Lily's Story

by Don Gutteridge

  Lily nodded. “First things first, though,” she said, glancing down.

  Lily went again to Maudie’s house, a neat white cottage with a brick chimney and a fancy metal stove to keep it cozy through the winter. Maudie was friendly and incurably chatty; she quizzed Lily on every aspect of her history in Moore township, and to her surprise Lily found herself not only answering but volunteering extra detail, embellishment, even. The ladies – farm girls every one of them who had married young and willingly trailed their husbands to the excitement of the new towns – seemed particularly titillated by her stories about Old Samuels, Sounder and Acorn. Sometimes they tittered in the strangest places. Afterwards she felt vaguely guilty and if Tom asked her how her ‘hen session’ went, she would snap at him or keep a morose silence as long as she could bear to. He put her moods down to the delicacy of her ‘condition’ and kept smiling.

  Tom smiled because he was genuinely happy. He liked the winter work, in part she supposed because he hated the slave-labour of the summers in the freight-sheds. But also because in the car-shops he could use his hands and his brains. He could work in concert with a select crew assessing problems and improvising solutions as the rolling stock limped or was dragged into their repair depot with all manner of fracture and trauma – after a rough stint on the open rails that now stretched from Portland, Maine to Chicago. And even though Tom would never be a master carpenter, he liked the challenge, the camaraderie and the unpredictability of their daily routine. And of course there were the thrills of emergency ice-jams, of which he was forbidden to speak over supper. And the son growing in her belly towards its own day.

  Early in March, after Lily had complained of unusually severe cramps in her stomach, Tom arrived home from work with a brisk little man in tow.

  “This is Dr. Dollard from Sarnia,” Tom said, unwrapping him from his black beaten-lambswool coat and looking for an appropriate place to install it.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Marshall,” the doctor intoned absently, waving her to a nearby cot.

  “I’ve had some crampin’, doctor. Maybe somethin’ I ate.”

  Dr. Dollard ignored this and all subsequent remarks from Lily and from Tom who was determined to be helpful. Primly he drew Lily’s skirt and half-slip away to expose the stretched skin beneath. He tapped, tamped, and plumbed, giving out every once in a while significant but untranslated ‘ahs’ and ‘hmmmms’.

  He wheeled around to Tom.

  “What is it?” Tom said, afraid to look at Lily.

  “Your wife is at least seven months pregnant,” he announced. “She is not eating enough to sustain two life-systems, hence the stomach cramps. She is getting too much exercise, hence the general faintness and the wan complexion. I recommend a bottle of Ayer’s Sasarsparilla for the stomach. That’ll be sixty-three cents for the medicine and a dollar for the visit.”

  Tom blanched.

  “Pay me when you can,” Dr. Dollard flashed an avuncular smile at Lily. “The young lady’s health is the main thing. When she goes into labour, send a message for me, day or night, and I’ll come straightway. You know where I am.” He put a bottle of patent medicine on the table, shook Tom’s hand, rescued his coat and decamped.

  “Tom,” Lily said, waving off the Sasarsparilla, “I want you to promise me one thing.”

  “Anything,” he said.

  “I want a midwife for this baby.”

  By the next day Lily was feeling fine. She got some food into Old Bill and walked him out to his privy and back. When he spotted the medicine bottle in her apron pocket, he grunted avidly. She left it beside him on the arm of his chair and by the time she got the door jammed shut, he had consumed it all. I hope he’s not pregnant, she thought, skipping through the snow to get the baby’s attention. It responded with a surly kick. No sense of humour, she laughed, and stretched her lungs against the brisk late-winter air.

  Tom was waiting. “Your informants are correct,” he said. “There is a local midwife. I went to see her. She said she knows where we live. In fact, she seemed to know all about us. She’ll come when you need her.”

  “Thanks,” Lily said. “But you look worried. Somethin’ wrong with her?”

  “She’s got a terrific reputation around here,” Tom said slowly, selecting his words with care, “but she lives down there in that place, you know, down past Prince Street towards the dunes, where the squatters are.”

  “Oh.”

  “She lives in a sort of – well – a hovel.”

  “You don’t think she oughta come?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Tom said and his glance told her: don’t remind me, I know, I promised.

  No more was said on that particular subject.

  2

  On the first day of spring the screw-prop grain-carrier Lake Erie nudged its bulk through the scattered ice-floes of the River St. Clair and docked at the Point Edward elevator. A day later Tom was moved from the car-shops to his summer job in the freight-sheds: lugging crates from ship to box-car and box-car to ship. The new regional manager, Warden Hargreaves, who set up temporary personal quarters in the luxury suite of the Queen’s Hotel on Prince Street, promised Tom that there was a good chance he could be made part of the permanent repair crew by the following spring. That hope and the more certain promise of a child to carry on his name buoyed his spirits considerably. So much so that only Lily could detect the minute signs of tension and strain that habitually afflicted him at this time of year. Although her own back had begun to throb – especially after a full day over her quilting (she’d sold two to Mrs. Salter, and Tom had put the cash in the Sarnia bank) – she spent the evenings of early April rubbing liniment into Tom’s back and arms. Outside, the snow-flushed creek and sudden freshets chattered their way across the wakened landscape.

  “We oughta start diggin’ the garden,” Lily said.

  “We don’t need a garden this year,” Tom said. “And next year somebody else can worry about this place. Don’t you go near it, you hear?”

  Lily heard. Nonetheless, she did slip out as soon as the sun was up and burning through the green gauze of the trees and bushes and shrubs and looping vines. But the baby had dropped and she felt as wobbly as a pear, so she merely pruned the perennials as best she could and scraped away the detritus from the fall harvest. No spading, she thought, I’ve got to be very careful. Unless I can rouse Old Bill to some work. She could tell by the sun that it was barely mid-afternoon. She turned and started over to Bill’s hut when her eye caught a movement near the windbreak. It was Tom, coming at full tilt across the field which lay between them and the village proper. She met him, breathless, at the tree-line.

  “It’s Bags Starkey,” Tom said. “A crate carrying half a locomotive boiler fell on his legs. Crushed both his feet. He’s bleeding real bad. They don’t want to move him too far. They need sheets for bandages.”

  Lily was running across the dead garden towards the house. “For God’s sake, Lil!” Tom yelled, but he fell to his knees, panting helplessly, tears spurting from his eyes.

  Lily rubbed and rubbed as if the ache might take advantage of the slightest let-up on her part. She lay her breasts – engorged and twingeing not unpleasantly – against the small of Tom’s back and listened to his heart thumping.

  “He’s alive, but that’s about all you can say. He wasn’t supposed to be in there lifting, but the crate was badly built and it got stuck, and ol’ Bags must’ve thought he was still a spring chicken the way he tore into it and swore away at us till the damn thing came loose, and buried him. We had to get it off with a block and tackle, and not once did the man cry out.”

  “Don’t Tom, please.”

  “I gotta talk about it, woman!”

  Still, he didn’t turn to look at her, and when her hands reached for the ache between his shoulders, he leaned back into them. “Both feet crushed like tomato pulp, blood was squirting everywhere. Gimpy was sick all over himself. But Bags is a tough bugger. He’s alive. And the doctor says he�
��ll likely have both his feet, though the bones won’t ever set straight and there’s still a chance of gangrene. His cousin came down from London; they’re holed up in a dirty little rooming house on George Street. We went to see him today. The company’s gonna dock us a day’s pay, but we went anyway. Fuck them!”

  “We could take up a collection or somethin’,” Lily said very quietly. “I got lots of preserves left.”

  Tom didn’t answer. Then he said, “He’s got no job, Lil. They told him yesterday. He begged them for an office job, he swore he’d be better in a month, he’d be able to get ’round on crutches, he knew the work, he’d been with them for six years, from the very beginning. Warden Hargreaves said he was sorry but he was only carrying out company policy, orders given way over his head and all that shit. You know the line.”

  Lily nodded. A thrill of fear shot through her.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” he said. “I’m going to see Mr. Warden Hargreaves tomorrow. In his office. I’m going to get Bags Starkey’s job back.”

  “Don’t go,” Lily said.

  “I’ve got to. I don’t expect you’d understand, but this is something I just have to do. If I don’t, I won’t be able to live with myself.”

  “I know that,” Lily said. “I know why you have to go. And I know what’ll happen. I’m only askin’ for the baby’s sake, not my own.”

  “Nothing ever happens in this world,” Tom said angrily, every trace of gentleness erased in his gathering rage, “because nobody is willing to stand up and be counted. Nobody wants to fight. Nobody!”

  Lily wanted to reply, but she held her peace. She might have said this: there are many ways a body can fight, though I don’t know of any ways of winnin’ – yet.

  “Well,” Tom said to her, his fury undiminished, “I got the satisfaction of telling that cowardly bastard what I thought of him.” His hands shook as he poured himself a mug of cold tea. Lily was knitting in the rocker by the south window. She felt Tom’s stare on her, keen as an accusation.

  “An’ he fired you,” Lily said without emotion.

  “He certainly did not.” Tom pounced on her presumption. “I put the fear of the devil himself into that yellow-livered little weasel. He didn’t dare fire me. I told him where he could shove the Grand Trunk.”

  Lily continued, starting a new row after re-counting her stitches.

  “He only had the guts to suspend me,” Tom announced triumphantly, and Lily heard him scrabbling under the sink for the big jug. “I got a free holiday till October,” he laughed. She heard the gurgle of raw whiskey. “Can’t do without me in the car-shops. What do you think of that, eh?”

  What Lily thought of it mattered little. What it meant was that without a garden and at best a bit of casual work for Tom over the summer, they would have to spend every cent of their savings just to survive. There would be no white-walled cottage in the new village. Lily continued to knit.

  “You keep your nose clean all summer, he tells me, and I’ll let you back next winter. Sure, what he means is I kiss enough company arse, they’ll let me keep on working for them. Who knows, maybe I’ll get good at it, eh? Eh?”

  Gimpy arrived shortly to chaperone his friend through the bleak evening ahead. Lily went to the bedroom and lay down. Even with the comforter wrapped around her, she found herself shivering. She caught no words from the other room, only low mutterings and occasional jabs of sound accompanied by the steady clink of crockery. With her teeth chattering she rose in the darkness, fumbled under the bed till she felt the leather sachet in her grasp, opened it and drew into her hand the familiar talisman. She left it burning there till its allusive warmth spread through her whole body and beckoned sleep her way. When she woke, the magic jasper lay on her bare throat, beating there like a hummingbird’s ruby heart.

  She stepped into the quick heat of the big room. The kitchen stove throbbed jovially. Tom was standing by the door, fully dressed, his walking boots agleam. In the crook of his arm lay the twelve-gauge double-barrel.

  “Where’re you goin’?” Lily asked.

  “You all right? You had a lot of covers on you.”

  “Where’re you goin’ with that?”

  He grinned, and she saw with relief the blend of daring and reserve she so loved and trusted. “I’m going hunting,” he said. “Rabbits. Got to put food on the table, now don’t we?”

  With the baby due in a few weeks, Tom tried very hard to adjust to the situation he had put himself in. Lily sensed that his resentment was directed only partly at the Grand Trunk. He was positively heroic in his attempts to keep himself busy and useful. He went hunting up in First Bush almost every morning. He helped Gimpy and Maudie’s husband, Garth, trap a few tardy muskrats down along the verges of the swamp. Their skins hung stretched and reeking in the little barn beside the latest slaughtered cottontail. He walked over to Sarnia to hang around the boiler works or one of the sawmills in hope of picking up some casual and very menial labour. In these ways he managed to keep out of the house till suppertime and arrive home with a Tom Marshall grin on his face. Sometimes she would stretch out on the cot after supper, and Tom would run a caressing hand over her belly for what seemed like hours on end, neither of them saying a single word, the slow sunset easing darkness into the spaces around them, as if a spell was about to be cast and auguries about to be tested on a sympathetic wind. This baby was even more active than the first, throwing tantrums of fist-and-feet in several directions and at times of its own choosing. Her back ached with the weight. It’s all right, she kept telling it – him – you just keep kicking all you want. I want you big and strong and alive.

  While they were eating supper one evening early in May, Gimpy arrived with a piece of paper stuck to the fingers of his right hand. “It’s a telegram,” he said. “Come in on the telegraph ’bout an hour ago. I told Farley I’d bring it on up here. I thought I’d better.”

  From the last remark, from the anxiety on his face and his reluctance to hand over the fretful paper, Lily was certain that he had seen the news and that it was dreadful.

  “It’s your Auntie,” he said, looking away.

  Tom ripped the envelope from Gimpy’s hand and tore it open.

  Seven months and not a word from Aunt Bridie. For weeks Lily had waited; she had gone to the post office whenever she was in the village, hoping not for an explanation but simply a word, a greeting from afar, a wave from some other life in which she was still, for a while at least, Aunt Bridie. But no news of any kind had come, and the postal watch ended. I don’t even know where you are, she thought not without bitterness; I can’t comfort you if you need me, I can’t give you a better reason for living, I don’t know what to do with this stored-up, useless love.

  Tom was mumbling over the words to himself. She saw him go pale, and while her heart sank, she knew perfectly well that her Aunt was not dead. All winter long, she recalled, I’ve heard your voice in the silences of my morning kitchen, in the hollows of my sleep, in the dream below my dreams – not as it used to be, brave and clear and certain, but very very faint, a voice calling out yet too weary or bewildered to compose a full cry for help, too proud ever to slip into whimper. You are alive, Auntie: what are you trying to tell me?

  “It’s Auntie,” Tom said. “She’s had some kind of attack. She wants me in London, as soon as possible.”

  Tom’s letter from London, which Gimpy helped her decipher, said that he would be away at least a week. But she was not to worry, as Aunt Elsepth had merely had a good faint one morning and fallen down against her bedstead. She had a nasty bruise on her temple, was as forgetful and cheery as ever, and determined to spoil him and Lucille, now her sole companion. She was wildly excited about the expected arrival and bent on living long enough to see it heading a regiment someday. The doctor reported to Tom that she may have had a mild stroke but did not see any cause for alarm. In the last sentence – delivered with a wondrous blush from Gimpy – Tom urged her to cross her legs tight till he could get
home.

  Lily herself was not concerned about actually bearing the baby. Gimpy came for a while every afternoon and Maudie brought her some goodies one morning and helped a bit with the house. Lily was having some trouble getting to sleep, and when she did, the dreams that assailed her from the deep part of night left her sweating and exhausted in the morning. Something was coming apart. Tom should be here. She needed him close. She felt he had to be close when the time came. Every night since Bags’ accident Tom’s body had coiled away from her, a trigger of muscle without a target. If anything were to happen to Aunt Elspeth...If something were to happen to the baby...She just remembered she didn’t even know the midwife’s last name.

  The night before she thought Tom might be coming home, worn out and fretful, Lily surprised herself by falling into a dreamless sleep. The evening had been very warm for mid-May, the air was suffused with lilac and wild-apple blossom. She lay down on top of the comforter with only a cotton nightshirt on, gazing at the swell of her flesh until sleep relieved her of all speculation. Some time towards dawn the wind shifted to the east and blew with the usual abandon of a spring storm. When Lily woke, the sun was up but smothered by a skyful of nimbus cloud bullying its way westward. The wind howled out of its secret, zigzagging centre and roared through the pinery and fern-leafed hardwoods with the hoarse clamour of a doomsday horn. She sat bolt upright. Her nightshirt was a sail. Her sweat cooled and receded. She punched her son; he punched back.

  Before she was certain she was even awake, Lily found herself outside. The nightshirt flapped about her waist as the storm’s breath claimed every part of her nakedness. She felt her nipples sprung like crocus-buds under snow. She felt the obscene, clammy, overweening presence of something so vile even the wind disowned it and the rage of rain that now struck her could not assuage or cleanse.