“The way I see it . . .” Uncle Sam’s voice rose up from behind Idella. He was speaking to the whole roomful of people, and everyone turned to listen. “Bill’s just taking his own sweet time to get here, following his own route. That’s his way. I say we wait over to the church and be ready to receive him. Let’s make the best of it for Bill.”
Idella looked over at Sam’s familiar face, so like Dad’s. There weren’t too many teeth left in his mouth now, but the sweetness came through when he smiled. He’d been a handsome man. People down here didn’t know much about caring for teeth. If you happened to get dealt a poor set, you just lived with them or pulled them out.
Mr. Farley, the stationmaster, shuffled over to the woodstove and stoked the fire. He moved from group to group, nodding and smiling. There were more people crowded into his little station today than since the war started and men headed out to go shoot the Germans. “You folks stay here as long as you want.” Mr. Farley was being a real host. He was a gentleman in his way. “I won’t close till the last one’s out. It’s an unusual time.”
Mr. Farley had helped Idella onto the train the day she left here to go down to the States, to get the hell out of here, nearly forty years ago. He’d shaken her hand, as if he knew something big was taking place, and wished her well on her journey. He’d used that word, “journey.” She’d been so scared and so determined, with no more than twenty dollars tucked in her shoe. Dad had gotten it from someone—Uncle Sam, probably—and given it to her right here at this station, just before she’d boarded. “Tell them you’ve got two hundred,” he’d told her. “When you get to the border. Two hundred.” Dad knew. He knew she had to go.
Now she was back, maybe for the last time. The farm’d stand empty for a while. Then someone would see a good thing and move on in. To people up here, that old house would look like a good thing. She wouldn’t be surprised if some of these relatives were feeling each other out right now as to who might be taking up residence.
Course, it’d all go to Dalton, legally. He was the oldest and the male. Nothing left for the sisters but what they might scrounge from the house, which was another way of saying nothing.
“Let’s head over to the church, then.” Emma stood up. “No use waiting for a train that won’t come.”
Idella joined her. “I could call down to Maine, see if Edward has heard anything.”
They stood side by side, staring into the flickering woodstove.
“Where in hell are they?” Emma asked.
Idella sighed. “The fools.”
“The goddamned fools.”
They pulled their coats tight about them, shaking their heads in unconscious unison.
“Where in hell are we?” Avis was squeezed into the middle of the front seat between Dalton and Stanley.
“There’s the one road and we’re on it,” Stan answered. “We’re nearly to Bangor.”
“Did I fall asleep?”
“Yep. You could call it that.”
“Christ. How long we been driving?”
“Going on eight hours.” Stan drove steadily through the darkness, the wipers of the hearse thumping back and forth like a steadily rocked chair.
“Storming the whole time?”
“Yep.”
“I feel like a puckered-up pea wedged between two stalks of corn. There’s no room for my legs.” Avis shifted herself around on the seat. “I’m numb. My ‘dairy-aire’ isn’t there.”
“Well, don’t put it here.” Dalton was slowly emerging from sleep. “Christ. My elbows is down behind my knees somewhere.” He stared dully out his window. “Jesus, Mother of God. What’s it doing out there?”
“Some of everything. Snowed from Boston to Portland. Rained near the coast. Few times it freezed and come down like pellets.”
“What a mess.” Avis stared out the windshield.
“Been that the whole time.”
“I don’t just mean the weather,” Avis said.
“Me neither,” Stan replied.
Dalton scraped his fingernail down his side window. “It’s all blurry.”
“Be blurred to you with the sun shining, the shape you two were in.” Stan’s long body was folded at sharp angles behind the wheel of the hearse. His neck was hunched over like a vulture’s, trying to see through the windshield.
“I assume we got Dad in the back?” Avis tried to turn her head and peer through the little window.
“Yep. We got Bill for ballast. Took four grown men to get him in there.”
“Was I one of ’em?” Dalton rubbed his eyes.
“Nope.”
“He said grown men, Dalton.”
“I’m grown.”
“I didn’t know which port you two were holed up in when I got to North Station. I thought I’d best get Bill in back so we wouldn’t drive off without him.”
“Were you waiting on us long?” Avis asked, looking over at Stan. The collar of his familiar flannel shirt was poking out around his neck. Avis knew he’d have suspenders on under his coat.
“Long enough to notice.”
“I’m sorry, Stan. We lost track of the time.”
“You lost track of everything. Do either of you remember me pulling you out of that bar at the station?”
“Not really.” Avis sighed.
Dalton shook his head, slowly taking stock of his position. “Can you drive this thing all the way up? You want I should take the wheel?”
“No use showing up with four bodies.” Stan glanced over at Dalton.
“Hell, they could bury us all and be done with it.” Avis laughed. “Emma and Della will be ready to string us up in the barn.”
Stan leaned even closer to the windshield. “I can’t see but what’s two inches in front of me.”
“That’d be your nose.” Avis snickered.
Stan laughed. “It’s good to have some company. Even the likes of you two.”
“Who but you, Stan, could come up with a hearse in the middle of a goddamned nor’easter?” Avis ran her hand over the front of the dashboard. MITCHELL’S FUNERAL HOME—GORHAM, MAINE was printed in gold letters across the leather.
“Promised Mitchell a well dug out back of his place come spring,” Stan said. “We’re counting on the Gorham population to remain steady for the next few days.”
“Here’s to the population of Gorham!” Avis rummaged into her purse to unearth a flask. “You want to drink to Gorham, Dalton?”
“I never liked Gorham.” Dalton reached for Avis’s bottle and took a drink.
“I promised Mitchell that every Hillock this side of the North Pole—and there’s a lot of them—would be obliged. Said we’d all throw our business his way when the time comes.”
“I’ll try to remember,” Dalton said, taking another drink. “When my time comes.”
They rode along without talking for a long while. The sounds of the storm filled up the car—splatters and taps and whining winds. Stan kept his attention riveted on the road. Avis and Dalton stared ahead, the wipers screeching to and fro in front of them.
“The old goat is dead.” Dalton’s voice was clear and unexpected.
Avis looked over at him. “You sound glad.”
“I can breathe. Never did when he was living.”
“You get the farm, you bastard.”
“That’ll change my life. Lording over that pile of wind and rock.”
“You inherit it all,” Avis said. “Being the only male.”
“The only male we know about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There’s more than one Hillock walking that goes by the name of bastard. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them had French accents or Indian braids.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Hell, he probably didn’t know the half of them. Why do you think there was so many French girls come and gone so quick as housemaids?”
“They were dumb cows, is why.”
“Hell, if he’d kept his
hands off Mother some of the time, instead of filling her with his stinking seed, maybe she wouldn’t of died birthing one.”
“That’s a fine way to refer to us. If they’d stopped with just you, things’d be a lot better, is that what you’re saying, Dalton?”
“Before that, even,” Dalton said softly.
“Seems like I was having more fun when you two were asleep. Maybe you’d best say nothing.”
“Any word yet, Idella?” Uncle Sam stood up in the pew as she walked into the church.
“Nothing. Dwight don’t answer. Edward don’t either. Just keeps ringing.” Idella had been trying to get through for almost an hour.
“The lines must be down,” Uncle Guy offered.
“It’s awful cackley, that’s true,” Idella said. “I don’t know what’s become of them.”
“Move over.” Avis elbowed Dalton.
“The only way I can move over is to open the door and fall out.”
“Well, go on, then. I can’t sit like this much longer.”
“If you’re so cramped, why don’t you go lay down in the back next to Dad?”
“Maybe I will.”
“I understand it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You know damn well what I mean.”
“I know what you think you mean, you half-assed son of a bitch, and it’s not true.”
“Quit yammering, the both of you. We’re coming into Houlton. We’ll get some coffee and try to call up there again and tell ’em we’ve got Bill.”
“I need to piddle,” Avis said.
“There’s a diner up ahead, by the look of it. Don’t look quite open or quite closed.” Stan slowly pulled the hearse up in front of the dimly lit restaurant. “One of them signs is lit anyway, and I see someone in there behind the counter.” He opened his door and climbed out. “Jesus God Almighty, that’s a tight fit.”
“It’s pissing down like a horse,” Dalton said as he stuck one long leg and then the other out of the car.
“Don’t let’s talk about pissing till I’ve done it,” Avis said from inside the car. “One of you is going to have to peel me out of here.”
“I preferred the snow,” Stan said, tugging Avis out of the car. “At least you can see it.”
“It’s all ice out there,” Idella said. “It’s just terrible. I’m dripping icicles.”
“Any luck, Idella?” Emma came up to her as she walked back into the church, stomping the wet off her boots.
“The lines are definitely down in Connecticut. The operator can’t get through at all.”
“And Edward?”
“Still no answer. But it appears to be ringing.”
“The scrape of them wipers is vibrating my whole head,” Avis said. They were riding on into the night with only the greeny lights of the dashboard to outline their three huddled shapes. Avis sighed and closed her eyes. She was exhausted from staring past the smeared windshield, trying to follow the wavery headlight beams as they reached out, feebly, for the road.
Dalton was pressed against her, snoring. “Nothing like bacon and eggs to set the world right” had been his last and only words after they’d left the diner. He’d been asleep since they’d pulled back onto the road.
“Don’t worry, Stan,” Avis whispered, “I’m not going to sleep.”
“I’m into my third wind here. That coffee helped. I just wish we’d been able to get through up there. No one up to the house. They must all be waiting at the church, God love ’em.”
Avis kept her eyes shut. She folded her hands and listened to the sounds around her—the steady bump-thump of the wipers, the slooshing of the tires as they spewed rain and snow out from under them, Dalton’s raspy, smoke-heavy breath as he slept with his head pressed against the side window, his long body all curled on itself like a fiddle-head.
As cold and cramped and tired as they all were, she didn’t quite want this ride to ever end. She had the only three men that she’d ever really loved, and who she knew for a fact loved her, all to herself. Della and Emma loved her, like sisters. But they weren’t as forgiving. She supposed Dwight loved her, poor old soul that he was, but she couldn’t return it. She was grateful to him for his kindness, for marrying her in spite of who she was instead of because of it, for putting a roof over her head. But she was beholden to him, and that brought out the worst in her.
Dalton twisted in his sleep, pushing his knee into her legs. She pushed it back. Just enough flesh on it to cover the bone. She and Dalton had never been too good at doing what they were supposed to, or what was expected of them—except now that they were expected by everyone to drink and screw things up, they did manage to do that pretty good.
Even when they bickered, which was plenty, they were still fighting a war alone against the others. They’d always been in cahoots. There was that scheme when they were about ten and fifteen—they’d worked a way to sell lobsters to the passengers on the trains going through Uncle Sam’s property. The train would stop for water, and the two of them would climb aboard and sell whatever catch Dalton had managed from taking out that little boat he’d built. Avis did the talking, knowing even then that the way you asked for things, and how you looked doing it, mattered. They sold the lobsters for six cents apiece and lorded their mounting proceeds over the others at every opportunity. Dalton finally spent his getting more traps and then lost interest in the whole enterprise.
Avis had kept her money—it wasn’t even five dollars total—in a variety of hiding places, each more elaborate than the last, till one day Dad ran across it when he went to empty out a seed bag in the barn. It was drunk and gone by the time Avis discovered it missing. “That’s what you get for being so secretive,” Idella’d said. No sympathy from her. “If you’d put it in the bedroom and left it there, this wouldn’t have happened.” Hiding it from Idella had been half the fun.
Avis knew she was Dad’s favorite. They had found comfort in each other. She closed her eyes tighter. There were times when she’d be overcome by the need to be alone in the world with Dad, holed up in some room lying next to him, giving each other a bodily comfort that went right through them. It was like being home when she could just lie there quiet in his arms. Even Stan, dear Stan, probably thinks the worst, thinks they were being dirty. But they weren’t. They were both so lonely, her and Dad, standing on earth like that godforsaken house they lived in, spindly and forlorn atop that great cliff, exposed to every wind that blew from any direction. That’s how Avis had felt, as a little girl, after Mother died and there was no one to talk to about her secrets or fears. Della was, what? Too distrustful? Too scared herself to offer any real comfort.
No one who saw Dad bluster and bang, who heard him drink and yell and carry on, would ever know the agony that man went through, for years, after Mother died. He didn’t let on, after the funeral and all, after that first stretch of time passed and people thought he’d gotten over it enough to keep going. But Avis knew.
It was Avis that first went down, unbidden, when she knew that Della was sleeping. She slipped out from next to her and tiptoed down the stairs and into his bedroom. Without a word she crawled in beside him, and he turned and scooped up her puny little nothing of a body and wrapped his arms around her and they went off to sleep. Dad must have woken up sometime and brought her upstairs, because she woke up the next morning curled beside her sister. That was how it began, their special closeness, that lasted right on through.
Avis knew that people wondered about her and Dad. She could feel their eyes trying to look through her. The old biddies up in Canada would make judgments about her. “She’s been to prison,” their eyes said when they looked at her. They’d gotten themselves through many a long afternoon discussing Avis. She could just hear them—Maisey Moore and Mrs. Doncaster—clinking their teacups and crunching their dry toast, hardly waiting to get the words out before they swallowed. “Sent away, you know, for luring men up to her room down
in Boston.” “Took up with a gangster of some kind.” “He was handsome, I hear. He got her to do all sorts of things till they finally got caught.” Avis sighed. Tommy was handsome, there was no denying.
It was Dad who drove down to Boston and got her out of that hellhole after two years of being locked up. Neither of her sisters knew the half of what she put up with, of what got done to her. All they knew is she got certified as a beautician. Like she was in some kind of finishing school.
At least Idella didn’t say anything to that damn fool Edward. Poor Idella would never know the number of times he’d tried getting his big, clumsy hands up inside her skirt. Even at the wake, with Dad laid out in her parlor and the house all full of people, Edward had come lumbering after her down into the cellar to “help her fix the furnace.” Damn fool. He wanted to start a fire, all right, but not in the furnace. Put more than two drinks in him and he was nothing but trouble. Avis started to laugh.
“What are you finding so funny? I sure as hell could use a laugh right about now.”
Avis looked over at Stan’s familiar shape, all angles and points, as Hillock as they come. He was leaned over staring hard at what little bits of road he could see. He was getting tired. The storm, by the look of it, was getting worse.
“Oh, I was laughing about Edward. He tumbled head over heels down the cellar stairs and looked so funny with that bandage all around his head. When he put that damned brimmed hat on he’s always wearing, perched up on top of all that gauze, I about peed my pants.”
“Poor Eddie.” Stan chuckled. “If you act like a damn fool, then damn-fool things are going to happen to you.”
“He brought it on himself,” Avis said.
“What are you two finding to laugh about?” Dalton was coming to. “Damned if something don’t ache, it hurts, if it don’t hurt, it’s wet. I feel like throwing Dad out of that damned box. I need it more than he does.” He peered forward. “My God, it’s ice now, ain’t it?”
“Been more ice than rain this last half hour. I’d like to pull over to scrape some off the windshield,” Stan said, “but I’m afraid if we stop, we won’t get going again. The defroster in this hearse isn’t up to this.”
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay Page 32