Of Incurious Kate - cousin to Willie Foot and daughter of Elizabeth in the time before her mother went proverbially as mad as a headless chicken - it was said that such beauty of mind and soul could not be left unflawed so the good Lord had given her horrifically crossed eyes, but for the bridge of her nose they would have met and been joined as surely as Siamese twins. She was a compliant and passive child, obedient, unnaturally quiet, usually expressionless, and capable of maintaining the same pose for hours on end without the slightest sound or movement. In these almost sleep-like states, she appeared perfectly content although a little other-worldly and whatever thoughts she might have had, she kept to herself. If asked what she was doing, she would appear to give the question considerable thought - sometimes she answered, I'm being, or I'm watching, but if pressed she would give no other details and we were all left to wonder, being or watching what?
She lived, everyone thought, in a private and walled in place that only she could access, isolated and protected from the real world and all its cares, rarely venturing beyond her own front door or outside her own mind, but as the island was to learn, God may have deprived her of some senses, but He had replaced them with others less common. She was as natural a storm senser as anyone had ever known, able to feel approaching bad weather long before it could be felt on the wind or in the air. She was a diviner, easily able to find the exact spot for a well to be drilled, navigating terrain with her eyes closed and coming to a stop at the precise location where an underground spring was waiting to be tapped. When she be could be coaxed into a fishing boat during a dry spell, she could lead the small fleet to waters that teemed with haddock, flounder, mackerel - she stood with her hands at her sides, letting the wind guide her. The boats followed the direction she faced and inevitably came upon the best fishing grounds. And she knew when death was on its way, laying hands on the elderly, the infirm, the injured - not speaking but offering comfort in some way no one else could see, helping to ease the way just by her presence.
She brought them peace and the promise of an afterlife, all without speaking a word and although no one wanted to find her on their doorstep, many were relieved when they did.
It was, the island supposed, inevitable and only right that James and Lydia would take her in - Kate's gifts needed tending and the preacher and his wife were gentle folk with open minds and generous spirits. It was Lydia who suggested sunglasses, suspecting that it might make it easier for Kate to communicate with others if they weren't so distracted by her eyes and hoping that it would allow Kate herself to engage them in return. The idea turned out to be a stroke of genius - with her crossed eyes shielded, there were no more gawking stares, no well intentioned efforts to pretend not to notice. She wasn't mended and there was no overnight miracle but gradually Katie began to spend less time in the faraway places of her mind and more in the actual world. With a little help from the schoolteacher, she learned her letters using crayons and a blank sketch pad - she was drawn to the colors and texture and soon began to create her own drawings, colorful and bright caricatures of passers by and tourists, then charcoal sketches of her surroundings. Her art was abstract, often wildly out of proportion - huge flowers in the most unlikely of colors towering over small oceans, portraits that showed scars their owners didn't know showed,
pictures of sleeping green cats and red robed angels, pink trees with lavender leaves, a demonlike, great whiskered catfish poised to devour a miniature whale. And faces, done in shadowy shades of blue and purple, some with lightly penciled in tears. As Lydia carefully dated each drawing and bound it into a scrapbook, she realized that they ranged from what had to be imagination to fantasy to horror. Do you think this is how she sees the world? she asked James and the preacher, holding the scaly and jagged toothed catfish at arms length as if it might come to life and snap off his fingers, frowned. I hope not, he said finally, I truly hope not.
Kate was in sight of twenty when she she began drawing the owls - no fantasy these, but sharply detailed birds with piercing, rounded, sleepy eyes. She drew barn owls and snowy owls, great horned owls, owls with short ears and long, screech owls and owls with wickedly gleaming black talons and yellow eyes. Lydia took these sketches to the schoolteacher who confirmed that some could not possibly be found in their part of the world. Picture books? he asked her, Magazines? Lydia shook her head, bewildered and unnerved. For reasons she couldn't explain even to herself, she kept the owl drawings separate, rolled up and stored in a linen chest. After several restless nights, she locked the chest and hid the key in a porcelain box atop a closet shelf, all the while chiding herself for her foolishness but unable to ignore or articulate the sense of dread the drawings produced. She said nothing to James, fearing he might try to reassure her that they were only drawings and that her imagination was running away with her. Owls weren't inherently wicked, she knew, but Kate's owls felt wrong, felt threatening, as if they were omens. I feel better knowing they're locked away, she admitted to my grandmother, but really I'd like to burn them even though I don't dare. My ever practical grandmother poured her more iced tea and reminded her that James was a man of God, Who better to ward off an evil owl? she asked and Lydia managed a shaky smile.
Incurious Kate - no one had called her that in years, not since she'd begun exploring the world in her own fashion - simply put aside her crayons and sketch pad one winter day, curled up in a rocking chair facing the fireplace and stared into the flames. At some point, she simply stopped breathing and died. Lydia, elbow deep in suds at the kitchen sink and watching the snow falling on the sleeping vegetable garden, thinking about that night's choir practice and reminding herself that she had to find time to proofread James' sermon before Sunday, thought she saw an owl fly past the window. She flinched sharply and in the same instant it took her to catch her breath, she knew. She dried her hands and walked slowly to the fireplace - there was, she realized, no sense in hurrying - and found Kate in the rocking chair, hands clasped around her dark glasses, eyes closed, a final owl drawing resting in her lap - a sweet and solemn faced baby barn owl with green crossed eyes and pastel feathers against a bright blue and yellow background. She would burn the rest, Lydia thought, but this one owl she would keep.
It's not for us to know or judge how others see the world, I remember James preaching that Sunday, We are all here for a purpose and a time, known only to God. Let us pray.
Restless and restrained in my Sunday clothes, slightly bored and anxious to be done with church, I was looking up when I thought I saw the owl, high in the rafters above the pulpit, hidden in the shadows and motionless. Don't fidget, my grandmother whispered sharply to me, but Lydia looked up, narrowed her eyes slightly, then squeezed my hand, nodded and smiled. I was always to wonder if the owl, just the barest outline of feathers and yellow eyes, had come to see Katie home.
No comments:
Post a Comment