by Jan Conn
Ordinary Strangers
MOTHER TONGUE PUBLISHING LIMITED
290 Fulford-Ganges Road, Salt Spring Island, B.C. V8K 2K6 Canada www.mothertonguepublishing.com
Represented in North America by Heritage Group Distribution.
Copyright © 2018. Bill Stenson. All Rights Reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, [email protected]—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Ordinary Strangers is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Book design by Mark Hand
Typefaces used are New Baskerville and Helvetica.
Cover Photo: Thank-you to the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History & partnering
museum/society for use of the photo #0039.0337: Victoria Ave, Fernie BC 1961.
Inside photo: Shutterstock
Printed on Antique Natural, 100% recycled
Printed and bound in Canada.
Mother Tongue Publishing gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Province of British Columbia through the B.C. Arts Council and we acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada, qui a investi 157$ millions de dollars l’an dernier dans les lettres et l’édition à travers le Canada.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Stenson, Bill, 1949-, author
Ordinary strangers / Bill Stenson.
ISBN 978-1-896949-70-3 (softcover)
ISBN 978-1-896949-71-0 (Epub)
I. Title.
PS8637.T47O73 2018C813’.6C2018-903680-X
For Susan
It doesn’t matter what story
we’re telling, we’re telling the story of family.
– ERICA LORRAINE SCHEIDT
There is no such thing as a ‘broken family.’ Family is family, and is not determined by marriage certificates, divorce papers and adoption documents. Families are made in the heart. The only time family becomes null is when those ties in the heart are cut. If you cut those ties, those people are not your family. If you make those ties, those people are your family. And if you hate those ties, those people will still be your family because whatever you hate will always be with you.
– C.JOYBELL C.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
Acknowledgements
1
The fair was in town. Hope, B.C. In August-hot weather, leaves on deciduous trees hung as limp and still as the trunks that held them in the air. Families shuffled through the dust, eating cotton candy, waiting for the sun to hide behind the mountains. The unusual absence of wind had cast a lethargic spell upon them. Fewer than a hundred people remained on the grounds, and the sense of exhilaration on faces earlier in the day had been replaced, for now, with fatigue and complacency. The lines for the few available rides had subsided, and the ticket taker at the Ferris wheel put his feet up and rolled a cigarette, long overdue. Soon the sun would set, and a much younger crowd would return the fair to swirls of dust and laughter.
A man and a woman, possibly in their forties, stood out from the lethargy at the close of the day because they were looking for their missing dog, Barker, and this made their vector path helter-skelter and urgent. Sage and Della Howard had inherited Barker as a pup to guard the house. Barker whined when desperate but never barked, and Sage thought his blond retriever was mentally challenged. Despite his misgivings, the dog was worth a search because he belonged to them, which may have been the only reason but reason enough.
Barker, Sage called infrequently and with little conviction, as if he believed a dog that doesn’t bark can’t hear either. Della went one way, Sage another. The mountains eventually blocked the late-day sun until only the tops of the trees were bathed in lime-green light they could almost taste. Della asked strangers if they’d seen the missing dog and offered a description, but no one could help.
The couple came together again in a copse of fir trees hundreds of years old. They stood still for the first time in a long time, words not needed to express the hopelessness they felt. Suddenly they turned their heads to the sound of a whimpering cry and hurried through the trees to find a toddler, dressed in shorts and tattered top, sweating, dirty and red-faced, turning in circles. When Della picked the girl up, Sage immediately took her away from Della just to feel the weight of her, then he handed over his handkerchief so she could dab the tears and snot from the girl’s face. The girl relaxed as Sage held her in his arms, and they walked to a purple car at the edge of the fairgrounds where he strapped her into the back seat. Sage started the car, and the three of them headed into the town of Hope.
They drove several blocks before Sage finally said, The dog may have wandered into town if he smelled food. Can’t you get her to shut up for a minute? I’m trying to think.
Della turned to the girl in the backseat. Shush, she said. Sage rolled the window down and drove around, checking the side roads for the dog. Into the town of Hope, then out of the town.
We’ll have to inform the authorities, Sage said.
Drive a little, Della said. A moving car can settle a child. I’ve heard that.
The flow of hot air whistled equally through the windows up front, opened for relief. They both knew what was transpiring, and their cunning wrapped around them with every passing tree and boulder. Sage drove slower than usual. Della noticed and glanced at the speedometer as cars passed them on the highway.
The little girl fell asleep as Della had predicted, but two hours later, she woke when they pulled into Princeton. Sage parked the car in a small community park and walked to the store for something to eat. The girl wasn’t interested in eating and wandered fearlessly away from the picnic table and into a field of cavorting dogs. Della scooped her up and took her to the washroom. The girl didn’t want to pee or wouldn’t pee, Della was not sure which, but she told her everything would be just fine.
As soon as we see a cop shop, we’re going to pull in and tell them what’s happened, Sage said.
Della said, If we see one. If not, we might as well wait until we get there.
They pulled up to a motel in Osoyoos in the sweltering dark. They stopped at three motels before Della found both a bathtub and air conditioning. Sage had orders to purchase some baby food, something mushy in jars, in hop
es that the girl would eat. Della turned on the TV, but the girl had no interest in television, so she drew a bath and placed the squirming child into lukewarm water. The water startled her enough that the crying stopped. Della sang “Hush Little Baby Don’t You Cry” even after the child stopped crying. Sage came back with pizza and three jars of baby food and a new outfit, including black patent leather shoes several sizes too big. Della laughed about how everything was the wrong size.
Sage didn’t find it funny. I don’t know the first thing about buying a kid clothes, he said, so Della said at least they were clothes she’d grow into, then she washed the girl’s dirty clothes in the tub and put them on the air conditioner that pumped warm air into the room. The girl, content for the moment, ran around naked.
Do you want a beer with your pizza? Sage asked. I bought a six-pack. The only time I like beer anymore is when it’s hot as hell out.
No thanks. I’m just going to watch the little girl run around.
Late afternoon they arrived in Fernie, new to both of them, a town filled with strangers, and Della and Sage had to wait for the rental house to be emptied. Della said the last people took everything but their dirt, but Sage tried not to concern himself with dirt because in a few days he would start his new life as a coal miner and the thought of it made him sick to his stomach. They stayed in a motel just outside of town because they didn’t have any furniture for the house yet. Sage borrowed someone’s truck and found enough furniture the second day for them to move in.
For the first three days, the little girl stopped crying only when she was sleeping or being carried somewhere. When they moved her, it was as if she expected to be carried back to the arms of someone she knew. If people heard the child crying, they said to themselves: she’s unhappy about something, or hurt or hungry, but no one thought her crying would fill three days of sunny weather or imagined that her favourite place to take refuge was in the dark cavern under her bed. Sage couldn’t stand the crying and sat out on the front porch in the evening until the girl finally fell asleep. The two of them no longer questioned the reality of what they had in their possession, but Sage thought they should have stopped in Hope to let someone know. Looking after a dog was one thing, but this was more complicated, with a kid that did nothing but cry, and at first it wasn’t clear to him what they’d gotten themselves into. Something had coated the two of them, something transparent and protective at the same time, a film that held their position in place but one they could both see through. After day four, the girl settled, and Sage stopped sitting out on the porch after supper, watching the swoop of swallows.
We’ve got to do something with her, Sage said.
She’s happy now, Della said. She only cried once all day, and she didn’t cry long.
Sage understood that for years Della had wanted to have a baby and couldn’t, and that now, unless they could find out where the little girl belonged, Della wanted her chance. She wasn’t thinking about anything else, he could see that, but he knew she didn’t understand the edge of the world the way he did. Even if they contacted the authorities, after so much time, they would be charged with abduction or kidnapping or some other crime. He watched his wife folding the few things the girl owned, and on cue the girl offered up a cooing sound from the bedroom. The doctor had said Sage was shooting blanks, that was the reason they couldn’t have children. He didn’t like the doctor and wasn’t sure he trusted him, but Della believed him and that was all that mattered. His wife never held their circumstance over his head, or at least she never came out and said that she had counted on something else, but Sage understood the space that had been created. None of this would have happened had his dog not wandered off. Bloody useless dog. Always had been.
When the girl was upset, Della thought she needed a bath, so she bathed her four or five times a day. She went shopping before Sage started work and brought back dresses and shorts and pink underwear. Against his better judgement, Sage bought the kid something as well. He didn’t bring it in the first day—he left it in the trunk so he could think about what he’d done. The next day he gave it to her, a secondhand Chatty Cathy doll that talked when you pulled the string. It looked grotesque to Sage, and the little girl thought so too. Della pulled the string on the red-headed monster over and over while the girl hid under the bed. Come play with me. I feel tired. Will someone carry me? I feel hurt.
Della, eager and persistent about playing mom, refused to give up. They fed her peanut butter on a cracker, which she ate, and Della decided that was her go-to treat, which meant she ate peanut butter three or four times a day for the first week. By day seven, Sage had reported for work, and before he left in the morning, he told Della she had better phone the authorities. Della said she’d think about it, but she didn’t think about it for long, and when he got home, she said there had been a breakthrough. With Sage out of the house, her natural instincts had kicked in. She stopped calling herself Della, and because she had been with the girl day and night for such a long time, she thought of herself as Mommy.
Sage watched her with the girl. You didn’t phone anyone, did you?
No, I didn’t. She’s so happy now, if something happens she’ll just be upset all over again. I made spaghetti and meatballs, just the way you like them.
Damn it, Della. I told you to phone. You realize what this means?
Yes, Della said. I do.
The transition from Della to Mommy came easy, and she gave several days of earnest thought to what would be a good name for the little girl. She didn’t rush because she wanted to get it right. Once you give a kid a name, they wear it until they die. The girl had pale skin, mildly freckled, and bright green eyes that stared out at the world, uneven and suspicious. I think her name should be Stacey Emerald Howard, she said. Though only a suggestion, Della made it sound as if it already had a sense of history.
Emerald’s okay, Sage said. Why not call her that?
Emerald for a first name would make her stand out, Della said. That’s the last thing we want.
Della believed if they used the name enough it would catch on, but when they threw the name Stacey into the air, the little girl looked toward the door as if she expected someone else to enter.
For the first few weeks, they made rare sojourns into the community. Sage took the car to work, and Della and Stacey stayed confined to the house because Della could never tell when the crying would start again. They had a TV set, but Della was afraid to watch TV. They had a radio, but she didn’t turn the radio on, and she wasn’t interested in reading the newspaper. Once they had a fixed address, Della joined the local library and soon had books on the floor of every room. Stacey ripped the pages of one book, and Della taped it up immediately. She read to her, but Stacey was in no mood to sit and listen, so Della followed her around the house reading Curious George between drags on her cigarette. When Stacey fell asleep, however briefly, Della read The Complete Book of Children’s Needs. Breakable things once sitting low she now placed up and out of reach. Della said they were learning. Sage didn’t say anything.
A breach in her armor occurred, Della was sure of it, several weeks after the girl’s arrival. Three things happened in the same week, and Della, who kept a journal of every event that occurred, no matter how insignificant, had three specific events underlined in her writing. First, Stacey ate a whole peach without throwing any of it at anyone. The second thing she did was laugh. Sage came home from work and accidently stepped on a rubber duck, and the duck said something that sounded more like a fart than a quack, and she laughed. Every day after that, when Sage came home from work and before he had a shower, he stepped on the duck, and the little girl got a kick out of it. The third thing she did was speak. During weeks of crying and screaming fits, Stacey refused to say anything and pretended she didn’t hear anyone, as if she was a little kid on strike. She pointed a lot and cried and curled up in the fetal position when things didn’t go her way, but now she willingly spoke. Not only did she speak, she said the wor
d “mom.” Della felt no shame at how important this was to her. She had been yearning for it, and she knew how it had come to pass. Here, Mommy will help you. Mommy’s going to give you a bath now. Mommy loves you. Pass that to Mommy. Good girl.
The first time Stacey said the word “mom,” Della picked her up out of a chair and hugged her, and Stacey began to cry. Della didn’t clue in that these early pronouncements were not aimed at her at all. Or maybe they were. Maybe at that age the brain has only a tentative hold on what is real. The next day Della took Stacey downtown and bought her a winter coat, and in some magical way, the coat defined a point of no return. Once the Howards invested in a winter coat, they no longer mentioned finding the authorities and returning the little girl to wherever she had come from—wherever the word they both used consistently instead of whoever. But perhaps the winter coat wasn’t the turning point at all. It could have been a few months earlier. The exact moment may have been when they strapped her into the back seat of their purple car and acted as if she had belonged to them all along.
2
Della was only nineteen when she married Willy Hoffner and Sage stood as the best man at her wedding. Willy had arranged a honeymoon at Lake Louise but hadn’t told anyone where they were going, so it was three days after the wedding before Della found out about the tragedy. Her parents, who were divorced but had agreed to travel to the wedding together, had been killed in a collision with a transport truck a few hours after the reception.
The honeymoon had some highlights Della would never forget, but Willy stayed drunk most of the time and acted antsy when sober, so it was her memory of the wedding ceremony that kept her company when they drove back to Vancouver to find out about the disaster that had struck her family. The funeral was a formality. No one knew where Della’s sister was, and no one in Vancouver knew her parents. The deaths wiped away any sense of happiness Della had planned to harness in marriage; in a strange way, it was as if the marriage hadn’t taken place. Two days after the funeral, Willy’s friend Sage got himself a job on a cargo ship, and despite Della’s pleas that if ever she needed her husband at her side it was right then, Willy joined him.