted the last package. There remained only the mailbag, which would be delivered to the depot.

“Well,” he said, “wish me luck with the Widow Kraus. There won’t be any kolaches
here.”

I sat down on the edge of the wagon and urged myself to go home. The sooner I made an appearance, the less punishment would be waiting for me.

“Da train vas here hours ago,” the Widow Kraus complained loudly, as if McPhee were a naughty child. “Vair vere you all dis time? I vill report you. You are vorse dan dat chilt,” she said, pointing at me. When she had finished with him, she hooked the screen and turned abruptly away without a thank-you or good-bye.

McPhee whistled down the walk, hands clasped low behind his back, retreating in a markedly untroubled way.

Tiptoeing across Aunt Betty’s porch, I opened the screen an inch at a time, sliding through the narrowest possible opening. Inside I stood stock still, listening. Beyond the green drape, Aunt Betty was moaning the way people moan when they have been sick too long and have lost their concentration and determination.

“I’ll be right back,” Mama promised. “Lark will stay with you till I come back.”

Pushing aside the drape, Mama said in a low voice, “Sit beside the bed where she can see you. Talk to her. I’m going next door to call the doctor.” Mama was not really looking at me. She was looking into her own head. She did not realize that I had been gone. Was Aunt Betty dying?

Mama hurried out, and I went into the bedroom and sat on the straight chair that had been drawn up near the bed. Laying the kolaches aside, I watched Aunt Betty moving restlessly beneath the sheet, as though she were trying to climb out of her body. She was not a person with whom I could associate pain. What was happening
was a mistake. My aunt was a person who laughed strongly and told funny stories that made the whole house gay and cozy. If she were well, she would weave silly tales about the Widow Kraus, plucking that woman’s stinger so we could look at her without fear and dread.

Scooting the chair over a couple of inches so that it was flush against the bed, and laying a hand on Aunt Betty’s feverish arm, I asked, “Would you like me to tell you a story, Aunt Betty?”

“ONCE UPON A TIME
there was a beautiful princess with golden red hair, and her name was … Elizabeth. She lived with her mama and papa, and her sister, Arlene, in a kingdom called Blue Lake.

“One night at a dance, in a real pretty place called the Lakeview Ballroom, the beautiful Princess Elizabeth met a handsome prince, who was visiting from another kingdom.

“The prince said to Princess Elizabeth, ‘My name is Stanley Weller, and I’m from Red Wing, but I work in Mankato for an implement dealer, and I’m here visiting my aunt and uncle.’

“Beautiful Princess Elizabeth laughed real hard at his long introduction and said, ‘We’re not getting married, we’re just going to dance.’

“And Prince Stanley said, ‘If we were getting married, I’d have mentioned my wooden leg.’

“Princess Elizabeth fell in love right there, and three months later they got married and moved to Morgan Lake. They settled down in a little castle on Main Street, two blocks from the Skelly station.

“Then, what should happen but a wicked witch moved into the castle next door, and she was very jealous of Princess Elizabeth because the princess was happy and had a handsome husband. The witch was a widow lady, and she didn’t want anybody to be happy.

“One day the princess got a letter from the stork. He told her that he was going to bring her a baby, and she should name the baby Lar… she should name the baby Ann. When the wicked
witch heard this news, she got so mad, she started planning bad things for the beautiful Princess Elizabeth.

“The first spell made Princess Elizabeth’s stomach grow real big while the rest of her got skinny. And when she went out among the citizens of Morgan Lake, people wondered what had happened, and they whispered to each other, ‘It looks like Princess Elizabeth is carrying a peck of potatoes under her dress.’

“The second spell that the witch worked on the princess made her sick, so that she had to stay in bed all the time. One or two people in the kingdom knew that a witch lived in the castle next to Princess Elizabeth. One person who knew was Duke McPhee. And another was Princess Myrna Loy of Harvester.

“The wicked witch didn’t know that Princess Myrna Loy had recognized her, so she went right on with her evil plan to shoot the stork who was bringing Princess Elizabeth’s baby. But a good fairy had sent Princess Myrna Loy a dream showing her this and telling her to catch the baby when it fell.”

Aunt Betty whimpered and her face grimaced in pain. I thought that I’d better get to the happy ending.

“Princess Myrna Loy waited faithfully on the back steps of the castle, watching for the stork. And one morning she saw a little speck in the sky, a long way off.

“Princess Myrna Loy ran across the back alley, climbed over the fence, and hurried as fast as she could out into the middle of the pasture. All of a sudden, just like in her dream, the stork let go of the blanket, and the baby princess began to fall through the air. Princess Myrna Loy ran faster than she had ever run in her life and held out her arms, and the little pink baby fell right into them. And the baby smiled at her.

“And the stork fell out of the sky, too, and landed at Princess Myrna Loy’s feet, a poison arrow in its heart.

“When Prince Stanley came home, he went next door and told the witch that she would have to pack her things and get out.

“When she heard that Princess Myrna Loy had saved the baby, the witch got so mad, she started to burn. Her black shoes caught fire, and then her hair, which was rolled up tight around her head. In a few minutes, she had completely burned up in the flames of her bad temper.

“Then, all the witch’s poisons and potions dried up and blew
away, and the beautiful Princess Elizabeth got well. She and Prince Stanley and Princess Ann lived together happily ever after. Amen.”

Aunt Betty lay twitching in her sleep. She breathed heavily, and now and then her breath came out in a soft moan.

I heard Mama’s step on the porch, and I went to tell her that Aunt Betty was asleep. Mama tiptoed to the kitchen, and I followed.

“That woman next door is a witch,” Mama said angrily. “‘It’s long distance to call Mankato,’ she told me, as if I didn’t know. ‘You have money?’ ‘My sister may be dying,’ I told her, ‘and you’re standing there asking if I have money to call Mankato for a doctor? What kind of person are you?’ As it happened, I had taken money with me. I threw it at her, I was so mad.”

“Did you talk to a doctor?” I asked.

She nodded. “He’s coming out tonight.” Mama slipped down onto a chair at the kitchen table, put her head down on her arms, and started to cry.

I couldn’t stand to see Mama cry. When Mama cried, it seemed that maybe Aunt Betty
would
die, and maybe I wouldn’t be there to catch the baby.

MAMA REMOVED HER HIGH-HEELED
shoes and put on bedroom slippers so that the sound of heels on the floor wouldn’t disturb Aunt Betty. “The sleep is helping her fight the poisons,” Mama said.

But when Aunt Betty continued sleeping restlessly hour after hour, Mama had increasing difficulty controlling her fears. For our supper she heated a can of soup and tried to make toast in the old toaster which sat on the stove burner and took its heat from the flame. But she didn’t have the trick of it, and the toast started to burn.

“Oh God, oh God,” Mama cried, grabbing a dish towel, wetting
it at the sink, and waving it wildly in the air to flush the smoke out the window. “Betty doesn’t need smoke in her lungs. Help me, Lark. Get a towel and wet it. Hurry.”