The Major's Daughter (22 page)

The song ended and they went back to their table. Amos had found them, she saw. He had been drinking, too, by the looks of him. He sat slouched in his chair, his tie loosened, his thick frame thrown on the chair like an old set of clothing. He raised his glass at their approach.

“The Mayor and Mrs. of Lumbertown,” he said, toasting them. “You make a dashing couple, you know? Everyone says so. You've made the evening sparkle.”

“Where have you been?” Henry asked.

Amos waved to indicate the universe.

“How do you like our provincial festivities, Miss Brennan? Are they up to your standards?”

“It's a lovely evening.”

“But a bit rude and boorish, wouldn't you say? A bit déclassé, isn't it? To someone who has been to the Continent, who speaks German . . . why, we're a bunch of hillbillies when you come down to it.”

“Amos, don't start,” Henry said. “Can't you for once just have a pleasant evening?”

“Oh, I'm having quite a pleasant evening, I promise. The sight of you two has been a highlight. Your hair and gown . . . well, they're a triumph, Miss Brennan. But never mind that. I've come to get you both. Our old friend, Fox, has entered a significant wager that I thought you might like to witness. It's really quite marvelous. He plans to shoot an apple off his dog's head. It's about to happen and I thought you should see. They have the dog, but they're in search of an apple. Funny, you would think it might be harder the other way around . . . to find the apple but not the dog . . . but Fox has had his dog for a decade or longer. You know him, Henry. The old retriever that's always with him.”

“How did this come about?” Henry asked.

Amos raised his glass to indicate alcohol and shrugged. Then he stood.

“Just out here,” he said. “Out in the lot.”

“It sounds like simple cruelty to me,” Collie said.

“Does it? Well, Fox stands to gain a good deal if he can manage it. You see, the thing is he loves the dog. Everyone knows it. So Parker McMahon set the wager at twenty acres of prime land, which is more than fair, I daresay. They always devil each other. But Fox is a good shot, so it's an even contest anyway you look at it.”

“I think we'll pass,” Henry said.

Amos pursed his lips and left. He touched the backs of the chairs as he went, using them to steady himself.

“Not a fistfight after all,” Henry said, picking up his drink again. “Something straight out of
William Tell
instead.”

“Can they be serious?”

“I'm afraid they are.”

“I want to stop it. It's horrible.”

“Too late, Collie. There must be a little blood sacrifice to these evenings. That's always been the way. This is a new wrinkle, I'll grant you, but the theme is an old one.”

Collie put down her drink and moved to go outside. She intended to stop it, but by the time she reached the parking lot the entire crowd had beat her to it. Looking around, she saw the garish expressions of those watching the event. A few men had turned on their headlights to form a court of illumination. In the center of the ring sat a black dog with an apple on its head. The dog was aged and slightly stout. It sat the way an old dog that is no longer supple in its hips must sit; one bandy leg stuck out from under his rump. He looked like a small old man, his gray muzzle pale white in the harsh light.

They had cleared the area behind the dog. Fox—she did not know the man, but he was evidently the owner—stood in front of the dog with a pistol raised. He was a large man with reddish hair and a bright pink complexion. He breathed with difficulty, his mouth sucking in air like a fish of some sort. He sighted down the barrel, then lowered the gun again. He pulled off his jacket and threw it aside. He stood in his shirtsleeves, obviously agitated and unhappy, but powerless to swim free of the current that had trapped him.

“You said twelve strides,” the man, Fox, said, his eyes casting back and forth between the dog and his position. “This is fifteen at least.”

“Shoot the apple!” someone yelled, and the crowd laughed.

“You can move in a foot,” a man nearby said.

Parker McMahon evidently, Collie surmised. The whole scene struck her as a primitive mass. She could not take her eyes off the poor animal. It sat in the headlamp light oblivious to what was about to occur. She had never seen anything sadder. Now and then the dog's tail thumped the ground as if, even amid this insanity, it sought to be a friend to its owner. The apple rested on its head, held by an elastic of some sort. The dog appeared to be wearing the equivalent of a child's party hat.

“Stop this!” she shouted. “This is barbaric!”

People shushed her. They wanted to hear the interplay between Fox and Parker McMahon. Henry called out, too, but she noted he did not sound insistent. He implored Fox to think about what he was doing, but Fox—what kind of man was named Fox? she wondered—was obviously too far in his cups to think clearly.

Fox stepped a stride closer to his dog. He raised his gun again. The crowd became silent. And then Collie heard the most horrible sound.

Fox called the dog's name. “Buster,” he said, getting the dog to turn to him, and then he fired.

The dog flew sideways. It made no sound. Neither did the crowd. Collie looked away, shivering. Then she heard Fox stepping across the gravel, and she heard a second shot, this one truer than the first, and then a third one put punctuation to everything. No one moved, and the sound of the river, forgotten and then suddenly remembered, covered this small tragedy.

Chapter Sixteen

I
n a single instant Collie knew everything: she knew that she loved August. It came at the most inconvenient moment. She stood on the porch of the administration building watching three cutting teams loading for a prolonged stay in Vermont. August's team was going, too. She knew that; she had supervised the paperwork, so that much was not a surprise. But what did catch her unawares was the slant of afternoon light, the warm autumnal sun, the patting of dry leaves on the oak that stood next to the building. She did not want to love him. She had avoided him for the past few weeks. She had avoided him after Marie's funeral, finding his presence unbearable in her desire to walk into his arms and be comforted by him. She had set her clock by him. She had departed the dining room when he entered, entered when he departed. Yes, it was childish and obvious to anyone who cared to watch, but she stuck to the plan, containing her exposure to him as if he were radioactive or contagious. She hoped that absence would rid her of his place in her heart, and until this moment, this precise instant, she had persuaded herself that it had worked. She had even enjoyed several dates with Henry, going once to Portland to the theater, attending the movies with him, going to a family Sunday dinner. She had kissed Henry twice, forcing herself to accept his advances, writing to Estelle afterward that it was for the best after all. No, she explained, their kisses had not been passionate, but passion could grow, she hoped, if planted in the soil of respectability and mutual respect.

Then she saw August and she felt herself thrown back into her former feelings. He did not see her at first. He wore his prison clothes, and she noted at once that he had lost weight. He looked thin and reedy, as if the work among the trees had turned him into a vine. He also slouched, coming to a stop beside his friend Gerhard, and she saw his hair lift in the autumn breeze, his eyes at first on the bus, then slowly, inevitably, they came to rest on hers.

She tried to look away. Honestly, she tried. She imagined some excuse to go back inside, but it was her responsibility to mark off the passengers, to write down the equipment and further provisions. Lieutenant Peters stood among the men, counting them, talking and laughing, occasionally turning to her when he required some nuance translated. Perhaps he had forgotten about August until the moment he appeared. But when he did, sauntering up from his barracks, his duffel bag casually perched on his shoulder, she understood that the others watched their interaction, watched them as you would watch two horses released in a meadow of high grass.

August did not speak. He stood with his hip out, his leg cocked at an attractive angle, his casualness intensely appealing. His posture suggested he had accepted her indifference, her constant absence, her deliberate effort to stay away. Perhaps he even approved of it, she reflected, and comprehended its necessity. Watching him, her eyes on his, she wanted to rip out her heart and throw it away. It would only bring pain, she thought. It would only bring upset and turmoil, place her father in an untenable position. No, she was better off with Henry, with anyone else, really, even with the bashful guards who sometimes tried to capture her attention for a moment when she walked to the refectory or accepted a ride to an appointment. Why did she react as she did to this one young man? It was maddening and cruel.

“All right, boys, let's load up the bus,” Lieutenant Peters called when he had made the final tally. “Do you have everyone, Collie?”

“Yes, twenty, right?”

“Twenty it is.”

“I have them all.”

“I'll count them as they board anyway,” he said. “Double-check.”

“Okay.”

Before they started climbing aboard, August stepped close to the porch and reached in his breast pocket. He pulled out a chain of clover flowers intricately woven with grass blades into three bands that resembled strands of pearls. Collie examined them, her hands shaking as she tried to hold the clipboard steady.

“In my country,” he said in German, “when two lovers part, they give each other such a chain. Each day you remove one link. When the flowers are all gone, then your promised one will return. It's a custom in our land, and people set great store by it.”

“But I have nothing for you,” she said.

He smiled. She loved his smile.

“To know you will remove a clover and think of me is my present. If you keep it under your pillow, we will see each other in our dreams. That's what my mother always said.”

“Did you make it yourself?” she asked, accepting it.

He nodded.

She placed the clipboard on the arm of a chair and held the clover necklace out to inspect it. The rest of the men had continued to board, but she knew they watched. Lieutenant Peters watched, too, although he pretended to be busy with the list of riders.

From her position above him, she bent down to kiss his cheek. It was wrong to do it; it was wrong to accept the flowers in the first place. Here she was making a spectacle of herself in a public square. But she could not hold back. She intended to kiss his cheek in a friendly manner, to make light of the flower necklace, but as she moved closer she felt a force pull her toward his lips. It was useless to resist. She felt herself falling into him, his eyes on hers, his breath suddenly mixed with her own. At the last instant she did not kiss his lips but managed to move an inch toward his cheek, but that left the edge of her mouth pressed to his. She felt the world still and become quiet, and even the men, who she imagined would hoot and make lewd comments about such a kiss, said nothing at all.

“Every day, one flower,” he whispered.

She nodded. Her lips touched his and then broke away.