Downhill Chance

by Donna Morrissey

  "So, what's a fellow like that doing getting killed in less than a day, and he with a rifle in his hands and hundreds just like him standing all around?" said Rupert. "Foolish is what it is, going off and fighting in places you knows nothing about."

  "Perhaps he should've stuck with his knife and left his gun at home," offered Clair.

  "Yes, now I knows Sammy Jones was too stunned to shoot a gun. Is that what you thinks?" sniped Georgie. "Well, I can tell you a thing or two about Sammy Jones; he was nobody stupid, and he was no frigging coward, either—"

  "Perhaps it's you who thinks he's a coward," cut in Clair, ignoring the warning look Phoebe was darting her way, "else what're ye all the time talking about it for?"

  "Oh, come on, let's play—girls against the guys," cajoled Phoebe.

  But Clair was already walking off, her back stiffening as Georgie went into a rant about how "it's like the old man says now; 'twas men going off leaving their own behind to be fended for was the cowards, not men like Sammy Jones who stayed on his own land, ripping apart bears that threatened him and his family."

  Dark looks followed Clair the rest of the week at school; or at least, she imagined, for she never took time to check herself, or talk with Joanie and Phoebe much, to find out. Enough to keep her mind on her school work and to help her mother with the cooking and cleaning at home, than listening to the likes of Georgie Blanchard going off half-cocked like his father. And besides, Phoebe was forever making eyes at Georgie these days, and the sight of Clair was quick to darken his face and bring a snide retort, making it more and more awkward for Clair to be hanging around the back of the school with Phoebe during recess or after school.

  Home felt equally as uncomfortable, what with her mother's chatter turned silent, and her face never smiling as she moped from room to room, upstairs and down, fidgeting with a cleaning rag or, most likely, lying across the divan with a bad head and hushing both Clair and Missy over the slightest sound. The days rolled into weeks, and the weeks into months, breakfast, dinner and supper, school, homework and bedtime. It all came and it all went, day after day, month after month. Dull, grey, colourless months. Except for Missy. Chattering, twirling and preening she pranced around the kitchen, mopping, sweeping and dusting—like the winter's lamb that, born out of season and brought inside to be warmed by the stove, reminds everyone with its babyish bleating and the sweetening smell of last summer's hay lining its bed, that somewhere outside, spring, like the cocooned butterfly, awaits the warming sun's rays to release its bloom. But, Sare, mired by the dead flower stalks outside her window, was not to be wooed by thoughts of spring. And Clair, pulled by a side of herself too newly formed yet to know, scoffed at this target of her blinder self.

  "For the love of it, Missy, you don't throw stuff on the floor," she scolded, picking up the broom Missy had flung to one side as she skidded into the kitchen.

  "I never throwed it—I lodged it near the wall and it fell," protested Missy. "You want me to open some bully for supper, Mommy?" Sare was standing at the sink, slicing a loaf of bread for supper.

  "If that's what you wants," replied Sare. "Do you want bully, Clair?"

  "Yes, we wants bully," said Missy. Diving for the bottom cupboard, she came up with a can of bully beef. "Here, help me get it started," she demanded, prying the key off the lid, and scaling back the label.

  "Get Clair to start it for you."

  "No, I wants you to start it."

  "Give me the can, Missy," said Clair, but Missy held the can away from her grasp. "I wants Mommy."

  "I'm just going to start it for you—"

  "No!"

  "For goodness' sakes, pass it here," exclaimed Sare, dropping the knife and taking the can from Missy. "And no more fighting, please."

  "Is your head bad, Mommy?" asked Missy as her mother squinted, trying to fit the key onto the little metal tip sticking up from the side of the can.

  "Mercy," she muttered impatiently as the key slipped through her fingers. Snatching the key off the floor, Clair took the can from her mother's hands. "Here, let me do it."

  "You're bad, Clair," shouted Missy. "I dreamed Daddy smacked you last night. I did, then," she countered as Clair groaned. "And my dreams comes true, don't they, Mommy? Don't they?" she asked, gazing imploringly at her mother. "And I was dreaming about you, too," she added, her voice softening, "you and Daddy—and he was buying lots of presents for you, and hats and ribbons—"

  "You're lying," said Clair.

  "No, I'm not. It was a real dream, and you were bad, Clair, and Daddy smacked you—"

  "Mommy—"

  "It's true—and he was in a box, Mommy, and he was trying to stand up—and he was singing out to you."

  Sare's eyes fastened onto Missy. "What kind of box, child?"

  "Don't listen to her," said Clair.

  "A pantry box—"

  "A pantry box?"

  "Like a small pantry and I was singing out, 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,' but he wouldn't answer me—"

  "Perhaps he couldn't hear you—"

  "But he did hear me. He was looking right at me. And—he was scared."

  "Mercy," moaned Sare, clasping her hands to her mouth. "All right, Missy, that's enough. No more dreams, now."

  "But, Mommy—"

  "No more dreams, Missy," Sare all but shouted, her voice trembling. And running into the stairwell, she flew up over the stairs.

  "Now, see what you've done?" said Clair. "You've made her cry. That's what telling lies does..."

  Clair's voice trailed off as a look of utter misery turned down the corners of her sister's mouth. Far was she now from the lamb bleating for its teat. Trailing into the stairwell as she was, the sheen of her hair burying itself in shadow, she more resembled the butterfly whose wings had fluttered briefly, and finding only winter, was withdrawing into the dark whence it came.

  "Missy—"

  But Missy was fleeing up over the stairs. Clair sighed as she heard their room door close ever so softly. She slumped against the window, laying her forehead against the cool of the pane, seeking out the withered remnants of the sweet williams that lay beyond it, encased within a film of October frost. The cold of the pane brought an ache to her forehead, and she held back her head, hearing only the ticking of the clock. Unlike those early days when her father had just left, the house was no longer pressing with yesterday's noise, as if it too had forgotten its maker.

  Summer came, then winter again. As if to compensate for their refusal to allow their men to take up arms, the women from the Basin had responded ardently to the British government's requests for knitted caps, mitts and socks to send to the soldiers overseas. Shearing, carding, spinning—the entire outport had turned into a sheep farm overnight, with the baa-ing of the sheep, and the burring, creaking and clacking of spinning wheels, Clair thought as she walked down over the hill to the store. Except for her mother's house. She looked over her shoulder. Aside from the thin trickle of smoke drifting out of the chimney, the house appeared deserted, with its closed doors and draped windows.

  "We never sees your poor mother," said Johnny Regular's wife, Rose, in a rough tone that forever accused, whether it was to babies or men that she spoke. It was a dirty fall day, wind, drizzle and fog, and Clair was about to duck inside the store to pick up some tea and soap. She paused in her step, nodding politely to Rose and Alma, the postal clerk, as they picked amongst the dozen or more turrs Ralph was tossing up from his boat onto the wharf, murmuring something about her mother being fine. But it was onto Alma her eyes were fastened, as they always were whenever she caught sight of the postal clerk these days, hoping for word or a letter that might be lying in the post office, that had thus far escaped notice, and was now in her pocket, waiting to be delivered. The last letter had been several months ago, cursing the African heat blistering his back, the sand-blasted sirocco wind, and the flies that drank more of his tea than he did himself, and how glad he was finally to be entrenched in the rain-soaked soil of Italy. Perhaps
the fellow Joey had written? her eyes asked.

  "Strange he haven't wrote for this long," said Alma, her eyes barely discernable above a gaily coloured scarf twisted thrice around her neck. "The young fellow from Rocky Head is just as bad; they haven't heard from him in a while, either—not since they got to that place in Italy—Cassino, I think's is the name of the place."

  "A lot of fighting going on there," said Ralph, tossing up the last of the turrs. "Read it in the newspaper that come off the steamer last week."

  "You'd think he'd write," said Rose, "with your poor mother in such a way."

  "I say now there'll be a bunch come all at once," said Alma, noting the look of concern on Clair's face at Ralph's words. "With the way the mail is, and coming from all the way from over the seas, you never can tell. Sure Darryl Day's wife, over in Trinity Bay, she got forty letters all at once when her husband went over to the first war—and that was the day he stepped off the boat, back home agin. He keeped them all, he did, and brought them home with him when he come. Imagine that, now. Funny things, my dear, war does to a man. And I allows that's what your father'll do, just climb off the boat someday, with the rest of his letters sticking out a shirt pocket. Who's that coming up there?" she asked abruptly, squinting past Clair to a boat moving towards them, some distance off.

  "Looks like that young fellow Frankie from Rocky Head," said Ralph, wheezing heavily as he tossed the last bird onto the wharf and climbed up the ladder. "For sure he's the only one to come up here, rough frigging water like this."

  "Yes, and balls, brother, after spotting that submarine."

  "Aahh, a seal, more likely," scoffed Alma.

  "That's what they probably thought on that ferry that got torpedoed," said Rose. "And we knows what that got them. Sir, you got the set of ears," she exclaimed as the store door was shoved open behind her, and Willamena, a heavy shawl wrapped around her shoulders, poked her head outside, her features appearing doubly pointed as she peered through the blowing snow at the lone figure in the boat cutting steadily towards them.

  "Not that hard to hear you, Alma maid," piped Willamena. "How's you doing, Clair?" she asked, her interest heightening at the sight of Clair attempting to sidestep her way into the store. "We hears your mother's some sick."

  Clair shrugged, "She's not sick—"

  "That's not what young Missy says, then."

  "She gets a bad head, that's all," said Clair, standing back impatiently as Willamena guarded the entrance to the store.

  "You'd think you'd quit school and help her out if she's that sick. Nothing the school board can do if you quits to help your mother—that's what I done—quit to help Dad."

  Clair was struck silent with surprise. "I'm—I'm getting my grade eleven," she finally stammered.

  "Oh, yes, that's right," said Willamena with feigned seriousness, "You're going to be a grand teacher someday. That's what your father was always going on about, wasn't it?" Taking stock of Alma and Rose's rapt attention, and Ralph approaching them from behind, pulling his cap up over an ear the size of a conch, Willamena took face to ask what they'd all been querying about for months now. "According to young Missy, your mother's getting a bit low-minded, is she?"

  And as was when she had crouched behind the lobster pots listening to them badmouth her father, Clair rose to her full height and was about to turn on her heel and march back up the hill again, if not for Saul pulling the door open farther, his eyes as hard as two grey beach rocks as he stared fixedly at his daughter.

  "With those looks, you'd think she'd be trying to bring the customers in, not freezing them to death on the stoop," he said past her to Alma, and Clair bit back a satisfied retort as a flush reddened Willamena's face.

  "Tasty figs grows on trees no matter how blight the blossoms," Willamena snapped at her father, flouncing back in the store, but not without a backward glance at the young fellow from Rocky Head who was now tying up at the wharf.

  "And what's a duff without a fig, hey, maid?" said Alma, as they all crowded in behind her, stomping the snow off their boots. "That fellow Frankie looks in the need of a good prune. I don't suppose she got plans for he, now, do she, Saul?"

  "Yes, watch out now I goes with someone from Rocky Head," said Willamena haughtily from behind the counter.

  "They're a working people, and that's something they can teach some of we," said Saul, tightening his apron around his waist. "Tend to her," he ordered Willamena, beckoning towards Clair standing silently at the counter.

  "A pound of tea and a bar of soap," said Clair as Willamena sauntered towards her, but her order was washed out by the door swinging open and Frankie pushing in through, a burlap sack tossed over one shoulder, the salty smell of the sea clinging to his heavy winter clothes, and with a bold smile that demanded acceptance as much as willed it.

  "You're back already," exclaimed Willamena, scampering over to the far side of the counter, greeting him.

  "Good day, good day to you, sir," said Saul.

  "Not what I'd call a good one," replied Frankie in the broad, flat talk of the Rocky Head crowd as he nodded pleasantly to those standing around, "but there's more than a few companies of turrs out there."

  "That's what there is then, brother, thousands," said Ralph, taking a seat atop the apple barrel. "And poor, too, they is."

  "Broody as an old hen to buff," said Rose. "That's not more knitting you got brought up," she asked as Frankie rolled his burlap bag onto the counter.

  "Yup, that's what she is, then," said Frankie.

  "Sure, how do the women find time for buffing birds with all the knitting youse is doing?" said Alma. "My, look at that stitching, Rose," she added, mauling through the pairs of knitted socks and mitts Saul was emptying from the bag onto the counter. "Tighter than Aunt Sulaney's, I think."

  "Yup, too bad it's for government purposes and not our own," said Frankie, an admiring eye upon his goods as he doffed his cap, patting down his slicked-back hair with the knife-edge part. Spotting Clair, he stepped back, sending her a smile of such charm that it tinted her cheeks and brought Willamena scurrying towards her once more, demanding her order.

  "No doubt, sir, there's a market somewhere," Saul was saying, holding open the burlap bag as Alma shoved the knitted goods back inside. "There's more money being won in this war than land; the merchants of death don't die with wars. Find the goods, I always say, and the rest is in your pocket."

  "Fancy words, them is," grunted Ralph. "How come all it gets me is store bills to stuff me pockets with?"

  "What's on the bills stuffs your gut, don't it?" retorted Willamena, coming back to the counter with Clair's tea and soap. And ignoring the sudden flare of Ralph's nostrils, and her father's look of warning, she sidled up to Clair, laying the goods on the counter, asking loudly, "Do you got money?"

  Clair blinked. Money! Aside from the scattered copper, she'd never seen money, and never in the store where everything was always marked down and deducted from her father's work, or his army cheque since he'd gone to war.

  "Well, they're over their limit," said Willamena, pushing the bill book at her father as he stared at her, equally as perplexed. "I told that to Sim twice this week when he was here carrying up stuff to Sare."

  "He—he don't carry up stuff to we," said Clair, hearing naught but the shuffling of Frankie's feet, and the sudden quiet from Alma and the others.

  "I knows what I'm marking down," said Willamena. "And what do you know anyway about what he brings to your mother when you're in school all day?"

  "I gets the groceries," said Clair. She turned confusedly to Saul as he reached past Willamena, pushing her bagged goods in front of her. "Well—do we owe more—?" she asked, faltering as her tongue thickened in the sudden dryness of her mouth. And scarcely hearing Saul's reply that he'd fix it up some other way, she took the bag off the counter and walked hotly out through the door.

  Decidedly, in a soul still clean with youth, there is nothing of the dirtied greys to temper a judgment, but a c
larity that shows decisively what is white and what is not white. And this—this theft of the uncle's, bringing the shame of charity to her father's name, along with the lies he told of his labours on his brother's stoop—seeded scorn in Clair's brain, a scorn that watered itself with rage, anguish, fear and other ills that, left alone, become too monumental to disperse within and is charted into that darker unknown self. And as is with most things that grow, it seeks light. And whereas before this encounter over her father's credit it had flowered into thoughts of pulverized bodies rotting the ground they'd plundered, it now took the form of the living. And as a duckling follows whom or whatever its eyes first light upon, so did the uncle become the harbinger of the rot festering in Clair's mind.

  Missy was kneeling upon a chair, jabbing a junk of wood into the stove when Clair burst in through the door. One look at the scowl on her sister's face and Missy clanked the poker across the stove and, scampering off the chair, dove for the stairwell.

  "You wait there," yelled Clair, kicking off her boots and diving after her.

  "Clair's after me, Clair's after me!" said Missy, the thrill of the chase sounding wildly through her cries as she scrabbled up over the stairs.

  "What're you after doing now?" sighed Sare, trailing out of her room, a few garments of dirty clothes hanging limply from her hands.

  "Clair's after me," shrieked Missy, darting behind her mother, clinging to her skirt.

  "She's blabbing off to Willamena at the store agin," yelled out Clair from the bottom of the stairs. "I've told her and told her not to go blabbing off to Willamena at the store."

  "No, I never!"

  "Yes you did."

  "I never blabs!"

  "Yes she did, Mommy, and there's something else too—" But Clair's accusation was cut off as her mother's wearied look was suddenly replaced by one of fright. Dropping the garments of clothing, she came running down over the stairs, her eyes locked onto a curl of smoke drifting from the kitchen. Clair's insides quickened and she darted into the kitchen after her mother.

  "Are you trying to burn us down?" Sare cried, snatching the burning-hot poker off the floor and scuffing at the charred spot on the canvas. "That's just what your poor father needs to come home to—his house burned to the ground."