Christine Deschamps/Keeper1

Christine Deschamps/Keeper1

Chapter Five

Autumn, 1907

Dunvegan, Nova Scotia

Iheld the lantern high with my child’s hands, breathing puffs of frost into the early morning air. Dad’s head was at the same level as mine as he crouched under the cow, giving me a good view ofhis red ears and the steam that churned from his nostrils. The damp creeped up under my felt coat and puckeredmy skin. I wanted to fold my arms across my chest, seal off the cold, but to doso I would have to set the lantern down, which would trigger a gruff scolding.

Dad chewed his lower lip as he squeezed and rolled his fingers down the teats, the smell of stale tobacco and slumber rising from his body. He was a giant in his heavy duck jacket and denim overalls, his large body folded like a jack knife to fit under the cow. He watched me from the corner of his eye, making me nervous.

Iplanted my feet wide, my wobbly knees locked and my hips tilted forward to balance the weight of thelantern. Gravity was winning; the lantern dipped toward the floor. But before Dad could scold, I raised the lantern higher, my arm trembling. Henever asked me to help with the milking, but every morning since I was old enough to lift a lantern, I would meet him in the kitchen, dressed in threadbare work clothes that had belonged to at least two of my older brothers before me. Holding the lantern made my arms ache, and the early hours made it difficult to stay awake. But I was determined to be useful – if I became a hindrance, he would ask me to leave – soI kept my mouth shut and my eyes on his hands.

But the intense concentration and sore muscles were worth it. For when we were finished with the milking, healways gave me a ride back to the house on his shoulders; his hands, warm and damp from the milk, clasped around my ankles. We’d drink strong tea in the kitchen while everyone else slept, clutching our mugs in both hands as we leaned toward the fire, elbows on knees. I would pretend to be a big strong man just like him, a man who could sling a calf onto his shoulder or lift a bale of hay with one arm. Sometimes, if hewas in high spirits, he would tell me stories. He was so full of stories that I wondered how he remembered them all. Afterward, when the rest of the family was awake, I would run to my room and write down everything he said so that I could remember the stories when I was grown and it was my turn to tell them.

“Done.” Dad lifted the pail from under Elizabeth, a light Guernsey who craned her neck around as if he was talking to her. “Take the pail over and set it by the can, Calum. And don’t spill any of it.” He said this every time, though I had never spilled a drop.

I lifted the pail with both hands. It hung between my knees, and my legs bowed to keep from bumping the pail and causing the milk to slosh. When I returned, he was just setting the stool next to Mary Queen of Scots, her jaw grinding side to side as she chewed her oats.

“We’ll make a farmer of you yet, Calum.” He put his hand on the top of my head, covering its crown with his heat.

I held the lantern high as he crouched under Mary, the top of my head cold now that he had withdrawn his hand. My arms began to tremble and burn from the effort, but I held the lantern so that the light fell over his shoulder, exactly as he liked it. My arms were just about to fail me when he straightened up and said, “That does it.”

I took the pail from under the cow.

“Don’t spill it,” he said.

“I never have,” I mumbled.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve never spilled any,” I said.

“Well, don’t make a habit of it now.”

I let my arms hang down, carrying the pail low to the ground, relieved that this task used different muscles, and set the pail next to the large milk can. I turned to hurry back, but he had stepped into the open barn door and lit a cigarette. He wouldn’t need me to hold the lantern right away, so I stood on my toes and peeked into the milk can; it was as dark as a well and smelled of wet metal. “Halò,” Isaid;my voice thin and hollow inside the can. The can was empty, and there were several pails of milk gathered around its base, steaming in the cold.

Dad was still smoking, his back turned.

My arms shook as I held the first pail over my shoulder, resting it against the lip of the can. Both hands were on the bale, butI needed to get one hand up under the pale to tip the bottom up, which meant I would have to grip it with just one hand while Imoved the other. Butmy left arm couldn’t hold the weight on its own, and the edge of the pail slipped from the lip of the can, dragging my arm down with it. The milk can rang like a giant bell as the pail ricocheted off its side and toppled to the ground, the milk spilling in the dust.

Dad came running. “Calum, what the hell?”

Myarms went up to protect my head. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Stop crying.” He grabbed the back of my neck and shook me. “What were you thinking?”

I clenched my teeth, tried to breathe, but as soon as I started to speak, my voice came out wobbly and wet. “I was trying to help.”

“Well you didn’t now, did ya?” He released my neck with a push, causing me to stumble overmyhand-me-down shoes. “Get back to the house.”

I just stood staring at him.

“Get back to the house!”His voice was the roar of a lion.

I ran from the barn.

Outside mist was falling. Thehouse’swindows were black and unwelcoming. I crept around to the backside of the barn, where a small service door led to the horse stallsand tack room. Our family’s two work horses, Foggy and Misty, a pair of dapple-grays, stood with their noses to the straw in their shared stall. They whinnied. Misty hung her head over the rail, pricked up her ears.

“Halò girl.” I stroked her nose.

She nuzzled my hand, her lips making a wet swipe across my knuckles.

“You want some grain?” I dipped my hand into the barrel across the hallway and brought back a handful. “Here you go.”

Misty nibbled at my palm – it tickled. Foggy nudgedmy shoulder with her head. I gave her a handful of grain as well. They were twins, inseparable since birth, and it was difficult to tell them apart, except that Foggy had a large black freckle in the iris of her left eye, making it appear as if the pupil had a small Siamese twin.

I cupped one of Foggy’s velvet ears in my hands, nuzzled my nose into its fuzzy lining. Foggy’s ear flinched, swatted my chin. Her lips probed my shirt pocket, looking for a carrot.

I unlatched the gate, slipped into the stall, and latched it again, ran my hands down the horses’ throats, stood between them. Heat radiated from their bodies, cut the chill. I buried his face in Misty’s shoulder, listened to the low whirring of her breath. Her heart thumped against my cheek.

Dad would come to feed them soon, so I climbed over the railing to exit the stall, crept out the door. Somewhere beyond the mist the sun was rising and a pale glow outlined the black saw blade of the woods, the dark spaces between the trunks inviting holes into which I could burrow and get lost from the world. I crossed the field through sodden oat stubble, soaking my socks.My wool pea coat, which had been my brother Robert’s when he was my age, hung almost to my knees and the gap at the throat was large, even when I turned up the collar.Soon the coat was dark with rain and the rolled-up cuffs began to collect water, which ran down the sleeve when I lifted my arm to push my wet hair from my eyes.

There was not enough light yet to penetrate the forest, and I stood on its edge for a while before I could make out the shape of the path through the undergrowth of bracken and nettles. The tops of the trees looked sickly from their annual molting. Falling leaves fluttering between nets of branchesas fine as spider webs. The woods were damp on my face, on the inside of my nose and throat. I swam through this world of filtered gray light, as silent as a fish, clinging to the shadows.

Farther up the hill, the path became less distinct, more a groove in the thick underbrush, no visible ground. I followed it to a clearing where a pioneer well sunk into the earth, the rocks that rimmed its mouth moss-covered and slumping. A few yards away, a pile of stacked stones appeared to be more cairn than chimney, the blackened hearth the only clue to its original purpose. The rain had broken, and shafts of sunlight beamed through from the eastern horizon, making the dark autumn grasses spring-bright, resplendent with crystal beads. I leaned over the cold stones, resting my belly on the edge. The sharp stones pressed into my ribs, creaked as I stretched toward the water’s metallic green smell. Then a rock slid sideways and I slipped forward, headfirst toward the water as the stone squirted from the edge, striking the side of the well before splashing into the black pool. Ishoved myself back, making the sign of the cross. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

“Joseph, seph, seph…” echoed the well.

I smiled, put my fingers to my teeth and let out a sharp whistle. It screamed through the well and bounced back. I grinned. A bucket, which was only partly rusted, sat on the ground next to my foot, a rope coiled at its side. I knelt next to the well, making a game of lowering the bucket so that it wouldn’t hit the sides and clang. I stopped when the bucket was about two-thirds down. Then I swayed my arm back and forth until the bucket began to swing. Its reverberation against the wall was like a chorus of church bells. Enthralled by the dissonance, I struck the wall with the bucket again and again until my arm grew tired and the sound muddled.

When the bells died out I cried, “Halò!”

“Halò, halò, lò, lò…”

“Is anyone down there?”

I Am. The words crept into my skull. My body felt weightless; my hands slacked, releasing their grip on the rope, which slithered over the wet lip of the well, spindled down, passing from light to shadow, graceful in contrast to the ricocheting clang of the bucket against stone. Then the bucket hit water, a hollow slap. The rope, heavy with moisture, tipped the pail and silver water arced over its curved lip, sucking it under. Rings mottled the surface; a cacophony of silver light cascaded up the moss-covered walls. Stars in the abyss.

Just as easily as the surface of the water had been shattered, it healed itself, the ripples dissolving until it became black glass once more. But I felt as if I had been sucked under with the bucket into a place where I drowned in the dark warmth of otherness as familiar and comforting as my mother’s womb. Then the tendril of The Voice twined through my thoughts, hooked its barbs into my spine, injecting images into my mind that a seven-year-old boy couldn’t possibly understand. Knowledge without context - like severed limbs - thrashedinsideme (use dash instead of comma here). I wanted to pull the bucket back up from the dark pool, to have the well give it back, not to regurgitate it, but to unswallow it.

“Stop!” I cried, covering my ears as if The Voice had entered through them.

“Stop, stop, top…”

“Please!”

“Please, please, ease…”

Images whirled like the flywheel on a harvester, too rapid to have meaning. “Please!”

As you wish. My mind went dark. Then a presence came over me, like the warm burn of my father’s moonshine, permeating my toes and fingers, deep warmth, like stepping into a hot bath. It moved through my body and settled in the top of my head, as if its beam shone from the crown of my skull. Then a single thought emerged – one that I could grasp. Granddad is coming.I breathed in the damp silence, letting my eyes see above the surface of the water to the reflection it cast, the silhouette of a small boy, his ears sticking out slightly, crouched over, his arms drawn to his chest.

Then The Voice slipped from inside me, leaving the top of my head cold.

A cloud shrouded the sun, and myreflection dissolved into the black. A deep chill settled over the meadow; the magic that had infused it dissolved in the soft rain that fell in rustling whispers on the trees and grasses. I stood on shaky knees, my legs numb from kneeling. My clothes were sodden, my pale skin the blue-white of skim milk. But as I made my way back down the trail, Ifinally looked my age.

I slowed my pace as I reached the edge of the woods. I couldn’t spot the sun in the overcast sky, but I knew thatI had been gone awhile. I would most likely get the strap for it. The burble of male voices came from the other side of the barn. Istopped at the corner where there was a lean-to filled with scrap wood,peeked around its side.

Dadstood by the corral, holding up a piece of damaged fence railing. Rain dripped from his wide-brimmed hat onto his shoulders and back. My oldest brothers, Neil and Bruce, sixteen and fifteen, stood in front of our fatherwith arms crossed on their chests and studious faces. Robert, eleven at the time, dangled his long legs from the top rail of the corral, feigning attention with practiced skill (Robert’s only interest in farm work was to get through it as quickly as possible so that he could read).Angus, age six, stood by the gate post tracing the wood’s squiggly larvae borings with a bent nail. Unlike the others, he didn’t have to be there, but he couldn’t find me, and I guessed that he was afraid if he went into the house, Mum would make him scrub something.

“See how they chewed it, lads? Horses will chew through anything they can. That’s why we need to put this on the tops of all the rails.” Dad held up a roll of thin metal strip, one-inch wide.

Angus pushed his nail into a split in the post; the wet, swollen wood grabbed onto the metal, held tight. Angus tugged at it for a while, but gave up. He jumped up on the corral gate, leaned back to swing it out;metal screeched against metal.

“Angus, get down from there!” Dad’s face reddened. “You’ll spring the hinges.”

Angus hopped down, rubbed his freckled nose, andreturned to messing with his stuck nail.

I watched my brothers and father through a lens of gray mist; hazy, distant. The dampness of the well had left its residuein my nostrils, on my skin. I felt like I did when I spent all Sunday afternoon reading, like I had stepped from another world, only this one had been too vivid. The barn and corral, the house, all seemed cut from paperboard. I thought about walking toward the house. Dad’s back was turned. Angus would surely follow, and we could play checkers in the kitchen while my clothes dried in front of the fire. But the thought stuck in my throat, as if I’d swallowed a piece of stale bread.

I stole into the lean-to and crouched among the scrap wood and spiders. I was out of the rain, and could still keep an eye on my father. I removed my shoes and socks, squeezed the water from them and slipped them back on. The lump in my throat had grown into a sickening mass. It wasn’t fear – I didn’t like the strap, but I could endure it – it was something worse. It was the feeling I’d had when, as a very tiny boy, I’d run naked through the house, squealing with glee after my bath – my father had slapped me hard enough to knock me down. I hadn’t cried, but had curled up against the wall, trying to cover myself and wishing very much for a blanket to hide beneath.

“Granddad is coming,” I whispered across the yard to my father, inaudible. “I know.”And though there was power in saying it aloud, I felt my own strangeness, as if I’d returned from the forest naked.

Yet the knowing had come with a set of instructions. This knowledge wasn’t meant to be a secret – I was meant to tell what I knew. I knew I was supposed to tell my father as surely as I knew Granddad would arrive that day. I also understood that I couldn’t say noto The Voice. Disobedience was not an option.

I crept from my hiding place in the scrap pile. The rain was colder than it had been before, a touch of ice in the drops. The open space between me and my brothers felt long and exposed, but I crossed it, stopped behind my father, hesitated before tapping his arm.