T. Boyle - San Miguel

The abalone chowder was a pleasant surprise, unexpectedly rich and flavorful, heavily peppered and simmered down in the cream from the milk of the cow Jimmie had led in from the pasture a week earlier after its calf had died — that and the butter they’d brought with them from the mainland. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought she was spooning up an oyster bisque at a candlelit table at Fior d’Italia in San Francisco. And Ida did a splendid job with the turkey, which, while it wasn’t as moist as it might have been, nonetheless hadn’t been scorched or dried to jerky either, which was quite a feat under the circumstances.

On the other hand, they were eating off of a mismatched assortment of chipped plates she herself had found in a dirty cupboard in the kitchen after discovering they’d somehow forgotten the box of Wedgwood china that had once belonged to her first husband’s mother. Or that the cutlery had been left behind too, so that they had to alternate between an odd farrago of forks and spoons and pass round the two bone-handled knives that had been standing on the kitchen windowsill for God knew how long.

That was crude. So crude it had almost brought tears to her eyes, but she’d held back — just as she’d held back that morning when the coughing started up again — because she didn’t want to spoil things for Will. This was his idea, his venture, his dream, and he’d talked it up so many times over the past months it had become a litany of success and increase and health abounding, and now the abstraction had been made concrete. He was beside himself, his eyes shining above the thick regimental mustache as he laid out his plans for the road, the outbuildings, the sheep and hogs and all the rest, even a boat — if they couldn’t build one out of scrap they’d save up and buy one of the working boats in the harbor at Santa Barbara, once the wool came in. She’d never seen him happier. He hummed to himself as he carved the turkey, then danced round the table as he served it out in great steaming slabs and all the while the talk never stopped. Increase, that was his theme. Increase and improvement and profit.

Edith seemed in good spirits too, chattering away with Ida, giggling, shooting glances down the table at Jimmie, who blushed and turned his face away, and at Adolph, immovable Adolph, who sat there as if he’d been carved of stone. It was a relief. Especially after the way she’d fought against the move, throwing one tantrum after another, as if to leave her piano and dance lessons and the new friends she’d begun to make in town were the end of her life. There’s no choice in the matter, Marantha had told her. The deed’s signed, the money paid out. Think of someone other than yourself for a change . And Edith had thrown it right back at her: I am. I’m thinking of you.

But now, in the flush of arrival and settling in, everything seemed to have changed. The mule ride had clearly thrilled her. The novelty of the place. The turkeys roosting in the grass, the lovely mother-of-pearl seashells she was already planning to work into beads for a necklace, the wildness and isolation of the hills and valleys that bled away in the mist as if they’d never been there at all.

“It’s like Wuthering Heights, ” she’d said as they were setting the table for dinner, “like the wild moors with their lowing herds and wandering flocks. Exactly like.” And then she’d looked beyond the window and into the yard where Jimmie and Adolph were cutting and stacking lengths of root and driftwood for the stove. “Only where’s my Heathcliff?” And then they’d both laughed, and that felt good, because it was the first time in weeks, at least since they’d begun the ordeal of organizing and packing and ordering supplies and foodstuffs from one shop and another, that Marantha felt the burden lift from her.

And then there was the lamb. They could hear it bleating from the yard throughout the meal and it kept on bleating even after Edith had given it a bowl of stove-warmed milk, letting it suck the liquid from her fingers as if it were at the teat, and it bleated when they cleared the table for cards and the Ouija board and it kept on bleating when she and Will climbed the stairs to their bed with its fresh-washed sheets and dubious counterpane and the bed curtains that were still damp to the touch.

For a long while she lay awake, listening to it, though she was exhausted and couldn’t have moved a finger even if the bed had caught fire. There were furtive scurryings in the dark — mice, as she was to discover, legions of them that overran the place and made it their own, as if she and Will were only leasing it from them — and an intermittent scraping she couldn’t place. It might have been the sheepdog scratching at the door or some other animal nosing round the house looking for a way in, seals lumbering up at night, seabirds, owls, what did she know? Or maybe it was her imagination, maybe she was hearing things, her nerves at a pitch and the silence so uncompromising, so different from the way it had been on Post Street, where there were always voices, hoof beats, the creak and clatter of wagon wheels, distant music, life.

Toward dawn — she must have dozed, because she started awake with the pain in her chest that felt as if some thing were living inside her and struggling to get out — there came a series of soft distant barks that weren’t like the barking of a dog at all, or the seals with their raucous eruptive cries she’d heard as clearly as if they were right out there in the yard. She listened for a long while, puzzled, until she realized that the sound must have been coming from the foxes Will had told her about, Lilliputian things the size of a house cat that stole through the night and made off with the turkeys and chickens and the eggs they laid in neat cups of grass and couldn’t defend in the dark. It was a dull sound, spaced at intervals, and after a while it dragged her back down into sleep.

If she dreamed, it was of sunshine cascading off a vine-covered wall and the grapes hanging there plump with dew, but before it was full light she was awakened by a knock at the door that pulled Will up out of his sleep with a grunt of alarm. “Hush,” she murmured, reaching out a hand to him, “hush, Will.” And then she thought of Edith. “Is that you, Edith?” she called.

A muffled voice. “Yes, Mother. May I come in?”

Edith had taken the smaller upstairs room, just behind theirs, and Ida had been installed in one of the anchorites’ cells below. Jimmie and Adolph, thankfully, had their own bunks in a long squat one-room outbuilding where the hired shearers stayed when they came out twice a year to collect the wool for shipment back to the mainland.

Will was already sitting up in bed, heavy-chested and pale in a nightshirt that could have been cleaner, his feet placed firmly on the floor and one hand scratching vigorously at the thinning hair of his scalp. “Just a minute,” she said. “I’ll come to you.” And then, though she still felt weak from yesterday, felt as if all the blood had been drained from her, she got up, wrapped a robe round her and went across the bare floorboards to the strange door that opened on a house she barely knew.

Edith was just outside the door, already dressed, though the first thing she noticed was that she’d been slipshod with her corsets, always slipshod, as if proper attire didn’t matter. It looked as if her dress were sagging off her in the rear, which was inexcusable. She might not have been conscious of it, though she’d been told a thousand times, but it made her look no better than a charwoman or one of these immigrant wives with their greasy hair and the faint line of a mustache darkening their upper lips. She was irritated, and before she could catch herself, she began to cough, not in a spasm, it wasn’t as bad as that, but her throat closed up on her again and Will, pulling on his trousers, roared, “Get her a glass of water — can’t you see she’s having a spasm!”