The Gravesavers

by Sheree Fitch

  Mabel. Nana had mentioned her but I’d never met her.

  Then he pointed to the right. “Roger Verlong. Famous for farting in church.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “I’m serious. Farting or snoring. But again, don’t let appearances and gas attacks rule him out. He’s a regular teddy bear. A farting, snoring, God-fearing man.”

  I had to wipe tears of laugher out of my eyes. “We sat right behind the man last Sunday.”

  “Lucky you!”

  “Where do you live?” I asked before I even thought the thought.

  He pointed. Up, over, up, across. “Near East Boulder.”

  “Any brothers or sisters?”

  He nodded yes. “You?”

  “None,” I said.

  I guess he sensed my irritation.

  “Race you to the next birch?”

  He beat me for the first time.

  “Cnicus benedictus! I guess I better practise harder!”

  “I had a head start.” It wasn’t true. He was nice, I decided right then.

  “Want to come with me when I take my petition around?” I asked. “Maybe tonight?” What was I doing? Asking him out? Ditz! I am a total ditz.

  “Terribly sorry. I work at night.”

  Yeah, like when I saw him walking in the sunset.

  “But I’ll be with you in spirit.” He flashed those pearly whites and put his hand over his heart. “Honest.”

  APRIL 1ST, 1873

  “Thomas!”

  I screamed out my brother’s name until my voice was hoarse and my breathing was laboured. I was paralyzed, motionless there on the floor until the ship lurched again. This time it was a long as well as violent shuddering. I was spit back out into the passageway and slammed repeatedly against a wall. Splinters of wood gouged my head and I felt the warm gush of my own blood running down my cheek, into my mouth. There’s little doubt I was badly dazed for it was as if the world dropped away suddenly. I was in my body and yet not in my body, like some perplexed and helpless observer watching the bedlam which ensued.

  Sounds were muffled and voices warbled much the way it is if ever you have tried to blow bubbles beneath water. Time was no longer time, it was like an accordion. Seconds bent back upon themselves and doubled and then stretched out again. There was such a hurly-burly of men with their faces contorted and mouths twisted open but all I heard was a growling, like fierce dogs in a fight. I tried to decipher the sounds as if translating from a foreign language.

  “Out! Now!”

  Was that my father’s voice? Wherewasmydadmymum?

  Someone, but no—not my father, yanked me by the arm so hard I thought my elbow dislodged from its socket. I staggered about on my feet but not for long. They lifted me, a whole line of them, and then thrust me forward, hand over hand, head over head, until I reached a small porthole someone had smashed open.

  “Heave!” I heard them shout. I closed my eyes as I shot right through like a canyon ball, exploding out onto what remained of the deck. Needlepoint slivers of glass pricked my skin. I looked back to the opening and saw only a hand clawing the air. I knew with certainty I was the only one small enough to make that egress to safety.

  The ship keeled again, both sideways and forward. With every wave, it was if the entire vessel was being swallowed, gulp by gulp, by the greedy mouth of the sea. A shark-toothed wind bit into my flesh and a cascade of waves swept me up and water filled my throat. I gagged and coughed but my throat was still closed. My lungs were filling faster than the pigs bladders we blew up to use for sport. The ship groaned and creaked and heaved once more. I was thumped against the deck again, a lucky blow this time because finally I choked and had a gasp of air.

  But I had no hold.

  I was spinning and sliding down towards the rest of them. Folks were piling atop each other, but still jostling, grabbing, clenched in a stranglehold between life and death.

  Then? They were falling.

  So numerous were they that I thought of dead flies on an old pane of glass in spring. Except dead flies cannot even buzz, let alone cry out with such ungodly shrieks and wails.

  “John!” Strong arms had me by the waist.

  “Dad?”

  But it was Frith with a rope and he pointed to the mizzen.

  “Climb and I’ll join you as soon as I can!”

  Rung by rung in the rigging I climbed. The tip of the mast was as spindly as the top part of a tree branch and I feared it would snap in the wind. I stopped mid way then tied a bowline knot, securing my ankles to the rigging. Back and forth I swayed and teetered. A boy in a swing.

  Below me was the real pit of hell, filled with water not fire.

  “John!”

  “Ryan!”

  He shinnied the ropes as nimble as ever, with a smile of relief and gratitude on his face. But then I saw it. I saw behind him a mountain of wave cresting higher and higher. There was a roar as it hit the deck and became a pummeling wall of water. Ryan held his hand up to me. I was beyond his reach, I was certain of it, and did not extend my hand to him. When the wave receded, Ryan was gone.

  One after each after another, those below were vanishing before my eyes. I watched a man with his wife and baby for the longest time. He had hold of a bit of railing and was praying. His eyes locked mine just before the wave came that swept them under. Perhaps he said a prayer for me. I heard that baby crying, I did, for several godforsaken minutes longer.

  Once again, time slowed down. The ship rolled over on its belly, gentle like, as if it were some old man merely trying to settle into a good night’s sleep. I was then staring almost face down at the frenzy of waves below. I flapped about, like a rag in the wind. My fingers were just frozen nubs.

  The vessel dipped and then I was flying outwards wondering why it was the moon had simply disappeared.

  — WHICH WITCH? —

  Hamamelis virginiana! Translation: witch hazel! Or maybe my grandmother was a chameleon. That’s all there was to it, I decided. Just when I thought I was getting a handle on her, just as I was changing my feelings about her in light of Harv’s great love and endless devotion to her, just as our mutual interest in the shipwreck was bonding us together in a loose kind of way, I was brought up short. Another side of her emerged. The Wacko Witch. My grandmother truly was a witch of sorts.

  “Hurry up, now, get outta bed, my clients will be here by ten. Lazy Mary, will you get up,” she began to sing. I covered my ears.

  “And I can’t have you clattering about the kitchen. I’ll need quiet for concentrating.”

  She stood in the doorway of my bedroom, one hand on her hip as if she was about to go into an “I’m a little teapot” routine. Well, she was short and stout, like the song said. This particular morning she was dressed up by her standards—brown corduroy pants and a moss green sweater that matched her eyes. For once, she wasn’t wearing that hat and her hair was brushed. It was a mop of gentle curls the colour of ashes from the end of a cigar.

  “Have you got any lipstick?” she asked.

  “Dad won’t let me wear it yet,” I said, blinking the sleep, as well as the surprise, out of my eyes. Carolina warned me people would think I was a tomboy because I didn’t give a hoot about make-up. She insisted I put on lip gloss at school. Corporal Ray did not know.

  But the Vinegar Witch wearing lipstick?

  “Well, that still doesn’t mean you don’t have any in that bag of yours.”

  She looked at me all wide eyed. She’d been snooping!

  I threw back the covers, glad I’d brought my flannel pyjamas and kept on my socks. The floor, even through my socks, felt colder than a skating rink.

  “It’s cranberry,” I said.

  “That’ll do fine. My lips are dry, is all.”

  She fumbled in front of the mirror and smudged it on.

  “Do this, Nana,” I said, poking my finger in my mouth and smacking. “That way it won’t rub off on your teeth.”

  “That right?” she said. “
Well now.” She did as I said and giggled. “Never been much into beautifying, you know,” she said.

  Like I hadn’t noticed.

  She handed me back the tube.

  “No, keep it,” I said. “I think I only ever wore it at Halloween.”

  “Thanks.” She even managed a wobbly cranberry smile. She looked almost pretty. Now if only she’d do something about that chin hair.

  “So, Nan, what’s the occasion? Getting hitched to Harv today?”

  “That’s enough out of you now.”

  “And what do you mean, clients?”

  I was back in bed with the covers up to my chin, shivering. She sat down on the foot of my bed. She started picking threads on the worn-out quilt. Then she looked around the room.

  “Quite the decoration scheme you’ve got here.” She got up and examined my clothesline of clippings and paint-swatch collages. “Lots of history and local colour.”

  “Ha ha. You’re changing the subject,” I said.

  She sighed and sat back down. “Well, I don’t get so much from my old age security cheque, and last winter the furnace had to be replaced and next year it’ll be the roof, no doubt. So. Well, I’ve started this little business on the side, you see.”

  This was something my father didn’t know about. He would have mentioned something like this.

  “What sort of business?”

  “Tea leaves.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I read tea leaves,” she said with the same expression as a person might say “I sell real estate.”

  “You mean like a fortune teller or something? You read people’s futures?”

  “No! That’s just Pugwash—I mean hogwash. Hocus-pocus. Those nitwits on TV, that’s all a hoax. I grow my own herbs out back, as you know. Then I harvest them and pound them and brew up some tea and serve it in the sunroom and, well, they say I have the gift.”

  “The gift?”

  “It’s called tasseography, the reading of tea leaves. I interpret the symbols left at the bottom of the cup. You have to know what you’re looking at. Then it’s plain as day.”

  “Cool,” I said. Not that I meant it. From geography to tasseography? Was it a sign of some old-age disease?

  “Well, I don’t know how cool it is, but four clients once a week is one hundred bucks, and times that by four and that’s four hundred extra dollars a month I’ve got. Not bad. Anyhow, you slept in this morning and I didn’t want to bother you, but they’ll be here in an hour.”

  “I’ll go out for my run, then.” I sighed as if this was a sacrifice.

  “You don’t have to stay away the whole time or anything like that. I just wanted the breakfast things over with.”

  “Okay.”

  She whistled on her way downstairs.

  I peeked in the sunroom before my run. It was completely decked out. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Wow! Nana!” I said.

  “Well, I try my best but—”

  “But nothing,” I said. “It’s beautiful!” And it was.

  The old pine drop-leaf table had been pushed to the centre of the room, with five chairs around it. She’d covered it with a creamy white tablecloth embroidered with delicate blue and yellow pansies. The tablecloth had been freshly ironed. A vase of her garden flowers, brown-eyed Susans and bright orange tiger lilies, made “an eye-catching centrepiece” my mother would say was to die for. On the buffet, her best china teapot and teacups were arranged on a tray, ready to serve.

  “And what’s that delicious smell?” I asked.

  “Scones,” she replied, “that I’ll serve with Devonshire cream.”

  “No, it’s another smell.”

  “Lemon balm, spearmint and rosemary and a few secret ingredients,” she teased. “It’s brewing in the kitchen now.”

  “Well, I think you could charge more, just for sitting in the room with this view,” I said.

  She gave me a hot scone for breakfast. Was it a peace offering? A truce? Where was the witch? Who was the witch? Which witch was she this morning?

  — PLAN B —

  “Minikin!” Max was poking around down on the beach not far from Poplar Grove. I waved and slowed down.

  “Come get a look at this!”

  He was wearing what he always wore. I knew folks in East Boulder were mostly fishing folks without a lot of money, so I tried not to judge. “Judge not your friends by outward show, the feather floats high but the pearl lies low.” It was one of Corporal Ray’s favourite lectures to me. Besides, Max always smelled clean as the ocean air. And he looked good, anyhow. His sweatshirt was blue, faded by the sun and salt. It matched his eyes. He wore a pair of denim shorts frayed at the cuffs. His sneakers were orange canvas and rubber, scuffed on the toes. The sole of his right sneaker was torn. Sometimes, it made a flapping sound when he walked.

  “What is it?” I panted. I hoped he thought the panting was just from my run.

  “You tell me.”

  It was a ring. A green stone set in gold was wedged between two rocks.

  “An emerald? From the wreck?”

  He shrugged.

  “Looks pretty old.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” he said. “Could have been anyone’s, I guess. Take it—it’s yours, Minikin.”

  I picked it up.

  “Well, put it on!” he said.

  I just stood with my mouth open like some kind of fool. “Where I come from, if you take a ring from a boy—”

  “What?”

  “It wouldn’t be right,” I mumbled.

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t get excited. We’re too young to get married … yet.”

  I turned Valentine Red. Romantic Red. Red-y or Not.

  “Can’t you just take it as a gift … from an old pal?”

  “Sure.” Pal. Old. “Thanks.” The darn ring fit.

  “How’s the petition going?” Guess he needed a topic change too.

  “It’s not.”

  “Why not? Go door to door yet?”

  “No. I’ve been training, and besides, it’s useless.

  It’s like Nana said. Nobody cares.”

  “Don’t say that! There are still folks whose dead relatives helped in the rescue that night. They’d all care. And I care. And my own mother and father would care.”

  “Well get them to sign, then. Three signatures so far. Harv’s store is always filled with people. My name, Nana’s and Harv’s. Whoopdy-doo. Like I said, who cares?”

  “Gravesaver! That’s you! That’s who!” He poked me in the ribs. “You’ve got to do something bigger than this petition idea, anyhow. Actions speak louder than words.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more. But what?”

  “Look out!” He pointed ahead. The limousine was coming towards us.

  “Hardly Whynot!” I whispered.

  “Who?”

  “Hardly. As in Whynot. Haven’t you heard the rumour that he’s renting Admiral Fullerton’s place? If it’s true, all I want is his signature!”

  “Great! Then you’ll have four on your petition.”

  “No, silly! An autograph—for my mother! She’s a huge fan and she’s been sort of down in the dumps, I guess you could say. What a surprise it would be. I mean … Oh my … Mississippi! What an idea! You said ‘something big.’ He’s big. Major big. He’s huge. What if I got him interested? He’s even got money.

  Swimming pools of it, I’ve heard. The Atlantic left from Liverpool, his home town, come to think of it. There’s a connection. Oh, I’ve got it! Get Hardly on this and we have ourselves a restored grave!”

  I hugged him. Then I got overheated.

  I rewound to Nana’s. “Gimme Your Hand to Hold.” The Ladybugs song blared into my head because as my arms shot out from my sides, the ring on my hand sparkled. We’re too young to get married … yet.

  So he was a flirt. A tease. Still, I wanted to hug him even tighter, not just hold his hand.

  — THE CACKLEBER
RY WOMEN —

  Nana’s “clients” were still in the sunroom. It was lunchtime, my brain was buzzing, and I had that lopsided feeling again. I was starving.

  “Minn, that you?” Nana called out. I was trying to sneak a scone up to my room.

  “We won’t bite,” someone said. Her voice was deeper than any trucker’s fuelling up at Harv’s.

  I stuck my head in and immediately wished I hadn’t. The four of them looked ready to pick at my bones, and I got that fluttery warning feeling in the pit of my belly.

  “They want to meet you, Minn,” said my grandmother. Her left eyebrow did that leapfrog hop it did sometimes. If I wasn’t mistaken, the look she gave me was more an apology. And those eyebrows kept ahopping. Okay, so if I was reading the telegraph correctly she was also saying to me: “Humour them, puh-leeze, they’re hopeless.”

  “Why would you want to meet me?” My tone was borderline rude.

  “We’ve seen you out running these past weeks. We’re renting the cottages up on Poplar Grove.”

  Her words were slurred. I realized with a bit of a shock that they had been knocking back some of Nana’s blueberry wine.

  “Yes, you’re a speedy little devil. Good for you. But we’ve got a question,” she continued. The woman was older than my mother, I think. Her neck was so long she made me think of a giraffe. “We’re staying in the rental cottages up on Poplar Grove Hill,” she said again.

  “Oh, Sylvia, cut to the chase,” wheezed another woman in tight leather pants.

  “We saw you talking to the chauffeur,” said the third woman. She was the one with the trucker’s voice.

  “Hardly’s chauffeur,” said the final woman. “At least that’s what we think. One of the famous Ladybugs—before your time, dear—” they all cackled at this, “is renting Admiral Fullerton’s mansion for the summer. Or so we’ve heard.”