Kit's Law

by Donna Morrissey

  The service was started by the time we got to the church. All of Haire’s Hollow was crowded inside, heads bowed, silently weeping alongside of the family. Loret, Fonse and I stood with those standing behind the back pews. I searched amongst the bowed heads, half expecting to see Sid’s. He wasn’t there. Neither was Doctor Hodgins. I bowed my head and listened to the new minister, a little younger than the Reverend Ropson, lead the congregation in prayer over Old Joe’s coffin.

  “I’ll be back,” I whispered to Loret when the last hymn was sung and the pallbearers were fixing to take Old Joe to the cemetery. Backing out the church door, I looked once more to where a kelp-green boat used to be moored off from the wharf, and ran along the beach to Old Joe’s brother’s shack. Doctor Hodgins was sitting outside puffing on his pipe, a blanket draped across his legs against the damp air, and a tumbler of brew resting on the wooden bench besides him.

  He lifted the tumbler off the bench as I come up to him, and nodded for me to sit.

  “Broodin’ with the waves, agin?” I asked.

  He was silent, and I noted the dried pathway down his cheek from where a tear had travelled some time before, and I was minded of the last time a tear had travelled down Doctor Hodgins’s cheek, the day Nan had passed on, and he had been walking with me along the beach, listening to a seagull wail. Taking hold of his hand, I held it against my cheek.

  “It ain’t fair,” I said, and began to sob.

  Doctor Hodgins laid his arm around my shoulder and brought his forehead to rest on mine. “No, it isn’t,” he answered, his voice breaking as he spoke. “And the fault is ours for expecting it to be so.”

  “I d-don’t understand,” I cried.

  “No. Nor I. That’s the mystery of life, Kit, we enter it, we leave it. We just got to learn to allow for it.”

  “He t-tied himself to the cleats. So’s the f-fish wouldn’t get him.”

  “He had the last say in that, didn’t he?” Doctor Hodgins whispered, turning his head to look out to sea. The swells were foaming hard upon the beach, brazen, relentless.

  “I just thinks of him, sittin’ there,” I cried, “watchin’ the water comin’ into his boat. He must’ve been c-cold.” I began to sob harder.

  “Sshh now, water numbs the skin. God got ways of making death bearable. Shh now.”

  I sobbed some more, then pulled back from Doctor Hodgins, wiping my nose with the back of my coat sleeve.

  “It was the starfish that told them where he was,” I quavered. “Fonse said the rope wouldn’t have held him till mornin’.”

  “He must’ve been wishing really hard.”

  “For sure he must’ve. What will you do now—without your fishin’ partner?”

  “I guess I’m going to have to find another one,” he said, balancing his brew between his knees and relighting his pipe. “Old Joe wouldn’t want his nets rotting on the shore.”

  “You could come live with us. Down in Godfather’s Cove.”

  “I expect it’s getting rather crowded around Mudder’s table.”

  “There’s other shacks. I mean … ”

  He gave a small grin.

  “I know what you mean, Kit. And perhaps I will someday. Perhaps I will.”

  I tightened my scarf.

  “Fonse and Loret are waitin’ for me, I’d better go.”

  I stayed sitting for a minute, then, “Do you think I never wished hard enough for Sid?”

  He puffed his pipe, then took a swallow of brew.

  “You’re right, Kit, it ain’t always fair,” he said, looking at me sadly. “It can be damn bloody wearying. But some things can never be changed, no matter how hard we wish.”

  “Starfish can re-grow themselves.”

  “That’s the way of starfish.”

  “Sid has another girl.”

  He took another swallow, then turned back to the sea.

  “You were talking to him?” he asked.

  “No. Loret told me.”

  “It’s time to move on, Kit.”

  Sensing the same stubbornness rising in his tone that always come whenever I talked about Sid, I rose to leave. He laid his tumbler and pipe on the bench and rose alongside of me.

  “You’ve got spirit, Kit,” he said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “A strong spirit. It’ll go a long ways to colour things right for you. I promise you that.”

  I kept my eyes down and, despite his mindset against me and Sid, crushed my face against the comforting, tobacco smell of his coat. Then pushing away, I hurried along the shore, looking worriedly over my shoulder at him sitting there in the cold, thinking the same tormenting thoughts I was thinking myself—about Old Joe wishing upon wishing to a starfish as the water swamped him, and of Sid taking another girl.

  “I swear, it would take a thousand suns to brighten up the faces around here,” Loret said some days later as I moped around the house, idly picking up after the youngsters and missing something else that she had said.

  “I’m sorry, Loret,” I mumbled, and wandered into the sitting room, looking out the window. Indeed, things just kept looking greyer and greyer since Old Joe’s funeral, and the restlessness I had been feeling the days leading up to his death had become a consuming fire. Always, I kept seeing Loret standing up to Fonse the night in the kitchen, and taking her place besides him as they went into the ill night to search for Old Joe. Always, I kept thinking of Old Joe wishing upon wishing on his starfish and having his wish come to be. And always, I kept thinking about Doctor Hodgins, sitting alone in front of his shack, brooding with the waves.

  That’s where I should be, I mumbled angrily, tossing and turning in my bunk: sitting besides Doctor Hodgins, watching and brooding, watching and brooding. That’s what I’d been doing since the day Sid left, watching and brooding for him to come back. And now he was never coming back. Not if he married another girl.

  I tore out of bed and, pulling on my housecoat, crept down over the ladder, the stairs, and made my way outside. It was a quiet night, fit for the torment inside of me. Bruddy found me walking through the potato garden, kicking at the ground foundering over from the beds.

  “Not a night for sleepin’,” he said, appearing from behind me, his cowlick carefully combed into place.

  “Goodness!” I exclaimed, jumping back and clasping my hands to my heart.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said softly. “You’re get-tin’ dirt on your nightdress.”

  “It’s a housecoat,” I said, for want of better words.

  “It’s a woman’s garment, for sure,” he said with a grin. “I don’t know too much about them, except for what I sees on clotheslines.”

  His teeth shone whitely through the night, and I imagined the warmth melting his brown eyes.

  “There’s lots of girls in Godfather’s Cove that would like to teach you about women’s garments, Bruddy.”

  The night hid from him the blush that followed my bold words. But there was a driving recklessness stirring inside me as the sudden truth of what Sid was about came crashing in on me. His was not a love that could fade like the coloured roses on an often-washed dress. Like mine, it had rooted in a parched soul, and each shuddering sob that had passed between us had worked to bring together two hearts as one, like the single trunk of a tree, and was now too grown to ever take apart without destroying the whole of what was flowering above it. And I wasn’t about to let him do that.

  Bruddy was chuckling.

  “How do you know about what other girls might be wantin’ to teach me?”

  “Loret.”

  “Loret!” Bruddy laughed. “If she said it, then it must be. There’s not much she don’t see.”

  I glanced anxiously towards her room window. It was dark.

  “Take me to Haire’s Hollow,” I gasped to Bruddy, the words coming out of my mouth before I even knew they were in my head. “Please take me, Bruddy. Now! While Loret’s still sleepin’.”

  “Tonight?” he asked in surprise.

 
; “Yes! Please.” I grabbed onto his shirt. “I need to see Doctor Hodgins.”

  “Doctor … Kit, are you sick?”

  “No—Yes! It’s not serious, but I need to see him—before it becomes serious. Please, take me,” I begged. “I-I don’t want to worry Loret.”

  “Loret! Cripes, you’d have them all out wringin’ their hands if they woke up and found us gone in the middle of the night.”

  “Then let’s leave now. We’ll be back before anyone’s awake.”

  He looked at me quietly, contemplatingly.

  “Why can’t we leave in the mornin’?”

  “Because Loret will want to know everything. And I just don’t want to have to explain. Not yet. I’ll tell her when we gets back.”

  “Is it to do with Sid?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes!” I say deeply. Then, “Yes it does, Bruddy. I need to give his mother back something, to be rid of her once and for all. Do you understand? And I need to do it now, right now before Loret talks me out of it or … or … something else happens and makes me change my mind.”

  He stood hesitating, and I knew he was thinking on his feelings for me, and how my ending things with Sid’s mother might be a way of ending things with Sid as well.

  “Don’t ask me anything more about it, Bruddy. Just take me. Now!” I stood back staring at him so hard I was trembling. “Please, Bruddy.”

  “You can’t go in your housecoat,” he mumbled, looking down over the cove with a sigh.

  “You’ll take me, then?”

  “Be quick. It’ll be black as tar if we loses the bit of moon.”

  “Thank you, Bruddy, thank you,” I breathed, clutching at his hands.

  “Thank me after I get us there,” he said, brushing me off and heading down over the garden towards the cove.

  It was as if my ankles had sprouted wings. I flew in through the house and up over the stairs and climbed the ladder to the attic without making the barest of creaking sounds. Taking the money out of the envelope Mrs. Ropson had give me, I put it into my cloth bag along with the money Sid had been sending over the past two years. Tossing a dress and some other garments into the bag, I hurriedly crept back down the stairs and prayed that everyone would stay sleeping for a minute longer. God answered my prayer, and I took it as a sign that this was a journey he was wanting me to make and ran faster down over the garden to the cove where Bruddy was waiting with the boat.

  There was a small lop on, nothing to be worried about. The thin crescent moon glimpsed through the clouds, casting light on Bruddy’s worried face and highlighting for him the determined look on mine. We spoke little. It was as if he knew that once we set off from shore, my only need of him was to steer the boat.

  It was close to three in the morning when we finally put ashore by the wharf in Haire’s Hollow. Climbing onto the wharf, I knelt down as Bruddy was about to toss up the painter for me to loop around the post.

  “No, wait,” I stopped him. “I’m not going back, Bruddy.”

  He stared at me for a second, then, “Now, listen, Kit, I just can’t let you run off … ”

  “And you can’t stop me, neither,” I cut in. “Just tell Loret I’m with Doctor Hodgins and he’ll be down the morrow or the next day to explain everything.” I scrabbled to my feet and started backing away. “I-I’m sorry, Bruddy. Take care of Josie; I’ll be back.”

  Then he was leaping up over the side of the wharf, and I turned and ran. His hands came down heavy on my shoulders, and as if I were no more than Little Kitty, he spun me around to face him.

  “You’re goin’ after him, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Closing my eyes, I held my head down and said nothing. His grip slackened, feeling more like a squeezing embrace.

  “You’ve got courage, to go after him, Kit,” he half whispered. “More than him. If you were mine, I would never have left you. Never!”

  I stared at him and, with a twist of my shoulders, escaped his hold and ran off.

  “Go on,” he shouted after me. “Go get him that don’t want you.”

  Ducking off the wharf onto the beach, I turned, checking the windows of Haire’s Hollow. There were no lights about. Running past Jimmy Randall’s stage, I threw one last look behind me to make sure Bruddy wasn’t following. He wasn’t. He wasn’t leaving, either, just standing there in the middle of the wharf, his arms folded as he watched after me. I would’ve liked to have gone back, to explain things better to him, to make him understand why Sid had left me, why he had never come back. Had I been able to explain why. Bruddy had hit upon the one thing that no amount of restless thinking had been able to defend—why Sid had never come back, if only to see that things were all right with me, and all right with Josie. But there was no time now to think about such things. The sense of urgency that had been growing within me since I first heard the news about Sid’s girl was driving me towards some distant point that I could not even perceive. Taking off up the shore, I kept to the shadows of the bank, straining to see through the dark and keep myself from tripping over pieces of driftwood and rusted tin cans. Ten minutes later, I was coming around the turn to Old Joe’s brother’s shack and Doctor Hodgins. I rapped as easy as I could, not wanting to startle him, but his eyes fair bulged out of his head when he opened the door and seen me standing there.

  “Nothin’s happened,” I said quickly, stepping past him. “Loret and everyone says hello. They just dropped me off on the wharf and is fixin’ to go on back.”

  He stared after me in silence, then closed the door. Moving quietly, he struck a match and lit the lamp sitting on the table. Raising the wick, he turned to look at me as a dim light shadowed the room.

  “Now then, young lady, what brings you here in the middle of the night?”

  “I’m goin’ to St. John’s. To get Sid.”

  He groaned, partly from dread, partly from expectancy, like Loret whenever she come upon the youngsters doing something that they were warned off from, yet, with the knowing it was what they were apt to do, no matter how many warnings were offered.

  “You’ve heard from him?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Kit, if he had wanted you, he would’ve gone down to Godfather’s Cove after the reverend’s funeral.”

  “Sid was here?”

  Doctor Hodgins looked at me in surprise.

  “I thought you would’ve heard by now. I’m sorry. With Old Joe … I forgot to mention it.”

  I turned to the window, thinking on Mrs. Ropson.

  “He got here just as the funeral was starting,” Doctor Hodgins said. “His mother was near hysterical with relief, but he left right after.”

  I nodded. Sid was here. And he never come to see me.

  “Did he go to the gully?”

  “I’m sorry, Kit.”

  “Did he go to the gully?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will you take me to the train in the mornin’?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Will you?”

  “You oughtn’t to be doing this.”

  “You said you’d be here for me, no matter what.”

  “I’m not going to help you make a mistake.”

  “It’s not yours to judge.”

  “It’s mine if I help you make it.”

  I stared at him steadily.

  “Very well then, I’ll do it without you,” I said, walking to the door.

  “Just a minute,” he ordered, holding up his hand. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “St. John’s.”

  He snorted.

  “You’d get to the end of the road and wouldn’t know which way to turn. Listen to me, Kit … ”

  “No! I’m done listenin’,” I say. “I’ve been listenin’ to others all my life. And fightin’! Fightin’ to hold onto what’s mine. And thankin’ everybody for lettin’ me do so. Well, I’m tired of smilin’ for your blessin’s, all the time smilin’, feelin’ grateful but never proud. I want to live
my own life, as I see fit. And I want Sid. You can help me if you wants. But I’m goin’ after him.”

  Running his hands through his thinning tufts of hair, he yanked open the door and strolled outside to where the water was lapping at the shore.

  “I’m not one of your faces,” I snapped, the wind taking my words as I chased after him. “And whether Sid comes back or not, I won’t ever be. I’m makin’ my own decisions now, and you’re not responsible for them.”

  “It’s wrong.”

  “Not in my mind. And I won’t be spendin’ my days broodin’ on a stoop, either,” I said, “no matter how I come to think on things. There’s other ways to pay penance, ways more deservin’ of time.”

  The wind ruffled the shirt against his back. I stood still watching him. He shivered, his hands deep in his pockets. Finally, when I was shivering too, he turned.

  “Might as well get some sleep,” he said tiredly, brushing past me. “We can’t go anywhere till morning.”

  I stepped inside the shack behind him and shut the door.

  “What now?” he asked, as I stayed where I was, staring after him expectantly.

  “I want you to fix it so’s I can never have babies.”

  His brow rose in utter astonishment.

  “Christ almighty,” he swore, coming towards me and seizing me by the shoulders. “How the hell do you know about such things?”

  “It’s the only way I can be with Sid.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You did it to Josie.” His mouth dropped, and I hurried on. “Nan told me, but she never meant to. I swear she never said it to a livin’ soul, except to mutter it out loud once, when she got mad at Josie for runnin’ off.” I paused. “I always remembered it, although I never knew what she meant. Till now. Till I started thinkin’ on the same thing, myself.”