A Walk Through a Window

by kc dyer

  She looked at her watch again. “I’ve got to go.”

  He didn’t argue, just turned to walk away. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime before you leave,” he said, and a smile lit up his face as he slipped back into the trees. “I live in the blue house at the end of the street.”

  Darby nearly dropped her skateboard.

  “Wait,” she called out to him. “You mean the house with the gingerbread trim?”

  But he was gone.

  Two o’clock in the afternoon. The sun beat down on the back of Darby’s neck and she turned her ball cap around to offer some protection. Her back itched. So did her shoulders. Picking raspberries was itchy business. Nan had given her a litre basket to fill and it seemed to be taking forever.

  Some job. First she had Darby peel potatoes for an hour before lunch. While they were eating, Nan announced that Darby’s job for the afternoon was to pick raspberries. And babysit Gramps.

  This last part she didn’t mention until Gramps had left to find his garden tool kit.

  “Just keep an eye on him, Darby. I won’t be out for very long and I just don’t—”

  “Want him to end up in a tree again?”

  Nan looked at her coldly. “Young lady, your grandfather is a wonderful man. He has a few—er—eccentricities, but he has been a kind husband and father for many more years than you have walked this earth. Now, I’m sure everything will be just fine. I’ll be back shortly.”

  She pushed the berry basket into Darby’s hands and walked out the door with that red hair of hers practically bristling off her head.

  “How ye doing there, kiddo?”

  Gramps was back. He’d been rummaging around in Nan’s garden shed. Darby brushed away a raspberry leaf that was stuck to her hat. “All right, I guess.” She cast a wary eye at him. Seemed okay. No sign that he wanted to suddenly climb a tree, anyway.

  “Hot work, pickin’ berries.”

  Darby nodded and slapped at an insect buzzing near her ear.

  “Ye gotta watch out for them blackflies, kiddo. This time o’ year they pack a mean bite.”

  She nodded again and held up her arm to show him a dime-sized scab just below her elbow.

  “I think one got me last night,” she said. “It felt like a red-hot needle had jabbed into me.”

  Gramps reached across the raspberry cane brambles and grasped her wrist in one strong hand. Darby felt a bit startled by this, but almost immediately saw he was just holding up her arm so he could see the bite clearly.

  “Yep, looks like one took a fair chunk outta you.” He chuckled. “My dad used to tell me that God put blackflies on earth to improve my reflexes.” He slapped his other hand on his thigh and the sound echoed off the trees like a rifle shot. “Suckers haven’t bit me since I was ten.”

  Darby rubbed the sore spot on her arm and turned back to her basket. If she could get this job done before Nan returned she might have a chance to try to find Gabriel. She wanted to hear how he and his family were able to live in that broken-down old place.

  Gramps pulled his hat down low with a snort and shuffled off toward the house.

  Now where’s he going? Darby thought. We’re supposed to be doing this together.

  She dropped to her knees and kept picking. Gramps seemed fine today. It was stupid that she was forced to keep an eye on him. He seemed perfectly normal—even a little less cranky than at breakfast time when he caught her piling four spoonfuls of sugar onto her porridge.

  And what if he did decide to do something wacky? Just what was she supposed to do about that? Not much a thirteen-year-old can do to stop a man the size of Gramps from climbing a tree if he wants to badly enough.

  Darby checked her basket. Maybe fifteen decent berries. There were two main problems with berry picking. Half of the things seemed to have a little white worm or two curled up inside. Ugh. And the other half looked so juicy and red—and the day was so hot …

  At this rate only one berry out of every five she picked was making it into the basket.

  The screen door slammed and Gramps shuffled back across the lawn toward the garden. Good. No tree climbing yet.

  He had a pile of old newspapers under his arm. “Gotta love The Guardian,” he said. “At least this goddamn paper is good for something.”

  Earlier he’d been complaining bitterly about something he’d read in the paper. Nice to see his attitude had improved. He dropped half the papers on the ground in front of Darby and knelt down on the other half. “I’m going to let ye in on a little secret, kiddo,” he said, his voice muffled by leaves as he stuck his head under the brambles. “The trick to picking raspberries is that ye have to be open to seeing things from a different angle.”

  Darby slapped at a mosquito and dropped to her knees. She stuck her head under the brambles, carefully keeping her distance from the little suckers on the leaves that wanted to sting her face and hands. The temperature dropped in the cool shade under the branches, and when she looked up, Darby could see masses of berries just ready for picking.

  That Gramps. Full of surprises.

  She rolled over on her back to look up at the clumps of red berries, each hanging from a slender stalk and dangling in their hundreds just above her head.

  The leaves rustled and Gramps’s head poked into Darby’s little cave under the brambles. “Nan stakes ’em so they’ll grow like this,” he said with a grin. “Should speed up the job—long as you can keep a few of ’em outta yer mouth.”

  Darby picked like crazy for about five minutes and just like that her basket was full. She scrambled out from under the bushes to see her grandfather dusting off his knees. “Thanks, Gramps,” she said gratefully. “That took no time at all.”

  About then she noticed his own basket was empty. He stuffed it into her free hand.

  “Uh, well, kiddo, I’ve a powerful thirst that’s just come on,” he said, glancing up at the house. “And since Etta is not available to get me a lemonade, I think I’ll just pop down to the Legion for a quick sip.”

  Darby jumped to her feet and tried to think fast. This was exactly what Nan didn’t want. “Er—Nan said you were going to—ah—keep an eye on me while she was out,” she stammered.

  “Ach—you’re a big strong girl. Ye don’t need old Gramps always hanging over yer shoulder,” he said, already heading across the yard. “Besides, I’ll be back long before Etta makes it home from her bridge game. Now you just get those berries picked, Allie my girl, and I’ll bring home some vanilla ice cream to eat ’em with.”

  He closed the back gate and Darby stood staring after him with his basket still clutched in her hand, feeling foolish and trying to think if she even knew someone by the name of Allie.

  Luckily, Gramps had shown up at the house as promised, a few minutes before Nan walked in. He totally played it like he’d been home all afternoon, and Darby wasn’t about to say anything different. She knew the smell of beer on someone’s breath. Gramps had been gone for less than an hour and when he came back he didn’t even smell of cigarette smoke, let alone beer.

  Nan didn’t seem to suspect a thing. But Darby prided herself on having a long memory. She mentally banked Gramps’s little trip in the hope that it might buy her some freedom in the future. Sure enough, it paid off even sooner than she had hoped, though not in a way she would have ever expected.

  The next morning at breakfast, Nan bustled around the kitchen adding items to a long list she’d written on the back of a cash register receipt. Then she announced she was going to head up Granville Street to the big grocery store in the mall.

  “How are you planning to get all the way up there, Etta?” said Gramps.

  “Not me, Vern,” she said clearly. “We are going up by taxi. I have a long list and I’ll need your help to carry the bags. Things are different around here these days with a teenage mouth to feed. We can’t have our girl going hungry, now can we?”

  Darby cringed. The guilt. Not only was her presence costing them more, but she was
making more work for them, too.

  “Do you want me to come, too?” she offered, hoping Nan would say no.

  Nan looked like she was going to accept Darby’s offer, when Gramps shot her a peculiar look. It took Darby a minute to realize he was winking.

  “Let the kid have some time on her own, Etta. I’ll help you at the store—and I’ll even call up Ernie to see if he’ll give us a discount fare on the trip.”

  Ah. So this was where Dad’s cheap gene came from. Darby laughed a little to herself. Well, Gramps could be as cheap as he wanted as long as it gave her some time away from peeling potatoes or one of Nan’s million other little jobs.

  Nan’s sharp eyes locked onto Darby as Gramps walked out of the room, jingling the change in his pocket in a cheerful way.

  “Don’t think for a minute that I don’t know a payback when I see one, young lady,” she said, without the hint of a smile. “Now, while you were enjoying your beauty sleep, I’ve spent the morning washing, so before you get to riding that skateboard of yours, there are sheets waiting to be hung up out back.”

  Darby bobbed her head in the most obedient manner she could muster. “Yes, Nan. I’ll do them right now.”

  “See that you do.” She picked up her purse and followed Gramps through the front door. “Now, Vern, what’s this Helen tells me about your little visit to the Legion yesterday?”

  Wow. That Nan.

  Darby felt lucky she didn’t have to get past that kind of radar at home in Toronto. She’d never make it anywhere near the Eaton Centre with her skateboard, that’s for sure.

  As soon as the screen door slapped shut on the front porch, Darby raced into the little back room Nan called the scullery where she did the laundry. There was a big sink under the window and an old-fashioned washing machine with a huge basket of wet sheets on the top.

  No dryer.

  It took Darby about twenty minutes or so to hang up all the sheets on the clothesline behind the house. It was hot work, and she stopped for a minute in the middle to drink a huge glass of cold milk. When she headed back out to finish the job, she tripped over Maurice and almost dropped the last laundry basket. It could have been a disaster with all that red PEI dirt just waiting to get on Nan’s white sheets, but luck stayed with her. Two minutes after pinching the last clothes-pin, she was rolling up to the end of the street in search of Gabriel.

  On the way, Darby passed Red T-shirt kicking his soccer ball. Except that today, just to mess things up for her, he was wearing a green shirt. She waved at him anyway, ready to let bygones be bygones. But he was so focused on bouncing the ball off his knee, she ended up just cruising on by.

  Proves my point, she thought. Who’s being unfriendly now?

  In the end, she didn’t even have to look for Gabriel. She rolled up to the old blue house and flipped the skateboard into one hand. He was sitting right in front of the house, perched on the old rusty fence beside the gate.

  “That doesn’t look too comfortable,” Darby said, with a grin.

  He smiled. “I knew you’d come today. Everything is ready.”

  What kind of weird remark was that?

  “Ready? Ready for what?”

  He hopped off the fence and reached out a hand. “May I?”

  Darby realized he wanted to see her skateboard. The truth was she had never let anyone lay a hand on the board before that moment. Not even Sarah. Then she thought about Red T-shirt ignoring her. And she did know where this kid lived …

  “I guess so,” she said, reluctantly. “But no riding it. I’m still breaking it in.”

  He nodded absently and turned over the skateboard in his hands, examining it carefully. He spun one of the wheels with a finger.

  “Geez, you’d think you’d never seen a skateboard before,” Darby said. “It’s not a fancy one or anything. One day I’ll get one with dual trucks.”

  He looked up at her as if from far away and handed the board back.

  “I think it is beautiful,” he said. He turned and started up the path to the house. “Are you coming?”

  She shrugged and followed behind him slowly.

  He paused to wait. “I see you have taken to wearing a moustache,” he said, pointing at her upper lip.

  Darby’s cheeks reddened. She swiped a hand across her face. “It’s nothing,” she muttered, and repeated her earlier question. “What did you mean—all ready for me?”

  He just smiled. “Have you had a chance to look around the town at all?”

  Talk about avoiding the question. Darby marched through the long grass, following him around the side of the house. The little stone chapel and the crab apple trees behind it came into view. On this side of the house the paint was really peeling—hanging off in strips in places, with the grey, weathered boards showing clearly beneath.

  “Gabe, you actually live here? Because I think your folks could use a little help with the upkeep.”

  He stopped a few paces ahead of her and turned to look up at the old house.

  “I love this place,” he said softly. “It has been in my family a long time.”

  Darby looked at him sceptically. He sounded sincere, but—

  “Did you know my grandfather was born in this house?” she asked.

  “Was he?” Gabe didn’t look surprised.

  “So Nan says. I guess in those days babies weren’t always born in hospitals. But then something happened to his mother, and his father sold the house and moved away. I guess that’s when your family bought it?”

  He shifted his shoulders a little and bent to pick up something from the grass. The sun slipped behind a great grey cloud, rimming its edges with gold. The leaves on the giant oak tree at the very back of the property rustled and danced and the wind swirled the grass at Darby’s feet, flattening it in spirals.

  “You told me you thought this was just an old town filled with old people,” Gabe said.

  Darby stared up at the darkening cloud behind him. “Maybe it is,” she said nervously. “What difference does that make to you?”

  The wind whipped his hair around and the merriment drained out of his face.

  “Perhaps I will show you something,” he said.

  “Well, okay—but can you make it quick? I’m no judge of the weather around here, but that looks like a serious storm cloud to me.”

  He didn’t turn his head or even glance at the sky. Instead he held out his hand, palm up. Darby found it suddenly harder to see for some reason—maybe because the wind was whipping her hair into her eyes. She took a couple of steps closer. But it was only a rock in his hand. A plain, red, Island rock.

  Something about the way he held his hand seemed strange, but Darby didn’t take time to think about it. The wind had worked itself up to a roar.

  “Look, Gabriel, this is going to be one huge storm,” she said. “I need to get home. That’s a nice rock and all, but we’re just going to have to talk about it later. I’ve got to go.”

  Quick as thinking, his other hand shot out and grabbed her by the arm. “No time,” he shouted over the wind. Or maybe he said, “Too far.” Either way, she knew he was right. It was a couple of blocks to her grandparents’ house.

  As if to prove it, a sheet of rain swept down from the sky and she was soaked to the skin in an instant. Great. All the work hanging up Nan’s laundry was wasted.

  “Follow me.” Gabe’s voice somehow carried through the storm. There was a clap of thunder and something leapt straight out at Darby from the grass. She jumped, but it was only Maurice, her grandparents’ cat, hanging out here again. He must have been looking for shelter because he hopped past them onto the stone windowsill of the chapel.

  “This place doesn’t look very safe,” Darby yelled, looking at the half-collapsed roof and piles of rubble inside. Definitely more like a chicken-house than a chapel.

  “Perhaps you are correct,” Gabe replied. “But what choice have we? Please take my hand.”

  She grabbed on and they stepped up onto the windowsi
ll. There was a blinding flash and the sky split in pieces divided by streaks so brilliant they left blue lines imprinted across Darby’s vision. Unless they dashed across the entire expanse of back garden, the tiny stone building was their only hope for shelter from the storm. Darby didn’t want to make the run, so she hoped it would be enough. She closed her eyes instinctively and clutched Gabe’s hand as they stepped across the stone windowsill and inside.

  The dark was absolute—and wrong. It took Darby a minute or two to figure out the wall of noise from the storm had stopped the instant they stepped inside. Just like someone had slammed a door on it. Darkness dropped around her like a smothering black hood. She couldn’t feel Gabe’s hand. She couldn’t see any light.

  The panic Darby felt rising with the onset of the storm threatened to erupt. She had thought things were bad when the darkness was on the other side of the bedroom door, but that had been nothing. Reaching for Gabe, she spun in a circle.

  Nothing.

  Waving her arms wildly, she tripped and fell, her head rebounding off the floor. It seemed to Darby that the darkness had taken not only her vision, but also her voice—or maybe she was just too scared to scream. One minute she had been yelling at Gabe over the noise of the storm, and the next …

  Finally she just covered her eyes with her hands, wanting to make her own darkness and not have it pushed down on her against her will.

  For some reason, it seemed to work. When she got up the courage to uncover her eyes, thin daylight outlined the stone frame of the window. The rain had stopped, too. Instead, mist rose up from the ground in a ghostly shimmer that was almost scarier than the storm itself. It slipped along the rock window and rolled over the sill like foam frothing over a waterfall. The already dim light of the outbuilding took on a grey tone she didn’t like at all. And where was Gabriel, anyway?