Read Online Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman - Free Book Online Page B

you to Boston.   We’ll be with you when you get paid.”
    They left long before dawn, when the cows and the mule were still sleeping in the damp stalls, as the high tide rushed out from beneath the rickety foundation of the barn.   Larkin carried the basket for the baby tied to his back; Lucinda had all she owned plus the child.   They walked to Provincetown in silence, though it took them the best part of the morning.   It was a hot day.   The ruts in the sandy road were deep, better for carts and horses than men and women.   Lucinda didn’t really remember having parents, only her brother, the one who’d run away out west.   Larkin reminded her of her brother, as a matter of fact, walking too fast, not bothering to talk, although he once pointed to the sky when red-tailed hawks were circling.   The air was still acrid; whale fat was being cooked in kettles in the best part of three towns, and the stripped corpses left on the beach were baking in the sun.
    At last they came to the rise from which they could see the harbor in Provincetown.   Larkin gulped in the air, the cool, salt-smelling breeze from the north.   He might never be back.   Might never again walk down that lane where oaks and pitch pine grew, or gaze at that old house where a pear tree took up most of the yard, and the fields were overrun by sweet peas and meadow grass.
    Larkin used his savings to pay for their passage.   It was a rough crossing, despite the mild weather.   Possibly the storm was leagues under the sea, some underwater catastrophe that had caused the blackfish to school in such huge numbers, then lose their way.   Lucinda leaned over the side railing and vomited, but she didn’t complain.
    Perhaps other passengers took them for a couple: the handsome
    young man who wore gloves, and the plain older woman with their child.   Assuredly they were united in one thing, their goal of getting to Boston unnoticed.
    Lucinda, however, didn’t seem to trust Larkin.   They took a room in an inn near the docks, but she refused to stay there and wait.   Instead, she followed him to the address of a substitute broker on Milk Street.   Even then, she didn’t seem to want to let him out of her sight.
    “Pretend you can hear even if you can’t, so no one will think you’re deaf.   Get the money in your hand before you sign any documents,” she told him, the way she might have advised her brother if he hadn’t run off and left her, if he’d been the one trying to change her world.
    When Larkin went inside to the brokers, Lucinda leaned up against the
    wooden building.   She should have been exhausted.   The sleepless night,
    the walk to Province-town, the six hours on the steamer, the walk to
    Milk Street.   Instead, she felt as though something had boiled her
    blood.   She felt awake for the first time.   She’d never been to Boston,
    and she fell instantly in love with the city.   The more crowded the
    better.   Everything was glorious to her: the scent of horseflesh, and
    bakeries, and coffee, and tar.   She held the baby over her shoulder
    when he cried and patted his back.   She thought about the day when her
    brother left.   He’d been given over to be raised by a farmer in Truro,
    while Lucinda had gone to the Reedys’.   He’d had his rifle over his
    shoulder on the day he ran, and he hadn’t
    been more than fourteen.   She hadn’t blamed him for taking off, not at all.   If she’d been a boy, she would have done the same.   She would have disappeared long ago.
    Larkin came out an enlisted soldier in the Union Army, with three hundred dollars in silver, a uniform, and a rifle he’d had to pay for.
    “They made you buy your own gun?”   Lucinda drew him into a doorway so she could count the money then and there and make certain they hadn’t been cheated.
    When she was satisfied, they went back to the inn, where they’d registered as husband and wife.   Larkin folded his uniform onto a chair, and