“I love you, Sid,” I cried out. “There’s nothin’ that can change that.”
“It’s damned, Kit!”
“No!”
“Yes! Damned!” He shoved me away savagely. “There’s none that can escape this one, not even the Gods. Do you hear me?”
“Gods aren’t real, Sid!” I gasped, clinging to him. “They’re just stories, bloody stories!”
“We’re each of us a story, Kit,” he cried, almost gently now. “What of Josie, isn’t hers a story, unlike ours, but one of pain despite her innocence. And it’s you who’s suffered for it. Is that what you’d have for our children, to suffer the pain of our love? They’d be marked, Kit. Just like Josie’s marked. It’s the way of blood. It’s the way of God.”
I listened, stunned with knowing that he was already gone. Even as he stood before me, he was already gone. He turned and ran into the night, the rain washing away his footsteps as if he never was, excepting for the growing pain in my chest, and the incestuous burning of the wedding ring upon my finger.
Then Doctor Hodgins was holding onto me, pleading with me to turn back, that there were people watching, and to not say anything as word was out that Sid and I were married, and we wouldn’t want it known that we were brother and sister as well.
The trip back to the gully was one in silence. Doctor Hodgins kept up behind me as I marched straight ahead, ignoring the curious faces appearing in the windows, and the cursed boldness of Margaret Eveleigh as she came skipping out of the store to stall me in my headlong flight. Blissfully Doctor Hodgins cut her off before she had a chance to open her mouth, and I kept right on walking. The rain poured with a vengeance of its own, determined to make itself felt through to the marrow on this evening of human misery. There was still light in the sky when I turned down the gully, yet the kitchen lamp glowed softly through its grim greyness, and a bellowing of smoke poured from the chimney.
Shoving open the door, I stomped the water off my boots, Doctor Hodgins behind me, and stared with misgiving at the shocked look on Fonse’s and Loret’s faces as they beheld whatever look of torment that must’ve been imprinted on mine.
“Sid’s gone,” I said, as Josie barrelled from the hallway into the kitchen.
“Who’s gone? Sid’s not gone,” she barked.
“Sid’s gone. This time he’s never comin’ back,” I said loudly, as much for my own ears as for everyone else’s. Then, feeling the strength leaving my legs, I turned and walked towards my room.
She was on my back like a scalded cat.
“Sid’s back. Sid’s back,” she hollered. “You’s farmed. Farmed!” she yelled, as Doctor Hodgins pried her arms from around my neck. Then, Fonse and Loret were helping Doctor Hodgins hold her back, and Doctor Hodgins was telling them who he was, and I slammed my room door shut and pounded my fist against the door. I yelped as the side of my fist scratched across the nail holding Old Joe’s starfish in place, and in a frenzied cry, I pried the dead fish from my door and flung it into an opened dresser drawer. Falling across the bed, I plunged my face into the pillow and chewed back the spiteful cries wailing up in my throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LORET’S BARGAIN
THE NEXT MORNING I STOOD STUBBORNLY on the beach and shook my head for the hundredth time at Fonse’s and Loret’s plea that I pack mine and Josie’s things and move with them to Godfather’s Cove. “It’s what Sid wants,” Loret cried. “Doc Hodgins said. Please, Kit, come with us.” “No,” I said quietly. “I thank ye for everythin’.” “Dammit, you’re as stubborn as they comes,” Fonse said. “I’ll be leavin’ you this mornin’, but I’ll be back. I promise you, we won’t rest with ye here alone.” “We’ll be fine,” I said. I stood on shore, waving until they were a dark blot on the sea. Turning, I caught sight of Josie looking down on me from a little ways up the gully. A scowl darkened her face, and she raced back to the house. Summer came. It felt like I was being lifted up and carried along by a mindless wind, my feet never touching the ground, rocks, grass beneath them. The leaves turned to red, gold, brown, and Old Joe come by with the winter’s wood. The caribou trekked across the barrens, and I trekked with them, filling the pantry with buckets of partridgeberries, and watching the clouds drift overhead. Everyone came as before, but I ignored all their questions about Sid. Word had spread quickly about the wedding in Godfather’s Cove, and what exactly Doctor Hodgins had told everyone, I didn’t ask. But from the well-intended comments made in passing, I expect it must’ve been that the reverend and his wife weren’t willing to accept me as their daughter-in-law. So, choosing neither, Sid had ran.
“Lord, it’s hard to think of you as a married woman, Kit,” Margaret said during one of her visits as I stogged the stove full of birch. “Yet, you looks different, somehow. Not like the same Kit at all.”
“Have a piece of cake, Margaret.”
“Mmm, looks good. Who made it?”
“Aunt Drucie.”
“Aunt Drucie!” Margaret shuddered. “Don’t take it to heart, Kit, but the way she drools in her bread dough, brrr, turns my stomach. It was the reverend, wasn’t it, that couldn’t hold the thought of havin’ you in the family? I must say, Kit, you looks awful calm about everything, what with Sid runnin’ off and leavin’ you like that.”
Strangely enough, I was feeling the same calm inside. It was as if I had stepped into somebody else’s shoes and were allowing them to walk my path with no inkling of touching, tasting or feeling. With Sid’s leaving I could no longer imagine a world where such things as love, desire or joy could exist; better to sense nothing at all, to move through the world and glimpse it from a distance, than to split God’s gift in half and live in its underside with no rays of light dispersing the darkness.
Not so what Doctor Hodgins thought.
“It’s Godfather’s Cove you should be thinking on,” he advised repeatedly from his seat in the rocker, a seat that was most always taken up by him the past six months since Sid left. “Fonse, Loret—they’re wonderful people, Kit. And they care for you and Josie.”
“This is my home.”
“It’s become your coffin.”
“I won’t leave here.”
“He’s not coming back this time.”
I fell silent. I always fell silent whenever Doctor Hodgins tossed that one in.
“You’ve got to give yourself a chance. Living here in the gully, waiting, every day, waiting, you’ll waste away. And that’s not what he wants for you.”
“I’m tired,” I said, rising and heading for my room.
“Name of God, Kit,” he yelled, coming out of the rocker and grabbing me by the arm. “You can’t wait forever. And even if he did come back, he’d still be your brother. Time won’t change that.”
“No one can be sure.”
“The reverend admits to the timing of it. And with the marked foot … it’s pretty certain.”
“But you can’t be sure.”
“You know it. Sid knows it. That’s why he left. Now you’ve got to be strong, too. Go with Fonse. Take Josie and make a life. A new life. That’s why he left you, Kit, so’s you could be free.”
“We’re married.”
“It can be annulled.”
“Not in my heart it can’t.”
I stared helplessly into Doctor Hodgins’s eyes and, seeing pity in them, shook off his hands and flew down the hallway to my room. He took a couple of steps after me, then paused for a second before turning back and taking his seat in the rocker. I lay across my bed, staring up at the night sky and listening to him creak, creak, creak his way through the night. Come morning I swore I would take that damn rocker and drag it out to his shack, and see, perhaps, if it might serve to keep him home a bit more.
Come morning he was gone and Josie was in his place, creaking her way through the morning. She hardly spoke to me since the night I told her that Sid wasn’t coming back, and spent most of her time as she had during his time in jail, sitting in the rocker and creak, c
reak, creaking. Except this time there was an anger in her towards me, a hard anger that wouldn’t let me touch her the way that I used to, or even talk to her. And a couple of times she had hit me square across the face and ran off before I had a chance to catch my breath.
“I didn’t make him leave!” I yelled at her one day when she snatched a slice of bread out of my hands and threw it on the floor.
“You’s farmed!” she yelled back. “You’s farmed!”
“It’s deformed,” I argued weakly. “Now you pick up that bread. Pick it up!”
“You pick it up!” she yelled, picking up the slice of bread and firing it across the room at me. “You pick it up!”
“I told you and I told you, it’s not my fault. I didn’t make Sid leave,” I cried out. “Can’t you hear me? I didn’t make Sid leave.”
“You’s farmed!”
“Who’s farmed?” a voice called through the kitchen window. It was Fonse.
A smile lit up Josie’s face, the same as if it had been Sid, and she boisterously hauled open the door and bounded outside, barking out her crazy laugh.
“I swear, it’s only him that she’ll listen to any more,” I said as Loret came in the door.
“That’s because she’s the only one around here with sense,” Loret replied, giving me a hug, a smile covering the look of concern on her fine features. Fonse poked his head in behind her.
“I’ll do up some splits and keep Josie entertained while you girls prattle,” he said.
“You won’t get her near an axe,” I said. “Not since … ”
Fonse nodded. “Then, we’ll go for walk down the brook.”
“There’s a good lad,” Loret said. She closed the door behind him and took a seat in the rocker. “Tell the truth, Kit. Is she gettin’ too hard for you to handle?”
“No,” I said reassuringly. “She gets mad over every little thing, but nothin’ I can’t help.”
“Sounded like you were about to come to blows just now.”
“She won’t get it out of her head that I didn’t send Sid away.”
“Perhaps whatever’s wrong with her to begin with might get harder to handle as she grows older. Now, now, don’t go arguin’ with me till you hears what I got to say,” Loret commanded as I opened my mouth to protest. “Poor old Effie Stride’s boy got worse over time. They had to strap him down sometimes, he got so hard to handle. I’m just worried about you here, all by yourself.”
“I’m not all by myself.”
“You got Doctor Hodgins, who’s just as worried as me and Fonse. Aside from that, you got no one, Kit.” Loret’s muddy brown eyes rounded like a cow’s.
“Oh God, Loret, are you going to start that agin?”
“Start what agin?”
“Start talkin’ me into leavin’ here.”
“Would you? If I was to say I needed you for a little while?”
“Don’t try to trick me, Loret.”
“Trick you? Well, if that’s what you thinks, maybe I won’t tell you anything else then.”
“All right. What is it?”
A tender look took a hold of her face, and she smiled.
“I’m havin’ another baby, and … ”
“Oh, Loret … ”
“That’s not what I’m on about,” she cut in, waving my fawning to one side. “Lord knows, there’s nothin’ wonderful about havin’ a baby, leastways, not till it starts breathin’ on its own.” She nestled deeper into the rocker, beaming me a smile that could guide drowning ships to shore. “It’s just that I’ve been spottin’ this past while, and the doc said it might be good for me to stay off my feet as much as possible. So Fonse and Mudder thought, perhaps, we could hire you to come live with us, just till the baby’s born,” she added quickly. “And perhaps for a few months after.” She leaned forward. “What’ll you say, Kit? You could be her godmother.”
A silence fell between us.
“It ain’t exactly a life’s sentence,” she said, laughing at my troubled look.
“I’m sorry, Loret. I’ll come, of course I’ll come. You need me.”
“Well don’t sound too excited now, Kittens, Lord Almighty!”
“No, I mean it, I want to help you, Loret.”
Loret got up and, tightly folding her arms, strolled over to the window.
“Oh, it’s me who should be sorry,” she said. “Puttin’ pressure on you this way, it’s not fair. You love your home, why should you leave it? For sure it’s pretty enough, lookin’ down over the water.”
“It’s pretty in Godfather’s Cove, I won’t mind.”
“No! No, you stay here,” she said, turning to me a determined air. “I only wanted it if it was what you wanted.”
“But the spottin’… ”
“Hah, the spottin’ was nothin’,” she said, looking a little sheepish. “I just thought I’d throw it in there, give you a good reason for comin’ should you feel you were being a burden, or some such foolishness. Hey now,” she said, as I kept looking at her worriedly, “I’m here to make sure you’re all right, not to add to your troubles. Come on.” She grasped me firmly by the shoulders. “Let’s make some tea. The savages are coming.”
She shot Fonse a warning look as he stepped inside, and no more was said about me and my mother moving down to Godfather’s Cove. I quietened Doctor Hodgins with the same troubled look when he came to visit the next day, and I was preparing a speech to deliver in case any of them ever tried to convince me of moving again, when Margaret come for a visit.
“My God, Kit, how can you stand livin’ out here all by yourself? I’d be mental.” She leaned closer, her ringlets falling over her shoulders. “They’re sayin’ there’s a strange footprint in the bog, same size as Shine’s, and it’s pointin’ to here. Have you heard any strange noises, lately?”
I shook my head.
“Oohh my God, gives me the shivers.” She looked at me quite shrewdly. “Someone’s been writin’ letters from all over the place to Fonse Ford, down in Godfather’s Cove. They says it’s Sid.” Margaret leaned closer. “I’m only tellin’ you in case it’s important that you know. Aunt Dottie Gilliam— that’s Mom’s cousin, she lives in Godfather’s Cove—well, she was up the other day and happened to see Sid’s handwritin’ on one of Mom’s store books. Well, she recognized it as the same as was on Fonse’s letter that she happened to see sittin’ on the counter in the post office, one day.”
“Thank you, Margaret. The kettle’s boiled.”
“Kit, you wouldn’t be hidin’ somethin’ from me, would you?”
“No. I never hear from Sid. And I never will. Please, don’t ask me to talk about it, Margaret.”
Margaret shook her head solemnly.
“Although I can’t say I’m not curious. But I’ll wait till you’re ready to talk.” Laying her cup on the arm of the rocking chair, she leaned forward. “Kit, there’s something that I wants to ask you. Me and Melissa—well, you knows Melissa goes out with Teddy Randall. And well, you knows I been datin’ Josh Jenkins. We was talkin’ the other night about there being no place to go. You know, have a beer without a dozen youngsters crawlin’ up your hole. So, we thought about comin’ out here some evenin’s. And young Arch Gale, well, he was saying how pretty you are, and we was thinkin’—perhaps now with Sid gone, might be time for you to start seein’ somebody else. You can’t go wastin’ away out here, Kit. What do you say?”
“I got to go find Josie,” I said. “You finish off your tea now, and don’t mind me leavin’ for a minute.”
I was out the door and down the gully in half the time Josie ever made it. Later that evening when I was sure Margaret was gone, I came back to the house and started hauling clothes out of the drawers and shoving it into a broken-strapped suitcase and Nan’s cotton flour bags she had put aside to make aprons and pudding bags. The next morning I had tea with Aunt Drucie, then walked into Haire’s Hollow and down to Old Joe’s brother’s shack and rapped on Doctor Hodgins’s door. That afternoon Jo
sie and I were sitting on the beach with the suitcase and three stuffed flour bags as Old Joe’s kelp-green boat putted to shore with Old Joe bent over the bow and Doctor Hodgins steering from the stern. The suitcase come apart as Old Joe, standing on the beach in his hip rubbers, lifted it over the bow to Doctor Hodgins, and a clump of slips and stockings fell into the water, and along with it, the starfish, with the nail still protruding through its centre.
“What have we here,” said Old Joe as he snatched at the garments before they scarcely had a chance to get wet, and plunged his hand through the water to rescue the starfish.
“You might as well keep it,” I grunted, hoisting myself over the bow of the boat. “’Cuz its wishes must’ve been meant for you.”
Old Joe tossed me the undergarments and studied the fish with a quirked brow.
“Did you say the verse before you wished?” he asked.
“Yup,” I said, helping Doctor Hodgins stuff the clothes back into the suitcase.
“Hmm,” said Old Joe, shifting back his cap and smoothing back his hair. Then, “Did you know that if a starfish tears off its leg, it wishes upon wishes till it grows back a new one?”
“Nope.”
“And that the old leg wishes upon wishes till it grows its self into a new fish?”
“Nope.”
“Perhaps you give up wishin’ too quickly.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Or perhaps its wishes ran out after you scraped it from the sea.”
Old Joe scowled, and lifting up a rock, he nailed the fish to the bow of his boat.
“Might be it was meant for me,” he said, standing back and examining it with a grin. “Might be the first voice it hears is the only one it’ll answer to.”
“Might be,” said I as he pushed off the boat and leaped up, swinging his legs in over the side. Fixing myself comfortably on the seat, I faced the wind as Doctor Hodgins stood arms akimbo at the stern, and Old Joe squatted with Josie before the engine, putting our way to Godfather’s Cove.
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