The Gravesavers

by Sheree Fitch

  Once, I worked up enough nerve and killed one. It crunched as if it had bones and splattered yellow guck. After that, killing was not an option. I learned to always wear socks and do my business fast.

  As if the moths weren’t bad enough, in order to go to the bathroom in the dead of night, in the darkest dark, I had to go past the Witch’s Closet. Ever since I could remember, my grandmother had a padlock on this door. I even heard my mother ask my father what the big deal was. “What on earth does she do in there, Ray? What is she so damned secretive about?”

  “Oh, I think it’s just her stamp collection,” my father said once, “and photos and stuff she’s saved over the years. I think she even has some of my dad’s old Wilf Carter records in there. Wouldn’t mind taking a peek myself.” But Nana guarded it like she was secret service at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police herself.

  But once I saw it open. A naked light bulb dangled from a long chain. The ceilings were very high and my grandmother very short. A red ribbon was attached to a smaller chain to switch the bulb on and off. Nana turned and saw me peeking in at her. She clicked the light off and hid what was in her hands.

  “Do not go snooping! You might not like what you find!”

  I ran off crying for my mother but never told her what happened until years later.

  “I think it was a skeleton,” I told her. “In her hands, I think she had bones, lots of bones, a bunch of bones.”

  “Oh, honey, it was probably a dream or your O.I. going wonky. Besides,” she said with a little laugh, “everyone’s got skeletons in their closet, get it?”

  Even though my mother tried to joke her way out of it, she didn’t ever convince me. There was something spooky about that closet. And I know what I saw.

  Besides, why did my mother always whistle really loud and walk super fast every time she passed the closet herself? It gave her the heebie-jeebies too. I know it did.

  I scared myself more just lying there thinking on it. But I really had to go. What else to do? I mustered up my courage. How do you muster? I used to wonder when I heard folks say that. When I was really little I pictured myself covered with invisible mustard that kept away all bad things. Things that you didn’t want to ketch up with you. Ha ha.

  I confess that at the ripe old age of twelve the game still worked wonders. I sprinted safely to the bathroom. Whistling. There were only five moths and they slept the whole time!

  On my way back, I tiptoed past the Witch’s Closet. The door rattled. Maybe it was unlocked. I could go in. If I wanted.

  If I dared.

  I reached out. The knob was as cold as metal in winter. I turned it. The door didn’t even budge.

  I sprinted back to my room. Nana mumbled in her sleep. I held my breath. She snored.

  By then I was wide-awake as a Saturday morning. I started reading. It worked, finally, but it was sunrise when I fell back to sleep. Nana shouted up not long after that.

  “Get up—get cracking!” She had the same squawking voice as the gulls circling the basin and shrieking the day to life outside my bedroom window. You should have heard her down there, clomping across the kitchen floor, rattling the drawers on purpose. It’s amazing how one little old lady could make such a racket. The radio was up full blast and she was whistling away, off key. I think it was “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” or some other cheery working or wake-up song. She’d already have written out a list of chores longer than her arm for me because “idle hands come to no good” or however it went.

  “Early to bed, early to rise, the early bird gets the worm,” she shouted up just then.

  “Eat your oatmeal by yourself and may your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth for all I care,” I muttered. I gagged at the very smell of her porridge.

  Besides, I had a plan. I would take an hour for running first thing every day. That way, I could avoid sitting across the table from her and wouldn’t have to listen to her dentures snap when she chewed.

  I got dressed beneath the covers. Not only was I afraid she’d burst into my room like a tornado at any moment, but it was so cold it was polar. Even by midsummer, this house would be damp and clammy and she’d still be poking wood in the stove to take the chill out like she was doing now. Much as I love the place, it’s always too cold and smells like the dust of potatoes kept too long in the storage cellar.

  “Going out for my run, Nana!” I whooped out over the din. I was flying down those stairs. I knew if nothing else, I had a bit of speed going for me.

  “Get back here. Minn! Cinnamon Elizabeth Hotchkiss! What do—?”

  “Training, Nan, Dad must have told you.”

  She was on the veranda then watching me stretch. “Going to the Olympics now, are you?” she huffed.

  “Who knows?”

  “Well, ambition’s good if you got talent to go with it and even talent’s not gonna do you a lick of good unless you got some breakfast in your belly first.”

  “I’ve got my sports drink.”

  “It’s blue.”

  “So?”

  “You can’t tell me that blue juice first thing in the morning is good for you. Gut rot. That’s what that is, gut rot. Eating anything blue is not natural.”

  “What about blueberries?”

  “Don’t you sass me!”

  “See you in an hour!”

  “Get back here! There’ll be no breakfast for you. I’m not running a restaurant here this summer … and furthermore … ah, Chicoutimi!”

  As I rounded the bend, I heard the door slam. Slam dunk for me, I thought. She had to know from the start I didn’t need a babysitter or someone telling me what to do.

  — BEACHCOMBING —

  The running that morning wasn’t easy. Maybe it was all the energy I’d just wasted, maybe it was the dirt road, and maybe I should have had at least an orange. Ten minutes into my run, for crying out loud, for no reason at all, I started crying out loud. I don’t mean crying just a little, I mean bawling like a lunatic. I couldn’t seem to stop, either the running or the crying, and I don’t know what was running faster, my nose or me.

  I slowed down a little, though, when I saw a black limousine snaking through the poplar trees up ahead on Poplar Hill. My heart did a cartwheel in my chest.

  Carolina was right! It had been a rumour for years, but maybe just maybe Hardly Whynot did have a summer home here. Who else in Boulder Basin would be driving a limousine? It turned out of Poplar Lane and headed towards me. I could make out the silhouette of a chauffeur through the windshield. Hat, sunglasses. The real thing.

  Any minute now, it would drive up alongside of me. The window of the limo would slide open silently. Mr. Whynot himself would lean out, saying, “Aye, mate, out for a run, are we?” I knew what he looked like and how he talked because my mother made me watch the old movies so many times. Then I would tell him that my mother was his biggest fan ever and he was the only man she ever loved besides my dad Corporal Ray and how her lifelong wish was to get his autograph. Could I please have one for her? He would say yes. And my mother would be grateful she had one daughter at least.

  But not like this. I couldn’t meet someone that famous and British and make an impression looking like this! Not even for my mother. I knew my eyes were swollen from my yanging and my nose all crusty. No. Proper introductions are important in our house. I crossed the road.

  I scrambled over the boulders lining the shore and started leaping from one rock to another towards the ocean. Jack be nimble, Minn be quick! I sang to myself. It was a dangerous thing to do, not because of the ocean—the tide was out—but it would be all too easy to sprain my ankle. That would be the end of my running for the summer, not to mention the only means of escape from my grandmother. I slowed down to smaller hops.

  As the limo passed, I peeked back up. The chauffeur gave me a thumbs-up. His sunglasses were the ski goggle models. He was probably a bodyguard as well and was checking me out, making sure I wasn’t a sniper in disguise. He looked long enough to
get a physical description. Subject: Pre-teen girl. Hair: honeyblonde-brown. Eyes: bluegraygreen. Height: short. Wgt.: featherweight. Distinguishing feature: freckles unevenly distributed across bridge of nose. Status: newcomer. Potential stalker.

  Cool as a cucumber, or so I hoped, I nodded. It was a nod that said: “To me you are just another limo and I am not suspicious about your boss. I am not impressed by your fancy car and I am not Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden, girl detective.” But that’s exactly how I felt.

  The limo sped on down the road, leaving a plume of dust behind it.

  At the water’s edge, I walked on for a while, stopping now and then to bend down and snap the seaweed pods. The clumps of dried-out seaweed by the road were the colour of ashes. Cheerleaders’ pompoms. But these clustered ones, the fresh ones, were the colour of dry mustard and made a snapping sound until they gave a little wheeze and oozed out a spit of water. The other kind of seaweed reminded me of lasagna: long ribbons of seaweed littered across the sand, as if the mermaids had had some wild party and the streamers were left over next day for someone to come and pick up.

  You can’t move anything by the ocean’s edge without noticing how everything is connected. The barnacles on the rocks, the tiny pool of water with crabs scuttling for safety. Then there’s the spiders, always looking like they are on some sort of mission. Spiders with a plan. Must get to school, must get to market, must get to work and spin my web.

  A few feet away from where the bank of rocks ended was a strip of beach. The sand was a fudgy brown and polka-dotted with clam holes. Just last summer we were in about this same spot, digging clams for supper. Corporal Ray loved to pretend he was the clam in each hole. In a squeaky voice like some cartoon character he’d start in: Don’t dig here, please spare my life. Go next door—the meat is much more tender next door. Oh, thank you, kind sir, now I’m happy as a clam, ha ha ha. By the time we had a bucket full and went home to boil them and dip them in butter, I could barely eat them for the guilt of taking their lives. But I had learned you eat what’s put in front of you at Nana’s. I laughed at the thought of my father and his foolishness. Then I had a flash: a picture of him and my mother holding hands in the sunset. They could have been the cover of one of Carolina’s romance novels, I thought as I walked back towards Nana’s. So I erased the picture from my mind with a shake of my head, as if I had water in my ear. What was wrong with me? I had that sad throat again. I started beachcombing as if I was searching for gold.

  — DISCOVERY —

  I found a sand dollar, a starfish and a sea urchin and stuffed them in the pocket of my sweatshirt. Then I settled myself on a large, flat rock. The sun dried my face. The waves sloshed into shore in time with my breathing and the beating of my heart. I don’t know how long I sat there, but too soon the tide was coming back in—my signal to head back up the road.

  In front of Nana’s house, the rocks were smaller and clacked together beneath my feet like marbles in a pouch. This gave me an idea. Perhaps I should bring her a peace offering. I started to look for heart-shaped rocks. I’d been collecting them for years. And so had Nana. It was the only thing you might say we had in common. All I ever found were crooked hearts, but it seemed to me that if I looked long enough, some day I might just find that perfect heart-shaped rock. Yes, I might even give it to the witch. Or not.

  A person’s eyes could get buggy from looking so long at the ground.

  Just as I was about to give up, an odd-shaped shell caught my eye. I figured some creature lived in it, judging from the shape it was in. Maybe the gulls ate the inside and bashed it on the rocks the way they did with mussels. It was the size of a tennis ball, I’d say, but more oval than round. I poked it with a stick at first, to make sure some spider with shark teeth wouldn’t attack. I turned it over. It was hard to believe that the scream I heard was my own.

  It was a tiny, perfect human skull.

  DEPARTURES

  The trip to Liverpool by train was grim. Mum cried as we pulled out of the station. Dad tried to lighten things but didn’t have much luck. I stared out at the countryside passing by until Dad gave up his cheery act and fell asleep. The only thing louder than his snoring was the train itself. The clickety-clack and screaming engines, the whistle blowing every time it slowed down and chugged through another village.

  Thomas looked like someone dreaming while awake. Yes, he was with us! I was over the moon. But he sure wasn’t happy about it. Even I couldn’t get Rebecca’s face out of my mind. When they rushed up to the train and Thomas jumped on at the last second, her eyes were puffy from her sobbing. And she looked at me as if I’d committed a murder. She may as well have said if it weren’t for you my heart would not be breaking. I felt a pang—a little teeny pang—of guilt. Very teeny. After all, he was my brother before he was her beau.

  But so much for the happy travels everyone had wished us. I tried to read, but the motion of the train turned my belly inside out. The smell of coal? Sickening! To make matters worse it started to rain. Since money was tight, we were riding in an open coach. We were getting wet.

  Dad woke up and tried to cover us with a blanket and looked up into the night sky.

  “Thank the good Lord for relatives,” he said. “I trust your cousin Libby will have a good meal and a dry bed for us. “Then he shouted and pointed. “Ahead, boys, Liverpool’s just ahead.”

  Thomas and I stood up and strained over the tops of folks’ heads to get a look. There were pinpricks of fire in the distance.

  “Gas lamps!” said Thomas.

  I’d never seen anything like it. “It’s as if all the stars in the Milky Way have fallen from the sky!” I said.

  “Liverpool today—tomorrow the world!” Dad clapped his hands together. “It’ll be good to taste that ocean air.” He kissed the top of Tom’s head. “You’ll see, son. All your life’s before you still.”

  Thomas nodded and gave half a grin. For one second, his eyes danced. I beamed at him.

  He narrowed his eyes and scowled.

  FAREWELLS

  “Go do your business, John, it’ll be the last comfortable dump you have for weeks.”

  “Thomas, really!” said Mum, blushing in front of her cousin. Thomas nudged me when she went round the back, though. First chance the water closet was vacant.

  Libby’s husband, Harold, navigated the carriage through the narrow, crowded streets of the city to the dockyard. It was a grey day. The city was wrapped in fog thicker than a woollen blanket. Libby explained it was more than fog.

  “It’s the poison in the air from all the industry. It’ll be worse where you’re going to.”

  Thomas shot her a withering look. “Thanks for your kindly words of encouragement,” he muttered to me.

  When we reached the dockyard we were sucked into the whirlwind of energy. The ground beneath us vibrated.

  “John, over here! Take a look at that, would you?” Thomas pulled my arm. He was pointing to a ship.

  “That’s ours?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you sure?” I choked out. I was looking up and up and up. I was getting dizzier by the second.

  “What’s the matter, little brother, getting scared?”

  “Not likely!” I said, but kept hold of his coattails.

  The men working on that giant, whale-shaped boat beetled to and fro, carrying crates on their backs and pushing them into holes darker than the mouths of underground caves. The stench in the air was overpowering—sweat and rotting fish and salt and more coal mingled together.

  I retched—and vomited my breakfast. On Tom’s shoe.

  “John! Disgusting! Here,” he said. He wiped my face with a brisk rub of his handkerchief. “Quick now, before Mum sees and makes a big fuss. You’ll be fine. Just too much excitement. Breathe.”

  “I’d rather not. That’s the problem.”

  “Then plug your nose. Like this. Just scrunch it up and then breathe through your mouth.” His voice changed as he showed me. I did as I was told
. It worked.

  Single file, holding on to each other, we wove our way through the crowd. Finally, we reached a man in uniform at the head of a long queue of people. He frowned as he shuffled through the handful of papers and tickets Dad handed over. He looked at the crate and cradle, shook his head. I watched Dad slip some money into the man’s palm. He waved us forward.

  Thomas jabbed me in the ribs. “Told you about them. Was I right or what?” I followed his finger.

  At the stern of the ship, on a thick cable of rope leading up to another one of those dark holes, was a rat as big as a beagle. It crawled up a twist of rope and into the belly of the ship. We both shivered. Rats spread the plague that claimed our grandparents’ lives. Now that was a story that haunted us even more than legends of the Black Knight.

  “It’s time,” said Dad. He was pale beneath his usual browned face. Mum sobbed into Libby’s shoulder and Libby was bawling too.

  “For God’s sake, Mare,” Dad said as we walked up the gangplank to the main deck, “I didn’t think you even liked the woman.”

  “It’s not Libby I’m crying for, it’s England,” she sniffled. Dad came to a dead halt. Thomas and I bumped into them.

  “We can turn around right now, Mary Hindley. It’s not too late. They’ll give me my job back in a second at the mill—you know that. Are you sure this is what you want?”

  I held my breath.

  Mum reached up and passed her hand across Dad’s forehead like she was feeling for a fever. “You are the kindest man alive, Paddy. I thank you for asking that question.”