by Sheree Fitch
“Do you know if it’s true?” asked Ms. Leather Pants.
“Can’t tell you exactly if that’s so, but I have my own suspicions as well.” I saw the opportunity for some fun.
“What makes you think so? What did he say?”
“He asked me first if I lived in the area and wanted directions to the city because he had to make a trip to a music store for new guitar strings for his boss.”
“Aha!”
My grandmother was nearly busting a gasket, trying to hide a smile behind her hand and peering into the teacups as if she was still seeing the future there, far below, in the bottom of the ocean.
“Oh, you’re just pulling our legs,” said one of the women. “Aren’t you?”
I shrugged. “Well, if I knew but was sworn to secrecy, I couldn’t go telling what I knew, now, could I? Look, if you really want to know for sure who’s living there, you should go find out for yourself.”
“But there’s No Trespassing signs all over the place.”
“True,” I said. “But there’s a secret trail by the hedge of pear trees at the west edge of the property that’ll lead up to the stone wall. There’s a crack in the foundation and you can get close enough to spy on the house. My father took me there once. We just wanted to see the house. Anyhow, if I were you and lived that close, I’d be tempted to take some binoculars and go find out. Careful of the poison ivy, though.”
“Well, your grandmother just told me I was going to meet someone rich and famous very soon,” said Ms. Leather Pants. “It’s got to be him!”
“I don’t know, really I don’t,” I said and excused myself. Their cackles were getting on my nerves. Their blueberry-wine breath was gross. From my window I watched the Cackleberry Women stumble back up the road towards Poplar Grove Hill.
The tea leaves were still at the bottom of the cups as I rinsed them out.
“Nana, do you believe in this, really, that reading tea leaves can tell you things like you told them?”
She didn’t answer at once. “It’s not so important if I do really. I think it’s more fun than anything. Just something my own mother did. It’s the people who want to hear that there’s good news ahead, or some excitement in their dull and boring lives, that needs to believe. Yes indeed. Belief can make a lot of things possible.”
— NEW NEWS FROM HOME —
Every morning I tried to write in the journal Miss Armstrong-Blanchett had given me. And every morning I crossed out almost everything I wrote. Talk to the page? What was there to say?
The training diary was easier. How long I ran. Calculation of distance. Calf stretches or hamstring curls. Jumping jacks and sit-ups. Push-ups. How many sets. Weather conditions. Mostly it was cloudy. Still, it was stuff you could make sense of. Sometimes, I was just plain bored out of my mind. I pinned more and more of the articles about the shipwreck across my room. I tore out more swatches from my mother’s paint fan deck and made a collage on my wall over the peeling wallpaper.
Rigbyisms yelled at me from every nook and cranny. Get off your gluteus maximus! Just Begin! He even phoned a few times.
“Minn?”
“Yeah?”
“How’s it going?”
“Fine.”
“Working hard?”
“Yeah.”
“Good stuff. Doing your visualizations?”
“Trying to.”
“Good stuff. Okay, bye.”
A man of action and very few words. Except for those Rigbyisms. Truth was, my most creative visualization was my room. Nana called it a decorator’s nightmare. I liked what I had done just fine. And to her credit, she did give me some back issues of her precious National Geographics I could cut pictures from and paste on the wall.
I kept rearranging my treasure drawer. I put down a soft piece of flannel I found in the rag pile under the bathroom sink. All the treasure I was finding along the shore was in there in a circle. I made a little bed for the skull in the centre.
I took it out often and cradled it on my chest as I lay in bed. There were cracks in the plaster in the ceiling. One afternoon I began to play the same game with the cracks as I did with clouds. A tulip opening. A giant bunny. The face of … a deer. There was … the phone ringing and Nana calling: “Minn, it’s for you. Some fella!”
Max?
“Hello?” My voice was as casual as possible.
“How’s my girl?” Corporal Ray!
“Oh. Dad.”
“Whatever happened to ‘Hey there Daddy-o!’”
“I’m not a child.”
“Things not going so well?”
“No no, everything’s fine. Tickety-boo.”
“Running much?”
“The gold will be mine!”
“Atta girl!”
“Put Mum on?”
Silence. Clearing of throat.
“I can’t. Your mother is … Your mother has … Your mother went out to see Aunt Ginny.”
“In British Columbia? The other side of the country? I thought you two needed time alone.”
“Sometimes a change is as good as a rest. Maybe she needs her sister right now.” He didn’t sound too convinced.
“Maybe I need my mother right now!” I hissed. “Sisters can be good comfort for each other,” he added.
“I wouldn’t know, would I?” I slammed down the phone and ran to my room. The phone rang again. I heard Nana talking. I pounded my pillow.
So. My mother left my father and was all the way across the country. When was she coming back? Or maybe it wasn’t a when question. Maybe it was an if. Was she coming back? Ever?
I crept across the room and put my ear to the door.
“Ray, she’s homesick as anything. Why not come for a visit? I see. I see. Well, that’s too bad then. But the girl’s been working herself so hard. I don’t know about this running business. Not natural. She’ll have arthritis someday from this. Get her mother to send a postcard, for heaven’s sake, at least.”
That was enough. Nana Vinegar taking my side and feeling sorry for me. I was feeling sorry enough for myself.
I reached for more newspaper clippings and leafed through the stories of the disaster. I had pinking shears.
I paper-clipped more on my clothesline and added to the walls.
Maybe it’s awful to admit, but it made me feel a bit better. I polished my skull and put her back in my treasure drawer. I plumped up my pillow. Then I reached for the box I’d shoved far away. The one that spooked me. The tiny cardboard coffin. I took a deep breath. I snapped off the criss-cross of red elastics and opened it.
I was wrong. I didn’t find more bones.
I found a beating heart instead.
John Hindley’s.
JUMP AND HOPE
The ropes held me fast. A woman scaled the ropes below me. Maryanna.
I watched as she stopped a few rungs over, steadied herself as best she could and then ripped her nightdress from her ankles upwards. She fashioned ties out of the tatters and bound herself to the mizzen.
Down below to our right, a mass of purplish seaweed floated in a whirlpool of waves. The hide-and-seek moon appeared then and everything was illuminated. Maryanna screamed. It wasn’t seaweed.
Bodies, floating together as if caught in a net, bobbed back and forth. Dead. All of them.
Then, Maryanna started singing. Yes. She was singing. By this time her hair was wrapped around the ropes, frozen there like a tangle of snakes. A necklace sparkled against her throat. A ring glittered on her finger. Her lips were blue and soon the song was nothing more than a rusty croaking. Whispers. Whispers. Whispers.
“John—stay awake! Miss Rayborn—keep the songs coming.”
It was Frith, climbing up to us as he’d promised.
I drifted in and out for a spell, but when my hands let go and I flopped over backwards I came to. Catch me catch me catch me can.
“Dad?” I flapped about, a human sail.
“Rise up!” Frith shouted. “Get back in t
he mizzen.”
But I had no will left to do his bidding. I closed my eyes for what I hoped would be eternity. A wave slapped me fierce and directly in my line of vision, my mother’s cradle appeared, floating on top of the waves as if rocked by an invisible arm. I gathered all my strength to right myself then, using my leg muscles the way I did whenever I climbed up into my father’s arms.
Maryanna was silent; her eyes wide open with that same startled look I’d seen on my brother’s face. The ring still shone. Every few moments, its light circled my head, like a lighthouse beacon nudging me awake.
On a hump of rocks several hundred feet away, a straggle of men had made it to safety. I watched others try—hand over foot—to shinny the length of the lifeline they’d rigged from the remaining deck. As the hours passed, it was clear very few would be strong enough to make it there. And then, even then, some were washed away once they got there.
Eventually, light leaked through hairline cracks in the dark clouds.
“Hang on! They’re coming!” Frith was alive. There was a boat, a small one, tossing about in the swell. “Jump when I tell you!”
I used my knife between my hands like a saw and tried to hack through my ropes. I fumbled and it was lost.
Five times the men in the boat tried to get in position beneath the mizzen rigging. Then I lost sight of it.
“Now!” Frith screamed. And I jumped. I put all my weight in the jump, leapt out into the air, feeling the rope whip out from my ankles. Just before I hit the water, I took a deep breath, all that was left in me.
— FACE TO FACE —
John Hindley’s heart was pounding, on a brittle page of newsprint.
–Lone child survivor–
What followed was the description of how he’d been saved in the nick of time, fished out of the water after hours clinging to the ropes of the mizzenmast.
The boy is twelve from what we can gather. And comes from Ashton-under-Lyne, England. He seems most unaffected by events. Although he lost both parents and a brother, Thomas, he had few words for us. The family was bound for New York City, where he has sisters. Already some in the community have offered to adopt him.
Then, on the next page, his picture. A face. John Hindley. Staring up at me from speckled newsprint. His eyes laser-beaming into mine. I recognized those eyes. Eyes filled with sorrow and secrets.
I placed his picture in my treasure drawer. Next to the baby’s skull.
— OUT ON A LIMB —
I told Nana I was going out for a long run after supper.
“You’re going to waste away to nothing burning all that food you just put into your belly so fast. There must be some kinda rule like when you can’t go swimming for an hour after eating. But all right. Get yourself home before dark.”
Dressed in a green sweatshirt and beige splash pants, the perfect camouflage and trés chic athletic wear, Cinnamon Hotchkiss, girl sleuth, set out upon her mission.
My mission was clear to me. I had to see if Hardly Whynot was at the Fullerton mansion. John Hindley’s picture made me more determined than ever to save the gravesite. I was trying to think big and get Hardly’s name on the petition. And even better would be publicity from his name and some money from his wallet!
Nana’s binoculars thumped against my chest as I jogged around the bend and out of sight. I’d convinced her I wanted to watch some birds! At night? But she bought it. Then, for the first time all summer, I turned into Poplar Grove Lane. The cottages were crowded together at the upper end of the lane that twisted and turned like a maze I had to guess my way through. Finally, I came to a fork in the road that branched off in three directions. I chose the middle road, winding my way through yet another puzzle of cottages until I reached a long stretch of woods behind a high cedar thicket. This was it, the boundary line for the Fullerton mansion.
A black iron gate aswirl with sailing ships marked the entrance to the estate. The gate was locked shut and the house was well hidden from view. A row of old-fashioned streetlights made it look like something from the last century. The lampposts were new, and mounted on each, I spotted surveillance cameras. I sprinted past, hoping I would be just a blur on the monitors. The theme song from Mission: Impossible played in my head.
Farther along the main road, the wrought-iron fences joined up with a high stone wall that snaked into the woods, past a grove of apple and pear trees. This was the place. I ducked off the main road and followed an overgrown trail that looped between the wall and the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The trail was wide, but I hugged the stone wall and was tempted to crawl on my hands and knees. It was a long way down.
The wind was blowing something fierce and I didn’t remember the trail being this snarled when I was here with Corporal Ray. After a bit, I spotted a section of the house. Inside a screened-in porch was a table made of twigs and wooden deck chairs painted pink and yellow. A hammock made of fishnet was suspended along the side of the porch. A telescope was mounted on a tripod. Perhaps Hardly Whynot had an interest in the stars.
The chauffeur was mowing the front lawn. Anchored at a wooden dock was an impressive outboard—more like a yacht—as well as a rowboat. A buoyed sailboat bobbed on the waves close by. Then I spotted him.
Sure enough, at the side of the boathouse, a man was hanging up life jackets and floating devices. Hardly! Or so I hoped. I lifted the binoculars and tried to focus, but he kept ducking out of view. I didn’t know how I could position myself so I could get a good look. If I jumped up the wall, they’d spot me for sure. If I climbed through the crack in the wall to get closer, I’d be on their property. The No Trespassing signs said there was a thousand-dollar fine.
My only option, it seemed, was the tree above my head. Up I went, nimble as a squirrel, and out onto a branch. I was halfway along when I realized that the branch hung out over the edge of the cliff. I froze. Completely. Frothy waves eddied below me and made me dizzy. The water seemed half-solid—like a heaving floor of jade green marble. Then the weirdest feeling came over me. I felt like jumping.
Okay. Okay. Breathe. Breathe. Back up. Slowly slowly slowly.
“Come on! It’s my turn! Gimme!”
I almost jumped out of my skin and slipped, just catching myself in time.
The Cackleberry Women! The four of them were on their hands and knees making their way to the crack in the wall. And laughing like fools. By the sound of them, I’d say they’d all been dipping into that blueberry wine again.
From out of nowhere, the biggest, meanest, blackest Doberman pinscher I’ve ever seen came tearing up the yard headed right towards them. If I hadn’t been so scared myself, I would have fallen out of the tree laughing. The sight of those four, in their high heels and designer clothes, hightailing it out of there, falling and grabbing each other, was like watching one of those prize-winning home videos on TV.
But the dog stopped at the crack in the wall and barked up at me! It must have smelled the sweat rolling off my forehead.
The man from the boathouse shouted to Mafia man, who stopped mowing and headed straight towards me.
He stood for several seconds at the wall, looking around. He patted the dog and told it to be quiet.
“What you see out there, girl? A spy? Come on, Hannah, it’s probably a fox.”
He returned to his mowing, and I inched my way back to the tree trunk and slid down, grateful to be on firm ground again. I ran, all right. I just barely avoided running into a huge patch of poison ivy.
Hannah! It hit me. “Hey Hannah” was a famous Ladybugs song. Well, my mission had been successful after all. How much more evidence did I really need?
My brain was whirling faster for another reason, too. Up in that tree I’d spotted Elbow Island. From that height it looked like an arm, beckoning. There was a flash of orange through the trees. Max? Yes, it was. Rowing towards the island in a small dory.
I was more than curious. Maybe—he’d take me the next time?
Nana would never let me.
>
But if Hansel and Gretel could do it, so could I. Find some way to escape from the clutches of the old witch.
MIND FOG
The arms of a woman held me close. Her eyes were the soft brown of a doe’s. The eyes of mercy.
“Drink,” she whispered. The words tickled my ears like bits of fleece. She held a flask to my lips. The burn in my throat!
Next thing I knew there were other arms, a man’s arms, picking me up, carrying me to warmth.
Hours slipped by, like clouds drifting over the face of the moon. I lapsed in and out of sleep and nightmare and woke up huddled on a bed wrapped in a quilt. Folks filed in and out, stopping for food and drink, for shut-eye as the recovery of remains was under way.
In through the door limped a man. Dad!
“John, you made it, son.” He reached out to me, grabbed both my hands and held his forehead to mine. I felt the bristle of his whiskers against my cheek and realized it was Frith, not my father.
“Our hero, the man who swam out to rescue us, is one Reverend William Ancient,” he told me. “The minister in these parts, a sailor he was before called to be a saviour of souls. God knows I have never been a religious man and only God knows why we were spared and so many was not. I expect I have a debt to pay in this life now.”
My folks were gone.
I understood this even before I found out no other children or married folks made it. The men stayed by the sides of their wives, it was said. It brought me some comfort picturing that. Paddy and Mary Hindley clinging to each other in their last hour as they had their whole lives.
I heard a scream then. My scream.
I had just remembered Thomas.
— HARBOUR OF HATE OVERFLOW —
“No. No. No. And furthermore, no. You are not taking the boat out.”