The Edge Of The World Part 9

"What is it?" I gasped. My breath burned down my throat and in my chest.

"A baby otter," Mrs. Crawley said. "A killer whale probably got its mother."

"A whale would be more likely to take the baby," her brother said. "I'd guess one of them Portuguese smugglers clubbed the mother. A load of furs'll be headed for Russia."

"What should we do?" I asked.

"There's nothing we can do about smugglers," Mr. Johnston said. "They'll be long gone."

"No. About the otter."

"You can see it's hurt," he said. "Best to kill it fast."

"Kill it! Oh, no!"

"I'm afraid it's nearly dead already," Mrs. Crawley said. "Look, it's struggling to breathe, and it can hardly open its eyes."

Its eyes were open slightly, enough for me to glimpse the living being in their bright darkness. "I'll take care of it," I said, pulling it closer to my chest. Without my corset, I could feel through my clothes its still-warm body under the wet fur.

"Unless you're planning to hit it over the head with a rock, you won't. You'll just make it suffer," Mr. Johnston said.

"He's right," Mr. Crawley said from behind his wife's shoulder, his pale eyes pinked from the wind or from emotion. "You'll only hurt it."

Oskar had come up, and I looked pleadingly at him. "What's the harm in letting her try?" he said stoutly.

"The harm, in my experience," Mrs. Crawley said, emphasizing the last word, "is a slow and painful death. It's cruelty, and I won't allow it."

Archie Johnston's hard hands closed around the little bundle and I felt him tug at it. "I'll take care of it," he said in a strange echo of my own words. I held on.

"Let go, Archie," Mrs. Crawley said, shouldering him aside. "Here." Her large, capable hands slid between the baby and my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Tenderly, she lifted the animal in its weedy bunting from my arms.

"Where are you taking the mermaid, Mama?" Janie asked anxiously as Mrs. Crawley began to step away from the rest of us.

"Back to the ocean just down here. Where it belongs," Mrs. Crawley answered. "You take Jane now," she added, nodding at me. "Go on. All of you children. We'll have nothing to eat if you don't hurry up with those abalones." She motioned with her head toward the edge of the beach, where they'd dropped their sacks and sticks.

"Come on!" Oskar called. He began to run, sweeping the children up with the force of his exuberant motion. They followed like birds behind their leader.

I trailed after them, grateful to be dismissed with the children. But I couldn't help looking back. Mr. Crawley had taken a few tentative steps after his wife, then had stopped and stood still, rubbing his hands helplessly against his trousers. Mrs. Crawley went on some distance across the sand and then knelt beside a log of driftwood. She laid the bundle on it, slowly taking her hands away.

"Don't look," a low voice, surprisingly gentle and solicitous, said beside me.

Startled, I stumbled, and Mr. Johnston caught my arm. "She's used to it," he said. "But you needn't be."

Although I let him lead me away, I glanced back through slitted eyes. Mrs. Crawley's arm was high in the air, and her hand clutched a thick driftwood club. I did not, thank G.o.d, hear the thump, but the sound of her retching was plain.

I didn't give a thought to my corset until late that night, and the next morning I couldn't bring myself to go down to that place again to find it. In any case, I was sure the waves would have dragged it away. Another piece of my old life lost. Until I fas.h.i.+oned something new with which to bind myself, I would have to give up wearing my cinched skirts and dresses and rely on the loose-fitting duster that until now I'd worn only for the dirtiest work.

CHAPTER 14.

IF THE CHILDREN were not apt pupils, they were good company, and I began to appreciate their distinctions. Mary thrived on organization. She antic.i.p.ated the materials we'd need and kept an eye on her siblings to be sure they were paying strict attention. She had a small silver pocketknife of which she was proud, and she was forever sharpening pencils with it and polis.h.i.+ng the blade with her ap.r.o.n. She ordered by species the items we continued to collect from the beach, using the book she'd kept from the traveling library, and of all the items in the Sears catalog, she coveted most a spice cupboard with eighteen cunning drawers. She wasn't quick, but she was dogged and would worry a problem or a pa.s.sage until satisfied that she understood its meaning perfectly. If this tended to make her literal and somewhat humorless, it also made her careful and thorough, and I admired her for it.

As so often happens with siblings, Edward, quick, restless, and impatient, was nearly Mary's opposite. She blamed him for breaking the points of his pencils on purpose to annoy her. Edward was confident and outgoing; it was no accident that he was the first person we'd met when we landed at the light station. He loved machines, either because he a.s.sociated them with his father, who had taught him their workings, or from a natural proclivity, and he was fascinated by Oskar's electrical contraptions. I liked to see them together, their heads bent over some mysterious bit of wire. Edward was protective of his siblings, always shouldering the heaviest burdens and stepping forward to test anything that appeared questionable or dangerous.

Nicholas was p.r.o.ne to daydreaming. He spent hours charging back and forth over the bridge to the light tower, waving a stick and mouthing encouragement to his troops. (I was gratified that some of his commands echoed those I'd read to him from The Battle of Mobile Bay). He was the most avid collector; he gave Christian names to nearly all of the items he picked up, including the stones and the weeds, and then told Jane little stories in which these creatures and objects figured as characters. He had a keen sense of fun and was the only one who dared to tease the formidable Mrs. Crawley. You could see that she was pleased to be allowed relief sometimes from her strictness.

Jane was the most curious and forward. She seemed to suspect that information was being kept from her-perhaps it was; she was the youngest, after all-and she questioned vigilantly and exhaustively. She tried out roles for herself, sometimes aping her mother, sometimes her sister or brothers. I was flattered the day she tried looping the two front locks of her hair to the back, the way I did mine. But her own strong personality-inquisitive, willful, and self-a.s.sured-overwhelmed any she might copy. I saw something of myself in her, and while I'd quickly become fond of all the children, I believed that she and I had a special sympathy. I sensed that she'd chosen me as a model much the way I'd chosen Miss Dodson.

With Miss Dodson in mind, I gradually decided that, given our unusual situation and my students' interest in aquatic life, I ought to become more of a real teacher of science. The children had recently found a sea urchin freshly expired on the beach. Some Species contained a picture of that creature's insides with the parts labeled, and I thought it would be instructive to open the animal and observe the complex structures beneath the sh.e.l.l. I'd not expected its outside to be so hard, however. Because of the roundness and the spines, it was difficult to hold the thing steady enough to plunge a knife in safely.

"Edward, run and get your mother's big shears, or we'll never open it."

While we waited, the others pretended to p.r.i.c.k their fingers on the bright purple poisonous needles.

When Edward returned, I fitted the jaws of the shears around the middle of the urchin and squeezed until the sh.e.l.l broke with a snap. With dish towels to protect my hands, I pulled the halves apart. The children leaned forward for a better view. Inside were soft twists and folds, glistening cl.u.s.ters of red and gray ribbon, and drifts of yellow seed pearls.

"There"-I pointed triumphantly, feeling quite like Miss Dodson-"is Aristotle's lantern!"

The whole looked like a tulip. Nature repeating her patterns, I thought, remembering Miss Dodson quoting Mr. Emerson. There was an important idea in this somewhere if I could figure out how to articulate it. Oskar, I was sure, would be able to explain it. The lesson, I believed, had been a great success.

Then Janie reached with her fork-utensils were our only dissecting tools-and poked at the soft ocher flesh. The briny smell of the sea rose from it, and suddenly, the tangle of innards, which a moment before had been a gorgeous arrangement of colors and shapes, stood out to me as what they were, a cup of guts, some small measure of which had tipped out onto my kitchen table. What had possessed me to take the thing apart?

"I'm sorry," I said. With great effort, I forced a feeling of sickness down, as cold sweat rose on my neck.

The children clamored for my attention.

"He spilled!"

"Can we open another?"

"Ow! Don't poke me!"

Their voices sc.r.a.ped at me unendurably. My collar was so close about my neck; it seemed to restrict my breathing. When the bell clanged at last, calling the children to their lunch, I fled the kitchen and stumbled up the stairs to lie down.

I slept for an hour or so, waking when Oskar slipped into the bed beside me for his "night." Feeling better, I went back to the kitchen. Oskar had left his lunch plate of sardines and pilot bread atop the gore. I sc.r.a.ped the violated urchin into a pail and carried it to the edge of the rock to hurl the mess into the sea. Mrs. Crawley was there, disposing of her family's garbage in the same way. I confessed my weakness.

"I'm surprised," I concluded. "I've never been squeamish before."

She gave me an appraising look. "Some women have these episodes when they're with child, although I never did."

My mother had admonished me to keep careful track of my bleeding, so as to avoid stained sheets and undergarments, but that was another instruction I'd resisted. I had no need of calendars and notebooks; I could tell by the tightening and the ache when the blood was due. My lax habits meant that I didn't know how many weeks had pa.s.sed since I'd last bled, although I'd been vaguely aware that more than the usual had gone by. I'd attributed this irregularity to the strangeness of the place, of the diet, of the entire life here. In reality, nothing extraordinary had occurred; the simplest, most obvious explanation was the truth.

I pressed my hand against my abdomen as if to hold the incipient child back. "I can't have a baby here!"

Mrs. Crawley laughed. "Of course you can. I've had two in this very place, and if the good Lord sees fit to send me more, I'll have them here as well."

"How?"

"The same way you would have it anyplace else. It's you who has to do it, you and the baby, not anyone or anything else."

"What about Oskar?" I hardly knew what I meant, but it seemed to me that he had to be included somehow.

"I'd say he's done his part. The rest is yours, I'm afraid."

"What if something goes wrong?"

She looked pensive, her eyes fixed on the milky water churning among the sharp black rocks far below us. "Babies don't always live, it's true. But something may just as easily go wrong in Monterey or San Francisco. Even in Milwaukee, I dare say."

I must have looked stricken, because Mrs. Crawley put a hand on my arm. Though it was cold as a fish, its pressure was firm. "I'll be here, you know. I do have a bit of experience. In the end, you'll see that there's little for you to do other than endure. Nature will take care of it one way or another. You needn't worry."

I attempted a smile, but it wouldn't stick on my lips.

"You'll want the nursery cleaned up," Mrs. Crawley said brightly. "Won't take more than an hour to pitch all that junk into the sea."

CHAPTER 15.

OSKAR WAS ELATED and confident. He convinced me that it was a sign-if one believed in such things; of course, we did not-that all was as it should be. After all, I was a young married woman; producing a child was what I was meant to do.

In a matter of minutes, it seemed, I changed from my mother's daughter, who might make any messes she pleased, because it wasn't really her job to keep order, to my own child's mother, who didn't want her baby born into any more disorder and chance than its own coming would create.

That night I roamed the house, straightening and scouring. I scrubbed the kitchen table with salt, wiped the soot from behind the stove in the parlor, and repaired a rent in a sofa cus.h.i.+on. I took my Aladdin lamp upstairs and surveyed the schoolroom. Oskar had never made shelves-the wood hadn't been to his liking, or Mr. Crawley had needed it for some other purpose; he'd been vague enough about the reason to make me understand that, in truth, the job no longer interested him once he'd found a more exciting pursuit. The trunk around which the children and I staggered forward with letters and numbers formed a sort of island, surrounded by a sea of dried creatures and weeds, along with various sh.e.l.ls, sticks and stones, egg cases, teeth, and bones, which we'd gradually removed from the crates where I'd stored them, so that we could examine one thing or another. The idea that Mrs. Crawley thought this ought to be cleared away wholesale disheartened me. Had we just been biding time while we waited for Nature to organize her agenda? Unable to face such a thought, I turned away.

Our bedroom was equally untidy, the blankets recklessly cast aside as Oskar had left them when he'd risen from bed for his dinner. As I reached to pull them up, I saw that the sheets were no longer the creamy white they'd been when my mother folded and placed them in the trunk, but pale brown. There were stiff circles where Oskar's spilled seed had dried, rusty swipes of blood, even patches of actual mud. How had I allowed this?

I yanked the sheets from the bed. On them I piled every towel and handkerchief we owned, and every item of clothing we'd worn in this place. Hardly an inch was fit to touch human skin.

I pushed it all down the stairs in a filthy ma.s.s.

For over an hour, partially clothed in one of the remnants of my former life-a dress I'd dragged here, not realizing it would be too fine to remove from the protection of my trunk-I spread a mixture of soda crystals and water on all of our cuffs and collars and the worst of the stains on the sheets and napkins. It seemed crucial to return everything to the state in which it had been before we'd left Milwaukee.

The next morning, even though it wasn't the usual day, Mrs. Crawley agreed to wash her family's clothes as well, so as to make heating the copper worthwhile. She and Mary and Jane and I went to the cellar, where we plunged s.h.i.+rts, trousers, petticoats, skirts, and linens of all descriptions into fiercely boiling water, while the steam curled our hair around our faces.

"It's to be expected," Mrs. Crawley said approvingly. "You're readying the nest."

I was as much irritated as rea.s.sured by the idea that I might be acting under the influence of some universal feminine instinct.

"That's enough, my girl!" Mrs. Crawley barked.

I snapped to, but it was Mary she was addressing. The girl was vigorously grating soap over the writhing clothes. A dark gray sc.u.m had gathered at the top of the copper.

"You'll sc.r.a.pe your fingers and get blood on the sheets if you're not careful," her mother said. "That's plenty of soap, anyway."

Jane had the safer job of dropping bluing into a tub of cold water. The globes of heavy color sank and stretched into jellyfish and then dissipated into wisps of indigo smoke before they disappeared into the clear water. "See? It's invisible, but you know it's there," she said. "Just like electricity. Mr. Swann says that everything and everybody's got electricity inside 'em. Did you know I had electricity in me, Ma? Mr. Swann says electricity is one of the invisible powers of nature. It's all over the place, even in the air."

Her last sentence made electricity sound less like the mysterious and beautiful bluing and more like the particles of dirt roiling around the copper.

"Mr. Swann has a great many ideas, doesn't he?" Mrs. Crawley said, handing me one end of a dripping sheet to wring.

"Oskar's designing some experiments involving electrical waves," I explained.

"Experiments? I didn't realize that Mr. Swann was a scientist." She began to twist the sheet.

"Well, anyone can be a scientist, don't you think?" I recoiled as icy water ran up my forearm. "I mean, it's just a matter of considering what's known and determining how to pursue what's not, isn't it?" But the words that Oskar had spoken so robustly sounded hollow when I delivered them. "He's going to build a machine," I tried, struggling to keep my grip on the sheet that Mrs. Crawley was fiercely twisting. "He's going to send messages from the parlor to the lighthouse using the electric waves in the air."

"Hmmph," she said, dropping what had essentially become a dry snake into the basket. "He might try shouting."

When we went outside to hang the clothes, Mrs. Crawley told the girls they could go and play; they'd helped enough.

"I wanted to tell you privately," she said when they'd run off, "that it's good to prepare, but it's better not to expect. You never know what might happen."

"You mean like Baby Johnston," I said.

She looked at me sharply.

"I read it in one of the logbooks. *Baby Johnston born and buried.'"

"Oh. Yes, that's right."

"And his wife?"

"Gone, too, I'm afraid," she managed around a mouthful of pins.

"Poor Mr. Johnston. He practically threw me off the rock when I tried to look at the grave."

"You'll learn, Mrs. Swann, that privacy must be respected here." She gave the sheet she was about to hang a violent shake to discourage wrinkles. "When you're living this close to people, sometimes you have to look the other way. There'll be times you'll want them to look the other way, too."

"He left birds on the catwalk again." Mr. Johnston had crept silently up the path and was standing just behind us. I stiffened, worried that he'd heard our conversation. "And his mess was all over the place downstairs."

I had a fleeting image of some marauding animal before Johnston pa.s.sed some familiar-looking papers to Mrs. Crawley. I imagined with chagrin the boiler room looking like our front room or kitchen after Oskar had spent hours working on his plans, the pages he'd carelessly let fall from the table drifting like autumn leaves against the legs of the chairs.