Mercedes is saying something, talking to somebody. Sadie can’t quite make out the words but she can hear the voices. Then a young man rises up to stand beside Mercedes. He puts his hand on her shoulder. There is a smile in his voice as he speaks to her. “Yes, she’s dead all right. Dead, dead, dead.” He laughs.
Sadie needs to get her eyes open. Her brain pulls at the muscles in her face, hauling and tugging so hard that she loses sight of the two of them. Nothing. No one.
She stops straining. They are there again, but only the back of them walking away. Mercedes Hann and Gerard. On they go, farther and farther, but still she can see them. They keep moving beyond, but never so far as to disappear altogether.
With one final wrench, she opens her eyes. Wide. She stares at the side of the bed. No one. Her heart bounces against her flesh so hard she is afraid it will break through. She takes several long breaths. Keeping her sights on the air beside her, she waits patiently for her heart to settle back into its place inside her chest.
She doesn’t blink for a long time.
Goddamn Old Hag. Goddamn Mercedes Hann.
PART TWO
1932-1955
10
If Mary Hann had listened to her doctor, Callum’s sister would not have been born.
“In here’s our new little girl,” his mother told him, patting her belly.
Ten-year-old Callum had always wanted a sister. “Will I be able to hold her?”
“Yes, my Callum.” She looked at him so seriously. “And can you promise me that you’ll always watch out for her, and help bring her up right and keep her safe?”
Callum nodded, proud of the faith she had in him. He made a promise to himself then, to always protect his sister and his mother.
“We needs a little girl around here, don’t matter what Doc Power says.”
He touched her stomach protectively. “Why don’t he want us to have a girl?”
“Oh, he says I shouldn’t have no more babies. But he don’t know everything.”
Martin Power never claimed to know everything, but as the sole practitioner in the area, he had no time to waste words. When Mary told him of her condition, he was blunt. “You have five healthy boys already, why do you want more youngsters?”
“Now, Dr. Power, it’s not up to—”
“You know your history,” he cut in, his voice raised. “How much you bled the last time. And those three other baby boys didn’t die from nothing. Their lungs don’t get enough oxygen once they come out of you, and I can’t help them.”
“We’ll be fine in God’s good hands, I’m sure.”
“It’s not a contest between me and God, Mary. You can’t be leaving it all to Him.” He studied her face. Just thirty-six, she had the washed-out eyes and pasty skin of a much older woman, and her dark hair had gone almost totally grey.
“Sure it’s the will of the Father, you knows that.” She rose to leave.
“Well, if a certain father had more willpower you wouldn’t be in this state.”
She paused at the door and added shyly, “This one will be a girl, wait and see.”
“Let’s hope so. Just tell Farley to get hold of me at the first sign of trouble.”
Unfortunately, when trouble came Farley was not available.
A winter storm battered the coast, the snow blowing and swirling so fast and furious you couldn’t see your own hand.
Your breath froze the second it passed your teeth. In light of such inclemency, Farley had settled in early at Patron’s Pub.
This establishment doubled as the town’s only restaurant, and the air was pungent with aromas of long-stewed lamb, onions and potatoes. Dr. Power, a bachelor whose balding head was as round as his belly, was also on the premises. He noticed Mary’s husband at a nearby table where they were arguing loudly about the Squires government and professing their indignation with the state of the fishery and their dependence on the dole. How they could spend money on liquor when their families were going hungry was a question the doctor often asked himself.
He approached the table. “Hello, Farley. How’s Mary?”
Farley twisted around and squinted up at him.
Dr. Power tried again. “How was Mary when you left?”
“Christ sake, Mary be fine. Go on from bothering me, talking nonsense.”
“I’m serious, Farley. You need to keep a close eye on her.”
“Jesus Christ!” Farley exhaled loudly, clenching his tobacco-stained teeth. “Mary got no need of you yet. Go torment someone else.” He turned his back on the doctor and lifted his glass to his lips. “Should mind his own fucking business.”
The belligerent words resounded among his suddenly silent friends, who kept their heads down or glanced away. Martin Power returned to his table.
As he sat down to his bowl of stew, Mick Hayes, a local fisherman, rushed in. “Thank God you’re here,” he shouted when he spied the doctor.
Everyone hushed.
“There’s been a awful accident, about ten miles out the road, but the storm got the bridge and nothing can get through from the Port St. Anne side.”
Martin Power sprang to his feet, his stew already congealing as the wind’s chill swept through the room. “What happened?”
“My Johnny passed it on his way home. A whole carload of people went over the bank and into the water. He come in to get help and then went straight back to see what he can do. If we don’t hurry, them people is going to freeze to death this night.”
The bar’s patrons instantly mobilized, organizing groups to head to the scene and others to gather supplies. Farley Hann sat quietly, his mug of ale in front of him. Several glasses had been abandoned nearby. He nodded and said a few words here and there, his face a mask of sympathy and concern as he drained every drop of beer left on the deserted table.
Farley had not always been such a selfish man. In his younger days, known for his humour and love of a good time, he was liked by all who drank with him. In fact, it was generally agreed upon that the plain, soft-spoken Mary Duffie from Green Harbour had made quite a catch when she’d captured the popular bachelor’s heart. But the elder Farley had little in common with his younger self. Some thought this was due to his addiction to the bottle, while others claimed his decline began years before when he was injured in the Nova Scotia mines up in Canada and sent on back to St. Jude.
When he finally staggered home that frigid February night, his daughter had already begun her struggle to enter his world.
Unfortunately, Dr. Power was still at the accident, leaving Mary in the care of her sister-in-law, Edna Duffie. Having recently given birth herself, Edna knew the delivery was not proceeding normally and had sent Mary’s boys to stay with her own family while she tended to their mother.
The instant Farley stumbled through the door, Edna was on him. “Something’s wrong. The baby’s coming and it’s too early.”
“What you barking at, woman?” He came to a stop just inside the kitchen. Half-dry clothes hung from a line over the blazing stove. The walls and ceiling were of rough pine planks, the floor bare boards, swept spotless nonetheless. And on the windows, lace curtains, faded and frayed, but perfectly clean.
“We needs help. You got to go get Dr. Power.”
Shoving past her, Farley staggered. He reached out to save himself but the only thing to stop him was the stove. As his blistering hand flew to his mouth, a groan started from the upper floor, gradually escalating until it filled the kitchen with a cry far more piercing than Farley’s.
Edna pushed him up the stairs. “Get up there and check on your wife.”
She bustled about the kitchen, whispering the rosary as she set water to boil for tea and to sterilize the rags and heavy-duty scissors she’d brought with her. She was about to start the Fourth Glorious Mystery when she heard a grunt, then a body tumbling. Running into the hall, she found Farley in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
“Heaven help us! Farley, are you all right?” Edna tapped hi
s face. His arm shot up and smacked at her, then he rolled over. She pushed him with her foot. He didn’t budge. “Frigging caudler,” she muttered, giving him a short kick.
She flung open the front door. The storm had stilled but the frozen air bit into her skin. “Help! Come to Farley Hann’s!” she shouted as loud as she could several times into the night. With the house so far from its neighbours, she had no way of knowing if she’d been heard, but soon, Mary’s stepsister, Nell, was at the door.
Around midnight, a baby’s wail could be heard throughout the house. Farley, awake at last and overcome with emotion, sobbed at his wife’s bedside. He swore on Mary’s life to take the pledge the next day. Mary whispered to Edna that she’d been given two gifts, her husband and her daughter. Without hesitation she named the child Mercedes, because God had finally had some mercy on her.
When Dr. Power arrived, he could only bow his head as the priest performed the final sacrament on the soul of Mary Hann.
Five years later, fifteen-year-old Callum was the nearest thing to a responsible adult in the Hann household. His older brothers had all left home, either to head out to sea or to the mines in Nova Scotia. As for his father, the pledge hadn’t worked.
Right from the start Callum had assumed responsibility for his sister. His Aunt Edna, pregnant again, had been happy to give the infant over to him and, after teaching him the basics, left him to it. Callum was grateful for the chance to fulfill his promise to his mother. When she died, he felt he’d already broken his promise to himself.
Mercedes was a good baby who grew into a happy toddler. What had started for Callum as a sense of duty quickly evolved into an intense protective love, more like that of a parent than a brother. His favourite time of day was when she awoke in the morning. Teeth chattering from the night chill still in the air, Mercedes would crawl onto his lap at the table. He would pull her blanket close around her so that only her face showed, her tiny nose red with the cold, her child’s breath sweet against his cheek. Callum felt as though his heart grew larger when she snuggled into him there.
While it was usually Callum who Mercedes turned to when she was hungry or hurt or wanted a bedtime story, she was close to her father as well. When Farley wasn’t drinking, he doted on his little girl, buying her treats, playing games like tiddly or peek-a-boo, bouncing her on his knee as they sang silly songs.
In fact, it was only in watching the two of them together that Callum caught a glimpse of the father he’d once known, even if it was a childlike version. He felt hope for Farley at those times, hope that his love for his daughter might keep him sober. But, inevitably, Farley would find a bottle, or a bottle would find him, at which point he was useless to anyone.
Fortunately, Callum still had his younger brother to help with Mercedes.
“It’s down to you and me now,” he said to Joe after their last brother, Frank, left for Nova Scotia. “Just us two to take care of little Mercie here.”
They were walking home from Sunday Mass, past the clapboard homes of their neighbours, the houses slapped here and there, some up, some down, some barely a hair from the next one.
The cold sea wind whipped through one home and into the next with hardly a pause. Only the Hann house stood alone, its weathered planks grey and ghostly, at the top of a hill at the edge of town.
By the time they reached their doorstep, the three of them were cold and damp from the drizzle of rain that had not let up for days on end. Callum’s stomach rumbled. Most of the parishioners would be going home to a hot meal of salt beef and cabbage or chicken and dumplings, or, for the less fortunate, a hash of fish and brewis. Had any of them known the plight of the Hann children, they would undoubtedly have shared their Sunday dinner. But like his mother before him, Callum was proud.
Mary Hann had never spoken of the meals they’d gone without; neither would he. Joe, on the other hand, would have told the whole congregation if Callum hadn’t been there to stop him.
His sister’s red-cheeked face peered up at him. “Is our Daddy gone too?”
Callum turned away from her childish wholesomeness. Farley hadn’t been seen since heading out two days earlier in search of a drink. “Might as well be,” he muttered.
Joe shot him a warning glance. “He’s just codding you, Mercie girl. Dad’s over at Sullivan’s having a beer, is all. He’ll be home any minute now, sure. Right, Cal?”
Callum tried to keep the anger out of his voice. “Any day at all now.”
“Don’t be minding him, he’s just in a bad mood,” Joe said, squatting in front of his sister with his palms up, an invitation to patty-cake.
The feisty five-year-old clearly had no intention of being bought off so easily. “I want Daddy and Frank,” cried Mercedes, eyes widening as her wailing escalated.
Sticking a smile on his mouth, Callum licked his thumb and rubbed a spot on his sister’s chin. “Let’s see what we got for dinner, eh, Mercie? I feels like cooking up some of them caplin. Maybe some boiled turnip to go with it. What do you say?” Picking her up, he carried her inside, tickling her wriggling body all the way.
Over his sister’s giggles he heard Joe mutter, “Same thing we been eating all week. Wish we had a bit of butter to go on them.” Callum didn’t bother to answer. Truth be told, his own stomach was starved for a lick of butter as well.
Callum and Joe worked hard to provide a good home for their sister. By the time the war ended, she had developed into a normal, healthy young girl. And although St. Jude changed little during those years, the same did not hold true for the rest of the world.
“Did you hear about all them jobs in New York?” Callum asked his brother one stormy November morning. “They’re putting up these huge tall buildings, skyscrapers they’re calling them, and from what I hear they needs men like crazy.”
Joe swallowed his last spoonful of porridge and washed it down with a gulp of hot milky tea. “New York’s supposed to be some kind of place, lots of jobs, people coming from all over the world.”
He spread a thick layer of bakeapple jam over a piece of toast.
“That’s what I read too.” Callum was standing at the window looking off toward the ocean. Now in his twenties, he’d become the family patriarch by default as his father had come to drink more and talk less, unless it was to the demons he found in the bottom of the bottle. At times, Farley seemed to lose himself in the past, yet he appeared no happier back there either. Occasionally he would ease off the drink, but more often than not he was as consumed by liquor as it was by him.
Callum looked at Joe. “Would you go there if you had the money?”
“What’s keeping me here?”
Their eyes were drawn to the window. Nothing could be seen but squalls of white. Winter had come early. Again.
Footsteps bounded down the stairs. Twelve-year-old Mercedes burst into the room. “Did you see the arithmetic book Miss McCarthy lent me, Joe? It’s that fat one with all the numbers on the front. Not that you’d ever look inside the frigging thing.” Her green eyes grinned at him, her pointy little nose twitching mischievously.
“Watch that mouth, you saucy brat,” Joe replied. Unlike Mercedes and Callum, Joe rarely opened a book.
“Joseph, my duck, you wouldn’t know a fraction if it bit you on the arse.”
“Mercedes!” Callum turned abruptly from the window.
“That’s enough.”
“Ah, Cal,” Joe jumped in, “sure me and Merce are only joking.” “I just think she should be a bit more careful what comes out of her.”
“So what? She’s the only bit of life in here most days, what with the old man either drunk or hungover and yourself so serious all the time. Leave it alone.”
In truth, Callum didn’t mind his sister’s exuberance. She seemed blissfully unaware of what a boring place St. Jude was, always running in or out, playing ball with her friends, scaling the cliffs or chasing seagulls along the shore.
“Never mind me,” she said. “Where’s my book? I’l
l be late if I don’t get going.”
Callum gestured towards the top of the wood stove. “Up there. Drying off.”
She stretched up to retrieve it. “Ugh! Smells like it was soaking in whiskey. What am I going to tell Miss McCarthy?”
“Now, Merce, there was an accident and something got spilled on it.”
“Right! And was his nibs in the room? Huh? I suppose he’s still sleeping it off.”
The innocent five-year-old who had cried for her father had long since abandoned any illusions about him. For the most part, Mercedes ignored Farley, but this time he’d gone too far. Nothing was more serious to Mercedes than school. Always at the top of her class, she had dreams of becoming a teacher herself someday. Callum planned to do everything he could to make that happen.
“You knows he can’t see that well anymore, Merce. Leave it and have some tea.”
“If he can’t see, what’s he doing buying a truck?”
“Don’t talk to me about that darn truck.” Callum’s voice was beyond exasperated. “To think of all the things we could have done with that money.”
Two months earlier, Farley’s only brother had died and left him over four hundred dollars. The next thing they knew, Farley was driving up the lane in Mona Burke’s truck, an old Chevy that hadn’t been used since her husband died. Callum had tried to make him return it but Farley wouldn’t hear of it. Knowing his father would soon drink the remaining money, Callum had taken what was left and set it aside to have plumbing and electricity put in the house. At least they’d get something useful out of it.
“I didn’t even know he could drive,” said Joe.
“Sure he can’t. Have you seen the dents he’s after putting in it?” Mercedes shoved her feet into her rubber boots and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Hand me that toast, will you, it’ll do till dinner. And keep him away from my books, okay, Callum?”
He nodded, understanding her frustration. Despite having to quit school to care for Mercedes and then find a job, he did all he could to educate himself. Mercedes gave him any books she got her hands on, which they would discuss when no one else was around. “I will, I promise. Here, put this on.”
Mercy of St Jude Page 14
