Aunt Drucie helped with the preserving.
“For sure Lizzy’d be proud to know you’re makin’ the best of her patch, Kit,” she said, tightening the cap on a jar of berries and passing it to me. “And that you’re keepin’ it secret. More than once I threatened to follow her in, but I allows she would’ve led me to God’s end and left me for the caribou to trek over. By the cripes, she was stingy over that patch.”
“Perhaps I’ll let you come with me and Josie next fall,” I say, taking the jar and placing it in the pot of boiling water with the rest. “How long should they boil?”
“Oh, till you sees the pink bubblin’ above the berries. Now, I lets mine boil a bit longer than Lizzy, to sweeten the tarty taste. But Lizzy now, she use to haul hers outta the water at the first sight of a bubble. I’d never say it in front of her, Kit, but I always thought her jam a bit tarty. Better than May Eveleigh’s, for sure, ’cuz hers taste worse than pig’s slop, as Lizzy always used to say. But I likes mine a bit of sweet, I do. Now, let’s have a rest till they’s boiled.”
It was a stark winter’s morning when I handed over the first bottle of partridgeberry preserves.
“Looks every bit as good as Lizzy’s,” Old Joe beamed. “Heh, you wouldn’t mind givin’ Old Joe a hint as to where to find a patch of his own, now would you, Kit? Lizzy always said she meant to tell me, someday.”
“And so I will, Joe,” I said solemnly. “So I will. Good day, now, and don’t forget to pass your brother over his bottle.”
“Aye, you’re gettin’ to be as hard as Lizzy, God help us,” Old Joe muttered, dodging on up over the hill.
“And just as scrooge,” Doctor Hodgins glowered as I shooed him away from my stack of jars gleaming on the bin one evening. Slouching down in the rocker, he stared warily at the chimney as the stormy February winds rattled down through, blazing up the fire and spurting smoke up through the cracks around the stove-tops. He’d been coming regularly since the day of the trial, making sure we had enough split wood to last through the nights, and that the roof wasn’t going to blow off over our heads.
Or so’s he said. I knew it was for different reasons that he came. A man with learning can’t lay claim to the youthful truths that he had talked about that evening sitting by the sea. So it was mine that he clung to, and Sid’s. And that’s why he kept coming out to the gully as often as he did, to see me and Josie, and judge it right that he had lied under oath and helped land a mother’s boy in jail. And other things too kept him rooted to Nan’s rocking chair that winter; things he brooded over, but seldom spoke of.
“You look like her,” he said after we had sat quietly for a spell one evening, and Josie had taken herself off to bed.
“Like who?” I asked, laying my history book to one side and looking up from where I was sprawled on the daybed.
“My wife. When she was your age.” He smiled. “With your blonde hair and pretty blue eyes, you could’ve been her girl.”
“Aunt Drucie said she wanted to adopt me.”
“She did, and that she did. From the second you were born and she laid eyes on you.”
“She was there?”
“Yes, she was, she and … Mrs. Ropson,” he added after a slight pause.
My eyes popped open.
“Mrs. Ropson?”
“She was a good friend of Elsie’s back then. She— happened to be visiting when word come that Josie was in labour.” He shrugged. “She’d often helped me with birthings back then, so, she came along.” He rested his hand on his chin, and went back to brooding again, as if the memory had become distasteful.
“Mrs. Ropson helped born me?”
“That she did,” he replied.
“You … didn’t want babies?” I asked, anxious to shut out the picture of Mrs. Ropson handling my squirming, naked body at birth.
“I always figured God would have given us one of our own, if He had meant for us to be parents,” Doctor Hodgins said. “Elsie went along with that. Course, I didn’t leave her much choice. I thought she’d gotten over it,” he paused, “until you were born. Everyone knew Josie couldn’t take care of you, and that Lizzy was getting on in years, so she set her mind on adopting you. With Lizzy’s blessings, of course.”
“And Nan said no?”
Doctor Hodgins’s brow shot up.
“And a whole lot more. And right she was to say no. She had love to give you, and love’s a better guarantee of happiness than someone else’s need to rescue.” He rose slowly from the rocker and, striding across to the window, looked down over the gully. His voice was quieter when he began talking again, as if he were speaking to himself.
“It was her needs that I misunderstood—again. Had I but tried, perhaps she might’ve found in me what she was looking for in a child. And too, there’s those that deserve to be rescued—God help them.”
Striding back to the rocker, he sat down heavily and started rocking again, the chair creaking beneath his weight. And long after I’d gone to bed I heard him sitting out there, creaking his way through the night, and brooding … all the time, brooding …
I brooded too, lying there in my bed. What with the wind trying to wrench every board in the house apart, and Doctor Hodgins creaking up his own storm out in the kitchen, there was small chance of blissful sleep on this night, or of hearing Sid’s laugh sounding up the gully. It was nights like this that I mostly missed Pirate. And nights like this that I prayed the hardest upon my orange speckled star. Starfish, star bright, starfish, star bright …
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE LETTER
IT WAS COMING INTO SPRING AND STILL no word from Sid. And if it wasn’t for Old Joe and Margaret and Aunt Drucie reporting back from his letters to his mother, I wouldn’t know even if he was alive. Josie became my true source of comfort. At least with her I could say his name. Oftentimes while she sat there rocking, and the gulls were calling out as they circled above the house, and the winter’s sun sparkled off the snow on the windowsill, I would chat while dicing up potatoes about how one day soon Sid would be walking down that hill again, with his white shirt and padded jacket, and whistling some nonsense song as he pulled a book of ancient proverbs out of his pocket and began prattling, and how he’d be chasing her around the chopping block, tying her hair into knots and wrestling her to the ground. She’d never say anything, but I could tell by the way the chair would stop rocking that she was listening. Sometimes while she rocked and dozed, her face would redden and her eyes would bulge, and her humming would start coming in short moans, and she would rock harder and faster, harder and faster. I knew then that she wasn’t dreaming of Sid whistling and prattling and tying knots in her hair, but that she was standing on the edge of the gully and seeing again Shine’s wind-driven boat lunging over the waves and heading for the shores of Haire’s Hollow. On those times I’d grip her shoulders and pull her head back against my chest and stroke her forehead, soothing her with more soft-spoken words, thinking all the time that this is what Sid would have me do, this is what Sid would have me do.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Shine’s gone and he’s never comin’ back. Shine’s gone and he’s never comin’ back. Sshhh, nothin’s goin’ to hurt you, now, nothin’s goin’ to hurt you. Remember what Sid said, God’s law. It’s God’s law.”
Most times she’d let me soothe her. Other times, the sudden touch of my hand upon her shoulder, or the sound of my voice if I spoke unexpectedly behind her, would startle her, and she’d rear out of the chair and wallop me across the face. Once, I dropped a plate while washing dishes, and she lunged out of the chair and slugged me so hard in the guts that it took a full minute before I could catch my breath again.
Aside from the stinging of her slap and the bruised ribs, I never minded. It wasn’t me that she was hitting, just whatever that sound was that made her jump. I took to doing most everything for her—fixing her meals, putting out her clothes in the morning. And the strangest of all, I took to mauling at her hair—the way she
used to do with Nan’s. It calmed her when she went into her bad rocking spells. And it gave me something to do besides talking to her. It got so that it became soothing for me to run my fingers through those long, red strands, brushing and plaiting them, and coiling them around her head, always making sure they was neatly combed and prettily braided. She was starting to look like Nan, especially when her hair was coiled back from her face. It was startling to see her look like Nan. I always imagined she had entered the gully the same way as me and Pirate, as an offering that Nan took pity on.
It was pity I expect Nan might’ve felt for Mrs. Ropson, if she had been walking with me the day I almost ran into her in Haire’s Hollow, going into the post office to get her mail. She was all shrunken up inside a black winter’s coat, with a black hat and a veil covering her face, no different than one in mourning. I leaped off the road and ducked besides Jimmy Randall’s stagehead so’s she wouldn’t see me. The water lopped up over the edges of my boots and settled coldly around my feet, but I never moved. Rather the freezing Atlantic than the freezing blood between Mrs. Ropson and me.
I never laid eyes on the reverend. I had left off going to church some time before the graduation dance. I knew Nan wasn’t pleased, but I felt more at peace with God curled into a nook at Crooked Feeder than I did in the back pew of the church with the reverend pointing his finger of shame in my face. And I got more learning from curling up on the daybed with a book than sitting in Mr. Haynes’s classroom and trying to shut out the sight of his purple-webbed nose and chalk-grimed hands. Once, he drove by the gully and stopped. He never blew his horn, and when he seen me come out of the house and silently stare up at him, he drove off. Since the killing no one come by the gully blowing their horns any more.
Spring came. My pile of letters to Sid grew. I couldn’t think as to why I never received one from him, but I knew it wasn’t because they were never wrote. Each night I turned into my pillow I could see his yellow head bent over a piece of paper and writing as fast as he could to keep up with the words coming to his mind. No matter how many times I looked over his shoulder, all I ever read was “for you and for Josie,” “for you and for Josie.” And each morning I woke up, I wrote another letter of my own, crying, “It isn’t right!, it isn’t right!”
One dreary April afternoon after leaving the post office, I walked along the shore to Old Joe’s brother’s shack. Old Joe’s kelp-green motor boat was moored off from shore, and Old Joe was squatting with Doctor Hodgins in the middle of a fishing net they had spread out over the beach, mending the damage from the winter’s ice.
“How you doing today, Kit?” Doctor Hodgins sang out.
“Fine,” I said, plopping down on a rock and watching along with Doctor Hodgins as Old Joe weaved the wooden, arrow-shaped needle in and around the broken twine squares of the net’s mesh.
“You wanna help me with the Doc here?” asked Old Joe with a grin. “Funny thing, sir, he been stitchin’ up people for thirty year, but he can’t learn how to stitch up a net.”
Doctor Hodgins scratched his hair, giving me a baleful look.
“It’s like trying to do a fine stitch with double ball mitts on,” he said, eyeing the wooden shuttle layered with twine that old Joe was thrusting through a loop, then hauling back taut, forming a knot.
“Tell you what, Joe,” said Doctor Hodgins. “I’ll do your squid jigging come fall, while you hangs around the shore for a spell, mending the nets.”
I giggled.
“What’re you gigglin’ at?” asked Old Joe, quirking a brow.
“Nan always said you was afraid of squids.”
“Hah, Lizzy! I been sittin’ on them waters for a good many year, and I ain’t run from no squid yet,” Old Joe grumbled. “I minds the time when I seen one so big, he was longer than me boat, and just as wide, and his skin shimmerin’ so red beneath the water, it looked like he had a lantern in his guts. And he come up outta the water, he did, his tentacles first, as long as them on an octopus and just as strong. Yes sir, you could tell by the way they was curlin’ up and splayin’ out, how strong they was. And then up come the old humpback whale, sir, as big as the side of a house and black as tar. And his eyes, big as tea plates. And he eyeballed that squid for as long as it took for the squid to puff out his sides like a balloon and then let go with a jet of shit that smattered both his eyeballs. Well, sir, you want to see a whale blow! I dare say she blowed a bloody lake out of her blow-hole that day, and then she was rearin’ outta the water. And then I seen the swordfish—sneaking out from the shadow of me boat. They teams up, you know—the squid and the swordfish. And before the whale had a chance to dive, the swordfish come up and pierced him through his gullet. And with that, they both went under, the whale on top of the swordfish, and swordfish still with his sword stuck up through the whale. And then the squid let go with another spray of shit, and while the swordfish was gettin’ away, the squid wrapped his tentacles around the whale, makin’ sure they was good and stuck, and his beak was coverin’ the hole the swordfish made, and then he started suckin’ the blood outta the whale. Then they sunk down through the shit and I couldn’t see ’em. It was another twenty minutes before I seen ’em agin, goin’ out the bay, almost down by Chouse Brook, the whale rearin’ outta the water, the squid still stuck to him, suckin’ his blood, and the swordfish gunnin’ for his back to pierce another hole.”
Old Joe finished talking, still weaving his needle through the net, whilst me and Doctor Hodgins stared at him in silence.
“That sounds like a yarn I read in a school book,” I said,
“And so you might’ve read it in a school book,” said Old Joe. “’Cuz that’s where they ended up before the squid got all the blood sucked out of that whale—in St. John’s. And that’s where they makes up books, ain’t it, Doc, in St. John’s?”
Doctor Hodgins stirred besides me.
“Yup, that’s about right, Joe,” he said, clearing his throat and lifting up a section of the net for a closer inspection. “That about right, Kit?”
“Yup! That’s about right,” I say. “Good day to ye.” Shuffling to my feet, I started wandering back along the beach.
“Kit!”
I looked back. Doctor Hodgins was sitting back on his haunches, staring after me.
“There’s a letter for you,” he said, nodding towards the shack. “Besides the lamp.”
I continued to stand there, staring at him, then turned and ran for the shack. Bursting in through the door, I stopped and gaped in wonder at the white envelope sitting on the table, propped up by the lamp, with my name scrawled across its front in Sid’s fancy handwriting. Snatching it up, I stuck it inside my coat pocket and figured on running straight home, but sat down weakly on a chair and pulled it out of my pocket, again. Ripping open the envelope, I begin reading.
Dear Kit:
Doctor Hodgins just told me what I’ve suspected all along, that none of my letters have been getting to you. I expect the reverend has seen to that. I think of you always, waiting for me in the gully, and it gives me strength. I pray you’re still there when I return.
I’ve made a good friend here and my days have become fairly routine, which is a shame in some respects. At first, with everything being so strange, and with all the rules, it kept me always paying attention. I never noticed before how much we miss when we go about our days not paying attention. It seems kind of backwards, somehow, that the only time we’re ever really aware is when we’re youngsters, and seeing and learning everything for the first time. Maybe that’s how it is we can keep moving through later life, because we remember what it felt like to think nothing, and that then becomes our goal—to work our way back there again, and to delight in just being. That’s how I feel when I’m with you—I delight in just being. I’ll write to you again, Kit. I write to you every day, only I don’t mail them any more.
Love, Sid.
I carefully folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. It was just like Sid to be sitting i
n jail and thinking about the way of things. I laughed. Then cried. Then I laughed again and was reminded of the day in the gully when I had found Josie meeting Shine on the beach and had gone running and crying into Sid’s arms and saw for the first time how his smile dimpled the corner of his mouth.
Wiping the tears off my face, I put the envelope in my coat pocket and went outside. Doctor Hodgins was standing a little ways down from where Old Joe was hunched over the net, watching for me.
“When?” I asked after I’d come close enough. “When did you see him?”
“I just got back last night,” he said finally.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were goin’ to see him?”
“I hadn’t planned on going to see him.” He shrugged, his eyes squinting against the sun and blocking what was unspoken. “But when I found myself in Gander this week, I decided to take a jaunt to St. John’s.” He shrugged.
I waited for something more, but receiving nothing, left him there, mending his broken nets with Old Joe, and hurried home. Josie wasn’t inside. Looking out the window, I saw her cooped down on the grassy spot behind the house, looking down over the gully. Digging a couple of cookies out of one of Mrs. Haynes’s butter-stained bags, I went outside and joined her.
“Have one,” I said, passing her the cookie.
She took the cookie and idly began eating it.
“What’re you thinkin’ about?” I asked, hugging the letter from Sid in my pocket.
She shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth and slewed her eyes warily towards me.
“Do you remember what it was like when Sid was here?” I asked.
“Sid’s gone.”
“But he’ll be comin’ back, someday.”
“Sid’s gone.”
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