Johnny Kellock Died Today

by Hadley Dyer

  The minister asked everyone to stand for the Creation hymn:

  Many and great, O God, are your works

  O Lord of every shining constellation

  Long before time and the earth were begun

  When I was singing those words, all my worries about Mama eased up. Martha’s voice was soft and deep, deeper than you would expect. I liked the way our voices sounded together and how they fit with the congregation’s. Funny how you can listen to the whole congregation, then, if you think about it, you can hear your own voice. Or someone else’s, like Martha’s. Or just the men, or just the women. Or just that old lady in the pew behind you who must have been in a choir once and still thinks she’s God’s gift to music because she’s really caterwauling and her voice has a phony trill to it so you work even harder to hear yourself.

  At the end of the hymn, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the caterwauler. She was wearing a skinny ol’ dead fox around her neck with the head and tail still attached. “Next time, dear,” she said, “maybe you should just mouth the words.”

  She said more than that, but I didn’t hear any of it because I was turned back around in my seat, a hot flush running from my ears down my back. I felt Martha’s hand over mine and started trembling all over what with trying to keep the tears from leaking out.

  Later, when the collection plate was going around, I could hear the caterwauler whispering to the old bag beside her that she was just trying to be helpful. Because of her voice, you know. Only trying to help. Can’t blame a person for helping. Oh yes, only trying to help. Then Martha turned around and gave them some kind of a look.

  We walked home with Martha’s friends Susan and Amy. Around the back, the Gravedigger was trimming the edges of the lawn. Mama was in the kitchen having tea with Mrs. Hewitt. I felt bad that I’d forgotten to be worried about Mama, and then I was mad at the caterwauler all over again because she made me forget. I went straight upstairs and took out my sketch pad. Before I was even out of my good clothes, the caterwauler was torn apart by a pack of foxes. I don’t meant to boast, but the picture was so good, it kind of turned my stomach.

  “Rosalie Evelyn Norman!”

  If you had told me a few days earlier that I’d be standing on the back step holding a plate with the Gravedigger’s lunch on it, I wouldn’t have believed you. But there I was, handing him his ham sandwich with a side of potato chips and a glass of milk to wash it down. He just took everything and started eating.

  All of a sudden I wasn’t scared so much as just peed off at the Gravedigger, sitting there in his work shirt and heavy boots in the middle of summer, like he wanted to be even bigger and sweatier and smellier than he already was. It was his own fault if people didn’t like him. And anyway, what was so scary about him? It’s not like he went around killing people—he just dug them up. He was a dog of a human being and I wasn’t going to be scared of him any more.

  “You know, civilized people say thank you,” I said.

  “Civilized people know their father’s proper names.”

  Dog! Mick! Gravedigger!

  “Don’t you get too comfortable,” I said. “When my cousin Johnny gets here, he can do this stuff and other stuff, too, and then you’ll be out of a job.”

  The Gravedigger took a long drink of milk. He wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve. “Your cousin’s not coming,” he said. “He’s missing.”

  Chapter Four

  “What do you mean missing?”

  “He’s run off.”

  “How do you know?”

  The Gravedigger’s cheeks were full of sandwich. He swallowed and shrugged. “Didn’t you know he was itching to leave?”

  Martha had mentioned that Johnny wanted to get a job. “You’re full of it,” I said. “Everybody knows Johnny’s been talking about working at the shipyard. But he wouldn’t just go off without telling anyone.”

  “Yeah? Then how come he did?”

  “Who says he did?”

  “Go ask your parents. Don’t got nothing to do with me.”

  The Gravedigger went back to his sandwich. I could hear Mama and Mrs. Hewitt’s voices through the kitchen window. Well, I wasn’t going to ask in front of Mrs. Hewitt. But I made good and sure my foot knocked over the Gravedigger’s milk on my way inside. That’s what you get for stirring up trouble.

  When Norman got home from Ship Harbour at suppertime, he was alone. “Izzie was happy to see that old wardrobe,” he said, hanging his hat on the hook. “Garden looks good.”

  “How’s the station?” Mama asked.

  “Keeping them all busy.”

  Keeping them all busy.

  “Did you see Johnny?” I asked. “We were thinking maybe he and Aunt Izzie would be coming back with you.”

  “No, he wasn’t around. Anyway, Izzie couldn’t leave Ezra to run things on his own.” He looked over at Mama with his eyebrows making an apology.

  Mama shrugged like she wasn’t expecting to hear anything different. “When you own the only gas station in the village, you can’t just come and go as you like,” she said.

  “Where was he? Johnny, I mean,” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Bean. A boy that age doesn’t tell his mother everywhere he’s going.”

  That lying Gravedigger, making it sound like Johnny had run away.

  Martha was chewing on the inside of her lip like she does when she’s worrying about something. “I called everyone to cancel Sunday dinner, like you asked, Mama,” she said. “And—and I talked to them about getting a little help around here. Well, you know Margaret’s got the young ones to look after, and Freddie lives too far away to be coming by every day. Doris is getting ready for the baby. She says she can’t do much in this heat anyway.”

  “And you’ll never peel Young Lil away from that new house,” added Mama. “Warms a mother’s heart to hear how busy her children are. Yes, it does, sitting here in the house where I birthed them all.”

  “So unless there’s someone else . . .” Martha sighed. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Johnson at the library. The other part-time girl is saving for her wedding and says she’ll take my shifts.”

  “You tell Mrs. Johnson you’ll give that girl some of your shifts,” said Mama. She waved off Martha’s look of surprise. “It’s not good for a girl your age to be home all the time.”

  “What will we do around here?”

  “Well,” said Norman, in his slow way. “This David feller done a good job today. He can help with the yard work. And we’ll pitch in around the house, won’t we, Bean?”

  He gave me a wink, but I was stuck on what he was saying about this David feller.

  “The Gravedigger’s staying on?”

  “What did you call him?”

  The thing about Norman is, he has a way of dumping shame over a person like a bucket of water.

  “Nothing.”

  “Good. He’s a decent young feller and a hard worker.”

  For Norman, being a hard worker is just about the nicest thing you can say about a person, so I was careful when I said, “He might be good in the garden, but some people would tell you he’s a liar. Some people would tell you he’s even said lies about this family.”

  “Since when did you ever listen to anything but the sound of your own voice?” said Mama. “You just mind your own business.”

  “But Mama, he’s a Catholic.”

  Mama was always telling us not to get tangled up with sailors, Frenchmen, or Micks.

  “There’s Catholics and there’s Catholics. And unless you grow extra arms to do everything that needs doing around here, I’m not going to hear another word about it. But Norman, not on Sunday again.”

  Norman nodded.

  “So it’s settled?” asked Martha. “I can keep my job?”

  There are some things I think I’ll never learn how to draw. Sunshine floating in a glass of water, for one, and Martha’s smile.

  I liked to get up early in the summertime. Agricola Street was always quiet, as if noi
se was colour and had no place in the blue-grey morning light. Norman would be downstairs already, reading the newspaper, his finger following the lines. I’d sit across from him at the kitchen table and have two drawings finished before I was even all the way waked up. Those were my morning exercises. You have to exercise a lot to keep up your drawing muscle. That’s what I call the callus on the side of the middle finger on my right hand. If my drawing muscle starts going down, I haven’t been exercising enough.

  The Gravedigger started coming to our house every day for an hour or two. He cut the grass, weeded Mama’s flower garden, worked in the vegetable patch. Sometimes Martha got him to help with heavy chores around the house, like taking down the windows and washing them. Then his arms would be two colours where the soap splashed and cut through the dirt. One time Martha offered to add his clothes to the laundry, but he just shook his head.

  It’s because I got up so early that I knew the Gravedigger came round the back way, cutting through the McCormacks’ yard, which was behind ours. I’d see him through my bedroom window, leaving the house with his father and two brothers. They near took up the whole of Agricola Street, walking side by side in their coveralls and steel-capped boots, swinging their lunch pails. I don’t know where the Gravedigger went in the meantime, but as soon as the sun was overhead, he’d show up on the back step.

  I stayed clear of the Gravedigger those first few days. For once, I was glad that mostly old people lived on this stretch of Agricola—no other kids my age to look out a window and spot the Gravedigger digging in our yard. Didn’t need that following me to junior high in September. But Mama’s ankle was going to be in a cast for six weeks, and if my parents kept him on after school started, it was going be hard to keep it quiet.

  I knew Marcy would be loyal, but I already had a taste of the other girls’ teasing and that was enough. You try always being the second shortest person in the class and having glasses and being told you say “tomato” like a hoity-toity person—no matter what Martha says about you sounding like you were raised in a trashcan—and see if you like the idea of going to a new school where the only thing the older kids know about you is that you have a pal called the Gravedigger. I had to find a way to show my parents that he wasn’t fit to have around. And it seemed it had to be worse than him taking a little seed of truth, something small and harmless, and growing it into something big and awful.

  Something niggled, though. How did he know Johnny wouldn’t be there when Norman went to Ship Harbour? I supposed Aunt Izzie might have mentioned it when Norman called that morning. And let’s say it came up when Norman and Mama, or maybe Mama and Mrs. Hewitt, were talking. And say the Gravedigger overheard them. What made him think he could get away with a lie like that for more than two seconds? Did he imagine I’d run crying to my mother, while he listened at the kitchen window, going “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”? That was just plain stupid. Trouble is, I couldn’t shake the feeling he was smarter than he looked.

  One morning the rain was beating on the windows by the time I finished my morning exercises. I curled up in Norman’s old horsehair chair and looked through photo albums. I found one of Mama, Aunt Izzie, and Uncle Jim standing on the porch of our house. 1906. They were wrapped up in winter clothes and huddled together like baby birds. Aunt Izzie was peeking at Mama out of the corner of her eye.

  Next came our baby pictures, school pictures, and weddings, starting with my sister Margaret’s when I was five. Mama had put me in curlers the day before the wedding and I’d tossed and turned all night with them digging into my scalp. The next morning, Doris and Young Lil pulled the rods from my hair and combed the tangled curls so hard that my head bounced around and I near got seasick. Mama said that once the family portrait was taken I could take my too-tight shoes off until the ceremony, but Uncle Ezra took forever getting it set up. I was wearing a little heart-shaped locket that Margaret gave me because I was the flower girl and I sucked on it hard. Just when my chest felt like it was about to burst open with a big sob, I felt Johnny’s hand on my head, the cuff of his jacket among my ringlets. I remember how he pushed a curl away from my ear and whispered, “Wait a minute. Anyone can take anything for a minute.”

  “Then what?” I whispered back.

  He said, “You wait another minute.”

  I was too little to know how long a minute was, so I started counting all the numbers I knew instead, and before I finished, Uncle Ezra took the picture.

  The telephone rang. “Rosalie!” Mama called from upstairs.

  “What?!”

  “What do you think?”

  I got the phone.

  “Who is this?” a voice demanded.

  Mama would have killed me if I was ever that rude. “It’s Rosalie Norman.” I lowered my voice. “Who’s this?”

  “Your Uncle Jim. How’s tricks?”

  Uncle Jim lived in Toronto. He worked in construction and lived in a neighbourhood full of Greeks and Cape Bretoners. Mama worried about him being far away in the big city, even though Uncle Jim said he always did his best to stay in the easternmost part.

  “Hi, Uncle Jim. I’m good.”

  “Married yet?”

  “I’m only eleven!”

  “Chinese people marry when they’re ten.”

  The thing about my uncle was, you never knew when he was making stuff up or when he was telling you something true that he just wanted you to think he made up. He also had a glass eye that he liked to pop out and put in your Coke Cola or your pocket, and when you found it and screamed, he’d say, “I got my eye on you, kid.”

  “Are you calling for Mama? I don’t know if she’ll come to the phone because her ankle is sort of broken. Did you know that? She has a cast and everything. She fell down the stairs.”

  “Listen, kid. I don’t mean any disrespect to your mother, but there’s a lot of good things a person could be doing with her time, and breaking her leg isn’t one of them.”

  “Actually, she fractured her ankle.”

  “Good, it only cost me three dollars in long distance to clear that up. Now put your mother on.”

  “I don’t know if she’ll—”

  “Tell her there’s two guys named Monstropolis and McAlibi holding their guns to my head.”

  I ran up to Mama’s room, where she was on her bed, rubbing Noxema into her liver spots. She reached for the blue frog and I ran back downstairs to hang up the line. When I picked up the receiver no one was speaking. I waited. And waited.

  I yelled up the stairwell, “Mama!”

  “Lord lovin’!” Uncle Jim said into my ear. “Lil, hang up and call back on the kid. I can hear her fine from here.”

  How come adults don’t ever want you overhearing even half a sentence?

  Later, as I poured myself a Coke Cola, I realized that Uncle Jim knew darn well about Mama’s leg, or else why would he call? The only time he ever phoned us long distance was when he couldn’t come home for Christmas. He didn’t write often, and when he did, his letters were always very short. I’d long ago figured out that they were really just an excuse to get Mama’s goat with newspaper articles about armed robberies and axe murders in the big city. Every time a bit of newsprint fell out of a birthday card, Mama’s mouth pulled so tight it practically disappeared. Shame of it is, Uncle Jim was never around to admire his handiwork.

  I kept the clippings. They might make for good horror comics some day. And if you’re waiting for me to say the other reason Uncle Jim might have called was because the Gravedigger had his paws on something bigger than a little seed of truth about Johnny—you’ll be waiting a long time.

  Chapter Five

  Marcy wrote to me from Pugwash. It wasn’t a letter exactly, just a bunch of pictures she’d drawn. Marcy jumping into the pond with her cousins. Marcy’s family around the campfire. That sort of thing. She’d written “a summer in Pictures” on the back of the envelope, which was covered in peppermint-pink kittens with little hearts and stars around them. Marcy’s drawings were
never very good, but I let her go on about how one day we’d be famous artists and live together in Gay Par-ee. Couldn’t help but wonder, though, how she thought she was going to get from pink kittens to Picasso.

  I sat on the porch with my favourite number 3 pencil and Stillman’s number 2 pad, trying to draw a letter back. Somehow I didn’t feel like doing Mama tumbling down the stairs. And I figured the most truthful way to tell Marcy about the Gravedigger was to just leave him out of the picture. If I had my way, he’d be gone before she got back. Instead, I decided to draw the Ragman.

  The Ragman was leading his old horse up the street. He called, “Rags, get out yer rags!” The cart was heaped with clothes, and the horse’s flanks were glistening with sweat. “Rags, get out yer rags!”

  The Ragman was just about the only black person you saw on Agricola in the summertime, except for maybe the kindergarten teacher, Miss June, who lived over on Creighton Street. She always spent a whole week decorating the classroom before the first day of school. During the school year, a lot of the black kids had to be bused in from Africville on an Acadian Lines bus. Didn’t seem fair, when the rest of us just meandered up the street. The Ragman came from Africville, too. He looked exactly like a white kid in my class named Ben Buchanan. Have you ever seen that? Two people who look alike except for something real obvious on the surface? You point that sort of thing out to people and they say, “No, he don’t. Ragman’s black. He’s got black hair and brown skin and brown eyes. Ben Buchanan’s got blond hair and white skin and blue eyes.” But both of them had long eyelashes, and their cheeks pulled taut when they smiled and made three deep lines. And they both had big front teeth, but big in a nice way, and pointy chins. And when everything started working together—eyes, cheeks, lines, teeth—their faces made the same triangle. But if you point that out to people they say, “No, he don’t. Ragman’s black.” It’s enough to turn your kittens pink.