Chapter II

For two recurring summers I stayed fixed at this point. And then came a spring when I slipped off early to the harbour for trout. The Perkins who drives the jitney met me at the wharf as I stepped from the Boston boat. “Hain’t a summer resorter nor a bluejay here yit,” was his greeting. “Weather’s right smart--nips ye considerable.” And it did. The water in the brooks was so cold my fingers remained stiff and blue all day. But the fishing was good, and in the end I caught something more than trout.

A morning came with a southeast wind. Up to that I had lost almost no flies, so I started out with little extra tackle. The middle of the morning found me a mile deep in an alder swamp, bog on one side and piled-up brush on the other. It was what you would call dirty fishing, and in half an hour I had lost every fly and leader I had with me. There was nothing to do but put up my rod and go back. In an effort to strike higher ground I came into what was new country to me. A trail led up toward where I judged the blueberry ledges would be, and climbing for a mile or so I suddenly broke through into a clearing and a wagon road. A grayish house stood beside the road. A thin spiral of smoke curled out of the chimney. On a split stake, even with the road, teetered a sign reading:

HAND MADE TROUT FLIES FOR SALE HERE

I attacked the door without mercy. A moment’s knocking brought the sound of stirring from within, and the door finally creaked open, displaying the oddest cut of a little man in a wheel chair. He blinked at me like some great nocturnal bird, and soon there was an intelligent wag of the head--more at my clothes than at me.

“Come in. Doan’t gin’rally git lady fishermen. Hearn tell they git ’em down to the harbour lookin’ jes’ as he-ish as the men.” He rolled his chair backward from the door, beckoning me to follow. I could hear him repeating the last of his words under his breath as if by way of confirmation: “Yes, sir, looking jes’ as he-ish as the men.”

He led me into a room that might have been identified even in the uttermost corner of the world as having been conceived and delivered in the State of Maine. An airtight stove centred it, and on its pinnacle stood a nickel-plated moose at bay. There were half a dozen pulled-in rugs: fruit pulled in; red, yellow, and purple roses pulled in; a rooster pulled in; and other things that defied the imagination. The two window sills were gay with geraniums and begonias. Crayon portraits panelled the walls, and between each portrait hung a hair wreath. Fronting the door was a shower of coffin plates, strung together with a fish line. A large coloured print of a clipper hung over the mantel, while all about hung trophies of the South Seas--strings of shells and beads and corals. But the most amazing exhibit was the feathers: peacock, egret, flamingo, pheasant, turkey, and cock tails, yellowhammer and bluejay wings, breasts, crests and what not. The work bench was littered with tiny feathers, partridge and guinea fowl, and spools of bright silk. He brushed all these aside and reached underneath to a drawer, bringing out a handful of trout flies. It took no close scrutiny to tell their exquisite workmanship.

“Pick out what ye want. Swamp back yonder jes’ eats ’em up, doan’t it?” And he smiled an ingratiating, toothless smile.

I made my selections slowly, studying the little man more than the flies. His head was as bald and pink as a baby’s. His lips were tremulous, and his eyes showed that pale blue opacity of the very old or very young. It was his hands that held me confounded. They were twisted like bird claws. How they could have ever taken wisps of feather and fine lengths of silk and wound them into the perfect semblance of tiny aërial creatures was more than I could conceive. He caught at my wondering and with a burst of crowing laughter he held the claws closer for inspection. “Handsome, hain’t they? Cal’ate I work ’em steady as most folks work a good pair. Can’t stand wet nor cold, no better ’n Gram Perkins could in hern. Good days she was the smartest knitter in the county.”

So here was another Perkins. I aimed my habitual question at him, expecting no better results. “Tell me, do you know anything about those four dreams?”

He sat a moment, motionless, in what one might have termed a vainglorious silence. He sucked his lips in and out over those vacant gums as if he found them full of flavour; then he suddenly burst into the triumphant crow of a chanticleer. “Yes m’am! Cal’ate I do know them dreams--seein’ I dreamed ’em. I be Zeb Perkins!” He said it with as sweet an unction as if he had announced himself King of the Hejaz. In a flash the room stood revealed anew. It spoke aloud of Sara Amanda Perkins, beloved wife of Benjamin Perkins, sea captain; of his clipper, of the relics of his voyages, of her handiwork in rugs and wreaths. The very begonias might be slip grandchildren of the ones she had planted. Here, indeed, was a stage set for those dreams. Here sat Zeb Perkins, playwright and stage manager, picking excitedly at his pink head, eternally ready to ring up his curtain. He caught my eye on the wreaths.

“Them little tow-headed fergit-me-nots belonged to her first son as died a baby. She set a terrible store by him. The black in them susans come from her sister Ida, my great-aunt Perkins. See them coffin plates. Ye’ll see every one of them was copper, nickeled over, every one but Gram’s. Hers was solid.”

There was a wealth of information conveyed in that last word. I had been standing until now. One of Zeb’s claws waved itself away from the coffin plates to a chair: “Set, woan’t ye? Ye’ll see them rockers under ye are worn as flat as sledge runners. That was Gram’s chair; and we wore them rockers off luggin’ her ’round. She was all crippled up, Gram was, same as me; only in them days there warn’t no wheel chairs.”

The chair was all Zeb claimed. There was no more rock to it than to a dray sledge. From the chair his eyes flew to the crayon portraits. “Look at them! Look at Marm--then look at Gram. Why, there was nary a thing Gram couldn’t do, for all her crippled-upness. Bake a pie, fry a batch o’ doughnuts, clean up the butt’ry. But Marm seems like she was born fretty and tired. Made ye tired jest to watch her travel from the sink to the cook stove. She’d handle a batch o’ biscuits like she never expected to live to see ’em baked. Jes’ lookin’ at ’em, can’ ye make out a difference?”

I did and I could. In spite of everything the artist had done to obliterate all human expression he had mastered the single point of difference. One face sagged utterly, the other looked out with sharp alert eyes on a world that interested her immensely. There was a grim humour about the mouth, and a firmness that spoke a challenge even at the end of a century.

“I tell ye,” Zeb’s eulogy was gathering momentum. “We boys set a terrible store by Gram. She was cuter and smarter tied to that chair than Marm was on two good legs--hands to match ’em. Golly! How sick boys git bein’ whined at. Didn’t make no odds what we done--good or bad--Marm al’ays whined, but Gram--she stood by like she’d been a boy herself. She’d beg us off hoein’ fer circus and fair days and slip us dimes for this or that. Cal’ate she’s slipped us enough nickels and dimes to stretch clean to the upper pasture. Pasture! Golly! When we was up thar, hot days, hayin’, she’d al’ays mix us a pitcher o’ somethin’ cool--cream o’ tartar water or lemon and m’lasses. When she had it ready she’d take a stick and tick-tack on the wind’y. She could whistle, too; whistle through them crooked fingers o’ hern like a yaller-hammer. She’d whistle whenever she wanted to be fetched anywhars; then one of us boys would come runnin’ and heave her to wheresomever she aimed to go--kitchen to butt’ry--butt’ry to settin’ room--settin’ room to shed.”

Zeb stopped here and illustrated. He put two of his crooked fingers to his mouth and shrilled out a thin, wailing note as eery as a banshee’s.

“That’s the way she done it,” he continued. “And Marm would fuss and fret and say she didn’t see why the Lord ’lowed a little crippled-up body like Gram’s to stay so chuck full o’ spunk. Some days she git sort o’ vengeful, Marm would, and tell Gram she’d better quiet down decent, or more’n likely she’d never rest quiet in her grave after she died.”