The Root Cellar (7 page)

Before the boat even touched her shore, Will said crossly, “That’s the second time you spoiled it. Why’d you have to call right then?”

“I wanted you to see me.”

“Well, I see you.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Oh, get in. I got some bread and cheese you can have.” He reached into a sack he had stowed under the bow seat and pulled out cheese, bread, and four slices of dried apple. Rose perched on the seat opposite him and ate greedily.

“You didn’t go back to your schooner,” he said.

“No.”

“Where’d you stay?”

“In a field and on the road.”

“Wasn’t you cold?”

“Yes, a little,” she mumbled through a mouthful of cheese and apple.

Will offered her a jacket that was stuffed under his seat, and gratefully she accepted. He stared at her curiously for a moment, but he asked nothing more about where she had been or why. “I wasn’t planning to go home for a while yet, but I’ll take you to the shore. Susan’s free after dinner if you want to wait around.”

Rose did not want to spend the day in Will’s back yard or walking up and down the road. “I’ll stay here with you,” she said. “I know how to be quiet.” She remembered, as she said it, the hours spent sitting at dinner while her grandmother talked business or discussed politics with friends. She made herself comfortable in the bottom of the boat, her back against the stern seat. Will frowned at her but clearly he had decided, for whatever reason, not to argue with her.

“Okay,” he said, “but you got to be awful still.” With one oar he pushed the boat off the shallows and began to row across the bay. Rose had only been in boats in Central Park in New York, and in Venice, places where a man got paid to take people out for an hour. Those times
had never seemed real the way this did.

Will rowed steadily across the bay and past his own house. He anchored close to the shore by a little wood. He sat back, listening. Rose listened, too, and looked. The woods were full of sunlight and shade. The white and wine-red flowers that Will said were trilliums, the violets, and the speckled adders tongues, covered the ground in bright patterns. The smell of spring was sweet and sharp. The redwing blackbirds mixed their metallic complaints with the pretty songs of the orioles and the bluebirds. She watched the tiny water bugs skating across the surface of the bay and the gauzy red and blue and green dragonflies like miniature dancers lighting here and there on the pond lilies and cattails, and on the golden marsh marigolds growing thickly along the shore. Down through the water, minnows darted in and out among the weeds, and gray and brown stones gleamed in the dappled sunlight. She stared at her reflection in the still, clear water and it stared solemnly back at her. For the first time she did not dislike it. She thought how much a part of the woods Will looked, his hair sun-golden, his face and hands as brown as the dried leaves, his eyes deep blue as the violets.

He had picked up his flute and he played a few notes. Rose listened. She forgot where she was. She forgot who she was. She knew only
the sounds of the birds and the flute. She became part of the woods and the water, of the boat and Will.

The flute played a melody. Overhead a bird sang four notes. Pip-pip-pip-pip. The flute paused, then responded in the same four notes. The bird pipped again. The flute replied. The bird sang, ce-o-lay, ce-o-lay. Very softly the flute sang back, a conversation. Finally the bird trilled a long series of rich high notes, paused, gave a little final pip-pip-pip-pip and, with a flutter of his wings, flew off.

Gradually Rose came back to herself, back to the boat and to Will sitting on the seat opposite grinning at her. He put down his flute. “You got good luck in you,” he said quietly. “I been trying to do that for months.”

Rose felt a smile grow inside her, almost in spite of herself. She felt very happy. The thought came, suddenly and unbidden, that she loved Will. “I’m going to marry Will,” she decided. Sure he must have read her mind, she blushed. She had never before even thought about loving anyone. She felt very self-conscious and very much aware of Will smiling across at her. She looked down at her feet, at Will’s feet, at the oars resting in their locks. Desperate to say something to ease the moment she stammered, “Can … can I row?”

“Do you know how?”

“No.”

So Will showed her how to hold the oars properly and to pull them at just the right angle and, before long, though a bit lopsidedly and now and again in complete circles, Rose was rowing. She rowed strongly for quite a while, aware all the time of her new, confused feelings. She wanted to reach over to Will as he sat playing softly on his flute. She wanted to tell him she’d decided she meant to marry him. At the same time she was terrified he would find out. Being much practiced at willing her mind from things she did not want to think about, she began to ask questions about those things she figured she ought to know.

“What year is this, Will?”

“Huh?”

“What date is it?”

“Why, it’s the tenth of June.”

“But what year is it?”

“Year? 1862, same as it was yesterday. It’s the month of the Methodist camp meeting in Soames, though I don’t suppose you know about that.”

1862. Then it was the Civil War they were talking about. Rose remembered lessons with her grandmother. The American Civil War, the war between the North and the South, Abraham Lincoln’s war. “Is the war on here?” she asked.

“No, it ain’t. The war’s got nothing to do with us, though there’s strong feelings about it. We don’t mostly hold with the South. We don’t believe in slavery. There’s a few fellers gone over to join the Union army for the North. Jim Heaton’s gone. Mostly we ain’t much for war around here, but some of us has come over from the States. My ma come from Oswego, so all her relatives is there. So did Jim Heaton’s.”

“I’m glad the war isn’t here. I don’t even like war movies.”

“What’s that?”

Rose realized what she had said and quickly changed the subject. “Do you go to school, Will?”

“No more I don’t. I went up through the third book, but I ain’t been in a couple of years. Teacher was a mean feller. He used the switch something terrible, even on the little mites. One day he strung Ned Bother up by the thumbs and I punched him. Laid him out flat. I ain’t been back since.”

“A teacher could do that?”

“Yep. Don’t you go to school?”

“My grandmother taught me at home but she died. I guess I was lucky.”

“I
guess
so! A body don’t learn much crammed in with all them other kids, some of ’em only five, some of ’em as old as fifteen, with some devil standing up front for a teacher.”

“Can you read?”

“Yep.”

“And you can play music, too!”

“Old Mr. Lestrie down to Soames taught me that.” Rose noticed there was awe in Will’s voice when he spoke of the music teacher. “Now give over them oars and I’ll bring us in. I got work to do.”

Will rowed them swiftly to the shore, leaped out, and tied up the boat. Rose jumped out after him.

“I’ll see you after dinner,” he promised, and off he went whistling up the slope.

Rose stayed a long while by the water thinking about Will, now she was alone. She made a daydream in which the two of them were living in the big house—“and Susan can live with us,” she decided. She watched Will as he made his way through the orchard with a bucket in his hand.
How odd
, she thought.
Here I am with Will, and down in the United States the Civil War is happening
.

“The American Civil War was one of the worst wars in the history of the world.” She could still hear her grandmother’s rich voice in her head. “Your great-great-grandfather and his brothers fought on opposing sides in that war. He was a Union man—they were for the Confederacy, for the South. When it was over his brothers were dead and he came to live in
the north. He was never happy, but he believed in the union, in one country, and he hated slavery so he had to fight. I remember him talking about it when he was an old man and I was a small child. He loved Abraham Lincoln with a passion.” Rose had never forgotten those words, partly because it was such a sad story and partly because of the unwonted passion in her grandmother’s own voice as she had told it. She had shown Rose a picture of a fierce-looking old man holding a top hat, and they had taken a trip to Richmond, Virginia, where great-great-grandfather had come from, and to Washington, D.C., to see the statue of Abraham Lincoln.

It seemed only a few minutes later when she glanced up to see Will going into the house.

It can’t be dinner time already. It’s not dark
. She hurried up the slope and stationed herself beside a big maple tree not far from the root cellar. In a few moments Will came out, and Susan was with him. Will was carrying a large basket. Susan smiled and waved. “Here you are,” she called, “and we’ve brought our dinner to have with you. Come along and let’s take it out to the orchard.”

They spread a fresh white cloth out under the flowering apple trees. On it they put a plate of cold pork and potatoes, dishes of pickles and relish, thick slices of brown bread, a bowl of
stewed rhubarb, a pitcher of cream, and a cake. Rose thought she had never eaten such a delicious meal in all her life.

When they had eaten everything, Rose and Susan sat with their backs against the trees, and Will stretched out on the ground watching a line of ants carry away the last crumbs of cake. Susan had to hear about the night Rose had spent by the road.

“You must have been up as far as Bothers’, and that dog of theirs is a bad one. Him and me don’t get along all that good, though he’s never offered to bite me yet. You’re a brave one. I guess that’s why you work on the boats and wear britches,” she said admiringly.

Rose looked from Will to Susan. “What I told you isn’t true,” she said. “I’ve never been on a ship. I don’t have a father. I don’t have a mother either.”

“Same as me,” murmured Susan.

“I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I came to live with my aunt and uncle in this house one week ago—only, of course, it isn’t this house. I mean it
is
this house, only it’s more than a hundred years from now. I don’t know how it happens. It started with Mrs. Morrissay, so I think she has something to do with it.” Rose told them the story of her meeting with Mrs. Morrissay, of Aunt Nan, Uncle Bob, and the boys. She told
them how she had found the root cellar.

Both Will and Susan listened, fascinated. When Rose had finished, Susan shook her head slowly. “It don’t matter where you come from, Rose. We ain’t going to give you away to folks that use you bad.” Rose could see that Susan did not believe a word she had said, but she did not mind. No one had ever listened to her with such interest.

“That’s a fine tale!” Will sat up. “You’ve even put us Morrissays in it. It’s like some of them stories Susan’s gran used to tell about ghosts and strange critters back where she come from in Scotland. It’s the kind of story you could almost make a song out of.” He pulled his flute out of his pocket and played a few notes. “It’s kind of sad, too, but I guess it’s like Susan says, it don’t matter where you come from. I guess what matters is where you belong. Me, I ain’t always sure. I was born here, but Ma comes from across the lake in the States. Now they got this war, I feel like it’s got something to do with me. My cousin Steve over in Oswego says I’m as much Yankee as him.”

“That Steve!” Susan snorted. “He comes here from across the lake with his ma sometimes, and every time he comes him and Will get into some kind of trouble. The last time he come—just last summer—he got a hold of Will’s pa’s old shotgun and he scared all of
Bothers’ cows out of their pasture and up the road. There wasn’t a one of ’em had good milk for a week. Grandpa Bother said he’d be happy to take the gun to Steve any time Will’s ma would care to have him.”

Will grinned. “He makes things jump, all right.” They told other stories about the neighborhood, tales of storms on the lake that sank whole ships in five minutes, tales of religious camp meetings, of boisterous practical jokes and fights that went on for days. Rose could hardly imagine some of the scenes they described. She realized that Will’s name was Morrissay. She learned that Susan’s parents had been killed when their sleigh upturned through the ice on the bay and that Will did not want to farm even though he loved the land. Susan talked about being an orphan, too, and coming to work for Will’s mother. “I’m twelve now. Been here three years.” Rose could hardly believe Susan was the same age that she was. “I got to do a woman’s work,” said Susan.

It didn’t seem like more than a few moments before the sun was low over the bay and the trees were making long shadows against the ground. Cows were lowing in the distance and, before long, the Morrissays’ had joined the mournful chorus. Reluctantly Susan got up. “There goes Pearly,” she sighed, “and my half-day’s done with.”

“What are we going to do about you, Rose?” asked Will. “Where is she going to stay?” he demanded of Susan. “I guess mebbe she could stay in the barn for one night.”

Susan agreed. “We’ll just have to figure out something else after tomorrow. But first thing in the morning you’ll have to be getting back to where you come from—or finding a place that’ll take you on as a hired girl. I’m coming, Pearly!”—as the cow bellowed to be milked, and off went Susan, skirts flying, to bring her in.

Will did not get up at once. Now and then be glanced over at Rose. “Them things you said is awful funny,” he said finally. “No mind. I guess I might as well show you the barn.”

“Don’t we have to pick up the things?”

“Yep.”

They gathered up the cloth and the empty plates and bowls and carried them to the house. At the kitchen door Will took her share from Rose. “I best go in alone,” he said.

From inside his mother called plaintively, “Is that you, Will?”

Through the screen door Rose could see a woman approaching. She was tall with a long, gaunt face, large sunken eyes and gray-blond hair in a tight bun at the back of her head. Suddenly Rose was frightened. It was the look of the woman, so drab, so obviously wretched in a world that was so beautiful. She leaped
back. Without thinking where she was going she ran to the root cellar, pulled open the doors, and scurried down the steps.