Kit's Law

by Donna Morrissey

  “You stop! Stop!” I screamed, racing up to the road, Aunt Drucie behind me. He shoved her into his car, much the same as he had done with me the day he had carried me off, then climbed into the other side. The motor roared to life just as I came onto the road. Tripping on a rock, I fell, my face barely missing the chrome bumper lining the back of the car. I crawled onto my knees but fell down again as the reverend jammed his foot on the gas and sped off, the spurt of heat from his exhaust pipe blasting in my face like a breath of hell. Gasping for breath, I got back onto my feet and started running. The car disappeared in a cloud of dust ahead of me, but still, I kept running. By the time I got to Haire’s Hollow, a crowd was already gathering in front of the jailhouse, and Jimmy Randall was standing guard upon the steps before its locked doors. Mercifully, Doctor Hodgins was coming across the path from the clinic, marching resolutely towards the jailhouse steps.

  “Doctor Hodgins!”

  Everyone turned as I cried out, and Doctor Hodgins grabbed onto my shoulders as I collided against him.

  “The reverend got her! He took her out of bed!”

  “I know, Kit, and we’re going to get her back.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders and guided me through the outporters starting to crowd around us.

  “I-I only went down the gully to see, to see if … ” but my voice became choked and Doctor Hodgins tightened his arm around me, leading me towards the jail.

  “Did Josie kill him, Doc?” Old Joe asked worriedly.

  “All I know at this point is that Josie is a very sick woman,” Doctor Hodgins answered, as much to Old Joe as to the others who were keeping step with us.

  “How come it was the reverend that took her, and not the Mounties?” one of the others asked.

  “We’ll leave that one for the reverend to answer,” Doctor Hodgins replied grimly.

  “How come she killed him, Doc?” asked Maisie.

  “Josie Pitman wouldn’t kill a mouse,” Doctor Hodgins said, taking the jailhouse steps two a time.

  “If he was comin’ to take her girl, I’d say she had God-damn good reason to kill the bastard,” Gert said, taking the lead in front of Doctor Hodgins. Coming square to Jimmy Randall, she stood arms akimbo. “And if you had any guts, it’d be Shine locked behind them doors, not a sick, retarded woman.”

  “I’m just doin’ what the reverend asked,” Jimmy whined, staring nervously from Gert to Doctor Hodgins.

  “It’s souls the reverend’s committed to treating, Jimmy, not bodies,” Doctor Hodgins said. “And there’s a sick woman in there that needs my help. Perhaps you’d better open that door.”

  Jimmy was relieved of answering as the jailhouse door swung open and the reverend stepped out, looking pleased as a fox with the feathers still floating around him.

  “I was about to send for you, Doctor. I’m afraid Josie’s fever is starting to act up.”

  Still holding onto my arm, Doctor Hodgins brushed past the reverend, and we piled inside. She was laid out on a small cot, trembling uncontrollably as she stared after the reverend.

  “Burn in hell,” she whimpered. “Burn in hell.”

  “Sshh, it’s not you who’s going to burn in hell,” Doctor Hodgins muttered, pressing his hand across her forehead. He swore beneath his breath as the reverend’s best preaching voice sounded back in through the room.

  “It grieves me to say, my friends, that Josie Pitman has confessed to killing Shine.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Doctor Hodgins muttered as a murmur rose up from the people. “Sit with her, Kit,” he ordered, and marched outside the jail.

  “I wouldn’t give a penny for anything Josie Pitman confessed to on this day,” he half snarled, standing besides the reverend. “She’s delirious with fever and wouldn’t recognize Shine’s name from that of her own mother’s right now.”

  “She had no fever when she offered to speak with me,” the reverend countered.

  “Offered?” snorted Doctor Hodgins.

  “That’s right, offered,” the reverend flashed back. “I’d forgotten my hat, and when I went back to get it, I found Josie alone in her room, calling out for help.”

  “He’s the thief!” Aunt Drucie cried out, coming around the corner of the jailhouse, gasping for breath and holding up the end of her apron. “The regular thief—come in and stole her, he did, whilst she was sleepin’ like the baby.”

  “She was weeping like the damned,” the reverend countered. “She said she killed him with an axe. Isn’t that right, Doctor?” he hissed, turning on Doctor Hodgins. “Wasn’t Shine killed with an axe? Only you know at this point what was used to kill him, and perhaps the Mounties. Can you tell us now?”

  By this time half of Haire’s Hollow was standing in silence at the bottom of the jailhouse steps. At the reverend’s question, they all turned their eyes upon Doctor Hodgins. I peered out around the door jamb and watched as Doctor Hodgins’s hands clenched shut behind his back.

  “I said it was an axe,” he said dully, “but, I never said it was Josie Pitman’s axe.”

  “But she said it was!” the reverend cried out. “May God have mercy.”

  “Ain’t right,” Old Joe called out over the growing murmur of the people. “She ain’t right in the head and she shouldn’t be called to answer.”

  “No! She isn’t right,” the reverend replied. “It’s an ill wind upon us, neighbours, and I pray for us all.”

  “It might be an ill wind, but it’s a man we all wished dead that it brung upon our shores,” Old Joe shouted back.

  “Yes sir, brother, and it’s them wishes that helped kill Shine, no different than the hand on the axe handle,” Maisie called out. “Is you goin’ to arrest all of we?”

  Her question fell short as the Mounties pulled up in their dusty black Dodge. Taking courage from their presence, the reverend slipped into his best sermonizing voice and hissed everyone to silence.

  “No doubt there’s some of us that has judged Shine, perhaps even judged him deserving of death. And come eternity, the sin rests on our own souls for having done so. But when it comes to killing, we can’t defer judgment till that day. We judge now! That’s why we have our own laws, as well as those of God’s.”

  “Be the Jesus, if the law had done its job, there’d be no sin committed,” Gert sang out, as much for the benefit of the two Mounties getting out of their car, as for the reverend.

  “That’s right, because Shine’d be in jail, not roastin’ our youngsters, and chewin’ off faces,” Darkus shouted.

  “That it took a woman to make the place safe to walk in, sir! And a retarded one at that!” Elsie yelled.

  The reverend held up his hands for silence as the Mounties made their way through the crowd towards the jailhouse steps.

  “There’ll be mercy for Josie Pitman,” he called out. “That I’ll guarantee you, my friends.” But his words rang hollow, for there was a fever burning in the hearts of the people for Josie’s bravery, a fever as big and as hot as the one eating up her mind as she lay weakly on the jailhouse cot.

  “Didn’t Mope say he was goin’ after young Kit?” Gert sung out.

  “Be the Jesus, I’d have killed him too, if he was coming after one of mine,” sung out another.

  “And she’s sick, my oh my, she’s sicker than death,” cried Aunt Drucie. “Name a God, how could she kill anything?”

  “Silence!” The reverend’s voice whipped through the crowd. “We cannot—each of us—administer justice as we see fit. I guarantee you there’ll be mercy, but it’ll be the law that administers it. We can’t allow our hearts to stand in the way of justice—no matter who or what the situation calls for.”

  There was a silence. And in that silence a voice rang out, a strong and bold voice, a voice that sent a quickening through my stomach and a sickness through to my heart as the intent of what it was saying sunk through me.

  “It wasn’t Josie that killed Shine!”

  Heads swivelled and a gasp rung through the people, a gasp
as sharp as the air hissing out of the reverend and Doctor Hodgins alike, as Sid stepped out of the crowd, his head gannet proud and his eyes burning into mine.

  “It was me,” he said loudly.

  “He’s lying,” the reverend rasped, his stunned surprise quickening his words.

  “No sir, I’m not,” Sid said, still staring at me.

  “Lies!” the reverend spat out. “Lies to protect the girl.”

  “That’s what I was doing, all right,” Sid said, calm as anything, mounting the jailhouse steps. “Protecting Kit. From being raped by Shine.”

  A roar went through the crowd as what they’d been thinking all along come to be true: Shine was fixing on raping their girls.

  “I was splitting wood when I heard Kit cry out,” Sid said, turning to everyone.

  “No!” the reverend hissed. “He hasn’t been splitting wood in the gully for weeks now.”

  “Then who’s that I sees walkin’ up over Fox Point just about every day I’m on the wharf,” Old Joe shouted.

  “He walks on the barrens!” said the reverend.

  “I walks to the gully!” said Sid. With a fierce defiance in his eyes, he turned to the reverend. “And on this day I had just gotten there and picked up the axe to begin splitting, when I heard Kit screaming. I ran inside, still carrying the axe. Shine had her on the floor. He was straddled across her chest.” His voice softened, and he looked to the crowd as if they were his judge and jury. “I only meant to knock him off Kit.”

  “No!” The reverend grabbed hold of Sid’s arm. “Tell them you’re lying. You can’t do this! Your mother … ”

  For the first time, Sid’s voice quavered as he stared back at his father and whispered hoarsely.

  “You ought not to have pushed it this way.”

  “I had to! Do you understand? I had to. For you!”

  “For me? How can you say that?”

  “There are things … ”

  “What things?”

  It was as if they were alone on the jailhouse steps. Then the reverend caught sight of me peering out from behind Doctor Hodgins’s back.

  “You!” he hissed, and the eyes of Haire’s Hollow were upon me. “Do you swear by God that he tells the truth? Speak!” he rasped, his eyes boring through mine. “By God, speak or hell’s damnation on your soul!”

  I felt Doctor Hodgins’s hand steadying on my shoulder as I stared past the reverend at Sid, and at the half-smile on his face as he looked back at me, and at how a breeze lifted a lock of his hair and stroked it back off his forehead, and at how Margaret Eveleigh appeared in front of the crowd behind him, her flaming red ringlets all neatly combed and prettily curled, neatly combed, and prettily curled. And I closed my eyes, seeing Josie’s, a dying ember—no different than the dulled breast feathers of the little robin—and a surging, almost of gladness, lifted my heart as I felt the rightness of what I had to do. I opened my eyes and smiled sadly at Sid.

  “It’s as he says,” I choked out, and all hell broke loose as everyone started talking at once, and the reverend lunged towards me with a snarl. Doctor Hodgins yanked me backwards and pushed me inside the jail as one of the Mounties grabbed hold of the reverend and the other laid his hand on Sid’s arm. Then, we were all standing inside the jail—me, Josie, Doctor Hodgins, the two Mounties and Sid. I looked through the small window overlooking the steps and saw the crowd parting to make room for the reverend as he staggered amongst them like a drunken man. Then Doctor Hodgins was instructing one of the Mounties to go bring his car closer to the steps, and for the younger one to scoop up Josie and carry her outside. Taking a quick look at me and Sid—a look every bit as bleak as the reverend’s—he followed the young Mountie as he carried Josie out through the door. For one blessed moment, Sid and I were alone. With a cry, I flung myself into his arms.

  “I don’t know if I can do this! I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry, Kit, I’m so sorry, it was the only thing left …”

  “No … ”

  “Yes, listen to me, Kit,” he whispered desperately. “They won’t put me in jail. Are you listening? I was protecting you—it was an accident. I’ll be home in no time.”

  “No, no, you don’t know that!”

  “I do, I do know. Besides, I’m only seventeen, and I’m the reverend’s son. Listen now.” He pulled back and give me a little shake. “I’m the only chance Josie’s got, you know that. She wouldn’t survive a trial, and if she did, the reverend would see to it that she never goes back to the gully. Or to you. This is her only chance.”

  “Oh God, but supposin’ they put you in jail?”

  “They won’t! I know they won’t!”

  “But supposin’ they do?”

  “Then that’s their bloody laws. It still won’t make me guilty, Kit. Only God can judge, remember that.”

  I tried to pull away.

  “It’ll be my word. I won’t put you in jail.”

  “You won’t. You won’t be putting me in jail.” He stared at me pleadingly as the sound of footsteps came up over the steps. “Please. You have to do this. For me. As I do this for you. And for Josie. Please!” he whispered urgently. Then he dropped his head and kissed me quickly on the lips. I tore away from him as the youngest Mountie stepped back in through the door, looking towards me.

  “The doctor’s waiting for you,” he said.

  With one last wretched look at Sid I ran out the door and down over the jailhouse steps to where Doctor Hodgins was waiting with Josie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DOCTOR HODGINS’S WAVES

  WE WERE TWO DAYS WAITING FOR THE TRIAL, and it was over in one. It took place in Deer Lake, a town about an hour’s drive from Haire’s Hollow. It took the two-day wait for Josie’s fever to break, and by that time she never ever got it straight about what happened out at the gully— except that Shine was dead and it was God’s law. Doctor Hodgins ruled Josie unfit to testify and had old Joe’s brother-in-law’s wife sit with her at his place, while he and I made the trip to the courthouse together. Since the day of Sid’s confession, both Josie and I were staying with Doctor Hodgins. He never said nothing during the drive, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, while I sat nervously besides him. Once, I almost broke down and told him the truth of what happened, but he held up his hand, his eyes still on the road. “It’s the truth I’ll tell on that stand. Beware of that before you speak.” I remained silent, though such feelings of fright as ever I felt with Shine and the reverend mounted with every turn of the road.

  “There is one thing, and I want the truth on this one,” he said after a spell. He kept looking at the road ahead, yet every sense of him was leaning towards me, listening, feeling for any sound or movement on my part that might tell him a little bit more than what I was willing.

  “Are you and Sid … dating?”

  This last word was spoke with such a thickening of his tongue that I cowered from its loathing. Staring out the window at the unfamiliar brooks and meadows sweeping past us, I felt again the wrath of the reverend the day he caught me with my foot in Sid’s lap, and the repulsive smell of rotting dogberries as I had stood before him—somehow, shamed.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I muttered bitterly.

  Doctor Hodgins stared at me in some surprise.

  “I’m not suggesting that you did. I only meant … ” He turned back to the road and sighed heavily. “There’s nothing wrong with having a boyfriend, Kit. I’m simply asking if Sid’s your boyfriend.”

  “I don’t have boyfriends!”

  “That’s fine! That’s fine! I—it just appeared that way, that’s all.”

  I said nothing more, but my sense of Doctor Hodgins’s relief was so sharp that it left me wondering why something that was so fine could affect him so badly.

  We spoke no more until we entered the courthouse. Doctor Hodgins and I sat on one side, with the reverend and his wife on the other. I took care to not look their way, but the sobbing that broke forth from Mr
s. Ropson every time she looked up and seen her boy with the handcuffs on and the look of pain that flickered across Sid’s face each time he looked her way pricked my heart like a well-whittled stave. Yet each time his eyes lit onto mine, a light shone from them as fierce as any that came from the reverend’s on a good preaching day. Only Sid’s was pure, as pure as the white of an angel’s robe because it shone from his heart, a heart of honour, and without him even knowing the weight of his offering, or whether his mind was yet strong enough to carry such a load.

  My heart swelled with a proud love. And when Doctor Hodgins testified to seeing Sid’s blood-stained shirt in the stove out at the house that day, and then swore under oath that Josie’s fever had started up a day before the killing, making it seem as though she would’ve been much too weak to do any lifting of axes and implanting them in the crowns of grown men, I knew he was feeling, too, the rightness of God’s law and Sid’s choice to act upon it. And when I moved to sit on the witness chair, my legs trembling and my voice quaking with each word spoke, I kept looking to Sid and letting that fierce light of his shine through me and bring forward every damning word that would condemn him for a murder that my mother had committed. And when the verdict was done, and the judge handed down his sentence of two years in prison, I sat paralyzed by shock, listening to Mrs. Ropson’s wails cut through the room with the anguish of a thousand grieving mothers. I fell to my knees, watching as they led Sid out the door, his face white from the sudden fright, and his heart breaking into two halves—one for his mother and one for me.

  “They’ll reduce it,” Doctor Hodgins was saying, pulling me to my feet. “The reverend won’t let it stick. His wife’ll see to that.”

  “No, no,” I whimpered, my knuckles white from gripping the railing in front of me. “It isn’t right. I’ve got to tell them, it isn’t right.”

  “It’s done, Kit,” Doctor Hodgins said harshly. “You can’t change it, now.”