ELWYN HAD SEEN LIBERTY BEFORE, but not in person. A moving panorama show once came through the forest towns, setting up in the main room of the Kegonsa station, the only place big enough. Heavy shades were drawn, and a light shone on a massive painting that moved between two scrolls. It seemed as long as the creek itself.
Everyone scraped together money to go. It was collected by the young boy who turned the crank that moved the scrolls. A man with oiled hair and crooked teeth spoke in a musical voice about the images that passed by. The panoramas of natural disasters were the most popular: a hurricane over Carolina sea islands; double tornadoes on the Laurentian Lakes; the grass fire on the Flatlands. And there was also the mile-wide Messipi, a natural wonder near enough that the Badfishians felt some ownership of it, though none of them had ever travelled there. People talked about these images for weeks.
The panorama show never came back to the woods. Maybe it was too hard to lug the giant scrolls down overgrown roads, or maybe the showman was a part-time crook disappointed to find everyone’s pockets empty. But the images stayed with Elwyn. If he’d had the money, he would have watched the show over and over, sitting open-eyed and perfectly still in the darkness. There had been a few brief scenes of the Hill towns along the Wisconsin river, including Liberty. The railroad and riverboat traffic made them popular getaways for moneyed Messipi traders and old Franco-Indian merchant families; they said that the ancient rocks and soil were good for people’s health. Some of the Foresters had booed those images and jeered the man to move on to something more exciting. But Elwyn still remembered the wide stone streets, the shops built into the hillsides, the horses pulling carts. There was a grassy park by the river with a single tree and several benches, and everything appeared so tidy and prosperous and pretty. That was Liberty. That was where his aunt lived.
Elwyn looked eagerly out the windows of the train as it neared town. Bicycles sped down streets, horses trotted ahead of wagons, white steamboats chugged along the river. Everything was moving. It pulled at him almost physically – he felt that if the window weren’t there he would lean so far forward, he’d tumble right out onto the grass.
The train arrived at Liberty Station an hour late, and Elwyn practically jumped out of his seat onto the platform. He was carrying a large cake box and dressed in the starched, many-buttoned clothes purchased by his mother. His shirt was the pale green of coneflower dye with a stiff bow at the neck, and it was unlike anything he saw worn by the people there. As he wandered through the crowd, people turned to look at Elwyn. It wasn’t just his clothes they were staring at, it was all of him, from his way of moving to his hair to the shade of his skin. The people in Liberty were almost all pale, pale even compared to people like Elwyn’s mother, who had darkened after years in the sun. He made an effort to stand tall and be lively as he searched for his aunt and uncle. But he felt uncomfortable in the gaze of the people passing by, and discomfort wasn’t a feeling Elwyn was used to.
He could not find his aunt and uncle on the platform, so juggling the cake box and slinging his deerskin bag, Elwyn went inside the station. At the far wall was a wooden bar where a few people sat on velvet stools and lunched. The thick air was redolent of roasted roots and beef. Elwyn’s stomach growled; he had already eaten the salted game and acorn bread packed for the half-day’s journey. Someday, that will be me, Elwyn thought. Taking a break while I travel, sitting on a stool and eating steak and drinking beer.
A man behind the bar was chatting with a customer and chewing a toothpick. Elwyn moved the cake box to his other arm.
‘Excuse me?’ Elwyn said. ‘I’m Elwyn. Elwyn Bramble. Is there someone waiting for me?’
A few people glanced sidelong at Elwyn, then averted their eyes, but the man behind the bar looked from Elwyn’s face to his clothes to the cake box tied with home-woven lace he held under one arm.
‘The Blackwells?’ Elwyn tried again, when the man said nothing. ‘A man and a woman?’
‘Farms have all the hands they need around here. Try again come harvest,’ the man said.
‘Oh, no. I’m not here to work on a farm. I’m here to learn. To study. Prepare for my future. I’m staying with my aunt, Piety Blackwell.’
The man moved the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other and watched Elwyn through narrow eyes.
‘Maybe you could give me directions,’ Elwyn suggested. ‘1434 Citizen Street.’
‘You’re not in the right place.’
‘This is Liberty Station, right? It says so on the sign,’ Elwyn said.
The man took the toothpick out of his mouth and inspected the chewed end. ‘I said, you’re not in the right place.’
The people at the bar were staring at Elwyn. Normally, Elwyn was someone who liked attention, who thrived on the eyes of others. But this time the gazes made him shrink away. He became uncomfortably aware of the way he stood, the darkness of his skin, the bows on his clothes, the odd colour of the fabric.
‘I’ll go look someplace else, then,’ Elwyn said cautiously.
They watched him as he stepped back out the door. The smell of hot grass was in the air, and hot metal and steam and smoke and stone. Elwyn shielded his eyes from the sun to look for his aunt and uncle once more before he ventured to find their house himself. The road was in front of him, as bright as before; the stones were hot below his feet. He hoisted the cake box onto his shoulder and began to walk.
1434 Citizen Street was an address Elwyn had known since he was a child, written on envelopes in his aunt’s tiny lettering. He had read and re-read those old letters from Aunt Piety, entranced not just by their words, but the weight and whiteness of the paper, the smoothness of the ink, the sound of the address. Badfish Creek didn’t have street names; there was something thrilling about the idea of towns with so many houses that people needed numbers to keep them straight. What an interesting place!
But Elwyn didn’t know how to navigate by address. He turned down whichever streets looked the most promising and became distracted by shop windows full of shining cow-leather shoes, dark blue suits, tall cakes, copper pots, pens, greenhouse flowers, ice cream. It was wonderful and almost painful to see the possibilities strung together down the streets like pearls on a string. Bicycles sped past, and horses snorted. Men yelled from their carts for him to move out of the way.
It was all new to him, and as thrilling as it was disorienting. Elwyn was hot and hungry when he finally found his way to Citizen Street, way out on the west side of town. It was quieter there, and he looked up at the wooden road sign with a flood of appreciation when he felt a tug at his sleeve. A ugly grey goat was behind him, making a snack of his shirt.
‘Shoo,’ Elwyn said. But the goat followed closely, nibbling the cloth where he could. By the time Elwyn reached the Blackwells’ door, several buttons were missing and sweat pooled and dripped down his back.
The front door was white and, like the skylights and the windows, was built into the grassy hill in accordance with the old Hill custom. For generations, the house had belonged to his uncle’s family, who Elwyn knew little about except that they were quite rich. He couldn’t quite tell where the house ended. Little windows and skylights dappled the mown grass a long ways.
Elwyn was eager to see what was inside, and to meet the family he had thought so much about all these years. He knocked and tried to smooth his hair while he waited – everything around him was so trim and neat, it threw his own rumpled appearance into relief. He tried to catch his reflection in a window when the door opened. He had wondered if there would be a maid, but instead the door was answered by a boy about Elwyn’s age. The boy had a pointed chin, a sour-looking mouth.
‘Hello. Is this the Blackwells’ house?’ Elwyn said. The boy didn’t answer, but as they stood there, Elwyn recognised something in the lines of the boy’s nose and eyes that reminded him of his mother’s. ‘Are you Boaz? My cousin?’ Elwyn said, a smile spreading over his tired face. The boy’s face was unchanged. ‘I’m Elwyn. Elwyn Bramble. I’ve come to stay with you.’
Again, the boy just stood.
‘Boaz? Who is it?’ a man called from inside. ‘You’ve been excused to leave the table, but manners dictate a prompt return.’
The boy slipped away, leaving the door open and disappearing somewhere into the halls. Elwyn followed. It took a while for Elwyn’s eyes to adjust to the dim light of the under-hill house. The air was sweet with the smell of old paper, wool and wood polish, but there was something else in the air, too. Lunch. The thought of food consumed Elwyn, distracting him from the grandfather clocks, the portraits on the wall. He followed the smell.
‘Boaz?’ the voice called again, now louder.
‘Let him be,’ a woman said as Elwyn turned the corner into a dim dining room decorated with pewter and paintings. A bearded man sat at one end of the long table, his plate full of peas and butter, cheese and bread, white slices of chicken. At the other end, with a more modest plate, was a woman who could only be Aunt Piety. Her face was like Elwyn’s mother’s, but leaner, less worn. Her eyebrows arched as she looked at Elwyn, and he felt silly with his torn clothes and a large cake box in his arms, a cake he would have been tempted to try if he didn’t fear the wrath of his mother.
‘You’re late,’ the man said, shovelling a forkful of peas into his mouth. He had a rolling stomach and two stick-like legs tucked below the table. Glasses sat on a squat nose guarded by heavy jowls. ‘You were due to come at noon.’
‘The train was late.’
‘To bow to the train’s faulty schedule is to give in to chaos. Punctuality, you will come to understand, is strictly adhered to in this house.’
‘Your uncle is very fond of schedules,’ Aunt Piety said, leaning back in her chair. ‘You can expect a proper greeting when mealtime ends in’ – she looked up at the clock – ‘thirty seconds.’
The man scowled, but buttered his bread, some crumbs falling into his beard as he ate. ‘Quite right. For, how many times have I said it, Piety? Timeliness is the foundation of orderliness, and orderliness is the foundation of civility itself.’
Just then, several clocks clanged at once, all with different chimes. At that sound, the cook came in and began to clear plates. The man dabbed his face with a napkin before standing up and extending his hand.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Elwyn Bramble, I am Timothy Blackwell. You may call me Uncle, despite the obvious lack of blood relation. I’m pleased to meet you.’ And he did look pleased, smiling at Elwyn, untroubled by or unaware of his nephew’s unkempt appearance. Elwyn set the cake box down and shook his uncle’s hand. ‘In handshakes, always be firm, but never too firm, Nephew,’ Timothy corrected. ‘An overly firm handshake is a sign of aggression. Aggression is a sign of weakness.’ He saw some gesture imperceptible to Elwyn out of the corner of his eye and turned around to his wife. ‘This is my project, Piety. How I instruct the boy is none of your concern.’
‘I didn’t say a thing,’ she said, then turned to Elwyn, still in her seat, and extended her hand. ‘I am Piety Blackwell, and that’s what you may call me.’ When he shook her hand, she said his handshake wasn’t nearly firm enough, and he couldn’t tell if she was joking.
‘I brought you a cake,’ Elwyn said. ‘My mam sent it, to thank you. To thank you both.’
‘What kind is it?’ Piety had eyes that seemed to be reading everything – like Whim’s, but much less forgiving.
‘Not one I’ve ever had before. She said something about pepper-honey? She said you’d know.’
‘Wasp cake,’ Piety said, smiling, but not happily. ‘It used to be a favourite of mine.’
‘Your aunt doesn’t eat sweets,’ Timothy said, taking the cake box and handing it off to the maid. ‘But you can write to your mother later and let her know that the gesture was greatly appreciated. It is, after all, the gesture that matters.’
‘Timothy will surely appreciate it.’ Piety nodded towards Timothy, who watched the cake leaving the room.
‘All things in moderation,’ Timothy said. Elwyn was also watching the cake and plates still full of chicken disappear. His stomach rumbled. ‘Let me show you to your room, then we can get down to business at, say, quarter to five.’
‘Do you think I can have something to eat first?’
‘You will have to learn to listen more closely to conversation, Nephew. I think it has already been firmly established for you that mealtimes are to be strictly adhered to. This household, like all places of order and reason, has a schedule. You will soon learn it. But for now, the preliminary things. I have everything prepared for your lessons. Come along. I’ll take your things.’
‘Lessons? Won’t school begin in the fall?’ Elwyn asked. But his uncle had already picked up Elwyn’s buckskin bag. Timothy held it far from his body as though it held a hive, and gestured with his other hand that Elwyn follow him out into the hall.
As Elwyn left the room, he turned back to look at his aunt. The grey eyes were watching him, her hands folded before her. Whim said you could tell everything you want to know about a person by looking at their hands and their eyes. Piety’s hands were pale and unworked, that was easy enough to see. But as for her eyes, Elwyn thought at first that they looked bored, but the next moment he thought they were laughing.