A Difficult Boy (12 page)

“Months? Lad, I never seen him at all before the day we got here.”

“You never—? You mean he was gone four
years
before you came?”

“We were lucky. Some folk never got sent for at all.”

Ethan puzzled over what it might be like to wait and wait and never get sent for. He studied Daniel's face to see if it was safe to ask any more questions. “What did your pa do? I mean, for work?”

“Build things. Canals and dams and mills and houses and such.”

“Was he sorry to go? Did he miss you and your mama? Did your mama miss him very much?”

Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. “Why ever are you asking so many questions for?”

“Just trying to be friendly, that's all,” Ethan said hastily.

“Why?” Daniel's eyebrows rose, and he looked truly bewildered.

“Everybody needs friends,” Ethan said.

“Not everybody.” Daniel uncrossed his arms and studied the wooden horse again.

“But you have friends, don't you? From school, maybe?”

“I'm too old for school.”

“I mean when you used to go.”

Daniel shrugged. “Who wants to be friends with the likes of Joshua Ward?”

“Oh.” Ethan winced to recall that, for a little while, he had wanted to be friends with the likes of Joshua Ward's brothers. “I wish I'd'a seen Joshua Ward's face when you hit him.”

Daniel shook his head. “I don't fancy it'll happen again. I'm not fool enough to tackle him twice.” But the corner of his mouth curled upward. Then he was on his feet again. He placed the horse on the windowsill overlooking the western landscape. “I could teach you, maybe, in a year or so, when you're bigger,” he said, more to the horse than to Ethan. “To ride, I mean. If you promise not to tell.”

“Of course I wouldn't.”

Daniel nodded without turning away from the window. “Your da's not simple, and neither are you.” Although the comment had nothing to do with horses, wooden or real, in a funny way Ethan understood that it was all connected somehow. Daniel headed for the stairs, leaving the horse to stand guard.

“Where're you going?” Ethan asked.

“Privy.”

The sun disappeared behind the mountains, the sky deepened from turquoise to indigo, and Daniel didn't return. The sky was black and pinpricked with stars when a noise roused Ethan from an uneasy dream. It took him a moment to come fully awake and realize that it was Daniel throwing off his clothes and putting on the old shirt he usually slept in. Daniel tiptoed over to the window, ran a finger once along the wooden horse's back, then slipped into bed. He fell into a restless sleep, tossing and pulling at the blankets and muttering in that strange language he shared with the mare.

Mr. Bingham's nose almost touched the page as he followed the loops and crosses of his numbers and letters. Ethan was amazed that such handsome letters could flow from the pen of someone with Mr. Bingham's cramped posture and feeble eyesight.

A tall, reedy man in his late twenties, Lucius Bingham had grown stoop-shouldered from years of having to peer too closely at the world in order to bring it into focus. Spectacles as thick as the bottoms of tumblers perched on his nose, their lenses blue-tinted to protect his eyes from the light. The blue glass turned the clerk's amber-colored eyes an unearthly shade of milky green, so that his irises seemed to float inside the glass of his spectacles.

“Is it very hard minding Mr. Lyman's books?” Ethan asked.

“Hard?” Mr. Bingham's head bobbed up. His questing eyes sought but didn't quite meet Ethan's. “I shouldn't say it's harder than any other work. It's all a matter of—” He tilted his head as he sought the word.

“Discipline?” Ethan guessed.

Mr. Bingham chuckled. “Discipline? What has that to do with accounts? No—no, it's—umm—accuracy, precision, paying attention to details.” The muscles around his eyes relaxed. A flash of milky green showed in his spectacles as he found the word. “Order.” He spoke to himself more than to
Ethan. “Yes. Order . . . hmmmm. Now how could I forget that? . . . So simple. Simple . . . And logic, logic, of course. It's all logical. Logic and order, yes.” His head tipped to one side, his squint settling firmly on Ethan this time. “Well, I suppose there's a bit of discipline to that, isn't there?”

“Did it take you a long time to learn what all the books are for?”

“Oh, well, a bit . . . a bit. Until I saw the logic of it.”

“Can you teach me?” Ethan asked. If he learned how the books worked, maybe he could help Pa sort out his accounts. If he only understood how it all worked, maybe he could figure out some way to pay off the debts sooner, some way out of his indenture, some way to get back home again, where he belonged.

Mr. Bingham chuckled and peered more closely at Ethan. “You're a bit young for all that, aren't you? Bore you . . . bore you to tears . . . yes, to tears.”

“I'm old enough to go out to work. I'm old enough to learn about money and accounts and—and everything.”

Mr. Bingham's sandy eyebrows rose. “Everything? Surely not . . . not everything.” He smiled kindly.

“Wouldn't it please Pa—and Mr. Lyman, too,” Ethan added hastily, “if I could be learning while I work here? I'm sure you could teach me ever so much more than I could learn in school.”

“Well . . .” Mr. Bingham drew himself up a little bit straighter. “Perhaps . . . perhaps.”

“I have to work in the summers now, 'stead of going to school. If you taught me some about figuring and all that, I wouldn't get behind, would I? I bet if you taught me, I'd go back to school in the winter smarter'n anybody there.”

Mr. Bingham patted Ethan's shoulder. “Ambitious, are you?” he said. “Like me when I was your age. All right, then.”
He slipped his fingers under the page, his palm showing through the onionskin-thin paper. “This is the waste book, see—cheap paper because it's only the quick notes we take as the day goes by. In here we write down everything just as it happens: sales, purchases, credit, cash . . . right away, you see, so we don't forget . . . don't forget.” His nose dipped closer to the page, as if an entry there had suddenly caught his attention. “Yes. Don't forget. Hmmm.” His voice drifted off, his head nodding over the book. For a moment, Ethan thought Mr. Bingham had fallen asleep, but then the clerk bobbed back up so quickly that Ethan nearly jumped.

“Then, at the end of the day—or maybe sometimes during the day, if it's quiet . . . quiet, yes . . . we copy everything in a neat, fair hand—very neat, mind—into Mr. Lyman's journal.” His long fingers reached under the counter, where two red-and-brown marbled volumes rested. He lifted the top one, thudded it onto the counter, and flipped it open at random.

Ethan recognized Mr. Bingham's handsome swirls in some entries, but most were in a stronger, more vertical hand. “Who writes in this one?” he asked.

“Oh—ah, depends . . . depends. On a quiet day, or when Mr. Lyman's away, I do the entries. But if he's here, he takes care of them. To spare my eyes, you see . . . you see. Very wearing on the eyes, bookwork. Yes, indeed, very wearing.” The muscles around Mr. Bingham's eyes squeezed tighter, in what Ethan supposed was a blink, but when the blink was over, Ethan could see no more of the clerk's eyes than when they'd been closed. “Or he takes them home to work on, so I needn't stay late after closing. Because of my mother, you see.”

“Um . . . your mother?” Ethan asked. Mr. Bingham and his mother and sister rented a little house near the common.
Ethan didn't know what had happened to Mr. Bingham's father, though Ethan supposed he must be dead. There was also a brother who had moved out west. The clerk always kept the most recent letter from his brother in his pocket and would read it when anyone asked.

“Not well. No, not well at all. Mr. Lyman's good . . . very good about it.” Mr. Bingham smiled, exposing a chipped tooth and the gap where its neighbor had once been. “Lets me go before my time if she's poorly, you see.” His head bobbed toward Ethan. He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. “You've a good master, Ethan. Very good.” He took off his spectacles and rubbed them with his handkerchief. “There aren't many would give work to a man with eyes like mine.”

“How—how bad are they?” Ethan said. “I mean, if you don't mind me asking. . . .”

Mr. Bingham held his hand about a foot in front of his face. “I can see perfectly well to here with my spectacles.” The hand moved to touch his nose. “Here without 'em. And beyond here . . .” He gestured around the store. “They let me see shapes, mostly . . . shapes. And these are the best I've had yet . . . best yet . . . mmmm. Got 'em from a peddler last year.” When he bent down, his nose brushed Ethan's ear. “But don't tell Mr. Lyman, eh?” he whispered, his chuckle tickling the boy's cheek. Mr. Bingham straightened. He nodded toward Ethan, one eye squeezed tighter than the other, a finger to his lips. Then he glanced down at the journal and remembered the lesson he'd been giving Ethan. “The journals,” he murmured. “What about the journals? Oh, yes. The day's debits and credits all get copied into the journals, you see? Just in the order they happened . . . happened.”

Ethan nodded.

“And then Mr. Lyman has his ledgers in the storeroom.”

“The big brown books?”

Mr. Bingham nodded. “Everybody has his own page, all in order. Your father would be under the Rs, and he'd have his own page with everything that he owes and everything he's paid all written up . . . written up together. Then when he wants to check his account, Mr. Lyman just looks it up in the ledger for him. You see?”

“What about the other book?” Ethan asked, remembering the small account book Mr. Lyman had pulled out of his secretary and written in after the incident of the broken plate.

“Other?”

“The black one. The one Mr. Lyman carries back and forth from the house. What does he do with that one?”

“I don't know . . . don't know. I don't take care of that one. . . .” Mr. Bingham squinted hard as he thought. “He's a very busy man, Mr. Lyman . . . very busy. It must be hard to remember all the things he has to do . . . things to order . . . bills to be paid . . . debts owed to him. Perhaps he uses it to remind himself . . . remind himself. . . .”

“Mmmmm-hmmm.” Ethan propped himself on the counter, supporting his weight on his elbows and letting his feet dangle so his toes brushed the floor. He flipped pages in the journal. Mr. Bingham had been right; it was boring—just lines of words and numbers. How, he wondered, was he going to pay attention closely enough to learn what he needed?

Mr. Bingham cleared his throat. “It's not just numbers though . . . not just numbers. There's a story in every one of 'em . . . a story. You can see who's making a new dress . . . new dress. See? Mrs. Aldrich bought twelve yards of calico . . . calico. If you can see the story behind it, then it all makes sense . . . makes sense.”

Ethan nodded. He stared at the page harder, looking for familiar names, trying to figure out their stories. For a few minutes, the entries remained a meaningless jumble, then, like untangling a thread, he found himself able to tease loose some sense from it. Mr. Bailey had a sweet tooth; he'd bought a pound each of horehound candy and lemon drops. Mrs. Holcomb was making extra money sewing shoe uppers and braiding straw for hats. “It's like a puzzle,” he said. “Like a game.” Seeing it that way, all of a sudden it wasn't quite so boring anymore.

“Not a game . . . no, no . . . this is serious,” Mr. Bingham scolded.

“Well, it has rules, doesn't it?” Ethan said. “And you're not s'posed to cheat.”

Mr. Bingham had to laugh at that. “No,” he said. “You're not supposed to cheat . . . to cheat.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Nye said, shaking her head. “That number never seems to get any smaller, does it?” She laid an arthritis-twisted finger along the entry in Mr. Lyman's journal.

“Don't you mind that, Mrs. Nye,” Mr. Lyman said. “Your credit's always good here.”

“You're a very patient man,” she said with a smile.

“You'll pay me when you can,” he said, taking her elbow. “Now sit down and I'll put your order together.”

Ethan didn't think he'd ever seen Mr. Lyman so gentle, not even with Mrs. Lyman or the baby. He guided Mrs. Nye to a chair as though she were as fragile as a butterfly. Ethan wondered how such an insubstantial-looking old lady could ever have gone out at all times of day, in all sorts of weather, mid-wifing just about every woman in town.

Mr. Lyman took Mrs. Nye's list from her hand and sent Ethan and Mr. Bingham bustling about the store for her
goods. Ethan had caught a glance at the list, and it had seemed nothing but a bunch of indecipherable scribbles. He wasn't sure how Mr. Lyman knew what to get.

Ethan carefully wrapped a piece of paper around the three nutmegs that Mr. Lyman had told him to fetch. When he came up next to Mr. Lyman to put the tiny parcel in Mrs. Nye's basket, the storekeeper was measuring out a bolt of blue calico against the yardstick affixed to the counter. As he measured, he and Mrs. Nye chatted about who'd visited her lately and what news she'd heard, how the weather affected her arthritis, what Mrs. Lyman should do for the baby's rash . . .

Ethan found himself staring at the cloth unrolled across the counter. At first, he didn't quite understand what had drawn his attention. Then he realized that Mr. Lyman was measuring each yard a good two to three inches short. He blinked. No doubt the storekeeper was distracted by Mrs. Nye's conversation and wasn't paying attention. “Sir—” Ethan said tentatively.