The Stubborn Season

by Lauren B. Davis

  Sue-Anne giggled and smiled up at Harry, ignoring Irene completely.

  “Where are my manners, for heaven’s sake? Irene MacNeil, may I present Harry Madison, my thoroughly unredeemable cousin. Harry, this is Irene MacNeil, an old friend.”

  “So, why have I not had the pleasure before, old friend?”

  “Irene has to stay home with her mother, don’t you, dear?” said Sue-Anne.

  “My mother’s not well. Hasn’t been well for some time.” Now, why did she say that? Sue-Anne giggled again and Irene wanted to pinch her. “Dear,” indeed.

  “Sorry to hear that,” said Harry.

  “It’s nothing new.” Why couldn’t she stop talking?

  “That makes it worse, not better,” he said, which was true.

  “Come on,” said Sue-Anne, pulling at his arm. “I don’t want to waste my day standing here.”

  “Don’t suppose you can come with us, can you?” said Ebbie. “We’re going up to Riverdale Zoo.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Which was exactly the answer they all expected. “I’m going to be late. Nice to meet you. ‘Bye, Ebbie.”

  “Okay, then, ‘bye,” said Ebbie.

  “See you around,” said Harry.

  Sue-Anne of course said nothing, but tugged again at Harry’s sleeve.

  Irene trotted a few paces along the street and vowed she would absolutely not turn back and look at them. Five steps later she couldn’t help herself and glanced over her shoulder, but of course they were not looking back, they were just walking along, three friends going on a lovely outing.

  She hurried along the road to Sherbourne Street and opened the door just as the organist struck the first chord in the opening hymn. The door squealed loudly on its unoiled hinge and several people turned to stare at the latecomer. She edged into a pew at the back of the church, thankful it was empty. As the congregation began to sing “Come into His Presence,” she tried to clear her mind and put the unpleasant encounter behind her.

  Irene had begun going to church merely as a way to get out of the house for an hour or two. However, she had come to look forward to the hour of ritual and contemplation as an oasis of calm and solace. She didn’t know what she had in mind when she said the word God, but she couldn’t deny that she sometimes felt, as the hymn suggested, in the presence of something, and that was enough for her. Her prayers were not so much requests for divine favours as they were moments of openness, of stillness, of just being, and not of being needed. It was not her custom to ask for specific boons, but she decided it might not hurt to send up a wee prayer that her father’s resolve not fail him and that whatever powers-that-be there were, see that he stay sober once and for all. Maybe, she chuckled to herself, she should become Catholic. Didn’t they have St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes?

  When Irene returned home after church she found, somewhat to her surprise, that Douglas was as good as his word. She felt a stab of elation, but still, it wouldn’t do to become too optimistic. He had made lunch, and if she was annoyed to find he had used up both tomatoes in the salad and the cheese that was to last them until the end of the week, Irene held her tongue. At three o’clock he prepared a plate of jam-filled cookies and a pot of tea and brought it in to the two women in the living room, proud as a child who’d baked his first cake. He poured Margaret’s tea and added milk and two sugar cubes. He stirred the cup and as he held it out to his wife, she turned to him quickly, as if startled, pointed her finger, the nail with its dark crescent of dirt, and said, “I see you. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

  Silently, his mouth set in a rigid line, he put her cup down on top of the radio and went back to the kitchen, where he tried to concentrate first on a crossword puzzle and then on the comics and then came back to the living room and listened to the radio. He fussed and fidgeted through the afternoon, and Irene kept expecting him to suddenly jump up and disappear from the house.

  At five o’clock Margaret said she was tired and returned to her room and her nest of blankets.

  “Why don’t you go out again?” said her father when they heard Margaret’s bedsprings creak.

  “Where would I go?” She didn’t trust the invitation. She was afraid he would ferret out some last-chance mickey stashed in the potato bin, perhaps, or in the rag box.

  “I don’t know. Where do the other kids go? Go to the Gardens. Go to the beach.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” After years of keeping her in the cage he now opened the door and expected her to bound happily away into the wide, wide world.

  “Why ever not? I’m telling you. Go out.”

  “She’ll need me.”

  “I’ll take care of her, for Christ’s sake!”

  “You don’t know how, Dad.”

  “What do you mean by that? Of course I know how. She’s my wife, isn’t she? I can certainly take care of my own wife. I can certainly do that.”

  Irene glimpsed the push and pull he too must be feeling, trying to be a father and a caregiver when there was so little to recommend him. She saw his weakness and its intimacy embarrassed her.

  She should go. Should be able to go without a backward glance, just into the day, down a street, like normal people did.

  “Well, I don’t know.” It was so tempting, the possibility of a park bench, of an hour or two free of accusation, free of the clutch of duty.

  “Go on, Irene. Really, Pet. It’s okay.” Pet. He hadn’t called her that in a long time. Wouldn’t it be a gift to both of them, a gift of trust and maybe even conspiracy, the two of them together?

  “All right, I will, then,” she said, as though testing his sincerity.

  “Go on.” He smiled at her, and it was the smile of a man she hadn’t seen in a long time, half remembered from childhood. Yes, she would go. A girl going out for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. Simple as that.

  She took her coat and gloves and opened the door like a sleep walker. Such an uncomplicated motion, one foot in front of the other, down the porch, to the sidewalk, turn left, keep going with the spring-sprung breeze and the sound of sparrows busily going about sparrow business.

  She walked through the glass house in the Allen Gardens and admired the banana trees and the orchids. She smelled the honey and musk-rich scent of the lilacs. She found a wrought-iron seat near a small fountain and sat there with her eyes closed, just breathing, in and out, the scent of the garden and the enchantment of time, all her own, with no one in the world wanting anything of her.

  Margaret had been downstairs waiting for her when she came back from her walk, complaining that she was sick with pains in her stomach, her voice thick with accusation. Irene had persuaded her to eat some toast and sausage, and she finally went back to bed, letting Irene know all the while that she was not pleased to have been left alone with Douglas.

  Now Irene and her father sat side by side and listened to the CBC. They drank weak tea, and her father smoked one cigarette after another. He gulped his tea and tapped his nails on the rim. Irene tried not to glare at him. She grit her teeth so she wouldn’t snap “Quit it, just quit it!” She knew that any excuse would be enough to send him back to the bottle.

  The CBC announcer read another report about the three men in the Moose River mine. The danger of more rock slides forced rescuers to sift through the soil with their bare hands, so fearful were they of what a pick and shovel would cause. They worked by lamplight in shifts, vowing not to quit until the men were freed.

  “It’s a shame, a terrible, terrible shame,” said Douglas.

  “Must be horrible, down in a pit like that,” said Irene.

  “I’m sure they’ll get them out. They have to get them out.”

  “I don’t know what makes you think so. Bad things happen all the time. Even I know that.” Irene collected her teacup and the empty pot and took them to the chipped kitchen sink. She stood staring out the window but saw nothing except for her own night-distorted reflection staring back at her. She wondered, as she
often did, where Uncle Rory was. It had been almost a year since he’d last written and that was just a hurried postcard from Kenora saying he was on his way out west and would write more later. Irene wondered if maybe he’d found a girl, married and settled down somewhere far away where the sky never ended and it was miles between you and your neighbours. She fantasized about him from time to time, picturing him in a farmhouse with a pretty lady and a fat pink baby.

  On Monday, April 20, Alfred Scadding, one of the men trapped in the mine, shouted up the drill hole with bad news. Herman Magill had died. The water was rising. Scadding said it was only a matter of hours before he and Dr. Robertson would also die. The rescuers redoubled their efforts, acutely aware that haste might trigger another slide and caution might make them too late. In Toronto it seemed that half the city waited, holding their breath and tilting their heads toward their wireless sets. All over the city the talk centred around the plight of the men.

  A tightly corseted lady hobbled into the shop and asked Douglas for something to take the ache out of her knees.

  “Used to be I hired an Irish girl to come in once a week and do the heavy cleaning, but these days I’m down on my knees myself, and me with the rheumatism. Some mornings I can’t hardly straighten my legs out.”

  Douglas recommended some aspirin and an ointment to rub in to her inflamed joints.

  “Listening to those poor men trapped in the mine, are you?” she asked as she paid for her medicine.

  “Yes. Terrible thing.”

  “No hope for them, as I see it,” she said with finality. “They’re in their graves already.”

  “I pray you’re wrong,” Douglas said.

  “It’d take a miracle. They’re just hanging on,” she said as she left.

  Douglas felt as though he were just hanging on himself. He would gladly cut off his left leg for a small shot of rye. He began to polish the countertops, shine the taps, clean out the ice cream bins. He would keep busy and he wouldn’t drink. He’d get a new sign painted. Why, things were even picking up today. How many customers had he served? Seven, eight? More people so far today than he’d served over the past three days. It was as though word was getting round already that he was a changed man. He scooped up a spatter of dead insects from the windowsill and brushed them with distaste into a rubbish bin. He put his hands on his hips and looked around. How had he let the place get so run down?

  On Tuesday, Dr. Robertson called up from the mine in a weak voice and requested a fountain pen. He wished to draw up his last will and testament. Three hundred rescuers and draegermen worked in a frenzy of perilous activity, trying to bore through from an old shaft near the one in which the men were trapped.

  It was Douglas’s third day without a drink and he was feeling good, proud of himself, puffed up with self-congratulations. He had woken that morning without a churning, acid-rattled gut, and the ghastly feeling that a cheese grater had been used on his skin was receding. The shop was a model of cleanliness, every surface shining and bright. The shelves had been rearranged, the dust swept out. He had called Borden’s Dairy and waited for a fresh supply of ice cream. He left the door open all day, as though signalling passersby that this was now a good and pleasing establishment to enter, and it seemed to be working. The trickle was slow, to be sure, and people were not making expensive purchases, but even with only these few hours of upright industry behind him, he could see that things could be turned around.

  On Wednesday afternoon, it appeared the prayers of a million people were about to be answered. The exhausted Nova Scotian miners were nearing the trapped men, who by some fluke, some incredible gossamer thread of stamina, continued to breathe, one gasp after another, hour after hour.

  Although the men were not yet above ground, the atmosphere was so optimistic that the evening newspapers hollered “RESCUED” on their front pages.

  As Douglas closed the shop for the day his spirits soared along with everyone else’s. Things were going to be all right; people in the street smiled at each other, exchanged glad tidings and hurried home to sit next to their radios, intent on being right there when the men were brought out.

  At 10:44 p.m., Toronto time, Dr. Robertson was at last brought up to the surface, followed an hour later by Scadding. The Salvation Army, who had stood by the mouth of the mine with sandwiches and coffee throughout the long ordeal, and the bone-weary miners doffed their hats and sang “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” The men were pulled from the earth blind and weak as newborn moles, and the people of Toronto poured out into the streets laughing and crying. The bells at city hall pealed out a joyful noise. All across the city, spontaneous celebrations burst forth.

  Margaret clapped her hands and began to softly cry. Irene danced around the living room like a dervish, her hands outstretched and her head tilted back, and if Margaret was afraid her daughter would knock something over and break it, in the spirit of the moment she said nothing.

  1935

  They start in Vancouver. There are fourteen hundred of them. People stand in the dark and wave flashlights. They throw sandwiches up to waiting hands, and David leans out and catches one. They cling to the tops of the cars, bracing themselves as the trains swing around the bends. When they get to Coquitlam, the cops open the boxcar door for them.

  David looks at his friend. “You wanna go inside?”

  “We can’t all get in. You think you can make it, staying on top?”

  “Figure so. Won’t be easy.”

  “Good man.”

  In the town of Golden they get down off the trains. A woman has been sent a telegram they were coming and she and some other women have set out food on trestle tables. Stew for all of them. Fifteen hundred by then.

  “We believe in what you boys are doing,” a hard-looking woman says, handing him a bowl. “You get to Ottawa, you tell that Mr. Bennett he can’t treat you boys this way. You’re mothers’ sons, every one of you.”

  “I’m grateful, ma’am. Thank you.”

  The woman kisses his cheek and he blushes, making his friend laugh.

  They get back on the freights after they’ve filled their bellies, and for some of them it is the first full belly they’ve had in some time. David and his friend choose to ride on top again. They are going into the spiral tunnels. They are dark legend. Men have passed out because they couldn’t breathe. They have fallen off the trains.

  “You got that wet handkerchief like I told ya?” his friend says.

  “Right here.”

  “Well, tie it on, then.”

  They tie them over their faces. His friend slaps him on the shoulder, tips his hat down low and butts his forehead against the roof of the boxcar. David follows his friend’s example. His heart pounds time with the steel wheels. There are miles and miles of ink black ahead of them, and the tunnels are low. If you sit up, you’ll get decapitated on the rocks. They have to stay low, their faces in the throw-back from the engines. Cinder and smoke and ash and the shrieking, hammering noise.

  After about half an hour, David thinks he’ll go crazy with panic. He can’t breathe for the smoke. He clings to the boards and begins to pray. His mouth feels like it’s filling up with coal dust, and he can’t spit without lowering the rag. His eyes are glued shut, full of grit, burning like hell. He starts to cry, calling himself a fool for not taking the opportunity to ride inside when he had the chance. The train’s screeching and moaning so loud his screams can’t be heard and so he doesn’t try to hold them back anymore.

  He doesn’t know how long he’s been in the tunnels. Time doesn’t move in any normal way. It could have been three hours or two days. Could have been always and forever, in a long chain of torment behind and before him. He knows he is going to die and he wants so badly to live.

  Suddenly they come out into the thin clear air of the Rockies and he is blind with light. He raises his head and tries to get his eyes all the way open, but they are so full of black dust and tears that the world is a scatter of wet shat
tered brightness. It is a miracle. David looks over at his pal and starts to laugh. He looks like a vaudeville minstrel, with his face all black, except that his eyes are as red as burning coals. His friend laughs back at him, pointing and slapping him on the shoulder. They are silly with relief. Then he throws up. He is ashamed, until he sees he isn’t the only one.

  When they cross the border into Alberta, a small crowd of B.C. cops wave and cheer them on. It makes him feel like something, after so long of being nothing.

  “See that? Do ya see that?” says his friend. “We’re gonna make it! We’re gonna make something happen, I tell ya!”

  “Ottawa, here we come!” David yells, and he whoops and hollers and his heart is swollen with possibility.

  15

  The next day the festive air held. All across Toronto people smiled at strangers, repeating bits of news they’d heard about the Moose River rescue. Men slapped one another on the back and women brushed tears from their eyes. After all the years of bad news, wasn’t it wonderful to have something like this happen, to have your faith restored? Sometimes an awful tragedy brought out the best in the people, didn’t it? So sad about that Mr. Magill, though, wasn’t it? Such a shame they couldn’t all have been saved. Still, it was wonderful news. Wonderful news.

  Douglas left the door of his shop wide open, delighting in the sound of neighbours walking by, the sound of their chatter mingling with the music from the radio. He was surprised to find, in the clear thinking of sobriety, that he greatly enjoyed the company of others. He missed the friends he and Margaret had before she became ill. Perhaps that would change now.

  He decided the shop still needed a bit of elbow grease and turned his attention to re-sorting the stock in the back room. It was deplorable the way he’d let things slide. He’d have to reorder a number of medicines, get his stock up to date again. Then he saw it. A bottle of bootleg booze behind a stack of liniment tins. He’d so completely forgotten it that for a moment he couldn’t think where it had come from or how long he’d had it.