Downhill Chance

by Donna Morrissey

  "Mercy," pleaded Sare as they landed in a pile at the bottom of the hill, and flopping back onto the snow, they stared up at the star-littered sky, listening as Job whistled shrilly up to the heavens, commanding the northern lights to dance.

  "There they go, do you see them, Missy? See them, Clair? They're dancing. Smile big—show your teeth, for he's seeing us now, all lit up with his lights, and you wouldn't want him catching you scowling, else he'll think you're not proud of the little small corner he's given we."

  "The foolishness of him," tutted Sare.

  "Foolishness! You think this is foolishness!" exclaimed Job, expanding his arms as if to embrace the snow-blanketed evergreens, glowing white in the moonlight, and coating the hills that steepled two thousand feet above them. "Out of the garden with you, Mother—go on, out you go—that's right, on your belly," he roared, buffing the powdery fine snow off his mitts onto her upturned face. Squealing with laughter, she shielded her face behind her scarf and crawled towards the cabin.

  After cocoa and crackers, and with her father puffing on his pipe by the stove, her mother gathered her and Missy around her lap as she always did before bedtime, and read to them from the Bible, showing them pictures of archangels standing over dreaming men, while thundering clouds gathered grey in the sky behind, and a tunnel of golden light led the pathway to heaven. The reading done, she bade them to her knees and listened as they said their prayers out loud. "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; God bless Mommy, Daddy, Sissy and all the starving children in the world, and the red men who died in the Congo." Then, with only the crackling of the fire and the creaking of the cabin beneath its snow-banked roof to hinder them, they recited the Lord's Prayer in silence.

  Clair would speed through hers: "Ourfather whoartin-heaven hallowedbethyname thy kingdomcome, thywillbedoneonearth asitisinheaven..." Once, she was awake when her father went to bed and she listened as he got to his knees and said his out loud: "Ooouurrr faatherr, wwhhhooo aarrrttt iinn hheavven" he whispered, so slow, so beautifully slow that each syllable was registered and words that she hadn't known were in there became isolated from their stream and took on meaning—or changed their meaning, like "lead-us-not-into-temptation" and not "leadusnot" as she'd always prayed. And all this time she had wondered why "snot" was in the Lord's Prayer.

  It was when she lay in bed, muffled beneath a mountain of blankets, that she said her most important prayer, as if those spoken at her mother's knee were destined to go no further than the cabin door: "Dear God, please bring me a dolly, a real dolly." She would squeeze her eyes shut, bringing the darkness tight around her and feel her soul craving for the quiet of her mind as she concentrated on the curly yellow hair fluffing over the shoulders of the green lacy dress of her friend Joanie Reid's doll, and the marble blue eyes that slept when you tilted her back, and the little plastic hands that had crook marks across her fingers, just like her own. And when finally she drifted into sleep, she'd take with her the murmur of her father's voice as he'd assure her mother that all was well, and stoke up the fire in the stove for one last burst of warmth before he huddled besides the small wooden boxed radio, the volume low so's not to awaken them as he listened to the news about a place called Warsaw and a man called Winston Churchill. Then, the radio off and the battery removed so's it wouldn't ground out, he'd crawl into the bottom bunk with her mother, and tuck in for the night.

  It was a week later, the night before they were to leave Cat Arm for their home up the Basin, that Missy had the dream. Awakening them all with her screams, she tumbled out of the top bunk onto the floor, frightening Clair that she'd broken her neck. Scrabbling to light the wick in the lamp, Job hurried back to where Sare sat on the floor, holding the now sobbing child in her arms.

  "I had a dream, M-mommy!"

  "Hush now child, and so you did," Sare soothed.

  "The bluebells were ringing—"

  "Ohh, now, it's only a dream—"

  "And you were bleeding, Daddy, and there was spiders crawling out of your mouth."

  "Precious Lord," Sare cried out.

  "There now," said Job, bending besides Sare and stroking Missy's hair. "I'm not bleeding, see? And there's no spiders in the wintertime."

  "You were lying in the m-mud, Daddy—and there was spiders."

  "Shhh, how can something so young have such a dream?" Sare demanded almost angrily. "Go back to sleep, angel. Can Daddy get you some milk? Bank up the stove, Father, and heat her some milk with a bit of water. Do you want to climb in besides Clair again? There you go, back with your sister. This time get on the inside so's you don't fall out agin. Are you O.K., my angel?"

  Clair wrapped her arms around Missy's trembling body as her mother passed her over and gently rocked her. By the time the milk was heated, Missy had gone back to sleep.

  By morning Missy had forgotten the dream. Clair awakened to her shrieks as she ran tither beneath a clear, blue sky and a sun that shone loud on the white of the pan ice that dotted the face of the sea. Her mother was packing up the kitchen as her father loaded up the boat, and wolfing down the last of her pickled herring, Clair bolted out the door and up top of the hill, calling out goodbyes to the trees and the hills, and the stars that came out at night, and the northern lights now hiding from the sun. Her mother called out to her from the cabin doorway, ushering her onto the beach along with Missy and her father waiting besides the boat. When finally she was sitting on the short wooden bench spanning the belly of the boat, and her mother and Missy were fixed away behind her, her father leaned his shoulder to the bow, inching them off from shore, and leapt aboard a split second before the boat began bobbing out to sea.

  Clair clenched her fists as the boat rocked beneath her father's weight, and stared down into the ever deepening water. Then the put-put of the piston blasted through the air, reverberating through the wooden bottom of the boat and up her legs and back, seizing her with excitement as they cut across the bumpy waters of the arm like a skidding rock. She looked back at her father, standing steady besides the motor, arms akimbo and his eyes squinting past the blinding white of the pan ice. He grinned down at her and she relaxed her grip, turning back to face the wind and the cool pinpricks of salty sea spray dotting her cheeks and stinging her eyes.

  Leading out of the arm, they headed onto the heaving waters of the bay, a mile wide and forty miles long, the hills rising from grey rocky shores on either side, and hundreds more pieces of pan ice drifting towards them. Squinting as far ahead as the eye could see, Clair started to hum "aaaaaaaaaa," an effortless sound that started low in her throat, and broken by the vibrations of the boat, bleated through her mouth like the cry of a lamb. Big Island, a tree-covered gorge of rock in the middle of the bay, loomed before them, then fell to the wayside, bringing into sight Chouse Brook, whose name belies that river churning down the eastern hillside and spilling into the sea. Gold Cove appeared on the western side, thus named because of the goldenrod that ran rampant over its meadows in late summer, and then just ahead, Rocky Head, a small outport whose people were thought to be more than a little dull in thought, and whose youngsters were reported to be as brazen as a moulting goose.

  It was the quiet that first struck Clair. The spew of youngsters that usually combed the beach, singing or whistling as they fished for torn cods off the stagehead, and fired rocks at all passing boats whilst ducking amongst the outhouses and woodpiles that lined the shore, were nowhere to be seen. And without the disruption of faces peering around their curtains the six or eight houses that lined the shore, their clapboard weathered a metallic grey and their windows glazed by the sun, looked to Clair like gladiator shields, this morning, protecting all therein from the lashings heaved upon them from the wind and sea. Only the winds were kind this day, and the sun an outside lure.

  "Must be someone dead," Sare called over her shoulder to Job.

  "Must be," said Job, steering them back towards the middle of die bay to get away from a clutter of pan ice floatin
g towards them. But not before a stirring of shadow somewhere near shore caught Clair's attention, and scanning beneath a stagehead that stood out over the water on rickety legs, she glimpsed in its lee, and scarcely discernable from its shade, a fat, heavy-breasted old woman, her dress flapping around her stockinged legs from the wind, and her arms folded across her breasts. She turned from her scrutiny up towards the Basin, ducking farther back into the shade as their boat passed by, and if not for the white of her tightly wound braids showing through the dark, Clair might have questioned if, indeed, she had actually seen an old woman, or had witnessed, instead, the disembodied spirit of some long-lost fisher's wife.

  The boat struck against a chunk of ice, startling Clair's attention away from shore and back to the rocking boat.

  "Sit back down," Job warned as Sare half rose in fright.

  "Lord, don't drown us, Father," Sare called out over the droning of the motor, "else there'll be no supper for you this night."

  "There's a fate," her father chuckled, steering them clear of the ice and farther out to bay. "No rations for a dead man."

  "I'm scared," sang out Missy.

  "What's to be scared of, child?" said Sare. "See? There's Miller's Island, and just beyond is the Basin. Sure, you can almost see our house from here."

  "Can I see the gravestone?" asked Missy.

  "Soon, now; here, stand up a bit—my, she never grow'd an inch all winter—see over there?"

  Steadying herself on her seat, Clair glanced towards Miller's Island with Missy, her eyes fastening on a granite headstone, a little ways in from the shore, and imprisoned between two full-grown fir trees.

  "Tell me about the little girl, Clair," said Missy, leaning against her sister's back and wrapping her arms tightly around her neck.

  "I keeps telling you."

  "Tell me agin."

  "A mommy and her baby girl, buried side by side," said Clair impatiently.

  "In the same grave?"

  "In the same grave."

  "And the girl died first—because she was thirsty?"

  "Because her body was parched from the fever."

  "It was tiefie?"

  "Typhoid."

  "Her body couldn't hold water."

  "She kept throwing it up. And her mother, too. And lots of others. And they brought them out to the island to bury them, so's to carry the sickness away from the land."

  "Did she hear the bluebells ringing?"

  "Ooh, Missy—"

  "Did she?"

  "Bluebells don't ring."

  "Mommy, bluebells ring, don't they?" said Missy, leaving off her sister, and settling back besides her mother. "And supposing she'd slept sounder and never heard them ringing?"

  "If there was such a thing, they still would've been ringing," said Sare.

  "But would she still died if she never heard them?"

  "I think so, child."

  "But her daddy never heard them, right?"

  "I guess they weren't ringing for him."

  "And he'd just done burying his girl, when they brought him his wife?"

  "And he dug up his girl, and laid her with her mommy. Then he buried them both."

  "And then he planted the trees."

  "One for each of them, and they joined together over the headstone, and grow'd as one."

  "And now nobody can move the headstone, right?"

  "Not even the sea."

  "And the bestest blueberries grow there and nobody picks them—because of the roots."

  "Back then they never, my dolly; for the faintest tinge of blue staining a lip would be sure to bring on a flogging."

  "Tell me about the roots, Mommy."

  Taking a deep breath, Sare launched into how the outporters believed it was the flesh of their dead that fertilized them berries, and their growth was a reminder to all hands left living that just as the roots of berry bushes nourishes the life above it, so, too, are people the walking roots of their own souls, and how it'll be their deeds that will judge the ripeness of their own resurrection someday. "No, my dolly, nobody picks them berries," said Sare, "not even today do anyone pick the blueberries on Miller's Island. Isn't that right, Father?"

  "You shouldn't be telling her that stuff," said Job, steering them away from the island, the gruffness of his tone causing Clair to glance back at him.

  Sare turned, equally as surprised. "What stuff?" she asked.

  "It's what gives her bad dreams," said Job.

  "Glory be, I always said you were squeamish—goodness, Job!" she cried out as he swerved the boat suddenly, knocking them to one side. Grabbing hold of her seat, Clair turned to face a four-foot mound of ice a hand's reach in front of her, the wind licking cold around its greeny blue contours and sweeping over her face with a chill that felt like fire. Swerving them still farther, her father let out an oath as the boat bumped against the big ice, rocking alarmingly before clearing it.

  "It's all right, it's all right," he called out over Missy's screams and Sare's shrieks as he steered them closer to shore.

  "Mercy, Job, didn't you see it?" cried Sare.

  "It's what comes from talk of the dead," he answered, the gruffness back in his voice. "It's fine, my dolly, it's fine," he then said soothingly to Missy as she continued to sob. "You get a fright, Clair?"

  Clair stared back at him, hands rigid onto her seat, shaking her head.

  "That's the girl," he said softly. And ignoring Sare's eyes sharply upon him, he nodded to Clair, saying, "It's the strongest amongst us that hides their fears the bestest, my dolly; now leave off your talk, Missy, and watch for our house. See, there it is," and they all turned with relief towards the Basin lying straight ahead, with its painted clapboard houses dotting the side of the hill that encircled the bottom of the bay, and their house, one of the farthest upon the hill and as white as snow, looking down upon them. But it was the steamer that stole their attention—the sixty-foot passenger and cargo ship that steamed up the bay once every two weeks after the ice had thawed and was now docked by the company wharf. Usually the wharf was swarming with the outporters greeting friends and acquaintances on board, and exchanging news and items of interest as they waited for their parcels and newspapers to be unloaded and passed amongst them. Today, the wharf was empty. And aside from the gulls circling and shrieking overhead, the outport appeared more quiet than Rocky Head.

  "It feels like Sunday," said Sare a few minutes later as they drew nearer and Job cut the motor, adding to the stillness of the air. "We haven't got the days mixed up, have we?"

  "The steamer don't put ashore on Sundays," said Job. "Must be somebody dead. Bide now," he cautioned as Sare half rose, her hand to her heart, and straddling past her, he guided them alongside the wharf. A shadow blocked the sun. Looking up, Clair shrank back as an apparition lifted from her history book, stared down at them—his beret perched to the side and his green, baggy-pocketed coat opened to the wind.

  "Good day, sir," said her father, tossing the painter up to the soldier as if he weren't at all perturbed by his presence and the Basin as quiet as death.

  "What's he doing here?" asked Sare, a tremor in her voice as the soldier caught the rope, looping it around the grunt.

  "I expect we'll find out," said Job, beckoning Clair forward. Taking hold of her waist, he helped her find her footing onto the ladder, then gently boosted her upwards. The soldier held down a hand and she hesitated, looking into a pair of eyes that crinkled almost as deep as her father's. Then as her mother clambered onto the ladder behind her, she grabbed hold of the hand and scrabbled quickly onto the wharf.

  "Bad planning, perhaps?" said the soldier as her father climbed up on the wharf behind her mother and Missy. Her father looked puzzled for a minute, glancing towards the store that sat half on the wharf, half on land with its blinds drawn, and the fishers' boats hauled up onshore, signalling they'd already pulled their nets and were home for the day. "They've all gone hunting," said the soldier. "Overnight—or longer—so it seems," he added, be
ckoning towards the store and Willamena, the merchant Saul's daughter, peering through a corner of the blinds.

  "Is this your first port of call?" asked Job.

  "The last," said the soldier. "They're inside, taking dinner." Clair saw then, others dressed in garnseys and lumberjackets like her father's, darkening some of the portholes and doorways as they passed by or glanced out through, none of whom she recognized.

  "Job," said her mother, taking hold of his arm, her voice thick with worry, but he was looking past her, along with the soldier, towards a short, stocky man with a brown worsted cap pulled low over his ears and with a pack on his back, appearing around the corner of the store and walking hesitantly towards them.

  "Your name, sir?" asked the soldier, his voice suddenly brusque as the fellow approached, and laid his bag at his feet.

  "Joey," said he, softly.

  "Last name?"

  "Osmond."

  "Where you from, Osmond?"

  "Rocky Head, sir."

  "Any more behind you?"

  Joey shook his head, darting an apprehensive look at the steamer. As the soldier pointed to the foot of the gangway, ordering "Go on board, sir," Clair saw that he lifted his pack and walked towards it with a steady pace.

  Missy started whimpering about her feet getting cold, and her mother tugged on her father's arm, coaxing him to come along now, and let's go home. And for sure he was about to do just that, but Clair saw, as he wrapped his arm around her mother's shoulders, holding her tight to his side, that quiet, lingering nod between her father and the soldier, as if they already were comrades in arms.

  "There'll be a cheque coming to them every month," said the soldier.