The Edge Of The World Part 8

I stood silent. What he said was true.

"Those stones are our business. Not yours."

"You needn't be rude to my wife," Oskar said. "She meant no harm."

"Well, she might have come to plenty. It's a very long way down and no good once you get there."

CHAPTER 12.

MRS. CRAWLEY MUST have admonished the children, for they began to appear at our front door every morning, their pillows clutched to their chests. In the first week or so, we looked at one another with trepidation, and our steps on the narrow stairs to the schoolroom sounded a doleful and dutiful march. They were forced to make various accommodations with their legs to sit beside the trunk-the top, for instance, came to the chins of the littler ones if they sat fully on their pillows-and then we addressed ourselves to the unnatural tasks that make up the usual school day.

They were shockingly uneducated. None of them could read more than his or her name, and only the two eldest could add and subtract and that not beyond what they could count on their fingers. They knew nothing of history or geography, not to mention science, art, and music. The two youngest didn't even know how to hold a pencil properly.

My mother had taught me all of these rudimentary skills. I struggled to remember how she'd done it. It had helped, I'm sure, that she'd had a great deal of authority over me. Jane, in this regard, being the littlest, was the most tractable and receptive, but she looked to her older siblings for her models, and they didn't see the point.

"We know how to keep the light," Mary objected.

"And I can fix the steam donkey," Edward added. "I've done it thousands of times."

"Don't you want to know about other places?"

"You mean like Cuba?" Edward asked.

"Yes, I suppose Cuba would be good to know about."

"That's where Mr. Finnegan's gone!" Nicholas put in. "He's going to kill the Butcher!"

This seemed to be a signal to aim imagined guns at each other and make explosive noises. I told them about the troops I'd seen ma.s.sing in the Presidio and used several sheets of my sketchbook to draw a map first of the line of coast along which Oskar and I had come on the tender-were they not curious to know where the tender came from?-and then of the whole of North America, adding a broken line from Milwaukee to San Francisco to indicate our train journey. By placing some pebbles Nicholas took from his pockets on the trunk at some distances from the map, I showed them where the Philippines and Cuba lay in relation to the rest, although, truth be told, my own grasp of world geography was rather loose.

Then we used pebbles to mark all of the places we-really, I-could think of: Paris, London, New York, Peking. I wondered how I might procure a globe.

"Where is Salinas?" Mary wanted to know. I couldn't even pretend to guess.

I printed the word HORSE in large letters-there went another piece of paper-and taught them to read it. But then I had to draw a horse as well, for they'd never seen one, or at least couldn't remember doing so. They were amazed that the steam donkey had the name of an animal like a horse. I tried writing DONKEY then, but it was clear by the avidity with which Edward tried to capture a fly under his cupped hand and by the fact that Jane had laid her head upon her pillow seat that they'd already learned plenty for one day.

"They're entirely ignorant," I marveled to Oskar.

We were kneeling before our store cupboards, which were stuffed so full of cans that I'd had to tie the doors closed with bits of ribbon to keep them from popping open.

"You choose and then I'll choose," he said.

I selected oysters in cream, and he pulled out venison cooked in port wine, as well as sweet potatoes, green beans, and cherries in thick syrup.

"No." I laughed, but I was serious. Some quality of the air here had increased Oskar's appet.i.te, and we were consuming far more than was prudent. "Really, we must put at least one of these away. You don't seem to realize that this is all we'll have until the next tender. That's months away."

"Oh, please. I'm so hungry today. Tomorrow I promise I'll make it up. I'll eat stones and cornbread. Or I'll get Crawley to go down and catch us a whale."

Against my better judgment, I gave in and built up the fire in the stove. Then, while I held each can firm, Oskar set the chisel as close to the edge as he dared and gave it sharp taps with the hammer.

It was difficult to keep from pulling away. "What if you slip?"

He grinned. "Maybe you'd best use your left hand."

Watching translucent gravy melt around chunks of meat and a froth of white bubble up around the oysters, I knew my mother would frown at this method of "cooking." The food did not taste good, but the novelty charmed us both. I made him close his eyes and held a bit out to him on my fork-oyster or venison?

"Tomorrow," he declared, "we try the goose and the plum pudding."

He was increasingly excited about Electric Waves, and he tried to get me to apply equivalent enthusiasm, as well as the scientific method, to my own work.

"Don't you see that the children's ignorance is wonderful? They're like a primitive people. You could do all kinds of experiments to find out how they think. Let's ask them to explain things-how far the ocean goes, say-and see what stories they've devised for themselves."

As he embroidered these ideas, he reached to push his fork into my bowl; he'd already eaten all of his portion.

"But Oskar," I protested, "they're children. They're not aborigines. They know how to fix the steam donkey, for heaven's sake."

Nevertheless, he remained convinced that the children presented a rare opportunity for study and if I were not to mine it, he would. Every few days, he set aside his research into "electrical transference," as he'd begun to call it, and came bounding up the steps to the schoolroom with a lesson he thought we ought to try.

"Never mind those letters," he announced one day, pushing aside the pages on which the children had been laboring for at least a quarter of an hour. "Here, Trudy, give them fresh sheets. Now," he went on when each had a new piece of my creamy writing paper before him or her, "I would like you to write a message without words."

They stared at him uncertainly.

"I see that already some damage has been done." He shook his head, but he was smiling, his expression kindly and patient. "We can undo it. Listen to me. Pretend you've never been taught a word of English. You possess no worn-out, conventional, mindless phrases. You've just come into this world," he went on, entrancing them, "and now you must sort it out on your own. You will experience it directly with your senses without intervention from teachers." He paused and looked around our schoolroom. "No, wait. I have a better idea. There's too much distraction here. These books . . . and what is this? A map? No, no, this won't help. What we'll do is go outside. We'll go into nature itself and get away from these sullying influences. Come on."

"Oskar-" I began to protest. It had been so difficult to collect and keep the children in this room, and he was working against all I'd accomplished. Also, I'd done my best with very little in choosing those books and drawing that map; I didn't like him to say they were sullying.

He held up his hand and shook his head. "Trudy, don't interrupt. Let's try a real experiment. We might all learn something."

And so, Pied Piperalike, he led them down the stairs, out the door, and from one spot to another around the top of the morro. He had them brush their palms over the bright lichens and press the soles of their bare feet into the sharp rock. He took them to the boiler room and told them to smell the oil. He filled a bucket with water and had them plunge their heads into it one by one. He encouraged them to lie on their stomachs at the very edge of the mountain, with their heads nearly hanging into the air, and then he told them to close their eyes. "Imbibe the rhythm of the ocean!" he ordered, while I surrept.i.tiously clutched the hem of Jane's pinafore with one hand and Nicholas's heel with the other.

When we trooped back to our little schoolroom at last, he said he wanted them to show him on paper what they'd experienced, though he cautioned them again not to use words.

"If you didn't know the words *ocean,' or *sea,' or even *water,' for instance," he said, "how would you tell me what lies out there?" He gestured toward the west.

They obediently scrubbed away at their pages until Euphemia began to ring the bell that stood outside her door, signaling them to abandon their studies in favor of lunch and ch.o.r.es.

Oskar was disappointed in the results. "I thought they'd draw pictographs," he said after glancing at the well-covered pages. "Like the ancient Egyptians. These are only pictures."

"They're revealing, though. Look." Mary's was an orderly landscape with everything in proportion. She'd even thought to include the clothesline and the steam donkey. Edward appeared in his own picture, looking as if he'd just conquered the morro and was using it as a vantage point from which to further command troops. Nicholas had filled a sky with birds and an ocean with creatures of all forms. Jane's sketch resembled Impressionist paintings, all shades and strokes and feeling, the boundaries between water, mountain and air indistinct. Perhaps she was too young to, as Oskar had said, "sort it out."

"Mmm," Oskar agreed, although he wasn't really looking. "I was hoping for something else. These are all so . . . idiosyncratic. We can't extrapolate anything from them about the way primitive man perceived the world. Maybe mathematics would reveal something more basic and universal. Next time let's see what they do if we give them a mathematical problem and some dry beans to help them with the numbers."

I admired the way Oskar seemed able to translate the most mundane circ.u.mstances into opportunities for study, and the children were clearly delighted with his methods, but I saw that he was more interested in what he could learn from the children than he was in teaching them, so I was relieved that he was often too busy with his electrical investigations to bother with us.

My sheaf of writing paper was disappearing quickly, eaten up by the children's scratches and smudges. Oskar was also using a great deal, even pinning sheets together to give himself room for extended diagrams.

"Imagine," he said one afternoon, chiseling open some rhubarb and spooning it right from the can, "if I were the one who figured out how to send a signal on an electrical wave."

"You mean like a telegraph?"

"A telegraph uses wires. I'm talking about a signal that could reach where no wires will ever come, to a place like this. Or out to sea, to a moving ship. Right through the air."

"Do you really think you could manage something so . . . ambitious? I mean, you've only just learned about these waves, haven't you? From that book?"

"You have to be ambitious," he said, "or you'll never get anywhere. But I am going to start with something more limited." He tipped the can so the last of the juices could run into his mouth. "I'm going to send a signal from our parlor to the light tower."

"Was that in the book?"

"The book?" He shook his head. "I'm finished with that. The real work is in the brain, considering what's known and determining how to pursue what's not." With that, he helped himself to several sheets of paper, tapped the stack smartly on the tabletop, and settled down to form the squiggles and arrows of his brainwork.

Our schedules had become unmatched, now that I had the children in the morning and the housework in the afternoon, while he still manned the night shift. When he stood up from the table and took my wrist, pulling me away from the story about eels that I'd begun to print in large block letters for Nicholas and Jane, I felt slightly irritated at the interruption of the rhythm of my daytime life. From our bed, while he moved his hands around my body as if testing for holds on the face of a cliff, I could hear the children's shouts, Mr. Crawley talking to Mr. Johnston as they pa.s.sed on the path, Mrs. Crawley shooing the chickens aside.

"Ma! I can't find any blackberry jam!" Jane's voice penetrated the membrane between their world and ours.

I opened my eyes to smile at Oskar in collusion, but his face was turned toward the window, his gaze focused beyond the horizon.

When he fell asleep, I got up again. After all, there were windows to rub with vinegar and floors to be scrubbed with a rough brush and a cake of lye soap; Mrs. Crawley had shown me the trick of such tasks by now. And the woman herself might come to the door with a job that demanded the two of us, rug beating, for instance, or linen boiling. There were always the stories to write as well. Even The Five Little Peppers had turned out to be too difficult for the children, so I'd begun composing tales for them myself, full of oversized letters and jaunty ill.u.s.trations. Along with the eels, I'd done one about a crab who wore a bowler hat and slid down the rock canyons on a broken cigar box; one about a starfish who took a train to Indiana (prompting much map drawing and some disjointed discussion of Lewis and Clark); and one about a mermaid who untangled her hair with a silver-backed brush.

"She lives in a cave," Jane said.

"All right," I agreed.

Drawing was Jane's particular pleasure, so I let her sketch the mermaid's house and wished that I had watercolors for her to paint with, so lavishly did she decorate her picture with ropes of kelp and abalone sh.e.l.ls larger than soup bowls.

CHAPTER 13.

THE AUTUMN PICNIC on the beach, Mr. Crawley explained, was an annual treat. "Before the rain begins," he said. I a.s.sumed he was joking. Not a drop had fallen since we'd arrived at Point Lucia, and what was a day or two or even a week of rain?

"When does it start to snow?" I asked, and Mrs. Crawley admitted that she'd never seen the stuff.

Oskar and I, thinking of the ice and freezing winds that would soon be a.s.sailing the East, laughed at the idea of a final hurrah before a little wetting. Nevertheless, we were happy to picnic. On the designated Sunday, the sky was a rich, saturated blue, and the sun promised to bake the beach all day.

We were to grill abalone and whatever else Mr. Crawley, who loved to fish in the surf, might catch, as well as boil mussels, and Mrs. Crawley set a hamper in the yard so that we could all contribute from our own stores the most delicious foods we could spare. Oskar made several trips from kitchen to hamper with cans labeled California Fruit and Boston Baked Beans and squares of chocolate.

We adults all rode decorously down on the platform. The tide was very low; the sea, as I was mildly scandalized to hear Mr. Crawley say in a soft voice to his wife, had "hitched up her skirts," and an undulating surface of dark, treacherous rock was exposed a good way out. The three older children followed their father onto it with sharp sticks to pry abalone from their beds.

While Mrs. Crawley and Mr. Johnston collected dry wood-Mrs. Crawley energetically; Mr. Johnston pausing often for long, scrutinizing looks up the sh.o.r.eline as if he expected someone or something to appear out of that endless, rocky wilderness-Jane and I were sent along the beach with a sack to hunt mussels. Our progress was slow; we had to pause often for Jane to bend and poke at the sand with her miniature finger, examining pebbles and the like. We were in such an att.i.tude, her hand clasped in mine, pulling me down to her level, when a dark shadow rushed up behind us. I was frightened for a moment, but it was only Oskar. He tapped me lightly on the shoulder.

"You're it!" he cried, running on, his bare feet slapping the wet sand.

I began running, too, Janie shrieking with excitement beside me, and we went perhaps twenty steps at a speed nearly fast enough to catch him, although only because he'd turned and was running backward. That was as far as I could go with the shallow breaths my corset allowed.

"I thought you could keep up." He smiled and shook his head. "You disappoint me."

"You try running in this thing." I pressed my hand to the garment that constricted my ribs.

"For heaven's sake! Why are you wearing it?"

"Because," I said, "it's what one wears! I would look . . . peculiar . . . without it."

"That's ridiculous! You would not look peculiar. In any case, who's here to see? Janie? Mrs. Crawley?"

"There's you," I said in a small voice.

"I've seen you without your corset, Mrs. Swann, and I a.s.sure you that you do not look peculiar."

I glanced away, embarra.s.sed to show that this pleased me.

"Mr. Swann! Come and help us!" the older children called from the rocks, and he dashed off like a kitten after a tail of yarn.

"He's right," I said to Jane, knowing she couldn't understand. "It's a ridiculous vanity. I renounce it!"

There were caves of a sort at the south end of the beach, almost directly below the lighthouse, abscesses where the ocean had licked away the black rock. They filled with water at high tide but were empty now, and in the dimness of one of these natural cabanas, I unb.u.t.toned my dress and released the clasps of my Chicago waist. Putting my clothes back together without the undergarment was a struggle, for when my torso was uncinched, the b.u.t.tons at the bottom of my rib cage would no longer meet. "I'll simply fold my hands, so," I said to Jane, covering the spot through which my petticoat peeked. She giggled, but I sighed, knowing that if I didn't put the corset back on, I'd have to drape my shawl around my waist when we joined the others, and then I would indeed look peculiar. I ran a few steps in the wet sand, testing my power now that I was free to draw full breaths.

"Look! A mermaid baby!" Jane squealed.

The girl was crouching in the far corner of the cave beside a bundle of kelp that was the size and shape of an infant. I bent close, unable at first to make sense of the tangle of slick green ribbon and rubbery tubes. With horror, I saw misshapen arms and legs, dark brown and clawed, and then a flat black nose.

"Is it sleeping?" Jane asked.

The creature's eyes were closed. Its smell was astounding, a ripe combination of animal, vegetable, and salt, the smell of sea beings exposed too long to the harsh air, but I picked it up and held as tightly as I could to its slippery covering. And then I ran.

"We found a mermaid!" Janie shrieked, and I must have been screaming, too, for the two men and the children began to move across the rocks back toward the beach, and Mrs. Crawley and Mr. Johnston looked up from the scant pile of driftwood they'd been arranging.

"Oh, why do they just stand there? Why aren't they coming?" I whispered, my heart louder in my ears than my voice.

I held the bundle out to Mrs. Crawley, but she didn't take it. With one hand, she gently moved a rope of kelp away from the brown face. "Ah, poor little thing."