Silver Rain

by Lois Peterson

  SILVER

  RAIN

  LOIS PETERSON

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2010 Lois Peterson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Peterson, Lois J., 1952—

  Silver rain / written by Lois Peterson.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-280-4

  I. Title.

  PS8631.E832S59 2010 jC813’.6 C2010-903575-5

  First published in the United States, 2010

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010929089

  Summary: Elsie’s father has disappeared and, as the Depression wears on, the family becomes desperate for money. But is a dance marathon any way to solve a family’s problems?

  10% of author royalties from this book helps support the South Fraser Women’s Services Society in Surrey, BC.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover Design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photo by Getty Images

  Typesetting by Jasmine Devonshire

  Author photo by E. Henry

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, STN. B PO Box 468

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA CUSTER, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  13 12 11 10 • 4 3 2 1

  For my dear friend, Elsie Ramberg, who “lent” me her name, although this is not her story.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  DANCE MARATHON CLOSED DOWN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  When Elsie slammed the mailbox shut, it shuddered on its post.

  She opened the lid again and peered inside one more time. But no matter how many times she looked, there was still no letter from Father.

  She stood under the drooping lilac tree with her hands shoved in her overall pockets, staring at the front door of the house a few feet away. Even though her family hadn’t lived in the house for more than a year, she still thought of it as her front door. With her yellow tulip in the stained-glass panel she’d helped Father install.

  And it was still her mailbox too. Even if she did have to share it with Jimmy Tipson’s family.

  Elsie kicked the wooden post, pulled her hat down tighter over her bangs and tipped her head back to watch the rain. It was thin and shimmery, like the silverfish that swam out of the cupboards in the garage that was now her home. Maybe the rain would help the crops grow again. Mother said if there was more wheat, there would be more jobs, and people could feed their families and stay in their own homes. It didn’t make much sense to Elsie, even though her grade-five teacher had explained about the Depression more than once. How long would it take for things to get back to normal? Whatever that was.

  She was about to turn away when a voice called, “Hey. You. Get away from here!” Jimmy stood on the porch, his fists on his hips. “You’re trespassing, you know.” Although he was in Elsie’s class, he’d never had anything to do with her until his parents bought her family’s house from the bank. Now he was always on the lookout, poking fun at her, blocking her way on the sidewalk.

  Elsie pulled off her hat and slapped it against her leg. “I can stand here if I want. It’s my mailbox too, you know.”

  “Who’s going to write you?” jeered Jimmy.

  “None of your business,” Elsie yelled.

  “Maybe I have your letter. Ever think of that?” As Jimmy opened his mouth to say more, the stone Elsie threw caught him on the lip. “Hey!”

  “Hey, yourself.” Elsie picked up another stone.

  This one landed at Jimmy’s feet. “Stop that,” he screeched, “or I’ll come down there and belt you one.”

  “Just try it.” She held a stone in the air. “Ready for this, then? You big bully.”

  “Okay. Okay.” He dabbed his lip with his fingers and looked at them. “I’m bleeding.”

  “You’re just a big baby.”

  Jimmy’s chin trembled as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “Want me to call your mother?” Elsie asked. “If you like, I can walk right up those steps. I’ll fetch your mother so she can kiss you better.”

  “Just leave me alone.” Jimmy stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Look in the mailbox all you want. See if I care.”

  “I will,” said Elsie. “See if I don’t.” She tossed another stone in the air and caught it. “I’ll keep checking this mailbox until I get the letter I’m waiting for. And nothing you can do will stop me.”

  She waited until Jimmy had gone back inside, slamming the door behind him, before she dropped the stone. Then Elsie pulled up the collar of her old brown corduroy jacket and, without looking back, ducked under the tree and ran through the rain to the shabby garage at the end of the yard.

  “There you are, then,” said her grandmother as Elsie ran indoors. Nan was pinning damp washing to the lines strung across the room. “I could have done with your help.” She snapped a tea towel straight and pegged it up.

  Sometimes Elsie thought her home looked like a spider’s web, with the wash lines zigzagging across it. A curtain separating the living room from the bedroom hung from another line. Yet another curtain created a place for Uncle Dannell’s cot—where Dog Bob sometimes slept too—and a separate nook for the big bed that Elsie shared with Nan and Mother.

  A striped blanket hung from a rod above the front door to keep out the drafts.

  Elsie slumped into the armchair that sat between the old kitchen table and a tile-topped cabinet. Father’s armchair. Two battered wooden chairs and a short bench pushed under the table took up so much of the room that there was hardly space for them all: Nan, Mother, Uncle Dannell, Elsie and Dog Bob.

  Father used to sit in this chair after he got home from the jewelry store each night. “Mrs. Cohen came for a brooch for her new jacket,” he might tell Elsie. Or, “Your Miss Beastly—oops—Miss Beeston? She wanted a match for a pearl earring she lost. Should have been home giving you an A for your English composition, I suggested.”

  But the shop was gone now. And Father too. Elsie shoved her fists into her eyes to stop the tears.

  “Ernest came looking for you,” said Nan as she pegged one last towel over Elsie’s h
ead. “Something important, he said. He plumb wears me out.” Her voice was muffled behind the laundry.

  Elsie jumped up. “I’ll go over.”

  “You’ll do no such thing, miss. I said he should come back after supper,” Nan told her.

  Elsie picked at a splinter on the table. Then she said, “Ernest is going to be a newspaperman. Did you know? He collects the news so he can write about it.”

  “He’ll go far, I don’t think.” Some of Nan’s strange expressions made sense, some didn’t. Elsie smiled as she took the laundry basket her grandmother handed her. “What are you laughing about?” Nan asked. “Go hang this back on the wall next to Dannell’s bed.”

  “Where’s Mother?” asked Elsie when she came back.

  “Mrs. Tipson gave Peg an afternoon’s work,” said Nan. “Now, take that hat off in the house. How many times.”

  Elsie hoped Mother hadn’t seen her throwing stones at Jimmy. She yanked off her brown felt hat, folded it twice and shoved it into her overalls pocket. Just like she’d seen men do before they entered their own houses. Or if they stopped to have a word with their wives’ friends in the street. Or when they reached the head of the soup-kitchen lineup.

  While Nan dozed in Father’s chair, Elsie peeled the spuds onto a sheet of newspaper. The pile of muddy skins had risen into a pyramid when she heard Ernest’s signal. Three knocks. Never two or four. Always three.

  That was something she could always rely on.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ernest barged through the door without waiting for an invitation. He swept the door curtain aside. “You should hear this.” His cheeks were flushed, his beady eyes shining. He leaned against the table, panting hard. “I heard. All about it. This afternoon. So I went. To investigate.”

  “Nan said to come back after supper.” Elsie dropped another potato into the pot of water. “Did you eat already? What did you have?” Meals at Ernest’s house were feasts compared to hers. The parents of his family’s boarders often gave Mrs. Styles boxes of vegetables and fruit from their farms. Sometimes even meat.

  “I couldn’t wait, could I? I didn’t want to get scooped. That’s newspaper talk for having your idea pinched.”

  As she peeled the last potato in one long gray loop of skin, Ernest nudged her arm. The knife slipped, nicking her finger. “Watch out!” Elsie sucked at the bright bead of blood that welled up. She glared at him. “I’ve got chores, you know. Don’t you?”

  “Loads of them. I am the man of the house. But I got Gladdy to do them. This is real headline stuff.” He tapped his notebook.

  Gladdy was one of Ernest’s four sisters; he called them the Noises. They and the boarders nagged and petted him so much that he often came to Elsie’s to escape.

  Ernest’s father hadn’t run off like hers. He’d just died.

  “So what’s this news, then?” She wrapped the newspaper around the potato peelings and shoved the bundle into the bucket under the table.

  “Two nights ago, Branscombe’s warehouse disappeared. Just like that! You know, the big one down by Main Street?” Elsie could almost count Ernest’s freckles, he was standing so close.

  “It was there one day,” he said, “and gone the next.” He looked at her as proudly as if he’d made the building disappear himself. “What do you think of that, then?”

  “Warehouses don’t disappear,” Elsie said. “Maybe there was a fire. Or a sinkhole. I read about them. I bet the ground just opened up and swallowed it.”

  Ernest bounced up and down, his hair flapping and his freckles blurring. “No. No. That’s not it.” He’d have shaken his clothes loose if they hadn’t already been untucked.

  “Don’t wake Nan!”

  Ernest leaned toward Elsie and whispered, “I spoke with the authorities. The hoboes came. And they took it away.” He nodded once and tucked his book in his pocket.

  “Reverend Hampton’s hoboes?” asked Elsie.

  “Maybe not his hoboes, exactly,” said Ernest. “But some bums. They stole that warehouse clean away in the dead of night. And you know the best part?” Now he sounded more like a little boy with candy than a newspaperman with an important story. “They took it apart, board by board, under cover of darkness. And you’ll never guess what they used it for? Go on. Go on.”

  “Give me a chance.” Elsie peered at Nan, whose head was tipped against the scratchy wing of Father’s chair. A shiny drop of spit hung from the corner of her mouth. “A boat to sail on the Pacific Ocean?” suggested Elsie. “A stage for tap dancing?”

  “You’re not trying. Guess again!”

  Elsie yanked her hat out of her pocket and jammed it on her head. “Okay. I give up.”

  “They used it to build a new shantytown. Halfway across town,” said Ernest. “Overnight. Just like that! That’s what I heard. Let’s go and see if it’s true. We should go now, before the story goes cold.”

  Before Elsie could ask how a story could go cold, a voice came from behind them. “You’re not going anywhere, Little Bit. Not until we’ve had our supper. And guess what I brought home for us all?” Elsie’s uncle stood at the doorway, holding a bulging paper bag.

  Ernest had been making such a racket, they had not heard Uncle Dannell and Dog Bob come in. “Don’t call me Little Bit. I told you,” Elsie said as a wet nose nudged her hand.

  The scruffy black and white mongrel gave her a lick with his long tongue. Then he did the same to Ernest. “Gedoff!” he said. He shoved his hand in his pocket.

  Dog Bob slumped down under the table with a sigh. He used to belong to Uncle Dannell’s friend Bob, who had jumped a train to Calgary to look for work and hadn’t come back. Dog Bob hardly seemed to miss his namesake.

  Short and wide, Uncle Dannell had a huge smile just like Father’s. A thin mustache crawled above his top lip like a dark worm. Father had a mustache too, although his was shaggier.

  But Elsie was not going to think about that now.

  “I expect your mother will be wanting you home,” Uncle Dannell told Ernest. “It getting dark and all. How about you meet us at the end of the block. Tomorrow first thing. We’ll all go see this hot story that’s going to get your name in the Vancouver Sun.”

  “But Dannell…,” said Elsie.

  “Uncle Dannell to you, Little Bit,” he said. “No ands, ifs or buts. Tomorrow is another day, and I have a supper here the likes of which you’ve not seen since a month last Wednesday. With leftovers for Dog Bob, if he’s lucky.” He held out a hand to shake Ernest’s. “Good night. With your nose for news, we should call you Scoop. Now that Elsie no longer likes her nickname, we’ll give you one.”

  “Scoop. I like the sound of that,” Ernest said. He shook Uncle Dannell’s hand. Then he licked the tip of his stubby pencil and scribbled in his book. “What time? I’ll make a note of it.” He looked up. “We should find a new nickname for Elsie too.”

  “Sidekick. Scoop and Sidekick. How’d you like the sound of that?” Uncle Dannell wiggled his eyebrows at them both.

  “I ain’t no one’s sidekick,” said Elsie.

  “It’s ‘am not’, not ‘ain’t,’” said her uncle. “Don’t let your mother hear you talk like that.” He opened the door and stepped aside for Ernest-who-was-now-Scoop to leave. “How’s seven forty-five sound? Be off with you, now.”

  When Ernest-Scoop had gone, Uncle Dannell turned sharply, like a soldier on parade. He bent down to hold his bag close to Nan’s ear, crackling the brown paper to wake her up. “Mother Nan. How’s about a little supper, then?”

  Nan rolled her head and opened her eyes. “Hmph. A pay packet would be nice. But whatever this is may have to do. Otherwise it’s potatoes and greens again.” She groaned as she stood up. “Phh. These old bones. Elsie, you done those spuds yet?” Nan frowned at the bag Uncle Dannell had dumped in the middle of the table. “You look, Elsie,” said her grandmother. “I wouldn’t touch that object with a barge pole until I know what’s inside. I know this fella’s tricks. And take off that hat, chi
ld! How many times!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Next morning, after a breakfast of toast and weak tea, with a slab of cold porridge in her pocket for lunch, Elsie trudged along beside Uncle Dannell and Dog Bob on their way to meet Ernest. She was going to have to get used to calling him Scoop. He’d been her best friend ever since she beat him at skipping stones at the tugboats hauling their loads down at False Creek. Katy Lillis and Ruth Cohen were her friends too. But you wouldn’t catch them standing in black sticky mud under the Connaught Bridge, lobbing rocks with cold fingers.

  Ruth and Katy were fine once in a while for looking through the Eaton’s catalog with. Or playing jump rope or five stones. But Ernest—Scoop—always had real adventures in mind, always on the trail of a good story. He’d told Elsie she could be his best friend until she grew nubs like the Noises. Until then, she was just as good as a boy, he said.

  Elsie checked her chest regularly. But there were no sign of nubs yet.

  Her fingers found the cold porridge in her pocket. If she ate it now, she’d have nothing for a snack at recess. “That was a lovely supper last night, wasn’t it?” she said to Uncle Dannell. There had been just enough meat on the two chicken legs for the four of them, cooked up with Elsie’s potatoes and the vegetables that Mrs. Tipson had passed on to them. Vegetables that came from what used to be Elsie’s family’s garden. But last night she had been too hungry to care.

  There was even enough leftover gravy to dribble over Dog Bob’s supper of stale bread.

  “That was nothing!” said her uncle. “Just a little treat. By the end of the week, I will be in a position to treat us all to supper at Melvin’s.”