“What the hell are you doing here? You got some nerve showing up now after taking off and leaving me by myself with no one to talk to! Hello Mr. Eldridge. Did you have a nice trip? Don’t you dare talk to me Maggs! I am really pissed! That friggin’ teacher went and called Patrick and he’s probably on his way over here right now to cart me off to the cop shop on account of I went missing! I practically begged her not to but - no - she had to go and tell on me! So now I’ve got to get packing again! I don’t know where the fuck I’m going either and it’s all your fault! If you didn’t run off like that I’d still be in school most likely and doing just fine. I don’t know how you could be such a bitch, Maggs. I never did anything to you.”
“What are you talking about? Why haven’t you been in school? You didn’t need me to get you there, you know. There’s nothing keeping you from going on your own.”
“Shut up! I told you not to talk to me! I wasn’t in school because I took off. To Vancouver, not that it’s any of your friggin’ business. But I got a job there and made lots of money too. I was modeling, don’t you know. It was pretty good as long as I didn’t open my mouth. I don’t know what’s wrong with those upalongs. You’d swear they never heard anyone talk before the way they were all the time asking me to say stuff. Said I had a quaint accent. I’d like to show them friggin’ quaint. Made me feel like some sort of retard. And then that creep put the make on me and I had to hit him. They hardly let you eat anything. Especially meat. I never had bacon and eggs the whole time there. And I had to sleep about twenty hours a day so I wouldn’t have circles under my eyes. Like, who the hell cares? I tell you, that crowd wouldn’t know fun if it up and bit them. They’re friggin’ crazy so I came home. Now it looks like I have to take off again. I don’t want to, Maggs. I want to stay here and have things the way they were before.” And she’s crying just a little and her nose is running.
Maggie finds a tissue in her backpack and hands it over. “Maybe if we talk to Patrick. I’m sure we can figure out a way for you to stay out of trouble permanantly this time. I mean, you were working. That shows some initiative. You’re obviously good at something.”
“Geez, thanks Maggs. You’re making me feel a whole lot better.”
“I didn’t mean it to sound that way, Judy. It’s just that you’ve never done anything for money before that wasn’t against one law or another, have you.”
Mr. Eldridge has been listening quietly to the conversation. Smiling. “I can speak to Patrick if you like. Or your probation officer. Or both. It must have been difficult to have Margaret leave just when you had become good friends. That would be rough on anyone. Why don’t I see what I can do. I’m sure that with a little time and patience we can work this out.”
“Well okay,” says Judy. “Do you want to go and have a swing in the schoolyard Maggs? I think I miss that more than any-thing. Though you’re sounding kind of grand compared to what you used to. I suppose you’re too good for that sort of thing now, are you?”
“Not likely,” says Maggie and they’re off. Mr. Eldridge settles back with his paper to wait for whatever will be.
Sarah has become inquisitive. She wants to know who Peter’s father is. Wants the story of Ruth’s life from beginning to now. Ruth is none too pleased.
“I knew bloody well you wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. You can forget about it right now. I really don’t feel like airing my laundry in front of you, if you don’t mind.” Ruth might as well give up. It’s not that Sarah nags. She doesn’t have the mouth for it. Not enough lines and she can’t make it go all tiny and pinched the way a true nag does but damn it, she is persistent. Last week she showed up at work just as Ruth was taking a break. Wrapped her arm through Ruth’s and said, “Why don’t I take you to lunch and you can tell me all about Peter’s father.” And a couple of nights later she popped by with tickets to a jazz concert. “Let’s have a drink first and you can tell me all about Peter’s father.” Another time she invited Ruth to drive with her out to Pottle’s Cove. “We can watch for whales while you tell me all about Peter’s father.”
“You’re like a crackle with a bone,” says Ruth. “Do you ever give up?”
“Not often. It’s a gift.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
Joe Snake’s mom and dad never did do anything with the money he sent. His sister Lucy talked them into buying a second-hand barge of a car that one of the cousins had fixed and was selling cheap. It took the better part of the winter and half the spring to get her license. The cousin repaired the new dents and scratches free of charge when she was done. Lucy is not the best driver on the island but she’s as good as most. The folks try to talk her out of going to visit her brother. It’s a long trek and she can barely see over the steering wheel but she’s determined.
“It’ll be nice now that summer’s coming. Joseph must be lonely with Ginny Mustard in jail. Annie Paul can look after the garden. I need to get away from here for awhile. Just for a couple of months.”
Her mother says, “Over my dead body. A couple of months! No! And that’s final.” She’ll need help making fish soon and putting up berries later.
“Get with the program, Mom,” says Lucy. “Nobody eats salt fish anymore. It pickles your heart. And anyway, you’ve got enough food preserved around here to feed you for a hundred years. And I’ll be back in plenty of time to help you pick the damned berries. There’s barely leaves on them yet, for God’s sake.”
“Well that’s a fine way to talk to your mother.”
But she gives in, though if Lucy thinks she’s going all that way alone - forget it. Mom is not about to let the flighty girl out of her sight for too long and so they all pack up and head east, Dad in the backseat with his earplugs and a pillow. The women in the front arguing over radio stations.
“There’s an old woman in the backyard, Joanie. I don’t think she has anything on her feet. She must be freezing! Should I see if she’s all right?”
“It’s okay, Mom,” says Joanie. “That’s Eve and she seems to be impervious to cold. She doesn’t usually come around during the day. She used to live here. In this house. She tended the garden and can’t leave it alone for some reason. I’ll go and talk to her.”
Eve is concerned about the birds. “There’s really not much for them to eat yet. I used to put out suet and seeds but someone has taken down my feeders. Where are they?”
“John threw them away. He was going to get more but just for the hummingbirds. He’s gone, Eve. My parents came and forced him to leave this morning. I don’t know what I am going to do now. I don’t know if he’ll ever come back. All I wanted was to have him be nicer to me. Less impatient with the children. Just to bend a little and not be so controlling all of the time. I’m sure we can work this out if he makes a few changes. Now the children will grow up without a father and that doesn’t work for anyone.”
“I think,” says Eve, “that if he was ever going to make a few changes, he’d have done so by now. Your children were sad little people with him. I don’t think his going can make them any more unhappy. Better they have one parent who can laugh with them than two who don’t. You just have to find something to smile about and everything will be fine. Ducks are good for that. When there’s nothing else can do it, you should go down to the lake and watch the ducks. It’s only a few streets over. Will you have enough money to get by? It’s harder if you don’t but it can still be done, you know. As long as you find something to laugh about. And if you’re going to feel sorry for yourself you’d best do it when the youngsters aren’t looking. After they go to bed, maybe. Children are silly. They always think things are their fault. I expect Patrick knows how to build nice bird feeders. He’s handy. I should ask Ruth if she will mention it. The ones in the stores are too fussy. Birds don’t like fussy things.”
And she’s gone. Walking or fading - it’s hard to tell.
“Well. That was strange,” says Joanie to her parents when she goes back into the
house. “Eve said there’s a lake around here somewhere with ducks. Will you stay with the children while I take a walk?”
When she opens the door Harvey races in, followed closely by Joe Snake who does not want to cause any more trouble for Joanie and has been running a few steps behind the dog since he got away.
“Hello, Joe Snake. Go in and meet my parents. I’m looking for ducks. My husband is gone and I can have all the company I want now. Why don’t you show my father where he can buy some good wine - John still has the key to the liquor cabinet - and please stay for supper.”
Joanie is crying and Joe Snake is not too sure what she said but he goes into the house anyway. Introduces himself to David and Caroline. “Joanie wants me to help you find wine that will go with duck. I think. I could be wrong.”
Crazy Rachel has had about enough of prison. Torturing Ginny Mustard only takes up so much of her time and she’s in the devil’s playground. She instigated an all-out brawl with Becky Norris but got the worst of it, not being as good with her fists as she is with her tongue and now she’s in solitary confinement again. “For two cents, I’d slit my wrists,” she says to the room that seems a little smaller than last time she was locked down. She has bruises on her face and arms and one of her feet was stomped on several times in the ruckus so she’s hurting. But only physically. She has never felt pain of any other kind. She hasn’t cried since she left the womb. No one ever noticed that. If she was dry-eyed when she didn’t get her way, the screaming and yelling made up for it.
Prison officials decide that regular psychotherapy is in order to make sure this batch of criminals never comes back to haunt them when their time is up. The women will have two hours each a week and group sessions on Saturdays. The warden thinks this is a crock of shit and has no qualms about saying so but she makes up a schedule and pretends to be nice to young Alice Paine when she comes in. Alice is fresh out of school and, if you don’t count her friends and relations, Crazy Rachel is her very first client. She is shocked by the bruises and says so.
“This happens a lot around here,” says Crazy Rachel. “You can be minding your own business and next thing you know they’re all over you. The guards.” She whispers now, “If you put out they leave you alone. I just can’t do that. I was raised different than some of them, I guess, so I get the worst of it. You might think I’m just a common criminal but mine was a crime of passion. The man I love cheated on me and I lost my mind and tried to kill him. I’m all right now except for the beatings. The one I really feel sorry for is Ginny Mustard. She’s pregnant, you know, and not looking so good lately. I don’t think they hit her but they can be pretty mean in other ways. Telling her that they will take her baby. Things like that. She seems terrified all of the time, the poor woman. There’s no point in asking her about it. No point asking anyone about anything. They are all scared to death of the guards. They’ll never tell the truth. They’ll probably say I got the bruises from fighting or something. That wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”
Alice Paine is upset by Crazy Rachel’s disclosure but promises that she won’t mention it to anyone. “Because it will be worse for all of us if you do. Oh, if only the other women felt safe enough. They might say something too. But a few of them have parole hearings coming up you know, and they can’t take any chances. It’s okay with me if I never get out of here. My Howard won’t see me again and I don’t care if I live or die. That’s the truth. I don’t know how much more mistreatment I can bear, though. Sitting in solitary and nursing my wounds. They won’t give me anything for the pain. Promise not to say a word about this to anyone.”
“Eve wants bird feeders and you have to build them.”
“I don’t have a lot of time for that, right now,” says Patrick. “Things are busy at the station. What do you mean, Eve wants bird feeders. Eve is dead, Ruth.”
“No matter. She wants bird feeders. Seems that idiot who moved into Mrs. Miflin’s house threw hers out and the birds are hungry. Don’t ask me how I know that. I just do, okay? If you can’t make them maybe I can.”
“Have you ever built anything?”
“No, but how hard can it be? Whack a few pieces of wood together and voila. Bird feeder. I don’t think they’re all that picky. As long as there’s a few seeds or whatever. Up high where the cats can’t get at them. Instead of going to the movie tonight why don’t we go to your workshop and you can show me the ropes.”
In the morning she brings her creation to Joanie. Hears the news of John’s eviction and meets David and Caroline. They are pleased to know the woman who saved their daughter.
Caroline wraps her arms around Ruth. “You can’t possibly imagine how grateful we are for your intervention, Ruth. We had no idea where Joanie and the children were. We’ve searched high and low but John is very good at covering his tracks. We were worried sick.” She begins to cry and Ruth pulls away only to be hugged by David.
“The police were no help at all. Thank you for getting involved, Ruth. We were detemined never to give up but we have been so discouraged and have feared the worst for such a long time. Thank you. I wish there was something we could do to repay you.”
“It was nothing,” says Ruth, peeling him away. Almost embarrassed. “I might have done it for anyone. You can stop thanking me. Joanie, Eve wants that bird feeder put up in the birch tree at the back of the garden. You’ll need a ladder. Better you than me especially if you use that old one she had. I’ll build a couple more to go on the shed and in the prickly hedge. I forget what she called it. I don’t mind saying, that woman is a lot more demanding now that she’s dead. She never seemed to want much of anything before. I was going to paint a picture on the side of it but all I can draw is horses and that doesn’t make any sense. What do you think, though? My first piece of woodwork. I’m rather proud of it. Not bad, if I do say so.”
“Eve is dead?” says Joanie. “The old woman who comes around all the time?”
“You’ve seen her? I just get a sense of her now and then. She made me buy a plant once and now I’m building bird feeders. And she’s worried about Ginny Mustard. I’m going to see if I can locate Joe Snake when I leave to find out what’s going on. How does she look? I thought she’d start from the beginning again. You know, baby, teenager, adult. Maybe that’s not the way it works. Anyway, what odds. Just put up the bird feeder so she’ll get off my case.”
“You’re joking, Ruth. There’s no way that woman is a ghost.”
“I didn’t come here to argue. I’m delivering a bird feeder. That’s it. Believe what you want but, as old what’s-his-face said, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy blah blah blah.”
Caroline is fascinated with Ruth and her ramblings. Wants to meet Eve next time she comes around. Tells her husband they should plan to stay awhile.
Dr. Kamau has been travelling for six days. He might have been here ages ago but there are dozens of small towns along the way and he can’t resist a visit to each of them. There are even more places off the beaten track and so far he has clocked 2400 km on a 1500 km trip and not even halfway done. He has been sitting around with fisherfolk and truckdrivers. Farmers and steel-workers. Today he had lunch with a handful of nuns who grow lettuce for a living. Fifteen different kinds with no pesticides and they charge a small fortune for them at the market on Saturday morning. A few times he has forgotten where he’s going until someone asks and then he drives all night to make up for lost time. He’s not so much absent-minded as easily led astray. Not unlike that daughter he never knew he had.
There are tiny fish that come ashore each year. Called caplin. They are much like smelts but mostly in size. You can eat them fried fresh or dry them for later or use them for bait to catch bigger fish. In some places people dig them into their vegetable gardens as fertilizer and the smell is awful for a few days but worth it in the end. The caplin come to spawn. Millions of them. On the tide. Find out when it will be high and go to the ocean. If you look ou
t a little way you’ll see them, a dark cloud in the water. And then they are rolling on the beaches. Gleaming silver. A flood of silver in the sun setting. You can fill a bucket in a minute. They are especially delicious cooked in butter with the tiniest new potatoes - boiled - and some steamed turnip tops or dandelion greens.
Following the caplin are the codfish in a good year and whales. Cod is tasty too and the whales are better than a circus any day. Take cold beer and sandwiches and a friend and find a grassy spot on a hill overlooking the ocean. You won’t need binoculars, they are that close. If you are lucky enough to know people with a boat, go out with them. The whales might play with you. Might let you touch their tough wet skin.
Dr. Kamau happened upon a crowded beach just before sundown one evening and had to investigate. Someone handed him a colander and he helped fill a wheelbarrow with the wriggling silver. Minnie Osborne had never seen an African man before except on television and invited him home for tea and he ended up staying in the twins’ bedroom for the night and they were sent outside to sleep in the camper trailer which suited them fine. And the next day Minnie was drying the caplin and he had to watch the process. Then they all went out to the beach to pick mussels for the fundraiser at the church hall that night. He ended up staying for three days and had a marvelous time.
Ginny Mustard is very unhappy. She is thin as a rail except where the baby grows. She looks like a brown egg on stilts. If only someone would listen to Joe Snake as he pleads on her behalf. If only someone could help her out of this sad and dreary mess. If only. She has been listening to Ella pray all day every day for months and might get down on her own two knees if it seemed to be helping at all. But Ella is as pathetic as ever. Moaning and crying out to her Lord and Savior. Begging forgiveness. If she would shut up for a minute she might hear the answer. Or not. Even God must tire of repeating Himself.
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