A Grave Too Small

by Sheila Jecks

CHAPTER 3

  Jim couldn’t figure out what was happening to me, his ‘usually’ capable, competent wife, who was always level headed and kept their little family on course. His eyes said, “Who’s this?”

  When Jim and I looked for a home, we didn’t have anything like this in mind. We knew we couldn’t afford anything right on the Fraser River; the mortgage on such a house would be way out of our range.

  So when the Real Estate agent mentioned she had a heritage house with some land right on the river in our price range we thought, fantastic, let’s look?

  She neglected to mention that the only way to the house was by boat or down a long flight of stairs built into the side of the ravine.

  She also neglected to mention, people didn’t stay in the house very long.

  We were told we could fix it up but not change the original structure. The problem was, the Real Estate Agent didn’t know who built the house in the first place and when and if there were any original plans or where they would be, but she did know how old the house was, maybe. She was told by the previous owners that it was built in the early 1900’s. No specific year, just early.

  In the years past some housing records were lost when the land records part of the old Municipal Hall accidently burned, no one came forward to straighten out the problems, but the house had been bought and sold several times so there was no question of it being legal to sell.

  It was designated a Heritage house in 1974, but who sponsored it was lost along with its history.

  It was sturdily constructed, and other than the back porch seemed to be in surprisingly good repair. Everyone called it ‘The Old Gunderson Place’. But no one could remember if ‘old Gunderson’ built it or just lived in it.

  Our little family moved into the house late in June, and I tried to plant some flowers but no one had worked the ground for a long, long time. I tried digging in several places around the yard but it was going to take more than a short thirtyish house wife with a $4.87 garden hoe to cultivate this ground.

  Finally, I started digging near the straggly old apple tree; although it hadn’t been pruned for an awfully long time it did give shade to the yard so we didn’t plan to have it removed. As I dug around I moved closer to the tree, there I found a patch of soft earth.

  I planted my flowers under the apple tree.

  Nothing grew.

  Monday morning finally came and I stood looking out the window at the slow moving river, it always calmed me. My eyes fell on the patch of barren ground under the apple tree where I tried to plant my flowers. “I’m going to have to put some fertilizer in there,” I said to myself and turned to find my husband and children looking at me strangely.

  “What?” I said, “can’t I look out the window?”

  “You’ve been standing there over an hour, you’re late for work, and the kids missed the school bus.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” said Katie my oldest, as she slammed into the bathroom.

  “Kids eat your breakfast and I’ll drop you off,” said their dad. “Don’t dawdle!”

  “We can’t hurry,” said seven year old Dustin tearfully, “We don’t have any food!”

  I snapped out of my funk, quickly got the cold cereal out and plopped some bowls and spoons on the table, grabbed the lunches Jim made the night before and put them by the door. Upstairs I threw on some clothes, aimed a dab of lipstick at my mouth and ran a comb through my hair.

  I don’t know why, I thought grimly, but I’m losing it.

  The kids were all sitting at the table taking their time trying to stretch the late start as long as possible. “You’ve got exactly three more minutes before I leave,” said Jim. “If you want to go to school with slippers on and your hair not combed, that’s fine by me.”

  They made school only a few minutes late, thanks to their dad.

  I didn’t make it on time to the Prime Insurance Corporation where I work, and had to tell a big fat fib to account for my tardiness. What a way to start a day!

  Things went from bad to worse. I began to have moments in my day that I couldn’t remember. Then it got to be whole chunks of time. I stayed home from work and moped around. I didn’t clean the house. I didn’t grocery shop. I just lay in bed and looked at the ceiling thinking about the bare patch of ground under the apple tree.

  Days turned into weeks…things didn’t get better. But I did go back to work.

  Soon it would be Thanksgiving.

  Jim talked to Helen and Una at church and found out about my fainting spell in the church parking lot in spring. He also found out I saw the local ghost again.

  “Sit down right there,” said my long suffering husband that Sunday after church. He was pointing to a kitchen chair, “I phoned your old school chum Isbell. You know the one that’s forever digging up dead bones and weird things. Maybe she’ll have an idea about this ghost you keep thinking you’re seeing.”

  “She’s an archaeologist, that’s why she digs up old bones,” I explained for the umpteenth time. “She may be a Doctor, but she’s not the kind that can help me. She digs up old skeletons, she doesn’t do ghosts. And I don’t need digging up!”

  “Maybe not, but I invited her over for dinner tomorrow night and she said she’d love to come, especially since she hasn’t seen our new, old house.”

  “I don’t know what to make for dinner,” I whined, “I’m sick.”

  “Never mind, we’ll order in, we’ll do Chinese from that place beside the church, I’ll run up the steps and pick it up when the delivery guy calls and says he’s there.”

  The next night Isbell came, her fiery red hair pulled up into a rather sloppy bun on top of her head; she usually sported a pencil or two sticking out of it but not tonight. Her ample body was ensconced in her long tweed skirt that came to just above her new short boots. Bad choice for boots, they looked divine with the skirt but no one told her about the steps down to the house.

  Or, how many of them there were.

  She stood at the top and looked down. Where had these nice people moved to? It looked like a trip down into the ‘world beyond’.

  Although Isbell was no longer an active Archaeologist her degrees from the University of Illinois in Education and an MA in Anthropology from the University of Iowa along with ‘hands on’ experience in Mexico equipped her for the position on the Advisory Board of the Colleagues of Archaeology, UBC.

  She was in the enviable position of being able to choose her own projects and what she picked was a small but interesting dig on the Fraser River.

  Standing at the top of the stairs she was getting ready to hoist her skirt, clutch her packages and take her life in her hands as she put a foot hesitantly on the first step.

  Thank goodness Jim was just coming up as the small green Chinese delivery van behind her stopped.

  After some quick hello’s, Jim paid the delivery man and turned to Isbell and said, “Sorry about the steps, they came with the house. I’ll help you carry your packages. Sara can’t wait to see you.”

  Isbell was not used to manoeuvring down long flights of stairs with or without stylish boots. She did not do steps well at the best of times; huffing and puffing; finally she got to the bottom step and made it into the house just in time to collapse on the living room couch.

  “What were you thinking when you bought this house? Was there nothing with more steps?” she said with mock exhaustion.

  “Next time, I’ll come by boat! I didn’t know you lived at the bottom of the world!” she said, as she gave out the gifts she brought for the excited kids.

  “What a coincidence you calling me right now,” Isbell said noticing the stress on everyone’s face. Although she hadn’t seen the family for a few months, she soon realized something was wrong and tried to ease the tension with trivial chatter.

  “I was just about to call you. I’m going to start a dig here in Delta where the old cannery was in Annieville. There’s supposed to be an Indian village around there and I intend
to find it.”

  Dinner was finally finished and I sent the kids to bed. I took our only bottle of fairly good red wine into the living room and poured a large glass of Yellow Tail Merlot for the three of us.

  “So,” said Isbell settling into the big chair, “tell me what I need to know?”

  I sat with my leg curled under me on the couch beside Jim and told her the story about the little girl with the white dress.

  “I don’t know what to think, Isbell,” I said. “But what I do know is what has been happening to me since I saw her, it’s starting to affect my family, and it has to stop.”

  “You’ve been reading too much Stephen King, my girl,” said her friend. “The reality is, dead is dead and always lies down!”

  “Dead walks around in graveyards looking at people,” I countered.

  “I know it sounds silly, but I’ve been trying to do some research at work on my lunch hour, but I’m not getting very far.”

  “Let me have a look at your notes, maybe I can see something you don’t.”

  Isbell took the notes when she left and promised to let me know if she found anything.

  The next Sunday, the family went to church. I carefully looked at the ground where I saw the little girl, were there any clues? What was wrong with me, how could there be anything left with the congregation coming and going in the parking lot?

  Maybe this was just a great big joke being played on the city folk.

  “What are you looking for mum,” asked Kaity. “We didn’t lose anything out here. What are you doing?”

  “Never mind, just get your brothers and go inside. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I didn’t want to scare the kids with thoughts of ghosts running through the church yard so I took a last look around and not seeing anything that shouldn’t have been there, went inside.

  Isbell called two weeks before Christmas. She left a message on my answering service at work--would I call her back; she had some interesting news for me.

  I couldn’t wait; I called right away and made arrangements for her to come to dinner that night. Nothing was going to interrupt what she had to say so I sent the kids to their Grandma Mona who lived in Cedar Hills for supper and a sleepover. She wasn’t really their grandma, but our families had been friends for so long, we considered them relatives.

  Well?” I said as I stood watching Isbell in sturdy hiking boots carefully make her way down the stairs, “We can’t wait to hear what you have to say; Jim has been on pins and needles ever since you called.”

  “Are you sure it’s Jim on the pins and needles?” said Isbell as we went into the house, “Let me take my jacket off and I’ll show you what I found.”

  She took her time arranging her coat on the back of the kitchen chair, getting her attaché case open and pulling a bundle of papers out and putting them on the table.

  “Quit stalling,” I almost shouted. I was consumed by curiosity and she was just teasing.

  “Well, the first thing I found was, there was nothing to find,” she said as she brought out a bottle of Shiraz from her roomy tote bag and got three glasses from the kitchen shelf.

  I couldn’t believe my ears, “What do you mean ‘nothing to find’. There’s somebody’s kid walking around out there in her night gown.”

  My voice was rising and I could feel the heat in my face as I stood up and began to pace the living room floor.

  “Don’t get hysterical on me,” said Isbell as she dug the bottle opener out of her bag and proceeded to open the wine and pour a liberal glass for each of us.

  She picked up the first paper, “there may not be cut and dried facts and figures but there certainly are plenty of clues as to who her parents could have been and where they came from.”

  “I called a friend of mine in the Coroner’s Office in Vancouver and he said they kept minimal records of normal deaths in those days, only the violent or extraordinary ones had any real notes attached. People who died from influenza and infection due to sickness were not considered unusual.”

  “He told me the people who came from Norway would have come by ship to the east coast. Early ships landed at the quarantine station at Grosse Ile. in the St. Lawrence Seaway, we can check the passenger lists ourselves. In the 1900’s they would have landed in Montreal and crossed Canada by train. But, in the very early days, they landed at Ellis Island in the U.S.A. and those records are still there. If what we’re looking for isn’t here we’ll have to get in touch with them and dig deeper.”

  I calmed myself and sat down.

  Isbell picked up the first sheets of paper and put them on the table. I saw it was a list of the people who had come by boat from Norway in 1888, 1889 and 1890.

  “Somewhere on these passenger lists are the families that came to BC, we just have to figure it out,” she said.

  “Wow,” I said scanning the pages, “there sure were a lot of people that came over during those years.”

  I saw on the bottom of the page that those from Norway had an ‘N’ by their arrival number. It wouldn’t be too hard to figure out where they came from and if we cross referenced the lists we could tell where they went to live.

  I took the lists and thanked her profusely and told her I would never have thought of looking for the people this way.

  “Hold on now,” she said as she pulled another pile of papers out, “you can also check the Census Bureau; it used to be in New Westminster. Today those files are kept in Victoria. I managed to get the figures for the one done in 1890. They did a census every ten years then. If they came before 1890 they would have been here for it. We know they were here by 1893 because that’s when the church registered its graveyard but we don’t know when the little girl was buried there but it couldn’t have been before that year. You’ll have to find the list of names of who was buried in the graveyard and compare the lists.”

  “That’s a lot of research,” said Isbell, “do you still want to do this?”

  I looked at the pile of papers on the table with trepidation, then over at my husband who nodded and told her he was looking forward to the challenge.

  Who was he kidding?

  We just moved into this house and here I was hip deep in a mystery that had nothing to do with me or our family.

  Later that evening after saying my goodbye’s to Isbell, I sat down beside Jim and resting my head on his shoulder, said, “What have I let myself in for? Look at all this paper work! I’m busy enough without adding this to it. Here we are, new in the neighbourhood and I’m going to start poking around and stir up old skeletons? No one will speak to us; we’ll have to move again,” I moaned. “The kids won’t find any friends, even the dog will want to move!”

  “Never mind,” Jim said, “I’ll help you. The kids will help you. But I don’t think the dog will help you.”

  I couldn’t help smiling at the lame attempt at comedy, not very funny, but at least it showed he hadn’t lost his sense of humour.

  Heaven knows we needed a little levity. I think I’m losing my mind.

  I went to bed that night with my head spinning.

  The next day was Saturday, and after the usual weekend cleaning and grocery shopping I sat down at the kitchen table and started to really look at all the lists. I divided them into two piles one for myself and one for Jim. If he thought he was going to get out of helping, he was sadly mistaken.

  He offered.

  I accepted.

  The first thing I had to do was pick out all the people on those passenger lists that had an ‘N’ before their arrival number. This was going to be easier than I thought.

  I was almost half way through checking the names with a yellow highlighter when I realized a lot of the names were duplicated. Knutson, Hendrickson, Peterson, Gunderson, Eriksson etc. these last names kept repeating. I knew then that I would have to see the lists of the early church members.

  Why is nothing easy for me?

  The following Sunday after the servi
ce I approached Les Peterson who was the Deacon that welcomed us the first Sunday we attended this little church. He was big, blond and husky. I knew it was from the summers he spent fishing off the coast of Prince Rupert with his Dad and grandfather when he was a teenager. I heard the story several times from his grandmother the last time I was at a ‘Woman’s Missionary’ meeting at the church.

  I told him what I needed.

  “Sure,” he said, grinning from ear to ear, “you can see the early membership books. I’ll get them for you.”

  I didn’t understand why he was smiling at me that way until I looked at the first page. It was in the Old Norwegian language and in such a faint spidery hand that I could hardly even make out the letters let alone the names.

  Standing in the nave my high hopes dashed, I scowled at the useless book in my hands.

  Helen, her arms full of the flowers that had been on the church altar came over, ‘you’ve got such a woe begotten look on your face,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

  Helen knew about the little ghost and me from the second time I saw her outside the church’s kitchen window. So when I showed her the book with the spidery hand writing and said, “This list will never tell me what I’m after. I can’t read it.”

  Helen just laughed. “Not to worry, Sara. I’ll be over around 3:00 this afternoon and bring someone who will tell you everything that’s in that book.”

  We went home.

  I made lunch and the kids went over to the park by the church to play. They were finally getting used to all the steps.

  When we first looked at this place I couldn’t believe there were no access roads and no garage, just these hundreds of steps. Well, of course it wasn’t hundreds of steps, but there were a lot. They descend the whole length of the ravine, from River Road down to the bottom where the little old house stood nestled in the bend of the river.

  Helen, true to her word appeared at my front door exactly at 3:00 p.m. with an old lady in tow.

  “Hi Helen, come on in,” I said as I opened the front door.

  “Hi Sara,” she said, “This is my Aunt Muriel, she lives in the Norwegian Old Folks Home on River Road next to the traffic light on 89th. She came here as a very young girl and is related to a lot of the people around here. She can read you the names of the people in that old membership book from church.”

  “Hello dear,” said Aunt Muriel looking around the kitchen with keen interest, “I’m not as old as all that you know, but I do know a lot of the original families that settled around here, and Helen’s right, she and I are related to a lot of them.”

  Aunt Muriel was Helen’s mother’s cousin. I knew that because she was pointed out to me at one of the church socials. I was told she was probably the oldest member of the congregation and was still just as sharp as ever. She knew everyone and who they were related to and where they came from in the old country.

  Everyone called her Aunt Muriel.

  She sat down at the kitchen table and I handed her the membership book. She started to page through, and looking up asked, “What exactly do you want to know?”

  When I told her what I was looking for the old lady stood up, turned to Helen and said, “Come on dear, we can’t help this young women. I’m sorry, but I have to go now.” And she walked outside and began to climb the stairs.

  I looked at Helen; she shrugged her shoulders and started after her Aunt. “I’ll see you later, Sara; I don’t understand either but I have to see that she gets back to the Home.”

  Jim, who had been watching the hockey game on TV in the living/family room came into the kitchen, “What happened here, I thought Helen’s Aunt was going to help you, but she left here like the devil was after her.”

  “I have no idea,” I said, “as soon as I told her I wanted to find out about the little girl in the graveyard she was out of here like a shot.”

  I just do not understand! What did I say that set her off that way?

  On Monday I went to work, and found some time on my lunch hour to call the Government Statistics Office in Victoria.

  They thought I was crazy!

  Statistics like that were very sketchy at best, and the names and numbers were all on paper not in the computer. Finding that kind of information would be very time consuming and expensive. I knew I shouldn’t have told the clerk the truth when she asked why I wanted the names. I was put on hold, and finally had to hang up as the other girls in the office started making rude comments about people hanging on the phone so long their ears were starting to look like cauliflowers.

  I started to laugh. Thank goodness for friends in the office with a sense of humor. I finally broke down and told them my ghostly story.

  “Wow,” said Tracy Trent, “I’ve never been in on a real live ghost hunt before.” She was just out of high school and still enthusiastic.

  “Tracy,” said Dorothy Lawson frowning, as the captain of their shaky little ship on the mighty seas of high finance she felt responsible, “You’re still not in on a live ghost hunt! Ghosts are dead people who can’t make up their minds. I’m not sure we want to be involved in this.”

  “Don’t be such a wuss,” said Tracy, “What can a little girl ghost do to you?”

  “Well, I don’t blame you Dorothy,” I said pushing my chair away from my desk, “I’m not too impressed with this whole business either.”

  How could I ask the girls in the office to help? But, bless their hearts, they all offered and said they would give it some time later in the day.

  How sweet!

  Now I had an office staff.

  I told the girls we needed to know if records were kept of the deaths in 1888, 1889 and 1890 and where were they buried. I knew I asked Jim to look some of this up, but he was so busy lately that I didn’t have the heart to remind him of his promise.

  Sic ‘im girls, I know you can do it! You don’t know how much I appreciate this!

  It took a week, and although I didn’t catch any more glimpses of the little girl, I learned a lot about the early settlers that came from Norway.

  Helen brought me a history that was written when the church had its 100th Anniversary in 1989. It held the reminiscences of some of the first families that came to the south side of the Fraser River.

  I knew I was going to find what I needed soon.

  I started to read the Anniversary Book and was fascinated to find many of the names that were listed in the census of 1890 were also found in the history.

  It talked about when the new comers got off the train in New Westminster after two weeks or more coming across the width of Canada and finding they were on the north side of the Fraser River. It spoke of the hardships of finding the only jobs available were fishing for salmon in the Strait of Georgia in a small wooden boat called a dory or leaving their families and logging in the heavily forested interior of the province.

  The mouth of the river looked like the fjords of Norway and it made the ache of homesickness worse.

  When they crossed the river to the south side and saw the huge trees that came right down to the edge of the water, they knew it would take a lot of time and work to clear the land for farming.

  In the meantime, since few houses were built they lived on barges that were called boat houses.

  From the descriptions given, they must have been floating sheds with just the bare essentials, but newcomers were glad to live in them till permanent houses could be built. Otherwise they lived in tents.

  One of the women quoted in the book said it rained a lot, I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been. To be wet all the time.

  Although they lived on the south shore, to buy food and attend church they rowed their fishing boats to the north side, to the towns of Ladner and New Westminster. The doctor and government agencies were also there, commerce flourished on the north side.

  I found a story about how they were able to cross the river when it froze over by horse and buggy. It wasn’t all work and no play, I found
a reference to a horse race on the frozen Fraser river, and who won.

  The men took whatever work was available, but most of them fished. It was a hard, cold way to earn a living. Fish went for two cents a pound, and anything less than twenty pounds was considered too small to keep.

  I found a reference but no name in the Anniversary Book of a small girl that died just before one early Christmas. Her parents buried her on the south side of the river and when the new church was built, moved her grave into the graveyard on the east side of the building.

  There I thought, there is the little girl, but why is she still walking around? I had to find out her name. Even checking the list that Statistics Canada finally sent me, I still couldn’t tell whose child she was.