Ghost of the Southern Cross

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  “Lavinia is sick, Joshua. You must have noticed her coughin’ before you went bird hunting last week. She strains herself against it. If it was summer we’d make a chair for her in the sun. But the weather’s nasty and she feels the cold right through her bones when we opens the window. She don’t have the stomach for the cod liver I gives her. More comes up than stays down.”

  His young face looked hopeful. “Can I see her for a minute?”

  “It’s best not. You wouldn’t want to breathe her sickness and carry it back home, not after your mother’s loss of your father on the Southern Cross. It would be hard on her if you fell sick and needed care. Now go on home to Kelligrews.”

  “I’ll see her when she’s better,” he promised. “I’ll go help me mother cleave some splits for tomorrow’s fire.” He strolled jauntily down the road as if he had all the optimism in the world that Lavinia would be better soon.

  Caroline felt sorry for not telling him the whole truth. She hoped for Lavinia’s life, but, after the doctor’s words, she feared the worst.

  Johnny sat by the stove, his head lowered. He heard what was said, felt it zip through his nerves like a hot wire. The sound of Lavinia’s musical laugh, her quick step, her energetic presence had buoyed him ever since she was a little girl but lately there had been a quiet weariness in her walk. He lifted his head to the sound of harsh coughs from the bed above the stairs. He knew what was coming, knew it as if the coffin lid had already been drawn over his niece’s face.

  The next day it was as if something inside Lavinia had broken. Blood spilled over her lips, so much it could hardly be stayed. She lifted her head off the pillow and turned to her mother, her eyes dark and frightened. “I’ll never get married.”

  “You won’t need to be married in heaven,” her mother said. “There’ll be enough happiness there without it.”

  February 15, with the snow falling gently, Lavinia died. The coffin that Jacob had made for Mary Jane’s funeral was painted white and cased inside with the white satin Caroline had planned to use in making her wedding dress.

  William stood above her grave, snow already covering the mound of earth over the coffin.

  “I knows full well the punishment you and Joe’s sufferin’,” he told Caroline.

  “’Tis a grief I never thought possible,” she said. “Johnny, too, is beside himself. He sits there on his stool, his arms hangin’. He cries without making a sound.”

  Joe gave William a haggard look, his voice subdued. “When we was born held upside down and slapped to get a wail out of us we’d knowed then if we’d had sense enough that life’s goin’ to be rough terrain to navigate.”

  When Elizabeth received a black-edged letter with news that Lavinia had died she felt her heart lurch. Who’s next?

  Out in the bay a fish hawk swooped down to bring death to a fish. Its chewk, chewk, chewk echoed through the air.

  Late one evening Jacob stopped mending salmon nets in the twine loft. Elizabeth heard his heavy step on the landing, a different tempo to his walk. He opened the door, came inside, and took the baby from her arms. He cradled her, letting out a heavy breath. “I’m motherless,” he said. “George just came with the news.”

  It was the fourteenth day of September 1915. Sarah Ann was sixty-two.

  Elizabeth slipped her arm across Jacob’s shoulder. “You know she was poorly for a while, too proud to let on how sick she was.”

  Elizabeth and Jacob climbed the hill holding their children tight. They walked into Jacob’s childhood home. “She never got her three score years and ten,” Jacob said, weeping into his hands at the sight of his mother laid out.

  “I suppose you know that Sarah Ann was a wonderful hand at embroidery,” Diana Kennedy said as she sat in Elizabeth’s house for tea after the funeral. “You should take it up.”

  “Maybe I will,” Elizabeth answered, “when I’ve no weans underfoot.”

  She had enough winter work. Clothes were wearied from use year after year. There were garments to be made and mended. Jane’s clothes were Elsie’s hand-me-downs and often needed alterations. There were the hens and the sheep to feed and care for and wool to spin besides the fish curing and the gardening.

  A few months into 1917 Elizabeth knew there was another life on the way. Labour pains came prematurely. Doris Elizabeth was born on November 13, a tiny, shivering creature letting out a wild, belligerent cry as if she were too early and too small to be let out of a warm place. Alvina took one look at her and declared, “There’s nothing to this child. Sure, she’d fit into a water jug.”

  Elizabeth’s first son was born February 12, 1920.

  “There’s no time a’tall since Jane came and here I am with a boy,” Elizabeth said as she brought the chubby baby to her breast. She smiled at Jacob standing in the doorway. “A son for you, Jacob. We’ll name him William James Maley after your father and mine and after me brother.”

  Jacob raised an eyebrow. “That’s a load for a little mite.”

  Elizabeth’s half-sister, Fannie Eason, died from influenza less than two months later—six years less a day after the Southern Cross disappeared.

  * * * * *

  Maggie came to visit Elizabeth that spring. Her sad look lightened at the sight of Jamie’s sister. The corners of Elizabeth’s eyes crinkled like Jamie’s when she was amused. She turned a shoulder with a lift like Jamie and rattled her teacup with her teaspoon the same way.

  The friends talked about their memories of Jamie and for that time Maggie’s terrible hunger for Jamie lessened.

  54

  Maggie had stayed with her aunt though the children were no longer in need of her help. She pushed open the kitchen window and drew in the zesty sea breeze, long and deep, and breathed out, over and over, her mind lightening. She went outside feeling alive for the first time since Jamie’s disappearance. She had framed his memory as if inside the covers of a photo album, her mind’s eye gathering scenes of their times together. The taste of Jamie’s lips and the sense of having been held in his arms had left unrequited love lying heavy inside her. Now and then she forgot the ache. It returned whenever she saw a couple strolling down the road on a Sunday afternoon, sweethearts sidling against each other, shoulders rubbing, voices low and secretive as if the whole world were contained in the space they held.

  The year passed and another October came reminding Maggie of her planned wedding month. She had been working in the kitchen garden all morning pulling potatoes from the ground, damp clods of earth clinging to them. She shook the potatoes from the stalks, dusty brown and speckled like sandpiper’s eggs, and laid them on brin in the cool, dry air. She would gather them tomorrow.

  She lifted her head to watch children play. The leaves had left the apple trees next door and the neighbour’s children were running through coppery coins, tossing them, laughter bubbling through the crisp air. She turned to see a young fellow tall and strong-looking, his gloved hands in the pockets of a dark woollen coat. Their eyes met, his watchful, hers narrowing.

  “And what might you be staring at?” she asked.

  “You,” he said with a lazy smile.

  “I’ll not be looking at you, then,” she said turning back to her work.

  He came closer and leaned in, eyes squinched. “The green eyes on you. That’s a Taylor in there if ever I saw one. I know all about you though I haven’t clapped eyes on you for years.”

  He turned and casually walked away.

  She shaded her eyes from the sun with the back of her hand and called, “You’re not a peddler, I suppose?”

  “No, then. Not the least.” He lifted a finger to the side of his face. “On second thought, I’ve got a heart I should be peddlin’ though I’m not sure what I’d get for it.”

  “There’s no one here to offer anything for it. Not a red copper.”

 
“I’m Ben Christopher. Your aunt said she’d mention me to you.”

  “Did she, now?” Maggie shrugged and turned away.

  “You’re missin’ Jamie, to be sure. ’Tis sympathy I’ll offer first.”

  “And then?” she asked, not sure she wanted to give him the time of day.

  His eyes twinkled. “Well—we’ll see—”

  She went into the house and shut the door. She leaned against it wondering where she had heard that name before.

  In the middle of the night she bolted up in bed wide awake. The fortune teller’s words—“You’ll be marrying a man whose surname is Christopher”—sounded through her head. She frowned and snuggled under her bedclothes. What did she know!

  A few weeks later, on a Sunday afternoon, she lowered a bucket holding a bowl of jelly down the cold well to set for supper, and went to sit on the veranda.

  “Maggie!” She was startled by the strong, energetic voice coming from behind her. She swirled around to face Ben Christopher. He stood straight and tall holding a bowler hat in his hands. Strong work hands, she noted, the veins large on their backs like blue tributaries.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a nice day for me to take a dodge with you as far as the beach and back.”

  “You can walk along if you mind to but don’t be thinkin’ anything more.” Her voice was defiant, belying her need. Her body ached, her heart ached, and she knew it would be hard to turn away a man if he proved to be decent.

  One night after several walks, neither of them saying much, she looked up into his face, into his soft brown eyes, and asked, “What would you be wanting with me?”

  He smiled and answered lightly, “What every man wants: a woman to come home to.”

  Her heart warmed under Ben’s gaze like a beach rock under sunlight, warm but hard and unyielding.

  55

  Maggie didn’t mean to marry Ben Christopher. Her heart was too full of Jamie.

  “Stay shuttered and you’ll grow old while doin’ it,” Ben said. “Don’t deny me a chance to help your heart to mend. I’ll do me best to be a good husband learnin’ as I go if you’ve the mind to teach me. I’ll take what you can give and be thankful for it.”

  She gave in to his persuasion.

  I’m getting married, she told Elizabeth in a letter. It don’t mean I think less of Jamie, only that I need to carry on with me life. . . .

  She wanted to be part of someone’s life, someone who would consider her needs. She longed for a man who would have her in his thoughts no matter what he was doing, wanting to be home with her no matter where he was. She wanted him to feel for her what she felt for Jamie.

  She looked in the mirror silently asking, Will Ben be able to do that?

  Her eyes looked back at her. Will you be able to do that for Ben?

  “I got your letter and I had to come,” Elizabeth said. The tips of her fingers touched Maggie’s cheek as she stood in a plain grey muslin dress and rimmed black hat. “I want you to be happy, but don’t forget me brother!”

  Maggie squeezed out words. “You know I can’t. I’ve found a man who says he has enough love for me to make up what I might not have for him. He’s a good man.” She gave Elizabeth an even look. “A fortune teller said I’d marry a Christopher. I’d gone for fun to have me palm read. Now I know it was meant to be.”

  Elizabeth’s face clouded. “A fortune teller can’t cast your fortune or your fate. You’re in God’s hands. Don’t marry Ben for that reason.”

  “I’m not, but Jamie’s memory won’t warm me bed or provide for me. I don’t want to spend me life cleanin’ other people’s dirt and helpin’ raise their children. I want to be the mistress of a place. I want to be a mother like you.”

  Elizabeth swallowed a lump in her throat. There would now be one less person to hold Jamie tight. When her father died there would be only her. Still she squeezed Maggie’s hand and urged, “Go on and marry him.”

  “I will despite my dreams.”

  “Dreams?”

  “Sometimes I’m in church and walkin’ to the altar where a man waits. I can’t see his face even when we are pronounced man and wife. When I turn Jamie is standin’ in the aisle wearing his sealer’s greasy clothes. He is soakin’ wet. He moves toward me, his hands held out. There is a terrible yearnin’ in his eyes. Our hands almost touch and then he sinks beneath the water. I turn back to the man I just married and there’s no one there.”

  “Maybe marriage will cure you of your dreams,” Elizabeth told her trying to hold in her own mixed emotions.

  Maggie married Ben. Her heart raced through the wedding ceremony. What if Jamie comes home!

  She settled her mind. He’s been gone too long to be alive.

  Ben’s house, one he’d built himself, was plain but kept warm. The several rooms downstairs included a large square kitchen with a pantry holding long shelves with jugs and cups on hooks, a rectangle porch beside it. Upstairs led to four bedrooms.

  “All for a large family,” the groom said.

  Maggie blushed when Ben, big and imposing, stepped naked from the tub in the porch. He grabbed a towel and grinned. “You can dry me off and rub me down.”

  “I could never do that,” she mumbled, turning away before she caught the whole sight of him. After he hauled on his clean long johns Ben reached for her hand and tucked it inside his. They made their way upstairs.

  At first Ben’s kisses were gentle as they lay together, lamplight snuffed. She faced him shaking, her hands folded over her silk nightgown, her knees drawn up. “I can’t let you near me.”

  It was too dark to see his eyes when he asked in a quiet voice, “Then why did you marry me?”

  She had a fleeting image of her mother’s white flesh against crimson-stained sheets and the tiny creature on her breast, a grey rope trailing it. “I don’t want to die like me mother.”

  He turned his back and she whispered, “Don’t you want to know about me mother?”

  “Not tonight.”

  He was soon snoring.

  Maggie lay wondering why she had not felt fearful all the times she had thoughts of being with Jamie once they were married. She woke the next morning to Ben sleeping in bed beside her, a white shadow in his long johns, every manly part of him safely stowed.

  The next night she asked Ben, “Could I have me own bed?”

  He looked at her.

  “Only for a while,” she said.

  “Only for a while,” he answered, turning away.

  He climbed the stairs and went next door to the room they had shared for one night almost as sister and brother. She shut the door to her room, hesitating before she pulled the key from the keyhole and laid it on the bureau. She had to believe he wouldn’t disturb her.

  Soon she heard the creak of the ropes under the mattress as he lowered himself to the bed and the whispering stir as he turned over and over. She lay awake for a long time and then she crept along the hall to his room. She listened to the sounds of his breathing and then she went back to her room and fell asleep.

  Ben didn’t say much in the next few days. She took hold of the work in the house and he spent time outside repairing nets and fences.

  One day she watched the golden light of the sun shine through autumn leaves under the stir of the gentle wind. Ben was beside the wood horse, sweat beading on his forehead as he lifted a log and placed it between the crossed posts. He drew his saw against the log cutting into it back and forth. Chips of wood and dust flew into the air and settled at his feet like discarded leaves. He stopped and lifted his arm across his forehead taking a long look at the house, his countenance kind and tender. She knew he couldn’t see her standing back from the window. New wood and tangy oakum scents mingling in the cool air awakened her to a beginning. She felt a stir through her body as she
imagined Ben waiting for her to yield to him. She sensed it in the longing in his face as he sawed through a log and it thumped to the ground. It was what a man and a woman expected from each other, a willingness to become one self.

  She lifted her pot of berries jamming on the stove and put it aside. She untied her apron strings and lifted the bib over her head. She ran out the door, her eyes alight and her lips parted. Ben’s face creased into a smile. He laid down his saw as she came closer. She tasted his lips salty with sweat. He pulled her tight, his hand on her bottom. She felt him hard against her, felt her own body respond. He reached for her hand and led her inside the shed and up a ladder to a loft permeated by the heavy scent of twine and oakum.

  Ben found her deep inside herself, curled like a periwinkle in its shell. He gently spread her with his thoughtful words. The sound of his voice, his kiss on her earlobes, down her face and neck awakened her to her own need. He murmured, “The men around here says a woman likes to be explored.” He trailed his fingers down her skin reaching and finding a sweet spot that sent shivers through her body. Feelings inside her rippled like water, exploded like waves.

  She put aside the memory of Jamie, then, like she’d lay a prized piece of jewellery too heavy to wear, in a dresser drawer, not too far that she couldn’t take it out once in a while. She’d be a wife and lover. God willing she and Ben would have children. She tried not to think about her mother and the baby that caused her death. That couldn’t happen to her. She wasn’t going to die like her mother.

  That night she lay against Ben as he slept. Her toes curled against his leg skin to skin. She ran her hand up his back resting it on his shoulder, heat rising beneath her palm. Ben stirred slightly. To be with someone I can wake up to every day, to not feel alone. That is something wonderful. She smiled and spooned against strong buttocks; then she fell asleep to dream of Jamie.

  Months later when Maggie felt the stir of life she thought of the chance she had taken—the risk. She pushed her fears aside and ran outside calling to Ben, “We’re having a baby.”