“Then, what do you know, here comes Gracie afoot, back across the bridge, and he’s riding off down the road. Her head was still wrapped in her scarf, and she was so unhappy I didn’t have the heart to send her away. I brought her home and put her to bed. Next day the old lady comes.”
“The Widow Fortune?”
“If that’s how she’s called. Rides up in a buggy, and Grace says can she use the parlor. Which I let her, even to permitting her to offer tea and such. I stayed upstairs, but I could tell the old lady was most sympathetic to Grace’s situation—a kind soul, if you don’t mind. Then she left.”
Grace was now driven to the extremest measures. First she told Mrs. O’Byrne she would leave, then she swore she could not, then she didn’t know what to do. In the end, however, she went away, never to return.
“’Twas the night of full moon, I remember that,” Mrs. O’Byrne continued. “Grace went out again in the evenin’, and that was the last I saw of her. She just left everything here and went. Never came back for her things, neither. Her sweetheart died, didn’t he?”
I said yes, wondering how she had come by this particular piece of news. I related what I had learned from Worthy about the horse accident, and Mrs. O’Byrne’s look was woeful as she opened the front door for me. “But you didn’t say—is Grace there still? Does she fare well?”
“She’s dead, too.”
“Oh, no—you don’t say! Poor thing. Still, I suppose she’s better off. I wouldn’t want to go through life suffering like poor Grace did.”
I stowed the Tiffany clock in the trunk, along with the slates, while the wind, which had increased perceptibly, drove everything before it.
“Hurricane weather,” Mrs. O’Byrne called. “Stop by again.” She battled the door shut against the gale.
Driving back toward the bridge, I looked at the sky. The moon, round and white, shed a strange light over the landscape, while across its face drifted an intermittent cheesy curd, lending the white light a greenish-yellow cast. Lightning flickered bluely on the horizon, and a steady wind whipped the grass along the roadside.
The car tires beat a tattoo on the bridge planking as I crossed. Emerging from the farther end onto the Old Sallow Road, I could feel the wind take the car again. The air sizzled intermittently, as if wired with a network of faulty electrical connections. I made the turns slowly, keeping the car toward the center of the winding road as I passed the Tatum orchard. I felt melancholy, thinking back over the story of Grace Everdeen. I found it strange and sad, and a little mystifying.
The lights were still burning at Irene’s house, and as I rounded the next bend, the embankment I had passed earlier was now on my left, and above me I glimpsed an edge of treetops waving wildly in the wind. On the other side of the road, the cornfields were whipped to a frenzy; the wind drove leaves and debris along the rutted track leading up to the house, scuttling them around the wheels of the parked cars and the buggy, past the soap kettle, spiraling ashes and carrying all up the steps onto the porch itself, where the parlor windows were glowing.
I slowed as the wind buffeted the car again, and a large branch broke from a tree and flew onto the road. I swerved, then stopped. Leaving the motor running, I got out and pulled the branch to the side of the road. Straightening, I heard what sounded like a cry above the sound of the wind.
As I kicked the branch into the gully, lightning flashed again, a sharp electric current of blue that turned the sky a sickly green color. Then suddenly, above me, at the top of the embankment, materializing out of the darkness, there appeared what I immediately thought must be the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome. Ghastly, eerie, the figure was a gray ashen hue, the white garments flapping like cerements, a specter returned from the grave. I have never seen a ghost, nor do I believe that ghosts exist, but at that moment I was absolutely certain I was looking at one. It seemed to glow against the lurid sky, hovering some twelve feet above me, the body cut off by the edge of the embankment, head upraised, arms outstretched. I tried to tell myself I was imagining all this, but there it stood, a haggard, silvery shape, like some ghoul risen from the dead.
It turned on me the most terrible countenance I had ever seen. An appalling face, the flesh was as white as the clothes, except for the dark recesses of the eyes and the red, grinning mouth. It was this grin that made it seem more horrible, scarcely a smile at all, but the parody of one. A poor, painted smile, witless, demented, grim, the inane smile of a rag doll. Dark gouts of liquid erupted from the corners of the mouth while one hand—feeble, supplicating—lifted in a pitiful gesture and tore at the grin, as though to strip it away.
Then the haggard thing performed a grotesque reel, a dance of agony, twirling slowly, slowly, head once more thrown back to the night sky.
In another moment it had disappeared, vanished as though, in the tradition of ghosts, it had dematerialized. I ran and shut off the car motor, then laboriously made my way up the embankment, using rocks and projecting roots to clamber up the steep incline and onto the grassy plateau at the top.
There was nothing, only the swath of wind-whipped grass, the edge of the woods beyond, and, beyond that, darkness. I called out. No answer came, and no sign at all of the white apparition.
The clouds scraped across the face of the moon. Suddenly bright and shiny as it moved slowly toward the west, it again poured a dazzling white over the dark landscape. I thought how big and bright and shining it was, and how far away, noting its visible geography, its clearly delineated craters, mountains, deserts, seas. Again I lowered my gaze, taking one last look for that other, impossible shape I had seen. And standing there, listening to the wind, I felt sure this was no ghost, no supernatural creature, but something as real as the moon itself, real enough to have been human and alive.
12
REAL ENOUGH; BUT HAD it been alive? Or was I falling under the influence of Cornish witch tales and charms? I thought of telling Beth of the strange apparition, then remembering the old trouble, and how easily influenced she was, I decided against it. Better to let the village weave its more salutary spells, whose good effects were so clearly already at work upon her. I was persuaded that it was better to leave my tale of the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome for another, more appropriate time.
The next day, Monday, I worked in the studio sanding the gesso panel I would use for my painting of the covered bridge. When Worthy came, I interrupted my work to help him tackle the roofing job. He was moody again today, with little to say regarding the excursion to Nonesuch Farm, other than that Kate had enjoyed it. I made no allusion to the strange event of last night, and between us we limited ourselves to the scantest of small talk until Beth called us to come in. We ate lunch from folding tables in the bacchante room so we could watch the replays of the Olympic events. Mark Spitz had captured another gold medal, and they were saying he would take an even seven and make Olympic history; I wished him the joy of all that gold.
When we had eaten, I left Worthy to complete the roofing job alone and, taking my water-color equipment, I set out for the Lost Whistle Bridge. On a sudden thought, I pulled in at the Pettinger farm to have a word with Worthy’s mother and father. The place wasn’t much by anybody’s standards, not “all-electric” like the Hookes’s, and without indoor plumbing. Like the rest of Cornwall Coombe, the Pettingers had planted corn wherever the ground might bear it. There was a well and a springhouse, a chicken run, and a barn. If Fred Minerva was jokingly referred to as the biggest hard-luck farmer in the community, Wayne Pettinger surely was the poorest. He had two other sons to help him with the work, but it quickly became evident that he begrudged the time “the boy” was giving to others, myself included.
Both of them, the mother and the father, had the tired, careworn look of the workaday farmer fighting a losing battle against the soil, and neither seemed inclined to discuss Worthy’s trouble when I bearded them in the kitchen, but only sat bleakly and with unswerving gaze as they heard me out. I told them I felt that Worthy should be giv
en a chance, that a great disservice would be done in stopping his schooling.
Mr. Pettinger was angry and adamant. The boy was full of fool notions. Theirs was a poor farm, but with seven years of Worthy’s being Harvest Lord it could become a rich one. Men would come and work it for him and not charge for labor; it could be the place they’d always dreamed it might be. Honor had been conferred; but no, the boy didn’t want honors, he wanted to be off with them hippies over to Danforth. Mr. Pettinger damned left and right: damned machinery, damned modern methods, damned folks who wasn’t satisfied with what they had but was so greedy they had to have more. Kids today didn’t know how well-off they was.
He turned to Mrs. Pettinger. “It’s your fault, givin’ him learnin’. There’s where the trouble starts—never should’ve let him go to school.” He clumped out to the barn, leaving me facing his wife, whose eyes were now streaming.
Clutching her red hands on the oilcloth-topped table, she confided to me that she had heard Worthy planning to run off. I replied that I thought young people should be allowed to do with their lives as they saw fit. She listened with a woebegone expression, dabbing at her eyes with her apron.
“He don’t laugh no more,” she said. “He was the most agreeable of all of ’em, you never seen a boy so pleasing, and so easy to please.” Her smile was frail as she stared at her hands. “And he’s bright, too. Not like—them.” She jerked her head toward the dooryard where Worthy’s brothers were shoveling manure. “Seems like he’s always had his nose into everything.”
But then she’d heard him, out behind the mulch heap, telling Junior Tatum how he planned to run off to Danforth if he couldn’t go to college. Her heart had been sorely tried. Planning to leave the village, leave Cornwall Coombe. Had she failed? Hadn’t he been raised right?
Finding the mother’s grief hard to witness, I tried to speak some words of comfort, but she continued as though I weren’t there.
“I tell myself, hope and custom will be my stren’th. But he’s a mind of his own; he’s different. And in Cornwall Coombe it don’t pay to be different. You got to go by what folks say, and what they think.” She rose. “And what they do,” she added. I sensed that these words were for my benefit as well, as though through some instinctive kindness she did not want me to make a similar mistake.
She followed me to the door, then seized my hand impulsively and said with a passionate look, “Help him, mister, can’t you?”
I spent the afternoon by the bridge, before my easel, my thoughts on the boy. Last night’s hot wind still continued, and it made outdoor painting difficult, but I persevered until I had accomplished two passable water-color studies. Shortly after four o’clock, I packed up my gear, stowed it in the car, and drove back up the Old Sallow Road.
I turned the bend where I had seen the “ghost” the night before, and pulled onto the shoulder. I climbed the embankment and made a careful investigation of the terrain, noting that the grass had been trampled, which bolstered my theory that what I had seen was no supernatural being, but human.
With a backward glance at the Tatum house across the way, I crossed the patch of trodden ground and approached the edge of Soakes’s Lonesome. From within its shadowy recesses came the plaintive barking of a fox. Birds overhead chirped and sang as they flitted from branch to branch. Beyond the trees I could just make out the flat blue plane of water that was the river, and heard the dull chug of the Soakeses’ skiff from the farther shore. The heat of the day was gradually cooling, condensing into mists along the bank, only to be unraveled by the wind.
I moved farther into the wood, resolved to find last night’s phantom or, if I could not, at least to discover the more substantial form Jack Stump had described to me. Parrot-green ferns fanned a toothy pattern in the wavering light. Beyond, the darker green was laurel and alder, with sprawling thickets of gooseberry bramble whose vicious barbs caused me to wend my way with care. Passing from glade to glade, I felt the ground give softly and noiselessly beneath my feet, a carpet of pine needles, strewn with wind-tumbled cones.
I heard a faint rush of water: a creek. I continued on till I discovered it winding among the trees, then began following the water’s upstream course, stepping from hummock to hummock across pools on whose dimly reflective surfaces water creatures skittered. My feet flattened a patch of skunk cabbage, the squashed leaves emitting a faintly sour stench.
I heard the snap of a twig behind me. I whirled. Something moved in a thicket. I waited, then decided it was the fox, wary and watchful; I continued on.
Now I was deep within the woods, girdled round by leafy shade, stilled by a silence that was almost uncanny. It grew dimmer. The tree trunks were black, their malachite moss bled of color. Somewhere a woodpecker rapped; crickets sounded; occasionally I heard the goitered throb of a bullfrog.
The terrain became hilly and rocky as I proceeded into a remote arm of the woods, and I discovered a worn foot trail which I now proceeded to follow. I kept a keen eye out as I went along the trail, and it was lucky that I did so, for otherwise I might have died—as Clemmon Fortune had—lost within those woods. Certainly I would not have discovered the trap that lay waiting for me.
The trail forked, and I had slowed, wondering which of the two paths to take, when I saw it, carefully concealed, a small, unnatural-looking mound where pine needles and other debris had been sprinkled for camouflage. I halted within feet of it, my eye tracing the tail of chain links winding through the leaves, and the unsprung jaws awaiting the foot of the unwary.
Choosing the left-hand fork, I stepped carefully around the trap, and continued along. The trail made a slight turning, and some low-growing branches partially obscured my way. I half crouched, pushing aside the branches, and when I had passed them I straightened—and walked almost into the bristly face of Old Man Soakes. In one hand was a shotgun; with the other he reached out and grabbed me around the throat and spun me up against the trunk of a tree. His arm pressed against my windpipe, intent, it appeared, on choking the life out of me. Through bulging eyes, I stared back at his angry face, the lips compressed with fierce determination, bits of white spittle along the lower one, his breath coming in spurts as he exerted a deadly pressure.
Releasing his hold enough to produce his knife—the large sharp-edged one I had seen him using on the landing—he stuck its point against the side of my neck. I turned my head, trying to avoid not so much the knife as the rotten smell of his breath. His eyes looked crazed as he demanded to know what I was doing in the woods. I tried to pull away; the knife point held me as though driven through my neck into the trunk behind. There were footsteps; he looked away for a fraction of a second. I yanked my knee up and caught him in the crotch; he let go of me, his face going bloodless as he doubled over. I placed both hands against his shoulders and shoved, then lurched away. Roy Soakes was coming at a jog along the path ahead; I spun, racing back the way I had come. As Roy charged after me, I heard the old man curse him to get out of the way so he could get a clear shot. The shot came; and another. One spanged off a trunk near my head, the second went wild. A quick look behind told me Roy was hot on my heels, and I dashed pell-mell back down the trail. When I neared the fork, I made a quick leap over the trap, then ducked down the right-hand trail, not slowing until a cry reached my ears, followed by a loud metallic sound as Roy’s foot sprung the trap. I paused briefly until I heard the old man coming behind him, spouting foul oaths at Roy’s stupidity, and more as he tried to release the iron jaws.
I almost felt like whistling. Having moved the trap to catch the innocent and unsuspecting, Old Man Soakes had only snared one of his own brood. I hurried along the trail, occasionally looking back over my shoulder as I plunged still deeper into the innermost reaches of Soakes’s Lonesome. I looked up at the sky, trying to find my bearings. A bird slid downward in a wide-winged dive, and I turned first one way, then another, not knowing where I was heading, trying to avoid the malignant tangles of growth blocking my every path. Coils of
creepers wound about my feet, dark bramble thickets rose before me. Heedless of the thorns tearing at my legs, I lifted my arms to protect my face and forced my way through.
I came to another stream and crossed it, stepping from one grassy hummock to another. My foot slipped, there was a sucking noise as it slid into cold, thick muck. I pulled; the foot held fast. A moldy stench arose from the mud as I bent and tried to release myself. At last the foot came free and I raced on.
I found another trail, a narrow corridor allowing me passage; I followed it blindly. The country was utterly unfamiliar. I could tell only that I was on an upward climb. Ahead lay an outcropping of shale, a humped ridge of rock that sprang half buried from the earth. I lay down, panting from my exertions, batting at the insects swarming in a thick damp cloud around my head, settling on my neck and throat. I tried to cover them, felt the sticky wetness. My hand came away with blood where the old man’s knife had jabbed me.
I rested until my breath returned. Then my eye strayed to the tree which grew, it seemed, almost from the very rock I rested on. It was a tall pine, with an abundant growth of branches towering some fifty feet into the air. On the trunk, as high as a short man might reach, was a naked spot where the bark had been cut away. I got up and went to it, putting my fingers to the open wood, still viscous with sap.
One of Jack Stump’s blazes: the tall tree on the rocky knoll. What I had sought with purpose I had found by accident. I circled the knoll, looking for a second blaze. I discovered it below me, on the left side of the outcropping. Now I could make out the trail which wound around the knoll and back into the woods. I pushed on ahead, looking for the next blaze.
The terrain was sloping downward now; lichen-spotted boulders lay strewn along my path like fallen meteors. I could hear the gentle purl of the stream on my right. Overhead the treetops again closed above me in a vast net of wind-tossed, soughing branches; the sky grew dim.