The Red Garden - Alice Hoffman [58]
The sisters were glad to be together. They had the easy sort of relationship where they didn’t have to speak to be understood. For as long as the weather held they took their meals on the porch, looking out toward Hightop Mountain. They moved the kitchen table and chairs outside. Lunches often lasted an hour or more as the weather continued to be fine even after the maple trees were already turning. Little Kate was already a charmer. Her red hair was tufted and shimmery in the daylight.
“What do we want for her?” Azurine wondered as they watched her, both sisters ready to dart over should she begin to fall.
Hannah was about to answer true love, but love alone was never enough.
“She’ll have us,” she told her sister. “That should do.”
They were finishing the last of the summer’s tomatoes. They’d picked them that morning, just after breakfast, scrambling into the garden barefoot, racing to see which sister could collect the most. Now, when Kate came skittering back to the table, they let her take a bite, even though some people might say it was best for children to eat only simple things. In their experience, nothing was simple.
THE MONSTER OF BLACKWELL
1956
HE WAS NOT FROM BERKSHIRE COUNTY or from anywhere in Massachusetts. He didn’t know where he’d been born or who his parents were. He lived with an aunt in Albany, near the railroad tracks, but he didn’t expect to be there for the rest of his life. He was convinced that something else was out there for him. He’d decided he would be ready, whatever his future might bring, whenever it might appear before him. He was prepared to vanish, take chances, disappear if need be. He thought perhaps he was enchanted. He was exceedingly ugly, so ugly he couldn’t look at himself. He’d always known this. People had told him so often enough, and, although he avoided mirrors, he’d glimpsed himself and had come to the conclusion they were correct.
He expected the reaction he caused. People ran from him, and he didn’t blame them. If he could, he would have gotten as far away from himself as possible. His features didn’t go together; they were misshapen, large and broad, pushed in as if the doctor had made a mistake during his birth and tried to throw him back into the place where he’d originated, pushing in on his nose, and ears, and mouth. His shoulders were broad and his arms muscular, but he seemed twisted and tended to be hunched. His eyes, however, were dark and beautiful. People didn’t notice. They didn’t look him in the eye. They were gone before that.
He’d always kept himself hidden. In school he hadn’t let on that he was smart. He’d made sure to sit in the back of the room, face averted. He’d been too big for his age, those big hands, big feet, big arms. He was as tall as a man by the time he was ten. His back was misshapen, pushed up onto his shoulders. That was why he hunched, in the hope of disappearing. When he was younger, the boys at school had him lie on the floor so they could climb over him. They said he was a mountain. They beat him. He stayed still and let them. He could have easily crushed his attackers, but it wasn’t in his nature to do so. He felt like a mountain, alone, far away.
Perhaps there was a spell to undo what he was, one that would lead him to become something better. He prepared himself with a feverish attempt at self-improvement. He read voraciously at night while his aunt was sleeping, not just novels and poetry, but how-to books. He studied the skills he might someday need in another time and place: how to make a fire, how to gauge which plants were poisonous and which were edible,