Dollybird

by Anne Lazurko

  “It helps chase those demons, boy.” Silas nodded at the jar in my hand.

  What did he know of demons? He’d showed up shortly after I moved in, said he was a neighbour, said he could help a little, introduce me to people in the community and such. So far I was still on my own. But between tending the neighbours’ livestock and driving the honey wagon I was making ends meets, feeding Casey okay. Didn’t need nobody to take care of him either. He came with me to do the cow chores and then slept on the wagon seat while I dumped the foul buckets of them could afford to pay someone to deal with the stink coming from their prim asses. I was glad Casey was too little to understand what those young foggers were saying to me. Taffy wouldn’t have liked him to see his old man put down. And I didn’t want him getting no idea that was a proper way for kids to act. Casey would learn respect. I’d make sure of that. The Millers had been good to him. He’d grown, his cheeks fattened up a little. Mrs. Miller even cried a bit, handing him over and quick wiping her eyes like she knew it was silly. Just couldn’t help herself. I looked over at him sleeping by the stove in a small bed fashioned out of wooden crates. Casey did that to people.

  But I was getting all trapped up by the dark of winter. Couldn’t sit still any more, my whole body aching for the sun. The shack was about a mile from town on a bit of a knoll. I liked it when I first saw it. Looking out the window over all that grass was just like looking out over the water at home. Bad choice for winter though. Windy as hell. The cold nosed around the sod in the windows and the snow blew in drifts against the door so every day I had to dig us out. So bloody cold. Casey slept with me so we could trap our heat. Even so, every morning the blankets were frozen to the end of the bed and iced under our noses where our breath froze. Kindle the stove to a roar, thaw the water and our bones, a little porridge and off for the day. When the snow blew hard we might as well have been a hundred miles from anywhere. On those days I could only keep the stove lit and hope the storm let up before the water run out.

  Looking out now, I could see a huge moon, the cold hanging in the air, beautiful like I imagined diamonds might look.

  “Holy Mother of Christ.” The moonshine whirled in my head. I leaned against the wall for support. “Godforsaken hellhole.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you left anything better behind.” Silas was always telling me it wasn’t so bad a winter. He’d seen worse. He took a swig from the jar. Seemed immune to the stuff.

  “Things were better there in some ways.” A dog or a coyote loped across the moonlit snow a hundred yards from the window, then disappeared. “Family, for one. The Flaherty clan watched out for one another. Everybody knew each other, the whole works transplanted into Cape Breton, following the first ones who came after the famine. They always talked about it.”

  “So you were born here?”

  “Yeah, but you’d not have known it. Didn’t speak a word of English until they made us go to their schools. I was maybe seven or eight.” Children were cruel back then too, taunting; the teachers almost as bad. “We spoke the Gaelic. But you know it’s funny. Each area had its own. It was so bad me and my wi... Well – people could live fifty miles apart and not understand each other.”

  “She wasn’t from your town then.”

  He was a nosy bugger. “There was always the fiddle. Who needed to talk?” I smiled remembering. We knew how to have fun. ‘Come to the ceilidh,’ they’d say and every house would show off the talents of them that lived there. “My mother loved the ceilidh.”

  It was the only time I saw her laugh and stand up a little straighter. She’d stooped over with years of caring for all of us and worrying after my Da. But at a party she’d draw up tall and sing or play the fiddle a bit. Mostly she danced, stepping quicker as the night wore on, looking younger, even pretty. I’d be embarrassed and proud at the same time, watching from the floor with all the other kids, wondering if this woman was another person and my real mother was back at home bent over the stoves, pushing damp hair out of tired eyes.

  “She didn’t drink,” I said to Silas, and glared at the jar in his hand. With a head full of my mother, the moonshine was wrong. She left drinking to the men, who only came inside when the jug was empty and sat watching with stupid grins, or passed out in the corner, or worse, joined in with their laughing too loud and cursing in front of the kids. My Da was one of them, and all the warm feeling I got from watching Mother would turn bad.

  “But my Da made up for it. Figured himself a regular troubadour, spouting the words of Robbie Burns as though the bard was one of his own. When he was drunk he forgot how much he hated the Scots.”

  Silas’s moonshine had fogged me over so I could barely see, forgot I was talking to him. But the memories were clear enough.

  “My father is a bastard.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’d tell him, ‘Please Aiden. Let’s just be going home now. It’s late for the little ones.’ Saving him his dignity. Not like Mrs. Hennesey, pulling her husband out by the ear, cursing him with every pinch, everyone laughing behind. Or Mrs. Dunhanley chasing hers out with her purse.” I laughed and Silas looked amused. I wondered if I had been as pathetic on those nights as her three boys, sullen and pimpled, trailing behind.

  “I don’t know why she cared about his good name,” I said, Silas just watching. “He’d stumble around, puking in the bushes, moaning about his sorry ass, how we’d be better off without him.”

  It was true. But it suddenly felt like I’d said too much. Until I said it out loud I could pretend it wasn’t what everyone knew and thought, could tell myself the town was wrong about my father, and the rest of us too. But far from home, drunk and lonely, it didn’t seem to matter who knew. And telling it felt good.

  “I grew up in a dump,” I said. “Barely hanging on, buildings leaning right out over the coulee on the edge of town.”

  I heard myself saying the edge of town. It was the edge of the world. The house was a two-room shanty. Four of us slept in one tiny lean-to room off the kitchen. If you needed to piss in the night, you’d crawl over the others yelping and groaning, the same when you came back. The main room was the kitchen, where my parents’ bed was tucked into the corner, three feet in the air on pine blocks. Underneath was a box-like crib pulled out for the two youngest to sleep in. And there always seemed to be baby sheep or pigs in the house. Mother hated it, but Da said we couldn’t let them die of cold. It seemed an odd thing when only weeks later we’d butcher one of them that we’d saved.

  “If I’d have stayed, I’d have done something with that place.”

  “What’d you leave for?”

  I didn’t want to answer. Casey snuffled in his sleep. The boy’s hair floated around his head, his face like an angel’s in the glow from moonlight coming through the window. His right thumb was resting limp on his lower lip ready to comfort him. There was a knife-sharp twist in my gut. I’d like to think it was love, but I never knew for sure after Taffy. I grabbed the moonshine, took a swig and another, coughing hard and finishing off the jar, waving it at Silas.

  “I’ve gotta get a place of my own. Walter says he has a good piece of land for me. All I have to do is go in and sign the papers. Don’t know that I trust him though. Like he’s not telling me something.”

  “They usually give first chance to those who’ve farmed before,” Silas said.

  “Yeah, well. I learned to stook and thresh and every other bloody thing they asked for on that harvest team.”

  “There are others who have waited longer,” he said, his eyes like razor points behind his thick glasses. “Worked harder too.”

  I knew it, but it was easier to begrudge someone else than figure out how to pull myself up. My head was buzzing.

  “And there’s the boy.” Silas jerked his head in the direction of the crib. “You’re gonna need a woman out there for Casey.”

  “I kn
ow, damn it. You can stop pestering me.”

  “Just saying, I don’t think you know how hard it’s gonna be.”

  “Oh shut up, you lumpy old man.” I smashed the jar onto the table and watched in surprise as glass sprayed across it and onto the floor. Casey started howling. “You get him. I gotta piss.”

  Silas shook his head. “How the hell do I know what to do with this?” he muttered, walking over to Casey, who had sat up and was rubbing his eyes.

  Silas bent and tried to wrap the rough blanket around Casey, picked him up and held him to his shoulder. I seen his face soften against Casey’s hair and heard soothing noises coming from his throat. When I stomped out the door, Silas was patting and rubbing the boy’s back as though he knew exactly what to do. I staggered to the side of the barn, sending the shadows of the horses into a skittish dance.

  CHAPTER 13

  i i i

  By the time I went to sign for the land the next day, Walter had already found me a woman to go with it. A dollybird. Said he wouldn’t give me the land unless I took her with me ’cause he was responsible for my making a go of the homestead, counting on my success to help him keep his job.

  “I’ve heard some of these women are only too happy to become wives,” he said. He sat at his desk and smirked up at me.

  “I’m not looking for a wife.”

  “Okay. But you have to sign these papers so it’s all up to snuff. And there’s only a small fee.”

  He was a shit of a man.

  Walter looked out the dirty window. “Look, you won’t make it without a woman. Not with a kid out there.”

  “I know.” I wanted to turn and walk out, but it was as though one foot was already snared in a trap. “Somehow I thought I’d just get a homestead. Never figured it all out.”

  “Well, figure it out quick. The weather’s warming up and others will start asking about that quarter.” He looked at me hard. “I might even have to give it to that bastard Gabe, if you can’t decide.” His eyebrows shot up as though I would be solely responsible for this travesty if I made the wrong decision. “This here’s the last piece of decent dirt this year. And you need the dollybird.” He shrugged. “But it’s your choice.”

  “All right. All right. How do I get fixed up with her then?”

  “Already done. Just have to sign here. Hope she can handle a miserable young bugger.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I pulled my hat down to cover my face when I stepped out into the street. I’d showed up in this town alone with Casey and right away chose to ignore the sidelong glances, the women whispering as though I didn’t know their gossip was about my motherless child. And now this plan, this dollybird. There’d be more talk, the town so small an outsider was their only source of entertainment, proving those from elsewhere could never measure up. Then again, why would this place be any different from Arichat?

  I wasn’t even sure I cared, the infernal cold winter making me crazy to get out of my shack, out of Ibsen. I wanted land, to be my own boss, crazed and selfish and greedy for expecting anything at all, yet wanting it all the more. Wanting too much was how I lost Taffy. The memories were always lurking, creeping over me like a harbour fog, clouding up every thought until I couldn’t move. If I hadn’t made her go to Halifax, if we hadn’t committed the most mortal of sins.

  At the Ceilidh I’d watched the dance and clapped along or sat looking at my scuffed shoes, embarrassed as Taffy’s father wished me to be. Until Taffy danced by, her slim white legs flashing. She fixed me with a smile that raced over my skin and fluttered in my stomach; the crowd, her father’s glare, all of it gone. She loved me. She was quiet and gentle and sweet and she loved me. My throat ached watching her.

  We left without a word to one another, just looked across the room and nodded, time to go, as though we’d agreed to something and there was no going back. Outside near the back porch, we grabbed hands and ran towards the harbour. The wind was loud and driving, a storm coming off the water. We stood looking out over the edge of the rock. It was deep dusk, that time when the black of night hasn’t quite come down, but nothing has the shape it takes during the day. Everything was just shadows dancing against the rocks. The waves crashed below, roaring in the darkness.

  Taffy was afraid. So was I, if I’m honest.

  “This way.” I leaned in close so she could hear, smelled her damp hair, felt her ear against my lips. She looked at me excited, eyes shining, face specked with spray. “There’s a cave.” I grabbed her hand tight, pulling her along the edge of the rock.

  It wasn’t a cave, only a hollowed-out face of stone worn smooth by water and wind and sand. We tumbled in and Taffy looked around, brushing the hair out of her eyes.

  “It’s beautiful in here,” she sighed. “And what’s this?” She pulled an old grey wool blanket from a crevice.

  “It’s. I...” My face was hot, but my teeth were chattering.

  “Were you expecting someone then?” She spread it on the ground and sat down, tucking her legs underneath her and wrapping her skirt around her knees. A proper girl.

  I didn’t know where to look, what to say, so I finally thumped down next to her. “I’ve come here since I was a kid. Spent hours watching the waves.”

  “With other girls, I imagine.” She flicked her hair out of her eyes to laugh at me.

  Just Rebecca, but we were little kids wondering about privates and how they worked, curious and disgusted at the same time.

  “I like to get away from the racket at home.” I didn’t want to tell her of Da’s endless, miserable act of dying. Taffy thought he was charming, though a little rough around the edges. She didn’t know the half of it.

  Taffy shivered and I slid my arm around her. We’d sat the same way on her father’s porch swing, rocking while we talked. It was different alone in the storm. There were choices we were making that could change everything. She was tense, waiting for direction, putting me in charge. I wrapped the blanket around us. When she looked up, I kissed her damp forehead, tasted the sea spray, nibbling bit by bit, her eyes, her nose, her cheek and neck, soft and smelling like flowers. Her breasts were small and firm, her cold nipples reaching out to my tongue. She moaned, slipped her hand around the back of my neck and pulled me close, finding my mouth. A warm current ran from her lips to mine and through my gut. I was so hard I could barely move.

  “But what will we do?” She was suddenly stiff, her big eyes staring into mine.

  For an instant I pulled away and gazed down into her trusting face. She loved me. My chest swelled with the power of it, being a man making anything possible.

  “We’ll get married,” I whispered into her mouth, “and go away from here and be very, very happy.”

  All night we lay wrapped in the scratchy blanket, clothes twisted around us, whispering and touching. Rain pooled in hollows in the rock and the waves beat against the rock below. Toward dawn the wind died and the sky lightened. She started to fidget, pushing fingers through her tangled hair, straightening her skirt and sweater. She seemed to want to be somewhere else. Suddenly she turned on me.

  “Dillan, what will we do now?” Her eyes were getting misty, her bottom lip quivering. “I love you, but my father...” She began to cry quietly.

  Being the man was suddenly less powerful. I was supposed to make her feel better, but the same doubts had started swatting at my head. “We’ll be all right, Taffy.” I helped her up, brushing the hair back from her face and the grit from her skirt, feeling more like a father than a lover. Taking her arm, I walked her out into the dawn. “They don’t understand. And your father, well, I’ll handle him.”

  It was what I had to say, but Mother’s voice was ringing in my ears. Don’t do it Dillan. God sees everything. Just pray for strength to fight the temptation. And Da. Sure it feels good boy, but you don’t want to be saddled with no baby
. Just keep your pants on. I didn’t want my father in my head. The water was sparkling in the sun; the wind was only a light breeze now. Rain made everything fresh, colours stronger. Looking down from the rocks, each stone and pebble was clear against the bottom of the harbour, magnified by light on water. We walked home, pretending. But the light made all the difference.

  i i i

  I wished she was beside me now on this godforsaken prairie, walking this unfriendly street with her head high, saying fog off to all who had doubted. We’d made a mistake, but she didn’t deserve what happened, her father cutting her loose, the filth of Halifax, being dead.

  Suddenly the frozen ground came up to meet my face. I was a half-mile from home.

  “You son of a bitch.”

  The familiar voice froze my balls hard, fear making it hard to breathe. I waited for the boots to land.

  “You think I don’t know what Walter’s done? Givin’ you my land so I’m left with that piece of shit to the south. Won’t grow nothing.”

  Slowly I stood to face the man who’d beaten me senseless only months before. Gabe was less bulky now, the skin around his jaw slack, muscles all but gone. His filthy pants were tucked into high-top boots, and his stained coat had buttons missing. He glared at me. His narrowed eyes were like my Da’s after a binge, glazed and drunk, his real self somewhere just beyond, eyes that could be slobbering in self-pity or beating you. Gabe stumbled closer and I stepped back.

  “You think you’re better than me? Like Walter, that bastard.” He swayed slightly.

  “No.” I stopped. He didn’t recognize me. “I’m just taking the piece he offered.” I shrugged like it was nothing. “There’s no need of fighting here. I’m going home.”

  “Yeah run away, you little prick.” Gabe laughed a short barking sound. “Like you did from your wife.”

  “What?” My neck bristled. I turned slowly, fists clenched.