by Myrna Dey
Normally Jane loves seeing the milky old eyes brighten when Louis speaks of his children, but tonight his words carry a harshness she has not heard before. Jane already knows of Maynard’s return from a year of gold prospecting up north. She hopes to meet the older son by timing her laundry delivery while he is there, always trying in vain not to allow Adam’s presence into this anticipation. Louis proceeds without looking back.
Butch has not ventured far from his hut. He hawks a wad of spittle into a bush next to his door. Jane does not see him reappear in the window light, nor does she hear the door scraping shut. Maybe he has gone to relieve himself in the trees, as Tommy does after a night at the pub. What else could he be doing at the back in the dark? Nothing there but two small butchering sheds. According to Louis, one contains hammers, knives, and axes for finishing off the slaughter and cutting up the carcass; the other is to hang the meat for curing. Both are without light.
Though she has an urge to make a break for it and catch up with Louis, Jane stays huddled behind the bush. She is afraid to reveal herself with a sound, in case Butch is closer than she thinks. The cold pinches her toes and, as usual, her nose has begun to drip. She fishes for a handkerchief in her cardigan, wishing it were gloves. A spell of silence encourages her to inch forward, peering for a better view of the door. It is still ajar. But there is no sign of Henry Hargraves. She thinks of Mama, hoping she has fallen asleep and will accept the explanation that the Salos did not have a lemon so she walked all the way to the store but it had just closed. She should not be away too long. From the sound of Louis’ voice, he has had his own warning, making her mission unnecessary. She backs up slowly, convinced now to retrace her steps home as quietly and quickly as she can.
Just then, the light is extinguished in the cabin and the door slams shut. Butch stomps down the path and turns in the direction of Louis Strong’s log cabin. The sudden transition back to darkness prevents her from being sure, but Jane believes she sees something in his hand.
She begins to tremble. Cold hands and feet forgotten, she feels her entire body shivering with fear. Longing to flee, she remains helplessly rooted to a square of moss behind an Oregon grape bush on the edge of the Hargraves property. Clouds have temporarily obscured the moon, and like the rest of the forest creatures, she must rely on her other senses for direction.
Butch’s steps come to a standstill not far away. An abrupt halt followed by what she hears as a heavy sidestep into twigs and leaves. In the distance more steps, approaching from the opposite direction. Plodding feet at a rhythmic pace.
The next sound Jane hears will remain with her for the rest of her life. A clipped thud, occupying no more than a split second of time, less audible than a single tap on a door. Was it a hammer, the blunt edge of a poleaxe? Whatever the weapon, the blow was excruciating in its simplicity and ordinariness. Perfectly executed, an exact target cushioned by wool, by hair, by scalp, as if it were the soft spot on baby Norman’s head. Not a grunt, a moan, or a scream. The vacuum of sound and light gives way to a putrid smell and a metallic taste in her mouth. A stew of the worst odours imaginable mingle in her nostrils: brackish water left standing in a vase, Butch’s breath and stale clothes from the time he got close to her on the path, rotten eggs, spoiled chicken, the privy before she puts lye in. All conspire to choke her into a sputtering cough, but she catches herself. One of the men — but only one — has begun breathing again. Heavy panting as he drags his kill toward her.
Jane’s mind hurtles through choices. She cannot turn back or the fickle moon, in full force on the path again, will give her away. She cannot stay crouched in the bush, so close to Butch’s cabin. Her only recourse is to creep quietly behind the windowless end wall of the cabin until Butch goes inside. She matches her movements to his puffing breaths and reaches the backyard just as he turns down the path, manoeuvring the dead weight behind him. Hiding behind the smaller curing shed, she waits until he is at the side door of his cabin. Instead of going in, he continues in her direction.
Jane’s terror is about to burst into something she cannot control. At the sight of the moonlit green shirt bobbing lifelessly past her just a few feet away, she swallows hard to stem dark bile oozing into her throat. She presses herself against the back wall, away from Butch pulling the corpse into the butchering shack like a deer carcass. Will he hack off a leg if it doesn’t fit?
To steady herself, Jane grabs at a protrusion she makes out in the darkness. A hasp on the door of the curing shed. Sharp and ragged, it slices into two of her fingers. She touches it with the other hand and a rough finish tells her it is rusty. She squats, doubling over. The delayed pain spreading through her fingers from the cut barely registers against growing nausea that threatens to empty her insides. “I must not faint,” she repeats, now past prayer and into an animal fight to survive.
At last, Butch slams the door of the other shed and thumps back into his cabin. Soon the lamp makes visible a wedge of the area just beyond her hiding spot. She resists an urge to look through the window. To see what a murderer looks like. Have Henry Hargraves’ features rearranged themselves like a werewolf in order to perform such an act? Would he have gone all the way to Louis’ cabin if Louis had not come back down the path? His repulsive face and manner had not prepared her for a possibility like this. Even more, she wants to slip into the butchering shed to touch the face of her old friend lying crumpled there. Perhaps there is still a pulse and she can revive him. And have her noisy efforts rewarded with a sledgehammer to both their skulls?
Jane knows Louis is beyond hope and that she must reach the main trail quickly before throwing up or passing out. Lifting her long skirt, she ducks under the window and, once behind the solid wall, makes haste to the main road. Instead of turning left to home and safety, she pauses. The same moonlight threatening her with exposure now illuminates something else. A faded red plaid bundle contrasted against a snow clump lures her eyes to the right. As if flung, it lies in a direct line from where she imagines the deadly blow to have taken place. She looks toward Butch’s cabin and, seeing the door shut, tiptoes toward the parcel, now recognizable. Is this what brought Louis out again from home so soon after leaving Butch’s cabin? Bringing clothes and sheets for her to wash in preparation for Maynard’s visit?
Jane chokes back the thought that she was his final destination on earth. In reaching for the package, her light-headedness distils into clarity. She must think fast, wrench her fears from the present to the future. If she ends up with Louis’ clothes instead of a lemon, she will have some explaining to do to her mother — and all the community. If she leaves it here, it will bear witness to the place Louis was felled. Butch would not have noticed the clue Louis left behind. Her hand wet with blood from the rusty hasp makes her decision. Gently she pushes the bundle under cover of a bush, beyond Butch’s detection but evidence for anyone looking. Her own blood will provide proof of a struggle.
A burst of adrenalin then spins her into a full run along the trail back home. Only at a safe distance does she stop to catch her breath. Dripping from her eyes, nose, and fingers, she lifts her skirt to wipe all three. She advances more slowly, willing away tears that could betray the story she must concoct before facing her mother.
Mary Owens is right: Jane lives too much in her head. Should she tell everything she knows, as Stella or Gertie Salo would, with words that spring straight from their eyes to their mouths without passing through their brains? She thinks too much of expectations and consequences. Her mother and Tommy would never understand how she had ended up at the site of a murder through not minding her own business. The questions would put them all on public display. Mama’s health would fail even more, Tommy’s position at the mine could be in danger, if she was thought to be helping the one person holding back a livelihood for so many.
But Louis? Where was her loyalty to him? If she was his only friend, should she not stand up for him, dead or alive?
No smoke from the chimney means Mama must ha
ve fallen asleep and let the coal stove die. Jane lifts the latch of the back door quietly and steps inside. She reaches for a rag to wrap around her bloody hand before unlacing her boots and hanging up her shawl. Using her bandaged hand for a final swipe over her tear-stained face, she moves toward the stove. Her mother is at the bedroom door, sleep in her eyes.
“Why is it so cold?”
“The fire got low.” Jane raises the coal bucket to the mouth of the stove, her back to her mother.
Mary Owens yawns. “What time is it anyway? Did you get lemons?”
“No.” She does not explain.
“You shouldn’t have been out in this darkness.” Her mother sets the cold kettle on the heating stove. “Maybe I’ll make a pot of tea to warm us up.” Back in the kitchen she turns up the wick of the oil lamp and sees Jane clearly for the first time. Her hands clamp over her heart. “O ’m Celi! What happened to you? You’ve bled all over yourself. Your face is so smeared you might have come from the mine.”
“A cougar,” Jane says weakly.
“A cougar attacked you? Didn’t I warn you?” Her mother’s alarm has prompted an agility Jane has not seen since Wales. Also a dialect. “Look you, there is terrible indeed.” She takes off the bloody rag and holds her daughter’s hands in the basin, running cool, clean water from the pail over them. Jane remembers how comforting this ritual was as a child, her mother scouring their hands at the sink after a day of playing outside.
Gomer has wakened, slouching into the kitchen with a blanket over his shoulders, nose caked with mucous, breathing thick and congested.
“Go you back to bed, Gomer,” his mother directs, helping Jane off with her cardigan sweater and skirt, leaving her in her petticoat and shimmy.
He whines for water and Mary Owens hands him a glass as she ushers him back to the bedroom.
Jane’s voice has become weaker. “A cougar didn’t attack me, but I thought I heard one in the bushes. I ran for shelter to a shed and cut my hand on a hasp.”
“Your hand is swelling,” her mother says, freshening the water in the basin. “Soak it while I get the iodine. There is careless you are, cariad.” Shaking her head, she applies the brown tincture to the cut, waiting for its sting to subside before wiping her daughter’s streaky face. Jane has not experienced such tenderness for a long time.
“It was rusty.”
“I thought as much. We must work fast to save you from blood poisoning. I fear it might have set in. Sit you still.”
Jane’s clean face, growing more and more pale, turns to her mother to say, “Thank you, Mama,” before she collapses on the kitchen floor.
“I’M SORRY TO WAKEN YOU, DEAR,” said Janetta, standing next to my bed.
“No, no,” I said, wiping drool from my face with a tissue still clenched in my hand. “I wasn’t asleep.” I tried to sit up and face forward, forgetting that the big white log of a leg had to be coaxed into position and, if possible, not at the expense of the shoulder. Uncle Lawrence stood in the doorway, cap in hand, as if waiting for permission to enter. I motioned them both to the two chairs in my private room.
“We’ve exchanged places since we last saw each other,” Janetta smiled, sitting down. “Except you’ve become a celebrity. We saw the incident on TV.”
“You must have given him quite a kick.” Lawrence nodded at my foot with his usual blast of laughter.
“Yeah.” I played along. “But he asked for it.”
Janetta held a tapestry tote bag, which she was now opening. “We had lunch with your dad and he thought you would be up for a visit. He’ll come later, so you won’t be too crowded.”
“Typical Dad. How are you feeling?”
“Better than ever, thanks. These are washed,” she said, pulling out a bag of plums. “And I thought you should have the letters, since it could be awhile before you’re back on the island.” She took out a Ziploc plastic bag containing a slim paper packet tied with a ribbon. “Special delivery from Jane Hughes.”
My wits were slowly returning after my nap, and I remembered the last letter. “Don’t you mean Jane Owens?”
“She’s Hughes in these. There are only five of them and I wish I had looked at them earlier. I would have preserved them in an acid-free album.”
“I’ll be careful.” I pulled the plastic grooves apart and slipped the slim bundle out of the ribbon. The stationery was more like ordinary bond paper than the creamy vellum she used for her other letters. I opened the first one, dated December 17, 1895.
Dear Sisters and Brother,
I want to thank Catherine for all her letters over the past year and beg forgiveness for my silence. There have been many changes, as you probably know by now. Mama says she has written to you. Blood poisoning last February almost killed me. I was confined to bed for a month.
On May 2 I married Roland Hughes and we are living in his home following the sudden death of his father in April. Next year we will be moving to the new mine site of Extension, which is being built on a rich seam of coal that was discovered not far from our property in Chase River. I am still close enough to Mama to help her with housework. I no longer take in laundry, because one customer died and the other left her husband and took her baby to live with her mother at Departure Bay.
On December 4 I had a baby boy. He was big for being early and I thought he was strong, but he died that same day. We named him Owen and buried him in the Chase River cemetery.
Thank you for the birthday wishes. I am now 17 and feel twice that age. Merry Christmas to you all. I will let you know my new address, when I have one.
Your loving sister, Jane
My eyes locked on the letter, I reminded myself I was ignoring visitors who had come all the way from the island to see me. Lawrence had already stood up and sauntered out of the room. Janetta, however, appeared fixed on my reaction.
“Are you sure this is the earliest?” I asked her, confused after reading the one Dad brought me yesterday.
“Yes, they’re in order.”
“This is much more formal than the last one we have. No kisses at the bottom, for one thing.” I retrieved mine, left in an envelope in the drawer of the swinging table. I handed it to my aunt. “Read this and see what you think.”
Janetta pulled her reading glasses up from their chain and read aloud:
January 4, 1895
Dear Sisters and Brother,
The Christmas season has come and gone and we are now into a new year. I hope it will bring blessings for us all.
I cooked a grouse and plum pudding for Mama, Gomer, Tommy, and his friend Roland Hughes, who doesn’t have a mother. Everyone was in good health and Mama and the two men sang carols while I put the meal on the table. Even Gomer joined in. To me there was still a sad feeling that you are so far away from us. I will never get used to that.
With the holiday over I start back to my laundry work tomorrow. As unhappy as I am at one house, I do it gladly in the hope that we will soon have the passage for you all. Cassie could come first until the others can travel together. I see joy in the face of my other customer who is expecting his son after a year of gold prospecting in the north. He needs hope to help him through his other problems. I wish I could do more for him.
Please write often. I miss you more than ever. Tommy sends $10.
xxxxxxxxx Your loving sister, Jane xxxxxxxxx
“Hmm,” said Janetta thoughtfully, rereading the earlier one. “Yes, this is more intimate than the ones I’ve given you. You’ll see for yourself. What I don’t understand is how Mother ended up with these letters. They were sent to Wales, after all. And we don’t have any of Jane’s sisters’ letters here. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? From the sound of these — they end in 1915 — Catherine never does make it over. Unless it’s in the last three years of Jane’s life.”
“Please don’t ruin the suspense. I didn’t think I would become as hooked on my great-grandmother as I have.” My mind was still stuck at Janetta’s first letter. Blood p
oisoning from what? Jane’s marriage to Roland Hughes so fast without any warning? Obviously she got pregnant right after she got well. And the fates of her customers? But most of all, the tragedy of Jane’s baby — would she not have said more about this heartbreak to her sisters? “Did you know about baby Owen? I don’t remember Sara mentioning him. As far as I knew, Janet and Llewyllyn were her only siblings.”
Janetta turned, a flash of annoyance giving way to resignation, as she noticed Lawrence pacing back and forth in the corridor, obviously a signal that she had been here long enough. “No, I didn’t know of that baby either. Mother must have, since she had these letters first, but I don’t remember her mentioning him.”
“Oh, to have Sara here again.”
Janetta stood up and smiled, resembling her mother so much in that instant I felt as if my wish had been granted. Maybe the heart attack had dissolved a few layers of reserve. “We’ll have to fill in the gaps ourselves.” She kissed my forehead and joined her husband standing in the doorway. “Don’t try chasing anybody now,” he called as they left, his laugh trailing through the corridor.
Squirming into a better position, I unfolded the next letter. Before I could read a word, a nurse came in carrying a pair of aluminum crutches.
“I’m going to take you for a short walk. We’ll see how you navigate on these.”
This should be interesting. I had limped as far as the bathroom, but that required only two or three hops. I was not looking forward to bracing the crutch with my shoulder, but I would do as I was told, as Dad said. Even slipping on the left sleeve of the hospital gown was more painful than I expected; that done, I stepped down on my cast and prepared for a stroll along the hall.
“Take it easy,” the nurse said, seeing my mouth clenched in more than determination.
The rests lasted twice as long as the steps, and I felt I should apologize. “The trouble is, it’s my right leg and my left shoulder. I have to give them equal chances to hurt.”
