expect to see you.”
“I’ve had my troubles,” Kelsey said. His hands began to tremble. He burst out, “Tommy, I’ve left Scotland for good. I’ll never go back! I’ve come for a job.”
“What about your father’s shop?”
For a moment Kelsey couldn’t speak. He struggled to control the bitterness and anger that filled him.
“He always wanted you to carry it on,” Tommy said. “He planned things that way from the time you were old enough to walk down the village street with him.”
Kelsey spoke then, his voice shaking. “The shop’s in strange hands. The manager for the Duncan estate—he wouldn’t let me take it over when my mother decided to give it up.”
Kelsey bowed his head, trying to get control of himself. Tommy said nothing for a moment, then walked toward the door. “Gotta go up to the bunkhouse. Back right away.”
There was silence in the kitchen, and while Kelsey waited for Tommy’s return his thoughts went back to the bitter scene with the laird’s manager. He lived again the bright cool day when he had walked joyously down the village street, saying to Prim Munro, “Today’s the start of big things! I’m off to see the factor, Captain Morrison, and ask for the shop in my name.”
The factor was having a walk up the shore, and they met just outside the clipped hedge that surrounded the laird’s big house. Kelsey remembered to hold the excitement within him long enough to ask after the laird’s health.
“He’s off to the South of France,” Captain Morrison said, pulling at his long nose, which was turning blue in the cold air, “and I’d not mind being there myself. It’s the devil’s own weather we have here in February.”
“But good for business,” Kelsey said, “for herring are running thick in the sea and all the fishing folk spend their money in my father’s shop.”
“The shop, eh?” The captain’s face became wary.
“It’s what I’ve come to talk about. You know how my mother and I have run it since my father died—how I got her to cut down on the spending and finally paid off all her debts. Bless her, she was never a businesswoman. But the books are clear at last, and Taraleean is ready to give it up. I’d like to take over.” Kelsey’s hands gripped hard behind him, and he could feel the thump-thumping of his heart.
There was a long silence while the gulls screamed away from the steep cliffs along the shore, while the whole sea danced with sunlight. Then the factor’s voice came out steadily and impersonally. “You can’t have it, Kelsey.”
“Can’t have it!” The rough red head came up. The wide gray eyes were unbelieving. “Can’t have it, you say?”
“You’re not twenty-one.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
The factor shrugged. “It’s a rule the laird has: no one under twenty-one can run the shop.”
“But I’ve tried to prove—” A pain was in Kelsey’s heart. A mist blinded him. “I’ve paid my mother’s debts. My God, man, I’ve had no young life. I’ve given up everything for the shop!”
“No matter of proof,” the captain said, clearing his throat. “Just policy—the laird’s policy.”
“But it’s my father’s business. It was his for years, and you can’t—”
“Oh, we’ve a man in mind. And he’ll keep you on. I’ll speak to him about it.”
“I’ll work for no man in the shop that was my father’s! Listen, my mother—let her keep it. I’ll go on helping her. I’ll—”
“Your mother,” the factor said quietly, “should give up the business. I’ve been noticing things; the way she’s run the shop hasn’t suited us. There’s no need to stand here talking, Kelsey.”
“Goddamn you! Goddamn all of you!”
“Hold that tongue of yours, Kelsey Cameron. You’ve given us trouble enough—putting up that ugly shack on the shore right under the laird’s nose, and—”
“You—” Kelsey’s voice broke. He turned and walked quickly away, the whole bright day blurring before him. So this was the answer to years of work to pay Taraleean’s debts, to months of planning the future with Prim. For a moment the boy in him rose above the man, and tears stung his eyes. He stopped then and stood, breathing deeply, staring toward the sea until it came clear and clean again, stretching away to the far horizon. Then he spoke passionately to the empty water. “I’ll leave Scotland! I’ll go where a man can become more than a thing to be stepped on by the lairds and their factors! I’ll go to America, the place my cousin Tommy wrote about. Yes, America!”
And here I am, Kelsey thought, raising his head in the smelly kitchen. And things have to work out; they’ve just got to.
He waited nervously until his cousin came in the door again. Tommy had a whiskey bottle in his hand.
“Tommy,” Kelsey said, “do you know what that bloody factor did? Just before I sailed for this country he had the gall to come to my mother’s house and offer me a job as gamekeeper on the laird’s estate. Gamekeeper—a servant to the laird! That’s when I told him to go to hell and take the laird with him.”
“Well, kiddo,” Tommy said, “you made a fine ass of yourself—let your fool Cameron pride run away with you, the way it always has. Jobs don’t grow on bushes, y’know. And beggars can’t be choosers.”
Kelsey stared at him, confused and shocked. He’d crossed an ocean; he’d borrowed money to get here; he’d been certain Tommy would understand, would say to him, “You did the right thing. I’ll see you get a new start here, Kelsey.” Now, thinking of the money he had to pay back, Kelsey felt sudden fear. He wet his cracked lips and said, “You can surely use me—I mean, I’m a good worker, and I thought—” He stopped, for there was a strange expression on his cousin’s face.
“Sure, sure,” Hilder interrupted. “We use him, eh, Tommy? He’s had bad trouble and he’s come a long way to see you.”
Tommy said nothing, set the whiskey bottle on the table, and went to the pantry for glasses. Kelsey’s confusion mounted.
“Your letters,” he began, “about all the chances for a young man—”
Hilder knelt before Kelsey, a flat tin of salve in his hand. “I fix them feet. Bandage them tonight. Rubbed raw. Jesus Christ, son, you sure walked hard!”
“Walked?” Tommy looked intently at him.
Kelsey’s face flushed. “Oh, it wasn’t so far—just from where I got off the stage. I—I was out of money. You see, I borrowed what I thought I’d need from Big Mina Munro, Prim’s mother. She was the only person in the village had the money to give me.”
“I got an old pair of slippers you can wear tonight. Rest your feet. You want a drink of whiskey?”
“My stomach’s too empty, Tommy.”
“Hell,
