第10章

Winnie had grown up with order. She was used to it. Under the pitiless double assaults of her mother and grandmother, the cottage where she lived was always squeaking clean, mopped and swept and scoured into limp submission. There was no room for carelessness, no putting things off until later. The Foster women had made a fortress out of duty. Within it, they were indomitable. And Winnie was in training.

So she was unprepared for the homely little house beside the pond, unprepared for the gentle eddies of dust, the silver cobwebs, the mouse who lived—and welcome to him!—in a table drawer. There were only three rooms. The kitchen came first, with an open cabinet where dishes were stacked in perilous towers without the least regard for their varying dimensions. There was an enormous black stove, and a metal sink, and every surface, every wall, was piled and strewn and hung with everything imaginable, from onions to lanterns to wooden spoons to washtubs. And in a corner stood Tuck’s forgotten shotgun.

The parlor came next, where the furniture, loose and sloping with age, was set about helter-skelter. An ancient green-plush sofa lolled alone in the center, like yet another mossy fallen log, facing a soot-streaked fireplace still deep in last winter’s ashes. The table with the drawer that housed the mouse was pushed off, also alone, into a far corner, and three armchairs and an elderly rocker stood about aimlessly, like strangers at a party, ignoring each other.

Beyond this was the bedroom, where a vast and tipsy brass bed took up most of the space, but there was room beside it for the washstand with the lonely mirror, and opposite its foot a cavernous oak wardrobe from which leaked the faint smell of camphor.

Up a steep flight of narrow stairs was a dusty loft—“That’s where the boys sleep when they’re home,” Mae explained—and that was all. And yet it was not quite all. For there was everywhere evidence of their activities, Mae’s and Tuck’s. Her sewing: patches and scraps of bright cloth; half-completed quilts and braided rugs; a bag of cotton batting with wisps of its contents, like snow, drifting into cracks and corners; the arms of the sofa webbed with strands of thread and dangerous with needles. His wood carving: curly shavings furring the floor, and little heaps of splinters and chips; every surface dim with the sawdust of countless sandings; limbs of unassembled dolls and wooden soldiers; a ship model propped on the mouse’s table, waiting for its glue to dry; and a stack of wooden bowls, their sides smoothed to velvet, the topmost bowl filled with a jumble of big wooden spoons and forks, like dry, bleached bones. “We make things to sell,” said Mae, surveying the mess approvingly.

And still this was not all. For, on the old beamed ceiling of the parlor, streaks of light swam and danced and wavered like a bright mirage, reflected through the windows from the sunlit surface of the pond. There were bowls of daisies everywhere, gay white and yellow. And over everything was the clean, sweet smell of the water and its weeds, the chatter of a swooping kingfisher, the carol and trill of a dozen other kinds of bird, and occasionally the thrilling bass note of an unastonished bullfrog at ease somewhere along the muddy banks.

Into it all came Winnie, eyes wide, and very much amazed. It was a whole new idea to her that people could live in such disarray, but at the same time she was charmed. It was…comfortable. Climbing behind Mae up the stairs to see the loft, she thought to herself: “Maybe it’s because they think they have forever to clean it up.” And this was followed by another thought, far more revolutionary: “Maybe they just don’t care!”

“The boys don’t be home very much,” said Mae as they came up into the half light of the loft. “But when they are, they bed up here. There’s plenty of room.” The loft was cluttered, too, with all kinds of odds and ends, but there were two mattresses rolled out on the floor, and fresh sheets and blankets were folded almost neatly on each, waiting to be spread.

“Where do they go when they’re away?” asked Winnie. “What do they do?”

“Oh,” said Mae, “they go different places, do different things. They work at what jobs they can get, try to bring home some of their money. Miles can do carpentering, and he’s a pretty fair blacksmith, too. Jesse now, he don’t ever seem too settled in himself. Course, he’s young.” She stopped and smiled. “That sounds funny, don’t it? Still, it’s true, just the same. So Jesse, he does what strikes him at the moment, working in the fields, or in saloons, things like that, whatever he comes across. But they can’t stay on in any one place for long, you know. None of us can. People get to wondering.” She sighed. “We been in this house about as long as we dare, going on twenty years. It’s a right nice place. Tuck’s got so’s he’s real attached to it. Then, too, it’s off by itself, plenty of fish in the pond, not too far from the towns around. When we need things, we go sometimes to one, sometimes the next, so people don’t come to notice us much. And we sell where we can. But I guess we’ll be moving on, one of these days. It’s just about time.”

It sounded rather sad to Winnie, never to belong anywhere. “That’s too bad,” she said, glancing shyly at Mae. “Always moving around and never having any friends or anything.”

But Mae shrugged off this observation. “Tuck and me, we got each other,” she said, “and that’s a lot. The boys, now, they go their separate ways. They’re some different, don’t always get on too good. But they come home whenever the spirit moves, and every ten years, first week of August, they meet at the spring and come home together so’s we can be a family again for a little while. That’s why we was there this morning. One way or another, it all works out.” She folded her arms and nodded, more to herself than to Winnie. “Life’s got to be lived, no matter how long or short,” she said calmly. “You got to take what comes. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time. Funny—we don’t feel no different. Leastways, I don’t. Sometimes I forget about what’s happened to us, forget it altogether. And then sometimes it comes over me and I wonder why it happened to us. We’re plain as salt, us Tucks. We don’t deserve no blessings—if it is a blessing. And, likewise, I don’t see how we deserve to be cursed, if it’s a curse. Still—there’s no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don’t bring changes. Tuck, now, he’s got a few other ideas, but I expect he’ll tell you. There! The boys are in from the pond.”

Winnie heard a burst of voices downstairs, and in a moment Miles and Jesse were climbing to the loft.

“Here, child,” said Mae hastily. “Hide your eyes. Boys? Are you decent? What’d you put on to swim in? I got Winnie up here, do you hear me?”

“For goodness’ sake, Ma,” said Jesse, emerging from the stairwell. “You think we’re going to march around in our altogether with Winnie Foster in the house?”

And Miles, behind him, said, “We just jumped in with our clothes on. Too hot and tired to shed ’em.”

It was true. They stood there side by side with their wet clothes plastered to their skins, little pools of water collecting at their feet.

“Well!” said Mae, relieved. “All right. Find something dry to put on. Your pa’s got supper nearly ready.” And she hustled Winnie down the narrow stairs.