Westminster West Page 9

  A moment later Mother came into the parlor. “Clare? Would you mind making biscuits so I can take care of the milk?” As always at the end of washday Mother was bone tired.

  Silence. Then Clare said, “Yes. I’ll do them.” She opened the door. Her eyes looked bruised.

  “No, Clare, you rest,” Mother decided, and for once Sue couldn’t blame her. Clare looked really ill.

  But she said quickly, “No, no. I can do them!”

  I’ll do them, Sue thought. She found herself sitting upright, braced to stand. Mother looked astonished.

  “Susan? Do you need something? Don’t move—I’ll get it.”

  “I—” The floor spun slightly, sank a little. It would steady, if she waited.

  She glanced up and saw Clare watching her with wide eyes, pupils growing larger and larger. Looking past Sue. Looking at the sofa.

  Oh, no, you don’t! Sue thought instantly. Mother was watching her, too, so worn and old-looking. Suddenly Sue couldn’t bear their eyes upon her, couldn’t bear to look into their faces.

  She said, “I need to go back upstairs.”

  19

  AFTER SUPPER, after she had washed the dishes, set the table, and swept the kitchen floor, Mother climbed slowly up the stairs and made Sue’s bed. Her feet scuffed wearily on the steps, and Sue shrank at the sound. This was more work for Mother; everything was more work for Mother.

  But in ten minutes the bed was ready, and Mother called, “David, will you bring Sue up?”

  Ed looked up in surprise. “Leaving us?” He glanced at Clare’s rocker. But Clare had gone early to bed.

  “Yes,” Sue said. “I … it’s not that comfortable.”

  “I had an idea you were getting better,” Henry said with a frown.

  “Sue can get better upstairs just as well as she can down here,” Father said, carefully marking his place in The Agriculturist.

  He approached the couch, slid one arm behind Sue’s back and the other beneath her knees, and lifted her. “Hang on.”

  Belatedly it occurred to Sue that one of the boys should take her, that Father was not young. Henry said suddenly, “I’ll do that, Captain!”

  But no one could deny Father’s physical strength. So much had been asked of him when young, and he’d always given it. His muscles were like iron, his step steady on the stairs: left, right, left, right.… Even at the point of putting Sue down, the point at which a burden is heaviest, his arms didn’t tremble and his movement was smooth. Sue left her arms around his neck a moment longer than necessary, so he would know it was a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “I’ll come up with my knitting in a minute,” Mother said.

  “No,” Sue said quickly. “I—I don’t mind being alone.”

  Mother closed her eyes. Any other day of the week she would have insisted. But sometimes Mondays were too much, even for Mother. “I’ll send up the rest of your things. Good night.”

  It was Ed who brought them. “This is all pretty hard on Mother,” he said abruptly.

  “Yes,” Sue said.

  Ed looked at her sharply and then sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets, roaming around the room. “I don’t understand this. Why does everything in this family seem so …” He paused by the window, struggling for a word. “I don’t know, like everybody’s stuck! Is it always like this in the fall? I’m usually at academy by now. Does this always happen?”

  Go away, Sue thought. Ed’s ignorance made him seem childish tonight. “No. This doesn’t happen.”

  “Then what’s going on? Why aren’t you better? Why the heck doesn’t somebody send you to a specialist? How long have you been in bed, Susie?”

  Sue closed her eyes. “Ed. Please.” They don’t send for a specialist because Mother expects to have a sick child. Because she knows, maybe, that it’s not real anymore. Because … just because.

  “God!” Ed said suddenly, almost violently. “Sometimes all I want is out of here! I can’t wait till January!” Sue heard his steps go down the stairs. The room grew still. She opened her eyes on its familiar bareness.

  What are you doing? she asked herself, and no answer came. She only knew that she was not strong enough to stay on the sofa and face Clare’s tragic look, Mother’s exhaustion. And she would not get up yet. She couldn’t.

  Ed and Henry came upstairs to bed. All sounds died away. Sue sat up straight, put her feet down on the cool floorboards, and stood. She touched the bedpost. It was there to support her if she needed it, but she did not. She felt the sturdy, reliable locking of her knees, the strength of her thigh muscles, the good stretch in her spine. Her stomach muscles trembled slightly. They were weak, but they would hold.

  Carefully, touching the one bedpost as long as possible and reaching for the other, she walked all the way around the end of the bed and got in on the other side. There!

  In the morning she knew why she was up here: Clare bringing up the tray with swollen, downcast eyes, still with that look of shock. Your life is here, Clare, she thought. When you start doing your share, I’ll get up to help you. She was doing something wrong. She knew that. But someone had to make it happen. Downstairs she wouldn’t be able to wait. She’d feel too sorry for Clare.

  Preserving was in full swing, and the house smelled of pickles, apples, spice. For days Mother was too busy to carry work up to the bedroom. Sue often heard her calling for Clare, but she couldn’t tell how much Clare helped or how willingly. When Clare brought meals, she was very quiet, as if her shock were still fresh. But time was passing. Get over it, Sue thought at her. Get over it, and I’ll be there to help. She waited for signs of that, waited, and walked.

  Softly, her bare feet making no sound or jar, she wandered the room, observing the rumpled runner on the table, the light film of dust that had begun to gather on the woodwork since Minnie’s departure—only looking, since to straighten or dust anything would be to give herself away. Her clothes in the closet had been so long unworn they seemed to belong to someone else. The dresses hung limply on their pegs. Dust had gathered on the folds of her riding skirt. In the back of the closet were her boots; jammed down inside one was the red book. She left it there.

  Often she stood near the window, watching the busy, orderly farmyard, sun glimmering on the ice pond, sheep, cattle and horses grazing, the oat harvest coming in. Behind the shoulder of the barn the hill yellowed, and the trees turned dull green and then suddenly, overnight, flared to scarlet and gold.

  Once she whistled to Bright as he drank from the barnyard trough. He raised his head sharply, looking toward the house, and Ed, who’d just turned him loose, looked, too. Sue stepped quickly back from the window.

  Bright. Bright remembered her.

  Nights she dreamed, but she didn’t know of what. When she awakened, she could sometimes hear her own gasp on the dark air. The bed would spin and spin, like a leaf adrift on a stream. It swooped, it swirled, and she clutched the sheet beneath her until her hands hurt, listening to the pounding of her own heart, the melodic interruptions of the big clock downstairs. She kept no account of time. It seemed better not to.

  But one morning a cold freshness, a smell of fallen leaves came in on the air. Sue walked silently to the head of the stairs and looked down. It was baking day. She could hear the brisk squeak of the rolling pin under Mother’s hands, catch the dusty scent of flour. Her hands longed to make a piecrust or shape a loaf of bread.

  She touched one hand to the banister, grasped the smooth, cool wood firmly. Her toes actually hung over the top stair. She was ready to take the first step—

  “Clare? This isn’t quite enough apple, and I’m up to my elbows in piecrust. Can you quick chop some more?”

  A sigh from the front parlor. Sue drew back. A moment later Clare came through the hall. Her shoulders sagged, and her hair, to Sue’s surprise, was carelessly arranged and rather untidy. She couldn’t see Clare’s face, but suddenly Clare looked up the stairs. Her mouth was contorted in a wide grimace, like a littl
e child crying. “Damn you, Sue!” she whispered. “Come down!”

  Sue’s heart pounded. She stood very still. Clare went on to the kitchen. Slowly Sue realized that Clare had not seen her.

  I will go down, she thought, getting back into bed. And she would! When, was the only question. She must do it right, at the right time. She wasn’t giving up. She wasn’t losing the fight. She was—

  You can’t go down!

  The thought was like a separate voice in her head, new and startling. Nonsense! she thought immediately. Of course she could, whenever she wanted to. This afternoon or tomorrow.

  No, you can’t. You want to stay up here. You can’t make yourself want to go down.

  “I can, too!” Sue whispered. “I can go right now!”

  Is that so?

  “Yes!” Sue said aloud, and stood up. The quickness of the motion made her giddy, and in the cool air her legs crawled with gooseflesh. What would she put on? Get back in bed while she decided.

  See?

  No. I can do whatever I want!

  But what do you want? You want to stay right here.

  Sue curled in bed and put her fingers in her ears. But the voice was within and kept on speaking in a dull, neutral tone, in time with her pulse. Cra-zy cra-zy cra-zy cra—

  “Susie? I’m sorry, was you asleep?”

  Aunt Mary Braley stood at the bedside, all apuff from the long climb up the stairs. Sue sat up, shaking her head. “No. No, I—”

  “Heard you was abed again, and I was on my way by. Been seein’ Em’ly and Laura off. I’ve prevailed on Em’ly to accept money from me and take poor Laura to the seashore. They say it does good sometimes.”

  “How is Laura?” Sue asked, grasping at good manners for help.

  Aunt Mary shook her head very slightly. “It’s hard for me to keep my hopes up. I’ve seen this too often. But how are you, Susie? Do you feel as if you’re gettin’ better?”

  Sue drew a breath that went on and on as she realized she did not have an answer. “I—don’t know.” Was it better to be dizzy or to have voices?

  Aunt Mary’s old eyes were the color of brook water in the spring, a surprising green, and they flashed for a moment with a look of speculation. But all she said was, “You’ll get well in your own good time. Don’t fret about the work; your mother says it’s well in hand.”

  Sue couldn’t answer. Aunt Mary glanced at her and then settled herself in the bedside chair. “I was up by Coombses’ yesterday,” she said after a moment. “Trouble on my mind, I guess. All I could think of was poor Homer Miller.”

  It took a moment for the name to penetrate. Not Johnny Coombs. Homer Miller. “Did you know him?”

  Aunt Mary looked down at her lap. After a moment she said quietly, “Ever’body was very sorry for his father when it happened. I remember in church people took his hand, but us children took a different view of it. In those days children didn’t disobey their parents, but I remember thinking, I won’t stand in front of an oxcart for anybody! And I never have.”

  “What do you mean?” Sue asked almost in a whisper.

  “He should have stepped out of the way,” Aunt Mary said soberly. “Let the old oxen run! I’ve done that, you know. Went to nurse durin’ the war, and when I felt I had to, I come home. And after Mr. Braley died, and I was told I should sell out—and I felt as though that would kill me—well, I stayed put. Some people didn’t think that was right. My own children! But you don’t have to let yourself be run over, Susie. Over the years I’ve come to feel very free.”

  Sue felt the words go through her with a piercing ache and sweetness. I’ve come to feel very free.

  Then Aunt Mary said, “But you know, Bela would have torn a strip off of poor Homer if he’d let those oxen run. A parent don’t always think what they’re askin’ or how a child understands.”

  “I know,” Sue said.

  Aunt Mary slowly nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Well, Homer’d be an old man now, and Bela’s with us yet. It’s like Reverend Stevens said, nothing stands still. That’s the one thing you can count on.”

  When Aunt Mary was gone, Sue paced the floor silently. I’ll get up if I can be like Mary Braley, she thought. What do you think I am? she could ask Mother, the next time she asked too much, the next time she forgot to be fair. What do you think I am? That should bring Mother up short!

  Tomorrow was Thursday, cleaning day. She would go downstairs tomorrow. She could slip into the work of the day without anyone noticing.

  But Thursday came, and Sue still waited. Waited? Or was caught, like a fly on flypaper? How could she tell if she was caught except by trying?

  How could she try when she just didn’t want to?

  She didn’t go down, and Thursday night came.

  20

  WITH A GASP Sue awakened to lie on the spinning bed, watching the yellow light flicker on the windowpane.…

  Yellow light flickering on the windowpane.

  Yellow light?

  Sue sat up. She was still dreaming.

  Was she? The air was chilly on her shoulders, and her hair hung down her back, in her eyes. But in the top corner of the window a light continued to dance. It looked very real, like little flames reflected—

  Her feet hit the floor with a slap; she stood up; her knees weakened and buckled, but she fell on them next to the window. The flames were out there, at the back corner of the big barn, the sheep barn, the chicken house, big as bonfires, and growing.

  “Fire!” Her voice came out in a loud, powerful shout as she rose. She ran out to the hall. “Father! Henry! The barns are on fire! Father!”

  Throughout the house came startled thumps and crashes. As Sue turned back to her room, Henry raced past in his nightshirt, trying to shove his feet into his boots in midrun. Ed followed, barefoot and pulling on his trousers. The front door banged open.

  Sue was at her closet door, stripping off her nightgown. Her riding skirt was nearest; she pulled it on, fighting hooks and eyes. Jersey. She pushed her feet into her boots. One wouldn’t go in—the red book. She shook it out, and it fell with a small thump in the back corner of the closet.

  The big door stood wide open at the bottom of the stairs. The banister glided beneath her hand; her boots rapped like snare drums. She passed Clare in the doorway of the parlor, a white blur in her nightgown.

  Outside, the night was blazing orange and loud with the lick of flames. Father, Ed, and Henry drove the sheep from the barn. The merinos baaed and huddled, heads high, ears back, and let themselves be driven as one animal toward the big field.

  “The horses!” Sue screamed. “Are the horses out?”

  Father turned, a black silhouette against the flickering light. “In the night pasture!” he shouted.

  Then the cows were out, too. What else? A shriek of hens, a wild flutter. Mother behind the flaming chicken house window in her dressing gown, shooing hens from their perches.

  The hogs! Sue ran to their pen, on the ground floor of the big barn. The hogs were screaming, but the fire was in the far corner. It had not reached them.

  She struggled with the latch. The hogs crowded against the gate, putting so much pressure on the hasp that she couldn’t draw it back. “Move!” she screamed. “Move!”

  Her screams were nothing to theirs. She couldn’t even hear herself. She snatched up a piece of sacking draped on a post and flapped it over the hogs’ backs. The tide of flesh receded for a moment, and she tore the latch open, fingernails breaking. “Go on!”

  The hogs needed no driving. They surged out the gate, all trying to crowd through at once, and raced into the blackness.

  For a moment the barn seemed quiet, with only the laughing, happy sound of the flames. They roared up the huge posts and across the underside of the floorboards, yellow and orange and lovely. Could they really be killing the barn?

  Sue ran out after the hogs. Now what? She couldn’t think what to do next.

  Father raced past her, straight into the big barn. A
moment later he brought a harness to the doorway. Mother was suddenly there and dragged it away. Henry and Ed had rolled the heavy wagon out and were pushing it off into the dark. Now Father gave the buggy a shove, and it rolled out on its own, shafts skating across the dirt. A barn cat leaped off the seat and disappeared into the night.

  Sue caught at the spokes as the buggy slowed. She tried to push it up the road. It would only turn in a circle, but then Ed was there at the other wheel.

  “Henry!” Father shouted. “Pump some water and watch the corners of the house!”

  Sue whirled to look as Henry sprinted past. The heat buffeted her face; it hadn’t been anywhere near that bad when she’d first run out the door. The house was still all right, but flames ballooned out around the sheep barn, so close.

  “Tell Clare to pump!” she yelled at Henry, and turned back to Ed. “Can’t we get water from the ice pond?”

  Ed just shook his head, coughing, as they ran back toward the barns. No, of course not. They couldn’t get the water up, with only five of them to span the whole distance. No time to harness a horse, even if they could catch one. The pond, not five hundred yards from the burning barn, was useless.

  Something sailed out of the barn doorway in a glittering arc and landed on the pile of harness.

  Bright’s nickel-studded bridle.

  21

  SUE HAD THE bridle in her hand and was running toward the barway before she knew what she meant to do. It was cooler, blacker, quieter, over here. She banged hard against the poles and whistled for Bright. Out across the dark pasture she heard drumming hooves, grunts, the low, drawn-out, wavering bawl of a cow in full gallop.

  She whistled again, slid back the top bar, slid back the bottom. Would Bright come? Toward the fires, toward the uproar, when she hadn’t called him in so long?

  She whistled a third time, leaning on the middle bar to rest her shaking legs. If he didn’t come, could she run all the way to the Holdens’?