Five Little Indians

by Michelle Good

  “Well, I’m not going back.” Lucy pulled her test paper out again, wrinkled and dirty from the tussle with Harlan. “This will find me something better. Liz, what did he mean? That thing about my boyfriends. I don’t even have a boyfriend.”

  “I was going to tell you, but what with Muhammad Ali over here, I didn’t get a chance.”

  “Tell me what?” Lucy could feel an awful nervousness taking over.

  “Some guy came into the Manitou today looking for you. He told Harlan you two were old friends. I guess someone told him you worked here. Harlan told him to take a hike.”

  “What guy?” Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know any guys.”

  “I didn’t see him, I just heard Harlan giving him the boot. Put some lipstick on. Let’s go have some fun. You did it!”

  Lucy reached into her purse and applied her lipstick as she walked, a little smug, knowing the white-pink frosted tone looked much better on her than on those hippie girls. She didn’t give the stranger another thought.

  The laughter echoed in Lucy’s head as she returned alone to her apartment above Chong Li’s. Clara had led the whole bar to the point of hysteria with her story of jumping Harlan in the Manitou parking lot. With each rendition of the story there were a few more punches landed, a few more insults uttered. Lucy laughed under her breath as she reached for the door to manipulate the key.

  “Lucy?”

  She panicked at the sound of her name coming from the dark alley. “Who is it?” Her chest tightened. She swung around to look and there he was, the man she’d seen before in the alley. “What? What do you want?” She slipped her key in the lock and it stuck, her nervous fingers forgetting how to jostle the door open. Her mouth was sand dry, her voice little more than a squeak. “Who are you?”

  “It’s me, Kenny.”

  “Kenny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the . . .”

  He stepped out of the shadow, and under the light of the Manitou she saw it was indeed him. A man now, but still the same. He walked toward her, his hands in his pockets. She caught a whiff of the alcohol rising from him. She clung to the doorknob, hoping she looked casual, as a light-headed dizziness threatened her balance.

  “Can we talk, Lucy?”

  “Are you okay?” She ran her hand through her hair, expecting to feel the stubbles and scrapes left by Sister Mary’s handiwork.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  She wondered if he thought he would see those scab trails on her head again too. “You been here all this time?” The swirling slowed.

  “Naw. Just pulled in a week ago.” Kenny ran his fingers through his hair, his face suddenly warm. “I ran into Wilfred down the States. He said you were here.” Kenny eyed the now-open door. “Can we talk?”

  “You saw my brother?”

  “Yeah. Took me a week to know who he was. All grown up.”

  “I never thought I’d see you again. They told us you were dead.”

  “Not yet. Give it time.” They both laughed, nervous.

  “Tomorrow? Can we visit tomorrow?”

  Kenny turned to leave. “You don’t have to. Just thought I would say hi.”

  Lucy ran toward him. “No. No! I’m just so surprised. I can’t get my thoughts straight. Look, I don’t have to work tomorrow. Come have coffee with me in the morning. Okay?”

  Kenny smiled. “You’re sure all grown up.”

  Lucy laughed. “You too.”

  “See you in the morning, then.” Kenny turned to leave. Lucy stood there, key in one hand, purse in the other.

  “Okay. Knock loud when you get here. Sometimes I don’t hear from up there.” She looked up at her kitchen window. “I’ll watch for you.”

  “All right.” Kenny turned slowly, hands still in his pockets, and made his way down the alley.

  She slipped inside and collapsed on the steps, her face in her hands, her head reeling. Images and sounds rattled around her. The nuns’ rustling habits and clicking rosary beads; Father and his insidious invitations; the giggling girls and the clatter of meals; the regimental lineups forming before any movement from one place to another. Kenny, with his glances and secreted notes, calming her. Lucy took a deep breath, stood and made her way up the stairs.

  Lucy left the lights off and quietly sat at the kitchen table. She watched the usual goings-on outside her window but remained distracted and overwhelmed by the flood of memories she’d worked so hard to keep below the surface. Clara had been there with her at the Mission School, but she was older and they hadn’t talked about it much. It was an unspoken agreement between them: the past was the past. It’s hard to run from the past, but once stuffed away, they knew it couldn’t be allowed to poison the present. They couldn’t be who they were now, with their lipstick, paycheques and rooms, if they were also those children, or the children who’d left the other children behind.

  Lucy looked at her hands and willed them to stop shaking. Kenny, the one we believed in. He was the one who never lost his taste for freedom. The stories of his escapes were legendary, his exploits spiralling into epic accounts in the whispers of the children in their dorms. She laid her head on the table and cried.

  The next morning, the patter of gravel on her window woke her.

  “Lucy! It’s me.”

  Groggy from too little sleep, exhausted after yesterday’s madness, Lucy rubbed her eyes and looked out the window. Kenny stood there looking up at her.

  She opened the window and looked down at him. “Hang on, I’ll come down.”

  She splashed cold water on her face and threw on a clean blouse, replacing the paisley one wrinkled from her sleep at the kitchen table. She walked slowly down the stairs, trying to breathe deeply to calm herself. She turned the deadbolt latch and opened the door.

  “Come on up.”

  He followed her up the stairs. “You live here alone?” He glanced around at the tiny studio, the ancient linoleum sounding like frozen ground, crackling under his boots.

  “Yeah, just me. I was working at the Manitou, but I’m not anymore. I quit yesterday. Hey, come on and sit over here. I’ll make us some coffee.” She put the kettle on the flame and pulled two cups from the cupboard along with the instant coffee. “What do you take?”

  “Just sugar.” Kenny sat at her table watching her as she slid into her seat, waiting for the water to boil.

  “Me too.” She smiled. Her happiness at seeing him alive, grown and free, eclipsed the sadness that followed him into her kitchen like a roiling wave. “I never stopped wondering about you, after that last time you ran away. What happened? Father told us you drowned, but we didn’t believe him. We knew you made it.”

  “I stole the new punt, the one they got after I blew out the engine in the old one. Remember that day when they were taking Howie to the hospital after Brother got through with him?”

  “Yes. And you walked right past Sister like she was nothing to talk to me. I knew then you would go again.”

  “I didn’t even know I was going again. I just couldn’t take it anymore. You should have seen the blood in Howie’s bed that day. I thought he was dead. I went down to the dock to see if they were coming back, and I just knew I had to go. But you stopped me. I tried to stay for you. I needed to tell you that. When I finally did leave, all I could think about was you, sitting so quietly in the dining hall with your shaved head.”

  “It was kind of hopeless without you. Whatever happened to Howie? We heard he escaped to the States with his mom, but he was never talked about again.”

  “I heard a story, don’t know how true it is, that he had to come back to Canada for some government paperwork problem. Had to go all the way back to Arrowhead Bay. All the dumb luck, he ran into Brother and kicked his sorry ass. Been in the can since. But you know, people talk shit.”

  Lucy smiled. “They sure do. So, where did you go?”

  “I didn’t stop till I got to Port McNeill. I found someone who knew my uncle. He wanted to bring me back to the Mis
sion. When I told him what was happening, though, he took me home to my mom’s place.”

  Lucy carefully spooned the instant coffee into their cups and added the now-boiling water. She handed Kenny his cup and pointed to the sugar. Kenny reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a mickey of rum. He sipped down half his coffee, then filled the cup to the brim. He held the bottle over Lucy’s cup, a question. She nodded. He seemed surprised and smiled at her. “Hair of the dog.”

  “So how did you end up in the States?” The sweet smell of rum in coffee made her nostrils tingle.

  “Well, home wasn’t home anymore. I hadn’t seen or talked to my mom in seven years, and I didn’t know that, when they took me away from her, she’d started drinking. It was like we were strangers. But what about you? How did you end up here?”

  Lucy sipped her coffee. Her face tightened a little. “Sister put me on a bus to Vancouver on my sixteenth birthday. I was scared to death. Had never even seen a trolley bus, or an elevator, or people just living like people. If I hadn’t found Maisie, I would have been done for. She got me my job at the Manitou.”

  “How is Maisie? What a girl that one was. Took no crap from anyone.”

  Lucy told him all about Maisie’s double life: her strength, her fight to survive, and her suicide. She surprised herself by getting through the story without crying. Kenny exhaled deeply, reached into his jacket and poured another shot into his coffee cup, a slight tremor in his hands. She shook her head at his offer of seconds.

  Kenny sipped and looked at her over the rim of his coffee cup. “And now you’re not working anymore.”

  “Well, I’ve been going to night school after my shifts at the Manitou. Yesterday I passed the last test. I’m going to sign up at the community college. Look at this.” She pulled the faded newspaper clipping out of her book and passed it to Kenny. “Look, those Indian girls became nurses. If they can do it, so can I.”

  Kenny laughed and grasped her hands as she pulled the clipping away. “I always knew you would make something of yourself.”

  Lucy blushed. “More coffee? Are you hungry? I have toaster tarts.”

  Kenny laughed again. “No, thanks. I gotta go see a guy about some work. If that doesn’t pan out, I might have to go to the Okanagan for a while. Get work in the orchards.”

  “It’s so good to see you, Kenny. Why don’t you come back when you’re done? I’ll do some shopping and make us a meal.”

  “That would be great, Lucy. I can’t remember the last time someone cooked for me.”

  “Okay, come back around six. Oh, fair warning: I don’t know how to cook much. Maisie had to show me how to boil eggs when I first got out.”

  They laughed and walked toward the door. Lucy reached out and touched Kenny on his shoulder, as if making sure he was real. She felt him shrink into himself.

  “I’m all scarred up, Lucy.” He shrugged his jacket on and descended the stairs two at a time. He looked up from the bottom and waved. “Later.”

  Lucy stood by the kitchen window and watched him leave. He seemed so old. He had been an intermediate student when she was a junior, but the age difference between them now seemed far greater than that.

  At midnight, Lucy’s kitchen was bathed in its usual red glow, but there was no sign of Kenny. She shrugged off her disappointment, wrapped up the roast chicken in waxed paper and slipped it into the fridge next to the toaster tarts. She thought of Maisie and her pauper’s funeral, Kenny so ashamed in his purple-flowered dress, and herself, her scalp scraped and bleeding, and sleep resisted her. She turned to her counting game, the one she used to put herself to sleep at night in the dorm, but even that was of no use.

  It was the evening of the fourth day before Kenny returned. Lucy and Clara strolled toward her apartment, the arms of their sweaters tied around their necks, too much to wear in the warm fall night. She nudged Clara and whispered something quickly.

  “You’re late,” Lucy said, her face soft with disappointment. “Do you remember Clara? She was an intermediate at the Mission when I was a junior.” Clara barely glanced at Kenny, gave him her back and spoke to Lucy alone. “You okay?” Lucy nodded, and Clara turned to Kenny. “You better treat her right, man, or you will have me to deal with.”

  Kenny took a step back and Lucy laughed, breaking the tension. “And Clara is no one to mess with! Just go ask Harlan.” At that the two girls broke into giggles.

  Clara recovered first. “But seriously, man. Don’t you dare hurt this one.”

  Kenny blushed and shook his head.

  Lucy rolled her eyes and gave Clara a friendly shove. “Okay, bossy!”

  The girls laughed and Clara headed off toward her place. “See ya tomorrow, kiddo.”

  Lucy stood in front of Kenny, the alley so quiet now with Clara’s giant presence gone. Kenny uttered the first of a thousand regrets to her as they headed up the creaky stairs.

  “Sometimes I’m just no good with people. Just need to be by myself.” They walked close, shoulders grazing, the air between them smelling slightly of rum.

  “It’s okay, Kenny. I’m like that myself sometimes.”

  They sat together on the threadbare fold-down sofa. Kenny put his arm around her and she placed her hand on his knee. They looked at each other and looked away. He turned to her, took her face in his hands and kissed her. “Can I stay, Lucy? Is it all right?”

  Lucy nodded, and rested her face against his chest. She was astonished at the pounding of his heart. The soft red glow from the Manitou reflected against her skin as she sat back from him and removed her blouse. He reached for her and they talked and touched long into the night.

  Lucy woke from a quiet sleep, slow to open her eyes, the warmth of the small bed a cocoon. She reached for Kenny, knowing he was gone even before she opened her eyes. She wrapped the blankets tight around herself and turned her eyes to the dank morning outside her kitchen window, the raindrops heavy and even. She lay motionless, her mind turned to her days at the Mission. Not a day without fear. Through it all, she had relied on Kenny. Not just for his encouraging notes and shy smiles, but because he ran and ran and ran. He would not let them beat him. And he believed in her. He even told her so. He was not as hollow then as he was now.

  Two months on, she walked to the catalogue outlet store to pick up the nurse’s uniform she’d ordered and stopped to buy a pair of proper white shoes at the department store, entering under the giant W. She didn’t have much time to think about Kenny now that she was about to begin her training, and as time passed, she thought of him even less, no longer expecting to see him leaning against her door, waiting for her when she turned the corner toward home.

  The day before her training started, Lucy headed for the Manitou, hoping to catch up with Clara. She’d been right after all: not only had Harlan pleaded with Liz and Clara to come back to work, he’d even raised their hourly rate to a dollar fifteen.

  Clara emerged from the linen room, head down, still in uniform, fatigue in her step.

  “Hey girl! You sure had him figured.”

  Clara laughed as she looked up and saw her friend. “Yeah, for now. You want to go to the Only?”

  Lucy waited while Clara changed out of her smock, and the girls walked as they had so many times before through the broken heart of the city. The hookers and addicts and runaway teens, johns and predators scouting their prey, all roamed the core. The hotels had all gone to seed and were nothing more than flophouses rented by the hour and week for those who needed to be within staggering reach of the beer parlours on their main floors. The girls didn’t give any of it a second thought; it was their neighbourhood, with dangers and comforts like any other. They slid into their regular booth at the Only, silently devouring their steaming fish soup.

  Sighing and satisfied, Lucy turned her attention to Clara, who was opening her fortune cookie. “Hey, it says I will receive good news in four days. I could use some good news.”

  “So, I start the nursing program tomorr
ow, up at St. Paul’s.”

  “I knew you would do it. Oh, hey, seen Kenny lately?”

  Lucy blushed, looking away from Clara. “Naw.”

  “He always had a thing for you. Us intermediate girls used to laugh at you guys in the dining hall, looking and not looking at each other. You were just little, and what was he—twelve?”

  “You know, he used to pass me notes telling me how brave I was and how pretty I was. He stood up for me. Wouldn’t let people laugh at me when Sister shaved my head that time. He made me think I was something special back then. That I could make it.”

  “Well, he was right.”

  “Sometimes he would watch me from the boys’ side, and when no one was looking, he’d pass me spruce buds to nibble on.”

  Clara smiled at her friend. “Well, it took him long enough to track you down.”

  “I guess he just wanted to see what happened to me.” Lucy wrapped her sweater around her shoulders and slipped out of the booth. “Walk me home, Clara, you can catch the bus by my place.”

  The girls wandered into the evening, giggling and talking.

  “You should move into my place, Lucy. It’s closer to St. Paul’s. You don’t need to be around the Manitou anymore.”

  “Maybe, but I like it where I am.”

  But what she was thinking was: How will he ever find me way over in the West End?

  6

  Clara

  Clara sat at the table, oblivious to the empty beer glasses, the overflowing ashtray and the noise of too many conversations straining to be heard above the pounding music. She smouldered alone, her friends now gone after their celebration of Lucy’s success. Her anger, a slow, quiet burn, gnawed at her as she thought of Harlan and how he’d tried to make Lucy feel small. She slapped her last five on the table as the barmaid set down two glasses of half-flat draft beer. She downed one without a breath and went slower on the second, the deep drags on her smoke almost calming her.