Leaving Home, of the Fields, Lately, and Salt-Water Moon

by David French

  JACOB I was getting to that. Saving the best for later . . . Now there always comes a time in the picture show, Mary, when the fellow you’m with gets the sense . . . the sense that the time is right.

  MARY The time for what?

  JACOB Well, say it’s me now. I’d glance out of the corner of my eye and see you sitting there with your hair all washed, your hands folded in your lap, looking all soft and lovely and smelling as fresh as the wind, and I’d sort of lean back in my seat like this and slip my arm around you . . .

  JACOB does. MARY knocks his arm away and springs to her feet.

  MARY (indignantly) So this is what you’ve been doing, is it, in the picture house with Rose?

  JACOB There is no Rose.

  MARY I don’t believe you!

  JACOB I made her up.

  MARY Liar!

  JACOB Look, will you sit down and watch the picture? This is one of the best Tom ever made. He rides right into a wedding chapel and snatches the bride from under the nose of the groom. (He grins.)

  MARY I suppose you finds that funny?

  JACOB It made me stand up, maid, and cheer.

  MARY That’s the most brazen t’ing I ever heard of. Why did he do it in the first place?

  JACOB Why? ’Cause the girl was being married against her will, why else. Tom rode to the rescue.

  MARY What if she wasn’t marrying against her will? What then?

  JACOB Then there would’ve been no picture. Besides, she had to be getting married against her will. If you saw the slouch of a bridegroom, you wouldn’t have to ask.

  MARY No odds. He might be full of himself, this . . . this Mr. Tom Mix, but that don’t give him the right to barge in and take what’s not his.

  JACOB Go on with you. Sure, even the horse looked pleased. He stood there on the carpet, Tony, all sleek and smug. Tom was sitting in the saddle, clutching the bride on his hip, the train of her gown brushing the floor. All eyes was on Tom. The Maids of Honour in their summer hats all gazed up at him, puzzled, and the minister looked on with his t’umb in the Bible, waiting to see what happened next.

  MARY What did the groom do? I suppose he just stood by and never lifted a finger?

  JACOB What could he do, the fool, against the likes of Tom Mix? He raised himself to his full height and gave Tom a dirty look, and Tom gazed right back down at him with that little smirk on his lips, as much as to say, “Too bad, buddy. Better luck next time.”

  Slight pause.

  MARY Well, Tom Mix had best climb back on his horse and ride off into the night. This is one bride he won’t be stealing.

  JACOB No?

  MARY No. And he better ride off soon, too, before Mr. and Mrs. Dawe return from the wake.

  JACOB Nobody puts the run on Tom Mix.

  MARY Tom Mix is a fool.

  JACOB No more than you, if you expects me to swallow another one of your lies.

  MARY What lie’s that?

  JACOB “What lie’s that?” she says, knowing full well the Right Honourable and Lady Emma won’t be home soon.

  MARY Indeed they will. They’ll be home any minute now.

  JACOB Indeed they won’t. They won’t be home till sunrise. Not till Mrs. Foote has had a good night’s sleep and can sit vigil at the coffin. I heard ’em say so . . .

  MARY says nothing.

  . . . So it looks like it’s just us, Mary. Just you and me and the moon. You and me and the moon that was meant for Jerome . . .

  MARY crosses to the porch and picks up the telescope.

  . . . And isn’t she a lovely one, too? As white as the wafer in Holy Communion.

  MARY (crossing into the yard) I’m not speaking to you after this, Jacob. From now on you can talk to yourself, for all the good it’ll do . . . (She trains the telescope on the sky, ignoring him.)

  JACOB That’s no way to be, Mary. Rose always liked the way I talked. She said it was . . . oh, what was her word? . . . quaint.

  MARY doesn’t react.

  Sing me a song, Jacob, my son, she’d always say. No one can handle a song like you. (beat) Sing me a verse of “Newfoundland Love Song.” The verse that goes — (He recites very simply.)

  Meet me when all is still

  My Annie fair!

  Down by the up-line mill, My Annie fair!

  Near to the silent grove,

  I’ll tell you how I love,

  While the stars shine above,

  My Annie fair!

  MARY turns and regards him with reproach.

  “I can’t sing you that one, Rose,” I said. “That song belongs to a girl back home.”

  MARY I don’t care if you had ten Roses, and you sang all the songs up your sleeve. What odds to me? (She returns to the telescope.)

  JACOB That’s right. What odds to you? You have Jerome McKenzie to comfort you now. And what a comfort he’ll be on a winter’s night, with his knobby knees and cold feet . . . The wind screeching like a broken heart, and him in the dark, wondering why his wife is turned to the wall, wondering to himself, “Why is Mary like that? Why is her heart as cold as my feet?”. . .

  MARY walks to another part of the yard and turns her back on him, lifting the telescope to the sky.

  What do you suppose Jerome’s up to right now? Prob’bly sitting on Isaac Tucker’s step, whilst Doctor Babcock’s inside with Betty. Him and Isaac smoking their pipes, their chins to the sky. “Look, Isaac, there’s King Charles’ Wain.” “King Charles’ Wain?” says Isaac. “Where?”. . .

  MARY reacts. She lowers the telescope but doesn’t look around.

  . . .“Right there,” says Jerome. “Right over Spaniard’s Bay. See? Some calls it the Plough. Most calls it the Big Dipper. But its real name is Ursa Major. U-r-s-a. Ursa Major. That means the great Bear in a dead language.”

  MARY (turning) Why, you . . . !

  JACOB (quickly) Why did you ever agree to it, Mary? Why would you marry someone like that? It don’t make sense.

  MARY Where did you learn so much about the Dipper? Standing there, earlier on, pretending not to know a blessed t’ing!

  JACOB Sam Boone taught me this winter. He knows the stars like his own hand. Now will you answer my question?

  MARY What question?

  JACOB You’ve so much steel inside you, maid. So much fire in your spirit. Why would you waste it on a weak little flame like Jerome? It’s not fair to him, and it’s not fair to yourself.

  MARY (vehemently) Fair? What’s fair got to do with it? Is it fair that my sister has to live in a Home with an iron fence around it? A fourteen-year-old girl sleeping in a bed with a number on it, her initials inside her shoes in ink? Is that fair?

  JACOB No, of course not—

  MARY Well then!

  JACOB What’s that got to do with what I asked?

  MARY A lot more than you imagines.

  JACOB Well, there’s no need to snap my head off, is there?

  MARY You any idea how many girls live at the Home? More than a hundred. All between six and sixteen. Sometimes twenty-one girls to a room. The big girls like Dot get up at five o’clock and make bread. At six she lights the Quebec heater with the galvanized boiler attached. Sometimes it’s hard to light, the wood might be wet.

  JACOB So?

  MARY So the Matron will come in and put her hand on the boiler. “This is not hot enough,” she says. “I couldn’t light it, Miss,” says Dot. “The wood’s wet.” And the Matron will knock her to the floor and put her foot on her.

  JACOB Who told you that?

  MARY Dot did. Back in June.

  JACOB Jesus Christ! . . .

  MARY There’s a lot more, but I won’t go into it. Dot made me promise not to complain to the Home, the Matron would only make it worse. She can’t say a word in her letters, either, or they won’t be mailed . . . I went to see her the day we left St. John’s this summer. I walked up to Hamilton Avenue and rang the bell. They let me into the sitting room, then Dot came in . . . There was a smudge of stove polish on her cheek. She�
�d been cleaning the stoves with blackening, and the Matron had struck her. She’d wiped the sting away with her hand, forgetting her fingers was black with polish. I said, “Dot, go get dressed. I’m taking you out for the day.” And when she came back, she was wearing a pair of laced-up boots, a dark blue hat with elastic under the chin, those navy blue knee socks turned down, and an old tweed coat with no lining . . . We went back to Mrs. Dawe’s and up to my room. I said, “Take off those clothes, Dot, we’re going out.” She looked frightened to death. I said, “What’s wrong?” She said, “I don’t want to take my clothes off.” I said, “Don’t you want to wear this pretty blue dress?” She said, “I can’t take my clothes off, Mary. Don’t make me.” “I won’t make you,” I said. “But why can’t you?” And she sat on the bed and looked at her feet . . . “Promise you won’t write Mother?” she said. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?” I promised. “I don’t have long to live, Mary,” she said. “I’m dying.” “Go on with you,” I said. “You’re fourteen years old. You’ll live to be an old woman.” “No, I won’t,” she said. And with that, she lifted up her skirt and showed me her underwear . . .

  JACOB Her underwear?

  MARY (suddenly embarrassed) Oh, no odds. It’s just that . . .

  JACOB What?

  MARY Well, that morning she’d been making her bed as usual. That was when she first noticed it . . .

  JACOB Noticed what?

  MARY I can’t tell you. Just that she’d become a woman that day and didn’t know it. I had to explain it to her, the way Mrs. Dawe explained it to me, and I told her it wasn’t a “curse,” either, which is what Mrs. Dawe called it . . . Then we both had a good laugh, and went out and walked the streets. I pointed out the drugstore where Tommy Ricketts was now the druggist, and we went inside and looked at him. He had the shyest smile and the kindest eyes, and him so brave in the War. The youngest soldier in the British Army to win a Victoria Cross. I almost asked if he remembered Jim Snow, but I was too in awe to speak . . . Once outside, I told Dot who he was, and how she had to be like him. Brave like him and Father, only brave in a different way. I told her the Matron was a coward, and like all cowards, I said, she was cruel, so the next time she puts her foot on you, Dot, I said, don’t make a sound: don’t even cry out, ’cause she’ll only grind her heel into you all the harder. Just look into her eyes, I said, and let her know that no odds how often she knocks you down, no odds how hard she steps on you, the one t’ing she’ll never destroy is your spirit. And maybe, just maybe she’d stop doing it, ’cause it’s a funny t’ing, I said, about cruel people like the Matron, they only respects one kind of person in the long run, and that’s the ones they can’t break . . . That night at the station, Mr. Dawe tried to buy me a ticket in Second Class. He always did that. Him and Mrs. Dawe would sit in First Class and he’d buy me a ticket in Second; once we was out of St. John’s and the conductor had punched the tickets, he’d come back and say “All right, Mary, you can come in First Class now.” . . . Only this time I wouldn’t let him. I said, “No, Mr. Dawe, and that you won’t! I wants a ticket in First Class and I don’t care if I have to pay the extra twenty cents myself!”

  JACOB Good for you.

  MARY He bought me the ticket, too, and I sat on the train and looked out the window, vowing I’d get Dot out from behind that iron fence one way or another . . . There’s not much more to tell . . . Before too long Jerome was stopping by, all dressed up, with a bag of sweets. Only this time I didn’t discourage him. I took the sweets that night, and the oranges the next, and when he showed up one night with a ring in his pocket, I took that, too. That’s it.

  Pause.

  JACOB No, that’s not it. That’s not it by a long shot. Not as far as I’m concerned.

  MARY Please, will you just go now? I’d sooner be left alone. I don’t want to hear about Tom Mix and his black horse, or girls you went out with called Rose . . .

  JACOB There was no Rose. You was right the first time. I never took a soul to the picture show and I never went to Niagara Falls.

  MARY I don’t care if you did . . .

  JACOB Not that I couldn’t have, mind. Sam Boone had a niece that used to pester me half to death.

  MARY Sam Boone has only one niece. Her name is Rachel. She’s two years old and lives in Corner Brook.

  Slight pause.

  JACOB Well, it was Sam and Lucy who saw me off at Union Station. That much is true. Before I boarded the train, I said to him, “Sam,” I said, “what would you do if you had a girl back home that might still be smitten with you but prob’bly couldn’t let on? What advice would you give?” You want to know what he said, Mary?

  MARY What?

  JACOB He said, “Jacob, did you ever hear tell of the Society girl from St. John’s who let it be known she’d marry the first Blue Puttee to win a Victoria Cross? Every time they went over the top, the single boys would yell —” (raising his arm in a fist) “JENNY SAUNDERS OR A WOODEN LEG!”

  MARY Keep your voice down, for goodness sake!

  JACOB The best battle cry I ever heard, that.

  MARY Well, I’m no Society Girl, and you’re no Blue Puttee. So there.

  JACOB (beat) “Besides,” Lucy said, “if she’s still mooning over you, my son, she’ll let you know somehow. It’s as simple as that.”

  MARY It’s not as simple as that, and you knows it. There’s one member of the wedding you forgot to mention, Jacob, when you told about Tom Mix riding in to steal the bride. What about him?

  JACOB Who?

  MARY Who? The father of the groom, as if you forgot. What was he doing that day, bent over with laughter? Or was he standing off to one side, burning up with shame?

  JACOB I never noticed.

  MARY You noticed a lot else.

  JACOB Is that what you suppose this is, Mary? An eye for an eye? You t’ink I rode t’ousands of miles by train and boat, all to get back at Will McKenzie?

  MARY I’m asking you that.

  JACOB (flaring up) Well, if that’s what you really believes, Mary, then you’m right: I am a stranger. More of a stranger than you realizes. And if that’s the sort of man you imagines me to be, then the hell with you, Mary Snow! Keep your star-gazing fiancé with his bald spot and bag of candies! (He slips on his suit jacket and picks up the suitcase.)

  MARY (pursuing him) Why shouldn’t I wonder that? The same question will be on everyone else’s lips tomorrow.

  JACOB I don’t give a damn what others t’ink! It wouldn’t bother me if the preacher denounced me from the pulpit! It’s what you t’inks that matters! You and no one else! (He starts to exit.)

  MARY There’s no call to carry on like this . . .

  JACOB Isn’t there? You stand there and tell me straight to my face I’m no better than the Matron — as cruel as her or Will McKenzie — and you expects me not to raise my voice?

  MARY I never meant it the way you took it . . .

  JACOB Do you really believe I’d ever set out to hurt you? That I’d use you, just to settle accounts with someone else?

  MARY Are you telling me it never crossed your mind? Maybe the night you packed your bag. Maybe the day you walked t’rough Customs at North Sydney. Maybe on the deck of the boat or in your seat on the train to here. Wouldn’t it be a slap in the face for Jerome’s father to have his son left high and dry at the altar? Be honest!

  JACOB All right. Yes, it crossed my mind. For as long as a shooting star takes. A flash. A flick of a second. I can’t help that, can I? . . . But I never came home the avenging angel, the smell of blood in my nostrils. And if you still don’t know why I’m standing here in a store-bought suit, with stockings in my suitcase, then I might as well walk out of this yard, and the sooner the better! All I’m doing is making a fool of myself! (He starts off.)

  MARY I suppose you expects me to stop you?

  JACOB (stops and turns) And that I don’t. For all I cares, you can sit in that rocker and polish your ring . . . I won’t be troubling you again, Mary. So go
odnight to you. (He starts off again.)

  MARY (pursuing him) Not goodnight, Jacob! Goodbye!

  JACOB Suit yourself. Goodbye then. At least now you won’t have to slap my face.

  He exits down the road stage left, leaving behind a sudden, terrible silence. MARY takes a step or two after him, then begins to quickly chant the words of the song we first heard JACOB singing. The tone is defiant, as though she were thumbing her nose at him.

  MARY Oh, the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin, His boots are crackin’ for the want of blackin’ And his baggy trousers they want mending . . .

  And suddenly the words choke in her throat and she sobs into her hands all the feelings she has stored inside her for the past year. Her hands try to stifle the sobs as if her soul were rushing from her mouth and she was trying to push it back inside . . . It is a sudden short-lived burst of emotion. She raises her head and looks down the road. She takes another step or two.

  (tentatively) Jacob . . . (louder) Jacob! . . . (Then she lets out a cry that splits apart the night.) JAAACOOOB!

  MARY stands looking down the road, her eyes straining to see, her eyes almost listening . . . but there is only the empty road, the moonlight, the silence . . . She composes herself and returns to the porch step. She sits gazing at some middle distance, absently turning her engagement ring on her finger.