Tell

by Frances Itani

  She could have made things worse.

  “If Kenan does get out onto the rink,” Maggie went on, “I think he’d be happy to be on skates again. I can’t help but remember him as a boy racing around the ice. One time, he skated all the way to Napanee—late in the afternoon, as it turned out. He might have frozen to death. He and Orryn, his friend—well, your friend, too—didn’t get back until after dark.”

  “Neither of them showed up for supper in the evening. Uncle Oak came to our place looking for Kenan, and so did Orryn’s father. Everything turned out to be all right, thankfully.”

  “Well,” said Maggie, “I’ll never skate as far as Napanee, but I intend to take part in the masquerade in January. Zel has persuaded me to work on a costume. Something we can skate in without tripping. Don’t ask what we’re planning. We’re working on an idea to go as a pair.”

  “A secret. I don’t mind secrets. I won’t pry.”

  “We work at Zel’s place whenever we have a chance. Once a week, sometimes twice. Zel is good company and we do laugh together. We use the workroom for sewing, the small building next to the house. You know the one I mean. Zel will be taking in another boarder next spring, she tells me. The second building has only one room but it’s big and wide, plenty of space.”

  Maggie did not mention that it was Luc who would be moving into the workroom when winter was over. Zel’s new boarder. That was private information. Though the whole town would know soon enough.

  “I want to skate in the carnival,” said Tress, “but I haven’t decided on a costume.” She was thinking that she, too, would like to be with someone with whom she could laugh. Laughter was becoming rare in her own home. There were times when she came through the front door and felt that a curtain of darkness had been drawn, a curtain that could suffocate.

  “There will be women on the rink in furs and muffs,” said Maggie. “The muffs are shaped like melons this year.”

  “I’ve seen them on guests at the hotel. And the men in town will dig out their buffalo mitts and their mouldy beaver hats so they can go as old-timers.”

  “Someone is sure to dress up as Charlie Chaplin. Last year there were four Charlies. Calhoun, from the town paper, will be a magician. We can count on that. He hauls out his black cape every year.”

  “There’ll be a nun and a bride,” said Tress.

  “But not the two together.” Maggie allowed a wry smile, acknowledging that she and Tress were of different faiths, attended different churches. Though each attended her separate church without the company of her husband.

  “I’d like to wear something different,” said Tress. “Something that hasn’t been thought of before. Maybe I’ll borrow my brother’s old hockey uniform from school and go as ‘Canadian winter sports.’ Though that’s nothing new. Anyway, I still have plenty of time; the rink isn’t ready yet.”

  “It will be soon,” said Maggie. “This part of the bay should be frozen by the end of the year. Am helped, one afternoon, to carry lumber to shore for the skaters’ shack. According to him, the weather has been so cold, the men are prepared to build. One more freeze-up is all they need. People are already coming into the post office to stand around downstairs to gossip and stay warm.”

  “Do you remember the year Kenan and I dressed as gypsies for the carnival? That was just before the war started.”

  “I do. The two of you danced around the ice like dervishes. I remember how happy you both were.”

  “Kenan won’t be with me this year. Will Uncle Am dress up?”

  “I don’t know,” said Maggie. And she didn’t. Am had said not a word about the carnival.

  “You two used to skate, didn’t you? Together, I mean.”

  Maggie nodded, though she wanted to stop there. Her niece knew nothing of that time in her life.

  “There was no rink at our farm. Who would have made such a thing in the country? We skated on ponds or the creek—it was known as the crick. The crick meandered through fields and woods and joined one pond to another. The ice was lumpy and rippled from the wind, but we skated just the same, even in moonlight. That was my favourite time to skate, nighttime. If there was no moon, Am carried a small lantern, a brass one we still have. He was the best man I knew on blades, and then some. If I tired, he was strong enough to pull me along behind. One winter he made snowshoes from birch, with leather straps, and we tramped over the snow around the woods on our farm. He was a man of imagination.”

  She frowned when she realized she had used the past tense, and wondered if Tress had noticed. But while bringing up the past, she had also called up for herself Am’s younger, firmer face, the life and sparkle of his eyes, his wide, strong shoulders, even his narrower hips. None of this, she told herself, has anything to do with my life now.

  “Uncle Am can do anything,” said Tress. “But he says the same about you. The last time he was at our place to visit Kenan, he told me that when you were in your teens, you were the only girl on the Ninth Concession who worked in the hayfields alongside the men. He said he had to wait for you to grow up so he could marry you.”

  “He said that? Well, he did have to wait, because he’s six years older. And it was my father who got me working in the fields. He taught me to drive the team because he knew I loved the horses. I was skinny and didn’t weigh much, so he wrapped the reins around my body and fastened me to the crossboards at the front of the wagon so the horses wouldn’t yank me off. He bragged to his friends that I could turn a load of hay on a dime. When I drove the horses, that freed up a man to pitch hay. I was good then, though I’d never do it now. I wouldn’t be able to.”

  Maggie laughed softly inside the memory: the raising and lowering of the horses’ heads, dust stirred by their hooves, the clanking of harnesses and reins, the scent of new-cut hay, the odour of sweating men around her, an occasional word echoing through the silence that encompassed and made them a single unit with a single purpose. Am had often been part of the crew, keeping an eye out for her, always.

  “At the end of the day, it was Father who drove the team through the fields and back to the barn. He sat me on top of the load of hay, and I perched there like a banty rooster.” She laughed again because she remembered her father’s pride. He had worked hard on the farm because of his love for her, for Nola, for their mother.

  “Whatever I did to help,” she said, “was a long way off from working two days a week in the town library—and I’m thankful for the job. I’ve always loved a good book, and now I can put my hands on any one I want.”

  “You sing. Don’t forget that.”

  “If I talk about the concert, Tress, my nerves will undo me.”

  “It’s almost sold out, you know. There won’t be a ticket left by the beginning of December. That means more than five hundred people.”

  “Which worries me even more,” said Maggie. “I’ve never performed on a stage. Not in a real theatre.”

  “You sing at your church every week. Can’t you think of the concert as a different sort of choir?”

  “I can’t think of it like that at all.”

  “Will Uncle Am be there to offer support?”

  “He will. I’ve already bought his ticket.”

  Maggie looked down at the street below, where two schoolchildren were heading home. They were laughing together, hand in hand, slipping and sliding along the boardwalk in their boots. She glanced down again, but they had vanished.

  “If I’m not allowed to ask about your singing, tell me about the farm,” said Tress. “I’ve lived in town all my life and the only farm I ever get to visit is my grandfather’s.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. After Am and I married, we bought our own small place. We had a bit of land, a few animals, a few rows of apple trees.”

  “Did you sell the land when you moved to town?”

  “We did. And I don’t miss it, not one bit.”

  What she did not say was that during the weeks and months before they moved to town, she had begun to drea
m of small hands combing through her long hair. Even now, thinking about the dreams, she remembered the sensation of her hair being sifted through fingers. The dreams stopped when she and Am moved to the apartment. She’d have gone mad if she’d stayed there, on the farm. She’d have gone mad if the dreams had continued.

  She passed the knitted shrug back to Tress. Over the bay, a new chain of clouds was about to snare the sun. One cloud broke free and skittered along the horizon, a beetle looking for cover. She shuddered.

  Tress understood that Aunt Maggie wanted no more questions today.

  Chapter Eight

  KENAN HELD A PHOTO IN HIS GOOD HAND. THREE soldiers in uniform in France. Hugh on the right, Kenan on the left, the third soldier between. Out of the depths, grappling for a name. Bill, the soldier in the middle, killed only days after the photo was taken. No body found, presumed dead, was dead. Kenan dropped the photo to the floor as if it were in flames. He bent forward and picked it up again. Details surfaced quickly, too quickly, firing into his brain from unknown directions.

  Bill. A lean, hard-muscled man whose words rattled out of him like rapid-fire bursts from a machine gun. He’d always cursed a blue streak. Told the others that his two biggest fears were being gassed and being buried alive. After the war he planned to work with the Great Farini so he could be shot out of a cannon. As a human cannonball he’d be able to withstand the noise, he said. If he ever got out of the trenches alive, he’d be deaf by then anyway.

  But Bill had become a different kind of cannon fodder and had disappeared. A short time after that, Kenan had been wounded and sent to England. Bill’s disappearance was one of the gaps in Kenan’s memory. Maybe Bill—or his body—had been found while Kenan was in hospital in Blighty.

  Now it was Hugh who had tracked Kenan down. Hugh remembered the name of the hometown Kenan had spoken about, and acted on the impulse to write. Kenan could not help wondering what contact would be like if he and Hugh were in the same room. He hadn’t seen any of the boys he’d served with since the night he’d been carried off on a stretcher. Nor had Hugh seen Kenan and his half-face of scars. All this time, neither had made a move to find out if the other was alive.

  Tress’s brother-in-law, Jim, had stopped in at the house to visit several times after he came home from the war in April 1919, and before he left Deseronto. For a time, Kenan had relied on Jim to bring in news of the larger world. Their shared experience allowed a comfort between them, though they’d been to different areas of the Front. Except for Vimy Ridge—they’d been there at the same time. Jim had served as a stretcher bearer, and they had compared notes. How the roads leading to the place had been lined with dead horses. How a pint of hot tea could mean so much to cold and thirsty men. How they’d eaten beans underground—two men to a can—and cheese and jam and biscuits and stew. How, at one stretch, Jim hadn’t taken his boots off for thirteen days, and when he was finally able to do so, he had a swelling on his heel so large it had to be lanced.

  And sound, the two men had talked about that. About the whumps that felt like the smothering of dynamite. About coming up out of crowded, sweat-soaked rooms and tunnels beneath the earth on Easter Monday, 1917, and emerging into what they instantly understood to be the noises of hell.

  Jim had applied to the Soldier Settlement Board and was hoping to farm with the help of the board to give him a start-up. He had the background—he’d grown up on his grandparents’ farm in Prince Edward Island—but hadn’t yet purchased land. He and Grania had gone to the island to see what properties might be available, and they’d been there since summer. Before making a decision, Jim wanted to spend part of the year in the province where he’d grown up. And now, here was Hugh, from the same island, reappearing in Kenan’s life.

  Until now, Kenan had received no personal letters since coming home. Only documents about his discharge from the army, messages from the veterans’ association, pension applications, letters concerning his injuries. Loss of an eye rated forty percent disability pension; one finger, less than twenty. There had been official suggestions of paying out fifty dollars for each finger lost. But what about an arm, a palm, a wrist, an entire hand? One commission after another was supposed to be working this out.

  While he was overseas, Tress had written every week the entire time he’d been away. Uncle Oak had also written and sent news about his bulldog, Jowls; news about who brought what to the welding shop for repairs. He’d even sent Kenan a package containing a rat trap, hoping that would help reduce the misery. But since returning home and until this moment, Kenan had had no word from or about Hugh—who, it was now apparent, had survived after all.

  Knowing that Kenan was always at home, Jack Conlin, the postmaster, had dropped the letter off at the house. There were two mail deliveries a day, and occasionally, if something special arrived, Jack would walk along the street and deliver it personally instead of putting it in the box to be collected later. Jack knew how rare was the receipt of personal mail addressed to Kenan. He also owned the house Kenan and Tress were renting, and he knew enough to knock on the front door, leave the envelope and depart.

  Kenan sat in his wicker chair in the back veranda to read Hugh’s letter. Three pages of letter. He wanted to take his time. He wanted to weigh every word.

  Hello Old Stuff

  Is this missive finally in your hands? I’ve thought of you so often, it’s a wonder my words didn’t spill into the air and reach you in flight. They probably did anyway if this envelope travelled in a mailbag in one of the new flying machines—and not one of the wood-and-canvas contraptions that flew over the lines. One way or another, I hope I’ve correctly remembered the name of your town.

  You would not guess where I am as I write this. In a TB sanatorium, built on the highest point of land on our island, a whopping five hundred feet above sea level. Well, not quite five hundred. Don’t laugh, it’s a low-lying land.

  Yes, that’s right, I came down with the white plague, the wasting disease, after I returned home, though I was probably infected when we were “over there.” Now, after being “over here” the past eleven months, I’ve been told that another few months should have me healthy again. If I get to leave this place, I won’t be sorry. The staff takes good care of me, but I’m hopeful that I’ll be free to pick up my life again by March or April, if I pass muster.

  The place isn’t exactly a hospital because we live here, though some of us wander about in pyjama suits or bath robes. As you’d expect, only consumptive cases are treated here. And as I’ve lived in the confines of one building for a very long time, the only news I have to tell is how I spend my days. So here goes.

  Everything happens at the slowest possible pace. The passwords are rest and more rest. Sleep all night, up at six-thirty, temperature taken and tray brought for breakfast. Imagine, Old Stuff, how soft we’d be if breakfast had been carried to us on a tray over there. I had no trouble adjusting to the service.

  After breakfast, into bed again. Along with pyjamas, this means wearing (in this cold weather) toque, gloves, scarf to cover my throat, a heap of heavy blankets, and then I’m pushed out—or rather, my metal bed is wheeled out by orderlies—to the open-air pavilion for fresh-air treatment. Real air, sea air, salt air. The verandas in the pavilion are wide enough to hold two rows of beds. That’s where we—every one of us—spend the next couple of hours. The beds are lined up side by side, and back to sleep we go.

  After “the cure”—that’s what it’s called—our beds are wheeled indoors. We have dinner at noon and the food is good, better than army, I don’t complain.

  The routine is the same in the afternoon: into bed, toque pulled over the ears, gloves, scarf, a weight of blankets, and we’re wheeled back out. No movement, no talking. We’re told not to stretch or reach or cough, if we can help it.

  The best part for me is being outside. Don’t imagine that we freeze in our beds. Truth is, we’re so bundled up, we manage to stay warm. The clear air here beats the fresh-air routine we
were subjected to in the trenches, and here there are no lice. I guess the part that bothers me most is that I’ve been idle. Idle is worse than … I don’t want to say what it’s worse than. After what we’ve been through, I won’t try to compare.

  Back to the routine. At the end of the afternoon cure, we’re wheeled inside. The nursing sisters wear gowns and keep everything disinfected as much as they can, cards, games, the dishes we use. There’s no hand shaking, no smoking. Anything that leaves the place has to be fumigated, including this letter. I’m not allowed to lick the stamp or the envelope, so you don’t have to worry. Don’t drop the letter where you’re standing.

  The sun helps clean the bedding, and in good weather, mattresses and pillows are laid out on the grass on the hill to soak up the rays. Much of the year, cows are in the nearby fields. It’s all dairy around here, milk and butter and cream. The cream is sent to the cheese and butter factory nearby. The cows are so placid on the slopes, they look as if they’ll slide right down to the bottom if the wind blows the wrong way. And wind blows pretty much all the time.

  There are two young boys on a farm over on the next hillside. I can’t see the farm buildings but I can see fencelines and the top of the hill. Some days, the boys take a kite outside, and sure enough, herring gulls soar in and dive at the kite and screech and flap until the boys tire of the interference and haul their toy out of the sky. Sometimes, I imagine that I can catch a glimpse of sea. A grey sea with the same rumpled look as the quilts on my bed.

  We have early supper at five, and another “cure” from six to seven. At bedtime, we’re given warm milk to drink. If I have trouble getting to sleep, I listen for far-off waves, especially if there are heavy seas. In the morning, our routine starts again, identical in every way.