by Sheree Fitch
“He swore up and down and used to make my mother so mad when he’d tell it. My father wasn’t much of a joker or tease, so we kids all believed him.”
Nana cleared her throat. “Pugwash!”
“Harv, do you think that’s what happened to Stubby McIsaac? He saw the headless man?”
“All I know is he sure enough was a changed man. Still reads his Bible every day, I hear.”
“He’s still alive?” My heart did a flutter kick.
“Yep. Old, though. Been living up in the Sunnyvale Nursing Home for years now.”
“So how about it, Minn,” Nana said, “will you be coming to the picnic with us on Sayrday?”
“If by Sayrday, you mean Saturday,” I mocked, “I’ll have to think about it.”
“Well, no flies off my back if you don’t. I was thinking you could ask your beau.”
“My beau? As if.”
“Well, you might have fun enough, all the same,” said Harv.
“I’ll think about it, Harv. How about some reciting?”
“Tuckered out now, I’m afraid. Ida, it’s your turn.”
“The Cremation of Sam McGee, maybe, since we’re on such a morbid topic.”
I shrugged. She began. It made me think of Corporal Ray. It was his favourite. Guess he’d learned it from Nana.
As her voice droned on, I thought of Harv’s father and especially of Stubby McIsaac. What did he know that could help me? I wasn’t sure, but something told me to follow that funny little flutter kick my heart did a few moments ago.
— STUBBY —
Sunnyvale Nursing Home is just across the road from St. John the Baptist Anglican Church. It was Nana’s church and we’d gone every Sunday since I’d been in Boulder Basin.
“There’s no point in kicking up a fuss over going,” she’d warned me the first Sunday. “It’s important to have a spiritual community. For now, you’re here in this community, maybe against your own wishes, but you’ll be coming with me. You can pray for the health of your mother.” If only she knew how I’d prayed—all last winter—and a fat lot of good that did.
Anyhow, I enjoyed the singing. Well, most folks’ singing, that is. Nana knew most of the hymns by heart and sang them full blast off key. It was almost as bad as Corporal Ray’s yodelling. I spent most of the service staring at the stained-glass windows and out the side door, which was propped open with a broom handle. Even then, the church was always stuffy and smelled of candles and lemon oil.
Through the door, I could see right across the street to the nursing home. Looked to me like those old folks spent the Sabbath having wheelchair races up and down the sidewalk.
“I’ve come to visit Stubby McIsaac,” I announced with as much confidence as I could to the woman behind the desk.
“Relative?” she asked, and then looked at me hard. “Why no, you’re not!”
My mouth twitched but I held my smile in place.
“You’ve got to be Ida Hennigar’s granddaughter. I’d know you anywhere—you’re the spitting image of her.” She beamed at me.
I rubbed my chin to see if there was hair growing there I hadn’t noticed before.
“I used to date your father in high school,” she said.
My eyes must have shown my surprise.
“A regular dream boat, he was!” she sighed, then caught herself. “Stubby will be thrilled to have a young visitor. Those grandkids of his hardly ever get in here to see him. Come this way. He’s right over here.
“STUBBY! SOMEONE TO SEE YOU, DEAR!” She sounded like she was talking through a megaphone.
“EH?” he yelled back, cupping his ear.
His face was so shrivelled he reminded me of those little dolls people make out of shrivelled-up apples.
“A GIRL TO SEE YOU!”
“THAT SO?” he said, eyeing me up and down. The woman patted me on the shoulder and left.
“WHO IS YOU, YOUNG LADY? ONE OF MY GRANDCHILDREN?”
“MY NAME’S CINNAMON HOTCHKISS,” I yelled.
“DID YOU SAY CINNAMON? THAT’S A FUNNY NAME!” Like he should talk. “CINNAMON LIKE THE SPICE?”
I nodded.
“AND HOTCHKISS?”
I nodded again. This was going to be painful. Big mistake coming here.
“RELATED TO BURNS HOTCHKISS?”
I bobbed my head up and down like a yo-yo. He was a great-uncle or something.
Stubby McIsaac touched one of his ears and then the other. “There now, speak up, but you don’t have to yell.”
The old devil! He’d had his hearing aid off the whole time!
“So what brings you here?” he said.
There wasn’t time to beat around the bush. This place smelled like cat pee and blue cheese. I wanted out as fast as I could. In the corner, a woman with no hair was sitting rocking a doll and singing to it. Her scalp was the same pink as the doll.
“Lullaby and good night with roses delight,” she wailed and then just sang, “Lo lo lo lo lo lo lo lo lo lo.”
I swallowed. “I heard a story,” I said. “About you.”
“Oh Lord in heaven, dear,” he wheezed, “don’t believe half of what you hear around these parts!”
“I am doing some, um, independent research on the SS Atlantic,” I told him. I heard Nana telling Harv one night her independent research on herbs was coming along fine.
Stubby’s eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. “I see.”
“I need to know what happened the night you went out to Elbow Island. I heard it changed your life.”
“For the better,” he agreed, not once taking his eyes off my face. “But I’ve not told a soul the truth all these years. Why should I tell you now?”
“Because,” I hesitated and then went for it. “Because, Mr. McIsaac, I would like to help save the gravesite.”
He coughed. He smiled—a sad sort of smile. As though he felt sorry for me. “Found some bones, didn’t you.”
I nodded.
“I know all about it. You find the bones and then you’re pulled into it. You find out what you can, right? I didn’t read much but I did lots of askin’. You try to not think on it too much. But it’s always there, isn’t it. The bones speak. ‘Who am I? Come find out.’”
“You do know.”
“I do. And is it true what I’ve heard? The grave is almost washed back out to sea?”
“There’s not much time left to save it,” I said.
“Well, finally, a person with a good enough reason to tell my story to. Maybe.”
“Please, I know it was a long time ago but …”
He slapped his thigh and chuckled. “Honey, I might not remember where I put my teeth last night but I’ll ’member what happened that night until the day I die, which isn’t so very far down the road, I suppose. Yes, well, maybe I should tell someone. Someone who might believe.”
I smiled like a prize student who’d just got the right answer.
“How brave are ya?” he asked.
“Why?”
“It’s not a tale for the faint of heart.”
“I can take it.”
“Why don’t you wheel me out front and park me under that tree? It stinks in this place!”
— STUBBY’S VISION —
As soon as I settled on a bench across from him, Stubby nodded off to sleep. Great, I thought. But with his eyes still shut he mumbled, “I’m just gathering my thoughts. Clearing the cobwebs. The memories are sharp, but sometimes I lose the words.”
As I waited for him to find them again, I thought about a lost and found for words that went missing. If I had that box full of lost words, I’d give it to the poor old man. Imagine seeing pictures in your head and searching for the words. Is being that old like always doing a crossword puzzle? My mother, in the good old days, coloured the world with her words. Perky Paprika! Fiddlehead Green! Vampire Vermillion. No, she’d never been at a loss for words—until she’d slipped into that silent place where words dribbled instead of gushed from her
mouth.
The church bells began to ring. Like a signal, when the last chime drifted out to sea, Stubby finally cleared his throat and started in.
“It was fine enough weather when I headed out that evening. I’d had a hard day and thought I’d make an overnight of it—something I’d always been meaning to do but never had. Thank God I had a few supplies, ’cause I no sooner anchored my boat than the wind kicked up something fierce. Then again, you know what they say about the weather round here. If you don’t like it, wait five minutes, it’s bound to change. She changes in a blink. We all know this.
“How old are you?” he asked suddenly.
“Twelve,” I said.
“Well, then, I suppose I can tell you a bit more honestly. The thing of it is, my dear, I was three sheets to the wind that night.”
“Pardon me?”
“Skunk drunk in the first place. I went out to Elbow Island that night to dip into my own supply. Can’t really remember for the life of me now how that felt, to be that thirsty, but to one who’s got the disease, well, you’d do most anything to get more when you haven’t had enough. So there I was stumbling around on those slippery rocks, talking to myself and trying to make my way towards the still. That’s when the rain started up. And I mean rain. Pour-down rain like the folks up yonder had turned on shower taps full blast. And the howl! The wind that night was like a chorus of voices, human voices rising and falling, you know the sound, a kind of Eou! Eou! Eou! sound. High then low then circling your head. Eou! Eou! Eou!”
He was shouting like a crazy man. A woman passing by on the sidewalk looked over at us in alarm and then hurried across the street.
Stubby took a breath and continued. “Hurricane, I started to think. Maybe some leftover tropical storm had made it all the way up the coast from Florida. I was soaked through to the bone in no time. I headed for a grove of trees mid-island where I knew the old Clancy cabin used to be. Sure enough, not that much of it was left, but I found it. I was happier than a pig in—Excuse me, my old words come back with memory, I guess. But I was feeling no pain. See, I’d found my refreshment along the way. So there I was. Had a sleeping bag, my drink and matches for a fire I always kept inside a leather pouch around my belt loop. I tore up some floorboards for kindling, snapped them with my boots and figured I’d be dried out—well, in one sense—in no time.” He stopped and gulped some air. “I kneels down to light my fire and when I turned around and saw …”
His eyes were misty.
I waited.
“Where was I?”
“You said you saw …?”
“Her. There she was.”
“Who?”
“Honey, as real as you are to me now, I was looking into the face of the prettiest woman I ever saw in my life. What a sight for my sore eyes. Merciful Jesus, I thought to myself, I am truly blessed this night! I reached out to take her hand. I wanted to kiss it like a gentleman. But then …” He shook his head, scrubbed at his face with his hand, pulling his wrinkles down as he did. For a second, I saw him as a younger man.
“Then, she changed in front of my eyes into—into a corpse. Her eyes bulged out, almost popped out of her skull, and her lips were purple and her necklace kept shining in my face until I was blinded and fell to my knees. I felt it was the She-devil, a demon.
“‘Lord have mercy!’ I screamed.
“‘Stubby McIsaac,’ said an angelic voice. ‘Look at me.’
“But I knew it was a trick.
“‘Look at me!’ she repeated.
“The cabin grew colder than death itself. I peeked out between my fingers like this.”
He showed me. It was the way my mother watched scary parts in movies, through what she called a real handmade mask. I was gripping the edge of the bench, I noticed, and my leg muscles were tensed up, my palms sweating.
“And what did I see? She was the sweet young woman again. ‘Who are you?’ I sputtered out. ‘What do you want from me?’ I asks her.
“‘My name is Maryanna Rayborn. I died on the mizzen rigging in the wreck of the SS Atlantic. I am also the Woman of Whispers,’ she whispered. ‘I am the holder of all secrets and burdens you cannot whisper to any living soul. Not even yourself. I want your secrets, Stubby, and your burdens. Speak to me,’ she said kindly.
“‘And if I don’t?’
“Again the dead woman rose up before me.
“‘All right, all right!’ I screamed. Hell, heck, I had enough secrets and burdens and some downright confessions to last me a lifetime.” He blew through his mouth with a shudder of his lips, just like a horse does. “Are you religious, Cinnamon?”
“I’m not sure what I believe,” I murmured, hoping my answer was okay. I was afraid he wouldn’t go on with me telling the bald truth like that.
“That’s fine, you can always believe in belief until you figure that out. Having faith is even better than having religion. Well, anyhow, I never knew what hit me. See, I was never much of a talker until that night, but I talked until the sun came up. Like she said, told her things I’d never told myself. And she did the strangest thing. When I was through, she waved her arms, and in through the door of that cabin, clouds drifted in. She whispered to them and waved her arms again. And then up blew this wind and the clouds swirled above my head and disappeared. ‘Your heart can rest, Stubby. Your wounds are healed and burdens dissolved. Go forth in peace.’
“I cried like some baby and fell asleep. When I woke up, I made a promise to myself. That I’d never touch spirits again. The way I figured it, the spirits had summoned the spirits, if you get my drift. I never ever wanted to see that vision again—a face twisted in a mask of death.” He stopped talking.
“How did she leave?” I asked.
“She just followed the clouds out the door like the gracious lady she was.
“Anyhow, I rowed, tunderation, I rowed back to the basin and went straight to Reverend Hardy’s and asked to be born again in God’s family. So there. The end.”
“And you never told anyone?”
“Well, I did tell Hardy that day and my good wife who had prayed every night of our married life I’d mend my ways.”
“And they believed you?”
“They believed it was the hallucinations of a drunken man. But I know better.”
“How can you be sure?” I said. “Because she gave me a name. A hallucination won’t do that.”
“Oh.”
“See, I looked over the passenger list once. After my encounter. There was her name plain as the nose on your sweet little face.”
“There was a woman who froze on the rigging out there. I remember reading that. But it didn’t give her name.”
“I’m just telling you what happened to me. So what will you do with this so-called independent research of yours?”
“I want to save the grave, Mr. McIsaac,” I repeated.
“Isn’t that a coincidence! There was a girl here before—Oh, that’s you, isn’t it!” he snorted.
Old people can smell really, really sour. Worse than vinegar.
“So what’s your plan? How are you going to save it?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’ve got a petition going. But I think I need to cause a stir somehow. Raise money.”
“I have a hundred dollars to get you started,” he said.
“No, no, I couldn’t!”
“Oh yes you could!” He reached into his right slipper and pulled out a wad of bills. He winked at me. “They don’t know I’ve got this.” Then he peeled off a hundred. “Please,” he said. “It’ll make me feel real good.”
I took it and tucked it into my jeans. It felt heavy as a rock.
“Go start yer stirring! Godblessnow. And if you find your way to Elbow Island, say hello to that beautiful woman for me, eh?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Of course you have. Bones speak, like I said. And the arm that is Elbow Island beckons.”
“I don’t know how I’d get there. And it so
unds dangerous.”
“It is not for the faint of heart. If there’s a will, there’s always a way. And for those that dare, the rewards outweigh the danger. Trust me.”
He began to wheel himself back to the front door.
“Did you … um … Did you see the headless man?”
“No. But Ace Jollymore did. Now, honey, I’m tired right out from so much talking. Talking takes breath and I don’t have so many breaths left in me.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Stubby,” he said. “You can call me Stubby.”
No, I thought, I really couldn’t. Leastways, not with a straight face.
I shuffled home, hardly noticing where I was going. Trust him? Believe his story? He had been skunk drunk, after all. And yet? If an old lady could sit and rock and sing to a doll thinking it was a real baby, maybe a person could imagine just about anything. O.I.! O.I.!
— PICNICS —
The day of the Herring Choker Picnic and Folk Festival started early. Five thirty, to be exact.
“A picture-perfect day!” squealed Nana as she opened the curtains and let the sun flood in.
“Up and at ’em. Lazy Mary, will you get up, will you get up, will you get up. Lazy Mary, will you get up, will you get up this mooooorning?” she sang.
“All right, just please don’t sing!” I protested.
“Rise and shine and give God your glory glory,” she crooned in reply.
“Nana!”
“Good morning, good morning, good morning to you! Oh, we’re all in our places with sunshiny faces! Oh, this is the way to start a new day!”
“How many wake-up songs do you know?”
“We rise again, in the faces of our children—”
“I’m up, okay!”
She was already halfway downstairs. “I’ll need a hand loading the truck!”
I took a second to look out the window. She was right about the day. An endless blue sky. “Holland Blue.” I heard my mother’s voice so distinctly I spun around thinking she was in the room with me.
After breakfast, Harv and Nana headed for the fairgrounds to start setting up for the picnic.
There were training drills for me to tackle, but goofing off sounded like a better idea. I had a nice long soak in the claw-foot tub in Nana’s room with lavender bubbles up to my neck. When my skin puckered up and started to peel, I drained the tub. My hair wasn’t quite dry when the doorbell rang.