The hurt of it is still inside him. He had not told his father he was leaving. Could not bear seeing how his parting would add to the old man’s worries, seeing new lines corrode his vein-threaded cheeks. His father spoke so little these days, just raked his fingers through his whitened beard, looked at the sky, rubbed earth between his fingers and shook his head. But staying meant worries, too. With Toba and the new baby and no money to build another room. Jacob had now found a girl and would marry in the autumn. His father could move to the loft, but the boy would have to move to the barn. He’d told his brothers of his plans, and they promised to give his letter to their father after he was gone. He would be back, he vowed, and with some money in his pocket. He’d hire out as a hand for the season and return in fall, in time for harvest. Isaac squinted up into the cloudless, rainless blue and then spit on the ground. His brothers said there was nothing out there, shuffled their big feet in the dirt, but didn’t try to stop him. They knew a bad year was coming. They knew they might be hard pressed to feed all these mouths. And they understood the road-lust. They’d never gone farther than Estevan, and he could see his own restlessness mirrored in their eyes.
“Yeah, left a couple of days ago.” He shakes the man’s hand. The grate of callus against callus.
“Where’s home?”
“Not far from here.”
“Farmer?”
He says he was, and the man nods as though this explains everything. They are from Winnipeg themselves, they say, and warn him there is no work to be found in the cities.
“I’m gonna find work,” says the boy, and the man in the shadows laughs again.
“Ain’t we all,” he mutters.
“Never mind, Fred. He’s just out of sorts ‘cause we ain’t eaten much lately.”
“I got a loaf of bread in my pack.”
“We’d be obliged,” says Jim.
The man named Fred steps out of the shadows. He is bigger than he’d seemed and his face is covered with pockmarks. One arm of his jacket is pinned up and empty. He stands too close and makes David uncomfortable. He can smell the sweetish, unwashed scent of him.
“I’d say you’re no more than fourteen, boy,” he says. “Young and pretty.”
“Leave him alone, Fred. He’s just a kid.”
Jim puts his arm around David’s shoulder and says, “Let’s just take a look at what all you’ve got in there, son.” Then he takes hold of the pack. For a second they are both holding it, then Jim’s arm grows tighter around his shoulder and the man begins to turn him toward the open door. The train has picked up speed and the ground is a blur.
“Nothing in here can be that important, now, can it?” Jim says, and Fred moves to the boy’s other side.
He lets go. The two men kneel down and rummage in the knapsack.
“Well, looky here,” says Fred. “Mama put a right nice parcel together. Cheese and bread and clean shorts and all. Bet she even told you to keep your money in your boot, now, didn’t she?”
“That true, son?” says Jim.
Jim holds him down while Fred strips off his boots.
“My, my, my,” says Jim. “There’s five dollars here. We can’t let you walk around with that in your boot. You might get a blister.”
Fred laughs and bites into a hunk of cheese.
“You bastards,” David hisses.
“Ah, now he don’t like us anymore. And after you helped him up into the car and all. That’s gratitude for ya.”
“Guess you won’t want to stay, then,” says Jim.
The train comes to a bend and there is a long slope outside the door. As it slows down a little, they push him out. He lands on his shoulder and rolls. As he scrambles upright, tears streaming down his face, they throw out the half-empty pack and his boots.
He wants to go home then, but knows he will not. He knows this is the way the world is. He understands there will be many more moments like this one, when he will be aching for his brothers and for his own bed and the hay-sweet smell of the barn and the sound of the dog barking and the feel of his father’s hand on the back of his neck and the lull of his father saying a blessing over the bread.
It begins to drizzle.
He limps down the line and picks up his boots and pack. He wipes the tears away with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of blood on his cheek. And to think he’d laughed at Isaac, who had insisted he pin two one-dollar bills in his shorts.
4
May 1930
It was Sunday afternoon, and Rory Cameron, Margaret’s younger brother, sat on the porch with Douglas, while Irene and her mother made supper. Douglas sat on an old cane chair that he meant to repaint someday. Rory sat on the top step, his back resting against the support post. Rory had a wide forehead and thick hair that came to a widow’s peak in the middle. He was dark-haired and blue-eyed, like his sister, but where she was pale as watered milk, his skin was ruddy, with the early evidence of lines around his eyes.
It was a warm day, thick with the smells of melting snow and the winter’s debris that lay beneath.
“How are things going down at the factory?” said Douglas as he sipped his whisky.
“Not so good.”
“Oh?”
“There’s been some layoffs, and more to come.” He took a long drink of beer.
“What about your job? Are you all right?”
“We’ll see,” Rory said. It was hard to explain, but he’d be almost relieved to find a pink slip waiting for him in his pay envelope. There were no other jobs to be had these days, but Rory didn’t mind so much, if the truth be told. He hated the box factory. He hated the big building on King Street that looked more like a prison than a factory. He hated the enormous arm-eating machines, the noise, the poisoned fog of blue smoke that hung in the air, the acrid smell of the printers’ ink. He hated seeing the children working there, no more than twelve some of them, working on “need permits,” which meant the government recognized they had to support themselves. Rory’s job was to feed cardboard flats into the jaws of one of the cutting machines and then to withdraw his hands before the press came down and pulled them in along with the paper. So far he’d been lucky, but the noise was deafening, and after only six months on the machines he had a ringing in his ears day and night. He worked from eight a.m. to five-thirty p.m. Monday to Saturday and earned ten dollars a week.
“What are you two talking about?”
Margaret stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on a red-and-yellow tea towel.
“Nothing, Peg, just moaning about the job.” He didn’t want to say more to her about his troubles. He could see the signs of strain in her face, the circles under her eyes.
“There have been layoffs,” said Douglas.
“You’re not going to lose your job!”
“Mum, what is it?” Irene peeked out from behind her mother.
The look on her face was so much like her mother’s, thought Rory. His sister clutched the girl to her, in a gesture more dramatic than he thought necessary, and Irene stiffened, not pulling away but not clinging to her mother either.
“Now, Peg, it’s all right. I won’t lose my job.” Rory hated it when his sister got like this; there was something selfish about the level of worry, like she wanted everyone to stop their own worrying and console her.
“What would you do if you lost your job? You’d have to move in here. How would we cope?”
“I haven’t lost my job, for Christ’s sake!”
“But you could, anyone could!”
He thought this would be a perfect time for Douglas to do something, but Douglas never seemed to do anything. Rory stood up and went over to hug his sister. Irene scuttled out from the embrace like a mouse narrowly escaping a trap.
Margaret clung to him for a moment, then stepped back. The angry look on her face surprised him. Her moods changed so quickly these days. She’d always been prone to fits of temper, even when they were children. He used to find it sort of funny, even though he had a bit of
a hair-trigger himself. But he didn’t think it was so funny now. She went back inside the house and Irene followed her. Rory looked toward Douglas, but he was staring down into his glass.
As Irene left the house one morning a few weeks later, her mother’s commands rang in her ears.
“You come straight home from school, do you hear me?” Margaret stood in the kitchen doorway, a copy of Ladies’ Home Journal in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
“But Mummy …” Irene would have stamped her foot had she not known it would lead to a smack on the bottom.
“Don’t but Mummy me. You’re too cheeky by far these days, my girl. If I tell you to do something, you do it.”
“Yes, Mummy.” Irene slipped on her plaid jacket and did up the toggle buttons.
“I won’t have you out there with those ragamuffins. You are not to go to the lot. No baseball. Understand?”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“Good. Now get along, you’ll be late. And give me a kiss.”
Irene trudged to school on the verge of tears. Something was wrong and nobody would tell her anything. How could her father say to go along with it for just a little while? A little while? It had been months and months and forever. It was so unfair. Something was changing.
Irene knew she was changing, and this was a strange thing to know. As her mother became more and more nervous, as her father referred to it, Irene became very good at several things. She made a list of them as she walked along. She was good at being small. At being quiet. And it was as though she had another set of eyes and ears, attuned to things outside the range of normal seeing and hearing. Like cats who could see ghosts or dogs that could hear whistles too high-pitched for humans. She was getting very good at being able to detect, from even the smallest signals, what sort of mood her mother was in. Because she wasn’t always unhappy. She wasn’t always mean. Sometimes she laughed and laughed and wanted to dance to jazz music on the radio. But when she was nervous it was important to know as quickly as possible, so that Irene could adjust herself accordingly.
Irene also knew that she must not speak to her friends about what was the matter at home, because, as her father kept telling her, nothing whatsoever was the matter. He’d made that very clear. Should anyone ask, nothing was wrong.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with Mrs. MacNeil no way,” said Jimmy Thompson, who tried to sound tough. He wore the same grey flannel pants and navy blazer as the other boys, but his trousers had a torn knee and there was a smear of jam on his jacket. There were rumours about what Jimmy’s father did for a living. Some said he was a bootlegger, but most agreed he ran an illegal gambling operation. These things gave Jimmy Thompson a certain mystery and authority. “Nothing wrong in her body anyways. She’s just nuts. Me and Charlie saw her burying something out in the garden late one night. I swear it to God.”
“Don’t swear, Jimmy, it isn’t nice,” said Violet, who always wore something to match her name. Today it was ribbons tied at the end of her thick brown braids.
“I bet it was a body,” piped up Charlie, Jimmy’s younger brother. They had the same freckled faces and might have been gap-toothed twins except that Charlie was so much smaller.
“Wasn’t big enough,” said Jimmy as he picked his grimy fingernails with a pocketknife. “I’ll bet it was a box of money.”
“Coulda been a baby,” insisted Charlie, thrilled at the horror of it.
“What were you two doing out at night?” said Ebbie Watkins. “You live over on Prospect Street, you can’t see Irene’s yard from your house, and besides, your mother makes you go to bed at eight.”
“We can get out if we want to. My mother don’t have to know everything.”
“Oh, you’re just telling tales, Jimmy Thompson. You don’t know anything about Mrs. MacNeil.”
“I know that lady’s crazy. My ma says so.”
And nobody said much after that, because it was true that Irene’s mother was different. It used to be that she would send out pitchers of lemonade to them as they roller-skated up and down the street on a hot day, or call them in for chocolate after they’d come back, half frozen and blue, from skating on the rink set up every year in the Allen Gardens. Now she wouldn’t even let Irene out to play baseball. Their mothers told them not to talk about it, held their fingers to their lips and shook their heads, with a pitying sort of look on their faces.
Ebbie Watkins was Irene’s best friend. Ebbie was tall for eleven, with curly hair so blond it was almost white and lashes and eyebrows that might just as well not have been there at all. Her skin was pale and her eyes protruded slightly, so that Irene’s mother said she looked like a partly skinned rabbit. Irene didn’t think it was nice of her mother to say such things about Ebbie. Had Irene said them herself, her mother would have given her a swat and a lecture about kindness to others. What Ebbie lacked in pretty, however, she made up for in smart.
As Irene rounded the last corner in front of Winchester Public School, Ebbie ran up behind her and jumped the last step almost on Irene’s heels.
“Boo!” she yelled.
“Oh! You scared me half to death, Ebbie!”
“You looked like you were a thousand miles away.” Ebbie’s laugh was always a surprise. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Your mother not getting any better? I know maybe I shouldn’t ask. Everyone says I shouldn’t. Well, not everyone, it’s not like everyone’s talking or anything, but my mother says … Oh, you know what I mean. But we’re friends and all, so … Whatever is wrong with her, anyway?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her,” said Irene, but seeing Ebbie’s eyes widen skeptically, she added, “Not really. Daddy says her nerves are bad and she’s fragile. It’s a sign of good breeding, you know.” She paused and thought. “My mother’s got awfully good breeding.”
“Can you come over? My mother always asks why you don’t come over anymore. She thinks you don’t like me anymore, for heaven’s sake.” Ebbie pushed out her large lower lip in a mock sulk.
“You know that’s not true, Ebbie! You are absolutely, positively my best friend!”
“Good, so come. Why not this Friday? We can have a sleep-over.”
“I’ll ask. I don’t know, but I’ll ask. I’d like that so much.” Irene thought how her parents were always fighting now. She thought about her mother complaining the house was too small for the three of them. And so maybe, maybe, her mother would let her go. “She’ll say yes, I’m sure she will. I’m positively sure.”
Irene and Ebbie went the rest of the way to school together with their arms wrapped around each other, looking forward to that Friday, planning what they would eat and what radio programs they’d listen to.
5
Margaret passed the morning sitting in the living room. She could not rouse herself, although there were a million things to do. Beds to make. Laundry to fold. Dusting. Sweeping. Cooking. She kept saying, over and over, “Now, get up now. I will count to three and then I will get up. One, two, three.” And then, nothing.
She saw her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. Her eyes were wide and wild, her hair a mess, her knuckles in her mouth. She looked like crazy Mrs. Rochester, ready to set fire to the world, ready to be locked in the tower and replaced by Jane Eyre.
At last she walked toward this image. She leaned her elbows on the mantelpiece, pushing aside a purple porcelain dog whose hollowed-out stomach housed a wilting African violet. She put her hands on either side of her face and pulled back the skin. She stuck her tongue out and made a lizard face. Soon she would be old. All her chances at happiness seemed behind her. Before her the future loomed plain and comfortless.
If she could just find a point, a reason for her life. She had asked Reverend Fuller to see her after church yesterday. She thought surely he would be able to understand and offer her guidance. The Reverend was a huge heron of a man with a beaklike nose and thin lips. His hair was wiry and white, his skin laced with small r
ed veins. His bony shoulders stuck up under the black material of his jacket, and his sleeves were too short. When she had asked for a few moments of his time, he smiled gently and told her to wait on his porch, next door to the church. Margaret did not want to wait there, in full view of the street. But she did as she was told.
“Masie,” he called to his wife, “make Mrs. MacNeil comfortable, won’t you, my dear. I shall be with her directly.” Margaret refused the offer of tea and sat stiffly on the edge of the wicker chair. She told Irene to do the same.
“Stop fidgeting, Irene. Honestly!”
“But, Mummy, there’s a piece of stick. It pinches.” Irene was hot and miserable in her crinolines and hat and gloves.
“Shush. Be good. We won’t be long.” Margaret busied herself in her purse as a way of avoiding eye contact with other members of the congregation now on their way back home. The entire exercise of going to church was frightening. All those faces, all those well-meaning inquiries as to her health. She wouldn’t go except she fervently hoped that here she might find answers to the questions she didn’t even know how to form.
Before long the Reverend finished shaking hands and accepting compliments on his sermon. He approached her, his black Bible tucked under his arm.
“And now, Mrs. MacNeil, you have my full attention,” he said and led her to his office at the back of the house. She told Irene to wait outside.
His office was small. Just a desk, with a chair behind and one in front, where he indicated she should sit. Books lay everywhere and a cup half-full of cold scummy tea sat on his desk. Another cup rested on the floor, and yet another on a small table near the window. The Reverend Fuller perched on the side of the desk, facing her. He smelled of camphor.
There was so much of him, all height and limbs. The room seemed too intimate, like a closet in which they were hiding together.
“Now, what can I do for you, Mrs. MacNeil?”
“I need your help, Reverend. I’m not myself these days.” She twisted the strap of her brown leather purse. How to phrase it so he understood?
The Stubborn Season Page 3
