A Difficult Boy Read online

  “This is Nell,” Daniel said, dropping a well-worn stool near the cow’s back feet.

  Ethan looked at the cow, then at the stool, then at the bucket, then back at the cow. He didn’t look at Daniel.

  “Well?” Daniel folded his arms across his chest. “You do know how to milk, don’t you?”

  Nell’s hind feet stepped about as if she were trying to dance a reel.

  “Of course. I do it all the time at home.” But Tess never danced around the way Nell did.

  Daniel tapped his foot and rolled his eyes. “You can’t. Oh, this is grand. They send us a lad who can’t even milk.”

  “I can too!”

  “Show me.” Daniel hooked a foot around one leg of the stool and shoved it next to the cow. He dropped the bucket under her belly. Nell rattled her horns against the stanchion boards.

  “I—I’m just waiting for her to stand still.”

  “She’ll stand still when you pail her out. Or would you be wanting her to burst, now?”

  Gritting his teeth, Ethan sat at arm’s length from Nell’s haunches and reached out a hand. It couldn’t be that hard. He’d managed all right with Tess, and one cow was just like another.

  Only they weren’t. Tess’s udder had hung down loose and low, the teats as big as Pa’s thumb, wrinkly and rubbery and a perfect handful for Ethan to pinch off at the top and squeeze the thick stream of milk down. Nell’s bag was high and tight, with teats barely as big as the tip of Ethan’s pinkie. He could fit only his thumb and forefinger around one. When he squeezed, a thin warm trickle ran down his hand, along his arm, and up his sleeve. He bit his lip and tried again, his fingers now wet and slippery with milk. The teat slid between them and popped out of his grasp.

  In the next instant, Ethan was on the floor. One moment he’d seen a hoof flashing in front of his face. The next, the stool was gone and he was sitting in a pile of fresh manure.

  Chapter Two

  Ethan took a shuddering breath, half expecting to find his chest crushed or his head broken, but the only thing that hurt was his rear end. When he tried to get up, he found that Daniel’s hand gripped his braces. He realized that the other boy had pulled him away from Nell’s sharp hoof.

  Daniel yanked Ethan to his feet. “You want to be getting your bloody head bashed in? Who the devil ever taught you to milk like that?” His voice dripped with contempt.

  “Our cow doesn’t kick.” Ethan plucked at the seat of his trousers. A glob of manure splatted to the floor. He backed up and tried to rub the rest off against the wall.

  “She wouldn’t kick if you’d milk her proper.” Daniel righted the stool and set the bucket back under the cow. “Like this.” He sat close up against Nell’s flank. Bracing the bucket between his knees, he turned his face toward Ethan and laid his cheek against Nell’s side. “If you’re afraid, she’ll be afraid, too. You get right in here and she sees there’s nothing to be scared of.” He put his hands out, tucking his left arm into the crook of Nell’s hock.

  Fear, Ethan thought, was probably the last thing on Nell’s mind. Murder was more likely.

  “Then you get yourself a good handful of her. She’s not got much of a teat to grab onto, so you got to be taking a bit of the bag, too.” Daniel’s long fingers grasped an inch of Nell’s bright pink udder along with the tiny button of her teat.

  Ethan noticed strange ragged patches of white flesh on the older boy’s hands and forearms, unfreckled and paler than the rest of his skin. The discolored spots distracted him until a steady stream of milk spurted from between Daniel’s fingers and hissed into the bucket below, drawing Ethan’s attention back to the lesson.

  Nell’s hind leg cocked back. Ethan opened his mouth to shout a warning. Daniel jabbed his left elbow sideways into the cow’s hock, stopping the kick before it had time to start. Nell tried again. Daniel jabbed again. The kick turned into a harmless pawing in the hay, as though all Nell had meant to do was readjust her footing. After Nell settled, Daniel’s left hand moved back to the cow’s udder and joined his right in a steady one-two rhythm. “See? You get right in there and she hasn’t space to swing. And if she tries, you can stop her.”

  “But how did you know?”

  “Felt it here.” Daniel pressed his face tighter against the cow’s flank. A corner of his mouth curled. “And saw it in your face.”

  Ethan’s cheeks warmed.

  “S’pose this one’s too much for you. Go do Patience.” Daniel jerked his right elbow toward a placid brown cow who stood with her joints so slack she seemed to be eating in her sleep.

  Ethan moved toward Patience, then stopped. “No.”

  Daniel’s hands missed a beat, but he didn’t look up. “No?”

  “You wanted me to do Nell. I’ll do Nell.”

  Daniel cocked his head to blink at Ethan. His pale eyebrows gathered, then smoothed. He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just remember you’re milking a cow, not playing the bloody pianoforte.”

  Ethan clenched his teeth and planted himself against Nell’s side, his left arm poised against her hind leg. From the corner of his eye, he could see Nell’s cloven hoof and, next to it, Daniel’s feet, bare and bony and filthy. He felt Daniel’s eyes on him, waiting for the next opportunity to scold and sneer. Ethan reached for the cow’s udder and grasped teat and bag just as Daniel had demonstrated. When he felt Nell’s muscles bunch against his forehead, he stiffened his arm, jabbing his elbow into Nell’s hock when her heel came off the floor. Her foot came back down, hard and fast, and stayed there.

  His first squeeze brought the milk out in a feeble trickle. The next squeeze was better. The milk came in only a thin string compared to the ropy stream Daniel had produced, but it came. He had the bucket a quarter full before Daniel’s feet disappeared and the weight of being watched vanished.

  Ethan was used to working hard: chopping wood, picking stones in fields and garden, hoeing, digging, hauling wood and water. None of it seemed to use the muscles that milking Nell did. His fingers cramped, and he lost the rhythm of pinch and squeeze. The stream of milk faltered into short spurts.

  He gradually became aware of motion around him. Stanchion boards rasped open, and the cattle clomped out of the barn. He heard the scrape-scrape-scrape of someone mucking out the barn. His wrists and the backs of his hands tingled, but he forced his fingers to keep moving.

  The cows murmured in the barnyard like children waiting for a friend kept after school. He heard the men chatting and laughing outside. Laughing at him, no doubt. His fingers kept moving, though his shoulders felt rigid. The milk went from small spurts to drops to nothing. He pressed his lips together and tried again, forcing his fingers to continue working the udder that was now soft and loose in his hands.

  Something nudged his leg. Daniel’s feet reappeared next to Nell’s. “Let’s have a look, then.”

  “I can do it.” Ethan felt sure Daniel wanted him to give up, to be sent home in disgrace.

  Daniel crouched and shouldered him away. He put a thumb and forefinger at the top of one teat, then gently slid his fingers down. Nothing came out. After repeating the test with the other three teats, he nodded. “I s’pose that’ll do.” He gave Nell a parting slap on the rump and walked away.

  Ethan stared after him. Daniel paused at the door to the cattle yard. “Well, are you going to be leaving her in all night?”

  “You call that washing up?” Daniel grabbed Ethan’s arm and shoved him back in front of the pump. He tossed a little scrub brush into the tin basin that sat under the spout, sending a splash of water into Ethan’s face and down the front of his shirt and vest. “There,” he said, flicking a glob of soft brown soap onto Ethan’s cheek. “Hands and face. Ears, neck, nails. The lot.”

  “How can I finish washing my buckets with you boys blockading the pump?” Lizzie dropped the last two milk pails on the floor with a hollow thunk.

  “It’s this new lad,” Daniel said. “You’d think he’d never laid eyes on a pot of soap before.”


  The cold water that Ethan splashed on his face did little to cool his burning cheeks. If not for Lizzie standing there, he’d have doused Daniel with the contents of the washbasin. Instead, he scrubbed at his face and hands with all the fury he wanted to set loose at Daniel.

  “He’ll learn,” Lizzie said. Ethan looked up from his rinsing to see her offering him a towel. Her smile faded as her nose twitched and her gaze drifted down to Ethan’s trousers. “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “Couldn’t get it all off?” Without waiting for a reply, she rummaged under the sink and came up with a battered brush and whisk broom. She led Ethan to the doorway of the little ell and stood him on the threshold so she could brush and scrape the manure off into the yard.

  Two furry bodies twined around Ethan’s ankles, then bolted into the house.

  “Now the bloody fool’s let the cats in,” Daniel growled. He took off in pursuit. Ethan heard the thud of Daniel’s feet, a shriek, a thwack, and a couple of feline yowls. He hoped Daniel hadn’t struck the cats.

  “I’m sorry,” Ethan said, twisting around to see if Lizzie’s work was doing any good.

  “I’m the one who let the cats in,” Lizzie said. “Don’t mind him.” She shrugged in the direction Daniel had gone. “That’s just Paddy being Paddy.” She gave Ethan a final brush, then quickly stepped aside as the two cats hurtled out, Daniel stomping behind them.

  “They didn’t get into the cream, did they?” Lizzie asked.

  Daniel shook his head. He yanked Ethan back into the ell and slammed the door.

  “There,” Lizzie said. “Best I could do, I’m afraid. Good thing your trousers are brown.”

  “S’pose it’ll have to do,” Daniel said. With a loud sigh, he grabbed Ethan by the shoulder and tugged him toward the kitchen. “Right, then. Let’s see what else he don’t know how to do.”

  “Not like that. You want to be wearing down the carpet? And by the seat, not the back.” Daniel picked up a bright yellow chair to demonstrate.

  Ethan smothered a groan. There seemed to be a right way and a wrong way to do everything around here, and whichever way he chose was always the wrong one. Now there even seemed to be a right way to set the chairs around the table for the evening’s tea.

  Mrs. Lyman and the girls had already laid the table with starched white napkins and blue-edged dishes as delicate as eggshells. A platter of cold ham formed the centerpiece, flanked by bowls of gleaming burgundy-red pickled beets and cabbage. Bread, pies, cakes, and pastries paler and more delicate than any Ethan had ever seen covered nearly every inch of the white tablecloth. His stomach fluttered with apprehension at all the things on the table that a misplaced elbow or hand could spill or break.

  The chairs bumped against his shins as he carried them, but better bruised shins than more scoldings. In a few moments, he’d lined up a neat row on his side of the table. He stood back to await his next order.

  Daniel came around and inspected the chairs. He moved the first one an inch to the left. He moved another chair a few inches to the right, and a third a fraction of an inch back. Ethan’s jaw tightened. Finally, Daniel nodded. “That’ll do.” He retreated to the kitchen and returned with an old ladder-back chair with a grease-stained rush seat. From the way Daniel thunked it down, Ethan guessed that nobody cared much how this chair was handled.

  “Whose is that?” Ethan asked.

  “Mine,” Daniel said.

  With a rustle of skirts, Mrs. Lyman swept into the room. Florella and Zeloda followed close behind. Florella carried two puddings, while Zeloda brought in the steaming teakettle. Somehow Mrs. Lyman conjured up spots on the crowded table for all the new dishes.

  Daniel seemed to shrink when Mrs. Lyman entered. He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ma’am. What chair would you like me to be setting for him?” He jerked his chin toward Ethan. Although he spoke to Mrs. Lyman, he directed his eyes at the table, his head bent, his shoulders rounded. His voice changed as well as his posture, losing some of its sharp edge, though not all. Something hard lurked under his deferential tone, like a tiny bone lodged in his throat.

  Mrs. Lyman gave Ethan a weary glance, as if he were yet another platter that needed a space on the table. “The table’s crowded enough with all the help we have to feed,” she said. “He can stand.”

  Ethan gulped. Stand? He hadn’t stood for meals since he was five. From the corner of his eye, he thought he noticed Daniel watching him, but when he turned to look, Daniel had dropped his glance.

  Daniel dragged a foot along a thin red stripe in the parlor’s carpet. Without looking up, he asked, “Only for today? Or for always?”

  “Until I say he can sit,” Mrs. Lyman said. She wrinkled her nose. Ethan realized that in spite of his double scrubbing and Lizzie’s brushing, there was no erasing the ground-in smear on the seat of his trousers or the smell of souring milk on his shirt—a fine impression for his first day in her house.

  The parlor seemed to explode with noise and people as Silas and the two farmhands came in, talking and laughing, at one door. Lizzie entered from another, carrying Aaron and leading Ruth by the hand.

  Ruth squealed and dashed toward Silas. The work-weariness faded from the young man’s eyes as he picked her up and balanced her on his hip.

  “Silas.” Mrs. Lyman frowned at him as if he were a great stupid dog who might bite his little sister.

  The muscles under Silas’s eyes tightened. Like Daniel, he seemed unable to look directly at Mrs. Lyman. “Sorry, ma’am.” He let his sister slither out of his arms and onto the floor.

  Mrs. Lyman tugged Ruth’s dress straight where it had ridden up her legs. “You must be ladylike, Ruth. You are not a monkey.” Her voice softened when she addressed her daughter. She touched the tip of Ruth’s nose with her finger, making the girl giggle. A hint of a smile crossed Mrs. Lyman’s mouth. She kissed Ruth’s forehead as she fixed the girl’s hair ribbon.

  “Yes, Mama.” Ruth’s voice was dutiful, but her eyes strayed to Silas’s, and they shared a smothered smile.

  The household milled around the table for a few moments, then stilled as footsteps in the hallway announced Mr. Lyman’s entrance. It reminded Ethan of how the children in school would fall silent when the teacher came in. Daniel and Silas stood at attention with their eyes averted, as though waiting for the master’s examination.

  Mr. Lyman stood in the doorway for a moment, surveying the assembled household. Ethan noticed that Mr. Lyman and Silas had the same serious, deep-set blue eyes: Silas’s the soaring blue of a crisp autumn sky; Mr. Lyman’s, the grayish blue of winter. Father and son shared the same strong nose, dimpled chin, and high forehead. While Silas’s profile was lean and sharp, the flesh under Mr. Lyman’s chin and at his neck had thickened with age. Stern lines ran from Mr. Lyman’s nose to the corners of his mouth, and a severe crease separated his eyebrows.

  When Mr. Lyman’s glance settled on Ethan, all the sternness washed out of his face. He gave Ethan the smile he always gave Ma and Pa when they came into his store, as though he were greeting an old and cherished friend. “Ah, young Mr. Root.” He strode over and patted Ethan’s head. “And how are your parents?”

  “Well, sir,” Ethan said softly.

  “And your sisters? And the baby?”

  “All well, sir.” Ethan spoke carefully, feeling his tongue threatening to thicken and tangle up inside his mouth.

  “It’s a fine thing having a baby brother, isn’t it?” Mr. Lyman glanced fondly from Silas to the baby in Lizzie’s arms, then back to Ethan.

  As far as Ethan could tell, all a baby brother meant was more noise, confusion, and smells in the house, and Ma always being too busy, too tired, too something or other else for anything but Benjamin. But it would be rude to say that to Mr. Lyman, wouldn’t it? “I—well, I don’t know. I mean, he doesn’t do anything yet.”

  Mr. Lyman, Mr. Pease, and Mr. Wheeler burst into laughter. “Oh, that’s good, boy, very good,” Mr. Lyman said. “‘He doesn’t do anything yet.’ I must remember
that. Well, you’ll see. You’ll see.” He surveyed Ethan up and down. “You’ve started your chores, then, hmmm?”

  “Yessir.” Ethan ducked his head, hoping Mr. Lyman wouldn’t comment on his state of cleanliness.

  “Well, then,” Mr. Lyman continued. “You’re to help Silas with the farm chores most of the time. A few days a week, I’ll need you at the store, sweeping, tidying up, delivering parcels, helping unload the wagons when they bring in the goods. And now and then Mrs. Lyman and the girls will need you in the kitchen garden.” He nodded toward his wife, his face relaxing into a fond smile. “Think you can manage that, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Lyman ruffled Ethan’s hair again. “Good boy. How did he do with the milking?” he asked Silas.

  Silas looked to Daniel. Daniel’s head tilted almost imperceptibly down, then up, just once. “Paddy says he’ll do,” Silas said.

  Mr. Lyman frowned. “Paddy?”

  “I’ve put Paddy in charge of him. He can show Ethan his chores as well as anybody. No sense taking my time on what Paddy can do.”

  “Just see you don’t learn too much from Paddy.” Mr. Lyman wagged a finger under Ethan’s nose. “You know what they say about the Irish.” He let out a hearty laugh and clapped Daniel on the shoulder.

  A muscle quivered in Daniel’s cheek. He didn’t laugh. Neither did Silas, Ethan noticed, and Lizzie only pressed her lips together. But everyone else laughed.

  “Indeed,” Mr. Pease said. “Like the thieving Irishman who went to heaven.”

  “To heaven?” Mr. Wheeler said, taking his seat. “Don’t you mean the other place?”

  “Well, you’d think so, for he’d stolen his neighbor’s pig and eaten it.” Mr. Pease shook out his napkin and tucked it into his collar. So did Mr. Wheeler and Daniel. The Lymans, Ethan noticed, laid their napkins tidily in their laps.