Blackbird House (8 page)

Larkin was working in the Mortons’ bog, over in Eastham.
 
By the time he had walked there he had decided to speak with old man Morton, who was full of good advice.
 
He waited until noon, when they sat down to the meal that Morton’s wife had made them.
 
In the heat of the day, with their fingers bleeding from the morning’s efforts of replanting, Larkin asked his employer what he would do if he wanted a great deal of money, quickly.

“You’re not thinking of robbing a bank, are you?”
 
Morton laughed.
 
His hands were red all the way up to his elbows.

“I would prefer not to,” Larkin said so easily no one would imagine that, now that the idea had been set before him, he found he was open to considering robbery as an option.

“Marry a rich girl,” Morton suggested.

“None would have me.”
 
Which was true enough.

They were eating biscuits and Mary Morton’s beans,

flavored with onions and lard.
 
Larkin had been a good worker, and Morton one of the best cranberry men he’d worked for.

“Honest truth?
 
There’s only one way for a man like you to make fast money these days.
 
Sell your soul.”

Now it was Larkin’s turn to laugh.
 
Then he thought of the blackfish, already being cut up and divided.
 
He thought of the mud, and of the baby looking up into the pink sky.

“Who would buy it?
 
It’s not worth much.”

“It’s worth three hundred dollars.
 
One of those substitute brokers up in Boston would gladly pay you that.
 
In turn, you go to fight in place of some boy whose family has enough to keep him home and safe.”

“I’ve got the blind eye.”
 
Larkin was thinking about three hundred dollars and how he would never in his lifetime earn that much, how he would still be working other men’s properties when he was as old as Morton.

“They don’t give a damn about blind eyes if you’re willing to go in another man’s place.
 
Hell, you could have hooves and they’d take you and they’d make you pretty welcome, I’d wager, if you were idiot enough to make a trade like that.”

Walking home that day, Larkin felt less tired than he usually did.
 
The air still smelled bad, but he paid no attention.
 
He kept thinking about that three hundred dollars and the baby; it was as though he’d never had a thought before.
 
His head was filling up with ideas, and there was nothing he could do about it, not any more than he could stop the ringing in his ears.

When he neared the dike road, he could hear the voices of his neighbors, and the song of the few blackfish left alive.
 
The men had taken saws into the bay to set to work; even the smallest children were out there helping, racing over the muck with buckets and carts.
 
Here was enough oil to last all year; the slim time grown fat with death.
 
Larkin might have earned some extra money if he’d pitched in, but it wouldn’t be enough for his plans.
 
It wouldn’t be three hundred dollars.
 
The next day, instead of going to work, he went down to the town hall.
 
He had never missed a day of work before, unless he had a fever; he figured that when Morton wondered where he was, never in a lifetime would he guess that Larkin was discussing buying that old farm he liked to look at so much.

He signed a promissory note that very day, although what he was promising he didn’t yet have.
 
That evening he bathed in a tub of hot water, and he scrubbed his hands until they were raw.
 
They were still red, and perhaps they always would be, so he put on his gloves before he went out.
 
He told Mrs.
 
Dill he was off to the tavern, though he was headed in the other direction, guided by a moon that was still fat and so white it hurt a man’s eyes to see its light, especially a man like Larkin, who could only see so far.

He managed to find the barn, half blind or not.
 
It was a squat, unappealing structure, set so close to the marsh that at full-moon high tide water rushed underneath the building, lulling the skinny cows and the one mule to sleep.
 
None of these creatures made a sound when Larkin let himself in, or as he climbed up the steps to Lucinda Parker’s lodgings.
 
She was sitting by the window, from which she could see the silver splash of the high tide.
 
She was so used to a man coming into her room uninvited she didn’t even blink.
 
The baby was in a basket that had been used for chicken feed; there were little sunflower seeds and suet sticking to his arms and legs.
 
He threw his fists into the air when Larkin leaned over the basket.
 
The baby looked stronger tonight.
 
The kind of hardy boy any man would want for a son.

“You’ve been feeding him well.”

“I haven’t got much of a choice.
 
I’ve got milk dripping so that I have to bind myself when I go out.”

She didn’t tell Larkin that she’d been letting her milk dry up, painful as that was, offering the baby a rag soaked with cow’s milk rather than her own breast.

Larkin placed the basket on the floor; he bent and let the baby try to catch his finger.

“I signed a note for the farm across the bay.
 
I’m taking the steamer

into Boston tomorrow to collect the money”

Lucinda snorted.
 
She had reason to be nervous.
 
What if Reedy came tonight and found out about the baby?
 
She was supposed to get rid of it, but here it was still in the basket.
 
What if Reedy hit her in front of this boy, Larkin?

What if he hit the boy instead?
 
Lucinda knew how to use a rifle; her brother had taught her before he’d run off, leaving her to fend for herself.
 
If she’d had a rifle still, she’d be happy to shoot William Reedy dead without a second thought if he came after them.

“Who’d be foolish enough to give you money?”
 
Lucinda grabbed the basket and moved it back beside the bed.
 
When the baby cried at night, she had no choice but to feed him, just to silence him, even if she did feel his heart beat against hers.

Larkin told her about the substitute brokers in Boston, and how he planned to sign himself over to serve the Union in exchange for another fellow’s freedom; how he’d return on the steamer to pay off the farm so that Lucinda and the baby could move in.

Lucinda went to her bureau and took out everything she owned.
 
A shawl, a prayer book, two skirts, the milk-soaked rags for the baby to suck on when it fussed.

“You don’t think I’m letting you out of my sight, do you?”
 
she said when Larkin seemed puzzled.
 
“We’re coming with you to Boston.
 
We’ll be with you when you get paid.”

They left long before dawn, when the cows and the mule were still sleeping in the damp stalls, as the high tide rushed out from beneath the rickety foundation of the barn.
 
Larkin carried the basket for the baby tied to his back; Lucinda had all she owned plus the child.
 
They walked to Provincetown in silence, though it took them the best part of the morning.
 
It was a hot day.
 
The ruts in the sandy road were deep, better for carts and horses than men and women.
 
Lucinda didn’t really remember having parents, only her brother, the one who’d run away out west.
 
Larkin reminded her of her brother, as a matter of fact, walking too fast, not bothering to talk, although he once pointed to the sky when red-tailed hawks were circling.
 
The air was still acrid; whale fat was being cooked in kettles in the best part of three towns, and the stripped corpses left on the beach were baking in the sun.

At last they came to the rise from which they could see the harbor in Provincetown.
 
Larkin gulped in the air, the cool, salt-smelling breeze from the north.
 
He might never be back.
 
Might never again walk down that lane where oaks and pitch pine grew, or gaze at that old house where a pear tree took up most of the yard, and the fields were overrun by sweet peas and meadow grass.

Larkin used his savings to pay for their passage.
 
It was a rough crossing, despite the mild weather.
 
Possibly the storm was leagues under the sea, some underwater catastrophe that had caused the blackfish to school in such huge numbers, then lose their way.
 
Lucinda leaned over the side railing and vomited, but she didn’t complain.

Perhaps other passengers took them for a couple: the handsome

young man who wore gloves, and the plain older woman with their child.
 
Assuredly they were united in one thing, their goal of getting to Boston unnoticed.

Lucinda, however, didn’t seem to trust Larkin.
 
They took a room in an inn near the docks, but she refused to stay there and wait.
 
Instead, she followed him to the address of a substitute broker on Milk Street.
 
Even then, she didn’t seem to want to let him out of her sight.

“Pretend you can hear even if you can’t, so no one will think you’re deaf.
 
Get the money in your hand before you sign any documents,” she told him, the way she might have advised her brother if he hadn’t run off and left her, if he’d been the one trying to change her world.

When Larkin went inside to the brokers, Lucinda leaned up against the

wooden building.
 
She should have been exhausted.
 
The sleepless night,

the walk to Province-town, the six hours on the steamer, the walk to

Milk Street.
 
Instead, she felt as though something had boiled her

blood.
 
She felt awake for the first time.
 
She’d never been to Boston,

and she fell instantly in love with the city.
 
The more crowded the

better.
 
Everything was glorious to her: the scent of horseflesh, and

bakeries, and coffee, and tar.
 
She held the baby over her shoulder

when he cried and patted his back.
 
She thought about the day when her

brother left.
 
He’d been given over to be raised by a farmer in Truro,

while Lucinda had gone to the Reedys’.
 
He’d had his rifle over his

shoulder on the day he ran, and he hadn’t

been more than fourteen.
 
She hadn’t blamed him for taking off, not at all.
 
If she’d been a boy, she would have done the same.
 
She would have disappeared long ago.

Larkin came out an enlisted soldier in the Union Army, with three hundred dollars in silver, a uniform, and a rifle he’d had to pay for.

“They made you buy your own gun?”
 
Lucinda drew him into a doorway so she could count the money then and there and make certain they hadn’t been cheated.

When she was satisfied, they went back to the inn, where they’d registered as husband and wife.
 
Larkin folded his uniform onto a chair, and placed the rifle atop the pile.
 
Lucinda went down to a food stand on the docks and brought back fried fish and beans.
 
After they’d eaten, Lucinda took off all her clothes and got into the lumpy bed. She hadn’t had any sleep for twenty-four hours, and she needed some now.

“If he cries during the night,” she said of the baby, “let him suck on one of those milk-rags.”

Larkin stretched out on the floor, beside the baby’s basket.
 
The harbor was noisy, and shouts echoed from the taverns and the coffeehouses, but Larkin was so tired he fell asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.
 
He dreamed about the farm, about tall grass and pear trees.
 
He dreamed about cranberries.
 
He could always tell when it was time to harvest from a tiny fraction of change in their shade from red to crimson to scarlet.
 
He heard something once, in the middle of the night, the baby whimpering, but before Larkin could rouse himself and get one of the milk-rags, Lucinda reached down and took the baby into bed beside her.
 
Then it was quiet.

When Larkin woke in the morning, sunlight was streaming through the dusty window.
 
The sound of the docks rose up, men and boats, crates delivered, teams of horses.
 
Larkin felt a thickness in his throat.
 
He felt some sort of strange loss.
 
He had two days to report to the fort in Braintree, and from there he’d be sent on with his division.
 
But all he could think about was here and now, this one morning, this one room.
 
He sat up and waited for his good eye to focus.
 
The bed was empty; that was the first thing he noticed.
 
He felt an ache in his chest.
 
Lucinda was gone.
 
He grabbed his jacket and reached into the pocket.
 
Now he was confused.
 
The money he’d gotten from the broker was still there.
 
He went to the window and looked out at the sea.
 
The sunlight was blinding.

Larkin went to sit in the chair beside the bed to think things over, and that was when he saw the basket.
 
He leaned over and looked down at the baby, sleeping, the tiny chest rising and falling.
 
Lucinda had left her clothes on the floor, the homespun dress, the muddy under slip She’d torn the bedding so she could bind her breasts hard against her chest before she put on the uniform.
 
Then she’d cut off her hair and left it on the bureau.
 
The color was pretty, gray and brown intertwined, like marsh grass.