He paused, swallowed thickly and continued. “He died at Harper’s Ferry in the blood and horror of that wonderful débâcle. His name is not recorded among the official twenty-two, but his bravery there is well-known among the people he died trying to liberate. He was guarding the Potomac Bridge with Oliver Brown and others when the militia arrived and drove them off. Apparently your father refused to retreat and was shot on the bridge. Before the local troops, slavering for blood and souvenirs, could reach him, he jumped or fell into the river below, where the current swept him gently towards the sea. The Virginia guardsmen stood on the bridge and used his body for target practice till it drifted out of their range of interest. However, when the Federal Marines went looking for it later that evening, it was gone, spirited off by a group of free Negroes who carried it upstream to Chambersburg where they buried it secretly in their churchyard. It’s still there under a plain white stone marked simply: ‘Mr. Corcoran’. Every year hundreds and hundreds of people – black and white – slip quietly into the shade of that little cemetery to pay their respects.”
Lily was about to speak but sensed there was more.
“Your father came back to Canada once. I learned this from Harriet Tubman, who told me about it only a few weeks before my trip up here. He had been present at the famous Constitutional Convention John Brown held in Chatham in April of 1858. Still afraid of being apprehended by the Canadian authorities, he dyed his hair black, shaved his beard and sneaked into the province for the two key days of the Convention. However, he told Brown he had to take part of a day to ride north to visit his sister and daughter in Port Sarnia. She recalled this because she said she had rarely seen him so agitated. When he got back late on the Friday, she took special pains to talk with him about the trip, and he told her – in a calm, sad voice – that he had found his sister’s farm easily enough, had walked up the lane till he heard voices in the garden beside the cottage, and then stopped. The two women, he said, were in the garden, working and humming and seemingly content despite the Black Frost that had ravaged both our countries that spring. He told Harriet that he watched them for a long time, hoping that they might glance up and see him and force him to come out of his cover, but they didn’t, and he found he couldn’t speak, and then he left.”
“After a while Lily said, “Did he ever talk about us?”
“Ah yes, Mrs. Marshall, all the time. He told me once that as soon as his mission was ended, he planned to go back and bring his daughter to live with him in the States. That thought was on his mind constantly.”
From the sadness of his smile Lily knew he was lying.
2
When Lily came around the bend towards her house, her thoughts were so roiled that she almost bumped into the woman standing patiently by the front stoop. A white glove shot out.
“I’m Miss Stockton,” announced a voice crisp but distant. “Bradley’s teacher.”
“How do you do,” Lily said in a tone she herself didn’t recognize.
“May I come in?”
Lily stood by the door, puzzled.
“I’d like to discuss your son’s future with you,” Miss Stockton said, avoiding the railing as she lurched up beside her host.
Inside, Lily became aware of the lunch dishes piled in a basin where the flies were noisily congregating. The dank odour of wet sheets and soda drifted and adhered.
“I’ll get a fire goin’ for some tea.”
“Thank you, no. I’ve got an appointment in a few minutes uptown.”
“Please sit down, then.”
Miss Stockton’s reserve came close to failing her as she searched about for a safe place to deposit her petal-pink, delicately flounced dress. She decided the middle cushion of the chesterfield was the least lethal of the available sites and perched on its edge like a fledgling on a wire. Lily sat opposite her on the easy chair and waited.
“You may not be aware of it, Mrs. Marshall, but your son is the brightest pupil I have seen in five years of teaching, here and in Toronto. Inspector Whitecastle was here last week and fully corroborated my own intuitions.”
“He’s a real good reader,” Lily said to be helpful.
Miss Stockton flashed an ambiguous smile and continued. “What I’m saying in practical terms is that your son will undoubtedly score highly on all of the papers of his Entrance Examination next week. He will be eligible to go to the high school in Sarnia, and it is my considered opinion that he will be a first-class candidate for the University of Toronto, in whatever field he chooses.”
Lily appeared to be absorbing this revelation.
“You have thought about sending Bradley to high school?”
“He’s been askin’ me about it, yes.”
“Good, good. With the extra coaching I’ve been giving him in the evenings this month – I do hope you don’t mind his being away from home too much –” and here she chanced a more searching appraisal of the second-hand ambience of the room: the blotched window-glass, the marauding flies, the absence of a study or desk, the pathetic little titled bookcase in one corner. “But I fully expect him to get straight A’s.” Lily gave no sign of being overwhelmed by this news. “The main reason I’ve come is to discuss a very delicate matter, and since I’ve always been a straightforward person, I’ll get directly to the point. While there are no tuition fees for the high school, Bradley will have to buy his own books, mathematical instruments and supplies. He will have to take the trolley to Sarnia every day. He –”
“He’ll need some money,” Lily said.
“Precisely, Mrs. Marshall, how quickly you see my point. He’ll also need, how shall I word it, a more fashionable kind of clothing – not to show off, mind you, or get a swelled head, I certainly couldn’t approve of that – but just so he won’t stand out for the wrong reasons or be picked on by city pupils who can, you know, sometimes be quite cruel in these matters.”
“I been puttin’ money aside all along,” Lily said.
“Splendid. And since we’re obviously seeing eye-to-eye on these critical matters, may I make one final suggestion. If you can see your way clear – perhaps not the first year since Bradley’s just thirteen – but by the second year or so, you might consider letting him board at one of the many fine homes near the school.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“That way he won’t have to spend an hour a day on the trolley, and more important, he’d be able to use the school library after hours or the public library down the street, and –” she aimed her pity towards the cubicle where the boys slept, “– of course he could have a quiet room of his own in which to study. My purpose today, Mrs. Marshall, has been to relay Inspector Whitecastle’s enthusiasm for, and my own endorsement of, Bradley’s genius to you in order to make these decisions more comfortable for you to consider.”
Lily showed her visitor out.
Miss Stockton suddenly turned on the stoop and said in her own cabbagetown cadence: “You’re gonna let him go, aren’t you?”
Lily nodded, and touched her reassuringly on the arm.
Back inside the warm room, Lily felt woozy and sat down at the kitchen table. Must be the heat, she thought. Robbie clumped in from the back shed. “No supper?” he said.
“You seen Brad?”
“Yeah, he’s up at Redmond’s fussin’ over that Potts’ girl. They were stuffin’ their faces with chocolate the last I saw of ’em.”
“Miss Stockton, his teacher, was just here. I thought he’d be home to find out what was goin’ on.”
Robbie went over to the tinder-box. “He knows, all right,” he said bitterly. “But he won’t come home till dark.”
“Why not?”
“He’s ashamed to.”
27
1
Dominion Day that year marked the first decade of the new nation and in Sarnia the opening of Lake Chipican and the surrounding Canatara Park. The new recreation facility – yet another outward sign of man’s steady ascendance to perfection – f
estooned with picnic benches, a bandstand and a mammoth open-air dance pavilion big enough for a whole village to jig upon. The grand debut of the facility would be celebrated with the usual political speech-making, boosterism and fireworks, but by far the greatest attraction was to be the regatta on Lake Chipican itself, starring no-less-a-celebrity than Ned Hanlon, the legendary world-class punter. Sophie decided that Lily ought to go because she had been down-in-the-dumps lately and needed a little music and dancing to cheer her up. When Lily protested mildly that Lake Chipican was just their own Little Lake with a fancy name attached to it to make it sound vaguely Indian, Sophie appealed directly to the boys seated nearby, and the day was carried.
As it turned out, almost everyone from both the town of Sarnia and the unincorporated village of Point Edward came out to watch the races and the mighty Ned Hanlon – whose combination of strength and agility, power and grace, bravura and humility appealed in their different ways to the ages and sexes that rimmed the pond seven-deep that Saturday afternoon.
Sophie and Lily spent the day together. The young people went off by themselves in twos and threes, returning only for supper or an extra nickel. Wee Sue and Brad took Bricky swimming. The sun shone benevolently down upon the festivities, glistening on the muscular arms of the rowers and deepening the contrast of their white-duck trousers and red-striped shirts. They pulled in furious unison, skimming the surface of the pond with the seeming ease of Argonauts, their rhythmic, guttural grunting muffled by the adulating crowd and the evergreen-and-oak of Canatara Park. Sophie was apparelled in a peach-yellow sundress and a billowing bonnet that gave her the appearance of a ruffled bobolink. She clasped Lily by the hand and pulled her here and there in order to improve their view of the racers and get a close-up gander at Ned Hanlon himself. Sophie’s ken, however, soon narrowed to the hefty coxswain of one of the rowing eights, the largest of the shells in the competition, requiring men of fortitude and amplitude to propel her manfully forward, stroke and counter-stroke. Lily preferred the scullers, the solitary racers whisking daft as dragonflies, commuting water to air.
During the picnic supper the Sarnia Bugles entertained from the bandshell and the husky athletes mingled with their worshippers. Several of them had volunteered to supervise the children’s races. Robbie won a prize and was presented with a ribbon by Ned Hanlon himself. With the sun behind them making them mere silhouettes, Lily watched her son and this illustrious Torontonian during the brief ceremony in which she knew much more was being exchanged than a mere ribbon. He’s just like Tom, she was thinking; he can’t live long on small rations of hope. The smile he flashed her way was like a reprieve. When Lily looked around for Sophie, she was gone. Bricky had been laid under an oak to sleep off his indigestion, the young folk had disappeared again, and in the distance the orchestra was just striking its first chord in the new pavilion.
By the time Lily got over there, the hardwood dance-floor was already covered by couples enlinked in a Strauss Waltz, animated by the strings and muted horns of the Detroit City Orchestra just arrived by lake-steamer. The underside of the pagoda-like roof over the raised platform was hung with coloured lanterns and pastel ribbons even though the sun would provide all the illumination required for two hours yet. No one noticed the anomaly. The air of early evening was cool, the music exotic and seductive. Sophie was dancing with the ‘eights’ man, who was smartly attired in yachting white. Lily could see that he too was surprised – and not a little flushed and exhilarated – by the nimble ponderance of her step, the grand sway of her circling: a panda’s waltz on its home ground. Lily was so absorbed in observing this scene that she hardly felt the pressure on her arm guiding her gently into the slipstream of music and dance. Did I say ‘yes’? she thought, settling into the stranger’s embrace. I must have.
He was one of the scullers, who had come second only to Ned Hanlon himself. In his oar’s grip he held Lily as lightly as he would a falling rose-petal. His sandy hair fluttered in the breeze of their own making. In the whirling fandango his fingers on her back praised and applauded. In the slow waltz she put her brown against his bare chin, and they navigated the shoals and eddies of the music with such mutual acuity Lily could feel no part of his motion but the point where brown and chin swivelled on a single bead of sweat. During the jigs she lifted her skirt above her knees and closed her eyes until she could hear, somewhere behind the fiddle’s slither, the bounce of a breath-driven harmonica. When it stopped, she leaned against the railing to steady herself; her premier danseur – Shamus O’Huguin from Burlington – was catechizing her with insatiable sea-green eyes.
As dusk descended and the mosquitoes began rising from the swamps and pools around, the music slowed to a last waltz, and young and old and many between clung together in pairs and danced as if they believed such bonding – such congruence of purpose and desire and hope – were as permanent a part of the human condition as war and depression and the facing of fidelity. “We’re all goin’ over to the Grand Trunk for a party,” he whispered. “You’ll come?”
Around her, jostling couples pushed towards the steps, a bass-viol accidentally groaned, illicit laughter percolated from the shadows, Sophie Potts was waving goodbye with her baby finger and ambling into the brush with her amiable paramour. Lily turned back to the young oarsman and she could tell from the smile on his face that she was about to say yes.
“You comin’, Ma?”
It was Robbie, at the bottom of the steps, alone.
“Yes,” she said, and released her lover’s hand.
2
Next day the Sunday hush lay more heavily than usual upon the village. The church bells importuned as lungfully as ever, but empty places were duly noted in a number of pews, and even in the choir-stall itself. Lily listened to their familiar, reassuring ring as she ironed a clean shirt for Brad, who was to go down to Sarnia tomorrow for his interview with Mr. Axelrod, the principal-designate of the recently constructed, independent high school. Brad lay on the chesterfield pretending to be absorbed by some verse-saga called Don Juan, a gift from Miss Stockton – daintily inscribed – in honour of his extraordinary performance on the Entrance Examination. Lily had taken some of the cash she had been putting away in a crockery jar under her bed and purchased her son his first store-bought oxfords, suit, vest and tie. Robbie was off by himself hunting cottontail in Second Bush.
It was a hot and humid July day without the relief of a breeze. Lily was thinking that she should go discreetly over to Sophie’s to see if the kids wanted to have a picnic and spend the day on the beach. If Wee Sue came along, then Brad would also. She was mulling these thoughts over sleepily – her dreams had been deep and disruptive for weeks now – when she was startled by a commotion in the back shed. A laundry pail clattered, pursued by a mutilated curse. Sophie.
Lily arrived in time to help her upright. Sophie glared at the offending pail, then flashed a teeth-stretching grin at Lily, catching her frontally with a boozy gust of breath. Her eyes hovered, radium red. The thick humus of her hair shrieked outward. The look she gave Lily (just before the mask of her face closed over it) skidded on the edge that separated ecstasy from desperation.
“C’mon, Lil, we’re gonna have us some fun, some real fun,” she said in a voice amazingly unslurred, riding its own energy.
Lily took her friend by the arm: “Let me get you home to bed, Soph. You ain’t had much sleep, I bet.”
“If you’re suggestin’ I been drink’ an’ screwin’ all night, then you’re absolutely right,” she laughed, pulling away and grabbing Lily’s hand in turn. “C’mon, you an’ me’s gonna haul old Duchess’s ass up the hill an’ give that bachelor pig up there the thrill of his life!” She rocked back on her heels, sat down on the cushions of her rump, and let out a dry, rattling cackle like a pullet with a kernel in her craw.
Lily allowed herself to be dragged across the lane to the Potts’ yard, where it became clear that Sophie had already put her plan into action. Beside the pig-pen s
at the rickety trundle-wagon Stoker used for hauling logs or vegetables up to the house. Duchess had been lured out of her shady retreat with a bucket of milk-slops strategically set near the gate to the sty.
“C’mon, Lil, I need a little help gettin’ her up on the wagon. Mind you, if she knew where she was goin’ she’d hop up there like a toad into poop, but she won’t listen to a word I say to her.” She flung open the barrier and called out in saccharine, seductive tones: “Soo-ee, soo-ee, soo-ee!”
Duchess pricked up her floppy ears, blinked pinkly, but decided not to abandon the slop-bucket in spite of its barrenness. She was a fine Chesterwhite sow with rosy-hued skin, a soft, lecherous snout, and fold upon fold of self-satisfied fat. More than a dozen litters had suckled from her contented teats, and whenever she was in heat, like now, she lazed in the mud and dreamed of nipples ripening and Farmer Holly’s Yorkshire boar rearing up behind her, his cleft trotters flailing against her roused flanks, while she prinked her golden bristles and joyfully sucked out his seed. But Farmer Holly’s boar was much overdue.
“Son-of-a-bitch up an’ died on us,” Sophie explained, circling the wary sow. “The old man, not the stud,” she chuckled. “Now you put that there ramp up to the wagon while I push this barrel of grease-shit from the rear,” she shouted.
“Soph, you’re crazy. You can’t get Duchess up on that contraption, an’ you can’t let her in with John the Baptist’s boar. He’ll kill you.”
“He ain’t home,” Sophie said triumphantly. “Gone perch fishin’ with Hap Withers’ boys, out on the lake for the whole day!”
“He ain’t gonna like it, you know how he feels about Aquinas.”
Sophie glared over at Lily. “Hey, you an Alleywoman or not?”
Lily grabbed the two planks and tried to make a ramp out of them. Sophie managed to get downwind of Duchess and plop a hand on each of the sow’s haunches. She grunted and heaved the animal forward, and was making some headway when she decided to expedite its progress by twisting its tail about three hundred degrees counterclockwise. Duchess squealed like a bruised bagpipe at the outrage and lurched sideways. Sophie lost her handhold, overcompensated and flopped flat on her back in the slime. Lily leaned forward and put a gentle arm-lock on Duchess while Sophie yawed fitfully in the mire, gained a knee, and then let her jaw slacken like a hippo’s yawn.
Lily's Story Page 50
