Heart So Hungry (7 page)

According to his verbal rendition, he had never given up but had been rendered ineffectual by a temporary insanity produced by the adverse conditions. According to the letter, he had tried several times to find Laddie’s tent but then, flour bag in hand, had made a conscious and deliberate decision to give up. Not until later had he become delusional and started hearing “a woman’s voice.”

Moreover, in his letter Wallace seemed to go out of his way to identify Hubbard as the weakest member of the party. He wrote, “Before we began our retreat from the big lake I had lost thirteen inches in waist measure. Our bones were sticking through the skin. We had not shaved or cut our hair, and our appearance must have
been pitiable. I know the others looked, especially Hubbard, like walking skeletons.”

Especially Hubbard
. Mina knew how her husband would have hated being described as pitiable. Worse yet to be singled out as the most pitiable of the group.

“We had several miles to run on a small river with dangerous rapids,” Wallace wrote. “Hubbard tried to manage one with George, and nearly wrecked it. Then George and I ran the rest, and took desperate chances, always, however, with success.”

And more: “At length one day Hubbard could not carry his little pack into camp, and I made him put it down and follow without any load. I returned and got his pack.”

At the end of that same paragraph: “Hubbard gave out.”

And later: “I sat up nearly all night keeping the fire going to warm Hubbard.”

It seemed to Mina that throughout his letter Wallace portrayed Laddie as a pathetic creature who required caretaking, but painted himself as the strong, devoted friend who uncomplainingly shouldered the burden.

Most infuriating of all, and the baldest of his criticisms, was this, early in the letter:

How easy it was to say, at the end of the journey, how the venture could have been improved. But had Wallace voiced any of these concerns before the expedition began? Had he predicted the especially brutal weather or the atypical lack of game? Each time Mina read his letter, her feelings for him darkened a little more.

Mina and Wallace met again a few days after Thanksgiving. He arrived at her door a changed man, all eagerness and grins and several pounds heavier than when last he had visited. She found his ebullience more than a little repugnant, but he was beside himself with “happy news.” He had finished the manuscript, the book about Leon. Here it was, hers to read. The writing had gone much more easily than he had expected, he said. It had been just as she had promised; once he got started it all came back to him, every snowflake and gust of wind, every ripple on the water.

He placed the manuscript in her hands as if it were something precious, something miraculous. But no, he could not sit still while she read, he would take a walk into town, have some lunch, allow her adequate time to work through it.

And when he returned hours later, cheeks glowing, wearing a grin of anticipation, he found Mina’s cheeks flushed as well, though not a hint of smile graced her mouth.

“Kindly explain to me,” she said, even as he was taking his seat on the sofa, “kindly explain to me how it serves my husband’s memory to give voice to his critics.”

Wallace was momentarily stunned. All he could think to say was “I beg your pardon?”

“Right here,” she said, and jabbed a fingertip on the manuscript’s final page. Both her finger and her voice quivered. “‘The critics,’”she read, said that Hubbard was foolhardy, and without proper preparation he plunged blindly into an unknown wilderness.’”

“But Mina—”

“‘Others tell how fish-nets might have been made from willow bark.’”

“But if you read further—”

“‘It has been said that, even had Hubbard succeeded in accomplishing everything he set out to do, the result would have been of little or no value to the world.’”

“I only point out the criticisms so that I can refute them.”

“‘Doubtless some will see in his life’s struggle only to win for himself a recognized place as a writer and expert upon out-of-door life.’” Her voice was high and tight as she read, her face ghostly pale where not splotched scarlet. The irises of her eyes were wide and dark.

“Mina,” he said, and considered reaching out to her, calming her with his touch. But the rigidity of her posture kept him at bay. “How can I refute the criticisms if I do not first acknowledge them?”

“To acknowledge them at all is to give them credence!”

“I cannot agree. It is my duty as a writer to—”

She laughed out loud, an explosive syllable of derision. A writer, indeed! How dare he think of himself in those terms? Her Laddie was a writer, but this hackneyed thing she held in her hands, this was the work of no writer.

She drew from beneath the manuscript a piece of folded newsprint, which she unfolded and held up for Wallace to see. “This,” she said evenly, “this, I have come to realize, was the beginning of the problem. There would not now be such an onslaught of criticism against Laddie had you not propagated it yourself.”

Wallace leaned forward to better see the newsprint, his brow knitted. “I assure you that I said nothing to disparage him. I never would.”

“Have you forgotten the letter you wrote to your sister? The one that appeared in the
New York Times?”

“I haven’t forgotten it, no. But I said nothing—”

“‘ …
we plunged madly
into the interior of an unknown country,’” she read. “‘For our trip we should have had 550 pounds of flour … 200 pounds of bacon or pork … and so on all down the line.’”

“That isn’t criticism, Mina, it’s … it’s hindsight.”

“‘Hubbard tried to manage the canoe through one with George
and nearly wrecked it
. Then George and I ran the rest, and took desperate chances,
always, however, with success.’”

Wallace looked at his hands. “Again, Mina, it was never intended as criticism.”

“‘ … Hubbard could not carry
his little pack
into camp, and I made him put it down and follow without any load.
I returned
and got his pack.’”

“It’s what happened. I wrote about what happened, that’s all. Naturally, if you emphasize certain words, it is going to sound like something other than it really was.”

“The
Times
referred to your letter as ‘the first authentic information of the death of Leonidas Hubbard Jr.’ So when you, in your own words, condemn Laddie for a lack of preparation, then portray him as an incompetent canoeist and a weakling whom you, the brave, successful canoeist and devoted friend, were forced to coddle … how could you not foresee the kind of public criticisms that would follow? Every one of them merely echoes what you yourself have said!”

“Perhaps, when I wrote that letter … I don’t know, maybe I merely wanted to reassure my sister of my own well-being.”

“Then here,” she said, returning her attention to the manuscript, thumbing quickly through the pages. “Here you write, ‘He was just a boy, really.’ A
boy
, Mr. Wallace? You dare to call a man of his accomplishments a boy? Was that for your sister’s benefit as well?”

“I only meant that, him being ten years my junior—”

“What you meant is certainly not what you wrote. Is that how a writer functions?”

“If I failed to make myself clear, I will certainly take all necessary steps …”

She flipped the pages over, returned to the beginning of the manuscript. “‘It will have to be taken into consideration how hard pressed Hubbard was by the fear that the short summer would end before he had completed his work.’ By this statement you imply that the Naskapi River was missed because my husband failed to take proper time to survey the lake.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth. Why, just a few lines earlier I make it perfectly clear that the—”

She strode forward and dropped the manuscript onto his lap. “It will have to be redone, Mr. Wallace.”

Again he found himself at a loss for words. “If there are a few places, a few phrases you object to—”

“There are numerous places! Dozens of ill-chosen words! You will find each and every one of them marked with my pen.”

He leafed through the manuscript. At least one of her marks—an underlining, a circle, a comment scribbled in the margin, a whole paragraph crossed out with an X—could be found every few pages.

“You can begin with the dedication,” she told him.

She had circled the entire thing, then drawn an X through it, then driven a thick blue line from start to finish.
Here, b’y, is the issue of our plighted troth
.

He tried to explain himself. “It harks back to the toast we made one another in your presence, Mina. When Leon and I first agreed to undertake the venture together.”

“I thought then and I think still that your words were poorly chosen.”

“How so?”

“I
am his betrothed, Mr. Wallace. Not you.”

“I only meant that we made a pledge to one another, that we … entered into a partnership as …”

“As enduring as marriage?
As sacred as the vows of matrimony?”

He could not bring himself to look at her. Her voice was like a knife in his ear, an ice pick, so cold and sharp. He stared at the first page of the manuscript on his lap. The words swam before his eyes, broken bits of blackened leaves aswirl on frothy water. Mina turned and crossed to the door, threw it open and stared out across the empty yard, the long and empty horizon, her heart beating wildly, the blood hammering in her head. Never in her life had she raised her voice in this manner.

It seemed to her an eternity before Wallace finally pulled himself to his feet. With the manuscript tucked under an arm, he came to stand beside her. “I think, Mina, that when you have had an opportunity to reconsider your remarks today—”

She glared at him. “Your last line,” she said. “Exactly what did you mean by that?”

He knew it by heart, had laboured over it for quite some time.
Perhaps it is God’s will that I finish the work of exploration that Hubbard began
.

“It was his suggestion.”

“You intend to make the trip again? The trip that
he
conceived of and planned?”

Not for my glory, Wallace thought. For his.

But before he could find his tongue she told him, “I wish to have his notes and photographs returned to me at the earliest opportunity.”

As a lawyer, Wallace knew well the advisability of a measured response. He took two steps past her, across the threshold, out onto the small covered porch. Then, only half-turning, refusing to meet her gaze, he said, “I’m sorry, Mina. I have need of those.”

Her hand tightened around the glass doorknob. “I will look forward to a revision of the manuscript.”

He was about to say
I have no intention
, but she stepped back and closed the door, careful to close it softly lest the entire planet be made to rattle with her rage.

Only when she heard his footsteps going down off the porch, slow and halting, did she unlock her fingers from around the faceted knob and place those stinging fingers to her mouth and allow the flood of tears to come again.

Mount Repose Cemetery in mid-December was grey and cold. The trees were bare and the only scent carried up from the river valley was that of chimney smoke. Gusting winds blew swirls of snow along the hillside. Behind a fir tree near the top of the hill Mina
stood huddled in a long black woollen coat, her hands in a fur muff, a cloth hat pulled low over her forehead. The spreading branches of the fir tree, its needles frosted with snow, shielded her not only from the wind but from the eyes of any passersby on the road below.

The Reverend Dr. Sawyer, who these past months had been doing his utmost to comfort Mina, waited in the open beside Leon’s grave, several yards lower on the hill. His carriage, an economical Dearborn, was parked along the side of the road. Mina could see the sorrel’s breath each time the mare snorted, could see her own exhalations one white puff after another. She wondered if that was what the soul looked like when it floated free from the body, a wisp of breath invisible in an instant, suddenly freed.

Finally there came the sound of another carriage, the muted clop of hooves on snowy ground. Mina peeked around the tree. A hack, rented in Williamstown, pulled up behind Dr. Sawyer’s carriage. A moment later George Elson climbed out, dressed in his brown, rough clothes, the heavy trousers and jacket. His hands and head were bare. He came straight up the hill toward Dr. Sawyer. And that was one of the things Mina liked most about George, the way he could take one glance at a situation, size it up, then act decisively and without hesitation.

He came to the graveside and shook Dr. Sawyer’s hand. The reverend spoke briefly. George turned just enough to look uphill toward the fir tree, and nodded once. But before walking up to meet her he faced the grave, stood there motionless. And Mina was grateful for that as well, that George felt the need for a few moments with her Laddie. The two men had obviously been very fond of one another.

Eventually George came up the hill and walked around to her side of the tree. She pulled both hands from the muff and grasped his hand in hers. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said.

“Thank you for sending the ticket money.”

She could feel the strength in his hand, the cold, hard, callused palm. Her hands seemed tiny in comparison, he thought, and so
warm. Softer than any woman’s hand on his had ever been. Back home he could never dare to hold a white woman’s hand in a public place, but here in the cemetery, with the reverend tactfully averting his gaze, George allowed himself to savour her touch.

“Don’t you want to know why I asked you to come all this way again?” she asked.

“I’m sure you’ll tell me when you’re ready to.”