Dear Hearts

by Barbara Miller Biles

  “Send my girls in, will you Alec?” asks Mrs. Stadel.

  “Will do.”

  The two little girls are already heading back. They stop to gaze at Ellie, who pretends to concentrate on preparations for the hunt.

  “Okay girls, on your way,” says Mr. Stadel. The girls wave at Ellie as they run up to the house.

  Uncle Alec begins to get things organized. “Now we need flushers and we need baggers. Gary, take the gunny sacks and the lantern. Todd, you give out the flashlights.”

  “Where are you going to be?” asks Todd.

  “I’ll be here at headquarters. Anybody needs me I’ll be right here.”

  “But I thought you were coming.” Todd frowns at his father.

  “Someone has to hold the fort.” Uncle Alec stands firm. He pats his shirt, looking for a match, and reveals the top of a mickey peeping out from his inside jacket pocket. He jostles Ellie’s father with his elbow. “Besides we’ve had our turn many a time.”

  Todd looks away, but Gary grins and puts a gunnysack over Ricky Johnson’s head. They laugh and scuffle and look to see if Ellie is watching. The Stadel boys nudge each other.

  Uncle Alec continues. “Okay, we’ve got lots of first timers here tonight so I’m gonna give you some instructions before you head out. Gary will establish a central location for the baggers in a clearing we’ve got down there in the trees. He’ll have the big lantern, so use that as your guide. You flushers stay in the trees, circling the lantern. You creep in to about a hundred yards from the centre, turn your lights off, and wait a while to let the critters settle down. Then Gary will give the signal by flicking his lantern on and off and you start hollering and clapping as you move toward the baggers. This’ll send the snipe right toward the sacks. Just make sure you stop all the commotion before you reach the clearing so they slow down a bit. All right? So Gary will give out sacks to whoever wants to be a bagger. You’ve got to be on your toes to catch a snipe and keep it in your sack because they can be fast and sneaky.”

  Gary smiles at Ellie and offers her a sack, but she shrinks back. She imagines a bird flapping and squawking inside, poking its straw-like bill at her through the loosely woven burlap, trying anything to escape, its colourful tail feathers flying helter skelter, waiting for their opportunity to fly out.

  Uncle Alec puts his hand on her shoulder. “Ellie, you best go with Todd. I think maybe you should be a flusher.”

  She smells whisky on Uncle Alec’s breath and looks to her father for some reaction, but he has no particular expression on his face. He and Mr. Stadel stand aloof, ready to escort the neophyte flushers to their hiding spots.

  “Come on Ellie. You don’t need to take a flashlight. You’ll be with me,” says Todd.

  “Now one more thing,” says Uncle Alec. “Listen carefully for the flutter of wings. You know how they sound?”

  Everyone either shakes their head or looks at the ground.

  Gary cups his right hand to his mouth and makes a breathy call. “Woobidah, woobidah, woobidah. Woobidah, woobidah, woobidah.” At the same time he bends his left arm and affects a flapping wing.

  Laughter rises from the hunters as they stand outside the farmhouse window. It floats up through the Manitoba maples where the bats are swooping and flitting, over the bejewelled umbrella of the crabapple tree, and down to the pasture where the sheep begin to huddle nervously but the cattle seemed unaffected, conveniently deaf like Aunt Helen. Even Ellie’s father and Todd join in the antics. Some of the boys mimic Gary: “Woobidah, woobidah, wooh.”

  Ellie looks high above Jarvis Hills and laughs right at the moon. Sure enough, the coyotes answer back. “Yipidah, yipidah, yip yip yip, yipidah.”

  She shivers. “I forgot my jacket. I’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you,” says Todd. “Come back here, Toby. Sit. You’re going with us.”

  Karen Stadel comes out to say goodbye, and Uncle Alec offers her a Craven A. The two stand close together as he cups the match and she drags fire into the tip of the cigarette. “Take care, you two,” she says then exhales. Ellie and Todd are headed for the pasture. “We’re fine,” Todd mutters, though he doesn’t sound like it.

  The group ahead has already reached the woods. Genial voices, punctuated by laughter, trail back to the two stragglers who are still in open pasture. As the hunters disperse amongst the trees, their voices sound conspiratorial. Twigs snap, rotting logs echo, dogwood and saskatoon bushes rustle, and prickly wild rose hips inspire minor complaints.

  Toby continually runs ahead of Todd and Ellie then circles back. The two walk in suspended silence; occasionally their shoulders rub and their hands touch. They keep moving apart, only to find themselves drawn back to a narrow path in a wide-open pasture.

  The air is snappy, the moon overripe, the coyotes tantalizing, and the earth unsteady like a California tremor. The two collide as Toby zips around their feet.

  “Toby, cut that out. Sorry. You all right?” says Todd.

  Ellie giggles. “It’s okay. I don’t mind. Hey Toby?” She tries to pat him on the head, but the dog is already off circling in front of them, certain to make his way back.

  They enter the woods with their flashlight turned on. “We’ll stay on this side since you don’t have boots on,” Todd says, his voice lowered. “It gets pretty wet over there.” They hear Toby scurrying through the bushes, his route no longer predictable. “Look for the lantern. Should be over that way.”

  “I see it.” She touches his arm and motions with her head. “Over there.”

  “Good. We’ll hide in here.” He grabs her hand and guides her into long grasses, near the sweeping branches of an old cottonwood tree and behind a screen of willows. He turns off the flashlight; they are nestled and alone.

  Ellie, suddenly delirious, stares up through treetops to see fragments of moon framing the antics of a great snipe. He flips and dives like an acrobat, spreading his rainbow tail feathers to make a whooshing sound: woobidah, woobidah, woobidah, wooh. A female stays grounded below in a small clearing, bedazzled but muted by all the excitement. Then coyotes harmonize—yip yip yip, yeowl—and Ellie shivers.

  “Are you okay?” Todd puts his arm around her.

  “What colour are their tails?”

  “Snipe? Oh, kind of a chestnut colour with black-and-white bands at the tips.”

  “Oh! And are they big birds?”

  “No. Only about the size of a robin, with a short tail.”

  “Oh.”

  He pulls her close so her head rests on his chest. “Chilly, eh?”

  Ellie has kissed two boys before. She was paired up with Dennis Olson, against her wishes, for Joanie Carmichael’s birthday party; it was the first mixed party, which she couldn’t bear to miss. When the lights went out in Joanie’s rumpus room, Dennis pushed his lips and teeth onto Ellie’s. She gagged and quickly found a light switch, bringing on complaints from all the others. She preferred Jeff Willoughby, who disappeared whenever the lights went off. She kissed him once though, at the skating rink, while they were playing keep-away. Caught him just as he was about to break through the guards to her side; grabbed his jacket and held on tight as he spun her in circles on the ice and teased that he would kiss her if she didn’t let go. She hung on tight.

  Now Todd lifts her chin and kisses her the way James Darren kissed Sandra Dee. A real kiss. Toby barks. Hunters’ feet stomp the earth, crunch dead twigs, and scuttle around bushes while hands clap and voices holler, “Whooee, yipidah, yeow.” Small lights flash through the trees.

  “We’d better go,” says Todd. “Come on.” He pulls her up from the grass and runs with her towards the lantern and the baggers.

  Thorns scratch her hands and saplings whip her face. She is breathless. “Hang on, slow down,” she cries and he complies. “What will they do with them if they catch any? I mean, they’r
e so small.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much.” Todd smiles. “Come on, we’d better hurry.”

  The hunters rally, telling stories of crossed paths, accidents, and failed opportunities, even the occasional sighting of snipe—but no one has booty in the bag. There is laughter and complaining and even talk of flimflam. Gary revels in it all but pauses when he sees Todd and Ellie holding hands, then hollers even louder. “Come on everyone. Let’s head back.” Ellie’s hand goes limp as they all parade back to the house, with Gary in the lead, and Todd finally lets it go.

  “Hey, hey. How many did you bag?” asks Uncle Alec as he stands outside the farmhouse door, like a bouncer at the local bar. “Ah well, come on in. Hot chocolate for everyone!”

  Karen Stadel goes forward to greet her boys. “How was it? Did you catch any?” she asks as she pats them on the back. Then she turns to Ellie and says, with whisky on her breath, “So, was it all you expected?”

  Her two little girls come out, the youngest looking dazed, still half asleep. “I saw Ellie and Todd holding hands. I bet she’s his girlfriend,” says the older sister.

  “Don’t be silly dear,” says Aunt Helen who is now in the doorway. “They’re cousins after all.”

  “Second cousins once removed,” mutters Ellie.

  Toby barks and pirouettes. The black lab and the bloodhound barely open their eyes, no longer on guard at the foot of the steps.

  “Go lay down, Toby. That’s it for tonight,” says Todd, and they all gather inside to have hot drinks.

  Back in Calgary, Ellie brags to her friends, as they sit cross-legged on her bed, that she has gone hunting and she will surely hunt again.

  The girls huddle over a copy of Photoplay in which Sandra Dee reveals that she doesn’t part her hair; she lets the wind comb it to give a tousled look. Ellie intends to let her own hair fly from here on out.

  GENEVA STORIES

  Rockin’ Around the Royal Bank of Canada

  FOUR BABY ROBINS STRETCH their bare necks and open their mouths toward heaven. Their nest rests on an upper window ledge of the Royal Bank of Canada, right on the corner of Neville and Main. Below, Geneva Roberts and Darla Collier arrive for Mary Stewart’s thirteenth birthday party dressed in matching navy skirts and Banlon sweater sets. Mary’s younger sister Janie lets them in the side door, on Neville. Diane Wedder barges right past them, up the stairs to the Stewarts’ apartment above the bank.

  Diane, almost two years older than the others—she failed grade seven—moved to Bradshaw with her mother and younger brother the previous summer. They rented a two-bedroom bungalow on Harley Street opposite a weed-infested vacant lot, an auto body shop, and St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church, a street that Geneva Roberts rarely goes down even though she is free to roam like every kid in town.

  Something about Diane is different; her mother and brother have matching red hair and freckles and compact skinny frames, while Diane is dark-haired and full-bodied. Darla says that Diane’s real last name is Pickle—she overheard her mother talking—and that Mr. Wedder is locked up somewhere. Geneva has the murky feeling that something about Diane is on the shady side, unacceptable, like nail polish. Diane’s nails, in fact, are painted cherry red for the party and her eyes are rimmed with black eyeliner.

  The Stewarts’ dining table is laid out in white linen with Royal Doulton plates, polished silver, and Czechoslovakian glasses filled with lemonade. Mrs. Stewart, the bank manager’s wife, is giving a grown-up dinner party to mark her daughter’s first day as a teenager. The attempt at sophistication subdues the party until Diane knocks over a glass and they all dash over with linen napkins to soak up the spill. Diane, in her black pedal pushers and blouse with the stand-up collar, stands aside and sings “I’m All Shook Up.” The right corner of her top lip quivers and her hips gyrate. Carol Simmons cracks that Diane must have tripped in her blue suede shoes—Geneva and Darla actually check Diane’s feet—then everyone erupts into giggles that resurface for no particular reason for the rest of dinner, until the angel food birthday cake is gone.

  “I’m stuffed!” they all say as they drape themselves over the living room sofa and chairs or sprawl on the carpet, waiting for Mary to open her presents. Diane thrusts her gift into Mary’s hands and sings, “Let me be your teddy bear.”

  “Ooh, I love it,” says Mary as she smooshes the pink bear against her cheek.

  Darla’s day-of-the-week panties are a hit—the new necessity. Geneva’s gift is next: a porcelain figurine, an elegant month-of-May girl with a garland of flowers crowning her golden hair. It is not what she intended to give.

  Geneva and Mary were at Jamesons Drugstore the previous week where Mary obsessed over a triple pack of nail polish—pastel mauve, pastel pink, and snow-fire red—and reminded Geneva of her upcoming birthday.

  When Mrs. Roberts gave Geneva the money to buy a present, Geneva knew very well that nail polish would not be on her mother’s list of acceptable gifts, which is why she bought the pack and hid it in her dresser drawer, avoided her mother’s eyes when asked if she had bought anything, then returned it to the drugstore, choosing instead Miss May from the china section of her father’s store, Roberts Hardware. She planned to tell Mary how sorry she was, that she tried to get the polish, even bought it, but her mother made her return it to the store.

  “She’ll fit perfectly on your keepsake shelf, dear, to mark your thirteenth birthday,” says Mrs. Stewart. The girls, being polite, murmur in agreement. “When you’re finished with presents you can all go to the Roxy. The show starts in half an hour.”

  “Hurry up, Mary! Open the rest so we can go,” says Diane Wedder in her gravelly voice, as though she’s in charge.

  The girls scuttle down the stairs and out the door. Two robins swoop and natter at them with little effect. Diane takes the lead, keeping Mary in tow, as the others skip and jostle their way up Main. Geneva and Darla purposely bring up the rear, countering Diane’s rowdy influence with a studied gait. “She’s so pushy,” they both agree.

  “Pop for everyone, popcorn too,” they are told in the Roxy, and they all push forward, dismissing previous complaints about stomachs ready to burst.

  Bugs Bunny wisecracks on the screen while the girls whisper and giggle, trade seats, and spill popcorn. Suddenly they are drawn to the main attraction like witnesses to divine light. It isn’t the story of a band looking for a big break that pulls them in. Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue aren’t there sneaking a lustful kiss that could lead to something more. It’s the powerful beat, the electric charge, the crazy jitterbugging that makes them sit up, light up, and jump up. It’s Bill Haley & His Comets: “Rock Around The Clock.”

  Diane Wedder claps her hands, bounces up and down, and dances in and out of her seat. Carol Simmons on one side of her, and Patty Schultz on the other, bounce and sway along with Diane. The other girls, including Geneva and Darla, tap their heels and rock their shoulders but stay firmly in their seats. Diane sings along as though she already knows the words.

  She is still singing and shouting as they leave the Roxy. “Let’s par…tee. Yeah! Rock, rock, rock.” She jitterbugs down Main Street like a pied piper; even Geneva and Darla join in. She slows to flip Patty over her back as they near the bank. The two robins, Mom and Pop, are also causing a ruckus on Neville and Main, but the party girls barely hear it above their own squealing and shouting. Then Diane suddenly stops and veers away. “I gotta run home. Mary, get your record player.”

  The girls threaten to take their rowdiness up to the apartment as they jostle into the entrance off Neville. Mr. Stewart rushes down to meet them with a ring of keys. “Remember Mary, customer side only.” With that he unlocks the double doors to the bank and, before they can say be bop a lula, he leads them past the tellers’ cages, with the tall wooden stools and plate glass windows; past his own office with his cushioned chair, oak desk, and Olivetti typewriter; through the counter gate;
and onto the polished battleship linoleum where customers usually stand in line. Mary’s sister Janie brings the record player and Diane arrives with a handful of forty-fives. Bill Haley blasts out all over again.

  Acrobatics rule as the bigger girls swing Geneva and Darla and Patty and Janie, who stand on chairs to get a leg up, flipping over heads and backs. Ordinary jiving takes on new twirls and dives as hands reach for shoulders and feet leap off the floor. Skirts flare up and Saturday panties flash in the overhead lights of the Royal Bank of Canada.

  Diane announces, before she puts on “Great Balls of Fire,” that Jerry Lee Lewis married his first cousin, who was thirteen, the same age as Mary Stewart. “Eew,” the girls reply. Geneva’s stomach does a small turn, confirmation of the fact that they are wading into unseemly territory. Little Richard sings “Tutti Frutti” and Elvis sings “All Shook Up” with Diane Wedder as his mimic. When the Platters calm things down with “Only You,” Diane takes a turn into melancholy. As quickly as the bank had become a rock ’n’ roll palladium, Diane transforms it into a funeral parlour. She turns off the record player and sings “Old Shep.” Tears run down her cheeks and her voice turns nasal as the song progresses, as though someone close to her has died.

  Geneva looks sideways at Darla, who, along with the other girls, has cast herself as comforter to the bereaved—to Shep’s owner who, with trembling hands, shot Shep in the head, and to Diane, who seems to take it personally.

  There is genuine sorrow in the air, greedily inhaled (it seems to Geneva) by Diane Wedder. Exuberance around Mary Stewart’s thirteenth birthday party is fully depleted; communal piety soars with the promise that Old Shep is now in heaven. Diane cries, “I have to go,” as she rattles the main door. “Let me outta here. Someone unlock the door!” Mr. Stewart is called to set them free.

  Out on the sidewalk lies a tiny specimen, beak permanently closed, eye staring sideways, veins bulging through translucent skin and partially squished to the cement. The girls draw back. “Eew,” is all they can say while two robins harangue from above and three mouths still reach out of their nest toward heaven.