The Sister Wife (19 page)

An Island off Jonesport, Maine
December 24, 1841

H
osea Livingstone woke to endure another day of pain. It was just before dawn and he heard Cara, the fisherman's wife, at the old metal stove in the kitchen, positioning the damper with two loud clinks, dropping in chunks of wood with several loud thuds, then closing the metal door with a loud clank. He hadn't told her the comfort the sounds brought him, together with smells that would follow, of woodsmoke and baking bread.

Early mornings had become the only part of the day he looked forward to since coming to the cottage of the fisherman and his wife. One day slipped into another, one dark night into another, when he could close his eyes and attempt to sleep, attempt to forget what brought him here.

At first, a small window above his bed gave him sunlight by day and moonlight by night, depending on its phase. The starlit nights
were most difficult to endure because with them came memories of navigation, of the ship he once commanded, of the seafaring years that had been his life. Of his last voyage with Gabe, the two of them on the quarterdeck under the stars, telling tall tales, exchanging japes, and sometimes laughing so hard they cried.

But now, day or night, he saw only snow.

The betrayal filled his mind. How could Gabe and Enid not understand the lie they'd lived all those years would dig into his gut and grab hold to stay, its poison accurate and deadly?

The good fisherman and his wife had been kind from the moment he woke and discovered the sea hadn't taken him after all.

Giovanni told Hosea he'd been unconscious when they found him and remained in that state for several days after—a good thing, the fisherman told him, because setting the broken bones and tending to his wounds would have been unbearable.

As if the pain he felt now—both interior and exterior—was bearable.

Each day Cara asked Hosea if he remembered his name and how he'd come to land on their beach. Each day he told them the same answer: He couldn't remember.

As the sky turned pearl gray in the small square of window over his bed, Giovanni came into the cabin, greeted his wife with loving Italian words as he sat in a chair near the door, and removed his snowshoes and then his boots.

Hosea's bed, though in a separate room, faced the doorway, so he saw their comings and goings. He figured they would wait until spring to take him by fishing boat to the nearest town, which Giovanni told him was Jonesport.

He turned his face to the wall as he heard Giovanni's approach.

“How are you faring this day?” The fisherman lifted the heavy woolen blanket to check his legs, which made it difficult for Hosea to ignore him. “Any feeling yet?” He pushed and probed along Hosea's calf, knee, and thigh.

Hosea shook his head.

“How about this?” He lifted the opposite leg.

Hosea winced. “Yes, that side has feeling.”

“The injuries aren't as severe. A cleaner break, this one. I know it's painful, but it's a good sign.” He frowned, probing Hosea's left leg again. “Several breaks on this side and some crushing of bone near your hip, and your kneecap took a beating.” He covered Hosea's legs with the blanket again. “But you will heal. You will walk again.”

He walked over to a small table with salves and bottles of herbs on the top shelf, a round bedpan on the second. “Need the pan?”

Hosea shook his head. “Not yet. I'll let you know.”

“Good. How about coffee? Cara's just put some on to boil.”

“Yes, please. That would be nice.” They had the same conversation every morning, and every morning Cara's coffee appeared, carried by Giovanni in a chipped, speckled porcelain-covered iron mug. The sameness of it touched him, but he couldn't fathom why.

The coffee always contained a spoonful of brown sugar and a bit of warm goat's milk. They never thought to ask if he might like it plain; he supposed it had something to do with how little they had materially. What they shared was a gift not to be picked over.

Giovanni stood next to the bed with the coffee as Hosea struggled to prop himself up against the pillows at the headboard. He'd noticed that Giovanni helped him less every day.

The fisherman pulled up a chair beside Hosea. “I thought we'd get you up again to try a few steps today.”

Hosea shook his head as he sipped the coffee. “It hasn't worked before, I see no reason to try again.”

“Your muscles will seize up if we don't get them moving.”

He shook his head again.

“It's Christmas Eve, a good day to take your first steps. Think of it as a gift.”

Hosea let out a bitter laugh. That was it. As soon as he could walk, they could be rid of him. His gift to them.

“Cara is making a lovely Christmas dinner, and we would like to have you join us at the table. It would do you good to get out of bed.”

“One leg is numb, the other too painful to even touch,” Hosea said. “I can only imagine the pain if I tried to put my weight on it. How can I walk on such limbs?” He turned his head away from the fisherman's searching gaze.

But that didn't stop Giovanni from speaking his mind. “You've told us nothing of your past; you say you can't remember. You are well spoken, an educated man, and I venture to guess, educated in the ways of the seas, therefore a seafaring man. How do I know this? When I speak of taking my boat out to fish, or mention the beauty of the sea, a light appears in your eyes that a blind man couldn't miss.

“You, sir, know exactly who you are and how you got tossed by the waves upon our beach.”

Hosea turned back to the fisherman, at first indignant and then chagrined. He tried to smile, but it seemed his muscles forgot how. “I'm not a good liar. Maybe I don't want to remember.”

“You've been with us five months now; your wounds, though serious, are healing. What isn't healing is that which is eating you up inside.”

“And while we're on the subject of identities,” Hosea said, “you don't sound like any fisherman I've ever known. And believe me, I've known many.”

Giovanni threw back his head and laughed. “Hear that, Cara? Our guest does not think I'm a fisherman.”

She came to the bedroom doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “We wondered how long it would take for you to figure it out.”

“Actually, I didn't say you weren't a fisherman. I said you don't sound like one. There's a difference.”

“I fish only for what we need to eat,” Giovanni said. “Our needs are simple. I don't take my boat out to bring back bulging nets of haddock or perch to take to market for profit. Most of the year I don't fish for more than what we can eat in a day. Though before winter sets in, I catch enough to salt or pickle to see us through the weeks our island is icebound.”

“Our growing season is short,” Cara said, “but my garden gives us an abundance of good bounty. Some we eat the day it's fresh-picked; some we set up as preserves for winter.”

“What about the woods behind your place? I've heard you talk about it—the abundance of wildlife you see even now in the dead of winter. I would think the deer and rabbits alone would keep meat on your table.”

Cara laughed. “Oh, we couldn't eat any of the animals that come to visit us. We feed them.” She headed back toward the kitchen, tossing over her shoulder, “Giovanni even preaches to them. Lands no, we couldn't eat them.”

“So you're a preacher,” Hosea said to Giovanni. He couldn't keep the bitter tone from creeping into his voice.

“No, not a preacher.” Giovanni's eyes flickered slightly in recognition of the bitterness in Hosea's tone.

“What are you, then?”

“Do I have to be something?”

Hosea wanted to laugh for the first time since his arrival, but again he noticed that one side of his face didn't seem to remember which muscles to use, which puzzled him. “No, I guess you don't.”

Giovanni sat back, crossed his legs, and then clasped his hands over his knee. “I do a lot of things; but none of them for income.”

“Such as?”

“Woodwork.”

“You're a carpenter, then?”

Chuckling, Giovanni called in to Cara, “Now the man thinks I'm a carpenter.”

“If you call whittling a walking stick carpentry,” she called back, “then I guess you are, love.”

“I have a gift for you,” Giovanni said to Hosea, “a Christmas Eve gift.”

“I have nothing to give you…”

“Ah, but you do.” He smiled mischievously. “You must use my gift.”

“The walking stick.”

“That's for later. You aren't yet ready.”

“You said that I need to walk today.”

“And you will, but only to move into the chair I made for you.”

“We tried chairs before. I don't have the strength to sit upright.”

“You will in this one.” He leaned forward. “But you've gotten rather nicely around the question I asked earlier. Now that we've established that you know your identity, who are you?”

“I can't go back,” Hosea said.

Giovanni studied his face. “This isn't about going back. It's about the here and now, who you are now, not who you were or what you did five months ago.”

Hosea looked up at the window, the bleak gray sky. How could he admit even to himself that all he had worked for, had ever wanted in life, he'd let go of in less than an instant? He had betrayed himself.

He turned back to Giovanni, studying the man's kind face, wanting to tell someone what he'd done, wanting to ask for help to untangle the brokenness inside and out. He took a deep breath.

“I can't go back because when the wave washed over the deck, I could have clung to the rail. I saw the rogue coming. I should have been in my quarters, but I went out on the deck. Not the quarterdeck, but aft, where no seamen would see me. And when the wave hit, I simply let go.”

Silence fell between them. Hosea searched Giovanni's face for condemnation. None appeared.

“You're a captain, then.”

Hosea studied Giovanni's face. Not everyone knew the ways of the seas, the protocol of naval officers, where they were to be and when. His curiosity was piqued.

“You said that who I am now is different than who I was five months ago.”

“And it is.”

“I was master and commander of the
Sea Hawk
, a clipper that had just set a speed record for crossing the Atlantic. My name is Hosea Livingstone.”

Giovanni didn't look impressed. “And you are now?”

“A broken man, in spirit and in body.”

“But it was because of the broken spirit that you did not try to save yourself.”

“True.”

“So that part is the same now as then. What happened to make you give up on life, on living?”

Hosea leaned back uncomfortably, the pain in his tailbone and spine too hard to bear. He needed to lie flat again. “I've told you my name. But I have nothing else to tell.”

“It isn't necessary,” Giovanni said, surprising Hosea.

The pain and the talk had worn Hosea out. The hand that grasped the now-empty coffee mug was too weak to hold it any longer. Giovanni reached for the cup just before Hosea's fingers let go.

“I will bring your chair later,” Giovanni said, helping him settle more deeply into the bed. He turned Hosea on his side, a painful process because of the bedsore at the base of his spine. “Rest, and then Cara's bread will be ready and we'll have breakfast.”

Hosea now faced the window. It was snowing again: large, fat flakes, floating down against a dull gray sky.

His thoughts drifted to another time, another place. Summer, when the skies were violet and the hillsides green, when he and Enid laughed and talked and wondered about the future, which both believed held only good things. He was strong then, and life knew no boundaries. He had reached his life's goal: master and commander of the world's fastest clipper ship. He'd had the world in the palm of his hand.

He thought he knew his God. He read the prayers in his Psalter daily, he could argue with the best of them about world religions, especially when he found something evil in them.

Pure arrogance.

What did it matter now? Who cared about him? Certainly Gabe didn't; Hosea had seen to that when he practically threw him off his ship and out of his life. And Enid? Who knew if she cared or not? She obviously hadn't cared enough to be truthful.

How ironic for Gabe to say he'd always held Hosea up as an example of someone filled with God's grace and mercy, that he had been a lifeline. Gabe had thought God indifferent toward him, and he had openly said he was indifferent toward God.

Strange, how things had turned. Now Gabe had found religion with the Saints, and Hosea was indifferent toward God. Indifferent wasn't the half of it. In truth, he had lost all belief.

The snowflakes were smaller now and falling more rapidly. A wind kicked up and whorled them, taking them from their downward course. He heard the wind's moaning and the sounds of it took him back to that night…

Hosea closed his eyes and the image of white foam at the wave's crests replaced the image of the snow outside his window. The crashing waves with their white-capped ridges, the frigid waters, his suspension between two places came back to him: above, the lighter hues of the surface beckoning, below, pulling harder, the black depths.

How long he hung suspended, he didn't know. It seemed like
an eternity, his lungs ready to burst, his body unwilling to swim to the surface for a life-giving gasp of air, unwilling to choose life. And then, as if by some unseen hand, he'd been lifted out of the water and thrown onto the rocky shore near the house of this man who said he wasn't a fisherman.

If he still believed in God, he would have thought it was the hand of God. But Hosea's broken body and spirit only reinforced his refusal to think any supreme being would bring such suffering to one he supposedly loved.