We walked back to the house together and then Billy cut right, going around the house and giving the downed wires a large berth. I went left, into the garage, to get my McCullough. As I had suspected, I could already hear the unpleasant song of the chainsaw up and down the lake.
I topped up the tank, took off my shirt, and was starting back up the driveway when Steff came out. She eyed the downed trees lying across the driveway nervously.
«How bad is it?»
«I can cut it up. How bad is it in there?»
«Well, I got the glass cleaned up, but you’re going to have to do something about that tree, David. We can’t have a tree in the living room.»
‘No,» I said. «I guess we can’t.»
We looked at each other in the morning sunlight and got giggling. I set the McCullough down on the cement areaway, and kissed her, holding her buttocks firmly.
«Don’t,» she murmured. «Billy’s-»
He came tearing around the corner of the house just then. «Dad! Daddy! Y’oughta see the»
Steffy saw the live wires and screamed for him to watch out. Billy, who was a good distance away from them, pulled up short and stared at his mother as if she had gone mad.
«I’m okay, Mom,» he said in the careful tone of voice you use to placate the very old and senile. He walked towards us, showing us how all right he was, and Steff began to tremble in my arms.
«It’s all right,» I said in her ear. «He knows about them.»
«Yes, but people get killed,» she said. «They have ads all the time on television about live wires, people get-Billy, I want you to come in the house right now!»
«Aw, come on, Mom! I wanna show Dad the boathouse!» He was almost bug-eyed with excitement and disappointment. He had gotten a taste of poststorm apocalypse and wanted to share it.
«You go in right now! Those wires are dangerous and-»
«Dad said they want the ground, not me-»
«Billy, don’t you argue with me!»
«I’ll come down and look, champ. Go on down yourself.» I could feel Steff tensing against me. «Go around the other side, kiddo.»
«Yeah! Okay!»
He tore past us, taking the stone steps that led around the west end of the house two by two. He disappeared with his shirttail flying, trailing back one word — «Wow!» — as he spotted some other piece of destruction.
«He knows about the wires, Steffy.» I took her gently by the shoulders. «He’s scared of them. That’s good. It makes him safe.»
One tear tracked down her cheek. «David, I’m scared.»
«Come on! It’s over.»
«Is it? Last winter … and the late spring … they called it a black spring in town … they said there hadn’t been one in these parts since 1888-»
«They» undoubtedly meant Mrs. Carmody, who kept the Bridgton Antiquary, a junk shop that Steff liked to rummage around in sometimes. Billy loved to go with her. In one of the shadowy, dusty back rooms, stuffed owls with gold-ringed eyes spread their wings forever as their feet endlessly grasped varnished logs; stuffed raccoons stood in a trio around a «stream» that was a long fragment of dusty mirror; and one moth-eaten wolf, which was foaming sawdust instead of saliva around his muzzle, snarled a creepy eternal snarl. Mrs. Carmody claimed the wolf was shot by her father as it came to drink from Stevens Brook one September afternoon in 1901.
The expeditions to Mrs. Carmody’s Antiquary shop worked well for my wife and son. She was into carnival glass and he was into death in the name of taxidermy. But I thought that the old woman exercised a rather unpleasant hold over Steff’s mind, which was in all other ways practical and hardheaded. She had found Steff’s vulnerable spot, a mental Achilles’ heel. Nor was Steff the only one in town who was fascinated by Mrs. Carmody’s gothic pronouncements and folk remedies (which were always prescribed in God’s name).
Stump-water would take off bruises if your husband was the sort who got a bit too free with his fists after three drinks. You could tell what kind of a winter was coming by counting the rings on the caterpillars in June or by measuring the thickness of August honeycomb. And now, good God protect and preserve us, THE BLACK SPRING OF 1888 (add your own exclamation points, as many as you think it deserves). I had also heard the story. It’s one they like to pass around up here-if the spring is cold enough, the ice on the lakes will eventually turn as black as a rotted tooth. It’s rare, but hardly a once-in-a-century occurrence. They like to pass it around, but I doubt that many could pass it around with as much conviction as Mrs. Carmody.