Home > Of Salt and Shore(7)

Of Salt and Shore(7)
Author: Annet Schaap

   “I’m here.” The door opens, and Lampie steps into the room.

   Her father takes a threatening step toward her. “Get back in your room, child. Go on! Stay out of—”

   “No, no, the child is staying here.” The sheriff lays his hand on Augustus’s shoulder. Not in a friendly way, but more like a threat.

   “Tell us what happened last night, little girl.”

   Lampie takes a deep breath. She has done her very best to remember what to say. Now here goes.

   “My father,” she says, “worked all night to repair the lens, because it was broken and, um, then he didn’t get it fixed until this morning, and by then it was, um…”

   “Too late, eh?” says the sheriff helpfully. “Goodness me, what a story. And then you went to buy matches.”

   “No…”

   “That’s what Mrs. Rosewood says.”

   “Oh,” says Lampie. “Oh yes, that’s right, then. Or no, it was earlier, it was just before…”

   “Why was that? Had your father forgotten? So he sent you? In that storm? You should be ashamed of yourself, Waterman.”

   “No,” says Lampie quickly. “No, it was me who forgot. It was my fault, it was all my fault.” Her cheeks are bright red but her eyes are determined. She is going to help her father. He does not have to do this all alone.

   “Your fault?” says the sheriff. “Are you the lighthouse keeper?”

   Lampie shakes her head.

   “And where was the lighthouse keeper?”

   “He can’t walk too well with his leg, not all that way,” says Lampie. “And he was…he had…He was tired.”

   “Shut your mouth, child!”

   Lampie sees her father’s fist opening and closing—which is never a good sign.

   “Let your daughter finish, Waterman. Tell me the truth, little girl. Tired? Or drunk?”

   Lampie gazes at him nervously. Lying to a sheriff is not allowed.

   “Well? Answer me. Drunk? Too drunk to work?”

   Lampie looks at her father and then at the sheriff and back again. “Um…” She nods her head and then tries to shake it at the same time. It doesn’t work. “Ye-no…” she says. “Or at least…” She can’t remember what to say and what not to say. “But that doesn’t matter anyway, because I always help him. I help him every day. It’s just that yesterday I forgot the matches, so it was my fault that…”

   Augustus can see a red mist in front of his eyes. From far away and long ago, he can hear Emilia warning him: Don’t do it, my love. You’ll only make things…But he doesn’t know if things could actually be any worse. His own daughter is handing him over to the sheriff. That jumped-up sheriff and his deputies are walking around his house as if it belongs to them. That woman in the corner is looking at him as if he’s the most disgusting thing in all creation. He tightens his hold on his stick.

   “You can all GO! TO! HELL!” A huge voice comes out of his mouth, and he whacks the table with his stick, so hard that the cups jump up and one of the deputy sheriffs shrieks. The blonder one has Emilia’s mirror in his hands again, and Augustus knocks it away from him. The mirror shatters, the pieces flying everywhere. And now he wants to whack the sheriff’s head too, and that stupid face with the big cow eyes, but you don’t hit a sheriff, that would be really stupid. What does he care though? Everything is already…

   “Stop it!” Lampie cries, in her mother’s voice. “Stop it, Father!”

   And instead of the sheriff, he hits her.

   Whacks the stick into her cheek, which flashes white and then glows red, and a trickle of blood comes from her ear, but his anger still isn’t over and he raises the stick for another blow, but…

   “Scandalous!” The voice of the teacher whose name Lampie can’t remember echoes around the room. “Scandalous. How dare you?” In two steps, she is beside Augustus, pulling the stick from his hand. “Your own child. You brute!”

   She turns to the sheriff and his men. “And look at you, just standing there. He could beat his own daughter to death and you’d stand by and watch.”

   “Oh, Miss Amalia, we really would never…” begins the sheriff. “We would have, we were just about to…”

   “Yes, when it’s too late, yes. Always just too late, eh?” She turns her eyes to the ceiling as if someone up there agrees with her. “I have told you about this before, sheriff. And now you have seen it for yourself. But I simply refuse to stand by and watch any longer. Not me. Not for another minute.”

 

 

pillowcase

 

 

Lampie puts her hand to her cheek. This is going to hurt really badly later, she can already feel it. But right now everything inside her is still glowing with shock. She did—and said—completely the wrong thing. She tries to catch her father’s eye. She wants to say, “I was only trying to help,” and she wants him to look at her and to see her again, which is what always happens after one of his outbursts. Sometimes it takes half an hour, and sometimes a few days. But he is always sorry. He doesn’t say so out loud; he can’t do that. But he says it with his eyes.

   Before he can look at her though, Lampie feels a cold hand on the back of her neck, pushing her forward, into her bedroom. Miss Amalia. That is what she is called—Lampie has remembered now.

   Miss Amalia follows close behind her; she has to duck as she passes through the doorway. The feathers on her bonnet brush the ceiling.

   “A few dresses,” she says. “Underwear, nightgown. Socks.”

   Lampie just looks at her. She has no idea what the woman means.

   “And something for Sundays, of course.” Miss Amalia turns to look at Lampie’s shelf of clothes. It is just a pitiful little pile. Impatiently, she snaps her fingers. “Give me your suitcase. I’ll pack it for you.”

   “I don’t have a suitcase,” whispers Lampie. She doesn’t understand. A suitcase? Does she have to go back to school now?

   “Or a basket? A bag?” Lampie shakes her head. With quick hands, Miss Amalia searches through the items on the shelf. She sighs with irritation as she tosses it all onto Lampie’s bed. Her little dresses, her badly knitted socks. An old flannel nightgown.

   “This one too?”

   “Do I have to go away?” asks Lampie. “Do I have to sleep somewhere else?”

   “Yes, child.” Impatiently, Miss Amalia stuffs the clothes into a pillowcase. Which is also old and worn.

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