Found Drowned

by Norris, Laurie Glenn;

  “You and your grandma doing the washing today reminded me of when I was a little girl. On wash day, Mother used to wait until it was Beatrice’s and my bedtime to make our beds. First she would put the bottom sheet down and tell us to get in and then she would make the bed over us. I used to love the sheets fluttering down on top of me, so fresh and clean from the line. She would make the entire bed with us in it and tuck us in for the night.”

  Tears rolled down her face, and she added, so softly that Mary could hardly hear, “I always felt so safe when she did that.” Ann closed her eyes and choked back a piece of biscuit. Finally, swallowing hard, she turned to Mary. “I’ll never see her again.”

  Mary stood up and wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders. How could someone stay so sad for so long? When was Mumma going to get up and walk again, go outside, go to church? Mary missed their talks about books and the sight of her mother reading in the rocking chair, and to the two babies. She didn’t know what to do to make things better.

  Rockley

  Nova Scotia

  October 1876

  John was sitting at the kitchen table, reading.

  “The cows are all milked and ready for bed,” Mary said. “Can I take your punt out for a while?”

  “Yeah, just be careful and come back before dark,” he answered, looking at her over the top of his newspaper. “Better put a coat on too, nights are starting to get a bit chilly.”

  “Got one right here,” Mary answered as she skipped out the kitchen door.

  The birds were beginning to bed down for the night and their calls echoed along the river. Mary walked down the lane and across the main road to the fishing shacks. There were a number of people out on the river tonight. She could see some young boys fishing down the way and a couple of girls being rowed around.

  Mary liked being out on the river. Sometimes she would go so far up she could see the Pugwash wharf in the distance. She always wanted to row as far as the harbour itself but didn’t want news of it to get back to Uncle John or he might not let her borrow the punt again.

  Mary dragged the yellow punt down to the water’s edge and into the river until it floated. She had just jumped in and picked up an oar when she heard a shout from the woods. She looked up to see her father jogging down the hill towards her.

  “Hey, Mary, wait a minute.” He waved to her.

  “Sorry, Daddy, too late.” She used the oar to put the punt, and herself, out of his range.

  “Aw, for Christ’s sake, Mary,” Will yelled. A few people within hearing distance turned, their shouts and laughter skipping over the surface of the water. He walked back into the woods.

  He’s drinking, she thought.

  Lately he’d been putting his arm around her waist and drawing her to him. The first time she was taken by surprise; after that, she pushed his arm away and they struggled whenever he made a grab for her. She noticed that he always did it when they were alone, and she avoided that as much as she could. He was her father and it was her duty to love him, she knew, but all she could feel about him was dread. Of what, she didn’t really know. He had stopped coming to her bedroom since she braced the door at night. A couple of times he had called her name, pleading through the keyhole to be let in. But Mabel had caught him at it and warned that she didn’t want to hear any of that foolishness again.

  Mary brought the punt out into the current. She put the oars on the floor and let herself be pulled along. She closed her eyes, felt the wind at her back and her hair coming loose and blowing about her face.

  “Hey…hey, Mary…what you up to? Better look where you’re going.”

  She opened her eyes to see a punt coming up close on her right side, going in the same direction. In the middle of it sat Thelma and Theresa LeFurgey and at either end steering it towards her were Harold Mills and Smith Reid. Mary wished she had somewhere to hide.

  “What are you doing out and about this time of night?” Theresa asked her, reaching out to grab the side of her punt as the boys brought the Mills’s blue punt up alongside.

  “Same as you are, to get some night air.”

  Mary could almost feel Smith’s eyes boring into her. She tried not to look at him.

  “Some night air.” Thelma giggled. “Oh my.”

  “Want to come with us?” Harold asked her. “Smith and I are strong enough to row the three of you young ladies around. We can tie your punt to ours and lead it behind.”

  “No, thank you. I’ll need to turn around soon.”

  “The current is strong tonight. Can you manage to get back on your own?” Smith asked her.

  “Yes, thank you,” Mary answered, determined not to look at him.

  “You know, Smith, old man, I don’t think she can.” Harold grinned at his friend.

  “You know, Harold, old man, I believe you’re right.”

  To the squeals and protests of the LeFurgey sisters, Smith placed his oar down on the floor of Harold’s punt and carefully stepped across into Mary’s.

  “No, stop,” Mary said in a little voice. She felt like crying.

  “I’m going to escort Miss Harney home, Mills.” Smith picked up the oars from the floor of the punt. “Will you kindly do the same with your two lovely passengers?”

  “That I will, sir,” Harold assured him. “In fact, I’m going to start doing that right now.”

  Theresa flounced down into her seat and folded her arms.

  “Now, none of that, Miss LeFurgey, or I’ll have to put you out here.” Harold laughed.

  As the punt headed towards Pugwash, Mary sat with her eyes straight ahead and her arms folded. She could feel Smith’s presence as he stood in the back of the punt and steered. They moved through the water together for a time, neither one speaking.

  “What did you do that for?” she finally asked.

  She felt shy and excited at the same time. She had never been alone with a boy before and Smith Reid was more than a boy.

  “I didn’t think that you could handle this punt all by yourself.”

  “I’ve been out in it dozens of times. I can handle it alone.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you out on the river a lot,” Smith admitted. “I just thought I’d be a gentleman and escort you home.”

  “But we’re not going home,” she observed.

  “Well, I didn’t want to cut things short,” he said after a minute, then added, “I’ve probably spoiled your evening as it is.”

  “We’re coming up to the ferry dock. It’s time to turn back now,” she told him.

  “Look up there to the left on the rocks,” he told her, pointing, although her back was still turned to him.

  “Aren’t they something?”

  “It’s just a couple of cranes,” Mary answered, turning away and trying to sound uninterested.

  “No, not cranes, Mary, those are two blue herons. They’re feeding at the end of the day. They mate for life, you know.”

  Smith wasn’t sure if he was correct on that last point but thought it wouldn’t hurt just to add it to the conversation. He found that he wanted to impress her, like he had never wanted to impress anyone before.

  “They are very pretty, there in the sunset,” Mary admitted.

  “Let’s get closer.”

  “No, let’s not bother them. Leave them be. And please, let’s turn around. I have to be getting home before it’s dark or I’ll get in trouble.”

  “With your father.” Smith slowly turned the punt around.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you angry with me for making trouble for your father last spring?”

  “Not as much as I used to be, and I was never really angry so much as scared. When your father came to the house looking for Daddy that time I was really afraid and so were Mumma and Grandma. Grandma wouldn’t ever say but I could tell.”

  �
�Pa thought it was for the best to talk to your father himself. To try to stop things from getting out of hand.”

  “They still did, though. You beat him up.”

  “I know. I was mad and wanted him to pay for hurting Jack. I’m sorry he was your father, though. Can you forgive me?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Mary, why don’t you turn around so it’s easier for us to talk?”

  “No thanks, I’m all right the way I am.”

  The punt turned the bend in the river and they could see people gathered around fires in front of some of the fishing shacks. Mary prayed that her father wouldn’t still be there waiting for her.

  “Mr. Reid, would you mind going to shore along here and getting out? I don’t think people should see us together without a chaperone. It’s not decent.”

  “All right, Mary, I will, on one condition.”

  “What?”

  “That you call me Smith from now on. Will you? I don’t know why you’re so formal anyway. I’m not that much older than you.”

  Mary was silent for a time.

  “Yes, all right.”

  “So say it. Say my name. Turn around and look at me and say my name or I’ll take this punt right over to the landing.”

  Mary was silent again. Then she stood up slowly, turned, stepped over the seat, and sat down facing him.

  “I’ll call you Smith from now on,” she said, looking right at him. “But you’re not being much of a gentleman about it, threatening me.”

  He grinned. “I’m gentleman enough when I want to be.”

  He started to move the punt over to the shore. Mary watched him. She liked that he was tall and his hair dark and curly.

  In a few minutes the punt bumped up against the river bank.

  “Okay, I’ll get out here and take the path home. You be careful taking this back out.” He passed her the oar and they stood looking at each other for a moment, the punt softly rocking. Then Smith jumped out onto the shore.

  “I’d like to see you again sometime, Mary,” he said. “Could I?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Daddy wouldn’t like that at all.” She pushed the punt away from shore.

  Smith tipped his cap and walked off into the darkness.

  Her hands were shaking as she steered the punt towards the landing. She felt scared and happy at the same time. Her father would be so mad if he knew about tonight. He hated Smith and his whole family. And he had told her before that he’d beat her if he ever found out she was having anything to do with any boy.

  Mary brought the punt into the landing and dragged it up onto the shore. She was humming as she tied it to the post in front of Uncle John’s fishing shack. She looked over to the bonfire. She knew that the group of laughing men over there were telling stories, and this being Saturday night, likely sharing a bottle or two. She wondered if Smith was among them. Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone get up from the doorway of the shack and stumble towards her. Her father waved a bottle around in his hand.

  “I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to get back…worried that something happened to you. You shouldn’t make me worry like that, girl.”

  He walked up to Mary and put his hand on her head, his fingers in her hair. “We worry about you. Me and your mother do. Especially me. I think about you a lot, Mary.”

  She raised her arm and dislodged his fingers from her hair.

  “Look at that bunch over there,” he said, pointing towards the fire. “Assholes.”

  He placed an arm around her shoulder and walked her towards the path leading to the main road.

  “I thought I’d better stay and watch for you so none of those idiots would get any ideas. You don’t know how a man’s mind works, girl.”

  “Well, I’m all right now that you’re here,” Mary said, ducking from under his arm and starting to run. “I’ll go ahead and get home so Mumma won’t be worried anymore.”

  Will loped ahead and caught up with her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around. His arms pinned hers to her sides.

  “Stop it.”

  She struggled to get away.

  He walked her towards the woods, backed her up against a tree trunk, pressed his whole body flat against hers, and fumbled with the collar of her dress.

  “Please stop. Stop,” she pleaded. She could smell the whiskey on his breath and the sweat from his shirt.

  Will placed one hand over her mouth and put the other around her waist.

  “Just once, Mary. Just once.”

  She managed to bite the hand he had over her mouth. He removed it, yelling with pain. She pushed him and stumbled away.

  “Stop it, Daddy. Why are you acting like this?”

  Mary ran up the side of the bank.

  Will tried to catch her but couldn’t. “Oh, the hell with it,” she heard him mutter to himself.

  ***

  Soon after their punt ride, Smith found out that Mary brought in the cows each evening, and he began to walk over to John Dempsey’s property at dusk a couple of times a week, hoping to run into her. After a few of these meetings she agreed that they could talk while she brought in the cows, and they became friends. Smith wanted more and finally persuaded Mary to start kissing him goodbye when they parted.

  “I don’t like kissing,” she told him at the beginning.

  “Everyone likes kissing,” he had said. “You’re just being shy.”

  Mary surprised him, however, in other ways.

  “Whoa,” he exclaimed, grinning as she moved a hand down his body, towards his belt, the first time they embraced.

  “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?” Mary blushed and hid her face.

  “Yes, but all in good time,” he told her gently.

  “It’s not right?” she asked, her head hanging.

  “Yes, but at the proper place and time,” he said. “Not that I don’t like it. But I’m surprised I don’t have to show you.”

  Rockley

  Nova Scotia

  November 1876

  Doctor Timothy Creed called on Ann ten weeks after her accident. Mabel greeted him at the porch door with a bright smile.

  “So good of you to call on us,” she said, removing her apron with one hand and offering him the other.

  “If I knew you were coming I’d have made myself more presentable.”

  Timothy Creed was thirty-five years old, tall, with light brown hair, a chin dimple, and a charming young wife. Three years ago, fresh out of the Dalhousie School of Medicine, the day after he opened his practice in Rockley, he received, by telegram, a summons to attend Mrs. Mabel Harney. When Creed arrived at the farm the patient was on the veranda waiting for him, dressed in her Sunday best. There was a lovely tea table set with pink china, and fruitcake and dainty squares laid on. He was invited to sit down and Mabel commenced to welcome him to the neighbourhood with gossip about the locals and much fluttering of eyelashes. She mentioned a headache when he inquired as to her health and she undid the two top buttons on her shirt waist to show him the difficulty she had turning her neck from side to side.

  It didn’t take Dr. Creed long to realize that he had been lured there for a social call. He wasn’t told until afterwards, no new Rockley physician ever was, that Mabel Harney made a point of acquainting herself with all the young doctors who settled in the area.

  “I’ll be a sick woman come morning,” Mabel had declared to her neighbour Fannie Burbine upon hearing that Doctor Creed was in need of patients.

  Now she motioned for him to come in.

  “Never mind your boots. I’m just about to get Mary to do the floors if I can find her.” She led the way into the kitchen and offered him a chair.

  “I’m here to see Ann. I met your brother over at Bailey’s store this morning and he told me that she still wasn’t
walking. I thought I’d take a look in to see how she was doing.”

  “Oh, she’s fine.” Mabel rolled her eyes. “Just likes being waited on, that’s all. That’s what’s wrong with that one. She’s set up camp in the parlour. Says she can’t make the stairs yet. I’ll go see if she’s decent.”

  Mabel hurried down the hallway and was back in less than a minute.

  “Her majesty will see you now.”

  Dr. Creed smiled and shook his head.

  “It’s the second door on the right. Used to be a proper parlour. Now it’s a damn sickroom,” Mabel yelled from the kitchen.

  “Hello, Ann,” Dr. Creed said. Ann watched as he seated himself on a faded green armchair.

  “Dr. Creed, I’m surprised to see you,” she said, sliding herself up higher on the sofa.

  She was wearing a flannel nightgown and wrapped in a black shawl. She was covered up to the waist with a blanket. Suddenly she felt too warm.

  “I wanted to see for myself how you were doing.”

  “That’s very kind of you. I’m still not able to put any pressure on my right ankle and the side of my right knee still hurts a lot. And on top of that my heart has been beating something awful lately. Did you know that my mother passed over a month ago? My heart started up right after that.”

  “Yes, I heard. Accept my condolences. Now, let’s have a look. I’ll call Mrs. Harney into the room for a moment.”

  As Mabel stood silent, her arms folded and her foot tapping, Doctor Creed pushed the front of Ann’s nightgown up to her knees, placed a hand on her right kneecap, then felt around to the inner side of her knee. She winced.

  “It still hurts a lot there,” she said.

  He touched the area gingerly. “You’ve bruised the bone. That’s why you have so much pain and why it’s taking so long to heal.”

  “If it’s bruised, why isn’t it black and blue?” Mabel demanded.

  “Because now only the bone is bruised, the skin has healed,” Creed answered, winking at Ann. “The only cure for that is time. Now the ankle.”