Sylvanus Now Read Online Free Page B

the already polished pickle jar.
    He sobered, leaning sideways to see her face. “Christ, Mother, you knows I’m not going to move off somewhere—” He lapsed as a dab of water wetted the corner of her eye. Sweet jeezes, she wasn’t bawling, was she? “Mother, now, Mother, in the name of jeezes, you’re not bawling, are you?”
    “Mind your mouth!” she ordered, flapping the dishrag at him as he tried turning her toward him.
    “For gawd’s sake,” and he grabbed her by the waist. “You needs some fresh air, you do. Blow the nonsense out of your skull. Come on,” and ignoring her shrieks of protest, he swung her onto his shoulder like a sack of spuds, striding with her out of the house, across the path, and in through his stage. “Now, get down or be flung down,” he threatened, lodging her onto the stagehead, steering her toward his boat, bobbing alongside.
    “I haven’t got time for this, foolish thing,” she cried, and started shrieking again as he lifted her off her feet, lodging her down into the boat, rocking it madly as he jumped in beside her. “Syllie, in the name of God, I got bread in the oven, and the goats are wanting—”
    “Hey, buddy!” Sylvanus called out to one of Manny’s youngsters dawdling along shore, “go tell your mother to go turn Mother’s bread! Marry a Trapp,” he muttered, pushing her toward the seat in the stern. “Marry a goddamn Trapp!” Shaking his head, he hunched before the engine house, heaving hard on the flywheel. “Yes, now, that’s just what I’m about, leaving Cooney Arm,” and he tutted over her rebukes as he putted them through the neck, haranguing about her selfishness, that she’d rather have her boy shift in with the sly-looking Trapps over some nice family in Ragged Rock. “Now, there’s nonsense for you, Mother, there’s bloody nonsense,” he chided. Settling himself beside her, he cradled her resisting shoulders, pooh-poohing any and all else that she said. Finally, she settled back, enjoying with him the sun full on their faces, the wind waffling their hair, and the clip-clop-clop of the boat hitting on the waves curling toward them off the open seas.
    By the time they returned home both mother and son were lulled into quiet. Which lasted about ten minutes after they were ashore. Then Sylvanus was grumbling again about the cramped quarters of his mother’s house, its peeling paint and sagging floors. Prowling outside, he started figuring how many quintals of fish it would take to lay a foundation and build his own house—and nearer the shoreline, it would have to be, he figured, sizing up the twenty, thirty feet or more his mother’s house held back on land, for wouldn’t the woman of his dreams like sitting on her stoop in the evenings, watching the tide washing closer, lifting the seaweed off the rocks and floating it before her like goldenrod, and the starfish fluttering amongst its blooms like butterflies? Her garden, he mused. The sea would be her garden, planting cockleshells and urchins upon her windowsill, weaving her pathways through the eelgrass, baring baby crabs and tommycod playing hide-and-seek amongst the rocks, lulling her with its waves washing up on shore.
    Within the week he was feverish with a need to see her, to touch her. Damned were his nights as he thrashed his bed. And damned were his days as he tried to keep rhythm with his jiggers and the rocking of his boat. He paced the shoreline. He threw rocks at the ocean. He scaled the cliffs rising from the neck, trampling over nests and burrows of kittiwake and carey chicks. And he started cursing the head, the coves, and bights that separated him from her.
    When, one Sunday morning two weeks after he’d first seen her, he found himself getting out of his boat in Ragged Rock and walking along the path leading to her door, he froze in his madness. What would she think of him—the thick mat of hair covering his body since before he was fourteen, his surly, black brows,