Kit's Law

by Donna Morrissey

  Not finding Pirate spooking through the timothy wheat edging the meadow, and not particularly interested in walking far in the dull, grey evening, I wandered back inside the house. Josie had gone off somewhere, and Aunt Drucie was gone home for the day, leaving me to wash the supper dishes. She was sleeping more and more this winter, and cooking and cleaning less. Because we lived outside of Haire’s Hollow, no one actually knew how much time Aunt Drucie was spending at our house or hers—which worked out fine with me. I’d taken over most of the chores by now and was only too happy to be sending her home more and more. Doctor Hodgins’s wife had worsened considerably this winter and his visits were kept down to one, sometimes two, a week. And when he did come, he couldn’t stay for long. And what with my mother taking off down the gully all the time, I was mostly alone. And that’s when I liked it best—when I was alone, feeling Nan’s humming all around me as I sat quietly by the crackling stove doing my homework and reading.

  The one problem that kept upsetting things was when Josie forgot to split the firewood. She didn’t usually. Cleaving wood was her one chore since she was a gaffer, and one she was always intent on doing. And during that first year after Nan’s passing, she most always kept the woodbox filled and splits ready for the morning’s fire. But, it appeared as if she became more and more despondent over time, and chopping wood became another one of those things that she didn’t care about, any more. And try as I might, I just couldn’t get that damn axe to slice through a junk of wood, getting it caught instead on a knot, or jammed at such an angle that no amount of prying could get it freed. On those evenings during the second winter without Nan, after Aunt Drucie had gone home and there wasn’t enough wood to keep the fire going, and the wind was whistling in through every crack in the house, it was Pirate that kept me warm. Stretched across the foot of my bed, his was a quiet presence that brought comfort to a cold night. Crawling beneath my bedclothes and shoving my feet down beneath the spot where he was lying, it felt like Nan had already been here, leaving behind a tea plate, heated and wrapped in a towel for me to put my feet on—like she always done in the winter time. On nights like this I stared at the orange speckled starfish shining dully through the dark, and wished that Pirate was a cat that could be touched.

  It was after such a night that Doctor Hodgins came to visit. Buffing his hands from the cold, he stood in the middle of the kitchen, his breath spurting out in puffs of white.

  “Good Lord, why’s the fire out?” he asked, glancing at the empty woodbox behind the stove.

  “I was up studyin’ half the night and burned all the wood,” I say.

  “How you going to get to school on time with no fire lit and kettle not boiled?”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “Heh, so it is.” He scratched his head, looking a little confused. “Perhaps I should have come over and split you a cord.”

  “You knows she likes to do it,” I said, nodding towards Josie’s room door. He stood quietly for a minute, rocking back and forth on his heels, and I noticed that his hair was tangled, and his shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and wrinkled. “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  He started buffing again, pacing the room.

  “Nothing you can help with, I’m afraid. It’s Elsie.” His eyes darkened and his voice lowered as he turned to me. “She’s took a turn for the worse. I’m taking her home to St. John’s. There’s a good hospital there. Plus her sister.” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to hope for the best.”

  “Will you come back?” I asked, suddenly terrified.

  “Of course I’ll be back,” he said, trying hard to sound convincing. “Just as soon as she’s well, again.”

  “Will that take long?”

  “Maybe.” His voice deepened further. “Maybe not.” A look of unbearable sadness passed over his face and he moved quickly around the room, buffing his hands all the harder. “You make sure Josie keeps the woodbox filled, and that Drucie don’t go to sleep while she’s stirring the gravy.” He jammed his hands in his pocket and looked at me with a forced grin. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  I forced a smile.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said, not feeling fine at all. “You just take care of Elsie.”

  He smiled at me then, a sad little smile that did little to lighten the look of gloom around him. Trying hard to think of something to say, something that might make him feel better, as he had with me so many times, I ushered him out the door, making small of his worries about the unlit stove.

  “You go on now, and don’t go worryin’ about us. It’s nothing for Josie to split a load of wood. And Aunt Drucie will be here any minute, rousin’ her out of bed.”

  “Mind you don’t catch cold,” he said, nudging me back inside from the winter’s wind. Giving me a pinched look, he pulled the door shut behind him, sending an icy draught around my bare feet and legs. I shivered, huddling my arms around myself for warmth as I watched him through the iced window, trudging up over the snow-beaten path. More so than anyone, his was a presence that was deeply felt in the gully, in this house and in me—like the fire that had always burned steadily in the stove when Nan was alive. It was only after she had passed on did I feel the canvas cold beneath my feet. Even when I was the first one up in the mornings and the coals in the stove had gone out during the night, I had never felt the canvas cold beneath my feet. And now, watching Doctor Hodgins walk away from the gully to some distant city that I had only read about in books, I felt another coldness, one that touched me deep inside, drawing a small shiver of fear down my spine and leaving me feeling as cold as Nan’s brow as she had lain in her coffin.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GULLY TRAMP’S GIRL

  DOCTOR HODGINS WAS GONE BUT a week when Aunt Drucie came down with the flu. Stamping the snow off my boots as I came in through the door from school, I started in fright to see her sleeping in the rocking chair, her head lolled to one side, and her half-opened mouth drooling onto her shoulder as the pan full of bologna smoked black on the stove. Dashing across the kitchen, I snatched the pan by the handle and dragged it back on the damper. “Goodness … mercy ah … ahh … ” She come to her feet and let go with a fit of coughing and sneezing that sprayed the pan of bologna and sizzled across the top of the stove. “You go on home,” I pressed her. “I can take care of things till you gets better.” Nodding appreciatively, her throat too sore to do much talking, she let me help her with her coat and bandanna and trudged weakly out the door. I watched her walking up over the bank to the road, her shoulders hunched beneath her long, winter’s coat, and a scarf wrapped around her face, wondering if I shouldn’t be walking home with her, and helping to put her to bed. But a chill was creeping around my own bones, and I went back to the stove, stogging it full with birch. The next morning I woke with my throat sore and swollen, and my nostrils as clogged as a weed-choked brook. Dragging myself through the freezing cold house, Josie not having chopped enough wood to bank the stove again, and not finding much of anything to eat that didn’t need a fire, I put off going to school and took myself back to bed. Around lunchtime I roused Josie who was still comfortably rolled up in her blankets, and whined at her for not chopping enough wood, then ordered her to get ready and walk with me to Haire’s Hollow to bring back some groceries.

  The second we entered the store, May Eveleigh left off her conversation with Mrs. Haynes, the teacher’s wife, and turned frowning eyes upon us.

  I offered a bit of a smile towards Mrs. Haynes as she absently fastened and unfastened the top button of her fashionable coat, remembering how she’d told me, once, when I was coming out of church with Nan, how pretty I was. But there were no nice words to spare me this morning as May leaned over the counter towards us, nostrils flaring like a bird dog sniffing out its prey.

  “How come you’re not in school, today?” she asked.

  “I’m sick,” I said.

  “Then how come Drucie let you out on a cold day as this?”

  “I-I’m b
etter.”

  “Who’s better?” Josie demanded, peeling her eyes off the jar of hard green candies sitting on the counter to scowl at me. “You’s better? You’s not better.”

  “Then if you’re better, how come you’re not in school?” May asked, ignoring Josie.

  I stared helplessly at what appeared to be a fading bruise on Mrs. Haynes’s cheek. She gave me the sympathetic smile of one too busy being preyed upon herself to offer much to anyone else, and went back to fidgeting with her coat button.

  “Because—I might get sick again,” I said, turning back to May.

  “She’s sick agin!” Josie barked. “Sick!”

  Whatever other questions May might’ve wanted to ask, she forgot them as the queer yellow lights from Josie’s eyes suddenly blazed into hers. Then quick as anything, she rammed her hand inside the candy jar and, pulling out a fistful of the hard green candies, shoved two into her mouth and stood back with her lips reamed shut, as if expecting May to reach out and pry the candies from her gob as Nan would’ve done if she had been standing there.

  Not sure if I should be acting sick on account of my not being in school, or acting better on account of not wanting to make Aunt Drucie look like she wasn’t taking good care of me, I quickly took advantage of the sudden shift in focus and asked for a can of milk and a pack of biscuits. Snatching up the brown paper bag, after May tucked the groceries inside, I nudged Josie with my foot and scurried out the door.

  The next morning, with every muscle bruised and my stomach a little queasy, I forced myself out of bed and stoked the fire. Hearing a steady hacking cough coming from Josie’s room, I groaned and made her a cup of tea and some toast. Groaning harder still, I slung my school bag over my shoulder, and dragged myself out the door.

  It was a grey, windy day, the air damp with unshed rain. Wet snow slushed around my rubber boots, and the ice beneath made it slippery for walking. Not seeing any smoke coming out of Aunt Drucie’s chimney as I walked by, I ran down the path to her door and checked inside. She was in bed, bundled beneath a mountain of blankets, hacking and sneezing, and the house colder than the outdoors.

  “You stay where you are, now,” I called out as comfortingly as I could, ripping up some birch rind and shoving some splits in the stove. “It’s a bad flu, you just needs to rest. Me and Josie’ll be fine for a few days, you just stay in bed. There!” I said, putting a lit match to the birch rind, and then stogging the stove with split, dried wood. “A nice fire to keep you warm and boil the kettle.”

  “You’re a good girl, Kit,” Aunt Drucie croaked.

  “Shhoosh now,” I said, buttering up some crackers and mixing her a glass of cold raspberry syrup. “Here!” I laid the platter with the crackers and syrup on her bed and backed out the door. “I gotta go now, I’ll be late for school. Make some tea when the kettle’s boiled, and don’t forget to put a bit of peppermint in it.”

  “Lizzy’d be proud of you, Kit.”

  “I expect so. Bye now,” I said and hauled the door shut. I ran, slipping and sliding, down over Fox Point to Haire’s Hollow. It was eerily quiet walking along the road through the outport, and I knew with a sinking heart that school had already started. The water lopped a dirty grey along the shore and I raised a listless hand to Old Joe as he called out a greeting from the wharf, while puttering about his endless tasks.

  There were three rooms in the school—grades primer to six in one, seven to nine in another, and ten and eleven in the other. I was in grade nine, the same room as whose windows looked out at me as I hurried across the schoolyard. Edging open the classroom door, I kept my eyes down and walked as quietly and quickly as I could to my desk. Mr. Haynes had stopped talking as I stepped inside, and he now watched as I took out my geography book and flipped it open to somewhere in the middle. He started teaching again, and while I never took my eyes off the book for the rest of the morning, I knew he was flicking looks my way every chance he got—waiting, just waiting. And whatever it was he was waiting for, I knew with a foreboding certainty, he was going to make it happen.

  Unpredictably, it was Josie that happened. It was just minutes before lunchtime when all of a sudden everyone was whispering and shuffling in their seats, and then busting into muffled giggles and outright laughing and groaning. Shifting my eyes sideways to see what was causing the commotion, I caught sight of her as she walked past the school windows, shoulders hunched forward into the wind and retching as she walked, the vomit blowing back into her face and sticking to the strands of her windblown hair as it flapped around her face.

  Margaret Eveleigh grabbed me by the arm and pointed to the window, while most everyone else, their hands clapped to their mouths to keep back their groans, whipped around to see if I was seeing my mother walking down the road and puking into her hair. Ordering everybody to be quiet, Mr. Haynes snatched the strap off his shoulder and cracked it across his desk. It was as if my mother heard the smack, because at that second she looked up, and seeing everyone looking out the window and laughing at her, she stopped retching and smiled back, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. Then, upon seeing Mr. Haynes looking out as well, she waved. Everyone busted their gut and Mr. Haynes walked savagely down the aisles, welting his belt across whichever desk was nearest to him. Blissfully, the bell rang for lunchtime. There was a stampede as everyone tried to be first one out the door, bursting to let go with their jeering and hooting. For me, it was a choice of hanging back with Mr. Haynes and his strap, or heading for the door with everyone else. I headed for the door.

  Surprisingly, it was big, blond-haired Josh Jenkins that come out of it the worst. Gaming for Margaret’s attentions, he stuck his finger down his throat and let go with a stomach-curdling urge that succeeded nicely in getting the attention of Margaret’s best friends. But not Margaret! She was too intent on swooping down on me, a look of utter disgust marking her pretty pink cheeks, to notice Josh Jenkins. Only, I was spared on this day. Gaining more and more courage from the giggles of Margaret’s best friends and getting carried away with the spirit of the moment, Josh ran up behind her and, grabbing hold of her ringlets, buried another gutretching gag into the flaming red coils. All around, everyone hooted with laughter, and the younger ones, who had yet to suffer from Margaret’s personal persecutions, started circling around her, bravely chanting “Josie, Josie.”

  Clawing back her ringlets from Josh’s fanned fingers, Margaret spun around as if she had been whipped. Raising her fist to his quickly sobering face, she screeched loud enough for all of Haire’s Hollow to hear, “You ever touch me again, pus-faced Jenkins, and I’ll have you jailed—you and your slouch of a father for all the credit he got in our store and can’t pay for.” Her face burning brighter than the look of fervour dying in Josh’s eyes, she caught sight of me trying to sneak off around the school, and swooped before me, a fury of red.

  “Your mother’s a dirty, rotten tramp!” she screamed, both fists flailing. “She’s not fit to walk the roads. Do you hear me, Gully Tramp’s Girl?”

  Escaping to the back of the school, I huddled down on a small, flat-topped rock and rested my back against the wall. It was where I sat most days during lunchtime and recess. No one else came back here, and it was warm, out of the wind and with the sun burning red on my eyelids. Only I felt cold this day, as cold as the morning Doctor Hodgins walked up the gully, on his way to St. John’s. I was surprised that I felt cold. Not even when I was racing down the gully, with my feet slipping over the ice-covered rocks and the wind licking over my face with the breath of a thousand icebergs, did I ever feel the cold, outdoors. But it must’ve been a real cold day. Shivering, I pulled open my lunch bag and took out the slice of partridgeberry bread. That was when I first noticed Sid.

  He was in grade ten, a different classroom from mine, and didn’t hang around the schoolyard. He was the reverend’s son and was born and raised in Haire’s Hollow. But his mother saw to it that he never spent much time running around with the outport boys, keeping him
home to help her on account of her being crippled all the time with arthritis, and sending him away to St. John’s in the summers with her cousin’s boys. He was nicknamed Mommy Suck. And when he did come out and about in the outport, he looked a sight with his puffed-up shoulders and poker-back walk. And the way he talked was more grand than the outporters, what with his mother, who was born and raised in St. John’s, making him pronounce his “th” sounds and saying “catch” not “ketch,” and “goodbye” not “see ya”—all which made for more name-calling at school, with “Dead Sid” being the most popular some days, and “Sid the Kid” on others. And what with the black pressed jacket and white shirts he always wore, and the small, hardcover books that looked like prayer books that he always carried around in his pockets, he looked more like a preacher going off to church than a young fellow going off to school.

  On this day, when he came around the corner of the school to where I was sitting, he was pale as anything, with fleshy red lips, squinty eyes that looked like blue dots behind his black-framed glasses, and his skin whiter than flour. His hair was yellow, the colour of mine, and he was looking at me the way he looked at everybody—his mouth partly opened and his lips working as if he was wanting to protest about something, but hadn’t yet figured out what that something was.

  I didn’t want Mister Sidney Kidney staring at me, so I closed my eyes and pretended he wasn’t there. When I looked up, he was gone. Along with everyone else in the schoolyard.

  I began to breathe more easily in the silence. When I first started coming to school, it used to hurt my ears with everyone seemingly talking at once. Sid was to say later that it was because I had spent so much time alone in the gully, that I had gotten too used to the quiet. Funny, but I’d never thought of the gully as being quiet, what with the wind scratching the trees, and the water pounding upon the rocks, and Josie barking, and Pirate meowling, and Nan bawling out. And in the evenings when the seagulls all fought for roosting space in the tucamores around the shore, they made more noise than a thousand schools at recess time. Yet it all seemed to go together, somehow—the wind and the sea and the birds and Nan. Sitting there on the rock behind the school, I heard nothing but the occasional raised voice of some youngster tardying on his way home, and the joints in the schoolhouse squeaking from the frost. An empty, churning feeling weakened my stomach, in much the same way as it did on that first day of school when Nan left me alone at the schoolyard gate. Shucking my slice of bread to the crows, I got up and walked home.