Shades of Mercy Read online

  We had twenty laying hens that we simply referred to as the “girls.” Keep the girls fed, safe, and happy, and you’ll always have plenty of eggs. That’s what Mr. Pop said.

  He always treated his farm animals well. They had names, a good place to live, and good food to nourish them. We all knew they’d be food on our table one day, and he wasn’t afraid to slaughter them, but he treated them with dignity and respect all of their living days. I can’t tell you how many times I heard Mr. Pop say, “Beware the farmer who treats his animals poorly. You could probably make a case that he doesn’t treat his family all that well either.”

  The truck rumbled past the buttercups and clover down low on the roadside and the devil’s paintbrushes and lupine in little patches here and there. I never tired of driving into town alone. It gave me time to think. Going the main road meant I could keep the windows wide-open and catch the breeze. The main road was one of the few paved ways to get into town. There was great beauty in the back way, either the Ridge Road or the Border Road, but the dust from the gravel made you close the cab up tight. Today I enjoyed the wind in my hair.

  Mr. Pop had taught me to drive when I was eleven—four years before. It was standard practice for fathers to teach their sons to drive at that age or even younger. Teaching daughters was something of an anomaly. I’m sure plenty of the folks in town—and even on the surrounding farms—raised their eyebrows a bit when they first saw me at the wheel, bouncing and lurching down the back farm road as I learned to work the clutch on the old Ford potato truck. Who knows what they must’ve thought hearing those grinding gears halfway into town, watching me slide around corners in the muddy buildup at the end of the potato rows. However, the people of Watsonville, Maine, were plenty used to Mr. Pop telling them I was as “good as any son—if not better” and had been used to seeing me raised as the son he never had.

  And certainly by now the sight of me, Paul’s daughter, in that old potato truck was a regular one. I waved at Pastor Murphy and Mrs. Brown chatting in front of Fulton’s on Main Street, knowing that the place I was headed, and what I was off to do, still offered plenty of fodder for gossip.

  It had become clear enough by last summer when I was fourteen that I was no son. And that Mr. Pop still sent me and my “budding womanhood,” Mother called it, to round up his Indian workers left many people shaking their heads and clucking their tongues.

  If it had been any other father besides Paul Millar sending his daughter, it’d have been an uncontainable scandal, boiling over the entire town, through the farms, into the logging camps, and even across the border into New Brunswick. It’d happened with other stories.

  But Paul Millar was a trusted, esteemed man. A true man of God and of honor. Although many folks questioned his decisions regarding me and the people he chose to hire, no one could question his heart and his mind. He was a good man. And everybody knew it. Everybody liked him.

  Which meant that when Mother took me shopping in town—stepping into Fishman’s and Woolworth’s, our favorites for a chocolate soda and to look at magazines, pens, and diaries, or into the Chain Apparel and Boston Shoe Store for school clothes and shoes or browsing the beautiful dresses in Woodson’s that sometimes made Mother tear up as she rubbed her fingers against the fabrics—no one dared ask the questions they were desperate to. When we stopped into the IGA Grocery Store, Miss Maude’s checkout line would grow uncharacteristically quiet. She may have started her gossip about us the moment the bells jingled behind us, but at least she didn’t pry for information. Not the way she did with other people.

  I slowed the truck.

  “Molly! Molly Carmichael!” I yelled and waved out the truck window. But Molly just grimaced and waved me on. I stopped the truck midstreet to watch her kick off into a run. I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Molly much since school let out a few weeks ago. And I missed that. Molly was the only one I could talk to about Mick, the only one who understood. Molly’s older sister Marjorie and Glenn Socoby had been seeing each other on the sly since last Easter. Glenn was a Maliseet, like Mick. I was tempted to turn the truck to follow her, find out what was up, but Mr. Pop would’ve had my hide. I’d have to catch her another time. Mick, Ansley, and the others were waiting.

  The truck croaked and lurched forward, causing heads to turn again on Main Street. But I kept my eyes on what lay ahead: the stately Second Baptist Church. I always wished we went there. Not just because our friends the Carmichaels were members, but because of its ivory steeple cutting into Maine skies, its creamy columns standing firm in front of scrubbed-each-summer clay bricks, and its English-born-and-bred preacher, Second Baptist breathed sophistication. Even though my family’s First Baptist had beaten Second Baptist to the punch years ago and won the Baptist Church Naming War, somehow our little country church, tucked back among potato fields, seemed like the loser.

  Especially since Second Baptist got its new sign—the one Ellery called a “braggin’ sign.” Today it read: “Sunday at 9 a.m. Love Thy Neighbor.” I’d have to tell Mr. Pop this one. I knew what he’d say: “Better we love our neighbors all the time, Mercy. Not just nine o’clock on Sundays.”

  Chapter Two

  The stench of rot and decay and animal waste hit before the sight of it.

  But whenever the Flats came into view—after that bend just past town, after the buildings give way once again to the pines—the smell made sense. Because it isn’t just the dump itself but the years of that putrid smell that clung to shack walls, if you call corrugated cardboard or tin (with tar paper stapled to it) walls. That gag-inducing odor steeped deep into old sofas and sunk down into chewed-through mattresses.

  This is how and where Mick and the rest of the Maliseet lived. This is where our town had relegated them. But the proud Maliseet tried not to focus on the trash and the ugly; instead they set their eyes on the surrounding beauty. After all, here the rolling brook hugged the country road and sparkled as it ran over rocks and rapids. High white birch and tall pines peppered the landscape across and behind the dump. In fact, in many ways the mound of trash itself blended in. Were it not for the shacks, the rectangles of gray—the soiled mattresses that the Maliseet slept on under open sky—the stray, jutting bits of broken chairs, and piles of tin cans and cereal boxes that the people of Watsonville drove out and piled onto the heap every Saturday, one could be hard-pressed to distinguish this hill from the other ones that rolled their way out of town.

  Mr. Pop had taught me to stay vigilant for the dangers that lurked along this inviting gravel-covered road: moose, deer, and bear could wander out at any moment. But as I drove out this day, the words of Second Baptist’s braggin’ sign reminded me of another danger Mr. Pop often warned me of. “Be careful,” he would say, “when people fail to treat one another with dignity.”

  I hadn’t always understood when he said this, but as I parked the truck at the base of the dump, a chill ran through me, suddenly understanding. I’d always figured the black bears that sniffed and poked around through the trash were the greatest danger here. Perhaps I was wrong.

  “Hey! Hurry up!”

  I jumped at the knock at the truck window. Mick.

  “Come on. Before everyone’s up.” Mick jimmied the handle and opened the door for me, grabbing my hand as I stepped out. “Over here.”

  He looked around and pulled me toward a pair of smoke-streaked yellow cellar doors.

  “Old Man Stringer dropped ’em off yesterday,” Mick said. “He was too drunk to haul them up all the way. But wanted us to have ’em. ‘They sure don’t work for my shack, so I thought maybe they’d work for yours,’ Old Man told me.”

  “So what are you going to do with them?” I asked, smiling and trying to resist reaching up to touch Mick’s face. He didn’t tower over me but had a good three or four inches on me. Mick’s deep tanned skin and shiny-black, shoulder-length hair made me weak in the knees. His eyes almost squinted shut when he smiled at me, and his perfect creamy-white teeth usually made peopl
e take a second look. He was wearing the same red plaid shirt I’d seen him wear a hundred times, but it never seemed old.

  “I’ll show you. Help me move one.” Mick smiled back at me and reached out to touch my face, running his finger over my smiling lips. “You must be the only person in town who smiles at the dump, you know that?”

  “It’s not the dump that makes me smile.”

  “Aw, shucks,” Mick teased. “Come on. Grab one. Let’s go.”

  I dragged my door until Mick scolded me. “You’re making a racket. You’ll wake everybody up. Pick it up.”

  “I’m supposed to be waking everybody up,” I said.

  “And we will, in a minute. Trust me. Here.”

  Mick shifted his door under a trio of snuggled-tight pines, then took mine from me, kicking and tugging the doors into place.

  “There,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans. “With the charred-side out, they can’t see. Now, come here.”

  I followed him under the trees, ducking low to keep too many pine needles from dripping down into my shirt. Mick patted the brown ground and I sat beside him.

  “Someday, we won’t have to hide like this. We can have a real home. But for now. At least we have a place to be alone. Together.”

  Together. Someday. I breathed deep. Here, the smell of pine and sap tried to drown out the wretched odor that lurked behind it.

  Mick wrapped an arm around me, snuck a kiss on my cheek. “Someday,” he whispered. We sat for a moment, staring out into the forest.

  “However,” Mick said, suddenly antsy, “until someday, we’ve got to go wake everybody up. We can meet here again tomorrow. Come a little earlier.”

  “One minute,” I said. “This is nice.” I put my hand to his cheek, ran it back through his black-as-any-bear hair and kissed him right on the lips. This wasn’t our first kiss—that had been last harvest. While everyone sat around on the porch and in the grass and dove into their peanut butter and jelly or cheese sandwiches, Mick and I stole behind the old shed and we snuck the first of many secret and dangerous kisses.

  Mother had told me the stories of her and Mr. Pop—sneaking their own kisses when they were about my age. Later Mother caused a scandal of her own by skipping college and the future a girl of her “station” was entitled to so she could marry my dad.

  “He’s a good man, a good worker, and a good Christian, Geneva,” my grandfather had told her before she married my dad at sixteen. “But he’s a farmer’s son. He can’t give you the life I’ve given you.”

  I stared back into the trees, wondering what my own father would say now. Knowing, actually.

  “Hey,” Mick said, nudging me with his elbow. “Let’s go get everybody.”

  I left first, and Mick met me in front of his shack. I had walked back around to where my truck sat, climbed the dump from that angle. Less suspicious—as always. Although as I passed the Indian women—sitting in their half circles, facing the road below and weaving ash wood into the potato baskets they would sell to local farmers along with the occasional tourist—their eyes followed my steps. They knew why I came. But I could never shake the sense they knew something else.

  I smiled and offered my best “tan kahk,” the Maliseet greeting. Mick heard me and jerked his head. Though I’d heard it all my life, this was the first time I said it. Well, except for in front of my bedroom mirror, where I practiced it and the other Maliseet phrases Mick’d taught me. I caught him in a small smile, before turning back to talk to his brother.

  “Mercy,” one of the women called out. I stepped toward the semicircle. It was Mick’s mother. She leaned forward to stir the can of beans resting in the fire.

  “Good morning, Miss Louise.”

  “Thank your father for the extra ash splints.”

  “No need. Mr. Pop says ash trees belong to God and the Maliseet.”

  Miss Louise smiled at me. “Yes, I know. He tells Ansley that. What I mean is, thank your father for cutting the ash. I had sent Joseph to do it. But—”

  I glanced over to the shack where Mick and his younger brother Joseph now leaned. Mick’s sixteen-year-old hand looked huge as it rested on Joe’s thirteen-year-old and much-too-young-to-be-heaving chest. Bear and rusted spikes and people treated without dignity weren’t the only dangers of living in this dump. Respiratory illnesses like Joseph’s and the high incidence of diabetes ran rampant through this place. Once I’d heard Mr. Pop saying he wondered how much longer Joseph had. At the time, I didn’t understand. As I watched Mick with his brother and saw Miss Louise’s eyes tear, I knew. Even healthy Maliseet men typically lived only into their midforties.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  Miss Louise looked back at her work, without saying anything else. She pulled and tucked the strands of ash, weaving as if it were nothing, as if creating those intricate patterns for the colorful baskets were the only worry in her world.

  By the time I got to Mick’s shack, Mick had roused those ready to work and had pressed on to the next shacks. Joseph followed him—begging to be included, knowing he’d be refused. The work was too hard for a sickly thirteen-year-old, certainly one struggling even to breathe. Joseph tapped the maple trees in the spring, a much less strenuous job, and by the time harvest rolled around, he felt bored and invincible even if he wasn’t.

  I trotted over by Mick to help bang on doors, pushing them open if we had to, and call loudly, “There’s work on the Millar farm. Truck leaves in five minutes. Mr. Millar’s got work today. Get up and get going.”

  The men rambled out of doors, pulling up trousers, tucking in shirts—meaning we didn’t need to go into any of the shacks. Always a relief.

  Mick counted them off. “Looks like seven, plus me and Pop.”

  “And me,” Joseph said with a deep breath, fingering the beaded Maliseet cap on his head. Ansley had given it to him during one of his lengthier respiratory episodes in the hospital.

  “Sorry, kid.” Mick gave Joseph a pat. “But one of these days, ’k?”

  Joseph kicked a rock and rambled back over to the circle of women. His mother pointed at a pile of ash splints and he reluctantly sat down to weave like the women were doing.

  “He can’t wait till sugaring season—so he can be off by himself, among the maples, instead of sitting there with all those women,” Mick said. “He thinks it’s not manly.”

  “He could always come, you know, feed the pigs and chickens,” I said. “Ellery’d find something for him to do.”

  “He’d just take up space. They need to work. He doesn’t. Just the way it is.”

  I stepped carefully over bits of rubbish, ears tuned for the growl of a bear as we headed back down the heap. After waking them up, I never said much to the men. We all just walked in silence—even me and Mick. Especially me and Mick, actually.

  Mr. Ansley broke the silence with “In the back. Now,” just as he said every day we reached the truck. A few of them reached out for another helping of beans and bacon from the women who’d met us at the truck. And as Ansley said this once again, so did the men follow—jumping over the back gate, their worn waffle stompers kicking up dust and grime as they landed. The same as they did every morning. At least, every morning I came to get them.

  I used to wonder why Ansley needed to repeat these orders. Surely, the men knew they were to ride in back. But lately, his words were meant for only one: Mick in the back too. Actually the words were meant for two. For Mick. And me.

  Picking rocks was worse than picking potatoes. After all, picking potatoes offered reward beyond the pay. It was true: eating those potatoes was sometimes pay enough. I loved those early golf-ball-sized cobblers with their white, mealy flesh soaked in butter, or with peas and cream added. Although, the Kennebec and Katahdin potatoes filled the bulk of harvest picking. It didn’t matter. You could give me either variety baked and slathered with butter and sour cream, and I’d forget about the backbreaking work that got them to my table.

  Rock picking—and its routine
drudgery—offered little extra incentive. You came away with bruised knees, skinned knuckles, and sore backs. And they didn’t make the supper table any better. But picking rock is what held the promise, Mr. Pop always said.

  Maybe this was why we still worked so hard with those rocks—hope and promise aren’t anything to sneeze at. So when I’d steal breaks—to stretch my back or legs—I’d scan the field for the other workers. Mick, Mr. Ansley, and the other Maliseet bent and crawled right alongside Mr. Pop, Bud, and Mr. Ellery. Right beside me. I’d wonder if this picture—of us all working together—wasn’t part of that promise itself. Mr. Pop talked as if it were: men and women, boys and girls, Indians and white folks, Catholic and Protestant, rich and poor, all working together. All glorifying God together is what Mr. Pop would call it. It’s what he’d said after reading about the U.S. Supreme Court’s “good and godly” decision regarding Brown vs. Board of Education the month before.

  “Back to work now, Mercy.” I’d been caught. Mr. Pop had a keen sense of when my body started to slack and my mind started to wander. He said it sternly, but I caught his slight smile.

  I smiled back. “Sorry, Mr. Pop. Just stretching.”

  I dusted my knees, took a step forward, and crouched back down on the rich, loamy soil. Such fertile soil, but winter frost forces the rocks to the surface every season. The colder the winter, the more rock picking in the summer. I resumed tossing rocks into my wagon. Mr. Pop had been doing this same work for nearly forty years. The way he tells it, his parents had him out picking rocks on this very farm by the age of ten. He let me know to understand just what a grace I’d been given by not starting till I was twelve.

  Though he’d laugh when he’d tell me that, Mr. Pop’s childhood hadn’t been funny. He and his twelve siblings had been born on this farm. Only five of them lived to leave it. His father died of tuberculosis when Mr. Pop was ten, leaving his mother, him, his brother, and three sisters to run the farm and try to keep food on the table any way they could. Only Mr. Pop and his brother stayed in Maine. Their sisters, long tired of the hardscrabble life that Maine offered them, scattered. My aunts wrote occasionally. But I had cousins I’d never met.