Johnny Kellock Died Today

by Hadley Dyer

  The screen door creaked open. Mama leaned over Norman’s umbrella and held out her coin purse. “Go to the store and get two pounds of ground steak,” she said. “Tell Jack Newberry that if he sends you home with something fatty, it will be trotted right back to him.”

  Lord, I’d been to the butcher’s just that morning. And the day before. And every day since I was old enough to walk to the end of the block by myself. Another mother might say to herself, “Gee, I wonder if I ought to get a little ground steak since my kid is already fetching bacon.” Not my mother. Jack Newberry liked to tell the other customers that I had a little crush on him and that’s why I went so often. I hated that.

  “It’s too hot, Mama. Do I have to go now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I have to go right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  That was the law in our house, Mama saying so. Always and forever. Martha was five when I was born and Young Lil was ten. Doris was fourteen, Margaret was seventeen, and Freddie was twenty. They’re old now, the whole lot of them, but they still do what Mama says-so.

  “Back again?” said Jack Newberry. “Why aren’t you off playing with the other kids?”

  I shrugged. Jack Newberry put the ground steak on the scale. The stiff cold coming from the freezer felt good on my skin. I’d have pressed my whole self against the nice cool display case, except for the cows’ tongues and pigs’ hoofs on the other side of the glass.

  There were other customers lining up, but he let me look at the ground steak before he wrapped it. Then I gave him the money and braced myself for the heat outside. Just as I was pushing on the door, Jack Newberry said—

  “Rosalie?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re here so often I’m beginning to think you’ve got a little crush on me.”

  I could hear them all chuckling as the door shut behind me.

  Pauline Christianson and Katie Price were sitting outside of Millner’s, sucking on Popsicles, a pile of empty wrappers and sticks between them on the bench. They were Marcy’s and my best school friends. In the winter, we’d go down to Pauline’s basement, where her father hung salt cod to dry from the ceiling, and have ourselves a little salt-cod snack with a bit of toothpaste smeared on each bite.

  “Rosalie! You going down to the lake later?” Pauline called.

  “Nope.”

  “Just come sit by the water,” said Katie. “Here, want half of my Popsicle? I got an orange one by mistake.”

  I didn’t like orange either, but I wasn’t going to turn down a free Popsicle.

  “I suppose you heard I can’t go too far from home these days,” I said.

  “Oh, your mother!” said Pauline. “Did she really break her leg? In two?”

  “Yeah, sort of. Got a cast and everything. She fell down the stairs. I heard her go, too.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you hear her bone snap?” You could tell by the way Katie glanced down at the pile of Popsicle sticks that she was this close to using one to make her point. But she thought better of it.

  “Well, I heard something like a snap, but I don’t know what it was exactly.”

  “God!”

  “Ew!”

  “It was right scary,” I said. “But I looked over her until we could get her to the hospital.”

  “You’re like a hero,” said Pauline.

  “Well . . .”

  “You are!”

  “You’d have done the same. You know, your heart starts pumping what with the fright of it, but your body knows what to do, so you just do what you have to do, and . . .”

  Ever stop listening to yourself right in the middle of talking? My mouth was going on about how people been known to lift cars off someone because their fear gives them superhuman strength, and maybe that’s where the inspiration for Superman came from, because didn’t he do that in the first comic, when he was just a little kid, not that I was comparing myself to Superman. Meanwhile, another part of my brain had got itself up and wandered off a ways. What it was thinking about was the Gravedigger. It was thinking: Hold on a sec. What about that letter? The one that came from Ship Harbour and went to the Flynns’ house by mistake. It was probably full of ordinary news from Aunt Izzie, and maybe there was something in it about Johnny. Something that might make the Gravedigger think he could get me going. Something that might make him think his lie would work out differently than it did. What if I could trick him into admitting he’d read the letter—steamed it open, maybe, like in my new favourite comic, Detective Fantastic? If I could prove the Gravedigger had got into our mail, I bet I could convince my parents to send him away.

  After I got my superhero self home and brushed the orange off my teeth, I grabbed my shoebox full of markers and pencils. Martha was at the kitchen counter, coating a cake pan with lard. Mama was darning one of Norman’s socks. I still wasn’t used to seeing Mama sitting so much. The bruise on her face was fading into a mishmash of browns.

  “For the love of Pete,” Mama said, pulling a rolled bill out of the sock toe.

  Norman was forever hiding money. He wasn’t supposed to—Mama was always afraid of being robbed—but he said he felt better when he could put his hands on it. “Safe place, my eye,” Mama said. “Course he’d keep a ten in the one with the hole in it.”

  She sighed, tucking the bill into her apron pocket.

  “I was thinking that maybe I’d draw something on your cast,” I said to Mama. “If you like.”

  “It’s hard enough to keep it clean,” said Mama.

  “Oh, a little decoration is better looking than just plain old white,” said Martha. “What would you put there? Maybe some flowers, Mama?”

  Mama shrugged. “I suppose you could do a small rose or something. Just on the inside there, not on the front.”

  I started sketching out the rose on Mama’s cast. The plaster was hard and bumpy. I had to use the eraser a couple of times and tried not to press too hard on Mama’s leg.

  “So how’s Izzie doing these days?” I said, blowing some eraser dust off the cast.

  “Aunt Izzie. Don’t be cheeky.”

  “How’s Aunt Izzie doing?”

  “She’s got a lot of worries.”

  “Things okay at the gas station?”

  “Hmph. Money’s tight, as usual.”

  “Why don’t the Kellocks come for Sunday dinner any more?”

  “Aunt Izzie needs Sunday just to catch up with the housework. Now there’s something my father never liked us to do—work on Sundays. Used to get on Norman about it. Truth be told, he could get a little rough, your granddad, especially after Mother died and he took to the bottle. But he had a healthy respect for God, all right.”

  “Well, anyway,” I said, “seeing’s how you’re laid up, maybe the Kellocks will find a way to come for a visit. Hey, you hear from Aunt Izzie lately?”

  “Your father was just out there. Careful, you’re colouring outside the line.”

  “Oh, sorry.” I fixed the rose’s stem with a sharp black marker. “I guess I mean a letter. I thought maybe I saw a letter from Ship Harbour last week.”

  Mama stuck out her foot and admired the finished rose. Then she pulled herself up with Norman’s big black umbrella, which she kept hooked on the back of her chair. “No,” she said, tapping out of the kitchen. “It’s been a while since we had a letter.”

  Chapter Six

  The Gravedigger was turning over the compost heap in the far corner of the yard. He stood inside the chicken wire, spearing the soggy top layer and moving it off to one side, then wedging the pitchfork underneath the good fertilizer at the bottom. Norman could do all this with a flick of his wrist, but then he was taller than the Gravedigger and had been doing it since he was born.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  It might have come out of me a little critical-sounding. The Gravedigger didn’t sa
y anything. I picked up a stray eggshell and tossed it towards the back of the compost heap where the new stuff was piled up.

  “You go to the R.C. school,” I said.

  Nothing. Just the sucking sound of the pitchfork being pulled out the earth and then the thwack of it going back in.

  “You not talking?”

  “You gonna ask me a for-real question?”

  “I was just wondering if you’re a Mi—of the Catholic faith.”

  “Don’t go to church.”

  “Didn’t you go to St. Stephen’s?”

  “Sometimes.”

  The pitchfork went shoook. Thwack. Shoook. Thwack.

  “You’d rather be working, eh?”

  “I guess.”

  “Your brothers both working?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Down at the shipyard?”

  The Gravedigger leaned on his pitchfork. “You mean like your cousin?” I waited some time on the “I told you so,” but it never came. “How old is he?”

  “Johnny? I think he’s seventeen now.”

  “Old enough. I suppose this means you decided I wasn’t making that up.”

  Well, I hadn’t decided anything. But I’d been thinking about it—hard—for a whole day. The one thing I knew for certain was that I’d held a letter in my hands. It was thick and I could picture the careful, loopy handwriting and the return address that said Ship Harbour. And I remembered about how grown-ups like to put a coat of sugar on things, especially when they’re talking to the youngest, and how sometimes it’s hard to scrape off. Because if you do scrape it off, what you might find is that Mama lied to me.

  “Did you read that letter that went to your house by mistake? You know, like steam it open?”

  “You think I’m Detective Fantastic or something?” the Gravedigger said. “I don’t snoop. I just happened to be under the window when your parents were talking. Believe me, I’m real sorry about it.”

  “And they said Johnny was going to be away on Sunday, right? When my aunt called, she told Norman that he’d probably miss him. Right?”

  Shoook. Thwack. Shoook. Thwack. For a minute, I didn’t think the Gravedigger was going to answer at all. Then the pitchfork stopped, and he said, “No one’s heard from him in over two weeks.”

  It was like I’d gulped a big gulp of water. I could feel a coldness snaking down to my stomach and pooling there. “Did they say he went off to look for work?”

  The Gravedigger flicked a potato peel off the toe of his boot. “Look, it’s not easy to get a job at the shipyard. I don’t know if that’s what your cousin’s doing, but if he is, he’s gonna give up soon, and then he’ll come by and explain himself and help out, just like you said. If he gets a job, you’ll hear about it.”

  “Do you—do you think your father would know him?”

  “Not likely he’d take notice of some kid looking for hire.”

  “Maybe we could go down and ask him.”

  The Gravedigger looked at me severe-like. “No.”

  “We won’t bother him, I promise. But maybe he’s seen him . . .”

  “I said no.”

  Here’s the thing about my Mama. Since I was little, she’s seemed as powerful as God, only more predictable. I spent my whole life up to that moment being told what was what and no explanation, thank you very much, and if that boy, that Gravedigger, that Mickey Mouse from across the way thought he was going to out-Mama me, he had another think coming. I had a whole lungful of air with his name on it when he said, “I’ll take you down, though, if you want to have a look around.”

  “You’ll take me?”

  “We’re not telling your dad, though.”

  “Oh, no. Of course not.”

  “And we’ll have to find a way to get in.”

  It was another day before the Gravedigger would take me to the shipyard to look for my cousin. First he had to finish with the compost. Then he had to fertilize the shrubs like Norman asked. Then he had to get the tomatoes off and, no, he couldn’t wait because see how they’re turning already. I even helped him since it was looking like Johnny would be an old man by the time we found him.

  The Gravedigger might have been right about Johnny showing up soon. And if no one was saying anything about it, maybe they weren’t so worried. After all, it wasn’t like Johnny to cause his parents grief for no reason. Maybe the time had come for him to break out of Ship Harbour, come to the city, and make his own way. Course, that didn’t mean people wouldn’t be happy if they saw me coming up our front walk with him, and probably they’d be sorry about keeping secrets. And something else. I’d sent Mama flying down those stairs and this was a way of making things right again. Maybe. I didn’t want to miss my chance.

  Later that afternoon, the Gravedigger came back to the house and said, “All right. We’re going.”

  Mama and Martha were having tea in the kitchen. I told them about how David had never been swimming and wasn’t that a shame, and shouldn’t I take him out to Chocolate Lake, meet up with some of the other kids, get a little sunshine. And all.

  Mama looked at me and then she looked at the Gravedigger. “You both finished your chores?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Rosalie did a good job with the dusting,” said Martha.

  “And now you want to go swimming? Rosalie, you hate swimming.”

  I saw Martha nudge Mama with her elbow. “Nice day to be outdoors,” she said. “You’d have to be careful with your glasses, Rosalie. David, do you have something to wear in the water?” The Gravedigger nodded, scowling. “You want me to wash your overshirt while you’re gone? It’ll be dry by the time you get back.” Martha paused. “That is, assuming it’s okay with Mama.”

  “All right, then,” said Mama. She didn’t look convinced about my sudden love of the water, but there was no good reason to say no. Course, Mama always found a way to say no.

  “Rosalie, no—”

  “Eating before we go swimming.”

  “And no—”

  “Frigging around with those big kids from the high school.”

  “And no—”

  “Swimming off by ourselves because that’s how people get drownded.”

  “Drowned. Go on, then, smarty-pants.”

  I pulled the Gravedigger out of the kitchen before she could change her mind. “Wait here,” I said at the front stairs and ran up to my room to change into my bathing suit. I shoved towels and comic books and other lake things into two bags and ran back down again.

  “You can take Archie and I’ll take Bugs Bunny and then we’ll switch,” I said loudly enough for Mama and Martha to hear. “I got some allowance for a pop afterwards, but no drinking before we go in, just like Mama says. Now, uh, David, pass me that shirt.”

  I held out my hand. David peeled off his overshirt and gave it to me, then he grabbed one of the bags and headed outside.

  “Bye, lovey,” said Martha, as I ran back to the kitchen with the smelly laundry.

  “Behave,” said Mama.

  “We will!”

  I whooped as we turned the corner onto Kane Street. I was high from our big escape, but David was quiet.

  “We’ll be quick,” I said. “And we won’t bother your father, promise.”

  He stopped walking. “Let’s get one thing straight. You can lie to your mum all you want, miss. You can tell people I spread kittens on my toast for breakfast, and you can pass me by on the street like you don’t even see me. But don’t you ever go telling people I can’t swim, or you’ll catch it. Get it?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I was the best swimmer at St. Stephen’s, any of those choirboys will tell you. I can do a perfect jackknife dive.”

  “Really? A jackknife?”

  “I’ll show you some time. If we ever go to the lake for real.”

  “Okay.”

  And just like that, we were walking again. For a second, I was sorry we weren’t heading to Chocolate Lake after all.

 
; The humidity had lifted, and the sun felt good on my shoulders, and the bathing suit under my clothes gave me that fun’s-a-coming feeling even though we weren’t really heading to a lake. A yellow tram growled past us on Gottingen Street. If I was with Marcy, we’d go down a little farther so I could have a look in the shop windows. We chose most of our clothes out of the Eaton’s catalogue, so the only shopping ever I did was when Mama sent me to the store’s order department with a list.

  The problem was, David said, as we skidded down to Barrington Street, the shipyard had a fence and a guardhouse and a guard. You didn’t get in without an ID card. Sure, there were lots of people who would’ve liked to have a look around, maybe pick up some tools or equipment or something to trade with their buddies. Every now and then the guard might check a worker’s truck on the way out to make sure he wasn’t sneaking out a “rabbit”—something you made on the boss’s time and the boss’s nickel but kept for your own self.

  There’s a concrete wall that runs along Barrington Street to keep you from falling to your death on the railroad tracks below. We passed through a gap in the wall and took a latticework bridge over the tracks. A long set of stairs—must have been a hundred steps—went down, down to the entrance to the yard.

  “So how do you think Johnny’d get in?” I asked.

  “He’d have to fix it with someone ahead of time. You think maybe he’s got a friend who works there?”

  “I dunno. Johnny’s lived in Ship Harbour since he was twelve,” I said. “Course, everyone loves Johnny. He could be sitting beside someone on a tram one day and there you go—” I snapped my fingers. “That person’d offer him a job.”

  “You don’t say,” said David.

  “Sure.”

  “Then I figure alls we have to do is get inside and look for the big Johnny Parade.”

  At the entrance, a knot of workers was making their way past the guardhouse, showing their ID cards. We waited until they were through, then David marched right up to the guard.

  “Allo, David!”

  “Hey, François.”

  The guard, François, was a big guy with a big blond moustache and a plaid cap pushed back on his head. “You come in to work, eh?” He laughed. I didn’t think it was all that funny, but David laughed, too.