Sunkissed Innsmouth
Part Fifteen
The old boots were back where Felecia had left them, near the remaining embers of the hearth fire, newly cleaned and even oiled to shine. There was little question in Felecia’s mind who had done that, then she thought on the thicker blanket as she folded it up and placed it on the ottoman before managing another cup of hot chicory.
Why? The sullen youth had said no more than a handful of words to her in the last few months, all of them carefully indifferent if not outright disdainful, and then this. She didn’t dare seek him out in hopes of thanking him, polite discourse wasn’t wanted in the groundskeeper’s house after all.
Instead, Felecia took it upon herself to enter the kitchen while the groundskeeper was busy putting gear together for the day and the youth was nowhere to be seen. The kitchen, such as it was, held little room for mystery or hiding places for pots or utensils. In fact, the place had precious little of use to cook anything beyond already prepared meats. A few hard biscuits, a jar of marmalade that had long ago begun to crystalize, an ancient jar of what Felecia assumed was cinnamon.
A favored punishment of Nana’s just after Felecia was too quick for the spoon was time spent in the kitchens. Felecia never saw it as a punishment though, she wanted to know how to make food for herself, to cook what she ate. Once Nana realized that, kitchen duty was removed from the punishment list but Felecia still spent the stray afternoon sneaking around the kitchen to learn and watch Elle and Rachel at work.
Rachel.
Thinking back on those afternoons had Felecia remembering the older girl, the heartache fascination she had with her. The last time she saw Rachel, the older girl was pulling a curtain shut downstairs in Rotary house so little Kat couldn’t see Felecia as she worked on a stretch of fence on the estate side of the barn.
There was no second look, no long glace, no secret desire that Felecia had hoped for or wrote about in all those embarrassing letters that she wrote to no one in particular.
Felecia’s thumb was covered in little crystals of old marmalade before she realized she was lost in early morning day dreaming. Hope, she had hoped for father to come back after the news of his loss at sea. She had hoped that Nana would find her worthy enough to accept her, or at least leave her alone for once, and she had hoped for Rachel to notice her in kind. Hope was useless in Rotary house and it seemed equally useless since.
When Phillip came out of his room Felecia handed him a cup of warm chicory and a cut biscuit slathered in crystalized marmalade with a chunk of smoked venison sprinkled in what turned out to be allspice. The concoction wouldn’t win any local county awards but Phillip sipped the drink and took a bite and smiled at Felecia before turning his attention to the front door. “Come get a bite of proper of a breakfast you lazy good for nothing!”
The sullen boy appeared, already covered in mud from the knees down.
All of Felecia’s good intentions caught fire in that one moment. A thank you to the sullen youth was turned into another example of his failure as the youth scraped his feet on the matt outside before walking in, head down to sip and taste what Felecia had barely managed to make edible.
“See now, that’s how it’s done. Boy.”
Phillip was still chewing on the last of his meal as he slapped the youth on the back so hard the blow resounded throughout the house.
Felecia didn’t feel like finishing her own meal or drink as the youth plodded into the kitchen and dutifully bit down and drank. Phillip kept at it as he finished, “Amazing what a natural touch at such things can do huh? It’s like she was born being able to do both, hunt and cook, and here you are, capable of neither.”
The sullen youth ate and drank out of duty and showed no weakness as Phillip chided and ridiculed him. Felecia’s older brothers were still alive and playing together when she first heard the term, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Nana used it as she mentioned Felecia’s eldest brother while he attended to a litter of malformed kittens. He found them and their mother under the back porch of Rotary house and he was busy turning their little blind, one eyed heads sideways sickeningly as the mother cat attacked him.
The sullen youth finished his meal and grimaced and scowled at Felecia for all her hard work. A hard pair of brown almond eyes met Felecia’s dead on for the first time and all Felecia saw in those eyes was fear and dread. The sullen youth was quick to dismiss her but just as quick to cover her with a warm blanket and fix the old boots back to new, whether for her benefit or not.
They were all moved a long and half way through the day before Phillip moved ahead enough to be thoroughly out of earshot. Felecia’s little camp was the first job of the day and it came to nothing, most of the place was still fairly dry over all. She could have easily slept there the night before without the warm chicory tea and poorly seasoned, sweetened meat for breakfast. The only party that lost out in the discovery was the sullen youth as he hunk back and worked at the small post fence leading away from the groundskeeper’s house to the lane beyond.
They were all half way through the day and then some before Phillip was thoroughly out of earshot. Felecia and the sullen youth were together by the near side of the barn securing fence posts when she chose to speak. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I wanted to thank you, for the blanket and the clean boots.”
The youth grunted and nodded the same way his father did, acknowledging the work while simultaneously refusing to pay homage to the memory of the work involved. “It was everything, but don’t worry about it. You’re lucky to be alive, but don’t you worry about the why.”