There Is No Summer

The trouble, when it came, was not what Luke had warned about. It began with the children. One morning, early in June, Sarah Yardley did not come to school. This did not alarm Mary. But she noticed the furtive glances darting around the room and the haste with which Sarah Pritchett began her ciphering lessons.

Two days later Polly and Joey Heaton were missing, then the four Bradley children and Matilda Hesse. By this time Mary knew something was wrong. Sarah would not look at her. She fidgeted with her sash, she dropped her bit of chalk. She jumped at every sound. But she would only say, “So many are ill. There is so much croup among the children and so much quinsy.” Henry wouldn’t look at her either and said only, “I dunno,” when she asked him what was happening.

She went to see Patty. “She will tell me,” she thought.

“Patty ain’t here.” Hannah Openshaw’s usually harried but jovial face was guarded. Mary walked slowly back up the road. Something was clearly very wrong.

Luke told her. He came that evening with a partridge for Henry’s board. He had not come to visit or to read in the month and a half since Simeon had behaved so badly, since he himself had again asked Mary to marry him. He had become as distant as before Henry’s near drowning. Mary was too proud and too unhappy to try to make things right. On this evening, though, she stopped him to ask why the children were not coming to school.

“It’s the things you been telling them,” he answered bluntly. “It’s about them terrible critters you say you see, and ghosts, and how you can see what’s gonna happen, and about Sim disappearing. You got them yonkers scared out of their wits thinking you can put spells onto them. And what’s more, you got a parcel of their mothers and a couple of their fathers thinking the same. Here it is June and it’s too cold to plant. Some of the trees have lost their leaves. It’s almost like winter again—just the way you said. You got to see how that scares folks. A whole lot of others think you’re a real loony and they ain’t so sure they want you teaching their children.”

“I did not make the cold come, Luke, and I have invented nothing,” Mary cried passionately. “Well, almost nothing.…” She had remembered the story of the eighty-seven-year-old sheep who had started life as a schoolboy. “But those critters are not here to bother the bairns. I told you that. They.…” Mary took a deep breath. “They have dwelt too long among their own rocks, in their own burns and lochs, those old ones. They cannot pick up their belongings in a scrap of linen and sail off across the western ocean. But ghosts, Luke, they stay among us for good or ill, here as there, rooted to the places where they lived. How can you believe I invented ghosts?” She stopped, remembering something else he had said. “And what do the children say about Simeon? I cannot make Simeon disappear. Henry, do you think I am a witch who can make folk disappear?”

Henry had been sitting, all the while, on the stool by the fire. He looked at Mary, his grey eyes big and dark, rubbing his hands nervously back and forth along the rough cloth of his breeches.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

“Do you think I can put spells on folk?”

“That’s what you says in school.” The whisper was barely audible.

“Truly I do so, Henry, but it is to keep those big lads behaving themselves. Do you think I would ill-wish the children? Henry, how can you? And whatever do you mean, loony?”

A smile flickered across Luke’s broad face. “It means crazy. Crazy people laugh like loons, I guess.”

“Do they? Do I?”

“Maybe not. Mary, why don’t you take a stick to the big lads, like anybody else. Don’t talk loony to them.”

Mary did not reply. The three of them sat in uncomfortable silence, looking at the fire, looking anywhere but at one another. Mary felt more alone and farther from home than at any time since she had come to Upper Canada. “I think maybe you’d best talk to Dan Pritchett,” said Luke.

“Why?”

“Well, Dan’s kind of sensible. You might tell him as how you was inventing stories to keep the big fellers in line and you’re sorry.”

“I only invented one story and three spells and I am not sorry.” Mary sprang from her chair. “If the children—or anyone—think I am a witch who can make folk disappear—if they think I can make Simeon disappear—but why do they think like this about Simeon? Where is he?”

“Didn’t you know Sim ain’t around?”

“Ain’t around?” she repeated stupidly.

“He’s run off, I expect.”

“Run off?”

“He ain’t the first feller to cut and run under the circumstances,” said Luke drily, “but he ain’t here to show himself to the children you been telling them spells to. So you might better go talk to Dan.” Luke stood up. With a curt “Good night,” he left.

After he had gone Henry went to his loft at once, and very quietly. Mary went to sit by Duncan’s grave. It was as cold as November and the wind was coming up from the east. She didn’t care.

“Duncan,” she said softly, “did they call you loony, too? Do they not feel their mothers and fathers, their dead children, whispering through the grass? Does the laughter of their loved ones not cling to their lofts and sing at their hearths?”

There was only the wind in the trees for an answer.

That night the voice was louder, more insistent.

June was almost over but the days were still growing colder. There was ice along the edges of the bay and the creek. Heavy frost had come again and most of the plants that had sprung up along the shore and roadsides had frozen and turned black. It was too late for planting. Julia Colliver told Mary that Sam said there’d be no flour to mill for next winter. They were going to have to scout around down the St. Lawrence river to buy it.

“You’re a queer one, telling us all this was gonna happen. You sure troubled a lot of folks with your talk. It’s a good thing, I say, the cows and hens and sheep ain’t bothered by the things you say.”

Besides Henry, only the Morrissay and Colliver children were still at school. Then Dan Pritchett came one morning to tell Mary that she would not be needed any longer, that Sarah could manage alone.

“But Miss Pritchett is no different now from the way she was when I began.” Pushed by her unhappiness—and her need—Mary spoke out boldly.

“All the same, she can manage,” Dan replied firmly, although he looked uncomfortable about having to tell her and he did not linger to talk about it. Mary remembered bitterly Martha Pritchett saying, “Nothing I can ever do for you can repay …,” and Dan himself: “Right glad to be doing some kind of good turn.” She was too proud to mention those words, too proud to argue with him.

Bewildered by Dan’s action, and afraid, Mary did her afternoon’s work, fed Henry his supper, and went in the dark and cold to sit again by Duncan’s grave.

“How will I manage now, mo gràdach? How can I stay here? How can I pay rent and earn money for my passage home if I am not to teach the children? Och, Duncan, he is unkind. They are all unkind.”

“Unkind, unkind,” echoed the wind.

“I cannot go to Dan Pritchett and tell him I have been making stories and spells when I have not,” she thought stubbornly. “Surely he can understand that. Surely he knows I am not daft.”

Patty understood. She came the next morning as Mary was standing in the creek washing her clothes, her feet blue with cold, her face red from exertion. Henry was walking slowly around and around the house, running a stick up and down the logs, causing Mary’s aching head to jump with pain with every rattling sound.

Patty began to wring the clothes. “I’m right sorry about the young ’uns having to quit your school. Ma took Mose home on account of that silly Annie Heaton. She said stupid things about you putting marks on her children. She’s an Irisher and she’s always saying things like that. You’d think a woman as big as Ma would have more sense in her than to listen to the likes of Annie Heaton, but she don’t. Only Phoebe Morrissay’s willing to keep on, but of course those children ain’t gonna come without the others—they wanted a holiday, them others, if you ask me! And look how they got their elders hopping!”

“Did you … do you believe I would put spells on folk?” Mary’s voice was hesitant.

“Naw. I don’t believe no one can make spells, nor make the weather go bad neither. I know you ain’t had nothing to do with that.”

Mary straightened abruptly. “Do folk say I have?” She snatched up the shirt she had been pounding on a stone and hung onto it, dripping icy water down the front of her blouse. “How could I?” she cried.

“That’s what I said.”

“But do they believe that? Do they?” Mary threw her hair back from her face and jumped to the bank. She grabbed Patty by her arm. “What do they say, Patty? What do they say?”

“Whoa.” Patty stepped back. Henry’s shirt fell to the ground. “Well.…” She look embarrassed. “Well, they say that if you can do the things you tell the children you can do—turn them into sheep—and see when people are going to die—you might, you just might, mind you, have something to do with there being no summer. You did go round and say there wasn’t gonna be one. You know how people talk. They just talk and … oh, Mary, I wish you wouldn’t of told no one you seen the frozen gardens in your dream.”

“It wasn’t a dream and I thought folk would want to know,” said Mary miserably.

“Here, come on.” Patty picked up the pile of wet laundry. “You’re soaking wet. You’ll catch your death. I don’t see why you gotta wash clothes by trampling around on ’em in this freezing water. Why don’t you wash ’em in a tub like the rest of us? Ma says why do you have to … never mind, let’s get us something hot to drink, I’m like to die of cold standing here.”

Seated by the fire, drinking the hot coffee Patty had made, Mary was suddenly overcome by her kindness.

“When your mother said you were not home the day I came to see you, I thought you did not want to see me any more. You have not been here in weeks.”

“It wasn’t I didn’t want to see you.” Patty paused. “It was something else. It.…” She gulped. “I’m having a baby.”

“A baby?”

“Yep. You know them little human beings that cries so much and makes so much mess but nuzzles up to you so’s you can’t never say no to them.”

“But I do not see … I mean I did not know.…”

“Simeon Anderson.”

“Simeon? Are you to marry Simeon? But I thought.…”

“You thought I was sweet on Luke on account of I told you that. Well, mebbe I was but it ain’t Luke helped make this baby I’m gonna have.” Patty’s cheeks had turned scarlet. “It was the night Luke and I come busting in when you was gonna take after Sim with your knife. I felt pretty low seeing Luke looking at you like you was his girl. I guess I didn’t much care when Sim got himself all over me and … and I guess we made a baby. Ma’s in a terrible state and Pa swears every time he looks at me. He says he’ll skin Sim alive if he ever catches him. Anyways I figure I done all the crying about it I’m gonna and,” she finished disconsolately, “it don’t much look like I’m gonna marry nobody. Sim’s run off.”

A vision of Patty in her blue dress cooking at the Anderson fire came to Mary. In the vision the cabin had become tidy and cheerful. Patty was smiling. John was coming through the door, Luke and Henry were sitting at the table. They looked like a family. The vision faded leaving Mary feeling bereft, left out. She did not want to tell Patty about it, but at the same time she wanted to comfort her friend. “Do not trouble yourself, Patty, it will come right for you.”

Patty’s big eyes grew bigger. Then she smiled. “I don’t believe you know that but, Mary, when you say it so nice, I do feel better.”

After she had left, Mary found Henry and went at once to the Collivers’. She needed to be busy. Although she knew it wasn’t reasonable, the thought of Patty and Luke getting married made her feel very alone.

Three days later Patty came to tell Mary she was going to marry John Anderson. “I’d as soon have John as Sim,” she said. “Sooner, I guess.”

“But you … but Luke,” Mary blurted out. She had been so sure the vision meant Luke.

“But but.” Patty poked her plump finger at Mary. “But Luke ain’t for me. Luke ain’t cared a fiddlestick for any but you since he first clapped eyes on you. Julia Colliver told me he was like someone with a rare treasure to be fixed the day he brung you to her when you first come to the Corners. I figured, when you told me you wasn’t fixing to marry, that I’d have a chance with Luke. The night Sim was offering to bother you and I seen the look on Luke’s face I knew I hadn’t. He ain’t for me, Mary Urkit. Whether you wants to know about it or whether you doesn’t, he’s yours.”

Mary could not respond to those words. She was doing her best to ignore the surge of relief she felt.

“Getting married is special and we must have something special to celebrate,” she cried. She went to the cupboard and took from it the packet of real tea Phoebe Morrissay had given her at Christmas, and a honeycomb left from last summer that Henry had found in the woods. “I expect it is not a marriage for you to rejoice in.” Mary put the tea in the kettle.

“Why not? John’s a good man. He’s had a hard time. Lydia Anderson was a sad woman and none too strong. It was powerful hard on her losing all them babies, but it was hard on John too, and with her taking to the drink like that. I like him. He likes me. He’ll be good to me and the baby. We’ll do well enough together. I … I’ve gone along up to the Andersons’ to live. We’ll get married when preacher comes in August.”

Mary was too astounded to be polite. “Patty, how can you be this way? You just let things happen to you, whatever comes along, and you do not seem to mind.”

“Mind? What’s the good of minding? This is how things turned out. I just got to make the best of them. What good would I do screaming and shouting or throwing myself every which way?” She smiled broadly, and Mary, who had been so cold and unhappy, felt warm.

After Patty had left Mary went to look for Henry. She could find him nowhere. He was not at the Openshaws’. He was not at the Pritchetts’. Mrs. Colliver told her he had gone fishing with Matthew. Matthew came back before Mary was finished with her work. Relieved, she hurried home to make supper for Henry, promising herself she would not scold him. But Henry had not come home.