The View from Castle Rock (10 page)

But why would someone have taken the trouble to have the names also added to those on the newer column above Andrew and Agnes’s grave?

It looks as if the death and burial of such a father was a matter worth recording twice over.

Nearby, close to the graves of her father and her brother Andrew and her sister-in-law Agnes, is the grave of Little Mary, married after all and buried beside Robert Murray, her husband. Women were scarce and so were prized in the new country. She and Robert did not have any children together, but after Mary’s early death he married another woman and by her he had four sons who lie here, dead at the ages of two, and three, and four, and thirteen. The second wife is there too. Her stone says
Mother.
Mary’s says
Wife.

And here is the brother James who was not lost to them, who made his way from Nova Scotia to join them, first in York and then in Esquesing, farming with Andrew. He brought a wife with him, or found her in the community. Perhaps she helped with Agnes’s babies before she started having her own. For Agnes had a great number of pregnancies, and raised many children. In a letter written to his brothers Robert and William in Scotland, telling of the death of their father, in 1829 (a cancer, not much pain until near the end, though
it eat away a great part of his cheek and jaw
), Andrew mentions that his wife has been feeling poorly for the past three years. This may be a roundabout way of saying that during those years she bore her sixth, seventh, and eighth child. She must have recovered her health, for she lived into her eighties.

Andrew gave the land that the church is built on. Or possibly sold it. It is hard to measure devoutness against business sense. He seems to have prospered, though he spread himself less than Walter. Walter married an American girl from Montgomery County in New York State. Eighteen when she married him, thirty-three when she died after the birth of her ninth child. Walter did not marry again, but farmed successfully, educated his sons, speculated in land, and wrote letters to the government complaining about his taxes, also objecting to the township’s participation in a proposed railway—the interest being squandered, he says, for the benefit of capitalists in Britain.

Nevertheless it is a fact that he and Andrew supported the British governor, Sir Francis Bond Head, who was surely representing those capitalists, against the rebellion led by their fellow Scot, William Lyon Mackenzie, in 1837. They wrote to the governor a letter of assiduous flattery, in the grand servile style of their times. Some of their descendants might wish this not to be true, but there is not much to be done about the politics of our relatives, living or dead.

And Walter was able to take a trip back to Scotland, where he had himself photographed wearing a plaid and holding on to a bouquet of thistles.

On the stone commemorating Andrew and Agnes (and Old James and Helen) there appears also the name of their daughter Isabel, who like her mother Agnes died an old woman. She has a married name, but there is no further sign of her husband.

Born at Sea.

And here also is the name of Andrew and Agnes’s firstborn child, Isabel’s elder brother. His dates as well.

Young James was dead within a month of the family’s landing at Quebec. His name is here but surely he cannot be. They had not taken up their land when he died, they had not even seen this place. He may have been buried somewhere along the way from Montreal to York or in that hectic new town itself. Perhaps in a raw temporary burying ground now paved over, perhaps without a stone in a churchyard where other bodies would someday be laid on top of his. Dead of some mishap in the busy streets of York, or of a fever, or dysentery—of any of the ailments, the accidents, that were the common destroyers of little children in his time.

Illinois

A letter from his brothers reached William Laidlaw in the Highlands sometime early in the eighteen-thirties. They complained of not hearing from him for three years, and told him that his father was dead. It did not take him very long, once he was sure of that, to start making his plans to go to America. He asked for and was given a letter of reference from his employer, Colonel Munro (perhaps one of the many Highland landowners who had made sure of profitable sheep-rearing by hiring Borders men as their factors). He waited until Mary’s fourth baby boy was born—this was my great-grandfather Thomas—and then he bundled up his family and set out. His father and his brothers had spoken of going to America, but when they said that, it was really Canada they meant. William spoke accurately. He had discarded the Ettrick Valley for the Highlands without the least regret, and now he was ready to get out from under the British flag altogether—he was bound for Illinois.

They settled in Joliet, near Chicago.

There in Joliet, on the 5th of January, in either 1839 or 1840, William died of cholera, and Mary gave birth to a girl. All on the one day.

She wrote to the brothers in Ontario—what else could she do?—and in the late spring when the roads were dry and the crops were planted Andrew arrived with a team of oxen and a cart, to carry her and her children and their goods back to Esquesing.

“Where is the tin box?” said Mary. “I saw it last thing before I went to bed. Is it in the cart already?”

Andrew said that it was not. He had just come back from loading the two rolls of bedding, wrapped up in canvas.

“Becky?” said Mary sharply. Becky Johnson was right there, rocking back and forth on a wooden stool with the baby in her arms, so surely she might have spoken if she knew the whereabouts of the box. But she was in a sulky mood, she had said barely a word that morning. And now she did nothing but shake her head slightly, as if the box and the packing and loading and the departure, which was close at hand, meant nothing to her.

“Does she understand?” said Andrew. Becky was half Indian and he had taken her for a servant, till Mary explained that she was a neighbor.

“We’ve got them too,” he said, speaking as if Becky had no ears in her head. “But we don’t have them coming in and sitting down in the house like that.”

“She has been more help to me than anybody,” Mary said, trying to shush him. “Her father was a white man.”

“Well,” said Andrew, as if to say there were two ways of looking at that.

Mary said, “I can’t think how it would disappear from in front of my eyes.”

She turned away from her brother-in-law to the son who was her chief comfort.

“Johnnie, did you happen to see the black tin box?”

Johnnie was sitting on the lower bunk, now bare of bed-clothes, keeping a watch over his younger brothers Robbie and Tommy, as his mother had asked him to. He had invented a game of dropping a spoon between the slats onto the plank floor, and having them see who could pick it up first. Naturally Robbie always won, even though Johnnie had asked him to slow down and give his smaller brother a chance. Tommy was in such a state of excitement that he did not seem to mind. He was used to this situation anyway, as the youngest.

Johnnie shook his head, preoccupied. Mary expected no more than that. But in a moment he spoke, as if just recollecting her question.

“Jamie’s setting on it. Out in the yard.”

Not only sitting on it, Mary saw when she hurried out, but he had covered it with his father’s coat, the coat Will had been married in. He must have got that out of the clothes trunk that was already in the cart.

“What are you doing?” cried Mary, as if she couldn’t see. “You’re not supposed to touch that box. What are you doing with your father’s coat after I packed it up? I ought to smack you.”

She was aware that Andrew was watching, and likely thinking that was a poor enough reprimand. He had asked Jamie to help him load the trunk and Jamie had done so, reluctantly, but then he had slipped away, instead of hanging around to see what more he could help with. And yesterday, when Andrew first arrived, the boy had pretended not to know who he was. “There’s a man out in the road with a cart and an ox team,” he had said to his mother, as if no such thing was expected and was of no concern to him.

Andrew had asked her if the lad was all right. All right in the head, was what he meant.

“His father’s dying was a hard matter for him,” she said.

Andrew said, “Aye,” but added that there’d been time to get over it, by now.

The box was locked. Mary had the key to it around her neck. She wondered if Jamie had meant to get into it, not knowing that. She was ready to weep.

“Put the coat back in the trunk,” was all she could say.

In the box were Will’s pistol and such papers as Andrew needed concerning the house and land, and the letter Colonel Munro had written before they left Scotland, and another letter, that Mary herself had sent to Will, before they were married. It was in reply to one from him—the first word she’d had since he left Ettrick, years before. He said in it that he remembered her well and had thought that by now he would have heard of her wedding. She had replied that in such case she would have sent him an invitation.

“Soon I will be like the old almanacks left on the shelf, that no person will buy,” she wrote. (But to her shame, when he showed her this letter long afterwards, she saw that she had spelled “buy”
by.
Living with him, having books and journals around, had done a power of good for her spelling.)

It was true that she was in her twenty-fifth year when she wrote that, but she was still confident of her looks. No woman who thought herself lacking in that way would have dared such a comparison. And she had finished off by inviting him, as plain as any words could do it.
If you should come courting me,
she had said,
if you should come courting me some moonlight night, I think that you should be preferred before any.

What a chance to take, she said when he showed her that. Did I have no pride?

Nor I, he said.

Before they left she took the children to Will’s grave to say good-bye. Even the baby Jane, who would not remember but could be told later that she had been there.

“She don’t know,” said Becky, trying to hang onto the child for a few moments longer. But Mary took the baby out of her arms and Becky went away then. She went out of the house without ever saying good-bye. She had been there when the baby was born and had taken care of them both when Mary was beside herself, but now she didn’t wait to say good-bye.

Mary had the children bid farewell to their father one by one. Even Tommy said it, eager to copy the others. Jamie’s voice was weary and without expression, as if he had been made to recite something at school.

The baby fretted in Mary’s arms, perhaps missing Becky and her smell. What with that, and the thought of Andrew waiting, in a hurry to be off, and the self-consciousness, the annoyance roused in her by Jamie’s tone, Mary’s own good-bye was quick and formal, there was no heart in it.

Jamie had a good idea of what his father would have thought of that. That business of trotting them all up there to say good-bye to a stone. His father did not believe in pretending one thing was another and he would have said that a stone was a stone and if there was any way of speaking to a dead person, and hearing back from them, this was not it.

His mother was a liar. Or if she didn’t lie outright, she at least covered things up. She had said his uncle was coming but she had not said—he was sure she had not said—that they were going back with him. Then when the truth came out she claimed she had told him before. And most falsely, most despicably, she had claimed that such a thing was what his father would have wanted.

His uncle hated him. Naturally he did. When his mother had said in her hopeful, foolish way, “This is my man of the house now,” his uncle had said, “Oh, aye,” as if to say that she was badly off, if that was all she could come up with.

In half a day they had left the prairie and its shallow, brushy hollows behind. And that was even with the oxen that walked no faster than a man. Not half as fast as Jamie, who was disappearing ahead of them and reappearing when they rounded a curve and disappearing again, and still seemed to be gaining.

“Don’t they have any horses where you are?” Johnnie asked his uncle. Horses occasionally passed them, in a whirl of dust.

“These are the beasts have the strength,” said his uncle after a pause. Then, “Did you never hear tell about keeping quiet until you’re asked to speak?”

“It’s because we have such a load of belongings, Johnnie,” said his mother, in a voice that was both a warning and a plea, “and when you get tired of walking you can climb up here and they’ll pull you along too.”

She had already hauled Tommy up on her knee and was holding the baby on the other side. Robbie heard what she said and took it as an invitation, so Johnnie hefted him up to crawl onto the sacks at the back.

“You want up there with them?” said his uncle. “Now’s the time to speak up if you do.”

Johnnie shook his head, but apparently his uncle didn’t see him, because the next thing he said was, “I need an answer when I speak to you.”

Johnnie said, “No sir,” the way they were taught in school.

“No, Uncle Andrew,” said his mother, confusing things more because this uncle wasn’t her uncle, surely.

Uncle Andrew made an impatient noise.

“Johnnie always tries to be a good boy,” his mother said, and though that should have pleased Johnnie, it didn’t.

They had entered a forest of great oak trees whose branches met over the road. In the branches you could hear and sometimes see the flight of the bright orioles, the cardinals, the red-winged blackbirds. The sumac had put its creamy cones out, coltsfoot and columbine were blooming, and the mullein was standing up straight as soldiers. Wild grapevine had wrapped some bushes so thickly that you would think they were feather beds, or old ladies.

“Did you hear any tales of wildcats?” said Mary to Andrew. “I mean, when you came along this road before?”

“If I did I didn’t listen to them,” said Andrew. “You’re thinking of the young lad up ahead? He minds me of his father.”

Mary did not answer.

Andrew said, “He won’t be able to keep it up forever.”

This proved to be the case. Around the next curve they did not see Jamie ahead. Mary did not mention it, lest Andrew think she was foolish. Then another view of a good stretch of level road, and he was not there. When they had gone some distance Andrew said, “Just turn your head like to look at the young ones in the back, don’t be taking any heed of the road.” Mary did so, and saw a figure trailing them. It was too far to make out his face, but she knew it was Jamie, scuffing along at a much reduced pace.

“Hid in the bush till we got by,” said Andrew. “Are you easier now about the wildcats?”

In the evening they stopped near the Indiana border, at a crossroads inn. The woods were not cut far back, but there were a few fenced fields, and both log and wood-frame buildings, barns or houses. Jamie had walked all the way, getting closer to the wagon as the afternoon darkened. That happened quickly under the arch of the trees—when they came out into the clearing it was surprising to see how much of the daylight they still had left. The boys on the wagon had waked up—Johnnie had taken his place up there too, once the dark came on—and they were all holding quiet, taking in the new place and the people around. They had known about inns in Joliet—all told it had three—but they had never been let wander around such places.

Andrew spoke to the man who came out. He asked for a room for Mary and the baby and the two little boys, and arranged sleeping room on the porch for himself and the two older ones. Then he helped Mary down and the boys jumped off and he took the cart around to the back, where the man said it was safe to store their goods. The oxen could go in the pasture.

And there was Jamie in the midst of them. His boots were hanging round his neck.

“Jamie walked,” said Robbie, solemnly.

Johnnie addressed Mary. “How far did Jamie walk?”

Mary said she had no idea. “Enough to wear himself out, anyway.”

Jamie said, “No it wasn’t. I’m not even tired. I could walk that far again and I wouldn’t be tired.”

Johnnie wanted to know if he’d seen any wildcats.

“No.”

They all walked across the porch, where some men were sitting in chairs or on the railings, smoking. Mary said, “Good evening,” and the men said, “Good evening,” looking down.

Walking beside his mother, Jamie said, “I saw a person.”

“Who was it?” said Johnnie. “Was it a bad person?”

Jamie paid him no attention. Mary said, “Don’t tease him, Jamie.”

Then with a sigh she said, “I guess you ring this bell,” and did, and a woman came out of a back room. The woman led them upstairs and into a bedroom and said she would bring water for Mary to wash herself. Boys could wash out back, she said, at the cistern. There were towels out there, on a rack.

“Go on,” said Mary to Jamie. “Take Johnnie with you. I’ll keep Robbie and Tommy here.”

“I saw a person you know,” said Jamie.

The baby was wet through her soakers and would have to be changed on the floor, not the bed. Down on her knees, Mary said, “Who was that? Who that I know?”

“I saw Becky Johnson.”

“Where?” said Mary, rocking back. “Where?
Becky Johnson?
Is she here?”

“I saw her in the bush.”

“Where was she going? What did she say?”

“I wasn’t near enough to talk to her. She never saw me.”

“Was this back near home?” Mary said. “Think now. Back near home or nearer here?”

“Nearer here,” said Jamie, considering. “Why do you say near home when you said we’d never go back there?”

Mary disregarded that. “Where was she going?”

“This way. She just went out of sight in a minute.” He shook his head, like an old man. “She wasn’t making any noise.”