Wild Geese

by Caroline Pignat

  I have to laugh, for she’s right. But my laughter only makes her scowl all the more. She stomps up the stairs to our room. I knit for a little while longer as the fire dies.

  I like carrying the baskets and helping the families in need. I like working with the sisters. What’s wrong with that? In these past few months, Mother Bruyere has taught me so much. She has given me a sense of purpose. A belief in God. A belief in myself. She has taken me from the muddy streets of Bytown and patiently helped me knit my life together, holes and all, just like Frankie’s sock.

  “How did you know you were meant to be a nun?” I ask Sister Phelan, as we trudge through the drifts on our way to the market the next morning. She smiles to herself as though my question isn’t unexpected, though surely ’tis to me. “Did an angel appear to you or a vision or something?”

  Her laughter comes out in puffs of steam. “No, nothing like that. For me, it was just a knowing. A sense of coming home. Like I belonged.”

  We walk in silence, listening to our boots crunching the fresh snow. I want to belong, more than anything. Only I don’t know for sure where that is.

  “Nobody knows right away, Kathleen,” she explains. “At least, nobody I’ve met. We all had to discern, you know, spend time learning and thinking and praying about our path.”

  I nod. It makes sense, really. “Can you show me how to discern?”

  She smiles. “Step one: become a postulant.”

  A postulant?

  The word catches me by surprise and I don’t say anything more the rest of the way. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. ’Tis no different really than my days now, for I’d be working with the sisters, praying with them, learning from them. I talk to Mother Bruyere about it when we get back from the market, and she is even less surprised by my interest than Sister Phelan was.

  “Becoming a Sister of Charity means taking vows of poverty ...”

  I’ve no penny to my name

  “... obedience ...”

  I want you to tell me what to do ...

  “... dedication to serving the poor ...”

  I spend my days doing that already…

  “... and chastity.”

  I hesitate at this one. I’d always assumed I’d have children of my own one day. A family.

  Am I really willing to give all that up?

  “Do not worry about having the answers now,” she says. “A postulant is meant to question and search. After a year, you will know if this is your path or not. Then you will decide. Today, you need only decide if you want to know more.”

  “Yes, Mother,” I say wholeheartedly. “I do.”

  Two weeks later, I don a purple postulant dress and white bonnet. I take all I own in this world, the black rosary Father Robson gave me, and I leave Saint Raphael’s to join the sisters in the convent.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  And so the winter wears on. A land of extremes, this Canada, for the same blossoming branches outside our house now hang heavy in their sheaths of ice. Mother Bruyere tells me February is known for its bite. Bite? says I. Cold Irish rain has bite. But this winter hound gnaws me to the bone every time I trudge up Sussex, and no amount of sweaters, mitts, nor muffs can protect me. On those nights when the thick drifts lean upon our frosted windows, it takes me a good hour by the fire before I feel my fingers and toes. I swear that blistering summer heat must be a dream I had.

  The wave of typhus has subsided, thank God, but the frigid winter ensures our hospital beds are always full. My afternoons are spent working with Sister Thibodeau in the house used for a hospital. I am learning so much from her. It reminds me of working with Lizzie back home.

  Agnes Brady has recovered, but now her children are consumptive, their tiny bodies wracked with such coughing fits, it sounds like they’ll never stop. Widow Moore is well enough to keep complaining, but Meg’s baby hadn’t the strength for this harsh life. Sadly, it died last month.

  We often have a few lumbermen brought to our doorstep, usually suffering from axe wounds or frostbite, for we are the only hospital for miles around. Every time I see one of them, I think of Jack and Mick, wonder if they are alive or dead. For, by the look of these grizzled men, life in the bush is no great adventure, and certainly no life for boys.

  I’m surprised to find Billy sleeping in one of the hospital beds when I arrive one afternoon. I haven’t seen him in ages. His arm and leg are splinted, he’s missing a front tooth, and his head is swaddled in bandages.

  “Kit?” he says, waking as I enter with a tray of soup for him and the other four patients in the tiny room. His fat lip splits when he speaks.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.” He takes in my postulant’s dress. “The purple brings out the bags under your eyes.”

  “Listen to that cheek,” I say, as I hand him his bowl. “I should break your other leg for that.”

  He gasps in mock surprise. “Take a vow of violence, did you? Such hostility for a nun.”

  “Yes, well, I’m not one yet.”

  As much as I enjoy working with the sisters, I feel restless, unsettled. I’ve none of the knowing Sister Phelan described, nor the sense of coming home Martha once mentioned. I talked to Mother Bruyere about it last week, admitted my concerns.

  “I don’t think I’m meant to be a sister, Mother,” I’d said. It felt like a failure to admit it. “I like the work, but the road ahead seems as lost to me as a drift in a snowstorm.”

  “Do the work before you and trust that your path will show itself,” was all she said, her answer as clear as a blizzard.

  I look at the three bowls of soup that need handing out. I’ll do the work before me. But even I know you can’t be a postulant forever. What then?

  “Speaking of violence, how did you get yourself into this mess?” I ask, returning to Billy’s bedside.

  He shrugs. “Wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I’d say.”

  I wait for him to tell the tale but, surprisingly, he doesn’t.

  “Still working for Mr. Sparks?” I ask. “I’d have thought you’d be Lord Mayor by now.”

  He looks into his soup but doesn’t lift his spoon. “Remember what I said about making your own luck, Kit?”

  I nod, thinking of the day he appeared on the bluff in his fine new clothes. I wonder where they went, considering the rags he now wears.

  “’Tisn’t true. Not really. You can make all the luck you like. The thing is, there’s always someone bigger, someone luckier who can take it away from you.”

  Right after Annie left, I would have agreed with him. I thought of all that was taken from me this long year and, for the first time, realized all I’d gained. I’d found faith, hope; I’d found my Anam Mór, as Murph had called it all those long months back in the belly of that ship. Great Soul. Now, I finally understood.

  “No matter what they take from you,” I sit on the bed and rest my hand on Billy’s heart as Murph’s words echo through me, “they can’t take what’s in here. And with that, why, you’ve got all you need.”

  His clenched lips don’t stop his chin from quivering. I can’t tell if it’s from his broken hope or his broken bones. Either way, I’ll leave him be. Standing, empty tray in hand, I head to the kitchen, for I’ve more soup yet to give.

  “Kit,” he calls, stopping me at the doorway. “Thanks.”

  I smile. “Eat your soup, now,” I say as I go. I know well enough you shouldn’t force hope any more than pry open a cocoon. It has to emerge in its own time.

  All we can do is wait. And watch for its fluttering.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The wagon splashes me in chilly slush as it races past and stops just ahead, outside the hospital. An older lumberman jumps from the driver’s seat. His plaid shirt is drenched in red and his bloodied right hand is missing a few fingers. Dropping my basket in the snow bank, I run to help him.

  “Your hand! Good Lord! Are you all
right?” I try to get him to sit on the running board as I call for Sister Thibodeau, but he won’t settle. He must be in shock.

  “Non, non … not me!” He clasps my hand firmly with his bloodied thumb and finger. The strength of it surprises me, but as he leads me around to the back of the wagon, I realize his maiming is an old injury. ’Tis not his blood. Another lumberman lies under a wool blanket with a bloodstained shirt wrapped around his head and most of his face. He’s not moving. I wonder if he’s alive at all, for what skin I can see is slushy gray and his uncovered lips are blue.

  Sister Thibodeau rushes out to join us. “What happened, Benoît?”

  “The logjam exploded too early,” Benoît says, climbing up by the young man’s head. “Don’t go, I tell him, it’s too dangerous … but he won’t listen, him—” his voice catches.

  She feels for the injured man’s pulse. He’s soaked to the skin; his body is a mass of cuts and scrapes Wadded, bloodied rags wrap around his head and pile against his side.

  “How long was he in the water for?” she asks as she climbs into the back of the wagon and lifts the sodden rags. His side gushes as she inspects the wound and she quickly presses her hand upon it.

  “Two, maybe three minutes. I’m not sure.”

  “Kathleen,” she waves me over and pushes my hand over hers against his side. She slips hers out. “You must press down on this. He has already lost a lot of blood.”

  She doesn’t have to tell me. Doesn’t the back of the wagon look like a butcher’s floor?

  “Will he be all right, Sister Thibodeau?” Benoît asks.

  “He’s been in the frigid water far too long for my liking. We have to get him inside, now.” Laying the blanket beside the lad, she nods at Benoît. Gently, they lift the young man onto the blanket and, each taking the corners, carry him inside. A trail of reddened slush follows us from the wagon to the house.

  “Keep that pressure on,” Sister Thibodeau scolds as they lay him flat on the first empty bed, but the jostling about makes my job near impossible. Blood gushes between my slick fingers, a sure sign his heart still beats. I pray to God it keeps on going.

  “I don’t think he’s breathing anymore,” Sister Thibodeau says, quickly lifting the bandage from around his head so she can listen at his mouth. “We’re losing him.”

  But her words are lost in the drumming of my head. It keeps time with the blood throbbing hot against my hand, the life seeping through my fingers, slowing with every pulse. For as she uncovered his face, I saw ’twas not some young lumberman.

  ’Tis Mick. My Mick.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “Oh, no, you’re not,” I say, kneeling at the head of the bed by Mick’s gray and blood-smeared face. “You can’t leave me, Mick. I won’t let you.”

  I’d seen Lizzie do this once, saw her breathe life back into Fanny Conroy the day Fanny fell out of her father’s boat and drowned. Or so we all thought. Lizzie had leaned over that lifeless body, blown into it, pumped the heart, and brought her back to life.

  What sort of magic had Old Lizzie, everyone wondered. To be able to blow a soul back into a body. What witchery? Surely it meant she could suck out a soul just as easily. As if she didn’t scare the b’jaysus out of us already. ’Twasn’t until I worked with her those last few months that I asked about it. She told me then how they aren’t really dead. Not yet, anyways. Snuffing the candle by the bed doesn’t mean you’re asleep. For those first few moments, you’re in that space between awake and dreaming.

  Pinching his nose and pulling his chin, I open Mick’s mouth, just like Lizzie had done with Fanny that day. I take a deep breath, place my mouth over Mick’s icy lips, and blow my will into him.

  Wake up! Come on, Mick. Wake up!

  “What are you—” Sister Thibodeau grips my shoulders to pull me away, but Benoît rests his hand on her arm and she stops. I cannot hear her now at any rate, for Lizzie’s voice fills my mind.

  Blow two breaths, she says, listen for a whisper.

  I listen, but Mick is still.

  Knock thirty times at the heart’s crossroads.

  Ripping open his sodden shirt, I find where his ribs meet and just as I’d seen Lizzie do, I lock my fingers and plunge down with the heel of my bloodied hands, kneading his heart awake. Needing it awake. Blood spurts from his side with my every push.

  Try again.

  I blow and knock.

  Again.

  I blow and knock.

  “Kathleen,” Sister Thibodeau’s voice echoes from afar. “He’s gone.”

  Again! Lizzie says.

  How long can you do it for, I’d asked Lizzie that day.

  She’d taken a drag of her pipe and thought about the answer. Well, that depends on which of you’s the more stubborn. Who’s not letting go? For as long as there’s breath in the body, the soul stays. I suppose if you’re stubborn enough, you could blow and knock until you were dead yourself. But why would you? If they’re ready to go, why keep them here? You well know yourself how it feels to give in to sleep after a long, hard day of it.

  “Don’t leave me, Mick, please,” I plead, as I plunge his chest.

  Lizzie once told me that in that place between awake and dreaming, we often see our loved ones who’ve gone on before us. They meet us there. As I pump his chest, I look at Mick’s eyes, still closed in his bloodied face.

  Who waits for him?

  His mother.

  His father.

  His brother, Kenny.

  His little sisters, Meg and Nan.

  How can I keep him from them? From his family?

  After all he’s done for me, what right have I to ask anything of him again?

  The cold truth of it hits me, numbing the heat of my will. As much as I want him here with me, as badly as I need him to live, I love him too much to make him stay. Moving to his head, I rest my mouth on his one more time, only this time I don’t blow. I kiss.

  I kiss my Mick goodbye.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  “He’s breathing!” Sister Thibodeau cries.

  I lift my face from the bed where I’d laid it in grief not moments before and rest it on his chest. Sure enough, his heart is beating like a bodhran. He moans and shivers.

  “Quickly, we have to get him warm!” Sister Thibodeau orders. Benoît stokes the fire, as Sister Thibodeau strips Mick’s wet clothes. I can do nothing but hold my hand against Mick’s side. So much blood. His life will surely seep away if we can’t stop it. Sister Thibodeau tightly wraps his wounds, but before we can cover him in blankets, deep red seeps through the bandages.

  “It isn’t stopping,” she says. “Kathleen, take Benoît to fetch Dr. Van Cortlandt.”

  Moments later, I’m sitting by Benoît, speeding along slushy streets to Upper Town. Neither of us speaks. I can tell by the worry in his eyes, by the way Benoît twisted his cap in his hands while Sister Thibodeau tended to Mick, that he cares for him. But the bushy brows he’d raised in worry are now furrowed in anger. It radiates off him.

  “Hey! Ôtez-vous du ch’min!” he hollers, and snaps the reigns as Bytowners rush off the road, narrowly avoiding the wagon. “Maudit batards,” he curses.

  Benoît’s clenched jaw makes me think twice before asking. Still, I have to know.

  “Can you tell me, sir, what happened to Mick?”

  He glares at me with such intensity, I’m almost sorry I asked.

  “What happened? He was somewhere he should not have been,” he says, breaking off in a flurry of French. I don’t have to speak the language to know he’s cursing a blue streak. “This … THIS is what happens when you send someone to do your job!”

  I cringe under his gaze and look away. So Mick told him. How else would he know I’d sent Mick to watch over Jack?

  We stop outside the Van Cortlandt house and collect the doctor. Within minutes, we’re racing back to the hospital on St. Patrick Street. Dr. Van Cortlandt rides up front with Benoît while I sit on the red-stained boards in the back.
Mick’s blood congeals in puddles down the center of the boards. So much blood; yet I can’t take my eyes off it.

  I should never have forced Mick to go. He’s no lumberman.

  A crimson puddle creeps toward me as we speed around the corner, but I make no move to avoid it. Benoît is right. This is all my fault. Mick’s blood is on my hands.

  The doctor works for ages on Mick, stitching him back together while Benoît and I sit vigil in the hall. Benoît hasn’t said a word since we returned. He stares at the wall and fiddles with the cap in his hands. Twice now, he’s caught me staring at his mangled right hand. I can’t help it. ’Tis amazing how deftly he uses what’s left, the thumb and finger, like a pair of tongs. I wonder what maiming Mick will have to learn to live with. If he makes it.

  “This is all my fault!” I blurt, for I can take Benoît’s silence no longer.

  He stops fidgeting and looks over at me.

  “Mick was in the bush because of me,” I say. “I made him go. I should’ve known better than to ask him.” Images flash before my eyes: Mick tripping over his own feet as we run in the fields back home; Mick slipping on the wet rocks and scaring away all the fish; Mick dangling from the yard arm on the Erin. “What was I thinking, forcing him into the woods? Mick has always been clumsy. He made a terrible sailor. Surely, he’s a worse lumberman.”

  “Non,” Benoît shakes his head. “Non, ma fille, that Mick, he’s no bank beaver, him.”

  The confusion on my face makes him explain.

  “Beavers, they are so hard working, they can’t stand any other beaver that is lazy or a misfit. They put him out.” He flicks his arm. “And that beaver, he has to live by himself. An easy catch for the trapper, that one. The trappers, they call them bank beavers.”

  He looks at the door to Mick’s room.

  “Mick started out helping the cook, cleaning the shanty, whatever odd jobs we gave him. For hours he marked log end after log end with the timber stamp, just so others did not have to. The logs must be stamped with the company brand so other companies don’t take them. No one likes that job, especially after their long day’s work felling, hauling, and hewing deep in the bush. So Mick, he said he’d do it. And he did. Stamped log after log until he had blisters on his blisters,” he shakes his head and smiles. “I said to myself, he has heart, that one. He will make a fine lumberman if someone teaches him.”