THE RAIN BEAT down in a single-note chorus. Above the din I could hear the creek rushing, but in the dark I couldn’t see it. My feet were my eyes, and had I not been familiar with the road, I would have stayed at the station, lonely but dry.
The glow in the window said that someone was still awake. I gave a quick rap and entered as though I had been gone only a day. Indeed, once inside, I saw that everything was where it had been—the broom in the corner, the chair by the hearth, and in it Father, asleep. Beside him stood my mother in her bedclothes, eyes wide.
“Lucy?”
“Yes, Mother.”
I knew she would be angry. She had every right to be. Even so, I wanted her to set it aside, if only for a minute. I wanted her to cross the room and hug me—happy to see me safe. But she stayed where she was, her face in a knot. “What’s happened to your hair?”
I set my bag down and tried to stay calm. “Where I went,” I said, “it was easier to work if my hair was short.”
John and Sarah came running down the stairs, followed by Mary. The older ones froze when they saw me, but Mary jumped like a goat and threw her arms around me without a thought of the water dripping from my outer-shirt. This moment of sisterly love didn’t wake my father or soften my mother.
“What kind of work?” she asked as I let go of Mary.
“Men’s work,” I said, hoping that might put an end to it. Mother’s face filled with more questions, but I spoke before she did. “Is Helen upstairs?”
“Well, I see you still remember her name.”
I pretended not to hear those words as I took the wet canvas from my shoulders and hung it on a peg by the door. Then I reached out and took Mary’s hand. “Will you take me to her?” Mary gave a bright nod, but Mother just stood there blocking the way. Our eyes met in a cold stare. A moment passed and then another. She moved aside.
I followed Mary upstairs and into her room. Helen lay asleep in Mary’s bed. She had twisted in the blanket and her pink feet stuck out the side. I could hear her breathing as I drew near. I looked at my child for a long moment, feeling everything from joy to shame. Finally I knelt down and kissed her gently. “I don’t think I should wake her right now,” I said softly.
I was not just thinking about Helen and the surprise it might cause to be woken this way, but about what I could manage in my own weary state. Mary didn’t understand and pushed past me, less cautious. “Oh, I wake her all the time—she always goes right back to sleep.” My sister gave my daughter a little shake. “Helen, look here. Mommy’s come back.”
Helen opened her eyes and smiled at Mary. Then she saw me and started to cry. I was scaring her, as I had feared.
“Helen, darling,” I said, leaning forward and touching her shoulder, “I know I look different, but it’s me. I’ve come home.”
My daughter pulled away. Mary reached out and took her hand. “I’ll get her back to sleep,” she said. “We’ll do this in the morning.”
I bent forward and kissed Helen again and then got up to face whatever was waiting down below. I could hear conversation, but as I came down the stairs, it stopped. Father was awake now, and he, at least, was happy to see me. He stiffly rose from his chair and kissed me on the cheek. Mother, John, and Sarah looked on.
“The return of the prodigal son,” said John, landing hard on the final word.
I turned to him. “Aren’t you a little glad I’ve come back?”
“It depends on how disgraced you are.”
“Disgraced?”
“Yes. You went away with a man?”
I wanted to throw something. “I did not.”
John forced a small laugh. “If you didn’t, then it’s probably because you think you are one.” I was standing there in his clothes, so there was little I could say to that.
“Men’s work?” asked Mother, as though there could be no reason for it.
“Well, what would you have me do, Mother? Stay on with old Winthrop for a dollar a week? Marry him? Would that make you happy?”
My mother wasn’t moved. “It was you who wanted to marry George Slater,” she said. “Couldn’t wait. Wouldn’t listen to anyone. You made that bed.”
It was unkind to throw George Slater in my face, but she was right. It was my doing and no one else’s. But the meanness in the room wasn’t my doing, and I had no way to meet it. Afraid I might cry, I turned and ran back up to Mary’s room. She was asleep with Helen, or nearly so. I lay down on the rug beside the bed. I hadn’t slept in two days, but still it was hard in coming, as bits and pieces of pointed conversation drifted up from below.
* * *
Neither Mary nor Helen was in the room when I woke. It was already light and I rose with the hope that a night’s sleep might have made everyone more kind. But downstairs, Mother looked at me and didn’t even give a good-morning. “Why are you wearing your brother’s clothes?”
I tried to stay even. “You’ve seen me in these. I’ve worn them before.”
“Yes,” she answered, “when you were working in the barn.”
“Well then, it’s no great sin if I wear them, is it?”
Mother’s face began to color. “I want you out of them right now.”
“She can have the clothes,” said John from across the room. “She can wear them all the time if that’s what she wants. But she won’t be any sister of mine. I’ll not be laughed at by the whole town.”
My brother was eighteen now, and I could see no trace of the little boy I had once loved, the boy I used to carry on my back and roll with in the grass. And if he fell and scraped his knee, I would run to him with a funny face to make him laugh again. Why had he turned against me? Because I was the oldest? Or was it because Father had taught me to shoot and ride and play the violin, things that other girls were not taught by their fathers?
I hadn’t come back to Basket Creek with the idea of staying in men’s clothes. I hadn’t had time to think about it. But now everyone was telling me what to do, and I didn’t like it. I looked at my mother and dug in my heels. “I’ll dress myself.”
From across the room, the woman who had brought me into this world met my eyes and answered with words as hard as river ice. “Then you can’t stay here.”
I knew that Father wouldn’t let that stand. He loved me and had always told me that no matter how big I got, I would never stop being his little girl. While I was away in Honesdale, my memories of him had been from the past—when he would grab me with his strong arms and throw me into the air as I shrieked with laughter. I remembered peeking at him in the candlelight as he unwrapped his rifle to go out with the farmer’s militia. Mother begged him not to go—men had been killed—but Father said it was the right thing to do. I felt proud of him and wished I could go with him.
I turned to my father and saw a man I hardly knew. I had not let him grow old in my mind, and so now, suddenly, he had aged twenty years. He was not a man on horseback with a rifle strapped to his shoulder; he was a man in a chair holding a pipe in a hand that couldn’t stop its shake.
Father understood that it was for him to speak, so he set aside the pipe and sat forward. “Let’s all just calm down now,” he said, “and come to our senses.” The room was still. He had said the sensible thing, which we all expected. Now he would proclaim the law and say that I could never be cast out of the house. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything else, and what he had said was meaningless. He might as well have told the sky to stop raining.
I forgave my father—his hearing wasn’t good, and I don’t think he had understood much of what was being said. And even if everyone did calm down, what good would it do? Soon William Patterson would be back from Honesdale with stories about me, for surely he now knew, even if he hadn’t recognized me on Main Street, which most likely he had. And what would Mother or John say once they heard that I had been betrothed, or nearly so, to a young woman in Honesdale? What would anyone say? My daughter would hear her mother taunted and mocked, the fodder for a year’s worth of Reverend Hale sermons. I couldn’t possibly stay. I had nowhere to sleep and no prospects for work—not teaching children, that was now sure. And I wasn’t going to marry Raspy Winthrop. I’d sooner die a long, cold death, but not in Long Eddy, where everyone could watch.
My eyes dropped to the floor. “I’ll go.”
I went out to the woodshed and took my rifle from its hiding place in the rafters. When I returned, Helen was on the far side of the room. She had been in the kitchen with Mary and had heard everything. She knew I was leaving and that she was not. Indeed, no one thought otherwise. I had little money and nowhere to go. And who could say what would become of me? I could sleep under a bridge and not eat for days, but would it be right to do that to Helen? I was the one without a home, not her.
I called to my daughter to come say good-bye. She stayed by the kitchen door, face twisted. She had not forgiven me, and why should she?
My heart fell apart like wet bread. It may have shown, for all at once Helen crossed the room. I went to my knees and gathered her to me.
“Helen, dearest, I have to go away again.”
Her arms tugged at me. “Will you come back, Mommy?”
“Of course I’ll come back,” I said, wanting it to be so. “But if something should happen and I don’t, you must always know that I love you.” I pushed back and met her dark eyes. “Helen—always know that your mother loves you.”
I cried on the road to Long Eddy. I had lost everything and everyone. Helen, Mary, Father, Lydia, and yes, even Mother, Sarah, and John. Without them, what was left of me? And where could I go?
I stopped and watched the night’s rain rush down the creek, following a leaf through the riffles, as though it were a boat that could take me to a new place, a place where no lumberman from Long Eddy would find me. And what would I do when I got there?
Suddenly by the creek, it came to me. I’d do what Lydia and I had planned. I’d raise horses.