by Mary Razzell
Did he mean stay at my house? I was so astounded, I couldn’t answer. He kissed me goodbye in front of everybody.
Even when the lights of Port Mellon had faded in the distance, I was still numb. His was obviously a world I knew nothing about. Maybe his parents didn’t mind if he had guests, even overnight ones. My mother would have a fit. I already slept on a cot in the living room. My three brothers slept in one of the two bedrooms, Mom and Dad (when he was home on leave) in the other. We had calendars on the walls, not oil paintings. The dishes didn’t match. There was no bathroom, just the outhouse down a little path and shielded by alders.
It was impossible.
“But, oh, Sonia,” I said, turning to her there on the Mimi 1 on our way home through the darkness. “Just think! He wanted to.”
* * *
I woke up the next morning at ten. Pep, our dog, was barking and tugging at the sleeve of my nightgown.
“Mom!” But there was no answer. She must have been out working in the barn.
I hurried to dress. What could be the matter? Pep kept whining and running around in a tight circle. Perhaps Jim or Mike was in trouble. This was the day they were going to catch Big Red and try to ride him.
Big Red was one of a band of horses that ran free-range on the peninsula, practically wild. Jim and Mike swore they would catch Big Red one day and ride him.
Pep ran ahead of me, barking and turning every so often to make sure I was following him. He led me along the side of the creek toward the base of the mountain.
Ten minutes in, I saw a piece of Jim’s red shirt caught on a blackberry vine. A little farther on there were fresh orange peels curled in a fern. Around me robins sang of summer coming.
Pep was snuffling along the trail, slobbering in his excitement. And then, there was Jim lying across the trail, his head in a pool of blood.
I could see the deep gash over his left ear. The blood was a dark crimson and oozed slowly. I had to fight panic when I couldn’t rouse him. It was as though he were in a deep sleep.
I quickly took off the white blouse and flowered dirndl skirt I wore and then my slip. The slip was an old cotton one but clean, and I thought it would do to make a pad to staunch the flow of blood matting the pine needles on the trail. I wadded it under Jim’s head. Using my fingers, I pressed hard on the upper side of the gash until the bleeding stopped. But every time I took my fingers away, the blood would begin to seep again.
I remembered that my mother used to mix saliva and sugar to stop any of our badly bleeding cuts. Jim had some sugar cubes for the horses in his pocket. I put a couple in my mouth. The minute they dissolved, I let the mixture drop into the wound to mix with the blood. It seemed to work.
Pulling on my skirt and buttoning my blouse, I went to look for Mike. Pep stayed with Jim, laying his nose on his paws and watching him, all the time making a high-pitched whine.
I heard Mike moaning. He was about thirty feet away. His freckles stood out against the whiteness of his face. I’d never known he had so many. Or noticed how small he was, lying down. One of his legs was at a crazy angle.
Kneeling beside him, I said, “I’m going for help. Jim’s unconscious. What happened?”
He stopped moaning. He looked scared.
“Big Red spooked when we were on him, and we... went flying. Hurry, Sheila.”
I ran. I scrambled over fallen trees. Tore through blackberry vines. Thundered over the wooden bridge. Damp. Breathless. Scared. Wondering how I could get help quickly.
There was Helga Ness at work in her vegetable garden, an old gunny sack around her waist for an apron. I hesitated to tell her what had happened. But I was afraid to take the time to find my mother.
She surprised me.
“Get Mr. Percy,” she told me. Then she took off for her woodshed and was already putting a chainsaw on a pack-board when I left.
When Mr. Percy and I arrived back in his truck, she had everything ready for us. Mr. Percy took the chainsaw. I had two blankets and a coil of rope to carry. She took a machete.
Mr. Percy went ahead and cleared the trail of windfalls. Helga slashed at the blackberry vines, and I came behind clearing away the debris. It seemed to take forever, and all I could think of was the blood oozing out of Jim’s head, and Mike’s twisted leg.
There at last was Jim, just as I had left him, lying in the same position and still unconscious, a large clot formed on the wound. I ran over to where Mike lay. There was a film of sweat on his forehead. I held his hand, something I’d never done before.
“Mr. Percy and Mrs. Ness are here. He’s going to carry you, and Mrs. Ness and I will take Jim. It’s going to be all right now, Mike.” I felt him squeeze my hand.
Helga and I carefully worked one of the blankets under Jim. It was hard to remember that I had thought of her as crazy when her hands were now so capable.
Mr. Percy tied the corners of the blanket securely to two poles so that we had a makeshift stretcher. With Helga in the lead, she and I carried Jim back down the trail. Mr. Percy put a splint on Mike’s leg, wrapped him in a blanket and carried him out of the forest down to Helga’s place.
Although we didn’t say anything to each other, Helga and I worked well together. She seemed to know when my arms felt as if they were coming out of their sockets. I noticed when her feet dragged on the ground. When that happened, we set Jim down gently on the path and rested.
It was strange to hear the birds still singing and see bright new green ferns unfurled on the forest floor. The air smelled sweet and warm.
When we had rested for a minute, we moved together to pick up the stretcher and walk again.
Mr. Percy arrived just behind us at the Ness yard. We put Jim down in the shade of the woodshed and while Mr. Percy continued to hold Mike, we followed his brief orders to place a mattress on the flatbed of his truck. There we made the boys as secure as possible by tying them down with rope. I knelt between them and hung on by hooking one hand through the open back window of the cab.
A couple of quick turns of the crank and Mr. Percy had the engine running.
“I think we should get your mother before we head for the doctor’s,” he shouted over the noise.
I poked my head in through the open window and yelled in his ear, “Isn’t Mrs. Ness coming?” For Helga stood there, hesitating. It seemed as if she wasn’t sure what to do.
“Helga, come on now, we’re waiting. We’re going to need your help.” She put her foot on the running board and swung into the cab alongside Mr. Percy.
My mother was out the back door, drying her hands on her apron, before we stopped.
“Glory be to God,” was all she said when Mr. Percy told her about the boys. Back into the house she ran, grabbing her purse and hat. She stepped up and squeezed in beside Helga.
The truck couldn’t go fast, but still the jolting caused Mike to groan as we clattered over loose planks of bridges and hit a few potholes. Jim was quiet. What if he were dead? I didn’t know which was worse. To have one of them too quiet or to have one groaning in pain, but I knew it was going to be a long trip into Gibson’s Landing to see Dr. Howard.
3
DR. HOWARD was in. We were in luck because he had the whole peninsula to take care of and sometimes was away all day.
“Thanks be to God,” my mother murmured. The doctor took a quick look at Jim and Mike before he helped us move them into his treatment room.
Going to the foot of the stairs, he called up to his wife, “Mollie, could you come right away and give me a hand?”
Waiting only until Mollie had put on a white gown, Doc began to give orders. “Mollie, give Mike there in the X-ray room an eighth of a grain of morphine. Mother,” he said to my mother, “you go and sit with the boy. Now you—Sheila, is it? You come over and watch. You may as well learn something while you’re here.”
He looked briefly at Jim’s wound, then covered it with a sterile gauze. The fact that he could go on talking in that matter-of-fact way as he worked
reassured me.
“We check the eyes of a head injury.” And he thumbed up the lid of one. “See that pupil? Okay, now the other. Both seem to be the same size and normal. Okay, check the ears for bleeding...the nose...the mouth. This bothering you? No? Good girl. Hand me that blood pressure apparatus...the black box. And the stethoscope. Roll that sleeve up for me... higher. Blood pressure a little low, but that is to be expected. Get his shirt up out of the way. Let me hear his chest. Now, then, turn him on his side and hold him there.”
He placed his stethoscope in several places on Jim’s back, then went back and checked them all again. He looked thoughtful. Tucked a thermometer in Jim’s armpit, waited a minute or so, whistled through his teeth. Held the thermometer to the light, stopped whistling.
“Mollie, you back yet? Put a dressing on his head wound and let Sheila see your sterile technique. We may have a future nurse here.” He winked at me.
As soon as the X-rays of Mike’s leg were dry, he held them up to the light. It was an uncomplicated break, he said, and Doc had me help him put a plaster of Paris cast on Mike’s leg.
Then Doc sat down with my mother and talked to her about Jim. “I can’t let him go home with you yet. He’ll have to stay at least the night. He needs close attention. No, no...” He put his hand out to calm her. “I know you would watch over him carefully, but his blood pressure has to be taken every fifteen minutes, for one thing, and Mollie is trained to do that. It seems like only a concussion to me, but he is running a temperature and he has lost a lot of blood. Now I don’t want you worrying. He’s young and strong, and I’m quite certain he’ll be right as rain. Do you have a phone?”
My mother shook her head. “The only one in the Landing is at the store.”
“Mr. Percy still running the store?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then there’s no problem. If I need to get in touch with you, Mr. Percy’s my man. Now, why don’t you phone me first thing in the morning, say around ten? I’ll know better then how he is.”
After we had settled Mike in the back of the truck and were ready to go, Doc had a few words for me.
“I’ve given your mother some 282s to give Mike for pain. Your job, Sheila, is to keep an eye on his foot. It should be a normal color. Not blue. He should be able to move his toes freely, and they should be warm to touch. Will you do that?”
Would I do that? At that point I would have done anything for Doc. He treated me as if I were a grownup. I loved him.
* * *
Home. Minus Jim. Mike on the kitchen couch, leg up on pillows, cast still cold and wet, but toes warm, pink and moving. My head back, slouched in a chair beside him. My brother Tom polishing his fishing spoons. All this had happened when he had been out fishing. My mother, Helga, and Mr. Percy finishing supper at the kitchen table. The sun, low in the sky, slanting in at the window, lighting on the polished kettle, my mother’s wedding ring, and striking green-gold depths in the cat’s eyes. The doctor’s words, gestures, face, blending in and out of my drowsy head. Me in a white uniform, long hospital halls... My mother and Mr. Percy talking, Helga quiet as usual.
My mother got up to make fresh tea. Helga’s eyes followed her, then strayed to Mike.
“How old is the boy?” Helga asked.
I sat up straighter. Other then telling me to get Mr. Percy at the beginning, they were the first words she had spoken all that long afternoon.
“Mike? Oh, he’s ten. In March. He’s in grade four,” said my mother.
“And your girl?” Now her eyes were on me.
“Sheila’s fifteen, sixteen at the end of June. She’s just finishing grade eleven. It’s her last year at school.”
I couldn’t believe I had heard her right. I stared at her across the room.
She stared right back.
“You don’t have to go to school anymore, Sheila. It’s only law that you go until you’re fifteen.” From the tone of her voice, she might have been talking about feeding the chickens.
“But I want to go to school!” I stood up, shaking.
“Well, we’ll talk about it again,” she said mildly. “It’s not that you have to earn a living like the boys. You’ll only end up married, with a family of your own.”
A family of my own? Like her? That was the last thing I wanted. I wanted more than that. A career—maybe nursing.
“But I want—” I heard myself shouting.
“That will do, Sheila. We need another pail of water, please.”
I grabbed the bucket and slammed out the door. Throwing the pail at the pump, I kept on going.
I went down to the beach and glowered at the mountains. They kept themselves blue, remote. I was so angry and shocked at what my mother had said that I bawled.
If Dad were here, he’d let me go to school. He’d want me to. Or Paul. He was proud of me doing well. Didn’t he tell his friends, “My kid sister’s the one with the brains in the family. She’s the one brings home all the A’s.”
I was going to go to school. I’d never get away from here and be someone unless I did.
I don’t know how long Helga had been sitting on the next log. I only know that when I had cried myself out, there she was. Sitting there, running shoes planted in the sand, bony knees, shapeless sweater.
She didn’t say anything. The sun was setting. Keats Island was the last to go into the shadows. The tide was full, the water calm.
We sat a little longer. Then we walked back up the beach trail together.
4
I PUT OFF the talk with my mother about school. She was full of concern about Jim, and it seemed better to wait.
The next morning we went to the store to use the phone. Mr. Percy led us back to the storeroom that was between the store proper and the post office. It was stacked with cases of Pacific canned milk, pork and beans, pears; cartons of toilet paper, soap flakes, crackers, gunny sacks of potatoes. The phone was black and hand-cranked, and set up on the wall.
Even if Mr. Percy had wanted to avoid hearing the conversation, he couldn’t have. He was making out an order for supplies, and I watched him count, then jot down items on the order sheet.
We could hear my mother. “Yes...yes...but...” Her voice rose in agitation.
Mr. Percy stopped writing. When my mother rang off, up went those eyebrows of his, and he asked, “How is the boy?”
My mother worked at her lip nervously. “The doctor said Jim has pneumonia. He isn’t conscious yet. They want to try some new drug—penicillin.” She rubbed at her eyebrows. “I don’t know what to think, I’m sure.” For the first time, I thought my mother looked old. Her face was drawn, and there were deep lines running down from her nose to both sides of her mouth.
Mr. Percy patted her shoulder. “Not to worry. I know all about this penicillin. They’re calling it the wonder drug of the century. They say it’s saved thousands of our boys overseas. Now you stop fretting, Mrs. Brary. After I close up today, I’ll pick you up and drive you over to Gibson’s. Wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we find Jim much better. Yes, even in that short a time. I tell you, this is a miracle drug. Read all about it in Life.” And so, patting and consoling, encouraging and commenting, Mr. Percy sent us on our way, feeling hopeful.
* * *
By afternoon the house was swept and dusted, and the washing hung on the clothesline where it billowed out in the ocean breeze. Finally I was free to visit Sonia.
I hadn’t seen her since the night of the basketball game at Port Mellon. There was so much I wanted to tell her— about Jim and Mike, Doc Howard and Helga...
But when I got to the Kolosky house, I found it in an uproar. There were mattresses hanging from the windows, blankets airing on lines, smoke billowing from both chimneys. Children ran everywhere with stacks of clothing, school books, toys. In the middle of the turmoil stood Mrs. Kolosky, the baby straddled on one of her hips, while she directed traffic and gave orders. Mr. Kolosky had appeared mysteriously, and was loading furniture onto a pickup truck
. He didn’t look like a Kolosky. He was skinny and dark and had wisps of brownish hair showing from under the edges of his cap.
Sonia caught sight of me as she hurried by with a load of flattened tin cans for the pit at the back of their property. I helped her bury them, and all the while we talked.
“Guess what?” she said excitedly. “We’re moving, and were going to have fourteen fruit trees and a hundred chickens!”
“You aren’t moving far, are you?” I asked anxiously.
“To the Fraser Valley...” Her voice trailed off. It was too far for two fifteen-year-olds, and we both knew it. “We can write each other,” she offered as comfort.
“It won’t be the same,” I managed to say, although my throat had tightened up, and I could feel the tears behind my eyes.
“No,” she agreed, looking as though she wanted to cry, too.
We finished burying the cans in silence and walked back slowly to the house.
“I won’t stay today. I’ll only be in the way,” I said. “When are you going?”
“This afternoon’s boat.”
“You can’t,” I said and couldn’t stop the tears. Sonia put her arms around me, and we bawled together like two calves.
I saw the Kolosky family off on the afternoon boat. Sonia and I waved goodbye until the boat had rounded the point and all that was left was black smoke trailing from the funnels. The boat whistled then for its next call, Gibson’s Landing, and its plaintive sound echoed and re-echoed from the mountains and in my head.
* * *
Mr. Percy called for my mother just as we had finished supper. My mother was ready—hat squarely on her head and purse in hand. She left me a list of instructions, and I could tell by the set of her mouth that she expected them all to be done.
“Oh, just a minute, Mrs. Brary,” said Mr. Percy as he turned back to his truck. “I brought your mail over. Thought you’d want it. Letter for you, too, Sheila.”
It was a letter from Bob McLean. There was his name and address in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope.