by Joan Boswell
Zen hauled them out of the way. She lined them up next to the cash register. “Aunt Maude, you’d better confess. Helen says the guy died.”
“It was natural causes.” Aunt Maude thrust her hands on her hips. “Then SHE, who is supposed to be my best friend, takes my ring and my dress. My designer dress, that I bought in the seventies, and it still fits like a glove.”
“Like a sausage, I keep telling you,” Helen said.
“You took my dress and jammed it in a green garbage bag and left it here. My designer dress. I might never speak to you again, Helen Fray.”
“It wouldn’t be too soon, Maude Crombie. I’ve had about enough of that stupid dress.”
Zen held a hand between them. “Time out. So those men are looking for your dress? That doesn’t make sense. I can believe they tracked you down because of the dress, everyone would remember seeing you in it. Ask a few bus drivers, and pretty soon your address pops up. But why do they want the dress? What are you hiding?”
“Nothing. Honest. I don’t know why they want the dress.”
The dressing room door opened. Rayette stepped out encased in a red, white and blue sequined dress. “How much is this? I love it. Fits me like a second skin.”
Aunt Maude sucked in her breath. “That’s not for sale. That’s mine. Zen, you get my dress back from her or I quit.”
“I found it in Housedresses.” Rayette said. “Fair game.”
Zen stepped between Rayette and Aunt Maude before any ripping happened. “Aunt Maude, you tell me what’s going on or I sell this dress to Rayette for two dollars.”
Aunt Maude made a strangled sound. “Okay, okay, you win. I got up to pee at three-thirty and found the guy dead beside me. I panicked. Those goons had driven us to the hotel. I knew they’d be back in the morning. I wanted to keep the diamond, so I had to get out of there and get a cab back to our hotel. I didn’t have much cash in my elephant purse so I went through his pockets. He had a lot of money. I took it. That’s it. End of story.”
Zen stared at her. “Rayette, that dress looks nice on you,” she said over her shoulder. “You’d be planning to wear it to Bingo?”
“Okay, okay,” Maude said, flapping her arms. “He had some stones in one pocket. I took them, too.”
“Stones?”
“Pebbly things. Milky white but transparent. Dirty on some edges.”
“And you thought they were—?”
“Uncut diamonds. I’ve heard stories about New York.”
Zen glanced back at the storeroom. Clothing billowed out the door. She left Helen and Aunt Maude staring each other down and dragged Sasha over to the window. “Listen, in the bag where you found that dress Rayette is wearing, did you find a beaded elephant purse?”
Sasha nodded.
“Where did you put it?”
Sasha pointed to the hangers in the wedding dress section.
Zen flipped through the hangers until she found the green and yellow beaded elephant. She opened it. It was empty, save for a pebble in one corner. “Was there anything in it?”
“Yeah, some gravel. I’m not so dumb. Make somebody feel special.”
Sharif and Rafael emerged from the storeroom. Sharif looked sweaty and uncomfortable. Rafael’s hair was spritzed up like candy floss.
Sharif posed like a wrestler in front of Aunt Maude and Helen. “We have been unsuccessful in our search.”
Rafael nudged him and pointed at Rayette. Sharif’s eyes bugged out.
“I see you were not lying. We have been too late.”
“I’ll say you’re too late, buddy,” Rayette said. “I bought this fair and square for two dollars. Finders keepers.”
“I think you might be looking for this.” Zen held up the elephant purse.
Rafael snatched it from her hand. He looked inside, pulled out the sole stone, and showed it to Sharif.
“Where are the rest?” Sharif shook the bag in Aunt Maude’s face.
“I dumped them,” Sasha said. “Nobody goes to a wedding with a bag of dirt.”
“Tell the nice man where you dumped them,” Zen said.
“In the fish tank, with the other gravel.”
Helen whipped her head around to the window display so fast Zen heard it crack.
“And where is the fish tank now, Sasha?” Zen asked.
“Constable Fray bought it. He said it would be calming and restful in the police station, when he had to take people in for questioning.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill. She handed it to Zen.
Zen turned to Sharif. “I believe your work here is done. We won’t detain you any longer.”
Sharif straightened his jacket and marched out. Rafael followed, tall and strong and carrying the elephant purse.
The door jingled shut. Outside the window, the two men conferenced at the fender of the Crown Victoria, with much pointing at the police station.
The only sound in the store was the tumbling of snowsuits down a slippery slope of slashed green bags.
“Helen, I’m gonna kill you.”
“Maude, I’m never going anywhere with you again.”
“Oh yes, you are. You’re going to the police station with me. You’re going to talk your nephew into giving me back my diamonds.”
The two women pushed each other out the door.
Zen grabbed the phone to give Jeremy the heads-up while they crossed the street.
Sasha turned to Rayette. “I don’t think that’s a lucky Bingo dress. I found the one Mrs. Witherspoon wore the night she won a thousand dollars. Come on, I’ll show you.”
When Zen got off the phone, the sequined dress was hanging in the overcoats section and Rayette primped in front of the mirror in a purple sateen square dance dress with a rhinestone yoke.
Zen smiled. “Sasha, I guess I need a new employee. It’s time you learned how to handle the cash register. We’re going to put little pictures on it so it will be easier to use. Rayette is going to give you two dollars for that dress. Rayette, you’re going to be patient, because Sasha is new and it takes her a little while to catch on. But she’s really good at making customers feel special.”
Vicki Cameron’s short stories have appeared in the Ladies’ Killing Circle anthologies, Storyteller magazine, and several German anthologies. Her young adult novel, That Kind of Money, was nominated for Edgar and Arthur Ellis awards. After a successful shopping trip to Frenchy’s, a popular used clothing chain in Nova Scotia, Vicki felt the desire to capture the bins in a story.
The Minstrel Boy
Barbara Fradkin
Dr. David Browne turned slowly in place, scanning the devastated street. The occasional moan of pain or frantic mother’s call could still be heard, but in the main a stunned silence had descended upon the scene. The seriously wounded had been transported to hospital, and the one dead man had been removed by the police. The remainder huddled in the lee of shops, cradling injured limbs and bloodied heads.
Three constables moved among them, taking witness statements and stilling the last tremors of the deadly rage. City workmen had already begun to clear away the bricks, tattered banners and shards of glass that littered the streets, and shopkeepers were venturing back to assess the damage.
“Haven’t seen a riot like this in Ottawa since the 1860s,” came a voice at David’s elbow. He turned to find one of the constables, breathless and sweaty beneath a patina of dust. “Used to happen all the time when I were a boy, between the Frenchmen and the Irish, or the raftsmen and the Bytowners. But we was all hoping since the government came, folks would settle down a bit.”
As an Anglo-Irishman growing up in working-class Montreal, David had seen worse, but the thought was no comfort. The Fenians used to sneak across the Vermont border every year to foment trouble at Orange Parades, and his older brother Liam, a staunch defender of the Empire, had come home twice nursing broken limbs but crowing about the number of traitorous Papist skulls he had cracked. David had hoped to find the old feuds less entren
ched in Canada’s fledgling capital city, but the carnage outside Upper Town’s newest Catholic church was disheartening.
“It appears to have been the work of a few inflamed youths, however,” he ventured with more assurance than he felt. “I haven’t encountered many of the leadership from either side.”
“Perhaps not,” replied the constable. “But it’s them leaders stir the lads up, and now a man’s been killed, which makes it a very serious matter indeed. I don’t suppose any of the lads volunteered any information while you were tending them, did they, Doctor? I’ve interviewed more than a dozen witnesses with na’ar a useful bit of information between them. They’ve all turned deaf and blind.”
David shook his head. “Who was the dead boy?”
“No one’s admitting, and he were beat so bad about the face it’s hard to tell. All I found were this truncheon lying nearby.” The constable removed a piece of wood from the accumulated debris in his cart. “I’m worried the lads know very well who he is and who did him in, but they’ve got their own form of justice planned. Know what I mean?”
David knew precisely what he meant, but as he turned the wood over in his hands, his answer died on his lips. It was part of a shaft, carved, oiled and sanded smooth. Although it was splintered and sticky with blood and dirt, he had no trouble recognizing it. With that recognition came a great despair.
Jimmy.
After he had treated the wounded, David urged his horse down Sparks Street towards the crowded tenements of Lebreton Flats, where Jimmy lived. All the while he feared what he would discover. Prayed that he was wrong. It seemed impossible that such a lyrical, lovingly fashioned piece of wood could have found purpose in the carnage of a common street brawl.
The first time David had seen the wood, Jimmy had been cradling it in his rough stableboy’s hands, sanding the fine grain of its maple shaft. David had just returned to the boarding house from Dr. Petley’s surgery, where he’d been assisting until he had sufficient funds to establish his own practice. His brother was still stubbornly refusing to underwrite what he regarded as David’s folly in abandoning civilized Montreal for a dusty, treeless timber town. But David had found Ottawa a lively, if fractious, city with a shortage of doctors to attend to the new Dominion’s burgeoning public service. He would prove Liam wrong yet, and for the first time use his own resources to establish himself.
His first move had been to purchase a horse and carriage so that he possessed the means to respond to calls from across the city. Widow Barnaby’s boarding house had a generous stable at the rear, and David had first encountered Jimmy when he’d brought his new horse home. She was a small, wiry bay, sway-backed and no longer young, but beautiful nonetheless for being his very own. He scrutinized Jimmy’s every move as the boy watered her and rubbed her down, singing a lilting Celtic ballad as he worked.
“My mother used to sing Irish songs when I was a boy,” David observed. “But I haven’t heard that one.”
“Made it up meself,” Jimmy mumbled, picking up a currying brush. Despite the boy’s broad hands and ungainly limbs, something about his touch seemed tender.
“You use words well. Can you read?”
Jimmy reddened beneath his freckles. “Some. Not much call to.”
“Jimmy!” a man bellowed from the adjacent room. “What’re you yammering about out there! Get on with—” The head groom thrust his balding head through the door and snapped to attention at the sight of David. Deference erased the sneer of contempt from his face. “Dr. Browne! Jimmy ought to be fetching your carriage out the front entrance, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. Regan. In future he will, but today I wanted to oversee her care myself.”
Hands clasped behind him, Mr. Regan inspected the horse with military solemnity. “If you have any concerns or complaints, doctor, please inform me immediately.” He gave Jimmy a meaningful stare before taking his leave.
Jimmy bowed his tousled head as he resumed his chores, but the joy was gone from his step and the song from his lips. The following afternoon David stopped by the bookstore on a whim, and as Jimmy loosened Lady’s traces, David laid his purchase down on the boy’s favourite straw bale.
“This just came into the bookshop, and I thought you might enjoy it. It’s the adventures of a young lad named Tom Sawyer.”
Jimmy averted his gaze shyly without response, but the next morning the book had disappeared. When it reappeared on the straw bale a week later, David replaced it with Gulliver’s Travels and then with a tale by the popular British author Charles Dickens. Over the spring, this informal tutelage slowly grew, away from the critical eye of the head groom. One morning when David arrived to fetch his trap, he found a notebook sitting on the bale. Jimmy was bent over a maple log, painstakingly whittling. David picked up the notebook, which was filled with a sprawling, clumsy hand. Jimmy focussed even more intently on his whittling.
“May I borrow this?” David asked. “The nights are long, and the company of my fellow boarders is sometimes wanting.”
David interpreted Jimmy’s buck tooth grin as acquiescence, and no more was said. When David settled into bed with the notebook, he found his intuition confirmed. The writing was ragged and the language rough, but the long rambling ballad itself was fascinating. Adventures on the high seas, discoveries of distant lands; a journey into a young man’s dreams as he gazed out through the bars of the life to which he was born.
The ballad would not leave him. The next day David went to view a modest house on Daly Street. Houses in Sandy Hill were being bought by Ottawa’s new professional families as quickly as tradesmen could erect them, and with its proximity to the hospital on Rideau Street, it seemed the perfect neighbourhood for a young physician to establish himself. The red brick house had room on the main floor for both a consulting room and a modest surgery, as well as ample quarters for himself upstairs. A third floor held sufficient space for domestic staff once he was able to afford them.
That latter qualification troubled him all the way back to the boarding house until he spied Jimmy hard at work at his carving. From the chunk of maple, the curved frame of a harp had emerged. A brilliant idea set David’s hopes soaring.
“Jimmy.” He tried to make his words sound casual. “I will be moving to my own house soon, and I will need someone to care for Lady, and perhaps to tend to some of the domestic affairs whilst I’m in surgery.”
Jimmy barely paused, but his fingers fumbled over Lady’s bridle.
“On the third floor, there’s a room with space for a bed, desk and gas lamp by which to write. I can’t pay you much yet, but I can offer you room and board in exchange for your services. On one condition.”
“Me ma needs me at home,” Jimmy interjected, but David paid scant attention, for he had attended at Jimmy’s mother’s last confinement himself, and he knew there wasn’t a square inch to spare in their cottage.
“On one condition,” he repeated. “There’s a small school two blocks from my home. I’ve spoken to the headmaster, and you may begin classes in September. There you will read not only Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, but Shakespeare, Thomas More, and all the great writers of history.”
Jimmy flushed a mottled red, and David caught a momentary glint of moisture in his eyes. Briskly, David reached into his black bag. “There’s no hurry to decide. Meanwhile try this cat gut on the harp; it should produce a better sound than horsehair on the lower strings.”
Jimmy didn’t meet his gaze nor reach for the suture thread, which David laid on his straw bale, while Jimmy busied himself rubbing down the tack. To save the boy further embarrassment, David retrieved his black bag and headed for the house.
“It’s a long way,” Jimmy murmured, almost out of earshot. “From me kin and me mates. I wouldn’t know a soul.”
David paused to reconsider the wisdom of his idea. Jimmy was a mere boy, fourteen at the most, rough-hewn and lacking the easy confidence that comes from breeding. David knew better than most how it felt to walk into a
classroom of fashionably dressed and impeccably bred young men, not daring to speak lest his peasant grammar make him the laughingstock. In his shame, he’d even invented a father who had been a brave ship’s captain lost at sea rather than own up to the drunken, penniless candlestick maker who’d blighted his youth.
By what perverse missionary zeal did he presume to drag this shy, reluctant boy along this same path? He retraced his steps to the stable, where he surprised the boy bent over his harp with the new cat gut. Jimmy thrust it aside and returned to cleaning the bridle.
“Jimmy, I know I’m Protestant, but I was a boy like yourself once, living in a shanty and apprenticed to a bootmaker. But I had a dream, and in this new country our fathers chose, we are all entitled to dreams. The Lord has given you a great talent and the means to fulfil whatever dream you will. But it must be your dream, not mine.”
“Me Da’s already worked hard to get me this position here. He won’t accept charity.”
David intended to arrange payment of Jimmy’s tuition, so that he would not experience the derision heaped on the charity cases. “I’d expect you to work hard. I need a man I can rely on. Why don’t I call on your father after church on Sunday, and discuss the arrangement with him?”
The boy’s eyes widened. “He’s a bit old-fashioned, is me da. Just so you know, he don’t like words the way I do.”
David had occasion to recall Jimmy’s warning during his encounter with the boy’s father that Sunday afternoon, for more apt words were never spoken. In the sweltering noonday heat of June, he had been ushered to the only easy chair in the front room to face the man’s stubborn, hard-bitten stare. A massive wooden crucifix dominated the tiny room, a palpable symbol of the divide between them.
“ ’Preciate the offer, Doctor,” Mr. Donahue said. “But I got Jimmy a good position at Widow Barnaby’s, with tolerable pay and a chance for advancement. What would he be learning from books at school?”