Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [76]
“I never seen the like.” She paused. “Evenings he’d take me for a walk around to show off those plants. I was happy for him but nights I’d lie to bed thinkin’, Who in the name of God was going to gather in this field of potatoes and lay them down for winter? It was wonderful and terrible at the same time; put me in mind of the year of the big tide, 1929. The vegetables were still in the ground and ready to harvest, and here in the middle of the night the sea come roarin’ in right up to the house and tore the ground right up. People farther along the shore to Burin lost everything that night: houses, boats, even their chil’ren. It was some bad. The mornin’ after, I was outside goin’ mad tryin’ to save what was still on the ground for fear the sea would rise again, take it all away, leavin’ us with nothin’ for the winter. He just ignored it all. He said it was all spoiled anyways, nothing there to save. Times like that he tried my patience sore. There was no talkin’ to him.
“When I sees the beds of potatoes enough to feed the whole shore, all I could do was pray that come the fall of the year, I’d find the strength to bring them in. But at the time I could barely walk the length of myself, I was that weak, so I used to pray to God to send what help was needed.”
The low buzz of a housefly sounded somewhere in the kitchen. It stopped momentarily, started up again, whizzing about in the darkness behind them.
“It was comin’ up to the end of September, when one afternoon he come through the back door with a rake of potatoes stacked along his arm. They were just like a load of junks for the stove. My dear, they were this big!” She held her hands about eight inches apart. “I never seen the like.”
“‘Them’s some potatoes, Matt,’ I said. He held one out to me, the black dirt still stuck to it but, my dear, it was perfect, neither scab nor blemish.” She paused. “I was some happy for him, Nora, happy he was proud of his work. We set about cooking them up that evenin’ for supper, watchin’ them boil up until they split right out of their jackets. ‘Laughing at us,’ was how he put it.”
Nora watched Peg’s face. The soft lamplight had smoothed away some of the ravages of time and sickness, leaving a faint trace of the younger woman, open, vulnerable, eager.
“I need not have worried. He brought them in that year hisself, workin’ from early mornin’ to evenin’, layin’ them down in perfect rows against the back wall of the root cellar, and what we didn’t need, he gave away.”
Nora was listening attentively and following every word Peg spoke, but there were other things on her mind and time was running out, so when a lull came in the conversation she asked the one question that had been floating about in her head like a leaf in a murky puddle. “Peg, in all those years did he ever express regret for what he had done to his wife and his child?”
Peg stroked the back of her hand, pausing for a moment, only to continue more vigorously with the same motion. “Not too much, except for the day he had that letter back from your father sayin’ he didn’t want to hear tell of him no more. It all come up that day just like he was sick to his stomach. The bits and pieces of his life come rushin’ out.”
20
There was comfort in the drink that Peg had passed to her and she was glad of it, but inside she longed for the luxury of a hot whiskey heavy with the pungent smell of cloves and the tang of lemon. Most of all