Bound (10 page)

The heat subsided. What if? Nothing. Nate was only fifteen, bound for long years at Harvard College. He couldn’t keep her or her bastard.

Alice’s feet had begun following the road home as her mind had followed another one, and now she saw with surprise that she had traversed almost the whole short distance to the widow’s, in the dark, far outside Freeman’s range, with Nate by her side. She dared a look sideways and found him with eyes fixed on his own footsteps, hands still secured in his pockets, but still she felt the rush of panic. She looked ahead and saw the widow’s house not three rods away, the keeping room windows yellowed with the light of her candle, and she calmed some. She said, “I’m here, now. You may go back to your frolick,” and ran up onto the widow’s stoop. She took the latch securely in hand and turned, but Nate seemed to have vanished. When he spoke his voice came out of the dark like the invisible call of a wolf or an owl, except for the work of the cider in it. “Don’t you like me, Alice?”

The solitary plea drifted across the air, bringing with it a kind of power Alice had never before experienced. If she said yes, she might draw him to her as she might draw a strand of thread from the bobbin; if she said no, he would spin off into the night. It was Alice’s choice. She put them both before her, the “I like you” and the “I do not,” and could see no great advantage to herself in either.

She called, “Go back to your frolick!”

THE WIDOW DROPPED
her knitting pins in her lap as Alice entered. “Why, Alice! ’Tis barely dark! And what have you done with Mr. Freeman?”

“I came away ahead. He talks yet.”

“No doubt.” The widow peered at her. “And did you enjoy yourself?”

“Yes, madam. I’ll soak the beans now.”

“’Tis done.”

“I’ve the cheeses to turn.”

“The cheese is turned. I hope you didn’t come away from your fun thinking me too feeble to turn a few cheeses.”

“No, madam. I was only tired. I’ll go to bed, then.”

Alice climbed the stairs but had only got as far as sitting on the bed and dropping her shoes when the outer door opened and she heard Freeman exclaim, “Is she here? Is the girl here?”

“Yes, yes, gone to bed. Whatever—”

“I look, I turn, I look again, she’s gone. With Nate. The pair together. Ben Howe said they walked off toward the road.”

“What did you think, they’d run off, then?”

“I thought…well, good God! As soon as I heard, I set out after; this was no longer than a quarter hour since—”

“Hardly time to pick a stone out of a shoe, let along tumble around behind a stone wall, if that’s what worries you.”

“You don’t know fifteen-year-old boys, then. Without a word she walks off. Without a look!”

“She grew tired. You were engaged in talk. She came home. Nate walked her. Calm yourself, sir.”

A chair scraped. A pair of heels thudded heavily against the floor.

The widow said, “What news of our neighbors?” and so the talk turned, too low for Alice to hear from her bed. She thought to return to the stairs, but she was tired. Beyond tired. She lay down on her bed and thought of how once again her protection had lain in Freeman. If Nate had indeed removed his hands from his pockets and tumbled her down behind a wall, Freeman would have come along in a very few minutes. She thought again of the tale she’d heard from Nate: she pictured Freeman’s strong but gentle hands wrapping the widow’s burned flesh in a sheet and carrying her to safety. After a time Alice realized that she had changed the tale, and that Freeman carried her and not the widow; the wake-dream lulled her into sleep, and she didn’t wake till dawn; if she dreamed a sleep-dream she didn’t remember it.

A
fter Alice had collected three more payments from Sears and watched them go into the widow’s money jar, after she’d felt the growing weight of her own little money pouch, she began to eat like she used to do. Or more than she used to do. Her waistband grew tighter, her face rounder; she checked herself in the hall mirror more and more now, but as no one commented on her changed shape she began to think she might keep her secret forever. She expected herself to be delivered of her bastard by early March; she made the calculation and then pushed it away as she might push away a turned piece of meat—far enough away from her and it wouldn’t smell. Or at least so it worked in daylight. At night she woke with pounding heart and sweating skin and wondered what was to become of her.

It seemed the greatest irony that as her internal situation became daily more alarming, the household around her seemed to settle into a greater state of ease; even Freeman seemed used to her presence now. The point was proved one night after Alice had gone up the stairs and she heard Freeman’s voice below, in that softer, looser tone he sometimes fell into after an extra mug of cider.

“I declare that girl draws half the light when she leaves the room.”

“Does she, now.”

“I said
half
the light, Widow Berry.”

“But which half sends the spark?”

“I say nothing of any sparks, I say only—”

“’Tis the old, dry wood goes first to flame.”

“I only mean to say that I think she’s a fine girl, and I’m glad you took her in.”

“So I see.”

“You might stop your nonsense and admit you’re glad as well.”

“Glad of what? That I took the girl in, or that you’ve succumbed at last to her charms? Or is it one and the same?”

Freeman’s chair scraped. “The amusement you seem to find in this particular line of conversation escapes me. I believe I shall say good night.”

“Good night to you, sir. Enjoy your dreams.”

To which Freeman made no answer that Alice could hear.

AT FIRST ALICE
took the conversation as nothing more than the widow’s teasing, and yet it kept her awake, running over and over through her head, not just the words but the various tones in which they’d been spoken. After a time Alice thought she began to see the problem: Freeman wouldn’t admit the widow’s jest about the spark, and this had provoked the widow into more jesting, which further provoked Freeman into…what? More praise of Alice.

Alice thought on this some more and began to think on some other things: Freeman’s statement earlier that she’d won him “utterly,” his new ease around her, how he’d warned Nate to leave her be, how upset he’d become when she’d walked off at the frolick. At first the new thoughts caused her flesh to prickle with sweat, but then they took another turn, and a new conversation began to take place inside Alice’s head, in another pair of voices, both Alice’s. They batted a single thought back and forth, unable to agree between the two selves whether to keep it or let it go.

When Alice woke the next morning it was as if the last night’s conversation with herself had continued in her sleep until one voice had won out, so that what had seemed an argument last night was now no argument at all, was, in fact, no choice at all.

The boy Nate couldn’t help her. The man Freeman could. It was that simple.

That awful.

BUT COULD SHE
do it? Alice would have been a fine fool indeed not to know the kind of thoughts she sparked in a certain kind of man, but what she didn’t know, even after all this time, was whether Freeman was that kind of man. It was true he didn’t ogle her as did the other men in the village; it was true he was never anything but kind and courteous; it was true he didn’t seem to consider himself in any way entitled to her services; but as Alice watched and listened over the next few days she concluded that although he was more careful at it than most, Freeman didn’t necessarily live on any higher plane than the other men in the village.

First came a bit of gossip at Sears’s store about the death of a mulatto whore who had been “kept at the tavern by Eben Freeman.” Alice lingered behind the shelves, selecting pins for the widow and discovered that the word
kept
got taken looser or tighter, depending on who did the talking. It seemed generally acknowledged that at one time Freeman had favored the whore, and she’d favored him; it seemed also acknowledged that she’d been better fed and clothed than most in her situation. There opinion turned left and right. The youngest Myrick sister insisted that the whore had died near Yarmouth’s Indian Town in a cabin that Freeman had built for her and where he continued to visit; the youngest Winslow girl countering that the Yarmouth whore was another one entirely and naught to do with Freeman; Mrs. Cobb declared that the tavern whore had gone off for a time with some money everyone suspected came from Freeman, but that she’d come back to work at the tavern and died in the same bed she’d been born in, being no better than her mother had been. There Mr. Sears spoke up to say that he’d not heard such a lot of nonsense since the business about the witch baby; Mrs. Sears then spoke into the new silence to say that if widowers like Freeman insisted on keeping themselves single so long they might expect their reputation to suffer; the older Myrick sister then supposed that one dead whore wasn’t likely to harm Freeman’s reputation any more than it had been harmed by “that other one.” Alice fussed over the pins a time longer, but there the talk cut off, as if all throats had been severed.

Next came Freeman himself. She now knew that he was a man long widowed and that he was a man yet desirous of a woman’s company, but because he’d passed that age where he might hope to acquire a woman by virtue of a natural attraction, he’d been forced to go out and buy one. Alice would have thought there might be a number of older widows ready to take him for his money alone, but as none had done it thus far it seemed clear enough to Alice that Freeman wasn’t going to settle for any of the toothless old vultures who circled the village.

And, his whore was now dead.

With all that in Alice’s mind, along with what she’d heard out of Freeman’s own mouth, she decided to attempt it.

THE DIFFICULTY WAS
in finding her chance. She thought she’d found it one day in late August when the temperature dropped down with September-like chill, prompting the widow to head into the yard to pull goose down for the winter mattresses. Pulling down was long, hard work, requiring the catching and securing of the goose under one arm while fixing an old stocking over its head with the other, then fighting against beating wings and pummeling beak to pluck free the soft undercoat of feathers. The widow would have been engaged with the noisy geese more than long enough for Alice to do what was needed; the trouble arose when Freeman decided to take that exact morning to ride to Eastham to visit an ailing uncle.

Alice’s next opportunity came when the widow set out for the shore to collect sand for the floors, but Freeman had come upon something in his newspaper that stiffened his neck and cobbled his brow as well as his jawline; Alice didn’t feel it just the moment to test the strength of her power to draw him.

Alice waited, and soon enough another chance came: the widow upstairs at the loom laying a web that should busy her for hours and Freeman off to the barn to check on a recent lameness in his horse. Alice didn’t like the idea of the barn, as it held a bad association for her, but it had one certain advantage: the widow wasn’t in it. True, the sash in Alice’s end of the attics remained raised, because she liked to smell and hear all she could of Satucket, but Alice didn’t think Freeman the kind of man to make enough noise to reach the widow’s end of the attics. Besides, Alice’s pregnancy was advancing, and if she waited much longer she would be too far gone to fool a man of Freeman’s wit into believing he’d spawned what she carried.

Alice found Freeman in his shirtsleeves, just leaving his horse’s stall. “Why, Alice,” he said, and smiled. Alice thought herself well acquainted with that smile by now, but in that minute she saw she had long missed one thing in it, something she could only call a well-worn sadness. For a second she thought with shame of what she was about to do, of how it would shame
him
. Alice wasn’t so great a fool as to think that someone like Freeman would marry her just to give his supposed bastard his name, but surely he would feel as honor-bound as he would be law-bound to keep such a child fed and safe and warm. To keep Alice fed and safe and warm. And after all, if he’d managed to keep a whore at the tavern without losing the respect of all the village, how greatly could a single dalliance with Alice shame him? And a single dalliance was all she needed of him. As Alice stood under Freeman’s smile she felt her edges soften, felt necessity joined with inclination. She began to form a not unpleasant idea that if she stepped closer he might of his own will put his arms around her, hold her. What he might do next she didn’t count as pleasant at all, but as it was her only hope she must allow it. The question was, how to begin it? She’d never needed to start Verley in her direction.

Freeman had pulled an old sack off a peg and begun to wipe his hands; Alice watched his long fingers work the cloth around and knew she needed to get them to leave the cloth and light on her, but how? She said, “Do you find your horse fit, sir?”

“Sound as ever.”

There Alice stopped, her best effort exhausted.

After a time Freeman said, “Have you come for me, Alice, or has the widow sent you out here on your own chore?”

And there it lay. The thing she needed to start him toward her as plain as the word of God, or if not the word of God, a sign, then. She said, “I come for you, sir.” She took another step forward, stretched up tall, and put her arms around his neck, hoping to press her mouth to his lips, but Verley had never troubled to put his lips on Alice, and she wasn’t at all sure how to fix them. She paused, and Freeman had just that second’s hesitation in which to pull back. He caught her hands from behind his neck and drew them down. “Here, now, what’s this?”

“’Tis all right, sir. You want me, you may have me. Right here. This minute.” She raised her arms toward his neck again, but halfway there she saw the look on him and thought perhaps he didn’t care to trouble with lips, either. She pulled open her bodice strings, caught up Freeman’s hands, and fixed them on her breasts—Verley had liked to squeeze her breasts near to rupture—and dropped her hands to his breeches buttons, working the first button through before Freeman came to life again.

“Whoa, now, Alice!” He lifted his hands off her swollen bosom, but there they stuttered in the air, as if he couldn’t decide where else to put them. He attempted to back up, but he only had a few inches to go before he came against the stall, and he struck it hard with his bootheel. It startled the horse, causing it to strike the wall a return blow that rattled the stall door, and Freeman looked behind him in alarm; it gave Alice time to work the second button through, and she felt his part stiffen under the cloth; one moment more, she thought, and all will be finished. She lifted her skirt, but there Freeman seemed to have decided what to do with his hands; he clamped them around her arms like a pair of shackles, picked her off her feet, and swung her around against the wall, startling the horse a second time. It thrashed so hard Alice thought it might bring the barn down over them, but she needed so little time now. She grabbed Freeman’s bobbing part; Freeman said, “Alice, now! Alice, now! Alice, now!” and another voice said “What on earth is the—” and stopped there.

The widow stood in the barn door, peering at them through the dimness. Freeman spun around, fixing his breeches as he went, attempting to adjust the awkward twist in them.

The widow said, “I do not…I
do not
—” and stopped a second time.

Freeman pushed past her into the dooryard. The widow followed him.

Alice leaned against the wall where Freeman had left her, knees puddling, heart thundering, as breathless as if Freeman had tried to strangle her. Tears massed thick and hot behind her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them loose. She wouldn’t. After a time she calmed enough to hear the raised voices from the yard. She edged nearer to the barn door to listen.

“And so you have nothing else to say on what’s just happened here.”

“What the devil do you think’s happened here?”

“Judging by what was before my eyes, any number of things.”

“And judging by what you know of a man who’s lived under your roof for the past two years?”

“I know better than to put any of us on any pedestal, Mr. Freeman. I should like to think, however, that you wouldn’t further abuse a young girl already—”

“A young girl already in possession of a trick or two!”

“You would blame her for what I saw, then?”

A pause, in which Alice imagined Freeman would very much like to blame her, but he said, “I blame no one but myself, for the sin of slow-wittedness in extricating myself from an entirely unwarranted and unsolicited situation. Now if you will excuse me.”

“So you would run off now.”

“I
walk
to the water in the hope that it will cool my temper, and if you’re wise you’ll leave me to it.”

Silence.

Alice peered out. Freeman was disappearing around the side of the house, the widow in the direction of the chickens. Alice crept out of the barn, crossed the yard, and climbed the stairs to her room. Her room, but for how many more minutes? The widow had seen her, and she’d heard Freeman; she would send Alice away now, instead of later.

After a time Alice heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She sat down on the bed, her hands under her to stop their trembling. The widow came into the room. She didn’t look at Alice but went to the chest where Alice kept her loose belongings, and began to fuss with them as Alice used to do, as if a whirling mind could be stilled by busy fingers. The widow picked up Alice’s hair comb and put it down, wound and unwound a hair ribbon, thumbed a book by Swift that Freeman had pushed on Alice, and last, she picked up the pouch that had once held the pennyroyal and now held the coins Alice had earned from the widow and Freeman. The widow hefted the pouch as Alice had done so often, as if weighing it. Regretting it. She tipped the pouch upside down and the coins fell out onto the chest, along with a few dregs of pennyroyal. The widow stared absently at the mess for a time, and then as absently wet her finger and picked up a scrap of leaf; she smelled it, set it on her tongue, and slowly, slowly, as if in a kind of trance, her head came up; she turned; she stared at Alice. She might as well have held a mirror before Alice, so clearly did Alice see her own puffy face, her swollen breasts, her tightening belly reflected across the widow’s features.