by Myrna Dey
Jane pulls all of this out of him with questions, when she delivers his clothes to him. By nature, he is a quiet man who does not like to talk about himself. His cabin has become the schoolroom she misses so much, where she can dwell in visions from realms other than her own. She grieves to think of him as a young lad wearing only one garment for night and day, sleeping on a straw mattress on a dirt floor in a shack with rags for covers. One pot of stew set in the middle of the floor fed all the children, eating from their knees. In fact, whenever Mama mentions the Monmouths now, Jane thinks of the young Louis Strong instead. And she no longer takes her family’s covers for granted; they are quilts that Mama and Margaret sewed back in Wales, threadbare now in places, but more than adequate to keep everybody warm. Probably Margaret and Catherine are stitching new counterpanes at this very moment to replace the ones sent to Canada. Jane lifts her pen from the paper and can almost hear her older sister scolding Cassie to stay at her task and stop daydreaming so much or playing with Gwynyth and Evan.
A snort from Gomer reminds Jane it is time to move him from Tommy’s bedroom to the couch. Bundled in blankets, he wheezes as she guides him, still asleep, the few steps to the front room. When Tommy finishes the two small bedrooms he plans to add, Gomer and Jane will each have a sleeping space. She would gladly share hers with Cassie, as she did in Wales. On her way back to the letter, Jane checks to make sure Mama is still sleeping. And as if someone else might be looking over her shoulder, she swivels her head before writing: Last week I met his younger son and his daughter at his cabin. They are golden in colour with smiles all over their faces. She could never record that she spent half an hour alone in the company of Louis’ son Adam after Ruby rode her horse back to her schoolhouse. Even putting his name on paper feels bold, and she omits it.
Jane cannot reveal that she considers Adam Strong to be the most beautiful boy she has ever laid eyes on. Standing next to him in Louis’ yard caused all kinds of sensations she has never felt before: pounding heart, light head, and gibberish coming out of her mouth. At eighteen, he is almost three years older than Jane, who will be sixteen in December. She once met Mrs. Strong when she came over to help her husband make apple cider; Adam is not as dark as his mother but darker than his father who carries the imprint of his own white father. Louis, in fact, could almost pass for someone of Spanish or Greek descent, though he would never have tried such a thing in the United States. She thinks of Adam’s shade in terms of the old dressers and tables Tommy picks up from other miners, then sands and revarnishes to a gleaming finish. Light oak is the colour of Adam’s face in the sun; his neck, polished maple, and his arms, a rich mahogany. He seems as strong and still as an oak himself, just like his father, whom he shows respect and affection at all times. He works hard tending his parents’ cattle and farm, because his older brother comes to Salt Spring Island only on his time off from prospecting for gold on the Skeena River in the north. With Maynard away so much, Adam has become the one his mother depends on. Jane smiles to think of Gomer taking on such a load when he cannot yet build a proper fire in the stove. All this she will tell Catherine when they are finally together again. For now she closes with kisses, inserts from a can on the shelf the $10 bill Tommy has instructed her to send, and seals the letter in an envelope.
The sun has begun to break through the morning’s haze, and Jane fills an enamelled basin with water now heated in the kettle. In the scullery off the kitchen, she slips quickly out of her robe and nightgown and washes her strong young body, gooseflesh rising from the cold air not insulated by the blanket curtain. Two freshly cured hams and a slab of bacon hang from the ceiling; Tommy gets their pork from a fellow miner — not from Henry Hargraves, to Jane’s relief. Back home, their father did the curing, and Mama kept chickens whose necks she wrung herself. That is all past.
She pulls a shimmy over her head, then a white blouse, and steps into a petticoat and a grey woollen skirt, all warming in a bundle next to the stove. As she fastens her lisle stockings to her garter belt, she notes the grease tins are full. Time to make more soap. On the way home she will stop at the store for lye. She leaves the curtain open to insure warmth for Tommy’s bath, stuffs her feet into Gomer’s boots, and flings a cloak over her shoulders. She exits quietly, two empty pails in one hand, a chamber pot in the other. After a brief stop at the privy, she steps quickly down a lane to a pump shared by a cluster of dwellings.
Tommy did well claiming this parcel of land. Lush with alder, poplar, maple, pine, and hawthorn trees, their large lot slopes gently down to the Chase River flowing through the bottom corner. Sometimes she thinks of the fugitive native murderer in his canoe, whose chase years ago by Hudson’s Bay Company scouts gave this sparkling stream its name.
Tommy had rented a small shack on his own until just before his family arrived, when he purchased a larger one for $50 to move here from the declining Wellington mine. Mama contributed her small compensation from Wales for furniture and housekeeping. Many miners rent company cottages, partly due to the greed of the owners, but also because homes can become worthless if the mine dries up, unless they are moved to a new site. Tommy believes they are well located in Chase River. If his work at the No. 1 Nanaimo mine ceases, he can sell or move their home again. He learned the value of owning and maintaining property, no matter how modest, from their father. Even their outside cedar shingles are weathering evenly, in contrast to the unsightly bleeding wood on some of the smaller, shabbier cottages built or rented by others around them — mainly Finnish farmers and miners.
Jane sees Gertie Salo turn into one of those cottages now with full pails. She is relieved to be spared stories of school at the pump from her former slow-moving classmate. Complaints about the studies she craves. The mine whistle jolts her into a quicker pace, still careful to keep the water from overflowing. Back in the warm house, she fills oil cans with water to boil for Tommy’s bath and scoops lard from a tin into a cast iron frying pan. Mama sneezes from the bedroom.
“Thomas home?” she calls in a weak voice.
“Not yet,” Jane says, looking in on her mother propped up on pillows. She is a small woman whose curly black hair has turned a steely grey since her arrival in Canada and now matches her eyes. Her skin bears a hectic flush, but is surprisingly firm, especially on her arms and neck, considering she has not had the benefit of much fresh air and exercise. “I’ve started his meal. How are you feeling?”
“Could be better. Water boiled yet?”
“I’ll bring your tea just now.” Gomer coughs and shifts on the couch as Jane stops to pull the blankets over his shoulders.
“Hakie,” he mutters through a crusty nose and parched mouth.
Jane takes a handkerchief from her skirt pocket, checking to see that it is clean before exchanging it for a wadded-up cloth, which she drops into a pail of cold water. She postpones the thought that in an hour or so she will be rinsing out Lance Cruikshank’s slimy handkerchiefs in a similar pail, then boiling them on the stove. At the sound of the mine train whistle at the Chase River stop, she hurries to fill the galvanized tub in the scullery with hot and cold water. By the time she has added strips of roast lamb, cold potatoes, and onions to the hot grease in the frying pan, her brother’s heavy steps sound on the path.
Soot-faced, Tommy enters wearily, discards his boots and tosses his lunch pail next to them. On the way to his bath he passes behind Jane drizzling beaten eggs through the hash, which she will dish onto a plate at the sound of his coal-stiff clothes dropping to the floor. A scrubbed Tommy emerges from the washroom, more ready to sleep than to eat. He never speaks until he has completed this ritual, and sometimes not until after his meal. Or sometimes not at all.
Jane spoons out a small plate for herself and takes the chair across the table from her brother. He is tall and, she thinks, quite handsome, but too shy and retiring to encourage anyone to look at him for long. When he left Wales for Canada five years ago, she remembers him boarding the ship in Cardiff, his greatcoa
t so large only his head protruded from it — no hands and just the ends of his feet. His hair was sandy-coloured then and now it is dark. She is not sure if it has been dyed permanently with coal dust or if it is just the natural deepening of colour almost everyone in her family experiences. She glances at Gomer’s tousled head, still blonde but once white. She alone was born with the same brown hair she has now. When Tommy pushes his empty plate to the side, Jane sets a dish of preserved plums and a mug of tea in front of him.
“Shift go well?” She takes a sip of tea.
“Nobody killed.”
“You off for a while.”
“Sunday noon.”
“Going to the dance tonight?”
“Might. Rollie wants to go.”
Tommy’s friend Roland Hughes often ends up at their house. He lives with his father, a moody, mean man, and admits he likes being in a house run by women. Jane welcomes Roland only because he is more talkative than Tommy, and she gains news about people in the mine and Chase River. But he drinks too much and she is certain he will end up like his father. “Stella is sure to go on about what she’s wearing when I get there.”
“If Lance takes her.”
“What do you mean?”
Tommy glances at his young sister protectively. “Lance sometimes talks as if he’s single.”
Jane stifles her surprise so Tommy will not think she’s too innocent and stop talking. “How can people become so different because of a new position? Stella told me herself his uncle got it for him.”
Tommy pushes his chair back from the table, nodding. “Not so long ago he was a mucker, cleaning up while our crew laid timbers, and complaining about all the orders. Now he gives more as tram boss than he ever took.”
Jane likes to see her brother smile, a triumph that often comes from speaking two or three sentences at once. She loves the soft cadence of Glamorganshire he tries so hard to lose. Whenever their mother speaks in Welsh, he answers in English, so Mama has stopped. Tommy possesses the sweetest voice in the family and, like Papa and Gilbert, has a whole choir in his throat when he sings. Even Gomer is developing a fine singing voice, more the pity he won’t have church to practise it the way the rest of them had back home. Mama’s illness has robbed them of many traditions. As for Jane, Mama says her voice is too full of shrill curiosity to be musical, but she does love to sing to Stella’s wee baby when she is alone with him.
“Da bore, Thomas. Time for another cup of tea with your mother? And a slice of bara brith.”
Mama shuffles from the bedroom, wrapping her dressing gown snugly around her. She sits down on the chair Jane vacates to make porridge. Jane has noticed Mama regains her health most in the presence of her oldest son. Tommy, who had risen to retreat to his bed warmed by his little brother, sits back down and pours himself more tea. Gomer, draped in his bedcovers, struggles from the couch to join them at the table. His voice is thick. “Dno porridge for bme.”
Jane serves two bowls, along with the current bread requested, and leaves her little brother for her mother to discipline for a change. From the cloak cupboard she takes a long green woollen cape and umbrella. “I’ll be back whenever Stella’s through with me,” she says, then remembers the letter to post on the cupboard. “I wrote to the others.”
“Again?” says Mama. “You just wrote last week.”
“If it’s not sealed, here’s another ten dollars t’ward Catherine’s passage,” says Tommy, pulling a bill out of his shirt pocket.
Jane’s heart leaps at the prospect. She rushes outside for a welcome gulp of fresh air and rain on the short trail between workplaces. She will correct the amount in the letter at the post office.
BETWEEN THE FIFTH AND SIXTH BLASTS, the foghorn on the Departure Bay ferry turned into my alarm clock. Or maybe it was the fifth or sixth snooze button. I was not aware of the alarm buzzing until my dark bedroom swallowed up Uncle Lawrence standing on the dock; he was still looking sad because we did not stay for supper. Cold toes told me I was badly swaddled in my quilt. I raised my head slowly, then sat up carefully. Nothing. I jumped to my feet. Hallelujah. The disappearance of a headache almost made that skull rattling worthwhile in the first place. Almost.
When I turned on the light, I saw the identical pictures of Janet and Sara on the night table. But the clock next to them said half an hour to briefing, so I yanked on my jeans and sweatshirt from the floor and grabbed my pants and last ironed shirt from the closet. I’d take a quick shower at work. Times like this made me thankful I had a short haircut that required no curling iron or gel. I used the rails of the staircase to the underground parking lot to propel me downward four steps at a time.
At the detachment, I was showered and in my uniform in record time and almost crashed into Emile entering the briefing room. He handed me the cup of coffee in his hand. “You look as if you need this more than I do.”
Our corporal asked if I was feeling better, and I nodded.
“Well enough for a stakeout?”
I nodded again.
“Put your jeans back on. There’s a video store off Boundary we suspect is a fence for a convenience store in Coquitlam. Hang around and see what you can come up with. Sukhi will go with you.”
Sukhi smiled, cool and organized already in his plain clothes. We had a couple of hours before the video store opened so once I’d changed, I suggested we get some breakfast. I was so ravenous, Sukhi wondered if I were the same person he had eaten with yesterday. Had only twenty-four hours passed since then? I felt as if I’d been thrown into a cauldron containing Ray, Retha, Wanda, Terry, and Jane Owens, then agitated on one of those paint-stirring machines. Dad was the only one who had not shaken me up.
When we got back to the car, we had a call to go to a supermarket. We still had time before the stakeout, so we pulled into the parking lot in our unmarked car. It was a monster food store, the kind thieves like best. Especially when no loss preventions officer was on duty and they knew it. We talked to the manager in bulk foods, while Sukhi scooped out a bag of chickpeas. They had their eye on a man who had been coming in twice a day recently. He was a young Vietnamese, spotted by a Vietnamese employee who had a hunch about what he was doing but did not want to confront him without grounds. We agreed to our roles.
At the moment, the suspect was filling his cart in the canned vegetable section. Sukhi pushed his cart casually behind him. I lingered at the other end of the aisle. He moved along toward me and we both reached for the sesame rice crackers at the same time, his hand pulling away politely until I had taken my package. From there he pushed his full cart to the express checkout counter at the far end without giving any of the closer cashiers a glance. I followed at a distance to where Sukhi was already browsing through a magazine rack at the checkout. The man’s back was to us during this transaction, which was much too brief for so many items. From the other direction, the manager approached and nodded at me. Sukhi followed our man through the automatic doors and I caught up in the parking lot. I hung back, within earshot, when Sukhi confronted him at his own car.
“Do you have receipts for these goods, sir?”
“Right here.” The man held two bills in one hand like playing cards. “This for the big order — you see, mushroom soup, rice, tuna fish.” He pointed meticulously to each item, then to the first bill. “See date.” He waved the second bill. “This for crackers only. I forget crackers and go back. I show cashier first bill.”
Sukhi took the bills from him. “The date might be right, but you had your thumb over the time. You bought your first big order two hours ago and I’ll bet it’s in your trunk. You thought you could get away with a duplicate set of free items using the same receipt.” When four more bags of groceries were discovered under a blanket in the trunk, Sukhi asked: “And where are the receipts for all this?”
I stepped forward, as the man dug nervously in his pocket for the non-existent bills. “Here somewhere,” he kept repeating.
The manager arrived as I cuffed him and g
uided him into the back of our car. “Pretty nice scam you had going for a while.” He pushed the cart with the stolen goods back to the store.
“Where do you sell your stuff?” Sukhi asked on the way back to the station. “Who’s your fence?” The man retreated into silence, pretending he didn’t understand a word we said. We left him in a holding cell and headed back out on our main file.
The video store was part of a little strip mall that housed a copy shop, a dry cleaner, and a Vietnamese takeout restaurant. From a glance through the windows, I figured the tenants were probably all Vietnamese, including the man we were watching. Sukhi picked up two coffees from the takeout place and we cruised around the block once. We saw a woman dressed in a business suit go in and out quickly, a man in a bus driver’s uniform drop off a pile of DVDs, and three teenage boys in baggy pants and baseball caps spend half an hour inside before bouncing out with an armload of movies. No one suspicious yet. I was getting hungry again. I had not brought my usual sandwiches due to my late rising, and much as I tried to avoid the extravagance of buying two meals, I would need something soon to prevent the headache’s return. I told Sukhi so and he stared into space.
