Downhill Chance

by Donna Morrissey

  "He's probably just wanting to be friendly," said Clair, the floor creaking as she walked, soothing Brother. "Who knows what he might have to say—" her voice trailed off wearily.

  "Would she see you?" asked Nora.

  "She won't even open the door, Nory. And—she never goes outside. Leastways, not during the day."

  "She shouldn't be cooping herself up like that. The Lord knows she's not the first young one to fall down. Is she showing much?"

  "According to Alma, she is. Lord, the thought of her suffering—"

  "She won't—there's smaller than her after giving birth—and younger, too. And once the baby's born, she'll want to see you—I knows she will."

  "You don't know her," whispered Clair. "She's always been so stubborn. And him—but that's it," she added more strongly. "No sense in crying—we'll just have to wait and see. You go on now, and see to Prude."

  All too quickly her aunt was gone, the door closing behind her, leaving Hannah trapped behind the stove. The rocker groaned, taking her mother's weight, and a series of snorting and suckling as Brother latched on to the bottle's nipple. A silence fell, loud and heavy. And she knew without looking that her mother had gone to that place again. She lay there, listening. She'd never felt before the heaviness of this place that her mother sat in, what with Father clumping around, and the baby gurgling or fussing, and the noise she made herself, scampering from room to room, searching for things. She listened now to how her mother never rocked, never made soothing sounds to Brother, never hummed or whispered comforts to herself. Yet, she felt the maelstrom within her; knew it because she felt it herself—this undertow, sucking the silence more heavily around them, the burden of its weight crushing her lungs as she ached to breathe. And a fear grew within her for that place of unrest that sent emotions churning worse than the waters of Chouse, yet it fitted the sickness in her belly somehow, this silence that overlay a house, stifling all but the scattered creak of a rocker and the drone of the outside sea, for was she not sharing in this place of unrest, too, now? Was not the loss of her aunt hers to grieve as well?

  Since the first that she could remember, she felt kindred with her mother.

  "FIFTEEN HUNDRED OF US CROSSED OVER, but it wasn't till '41 I met Joey," said the vet to the few women and older boys allowed inside Willamena's kitchen that evening. "Part of the 166 Nfld. Regiment, we was then—heavy artillery, defending the mother's shores. Till the bombing, and that's when she went to war, b'yes; that's when she went to war. But we was a long ways from war yet, the 166th was. From heavy artillery to field we went, and for that we was moved to Scotland. Yup, Scotland, sirs, the heart of the world, she is. In all the places I tucked in, it was there we were treated the best. No matter your name, you were a Newfoundlander, and what they knowed of us was what our forefathers showed them during the first great war. And they done us proud, our forefathers did; they done us proud, for wouldn't nary a door that don't open to a Newfoundlander in that prized land of Scotland. And the girls—" Raising his face with the bliss of a sleeping infant, he'd slip into more yarns of what sounded more like an excursion around the world than a sojourn into war as he traipsed from kitchen to kitchen, sipping tea with the women. And after he'd warmed them with story, and evening was drawing nigh, he'd stroll out onto the bank, talking more serious talk with the older boys, Roddy and Marty, and coaxing them to build a fire so's he could sit, watching the sea, he'd say, and mind himself that it was over them waters that he had bathed in blood, and not till the journey back home did he wash himself clean of its stench. "And a little nip, b'yes, if you can find one, for it pains me, it do, to think on that stench—it's still there," he'd say, holding out his stubby, callused hands. "Every time I looks, I sees it, staining me flesh. And it's only when I talks of it do it fade a bit, and I prays the day will come that if I tells it enough times, and if I dreams it enough times, they might start coming clean, b'yes; they might start coming clean."

  And they clung to his every word, did the folk from Rocky and Lower Head. Aside from Prude and Clair, that was. Neither woman was to be seen out on the bank during the next few days. But still they heard. From the mouths of Nora and Beth and Hannah and every other youngster that could string ten words together, they heard. And with keen interest, too, they listened to the growing yarn the old vet was spinning about how Joey was the spit of his own boy—the one he'd lost to the sea once, and his bones nibbled clean by the fish when he was found five years later in a water cave. So, he'd taken to Joey, he had, treating him as if he was his own, and it was good that he'd done so, for he showed him all the fine secrets of the Scottish towns, and sat with him in a great many pubs, clapping their hands to song, and Joey tossing his hat to the pretty girls with nicely set hair and lips as red as darkest ochre.

  "Yes, he was my boy," said Sergeant Roland Ouncill, sitting on the bank, sharing a nip of shine with Beth and the fisher Harve. "I nourished him, I did, with food, wine, warm socks, anything that struck his fancy—even an old accordion he found in a junk shop. And Lucifer, could he play. 'Twas times he made us bawl like babies, he stroked that accordion so pretty—especially when he'd play 'Oh Mary of the Cold, Cold Moors.'"

  The stranger smiled. He didn't look as devil-like in his common plaid shirt rolled up at the elbows, and his thinning grey hair brushed behind his ears, and his belly pouching out over his pants; more the aging old-timer—if not for the sunken red eyes, and purplish spots splotching the pallor behind the stubble greying his cheeks. "It's odd you never met Job Gale," said Beth. "That's all Joey talked about in his letters he wrote."

  "I never said I didn't meet him," said the old vet. "I said I didn't know him. Difference between meeting a man and knowing a man. We never got on, we never—aye, his weren't the ways of Joey. 'Tis another world over them waters—another world." And he closed his eyes to the breeze and the lapping water. A snipe screeched and his eyes startled open. "Damn snipes," he muttered. "Damn snipes," and he began to drift again. "My boy," he croaked, not so's anyone could hear, but sitting as close as Hannah was, she heard. She saw, too, as he lifted the tumbler of shine to his mouth, his lip beginning to quiver and wondered why neither her mother nor her grammy Prude had yet to sit with this stranger, and listen themselves to the stories they were hungering to hear. For neither of them shushed Nora or Beth or the youngsters when they went running to and fro, repeating for them each word that fell from the stranger's mouth. And more confounding was her father's refusal to listen to her yarns as he sat at the table, just home from camp, finishing off a late supper of tea and baked salmon.

  "But he knowed Uncle Joey, Daddy," said Hannah, climbing down off the bin with a bottle cap filled with flour. "Is this enough?" she asked her mother, who was sitting in the rocker, washing Brother from a pan near her feet, and him laid naked across her knees.

  "That's enough—keep stirring so's not to burn it—just a little brown is all," she added as Hannah pushed the high chair, which used to be hers and was now waiting for Brother, nearer the stove and laid the cap onto the stove top.

  "That don't look too good," said Luke, peering at the baby's bare bottom, peppered in a red rash.

  "He's forever with a rash," said Clair. "He—the vet—says he wants to meet you. There's always so many people about—I thought we'd have him in some evening."

  "Do it after I'm gone, lovey, because I knows all I needs to know about Sergeant Roland Ouncill."

  "What do you know? What a few people are after saying—"

  "I knows he's an old bastard, that's what I knows," said Luke, and Hannah glanced over her shoulder, as surprised as her mother by her father's words. "And how do I know that?" he asked, calm as anything. "I knows that by the way he's sitting out there on our shores, sniffing our brew and peddling out yarns to keep our liquor flowing, that's how I knows that. I met his kind before; liquor-addled they are, and they'd tap their own bodies for their own spirit if they could—just in case it was the drinking kind. And that's why I'm proud the old wom
an out there is having nothing to do with him. But what I'm more interested in knowing is how come you haven't already been talking to him?"

  Clair shrugged. "He didn't know my father."

  "How come he knowed Joey, then, if he didn't know your father?"

  "It's a big war, Luke."

  "Is that what he said—he didn't know your father?"

  "He said he met him, but he didn't know him."

  "What's that mean?"

  "What do I know what it means! That's why I'd like to have him in—to talk to him about it."

  "Why have him in?"

  "Why not? He's been everywhere else—except Grammy's. It's only fitting we'd have him here, too."

  "Suppertime tomorrow."

  "No. Everybody else would come too."

  "Thought so," said Luke, with a deep nod.

  "Thought what?"

  "You don't want nobody else listening when you asks him about your father. You listen to me, lovey," he said as Clair rose with a sharp sigh, "you got nothing to be frightened of with your father; he was a brave man—"

  "Leave it be, Luke," she warned, laying Brother in his crib.

  "I met your father. I knows his stock. He was a good man, he was, and if that old bastard out there was to say anything but, I'd throw him overboard, you hear that?"

  "Ohh, for God's sakes," sighed Clair, stacking the dishes in front of him, "you're bellowing as if you was in the woods."

  "Bloody yarns," muttered Luke.

  "And who's to say they're bloody yarns?" asked Clair, the forks clanging from her hands. "He was a sergeant—Joey's sergeant. He just might have something to say."

  "Yup, he might," said Luke, "but I was already told; he died with courage, your father said, and that's what I carries with me—he died with courage. How many bullets or bombs or whatever tore at him, matters none."

  "It mattered to Daddy, then," Clair whispered. Gathering up the dropped forks, she carried them to the sink. Luke was quick behind her.

  "Lovey, I don't make light of your father's suffering. No, no, listen to me," he said, as she turned her back to him, "I knows you don't like to talk about him, but damn it, Clair, I thought I walked in hell once, till I met him, but, 'twas a different hell I seen in his eyes—one that's been scaring me ever since, and all I can ever think is he must've been a helluva man to carry around whatever it was he was carrying around—a helluva man."

  "But he didn't," Clair croaked, twisting around to face him. "He let it kill him—his way of thinking on it, day after day—"

  "His way of thinking? Geezes cripes, you think it was a way of thinking that broke a man like your father? Lovey, it weren't no bloody way of thinking that took Job Gale. When a man walks that deep in hell, taking off a uniform ain't going to bring him out of it. It was nothing but guts that brought him back. He could've stayed if it wasn't for ye and your mother, and he would've found peace a lot damn sight earlier if he'd gone with Joey."

  "Then let me know that!" Clair cried out, her face as stark as death.

  Luke quietened. "Tell you what, Clair," he said finally. "Let me take you to Cat Arm tomorrow." As she tried to walk away, he argued, "I told you once I'd take you back. Maybe it would be good for you to go back. I've always felt you should."

  Suddenly her eyes swooped onto Hannah standing on the high chair, motionless as she stared at them, and smoke from the burning flour oozing up from the stove. She startled as her mother darted towards her and snatched the spoon from her hand, pushing the bottle cap to the back of the stove.

  "Now, look," exclaimed Clair, staring at the burnt flour, her voice quavering. "Rock him, Luke," she ordered as the baby started up bawling, "and Hannah, you start with the dishes, I browns more flour. And there'll be no more talk this night," she added sharply to Luke, helping Hannah off the high chair. "There's enough filling heir ears these days, without having to listen to us."

  Scruffing the back of Hannah's head, her father picked up Brother and sat himself in the rocking chair as Hannah began scraping bones off the plates, each casting chastened glances the other's way, whilst sneaking glances at Clair as she busied herself scraping the burnt flour out of the bottle cap. Brother's cries fretted into silence and all might have ended well enough had Willamena not felt the need to vindicate herself from a similar deed perhaps done eight years before. But as with Prude's prophecy, mere circumstance is ignorant of the greater seed it comes from, as was Willamena's visit that evening.

  "I'm not one for arguing, but there's some talk I won't stand for," she announced as both Clair and Luke turned to her in surprise. "Hannah called Lynn a bastard!"

  "Hope now!" exclaimed Hannah, mind frantically seeking backwards.

  "I checked it with Grammy Prude before I come here," said Willamena in a no-nonsense voice.

  "Hannah?" asked Clair, her tone already laying out punishment.

  "I never! Lynn's a liar!"

  "Prude heard you—I asked her—you called Lynn a merry-begot, you did, and you called her it twice."

  "So?" challenged Hannah.

  "I—don't think she knows what that means," said Clair as Luke turned to one side with a soft groan.

  "Yes I do," said Hannah, "I heard Aunt Beth—"

  "Hannah!"

  Hannah jumped, clattering a saucer onto the floor as her father came out of the rocker, and still holding Brother, scooped her up with one arm and lodged her down in the hall. "Bedtime," he said, patting her bottom, nudging her towards the stairs.

  "She called Aunt Missy a trollop," Hannah yelled, then winced as her father's hand gripped her shoulder, boosting her up over the first couple of steps.

  "Not another word," threatened Luke. "You hear me?"

  She tensed against the stairs, but moved no farther as her father strolled back into the kitchen, speaking with a controlled quiet to Willamena. "Perhaps it's Clair who ought to be knocking on your door, if we was to pay heed to youngsters."

  "It's not from other youngsters they're picking up this talk," said Willamena, in full view of Hannah as she inched back down the stairs, listening. "Lynn oughtn't to have said what she did, but it's only what she's hearing, and I won't have the same said about me. I wasn't tarred with that brush—" She paused as the door opened and Frankie stepped inside, letting in the evening breeze and the guffaws from the old war vet and others as they sat around a fire on the beach.

  "There you are," he said, turning to Willamena. "Someone from Lower Head wants to send a message—it's important," he added, holding the door for her.

  Willamena stared from Clair to Luke, then, tilting her head, walked back out the door. Frankie closed it quietly behind her and with an invite from Luke, drew out a chair at the table.

  "Is what they're saying true—that Missy was running around?" asked Clair.

  "God, no," said Frankie, shaking his head. "She's got a good name. She was only doing what they were all doing—prancing around the hills on starry nights with the boys—it's what we all done, wasn't it? They says she got caught first time. And who's to know who is or isn't a merry-begot—weddings took care of that."

  "Nobody's saying who?" asked Luke.

  "Not a word," said Frankie. "She won't say, either."

  Clair shook her head, and Hannah flattened herself out, scarcely breathing as her mother took the baby from her father and bent over the crib with the burnt flour, diapering him. Her face was taut, pale, even as her father lit the lamp, yellowing the evening light.

  "Have you thought about sending her to Corner Brook till the baby's born?" asked Frankie. "There's a place there for young girls."

  "She's not giving the baby up," said Clair.

  "Even still. Some goes just to have privacy whilst they're pregnant."

  "Damn foolishness they're made to feel this way," said Luke. "Must be a way of making her think differently rather than running off and hiding."

  "None that's going to settle itself soon," said Clair. "Perhaps she might like to go to Corner Brook till the baby's b
orn—and it won't be that far with the road coming through to the Basin—two hours' drive, Frankie?"

  "If that," said Frankie. "And with the road, I'll be going back and forth more often—and you, too, if ye goes ahead with your plan." Frankie paused at the quizzical look from Luke. Scrooping back his chair, he rose. "Think I'll mosey out there, see what they're on about this evening. Coming out, Luke?"

  "In a bit."

  "Yup, see you, then. Never mind nothing Willamena says," he added on his way out the door to Clair. "Youngsters exaggerates everything. I'll have a word with Lynn, the young bugger."

  It was her chance to scramble up over the stairs, but her father was onto his feet the second the latch clicked in the door.

  "What's he talking about?" he asked, striding before her mother.

  "Nothing I wants to talk about right now," said Clair, trying to move around him.

  "Tell me, Clair; what the hell's he talking about?" he asked more loudly.

  Clair sighed, starting to gather the dishes. "This isn't how I wanted to tell you—and I don't want to argue any more this evening, either—"

  "Tell me, Clair."

  "I'm thinking of starting up a small store. I won't need anything from you," she added quickly, toppling over cups in her haste. "With Hannah's help, it won't be much to serve the few people around here, and it would certainly save having everyone going up to the Basin every time they needs some little thing. We could set it up in the front room—we don't use it for anything, and the extra money will help with Hannah's education—" She faltered as Luke stared at her, shaking his head speechlessly. "I'm not going to argue it," she began, raising a hand to silence him. "We've already had enough this night."

  "First, you answer me this one thing," he asked quietly. "How is it you got plans to change the roof over our heads and you goes to Frankie first?"

  "It's just that he knows about such things—"

  "About whether or not we should have a store?"

  "About how to go about starting it. He knows the right people, and he's offered to put his name on a bill for us—but it was my idea," she said loudly, "and it's a damn fine idea. And I would've told you, but I thought you'd say no."