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"I can't help it, Mama. Please make him change. He smells like a dead fish."
"How could I? I didn't catch nothin'."
"Anything," said Pa.
I think Ma was more annoyed at Beth than she was at me, but she made me go change anyhow. Honest, sometimes the burden of having a
sister who's a lady-in-training is more than a boy should have to bear.
Ma had fixed up beans and boiled some ham, almost like it was still a holiday. We all tried to eat to please her, but it was a hot day and no one was really hungry. Except Elliot. Ma watched him shovel in those beans, her eyes shining like she was proud of some big accomplishment the boy had managed.
Pa made appreciative noises over the food, but I could tell he was no hungrier than me. There were dark shadows under his eyes, making them look old and puffy. Whether from lack of sleep or crying I didn't want to guess. I kept harping on those tears. I didn't mean to, but it really shook me to see my pa so small and scared, a little boy who's hurt and running to his ma.
Beth kept turning and giving me queer looks.
"What?" I said finally. She was making me feel prickly and guilty.
Everyone turned to me like I needed to explain myself. "Tell Beth to stop looking at me," I said. I couldn't believe the stupid words that just jumped out of my mouth. I turned as red as a flag stripe.
"I can't help looking," she said sarcastically. "You're just too pretty for words."
I jumped up from the table. Pretty? I've given bloody noses for less than that.
"Sit down, Robbie," Pa said quietly. "And calm down, both of you." I gave Beth a smirk, in case she missed the point that I wasn't the only one out of line.
Willie couldn't fish after dinner. His aunt had him working the vegetable patch. Sometimes I help Willie with his chores, but that day I just couldn't make myself. Elliot was going to help Pa in our garden, so I wasn't needed at home. Or wanted. At least that was the way I was seeing it.
Without thinking, I headed back up to the cabin. Nobody was there. I called out, gently at first. When no one answered, I went on inside. There was enough light now to see around. The squatters had a couple of quilts, ragged and filthy to be sure, but still quilts. They must have built a fire sometime earlier, as there were ashes still smoldering in the old stone fireplace.
I tried to figure where they got their food. They could have marched down the hill into town and bought it same as most of us, but somehow I sensed that wasn't how they did things. I'd never seen anyone, not even the Pepin children, whose pa died in a quarry accident, look as needy as Vile did. At school, sitting close together near the wood stove, the Pepin children smelled different from us. Here in the cabin, that odor, which I could only guess was the smell of poor folks, was multiplied ten times. It made me want to gag.
There was a big kerchief by one of the quilts, tied up, I guessed to protect their worldly goods. My fingers itched to unknot those corners. What would people like Vile and her pa carry from place to place? Where had they come from? What did they call themselves? Not Gypsies, I was sure.
There was a Gypsy caravan that camped in the flats south of town every September. They'd stay a week or so. We boys loved to go and spy on them. Their wagons were painted in bright colors. Their clothes were motley colored, too. Both the men and women wore gold in their ears. They made me think of Solomon in all his glory. When Ned Watson said they kidnapped babies and ate them, I knocked him down. "Wal, you're one baby they'd spit out," I said.
At night, around their fires, the Gypsy folk sang songs, the likes of which you'd never hear in any church—wild songs that would make your blood race and sad tunes that would make you feel lonely and homesick even when you couldn't understand a word. I liked the horses best. They were smaller than Morgans or any farm horse I had ever seen. But they weren't ponies. They were too proud to be ponies—and decorated as beautifully as the people. Nobody who had such wonderful little horses could be evil. I was sure of that.
No, Vile and her pa were no kin to Gypsies. More's the pity.
Were they then what some folks had taken to calling "hoboes"? Pa wouldn't let us use that word. He said it insulted honest men who had been thrown out of work when times got bad, as they had too often in the last few years. How blessed—Pa never used the word lucky— how blessed we were that the quarries had stayed in production, making it possible for the farmers to sell their produce and for most of us in this part of Vermont to eat regular. But even if I was allowed to use the word hobo, Vile couldn't be one. I'd never heard of little girl hoboes—just grown men.
"Thief! I caught you!"
Vile was standing over me. I looked up startled. The huge form of her pa—he was full and tall as mine-filled the door. His right arm was behind his back, as though he was hiding something.
"Thief!" Vile said again. I looked down and saw that while my mind had been picturing Gypsies and hoboes, my hands had been untying the ends of the kerchief. Vile fell to her knees and snatched it out from under my hand, but not before I spied printed papers—like bills that get posted up to advertise performances and revival meetings or criminals on the loose. I had no time to read anything. Vile had snatched the whole bundle and was busily retying it, mumbling under her breath at me.
"I didn't take nothing," I whispered. I wasn't anxious for her pa to hear me. "Honest." What things of theirs did she imagine I could possibly want?
"You was fixing to," she said. "You would have if me and Paw hadn't caught you in the very act."
"I was just curious," I mumbled, then wished I hadn't. It made me seem worse than a thief, poking about in their meager possessions, as though because they had so few things, they had no right to keep private what they did have.
She finished knotting the kerchief, pulling the ends tight with her rough little hands. The nails were bitten, rimmed in black. By this time the man had come into the cabin, dragging behind him a burlap bag. He reached for the bundle with his free hand. It, too, was raw and red with filthy nails. I couldn't help but think of my father's strong, clean hands.
"What you doin' back here agin?" he asked. He was close enough now for me to see the dark red of his nose and the broken blue veins cobwebbing his face.
"This was—is—my cabin."
