The View from Castle Rock

them. His boots were hanging round his neck.
    “Jamie walked,” said Robbie, solemnly.
    Johnnie addressed Mary. “How far did Jamie walk?”
    Mary said she had no idea. “Enough to wear himself out, anyway.”
    Jamie said, “No it wasn’t. I’m not even tired. I could walk that far again and I wouldn’t be tired.”
    Johnnie wanted to know if he’d seen any wildcats.
    “No.”
    They all walked across the porch, where some men were sitting in chairs or on the railings, smoking. Mary said, “Good evening,” and the men said, “Good evening,” looking down.
    Walking beside his mother, Jamie said, “I saw a person.”
    “Who was it?” said Johnnie. “Was it a bad person?”
    Jamie paid him no attention. Mary said, “Don’t tease him, Jamie.
    Then with a sigh she said, “I guess you ring this bell,” and did, and a woman came out of a back room. The woman led them upstairs and into a bedroom and said she would bring water for Mary to wash herself. Boys could wash out back, she said, at the cistern. There were towels out there, on a rack.
    “Go on,” said Mary to Jamie. “Take Johnnie with you. I’ll keep Robbie and Tommy here.”
    “I saw a person you know,” said Jamie.
    The baby was wet through her soakers and would have to be changed on the floor, not the bed. Down on her knees, Mary said, “Who was that? Who that I know?”
    “I saw Becky Johnson.”
    “Where?” said Mary, rocking back. “Where?
Becky Johnson?
Is she here?”
    “I saw her in the bush.”
    “Where was she going? What did she say?”
    “I wasn’t near enough to talk to her. She never saw me.”
    “Was this back near home?” Mary said. “Think now. Back near home or nearer here?”
    “Nearer here,” said Jamie, considering. “Why do you say near home when you said we’d never go back there?”
    Mary disregarded that. “Where was she going?”
    “This way. She just went out of sight in a minute.” He shook his head, like an old man. “She wasn’t making any noise.”
    “That’s the way Indians do,” Mary said. “You didn’t try to follow her?”
    “She was just ducking along in and out the trees and then I couldn’t see her anymore. Else I would have. I’d have followed her and asked her what she thought she was doing.”

    “Don’t you ever do such a thing,” Mary said. “You don’t know the bush like they do, you could lose yourself like
that
” She snapped her fingers at him, then busied herself again with the baby. “I expect she was on her own business,” she said. “Indian people have their own business we don’t ever know about. They’re not telling us everything they’re up to. Even Becky. Why should she?”
    The woman of the inn entered with a big pitcher of water.
    “What’s the matter?” she said to Jamie. “You scared there’s some strange boys out there? It’s just my own boys, they’re not going to hurt you.”
    Such a suggestion sent Jamie skittering down the stairs and Johnnie after him. Then the two little ones ran out as well.
    “Tommy! Robbie!” Mary called, but the woman said, “Your husband’s out back there, he’ll watch out for them.”
    Mary did not bother saying anything. It was no strange person’s business to know that she had no husband.

    The baby fell asleep at the breast, and Mary laid her on the bed, with a bolster on either side in case she rolled. She went down to eat supper, with one aching arm hanging gratefully empty of its daylong load. There was pork to eat, with cabbage and boiled potatoes. The last of last year’s potatoes, these were, and the meat had a good tough layer of fat. She filled up on fresh radishes and greens and new-baked bread which was tasty, and strong tea. The children ate at one table by themselves and were all so merry they didn’t give her a glance, not even Tommy. She was tired enough to drop, and wondering how she would ever stay awake long enough to get them to bed.
    There was only one other woman in the room besides the woman of the inn who was bringing in the food. That other woman never raised her head and gobbled her supper as if she was starved. She kept her bonnet on and looked like a foreigner. Her foreign husband spoke to her in businesslike grunts now and then. Other men kept up a steady conversation, mostly in the hard punishing American tone that Mary’s own boys were beginning to imitate. These men were full of information and contradictions, and they waved their knives and forks in the air. In