LITMIR.BIZ

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of her as if she were contagious. He sat down again, gathering the frayed ends of his composure. Lily didn’t move. He seemed surprised, even discomfited, by the fact that she had fled his study. He felt her presence– the Lord’s anteroom, as it were – as something indefinably threatening and darkly tempting.

      “Mrs. Beecroft will show you out,” he said at last. When she reached the study door, though, he shouted desperately. “Whatever becomes of you, Miss, just remember this: God is not a Pottawatomie!”

      As best she could, Lily told Bridie what had trespassed at the Manse. Bridie listened with interest, not once interrupting.

      “God’s not there,” Lily said. “I know it.”

      Bridie’s face clouded. “I don’t deny it. But if you turn away from all the churchin’ these folk ’round here can’t do without, they’ll never ever forgive you. You’ll have to pay for that rebel streak all your life.”

      “But you –”

      “Yes, I did it, I know. As far as I’m concerned, the god they pray to was invented by landlords and greengrocers. An’ now that I look at you, I see somethin’ in your face, somethin’ from that mad father of yours or the wild bush you was let roam in –.” She didn’t finish, as if she’d already said too much. Then: “Well, don’t just stand there with your legs in a knot, get that frumpery off, we got corn to shuck!”

      When they were again working side by side, Lily said, “Will you teach me how to read?”

      “Yes, honey, real soon. That’s a solemn promise.” And she tore at the stubborn shocks in a frenzy.

      Contrary to her own declarations, Bridie was off to cook at the camp yet again. As many of the workers brought their families into the area and moved to more permanent quarters, Bridie’s business followed them. Already she was plotting the use of the new acres cleared, cut and sold by Cam before he left, not even taking his last week’s pay. Orders were left with her subordinates: Lily was to bake two dozen pumpkin pies for a special Thanksgiving celebration at the camp, courtesy of the soon-to-be-announced candidate for mayor of the newly incorporated town: Maurice Templeton, Esquire. “I’m trustin’ you to do as I’ve showed you; somethin’ big could come outta this,” Bridie said. Second, Chester was to give the north coop a thorough scrubbing and white-washing as several hens had recently died from some mysterious cause.

      Lily was delighted, but Chester’s back went on leave. Lately Bridie had been more than usually stern and grumpy, snapping at her and Chester with little or no provocation. Most of her wrath was directed towards him, though Lily failed to see why. Seldom would he talk back, and even then the argument always collapsed after a single strike. Sometimes he would look over at Lily, aggrieved and helpless, as if to say, “See, this is what it’s really like.” Once she had seen Chester, unaware he was being observed, pick up Bridie’s pince-nez – which she needed to read The Observerand “do the books”– and hid them under the mattress. Bridie searched high and low for them, more than routinely disturbed that she had been so careless as to mislay them. Chester meantime made a great fuss about helping her locate them: “Thought they might’ve fallen off in the fruit cellar when you was labellin’ the jars, but not so, I’m afraid,” he said solicitously. “Not like you to be so careless with your valuables.” Three days later when the spectacles turned up magically between two butter-boxes on the kitchen shelf, Bridie gave her husband the oddest look, then went about her business.

      Grumbling about his lumbago, Chester went off to the north chicken coop, tools in hand. Lily went to the pumpkin patch and started the laborious task of loading the ripest ones into the barrow and pushing them through the loose soil to the dooryard. On the very first load Lily saw she had been too ambitious: the wheel buried itself in the ground, and when Lily got angry with it, it lurched sideways and sent the pumpkins thumping overboard. Uncle Chester was suddenly beside her. “I’ll help you with that,” he said. “Damn woman oughta know better’n to make you push a thing like this. There’s times I think she just forgets you’re a girl…a young lady,” he said, puffing and huffing a huge pumpkin into the barrow.

      “Be careful of your heart, now,” Lily said, but she was happy to have help. Together they managed to get three loads of the unwieldy fruit safely to a pile beside the stoop.

      “There now, my lass, you can go on with your woman’s work,” said Chester.

      Lily leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Maybe I can get this done an’ come help with the coop.”

      He sighed: “That’s a dog’s work,” and trudged off.

      Lily split the pumpkins and removed the pulp, then cooked and strained it in large kettles supplied by Mrs Templeton before setting it in the cool of the back shed. She would have to build a hot, sustaining fire in the stove for the pies; in the meantime, she and Chester would eat a cold supper.

      After getting a good blaze started, she set out to fetch him home. The first place she looked was the barn. He wasn’t in his workshop; nor were there any signs that he had been there. Puzzled, she walked over to the north coop. Inside she was greeted by a spray of chicken feathers and dust; when it settled in the fading light, she saw Chester sprawled on his back, his clay jug overturned and empty beside him. He was awake, but his eyes were half-lidded as if he were just waking or about to drop off. His face glowed as if sunburned. The place was a mess, and Uncle Chester lay fully in it; bits of cast-off straw and chicken droppings, hen-pecked dirt and disembowelled seed-husks. “Uncle?”

      “Ah, is it you, Lily? You see what she’s done now, you see what she’s driven us to?”

      “Come on, Uncle. Your supper’s ready.”

      “You’re the loyal one, though. Chester can always count on his little Lily.” She had him by the arm, and he made a half-hearted effort to get up. “You wouldn’t drive a man to this, would you, my sweet?”

      He was up, but when she let go, his eyes rolled and he slumped back into the muck. “Where’d the room go?” he said, trying to laugh through his coughing jag. Lily was able to wrap one of his arms around her shoulder and with great difficulty manoeuvre him out of the coop and onto the path that led to the house. The odours of whiskey and offal contended in the evening air.

      “You always thought she was so damn smart, didn’t you, pickin’ this spot out. Well, you’re old enough now to be told the truth,” he said, guiding his slurs. He stopped to retch into the last of the cucumbers.

      “I’ll put some tea on,” Lily said.

      “Picked this hell-hole in a pine-bush ’cause it was next to the army reserve. They’re gonna build a fort an’ barracks right there, she says, an’ we’ll be right next to them. Some fort, eh? Nothin’ but pine trees an’ always will be! Some smart, eh?”

      They were at the house. Uncle Chester dropped to his knees and vomited copiously on the flagstones, spraying Lily in the process. Then he looked up at her as if he had just wakened from a messy dream and was wondering where he was: “Your Auntie’s a good woman,” he said softly. “An’ don’t you ever forget it.”

      “I’ll get out the tub,” Lily said. “You can just sit right here.” Lily hurried inside, got him a cup of clear tea, and then proceeded to prepare a bath. Using the extra kettles from the Templetons, she boiled enough water to almost fill the shiny metal tub they’d bought last winter to help “straighten out” his unreliable backbone. Not once had Bridie used it, nor had Lily – both of them continuing to wash at the outside pump in the sheltering dusk or once-a-week with a pail and warm water and soap in the dank kitchen.

      Lily went out to Chester with a flannel sheet, and after managing to slurp half-a-cup of tea, he wobbled to his feet and let Lily pull off his reeking shirt and trousers under cover. Somehow, with Lily keeping the sheet in place, he succeeded in removing his undervest and linens. Through the sheet Lily could see how thin his arms and legs had become in the last year, He held her hand like a little boy as he stepped into the tub, cupping his private parts in an automatic gesture. But Lily had already turned away,

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