by Terrie Todd
I looked forward to my trips to the Harrison farm despite the possibility of seeing Victor there. The oldest in his family of five children, he was nearly always working with his father on something. His sister Peggy was ten; Nancy, seven; Anna, six; and his brother, Bobby, was four. They had a dog named Bingo who greeted me with a friendly tail wag no matter how dreary the day. Just like everyone else, the Harrisons struggled to keep everybody clothed and fed, but for some reason Victor’s mother didn’t carry that weary, hopeless look all the other adults did. She always greeted me with a sunny smile and spoke kindly to everyone, even her own children. While none of them wore new clothes, they managed to stay clean, which was more than I could say for most of us in Bleak Landing.
Maybe it was because the Harrisons’ house was built better than most; I’m not sure. Maybe it had something to do with the plaque hanging on the wall above the table. It said: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15. Did a person’s house magically stay clean if they hung scripture on its walls? I doubted it. Maybe if they followed its principles, though. I didn’t know. But I knew that when I stood inside that kitchen where I was always offered a drink of water, I longed to make a little bed in the corner behind the stove and call that place home.
This was, of course, ridiculous. But having something to daydream about on my walk home with the eggs made it easier to ignore the dust kicking up around my feet and the hoppers whirring across my path. Nasty things. Sometimes they landed on my arms and legs and hung on as if they’d been glued there.
So I imagined myself trading places with Victor Harrison. He could go live with my father. He certainly stood tall enough now to hold his own with Pa. Besides, they kind of deserved each other. And I could be a big sister to Peggy, Nancy, and Anna. Oh, sure, we’d have to share a bedroom, but at least it would be an actual bedroom. I could call Mrs. Harrison “Ma,” and she’d teach me how to be a lady and how to do my little sisters’ hair and remind them to sit up straight. Little Billy could take the place of my brother, Tommy, who had died. Instead of spending Sunday mornings in my overalls hauling water in summer and stoking the fire in winter, I could put on a pretty dress and sit in church singing about amazing grace with my family, right there beside my ma and my sisters.
I supposed, though, that whatever that amazing grace was about, it wasn’t for the likes of me.
I had managed to finish Grade Six without getting into more trouble at school, mostly by avoiding the other students. Victor Harrison and Bruce Nilsen, however, served enough detention time to keep the floors and the outhouse clean as a whistle. If those two weren’t climbing on the schoolhouse roof, they were tying the ribbons of Francine Lundarson’s dress to the back of her chair or dipping Margaret Mikkelsen’s braids into an inkwell. At least they left me alone most of the time—except with their words, which I knew could never hurt me. Certainly not unimaginative, childish words like “carrots” or “leprechaun.” Bruce got my dander up whenever he tried to mimic an Irish brogue, though. For one thing, he was no good at it. For another, I did not speak that way! I knew my father did, and my father was the last person I wanted to sound like.
Pa had been leaving me alone lately. I didn’t know if he was just running out of energy or if I’d grown wiser about how to avoid his angry outbursts. Whatever the reason, he was more prone to simply leave the premises when he got mad. I figured my biggest troubles were behind me and I could look forward to better days.
Then one hot night I overheard a conversation that piled a whole new layer of dread on me. Pa was outside in his undershirt, sitting on the porch step trying to keep cool. I was tossing on my couch bed. I had left the windows open in hopes of a breeze, having long since given up on trying to keep the dust out of the house.
Just when I thought I might be close to dozing off, I heard someone talking to my father.
“Good evening, O’Sullivan.”
“Evenin’, Roper. What brings you ’round?”
“Wonderin’ when I can collect on my winnings. Thought tonight might be just as good a night as any.”
Pa hesitated. “You’re drunk, Roper. Go home and sleep it off.”
“Not so drunk I can’t remember your offer, even if you was too drunk to remember making it.”
I crept off the couch and over to the window to peer out. I couldn’t see the man talking to Pa, but I could hear him more clearly.
“That’s because I didn’t make you no offer. Now get on home before I sic my dog on you.” Pa was always threatening to sic his dog on people, and sometimes the threat worked. Not tonight.
“You ain’t got no dog, O’Sullivan. And if you ever did have a dog, you probably gambled it away in a card game. Just like you did your daughter.”
I saw Pa’s head jerk up. “I did no such thing.”
“Did, too. So sure your hand would win that last round, you promised me first chance at your girl. But I won fair and square, and now I’ve come to collect.”
“She’s a child, Roper.”
“Thirteen. You said so yourself. Old man Larssen started peddlin’ his girls around at twelve. I figure I’m doin’ you a favor by coming here and saving you the effort of bringing her to me. Now how about it? You gonna make good on your deal, or you gonna make me tell everybody you’re a fella who goes back on his word?”
I heard the familiar warning sound of Pa’s fist smacking against his palm. “I suggest you get off my property this minute, Roper. What kind of man do you take me for?”
“Oh, I think we’ve already established that, O’Sullivan. Just don’t bother askin’ to join any more card games around here once word gets out. And it will, I’ll see to that.”
Pa stood there, sturdy as a rock, fist in hand. For the first time in my life, I understood the glorious security of feeling protected. The man I feared had become my champion. Whatever Pa may have promised in one drunken moment, he was my hero in this one. I’d never felt more proud of him.
But just as quickly as it had arrived, my joy drained away with Pa’s next words.
“I’ll make good on my promise when my girl is ready.” He turned his face away from Mr. Roper’s. “Come back when she’s fifteen.”
Chapter 5
April 1936
Victor Harrison liked his school assignment, for a change. Each class was supposed to prepare a current-events report as a group project, using the newspapers Miss Johansen brought to school. Since he, Bridget, and Bruce Nilsen were the only Grade Seven students, the three of them had to work together. Bridget bossed them both around like she was some kind of drill sergeant. Victor found it funny, but he could tell it rankled Bruce.
“Crazy woodpecker thinks she’s so smart,” Bruce complained on their walk home from school. “Her pa don’t even own a radio.”
Victor knew that Bruce’s family had only acquired its first radio in the past year, but he didn’t mention it.
Bruce wanted to do the report on the Canadian athletes who would be competing at the 1936 Olympic Games, in Berlin. Bridget thought Canada should boycott the Olympics to protest the way the Nazis were treating people. She wanted to focus the presentation on propriety and justice, exposing the German leaders who, she said, “ought to be skinned alive.” In her opinion, Canada and the United States should be opening their arms to immigrants, providing a safe haven for folks who had to flee their homelands.
Bruce defended Germany. “Pa says the Nazis have the right idea: do away with the weaker races and you’ll have a better world. Why should we let them come here and drag our country down?”
Bruce was always saying stuff like that, and sometimes Victor wondered why he still hung around with the guy. But he couldn’t remember a time when he and Bruce were not pals. One of his earliest memories was going to the Nilsen house with his mother when Bruce’s baby sister was born. Both boys were just four at the time.
“Can I show him my sister, Mama?” Bruce had asked.
“Yes, but be quiet and don’t touch
her,” his mother said.
Bruce had led Victor to a back bedroom where a tiny baby lay sleeping in a basket. Victor already had a little sister, but he couldn’t remember her ever being this little. He watched, wide-eyed, as Bruce picked her up. Suddenly, the infant slipped from her brother’s arms and landed on the hardwood floor. She began bawling, and Bruce quickly grabbed her and lay her back in the basket. He skedaddled out of the room as quick as a bunny, with Victor on his heels.
In the years after the incident, rumors about the Nilsen girl abounded among the people of Bleak Landing. “She ain’t right” was the usual summary. Some said she was born that way; others suggested something had happened to her later. The only thing Victor knew for certain was that the girl was seldom seen, and when she was, she sat silently with a vacant stare in her eyes. One day she simply wasn’t around anymore. When Victor asked Bruce about it, he said that his sister was at a special school in Winnipeg and that Victor shouldn’t ask about it again. Victor never did. No other children were added to the Nilsen family, and the two boys seemed to have some unspoken agreement that they would both remain silent about the day Bruce had dropped the baby.
While Bruce and Bridget argued about the Olympics, Victor dug through the papers and found an amazing story about a jockey in California named Ralph Neves who was declared dead after a horse rolled over him. The very next day, though, he was out riding again and went on to get enough second-place wins that he took home five hundred dollars and a gold watch presented by Bing Crosby. Victor convinced Bruce and Bridget that they should present Neves’s story instead. Which was just as well, since the Olympic boycott plans eventually fizzled and the games went on in August as planned.
When it came time for them to give their presentation, Bridget played the role of a news reporter interviewing Ralph Neves, played by Bruce. She stood on a stool to emphasize Neves’s short stature, and threw herself into her portrayal as though her life depended on capturing the attention of millions of radio listeners. Victor had never seen her so animated nor heard her so articulate, and she commanded the attention of the entire room. After the class applauded, Miss Johansen gave a brief evaluation. “I think you two might have been born for the stage. Well done, Bridget and Bruce. And Victor, you make a very convincing racehorse.”
For a few brief moments, Bridget’s face was so radiant that Victor couldn’t stop looking at her. But by dismissal time, she’d returned to her serious self and couldn’t be bothered to give the time of day to either boy.
A week later, a completely different assignment seemed to reveal a completely different girl.
Victor chewed on his pencil and stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of him. He really hated Miss Johansen for this new assignment. Show me one real man who writes poetry, he thought. Although Edgar Allan Poe had probably been a pretty swell fellow. At least he knew how to scare the girls with stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart” and his poem “The Raven.” Maybe, Victor thought, he could write something like that. He gazed out the classroom window for inspiration. He’d seen a raven a time or two. Crows and magpies. Robins, sparrows, blue jays. Even seagulls had been known to dot the prairie landscape before things got so dry. Nothing poem-worthy, though. The birds he saw most were his mother’s laying hens.
“Victor Harrison, keep your eyes on your work, please,” Miss Johansen singsonged from the front of the room. “And for those of you who have chosen to write a limerick, remember the rules. Five lines long. Lines one, two, and five must rhyme. And lines three and four must rhyme. Don’t forget to keep your rhythm consistent.”
Victor leaned forward over his page and wrote “The Chicken” for a title. His eyes roamed again. Just ahead and to his right sat Bridget O’Sullivan, in that dilapidated brown dress she always wore. Her red hair hung loose today, but short bits near the front made him wonder if she’d taken a butcher knife to it. The choppy-looking pieces reminded him of Chester, the Rhode Island Red rooster that strutted around the Harrisons’ farmyard, his comb sticking straight toward heaven and his feathers always ruffled. Victor suppressed a chuckle and, with a wicked grin, started his poem.
Five minutes later, he scrawled his name across the bottom and raised the sheet of paper high in the air. “I’m all done, Miss Johansen. Can I be excused?”
Miss Johansen frowned over the top of her glasses. “May I be excused.”
“Sure you can!” Victor grinned. “Can I be, too?”
The class broke up laughing, and Victor looked around the room to bask in the appreciation. The only one not laughing—in fact, not even looking—was Bridget O’Sullivan. She still seemed intent on her poetry.
“All right, settle down!” Miss Johansen warned. “Victor, this wasn’t supposed to be a race. And no, you may not be excused. In fact, for disrupting the class—again—you’ll be staying after school to clean the chalkboards and brushes. Again. Now, are you pleased with your poem?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please stand and read it for the class.”
Clearing his throat, Victor rose from his seat and stood in the aisle. He held the paper up so the light from the windows fell squarely on his page. He read in a strong, clear voice:
There once was a naughty red chicken
Who deserved a really good lickin’
With her feathers a mess
And her ugly brown dress
She stunk up the place like the dickens.
The classroom erupted. Victor took his seat and was thumped on his back by Bruce, who sat behind him. Even the little kids thought the poem was funny, though they clearly had no idea who had served as the poet’s muse.
“How inspiring,” Miss Johansen said in a flat tone.
“Thanks,” he said, knowing full well she was being sarcastic. He wasn’t about to let her make him feel bad. He surveyed his captive audience again, enjoying the admiration and the knowing grins of his peers, the elbow pokes he saw exchanged, and the nods in Bridget’s direction. She appeared, as usual, to be the only one who wasn’t amused by his antics. She stayed focused on the page in front of her, her pencil scratching against it. Only one thing had changed: Bridget’s face was now the same shade of red as her hair.
Victor looked at the surface of his desk, feeling an immediate flood of regret. In an instant, he could hear his mother’s prayers, how she included Bridget O’Sullivan nearly every night along with the petitions she offered for her own children. How she asked God to make Victor a man of conviction and integrity, a man who would do good in the world and have compassion for those less fortunate. A man who’d be a leader of men and stand against injustice. He glanced again at Bridget’s sorrowful face and hung his head. He was anything but those things. He was just a boy who cared more about getting a laugh than he did about people.
In that moment, Victor loathed himself.
“Is anyone else ready to share their work?” the teacher asked.
One by one, students stood to read their poems. Some were well constructed; some sadly lacking. Most were funny, but none received a reaction anywhere close to what Victor’s had. After each, Miss Johansen called on the class to identify whether or not the poem was a limerick and to discuss its rhythm and rhyme.
The last to finish was Bridget O’Sullivan. “Are you ready to read your poem, Bridget?” the teacher asked. “It’s nearly dismissal time, but I’ll give you half a minute.”
Victor braced himself, expecting Bridget to seize the opportunity and pour out a limerick that would pay him back a thousand times over. It would almost be a relief. He could take his medicine, endure the ribbing of his classmates, and feel they were even. But the girl said nothing.
“Have you completed it, Bridget?” Miss Johansen asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well then?”
“I’d prefer not to read it, Miss Johansen.” Bridget rose from her desk and walked to the front of the room, where she handed her paper to the teacher.
Miss Johansen scanned the
page and stared at it for several long seconds. She swallowed so hard, Victor could see the bump in her throat move up and down. Finally, she sniffed and cleared her throat before speaking in a near whisper.
“This is lovely, Bridget. Well done.”
As he waited for the teacher to read Bridget’s words, Victor felt his curiosity rise. But to his disappointment, Miss Johansen merely added the paper to the stack already on her desk. In a louder voice, she said, “Class, you’re dismissed. Enjoy your weekend and please don’t forget your seed collections for Monday.”
The room cleared quickly, but Victor fiddled with his books and papers as an excuse to remain at his desk. As students passed him, some of the boys patted his shoulder or extolled his brilliance. Even the girls were all smiles, and Rebecca Olsen stopped to talk. “I loved your poem, Victor. Want to walk me home?”
“Can’t,” he muttered. “Gotta clean the boards.”
“I could help you,” she offered.
“No, thanks. I don’t think that would sit too well with Miss Johansen. You better go on home.”
Rebecca shrugged and kept moving. “Your loss.” Behind her came Bridget, her gaze focused on the door.
“Bridget.” Victor stopped her with a hand to her arm. “I’m sorry.”
When she looked him in the face, Victor thought he’d never seen so much anger and sadness wrapped up together in one pair of eyes. She looked down at his hand on her arm until he removed it. Then she looked him in the eye again.
