Peter Loon Read Free

gone.
    The next night, long before sunrise, Peter woke to find his mother standing by his cot, looking down at him. There was a lantern in her hand, the light of which must have wakened him; it lit her face from below so that she seemed almost sinister. Peter wondered if she knew he was awake and tried to pretend otherwise, but she spoke in a near whisper.
    â€œPeter,” she said, and the use of his name sounded strange from his mother. “Peter.”
    â€œYes, Ma.”
    â€œThere is something you need to do,” she said. Then she said, “There is something I need you to do.”
    This seemed stranger still, his mother needing anything from him. “Yes, Ma,” he said.
    â€œI need you to find your uncle.”
    Peter thought about this. As far as he had ever known, his mother had been an only child, and his father’s brothers were all dead. “Uncle?”
    â€œI need you to find your uncle,” she said again. She was fully dressed and there was the scent of some autumn flower about her. She had just come in from one of her walks by moonlight. Peter could see a sliver of milky light lying on the floor beyond her.
    Peter thought it polite to sit up, but he did not want to close space with her. His father was dead; his father’s body lay on the table in the next room. His mother stood over him in the middle of the night demanding that he find an uncle of whom he had no knowledge. “My uncle?” he said finally.
    â€œYour Uncle Obed,” she said. “I need you to find your Uncle Obed.”
    â€œWho is Uncle Obed?” he asked.
    She did not answer but lifted an arm to show him that she held his clothes. “You can eat before you leave,” she said.
    He sat up then, blinked, and looked more closely at her. “But they’ll be burying Pa.”
    â€œYour Pa would want you to find your uncle.”
    â€œI expected I’d be needed here,” said Peter in his confusion. “I expected I’d need to dig a place for Pa.”
    â€œThe neighbors will take care,” she said.
    Peter’s youngest brother stirred in the bed next to him. His mother shook the clothes at Peter just once and he complied by putting them on. He found his tall moccasins by the bed and tied them on. They were narrow for his feet and he had slitted the outsides of them. He followed his mother out to the main room where his father’s remains lay on the table covered by a sheet, then to the back of the house where the one fireplace barely glowed.
    â€œYou better eat first, then bring this with you,” she said, pointing first to a plate of victuals on the plank table, then a cloth sack.
    Peter peered into the sack, and from the light of the lantern he could descry some hard biscuits and apples. “Am I leaving now?” he asked.
    â€œYou’d better get a push on before first light,” was all she said. She sat opposite him.
    The truth was, he hadn’t eaten much for dinner, and guilty as it made him feel with his poor father in the room behind him, his stomach felt empty. He’d eaten through about half the plate when another question occurred to him. “Where is he?” His mother’s face was hidden behind the glare of the lantern on the table, and when she didn’t speak, he leaned to one side and said, “Where is this Uncle Obed?”
    â€œI’ll show you,” she said. “Eat your breakfast.”
    Peter didn’t know if it was breakfast or dinner, yesterday or tomorrow, but he finished what had been put in front of him with rather more relish than he would have guessed. When he was done, his mother brought him his father’s coat and hat, then led him outside. Peter insisted on stopping at the table in the parlor and paying last respects to the man who had sired him and given him every advantage in his power.
    Peter Loon felt oddly aware, pinned like tailor’s work to the hour. A half-remembered moment