The third death was a young man full of vigor and health. Foster Simon was his name. He was an apprentice carpenter and had gone with other men to deep woods outside our clearing to hunt a tree to make a table and chest. His father and brother accompanied the party and worked at felling it, but they started for home to bring others to help. Halfway there with his brother perched upon his shoulders, Foster remembered leaving his axe at the base of the tree. He put his brother down and sauntered back down the new-cut path.
When he did not return for the midday meal, the men called for him as they walked, and joked that he had probably fallen asleep. They found him, flesh bitten and torn, his neck broken. A bear had savaged the tree and huge scars on it coated with blood marked the place of Foster’s death. I stood at the grave as they laid that young man to his rest. My arms and neck still bore yellowing bruises from the beating Birgitta had given me. As they started filling dirt upon him, his blood seeping through the winding cloth, I thought I would rather be in that cool ground beside him than working here.
Though Mistress kept me busy working, I searched out wildflowers and laid them daily upon the three graves. I did not know Goody Fischer, and Lonnie was so bothersome that I felt little but sorrow for the suffering she had endured and some gratitude that I did not have to sleep next to her. Foster had been little older than August, was both a young man and a boy, a stranger and yet part of this group to which I belonged. He had once helped me with a load of firewood and he knew “If I Wast a Blackbird.” When Foster had smiled, two cunning dimples puckered his cheeks like an overstuffed pillow. I wished I had had a chance to kiss those dimples, I thought with a sigh. Oh, how handsome he had been.
One day, I lay down upon Foster’s grave and stared at the sky. I patted the soil beneath me and felt of him lying there, snug and warm as if tucked in for the night. Clouds drifted overhead like a flock of animals, bunching and parting, bunching and parting. I knew then what Patience meant, for I knew I loved Foster Simon. My chest ached. I would never marry for my own true love was dead, just as in the blackbird song. My heart’s wings would ever flutter over his heart, and the beauty of our tragic love would rise above any other love ever known. I sighed with the soaring emotion of it. Love so true and pure!
The next day I visited him and sat at the end of the mound over his feet. I swept clear a place with my hands and took great care to set stones upon the grave in the shape of a heart to show him my love. I heard Birgitta call and I stood to leave. “I will come back to see you soon,” I said, brushing gravel and bits of dried weed from my skirt. “I wish you weren’t dead. I will come and keep you company. Good day. And, I love you.”
“Mary!”
“Coming, Birgitta! I love you, Foster.”
Next Meeting Day, Reverend Johansen called to me, so I sat near him. “Mary, do you understand what death is? And do you understand what it means to let the dead rest in peace?”
Against my will my lower lip pushed itself out. “Yes, sir, I do most certainly.”
“I’m speaking of Master Foster Simon. You have decorated his resting place and visited many times, yet you must know his soul is not there, and naught remains but his earthly form, turned already to dust. I ask you to let his spirit rest.”
“Does my being there bother him, sir?”
“We don’t know what the spirits know, but I think a fortnight of mourning is enough.”
“I love him.”
Reverend Johansen said nothing but smiled in a small way. “Child, if the dead do know, he will be warmed by that knowledge. You can carry that feeling in your heart and let him rest in the ground.”
“I will not visit him any longer.” Oh, my heart lurched with the agony of that terrible declaration. “I will still love him, though, with all my heart, forever.”
“I think that is wisest,” he said. “As for love, what you know now will grow and fashion itself anew each time you press your heart against the thought. I pray God that you will know the best that love has to offer when you are a woman grown.”
I walked from the church and went inside the Haskens’ empty house, for they were all still at the common meal. I took the iron poker from the fireplace and, using the tip of it, scratched the initials F S into the doorpost at a height that my hand would touch as I went in and out. The Haskens were tall. They would not glance down and see Foster’s initials carved there for me.
CHAPTER 10
May 9, 1730