by Sarah Ellis
Charlotte’s half of the conversation was contained in a nod.
* * *
Charlotte took Tom Ed around to the kitchen door.
“We don’t use the front door because it’s hard to get through the front hall with all the plants. It’s the brightest room so it’s good for them. James calls it the intensive care ward.”
“James?”
“My brother.”
The kitchen was full of steam and sizzle. Uncle Claude was making a racket with frying pans.
Charlotte did the introductions and Claude shook hands with Tom Ed without taking off his oven mitts.
“Well, frost my socks. A genuine American draft dodger. I’ve read about you fellas.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir. What’s that you’re fixin?”
Somehow Claude knew what “fixin” meant.
“Stir-fried vegetables. It’s a Chinese thing. I like to do it for Miss Biscuit. They were missionaries over there somewhere, weren’t they? Once upon a time? It ought to make them feel right at home. I figured it would jazz up the Easter ham. Lots of work, though. Everything’s cut up into small pieces. I don’t think the guys at the camp are going to go for it.”
Charlotte waved away some of the smoke. “Is it burning?”
“You have to get the oil smoking hot. Set the table, would you?”
“How many?”
“Basic five plus Miss Biscuit plus our new guest.”
“So, eight.”
“Isn’t that seven?” asked Tom Ed.
Actually he said, “Idn’t that seb’m?” but Charlotte was already fluent in Texan and jumped in to explain.
“Miss Biscuit is actually two people. There’s Enid Biscuit and her younger-by-one-year sister Ethel. But we always just say Miss Biscuit.”
“Family?”
“No. Quaker friends and they work in the store.”
Charlotte was bumping the cutlery drawer shut with her hip when Tom Ed took the knives and forks out of her hands.
“Dining room this way?”
* * *
Under the dining-room table Charlotte’s newly washed toes stretched out in clean socks. A long afternoon of rain and dancing and too much Coke and she was floating. She found herself staring at Tom Ed’s hands. They were large and bony.
You could tell a lot about a person by the way they ate. For example, it was obvious that the Dodger was American. He ate like the Quaker Elder from Boston who stayed with them last year.
Tom Ed cut a piece of meat, laid his knife along the side of his plate, transferred his fork to his right hand, stabbed the meat and some vegetables with his fork and then ate it. Then he transferred his fork to his left hand and started again. It seemed complicated but it also had a rhythm to it.
“Do you have any brothers and sisters, Tom Ed?” Miss Biscuit always liked to get people’s families sorted out.
“Yes, ma’am. I have an older brother JJ, an older sister Jimilene and there’s the little one, Randy.”
Mid-dinner the conversation turned to the Vietnam War. People talked about the war at Meeting and Charlotte knew about the marches and the protests, but it always seemed like something that happened in another country and on TV. Tom Ed sitting at the table scooping up scalloped potatoes made it more real.
“What is your position on war resistance?” Dad leaned across his plate and addressed Tom Ed.
Tom Ed put down his fork, swallowed and wiped his mouth.
“I know you’re Quakers but I have to say that I’m not a pacifist. I hope that’s not disrespectful.”
“Not disrespectful at all,” said Dad. “Tell us more.”
“But please feel free to keep eating,” said Mom. “Paul has a habit of going into interrogation mode just when one is chewing.”
“I’m not a pacifist because I think there are necessary wars. I would have gone to war against Hitler. But this war doesn’t make sense. It was a mistake from the beginning and now we can’t get out because we’re not allowed to be seen to lose. Nixon and his ‘peace with honor.’ Ffffft! I’m not going to go and be killed, or even worse, kill other people just so that some guy in the schoolyard can save face.”
Miss Biscuit nodded vigorously.
“It’s the old story.”
“Boys on the playground.”
Up to this point James had been quiet but he set down his water glass and leaned across the table.
“If you avoid the draft by coming up here to Canada doesn’t it mean that somebody else has to go in your place? Probably some guy who can’t get out of it? Like some poor kid?”
Charlotte waited for Mom to say, “Now, James,” because it sounded borderline rude but everyone just waited for Tom Ed to answer.
He abandoned his fork once again. “Yes, it likely does mean that but I can’t go over there in the name of a war that is at best unjustified and at worst immoral. Some of the things that Americans are doing over there …” Tom Ed swallowed hard.
“Where do you get your information?” James wasn’t letting it go.
“Look. I know stuff, okay? There’s no real good choice here. Only bad and worse. I chose bad.”
He gave James a hard look and Charlotte smelled a whiff of the playground and thanked her lucky stars, for about the millionth time, that she wasn’t a boy.
Miss Biscuit jumped in. “We really admire you young people standing up for what you believe in. Change has to come from the grass roots. Do your parents support you?”
Tom Ed put down his fork again. “No, ma’am.”
“Such a shame. We know what that’s like, don’t we, Enid? We were members of the WSPU when we were girls. Father was just livid. He threatened to lock us out of the house.”
“WSPU?” said Tom Ed.
“Women’s Social and Political Union.”
“Suffragettes.”
“Did you go on protest marches?” said Tom Ed.
“At first. But the motto was ‘Deeds, Not Words.’”
“What kind of deeds?”
Charlotte expected that Miss Biscuit would say something like singing protest songs or maybe blocking traffic or something. (Did they even have traffic when they were girls?)
“It started with breaking shop windows. Then it went on to bombing stately homes.”
“Frost my socks!” said Uncle Claude. “You were setting bombs?”
Charlotte looked at Miss Biscuit. The sisters suddenly transformed from two old ladies into a pair of criminals.
“Well, not us personally. We were only seventeen and sixteen after all, and then the war came and it all rather fizzled for a while. But we went to the rallies and we approved, didn’t we, Ethel? We wore our badges. They were portraits of Emmeline Pankhurst. They came with ribbons. Purple for …”
“… the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette.”
“Green for hope.”
“And white for purity in private and public life.”
“Doesn’t sound that pure, bombing people’s houses,” said James.
“We didn’t call them bombs, did we, Ethel? We just referred to them as things that blew up the mail.”
“And they made sure nobody was in the houses at the time. Mrs. Pankhurst was very stern about that. Property, not loss of life.”
“Point is, we understand about trying to change the minds of those in power. Without the vote, civil disobedience was really the only option.”
“Father did lock us out, remember, Enid? Well, he tried to, but Cook just let us in the area door. Cook was a secret suffragette. Father was terrified that we would make a spectacle of ourselves in public. ‘I don’t want a daughter of mine with her picture in the morning papers.’”
Tom Ed wiped his mouth again. “Yes, ma’am. Same with my daddy. He worries what everybody in town will
think. He probably worries as much about that as about patriotism and serving your country.”
Daddy! Who called their father Daddy after about age five? Charlotte saw James make a face.
Over pie, the conversation moved on to another war — the squirrels in the attic of Miss Biscuit’s house.
“They seem to be eating the wires. We had to have a man in.”
“We felt terrible. There were new babies.”
“But it can’t have been good for them, eating wires.”
“He trapped them all in a cage and he’s going to take them to Stanley Park and release them.”
Tom Ed frowned. “Why didn’e just shoot ’em?”
Miss Biscuit stopped mid-chew. “Well, I don’t believe the pest control people are issued with guns.”
“If anybody had trouble with squirrels or other pests in our town they just got Duane to come. He had an air-pump pellet rifle. He was a sharp shooter for a kid.”
This time Mom stopped eating. “How much of a kid?”
“Around twelve.”
“A twelve-year-old with a gun?”
“Well, yes, ma’am. But he was good. He practiced on rats.”
Eating ground to a halt. Charlotte felt it was her turn to prompt Tom Ed to continue.
“Where did he get the rats?”
“Well,” said Tom Ed, “this is where I come into the story. Duane would pay five cents a live rat to any kid. We had a good source of rats. At the end of our block there was a big vacant lot filled with construction garbage — plywood, sheet metal, stuff like that. Good for building stuff and collecting stuff. We’d go down there with empty milk cartons, one end opened up. Then one kid would pull up something plywood or metal and usually a rat would run out. Then we’d run and step on the rat and scoop up the head into the open carton, then lift up our foot and turn the carton upright real quick and close it up. Then deliver the rat to Duane and get our nickel. It took some skill.”
“I almost hate to ask this,” said Dad, “but exactly what did Duane do with the rats?”
“He’d get somebody to let them go and then he’d shoot at ’em.”
“With his gun?” said Mom faintly.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s right.”
* * *
Dawn phoned after dinner.
“So? Is he going to stay at your place?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, boy, you’re so lucky. Your own draft dodger. For how long?”
“Hmmm, not sure.”
Conversations at the Quintan house often involved being a woman of few words. The phone was in the front hall by the stairs, right in the middle of everything. Charlotte noticed that when you flipped through the phone book sometimes you saw, under the first number, another number that said “Children’s Phone.” Who were those lucky people?
This was not a teenager complaint. It was a human-being complaint.
“He absolutely can’t leave until I get back from music camp. Why do I even have to go to music camp? Maybe I just won’t go. Maybe I’ll get sick, but just until the bus leaves tomorrow morning. Oh, that won’t work. I’m doomed. Look, you’ll just have to remember every single thing that happens between now and Saturday.”
Charlotte spiraled the phone cord around her finger. Dad walked by.
“Charlotte, quit messing up the cord. I just fixed it.”
The phone cord was one of Dad’s special interests. He felt that if the phone cord was tidy, there was hope for cosmic order.
“Charlotte! Promise?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Promise squared?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Promise to the nth power?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. Call me before I leave tomorrow.”
“Before eight?”
“Come on, Charlotte. It’s only fair. Plus, I was the one who found him in the first place.”
She had a point. “Okay.”
Six
Monday morning and no school. Was there a more delicious combination? Charlotte stretched out and tipped Puff off the edge of the bed. It wasn’t like the Easter holidays were going to be glamorous. Some kids from her class were going on trips. Sylvia Lane’s family was off to the cottage.
But Charlotte’s plans were more modest. Sleeping in, going shopping with Monique, playing some badminton with Donna, a couple of evenings of babysitting and a feast of daytime TV. Five days in a row of People in Conflict.
Life was good.
At seven Charlotte had rolled out of bed to phone Dawn as promised. She reassured her that she wouldn’t let the Dodger leave (as if she had control over that) and she said goodbye, all without actually waking up, so she was able to roll right back into bed for another delicious three hours.
She gave another stretch. The purring sound of the lawn mower wafted in the window. James?
She looked out the window. Tom Ed! The lawn looked very precise.
Shrugging on some beat-up clothes, she wandered outside, grabbing a banana on the way, and met Tom Ed coming up the back stretch.
He gave a huge smile. “Howdy, Miz Charlotte.”
Movie-star teeth.
Charlotte felt like she could say anything. “How come Americans have such good teeth?”
“I don’t know about Americans in general but where I grew up there’s a high concentration of fluoride in the water.”
Charlotte felt a wave of easiness break over her. It had been a real question and Tom Ed was really answering it. He didn’t seem to find the question cute. He was treating her like an Unteen.
“Nobody has cavities. Nobody goes to the dentist, except after they get old and they have to get all their teeth pulled and get false teeth.”
“Really? You’ve never been to the dentist?”
“Nope.”
No dentists. No needles, no drills, no spit in the sink.
“I want to rewind my life and grow up in Texas.”
Tom Ed tipped up the mower, sat on the ground and started cleaning grass gunk off the blades with a stick. “Would you be the same person?”
“What?”
“Same family, different place. Would you be the same person?”
Charlotte sank down on the grass. Weird. This question — how much can you change and still be you — was something she had thought about for as far back as she could remember. What if she lived in the house next door? What if she had different parents or grew up speaking Japanese or wearing wooden shoes? What if she’d been born a boy? This was a reliable question for boring car trips or too-hot-to-sleep nights but she had never thought to discuss it with someone else.
“I think so. If I had the same family I’d be me. Only better teeth. You?”
“Not sure. But I think I’m about to find out. Will I be the same person in Canada?”
Tom Ed gave the mower a wipe with a rag and pushed it back to the shed door. Then he came and plunked himself down beside Charlotte.
“Want half a banana?”
“Sure.”
Charlotte gave him the half with the peel.
“Say, I’ve been wondering.” Tom Ed pointed to the cherry tree, pink with bloom. “What’s that thing up there?”
“Just what’s left of a treehouse. Dad built it. It used to have a ladder and a window. Once Dawn and I slept there overnight. But bits have fallen off.”
“Treehouse? I’ve never seen one.”
“You didn’t have a treehouse? But I thought you were always building things.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t have any trees. We built forts.”
“No trees?”
“Nope. ’Cept in parks. A few shrubby things in gardens sometimes, but no trees. Nothing to block the view.”
“The view of what?”
“The view of what t
rees would have blocked, which was more and more of nothing as far as the eye can see. There’s this thing they say in Lubbock. You can see clear to the next county and if you stand on a can of tuna you can see to Oklahoma. So I’ve never seen a treehouse and I’ve never been in a treehouse, which is a situation that is going to change right quick. Let’s go up there.”
“It’s probably rotten by now, and the ladder’s gone.”
“So we’ll climb.”
Charlotte looked at the rough bark of the tree. It looked scratchy.
“Maybe I should get the stepladder.”
“Naw. I’ll just boost you up. I can climb up after you.”
“How?”
“I’ll show you. Come on.”
When they reached the tree Tom Ed leaned over and laced his fingers together.
“Step here, and then step onto my shoulders, then a short step up to the front door of the house. Easy as stairs.”
Why not? There was a bad moment between hands and shoulder when Charlotte bashed her knee into his ear. But Tom Ed didn’t complain and she made it from shoulder to treehouse without further incident.
Tom Ed jumped up to grab a branch and then swung himself back and forth until he got his legs over it as well, and then pulled himself up. It was like a gymnastics thing.
“Not bad for a kid from no-tree-land, wouldn’t you say?”
The tree had filled out since the treehouse was built, and the platform was now enclosed by black branches and pink flowers. Sunlight flickered on the grayed boards. It was even more like a bird’s nest than Charlotte remembered. There was a small breeze.
“You can smell the water on the wind,” said Tom Ed.
“What’s that?”
“Where I come from it hardly ever rains, but when it does you can smell it coming. It’s some sweet smell.”
“I guess in Vancouver we smell that almost all the time so we don’t notice it.”
