Mim rubbed her face and the backs of her hands on the rough wool of her jacket. She felt as though everything had frozen in place, and the question had to come up from somewhere very, very far away. “What happened to Tucker’s boy?”
“If I had my way,” Agnes said, “we’d pile the kids in the truck just like Ward done, and load in what we can take, cash out whatever... Jimmy Ward’s nobody’s fool. But Mick... He’s never been a tight man except when it comes to his land. Like there was some kind of spell on those particular acres.”
“What happened to Molly Tucker’s boy?” Mim asked again, her voice grown hoarse.
“The land. Never a speck of sense, my Mick. Now it’s the land. I left the land all right where I was reared. Never a backward glance. He says, ‘You don’t do that. Up and leave your land.’ And I say, ‘You’ll get killed, all for the sake of your precious land.’ And he says, Six kids, Agnes. Six kids.’ And I say, ‘You think they love that piece of rock and sand—that never grew nothin’ right but weeds and berries? You think that’s better than a livin’ breathin’ father?’” Suddenly Agnes was gulping on big sobs, haphazardly.
“The land, Mim. Why the land?” She stopped. “Shhh,” she said and crossed the room again to look out of the hole in the shade. “They’re listenin’.”
“I guess you got your own problems,” Mim murmured and she walked toward Agnes, thinking to kiss her goodbye, forgetting the poison ivy.
But Agnes turned and screamed as she approached. “What are you after?” She stumbled across the room out of Mim’s reach. “Get your hands away from me.”
Mim turned, frightened, and collided with Jerry as he opened the door with the shotgun in his arms again. “Good Lord, be careful,” Mim said, backing off and sidling past him as he motioned to her.
In the hall, she reached out to touch Joan, who was as big as Jerry now, but Joan eluded her with an angry flip of her shoulder.
“Joanie,” Mim whispered. “Tell me what happened to Molly Tucker’s boy.”
“He drownded in the well,” said the child, with a hard frightened stare. “The little one.”
“But why?” Mim asked.
The four smaller children huddled behind Joan ready to skitter away like beetles if Mim moved. Jonathan sucked his thumb and Mim could hear the clicking sound.
She stumbled out to the truck in front of Jerry’s gun, rubbing her face. The thin dogs crouched growling on either side of the door, ready to leap if she should decide to come back.
There was a new brown Crew Cab pickup in front of Linden’s. It turned out to be Ezra Stone’s. The jangle of bells when Mim opened the door made Ezra look up from the fishing tackle at the back of the store, and she met his yellow eyes full on across the shoulder-high rack of cupcakes and potato chips. Without greeting her, he went back to fiddling with the boxes of fishing hooks.
“Where’s Hildie?” Fanny asked, and Mim turned to find her sleepy blue eyes uncharacteristically awake.
“Home with Ma and John,” Mim answered.
“Oh,” said Fanny, and her eyes went back to sleep. “What’d you get into?”
“Poison ivy up to the top of the pasture by the gravestones,” she said.
“All by yourself?”
“All by myself,” Mim said. “Some people ain’t got the sense they was born with. I need some calamine.”
Fanny opened a glass cabinet over her head and rummaged.
“You got any bottles smaller than a dollar?”
“Nope,” Fanny said.
Mim hesitated, fingering the dollar bill in her pocket. “Been to any auctions lately?” she asked softly.
“Oh they’re still goin’ strong,” Fanny said. “They move them into Perly’s barn when the weather’s foul, is all.” Mim thought her eyes flickered at Stone in the back of the store. “But me, I mind my own business. Run the store the way I always done and mind my own business. She plunked the bottle of chalky pink liquid down on the counter. “That’ll be a dollar.”
Mim stood at the counter. She didn’t want to go. “Any news?” she asked. “I ain’t been to town in ages.”
“Yeah, thought maybe you was gone, too,” Fanny said.
“Too?”
“Lot of people movin’,” Fanny said. “Guess maybe it’s the times.” But she took a big bag and put a Boston Globe in along with the calamine.
Mim opened her mouth, but Fanny said softly, “Yesterday’s. We been all through it. You was askin’ after news.”
John took the paper immediately and went to work on it, starting at page one. He read laboriously, shaping his lips around the words and rereading each sentence. When it got dark, he spread the paper out on the table, brought the kerosene lamp up close, and went on reading. Ma had them pull her chair up to the table so that she could work 011 the back half of the paper. John told Mim about anything that interested him as she moved around him, tending to the fire, chopping onions and potatoes for the soup, admiring the fragile edifices Hildie was erecting with the kindling.
“You know that lot of forest fires in California?” he asked. “It says here, ‘Over eight hundred homeless. The American Red Cross, with the aid of the citizens of nearby communities, is providing food, clothing, and temporary shelter. Three hundred fully equipped mobile homes are being transported to the area.’ ” He stopped with his finger under the last word. “They just give them to them?”
“Anybody give you one, son,” said Ma, “you’d be givin’ it away again the followin’ Thursday. ‘Sure. Sure. Help yourself. Take it away. Me? My child? My wife? My old Ma? The silver linin’s all we need.’ ”
Still holding his place with his finger, John looked up at his mother. The lamplight under his chin deepened the lines in his face and seemed to bend them grimly downward. “You got complaints, Ma?” he said. “You got complaints about the way I been keepin’ you these ten years?”
She said nothing more. She bent over the classified pages with her magnifying glass, commenting occasionally on the outrageous price that someone wanted for a used upright piano, or a pickup truck with a plow on it. Eventually it was she who found an ad with a Harlowe telephone number.
Under Machinery, New and Used:
Secondhand Farm Machinery to be auctioned off Saturday in Central N.H. Call 603-579-3485.
But when Mim leaned over her shoulder to look, what caught her eye immediately was the big ad. “Listen to this,” she cried, taking the paper from Ma. “Says ‘Harlowe, New Hampshire,’ right here.”
Perly Acres. Rolling hills, high ledge, views, fields, pasture, trout streams—preserved in all their rustic natural beauty. Enjoy the beauties of the country, the comforts of your own home, and the luxuries of the finest resort. To be developed next summer: guest lodge, ballroom, community center, movie house, pond for sailing and swimming, trails for snowmo-biling and horseback riding, ski lifts, tennis courts, golf course, even an indoor gymnasium for those “rainy days in the country.” Central caretaking services to protect your property and rent it for you summer or winter when you can’t be in residence. Expert advice and contractors available for building. Complete financing on excellent terms. Get in on the ground floor at ground floor prices. First parcels to be auctioned off this Saturday. One acre. Five acres. Twenty-five acres. Or be the aristocrats of the development and buy one of the first two authentic antique farmhouses to go up for sale. For information and a tour of the properties available, call 603-579-3485.
And then all along the bottom like a border, it says “First Ad. First Ad. First Ad. First Ad.’ ”
John took the paper from her and read it again. “Which houses? Ward’s maybe and who else’s?” he said.
“A pond?” Mim said. “And a hill for skiing?”
That night, after Ma and Hildie were asleep, John and Mim lay on separate edges of their mattress. A full moon over the pond threw a bright ell of light down the wall and across the floor. The dim blue light outlined the underwear folded in piles on a new shelf, and the jeans and shirts hanging on hooks along one wall. Mim’s face and hands and arms, a flat bright pink with calamine, glowed in the half light.