As hard as Freeman tried to turn them back to the time before the “unpleasantness,” it couldn’t be done; he lasted only the remainder of that day and night and left the next morning for Barnstable. Alice waited in dread for the widow to confront her about the child, but she did not; after two days Alice began to hope that Freeman had indeed convinced her she’d mistaken Alice entirely. There remained the scene in the barn, but of that too the widow said nothing. In fact, she said little at all. She spoke when she had to in thin, taut sentences, and except for the hum of the wheel and the thump of the loom the house fell into silence, the walls shrinking in around them like a chestnut burr around a pair of blighted seeds.
So they went on, Alice spinning, the widow weaving, Alice making trips to Sears’s store with their cloth and listening to the talk of politics that filled the air, even from the women now. They tossed about the men’s words as well as the men ever had—non-importation, tyranny, taxes. Alice even overheard Mrs. Cobb quoting the widow’s own words, adding in her own embellishment: they might pickle her and ship her to the West Indian Islands in a herring barrel before she’d pay a king’s ransom for a bit of cambric.
The widow and Alice took the necessary time away from their textile work to pick and preserve watermelons, cherries, and currants. Nate came often to inquire if Freeman had returned, or so he said; sometimes he waited in the yard or near it to see if Alice would come out on some kind of errand. Alice knew this because she could look out the window and see him lurking. Sometimes, when Alice didn’t appear, he would make a slow stroll in the direction of the landing and come back again; if someone passed him in view of the widow’s house he waylaid him with conversation, darting his eye at the house as he talked. Most of the men thus accosted seemed willing enough to talk to the boy; once he stopped an Indian girl, and she seemed willing enough too, until the Indian Sam Cowett came out and beckoned to her to get along.
Alice watched Nate and wondered things, the old things, but some new things too. Strange things. What if she went out just now to collect a tow sack from the barn? What would Nate do? Would he follow her into the barn? Would he try to touch her? If he didn’t try to touch her would they stay in the barn and talk of Freeman, or Otis, or the widow, or Nate’s father, as they’d done before? Or would he ask about Alice’s life now? If he did, what would she say?
As it happened one day she did step outside to pick a handful of parsley for a sauce just as Nate came walking back up the landing road, and he saw her and walked slowly over the grass, as if afraid she’d duck back inside if he came too fast at her, as if she were a deer. But as she watched him come into the dooryard she thought he was like a deer too, slender but sure-footed, graceful, strong. He came up to her and reached out a hand, not to touch her but to take the parsley, to hold the parsley. He grinned.
Alice said, “What amuses you so?”
“I’m not amused, I’m glad.”
“What are you glad of?”
“Of everything. Of parsley.” He lifted it to his nose, sniffed it, bit off a stem.
Alice reached out. “Give it to me. I must go in.”
He handed her the greens without argument. He said, “Am I still not to touch you?”
“You’re never to touch me.” She turned away and moved toward the house.
He said, “Alice!” so violently from behind her that she started.
She said, “What? What is it?”
“Nothing. I just want you to know that you may touch me whenever you like.”
Alice ducked inside, her face in flame.
That night she lay awake thinking of Nate, how young and silly he was with all his talk of gladness and parsley and touching him. But after a time of lying awake Alice began to think something else about Nate. She had told him she did not want him to touch her and he hadn’t. Alice began to think too that she didn’t know a great deal about this subject of touching. She had Verley, who had touched her when she hadn’t wanted it, and she had Freeman, whom she had touched when he hadn’t wanted it, neither example giving her the least idea how the thing might work when the parties were together on the subject. Nate had said she might touch him, which took care of his part of it, but what of Alice? Why should she want to lay a hand on him? She knew well enough what would happen the minute she tried it. His hands on her. Not like a Verley, perhaps, at least not to start, but it would be just the same at the end, or close enough to it. She might wonder what that soft, pink cheek would feel like against her palm, and whether it had come into its whiskers yet; she might wonder whether a hand slipped under his shirt would discover a smooth, slender back, as it looked, or a collection of lean muscles and sinews, of the kind required to send wood chips flying wildly. She might wonder, yes, but wondering did not cause pain. Wondering did not cause bastards.
When Alice slept, which wasn’t until she’d kicked the sheet loose of the bed tick, she dreamed of Nate, and Freeman, and Verley, all mixed in together, and of herself, running away from them down a long, narrow, stinking street that she didn’t recognize in the dream, but on waking she knew it to be her old street in London. As the street came out of the grayness so did the little house, and her mother and father lying on their bed in the corner of the kitchen, their limbs all tangled up in each other, her father’s hand gripping her mother’s buttock as he slept, her mother’s hand curled around her father’s cheek. The buttock would have been smooth, the cheek rough as bark, until her father got up and scraped at it with the razor. Alice remembered this too: her mother touching her father’s cheek in the morning after he’d worked it over and saying, “Better.”
FREEMAN STAYED AWAY until September, when his uncle died, as they said, from drinking cold water, and he was forced to return to see his affairs to a close. His arrival brought the men to the widow’s house as usual, where a few hasty condolences were voiced over the uncle, but soon enough they returned to battering away at the same old subjects. Trade. Taxes. Non-importation. From the discussion Alice learned that Boston held strong on the agreement, with Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania following behind. At the end of the meeting they again toasted their king, but it seemed to Alice that Freeman did so with something akin to hurt feelings.
In the few moments Alice had spent in Freeman’s company since his return he had barely spoken to her or looked at her, and if he said more than two words to the widow, Alice didn’t hear them. Alice imagined that although Freeman’s singular laugh had cleared him of the charge of actually penetrating Alice’s flesh, an acceptable accounting of the events in the barn must still be wanting. Freeman stayed only the single night and rode off again, this time to Boston.
THE VILLAGE NOW smelled of an odd mix of fresh-cut hay and fetid oil as the whalers returned from the north with their holds full of blubber and began to boil it down. Neither the sickly sweet smell of the hay or the cloying smell of the oil disturbed Alice’s stomach, and again she hoped it meant that the pennyroyal had belatedly taken hold, but even as she hoped, she knew it to be less hope, more dream. Yet the face in the mirror regained its color; with the cooler weather Alice was able to add a light shawl to her dress to conceal her fullness; the deception held.
The cloth went faster off Sears’s shelves, and on Alice’s trips to and fro she noticed the talk among the women turned to what each had done to support the non-importation plan. To save the sheep for wool, they wouldn’t eat lamb; they used beet sugar or honey or maple syrup to sweeten their bread or pudding; they traded recipes for tea made from goldenrod and blackberry leaves or made a kind of coffee out of rye and chestnuts.
Alice saw Nate now and then, sometimes at a distance as he attacked his father’s hay with a scythe, sometimes near to, if he happened to come along as she was leaving the store or stepping out into her dooryard. He kept his hands to himself, but at the same time he seemed to grow easier in her presence, as if assuming that Alice liked him near. Alice couldn’t think what she might have said to cause the change in him; she continued to act toward him as she always had; if she dreamed confusing dreams of him he couldn’t have known.
At the end of the month Nate came to say good-bye as he prepared to leave for Harvard College; the news saddened his grandmother and surprised Alice—she’d lost count of the days. He began by reporting to them that the Sugar Act had taken effect, displaying the same hurt surprise over this news that Alice had seen not long ago in Freeman. The widow received the news in solemn silence, but as Nate made to leave the widow said, “’Tis a time that needs men well versed in the law. Attend to your work and make me proud of you,” a little speech that surprised Alice, as from the widow’s previous talk she’d not understood her to have any great love for lawyers. Nate left but not without making a great show of rolling his eyes from Alice to the door; he would have her go out after him.
Alice didn’t want to go anywhere after Nate. She didn’t trust the new ease in him. She stayed at her wheel until it became time to collect the cow from the meadow, well ahead of sundown, it was true, but only because the wolves had made such noise of late. She stepped into the dooryard, and there was Nate, coming out of the wood much as he’d done the day he’d helped her pick up the cloth. He fell in alongside her as she walked but said nothing, more like the old days of the hot face and stopped tongue.
After a time Alice said, “Your father will be angered that you’ve kept away so long.”
Nate shrugged. “’Tisn’t so long. ’Tisn’t so long as I’ll be gone from here.”
“You’re unhappy to be going to the college?”
“I’m unhappy about a number of things. I wished to see Mr. Freeman before I left. I wished to go to another frolick with you. I wished—” He broke off.
They walked onto the meadow, the sun just low enough to blind them; Alice couldn’t at first spot the cow and thought it must have chewed its tether and wandered off.
“There,” said Nate, pointing at the scrub along the edge of the meadow, and Alice set off after it, slowly at first, but liking the swish of the grass against her skirt, liking the path of the sun on the grass, liking the crisp breeze that peaked the waves in the distance, she started to run. She heard Nate behind her, beside her; she put on a burst and pulled ahead; he caught her up and pulled ahead, then ran backward until he tripped and went down, spread-eagled in the grass. He leaped up and began to hop around, clutching his ankle; Alice came up in all concern, but once she got close she saw he was clowning, wagging his elbows like a chicken again, just as he’d done at meeting. Alice began to laugh. Such a silly thing, to run like children, to hop around like a chicken! Nate saw the success of his clowning and joined in with the laughing, making Alice laugh the more, until she hiccupped, until the tears ran. She bent low to untether the cow, hiding her face; she set off the other way across the meadow, the tears on their own plan now. Nate pulled up alongside, peered at her, and stayed silent.
At the barn he pulled open the door for her, bent down, and peered at her again. He said, “Why do you cry, Alice?”
Alice didn’t know. She didn’t in the least know.
Nate said, “I should like to think it’s because I’m to leave soon and you won’t see me for ages and ages, but I think it more like a bee sting, or some dirt in your eye. Or perhaps you wish to kiss me good-bye but don’t quite know how to enter upon the subject.”
Alice couldn’t help it. She started to laugh again. Oh, he was so silly! So young! She said, “’Tis nothing but my eyes mistaking happy tears for real ones. Thank you for finding the cow. Good-bye. May you do well at the college.” She tugged at the cow, but Nate held on to the tether.
“Will you miss me, Alice?”
Yes, she thought, surprised; yes, she would miss him, but she said nothing.
He said, “I shall miss you too, Alice.”
They stood with the cow between. What would it be like to touch him? What harm, now that he was going off? She leaned over and laid her palm against his cheek; she felt the remnants of morning whiskers, but soft ones. Nate put his hand over hers and slid her fingers onto his lips. How soft his mouth was! She pulled her hand away. “Good-bye,” she said. “Good-bye and good luck to you.”
She yanked the cow into the barn and pulled the door closed.