yellow boots with duck-shaped toes; Ben’s were green with frogs. Faith felt like a greeting card.
“Now, let’s look for signs of spring,” she told the children.
“Signs of spring, check,” Ben said. He’d recently adopted this way of speaking from whom Faith knew not.
“Check,” said Amy, bringing the current word count to sixteen. Faith felt they’d made a good start.
Despite the cold wind that swept across them at intervals, the sun shone steadily and they did find some bright green growing things under last year’s dried grasses. Just before they were into the bog proper, Ben discovered a patch of snowdrops. “I want to pick them for you, Mom,” he cried.
“Thank you, sweetie,” his mother replied. Sons were so nice. “But we don’t pick wildflowers. We leave them to grow where they belong, and also so other people can enjoy them.”
Ben seemed satisfied, and they continued on in search of pussy willows. The approach to the bog passed through a densely wooded patch. Thick vines hung from the still-leafless deciduous trees. Small pines were struggling to compete. Amy pulled back, and Faith was surprised to see apprehension on her daughter’s face.
“Noooo?” Amy asked hopefully.
Faith picked her up. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Mommy will hold you. There are so many trees, the sun has a hard time peeking through. It will be a cool place to be in the summer.” If Joey’s chain saws haven’t leveled it, Faith thought dismally.
“I’m not scared of a bunch of trees,” Ben boasted.
“Amy is such a baby.”
“She
Ben gave her a patient look. “That’s what I said.” Faith decided to let it go. She was starting to train early for adolescence. Choosing one’s battlegrounds was an acquired skill.
“ ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ ” she quoted from Frost, even though there was no snow, nor did she have a horse. She did, however, have many promises to keep. Amy was getting heavy; Faith took a deep breath—or it may have been a sigh—and hitched her up higher.
“What’s that noise?” Ben grabbed the corner of Faith’s jacket.
“I don’t hear anything.” Her respiration hadn’t been that loud. “Probably an animal—a squirrel, or maybe even a deer.”
Then she heard it, too. Definitely some creature was rustling in the leaves—a good-sized creature.
“Don’t move, children,” she whispered. “Maybe we can see it.”
Like startled deer themselves, the Fairchilds froze in position, and such was the family grouping that presented itself to the two human creatures who came crashing through the brush. Human creatures in quasi- military dress with black ski masks pulled over their faces. For an instant, the whole forest stood still; then Amy opened her mouth and wailed. Quickly, the couple removed their headgear.
It was the Batcheldors.
Hugging her daughter tightly and repeating that everything was all right, while Ben twisted her jacket so tightly it began to resemble a tourniquet, Faith said shakily, “Goodness, Margaret and Nelson. Out for a walk?”
What she wanted to ask was what on earth were they doing out here dressed like
“Oh, yes,” Margaret replied cheerily in the birdlike tones she seemed to have copied from the confusing fall warblers. “Such a lovely day, and we were up with the sun.” She waved her binoculars at Ben. “He’s certainly old enough to start his life list. I was three when Mother started me on mine.”
Faith knew from Pix that said list referred to birds spotted and not some monstrous “To Do” resolutions or other New England folkway. She also knew if Ben was going to start said list, it was going to have to be with another mother or be limited to birds that could be spotted after nine o’clock.
“Nippy today.” Nelson smiled at the children and waved the woolen helmet, so recently the object of fear. It worked again. Amy started to wimper. Having removed their hats, the couple still looked bizarre—hair standing on end from the static electricity and deep red circles around the eyes and mouth where the elastic had been too tight. Faith could feel Amy’s body get rigid in preparation for another ninety-decibel eruption.
Faith quickly took refuge in the mother’s standby,
“I think the children are getting tired. We’ve been out for quite a while.” Before Ben, who had been blessed —or cursed—with total honesty, could point out, as he was wont to do, that they had just started, Faith said good- bye.
Margaret had found a nest and was focusing her binoculars. She chirped something unintelligible, presumably at the Fairchilds. Nelson waved good-bye with another of his smiles, which seemed destined to have the opposite effect on her children, and Faith turned the troops about-face. She hoped Ben’s clear, high-pitched queries a few yards later did not float back to the two bird-watchers, “But we just came. Why are we going back? I’m not tired. Why did you say we were tired? Amy doesn’t look tired.
You’re not tired, are you, Amy? Why did you say we’d been out here quite a while? It doesn’t feel like quite a while to me.”
Faith stopped and put Amy on her own two feet.
“Believe me, it has been quite a while and
“Then you should have—”
Faith gave her son a look he knew, and he fell to studying the ground, kicking at small hummocks, muttering, “I’m not the tired one.”
Faith hoped Tom had finished his sermon.
He had, and they decided to go to the Audubon Society’s Drumlin Farm in nearby Lincoln after Amy’s nap.
Ben brightened up at the prospect of pigs and Faith was able to settle him in his bed with a book after lunch. She went back downstairs and found Tom putting the food away.
“I still can’t figure out what Margaret and Nelson were up to,” she said. The encounter with the Batcheldors had been the prime topic of lunch conversation, introduced by Ben as soon as he saw his father emerge from the study. Faith had endeavored to downplay the whole event, while punctuating the salient details with various dramatic facial expressions whenever the kids became distracted by the tri-colored fusili with Gorgonzola sauce she’d made, Ben’s totally unaccountable favorite.
“Are you sure they were ski masks, not woolen hats pulled down low?” Tom asked.
“Of course I’m sure. I thought we had stumbled into the middle of some crazed neo-Nazi maneuvers.
When they got close, I could see they weren’t wearing fatigues, but they were all in green. Now knowing how nuts Margaret is, I wouldn’t put it past her to dress up like a particular bird she was hoping to add to her list, the olive-colored, black-capped bog sucker or some such thing. But given the mood of the meeting last night, I don’t think they were birding today.”
“But what?” Tom looked extremely troubled. Nelson Batcheldor was a member of the Vestry.
“Maybe they’re planning some way to blow up the bog if Joey goes ahead with his plans.”
“How would that help them?”
“I don’t know, Tom. This is all supposition, and as far as I could tell, the only thing resembling a weapon was Margaret’s heavy set of binoculars. Unless Nelson’s camera is one of those James Bond types.”
“You were in the woods, so they were coming from the bog itself. Maybe they’re stockpiling things. Oh, this is too crazy. We know they’re a little eccentric.” Tom looked at Faith and amended his words, “Well, very eccentric, and they probably dress like that for bird-watching all the time. We’ve just never seen them before. And it was cold early this morning. I would have worn a ski mask, too, if I’d been out.”
“You don’t have a mask like that. Only robbers do.
In fact, I wonder where you’d even get one.” Faith was getting sidetracked into a realm of speculation she’d explored before. You’re about to engage in criminal activity. Where do you shop? Walk into house-wares at Jordan Marsh and ask for a good, long, sharp kitchen knife? And these masks.
Faith answered it, and whatever she had planned to say about the Batcheldors’ proclivities went clear out of her mind.
It was Pix and she was definitely agitated.
