More Than You Know (9 page)

“Did you know Miss Hamor?”

He said, “To speak to. Everybody did. She was pretty ancient.

She taught my father Latin at the Academy.”

“Really?”

“I don’t believe he shone, at Latin.” Something about this

thought made Conary smile to himself.

I asked him why the house was empty for so long, just to see

what he would say. We were drawing into town.

He said, “
I
heard it was haunted. Now . . . where can I set you

down?” As he asked, he pulled in at the post office. I thanked him for

the ride and got out, wishing the way had been twice as long.

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The Civil War

TheHaskellplacewasonthesoutheasternshoreofBealIsland,

with a wide view of the outer passage to Frenchman’s Bay. Claris knew

this when Danial brought her home on their wedding day; what she hadn’t

exactly understood was that Danial’s mother and brother, Leonard, were

to go on living in the house with them. Danial had merely said that his

mother would welcome her and all necessary things had been arranged,

and Claris had assumed that things would now be for her as they had

for her sisters. When Mary had married, Jonathan Friend’s family built

a house for them. When her sister Alice married, Byron Crocker took her

all the way to Boston on a honeymoon.

Claris’s honeymoon consisted of having an ancient coverlet quilted

in a wedding knot pattern produced from a chest in Mrs. Haskell’s bed-

room and spread on the bed where Danial had slept since boyhood.

Additional arrangements were that Leonard moved downstairs to sleep in

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the buttery, and that for her night soil Claris was given a rather grand

china commode with a lid, from England.

In her first island winter Claris lost a child, a stillborn daughter.

This was a terrible blow; her mother and sisters all gave birth to healthy

babies at the drop of a hat; why should she alone suffer such loss, such

failure? The brief dark days of that winter for Claris were endless. Ten

months later she lost a second baby, also a girl. Her mother-in-law said

very little about this (or about anything) but peered at Claris with ap-

parent dislike from under her bonnet.

It was during this lonely passage in her life that Claris first began

to doubt that behind Danial’s silence lay a mind that divined her thoughts

and a heart that beat in sympathy with hers. She was living in a thick

atmosphere of paralyzing bleakness, waiting for Danial to show that he

knew how it was with her, how it felt to have longed to be a mother but

instead produced only death. When he merely came and went as usual

and expected her to do the same, it finally began to occur to her that

behind Danial’s stolid silence might be . . . nothing she understood.

When her mother-in-law died the third winter, Danial brought the

Baptist minister out from the main, along with the few old friends who

remained, to pray for the soul of the inaccurately named Solace Haskell.

While Reverend Tull was with them, he said prayers for the dead at the

tiny graves of Claris’s daughters, both named Sallie. The ground was

frozen too hard to dig a hole for Solace, so Claris sewed her into a

sailcloth shroud weighted with rocks, and Danial and his brother took

her far out onto the ice, cut a hole, and buried her at sea.

Solace had been almost completely silent during her last year, and

nearly bald, and so nearly dead it was hard to tell she was breathing. But

her ways ruled the house both before and after death. In her house they

did no work on Sundays, could read no books except the Bible and play

no games of any kind. Solace opposed music, cards, and any form of

alcoholic drink. Danial seemed distraught at his mother’s death in a way

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that frightened Claris; it was nothing like his reaction to the deaths of

her babies. Next, Leonard Haskell left to marry Ellen Gott, who lived

around the tip of the island, and Claris finally found herself alone with

her husband.

The family had chickens, sheep, a pig, a cow, and two horses at

the time of Leonard’s marriage. Leonard took one of the horses and half

the sheep, and Danial bought out his share in the pig and the cow. The

chickens they reckoned were Claris’s, since she had taken on care of them

when Solace stopped leaving the house. Danial butchered his sheep, froze

the meat, and in the spring sailed into the main with most of it to trade

at Abbott’s store. When he came back he brought barrels of flour and

molasses, some bright new cotton dress goods, and the most extravagant

present: a whole stem of green bananas brought round the Horn from

the Sandwich Islands. It seemed, at last, like the real beginning of their

life together. Claris hung the fruit in the dark cellar to ripen, and it was

the first and last time in her life that she had all the bananas she wanted.

When Claris went into labor for the third time in the spring of

1862, Danial sat alone in the kitchen while the midwife attended her

upstairs. Twice in this marriage already there had been pain and blood

and then silence. This time, after only two hours, Danial heard a sur-

prisingly loud wail, and he took the stairs two at a time. He burst into

the room to find Mrs. Duffy holding a long purplish baby boy by the

heels. The baby was roaring, and with each lungful of air he took, his

color became more human, white and pink. Meanwhile a coiling cord of

an astonishing gray-purple color stretched from the baby’s middle to be-

tween his mother’s legs. Claris crouched on the edge of a chair, gripping

the arms and weeping with relief, and Mrs. Duffy said, “Please, Danial.

We’re not quite ready for you here.”

For the first days and nights of the baby’s life, Claris wouldn’t

sleep; she wouldn’t even lie down. She sat in the chair beaming and held

him, sang to him, nursed him, while Danial looked on, proud and smiling.

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Amos Haskell grew into a healthy and bright-eyed baby, the image of

Claris’s brother Leander. When he was sure the baby was going to live,

Danial sailed into Dundee and came back out with Claris’s mother, who

stayed several weeks with them, sewing diapers, cleaning and baking, gos-

siping with Claris, and paying a round of calls on the island folk, getting

to know her daughter’s neighbors. Claris had never done this on her own,

and some of the neighbors were quite surprised to see the Haskell wagon

pull into their dooryards. They were happy to see Captain Osgood’s wife,

though, whom they knew at least by reputation, and glad to get to see

that Claris was not so standoffish as she appeared.

Claris and Mrs. Osgood talked for hours over all the news of home

Claris had missed. Both Simon and Leander had marched off south with

the Thirteenth Maine, but both were safe so far. Her sister Alice had a

baby girl, and Mabel was teaching school. Otis was now thirteen and as

tall as his father, and could play the fiddle even better than Leander.

Claris liked having her mother all to herself, although even now, from

time to time, there were strains.

Claris had regained her health quickly once she felt sure the baby

would survive. Baby Amos seemed to take on an aura of gleaming per-

fection for her. He was the coin with which she would be repaid for all

the griefs, slights, and disappointments she had met in life thus far, and

Danial and Mrs. Osgood watched with some surprise the intensity of the

love she shone on the baby.

One night over a supper of fresh fish and wild greens Mrs. Osgood

had gathered and cooked, Claris leaped from the table at the sound of a

tiny mewling noise from the baby.

“Clarie, he’s just dreaming,” said her mother. “Don’t wake him up.

Finish your supper.”

“I think I know my own baby best,” Claris said. She picked the

sleepy child up from his cradle and brought him to the table to nurse.

Mrs. Osgood (who had always retired to a separate room to nurse her

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babies) looked across at Danial, and the two shared a moment of under-

standing. Danial said, “Mother O, did I forget to tell you that that baby

is the first and only baby ever born in the world?”

“I thought he might be the infant Prince of Wales,” said Mrs.

Osgood, smiling at Danial. Claris got up from the table and ran upstairs

with the baby in her arms.

Danial and Mrs. Osgood looked after her, and then again at each

other. Danial shrugged and went back to eating his supper. After a mo-

ment Mrs. Osgood said, “Excuse me,” and followed her daughter upstairs.

Claris sat, weeping, in the birthing chair, with the baby sucking

happily at her breast. Mrs. Osgood came in and closed the door behind

her. She looked around at the pine dresser, the bare floor, the bed with

its thin mattress and wedding knot quilt. The bed linen looked none too

clean.

“Clarie, don’t cry, there’s no need for that. No one meant to hurt

your feelings.”

Claris’s brimming eyes met her mother’s. “You don’t know,” she

said. “You never
do
know how I feel. You never lost a baby as I have or

you wouldn’t mock me.”

Her mother sat silent with downcast eyes for quite a while and

then said, “Actually, I have, Claris. I lost a little girl between Mary and

you. She was strangled during birth by the cord.” Mrs. Osgood’s gaze

held her daughter’s.

Finally Claris said in a flat voice, “I never knew that.” (Mrs. Osgood

couldn’t help thinking that Mary or Alice, even in pique, would have

melted at once, come to her and said, “Oh, Mother, I’m sorry.”)

“No need to talk about it. You were born the next year, beautiful

and healthy, and we were so glad to have you.” The two women sat in

silence for a while, watching Amos nurse.

The next morning Mrs. Osgood said to Danial that, with regret,

she thought she ought to be getting home. Claris stood on the porch with

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the baby in her arms and waved as Danial sailed her mother away, feeling

both sorry and angry.

k

That first year of Amos’s life was mostly a happy one for Claris

and Danial. Danial fished all summer, and the catch was good. Twice a

week he’d sail into the main and peddle his fish, five pounds of haddock

(no hake) for fifteen cents and clams for ten cents a quart. What he

couldn’t sell direct he traded to Abbott’s. Sometimes he’d take Claris and

the baby along with him into town, and Claris would spend the day with

her mother or one of her married sisters. The rest of his catch Danial

dried and salted and sold in barrels to the boats that called in at the

wharf on the south end of Beal.

The winter Amos was three, Danial began work on a plan he’d had

in mind since he was a boy; he wanted to try a sawmill at the mouth of

their stream. He had suggested it years before to his father and been

laughed at for trying to get fancy. There was a gristmill on the Neck and

a sawmill at Dundee, and that was enough, according to Abner Haskell.

Haskells didn’t take wages, and they didn’t go into trade, according to

him. Danial went to study both of the mills on the main, and in the

spring he ordered what parts he couldn’t manufacture, and with Leonard

and two of the Gotts he started building. All summer he worked on the

mill instead of fishing. By fall he was in operation. They were nearly out

of cash and goods to barter, and he told Claris they’d have to live close

to the bone that winter, but by next summer all their hard work would

pay off.

Unfortunately, he and Leonard quarreled over whether Leonard had

worked for wages (still owing) or for ownership, and they stopped speak-

ing with Leonard holding a large IOU from Danial. Business at the mill

was less than Danial had hoped for, and he grew tense and silent. Their

diet that winter consisted of dried apples, eggs, biscuits with salt pork

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gravy, and salted fish boiled in milk. In the spring Danial hired Percy

Grindle to help at the mill, but they too quarreled. Soon after that, in a

moment of pique or inattention, Danial sawed off two of the fingers of

his left hand. Claris doctored the maimed hand in silence, pulling the

bandage strips painfully tight. She had felt the mill was a bad idea from

the start, and unfortunately had said so.

Danial walked away from the mill and never went back to it; he

wouldn’t even sell it. He went back to fishing and saltwater farming, and

let the mill fall slowly down, year by year. Claris said little about this

either, but her manner showed she was disgusted. Now and then she

mentioned the courage and persistence the men of her family were known

to show in good times and bad. She did not mention that in her family

she herself was as famously hard to deflect once she had set her course