A gulf of speechlessness. Finally, on cue, a miniature “In the river?”
“Christ no, into the river bank, an’ deflectin’ downward so she starts to plough forward, an’ the stoker an’ crew jump just before she disappears completely into the ground, tossin’ back whole gopher-towns of dirt risin’ up like a huge sandstorm that covers all of Sarnia, an’ some of the passengers on the platform think its Armageddon – with the passin’ of the Juggernaut an’ the great seals busted wide open for all time, an’ the last we ever saw of old ’62 was the thrashin’ of the caboose before she was sucked underground.”
“And the Guffer?”
Wheezing of freshly stoked pipe. The timing was all.
“Oh, him. Why, he come up face-first on the other side of the River, smilin’ and fartin’ and assumin’ he was in paradise. Yessir, he done the Great Western a genuine favour; he gouged a tunnel straight under the St. Clair from the Dominion of Canada to the U.S. of A. Now all we gotta do is figure out how to get the son-of-a-bitchin’ train out of the hole!”
Uproarious approbation. A spell had been wound up, achieved, held, and released. She heard the conversation break up into its customary blurred elements. The dishes, rattling and all, had got themselves washed and dried. From the shuffling behind her she knew the men were about to leave, some to work, some to town or to their bunks. She edged over to the curtained doorway, drew the velvet slightly apart, and watched. They were every shape, size and age. They lumbered, sauntered, hurried – only their faces exposed above mackinaws and denim as they turned from the cozy brotherhood of their room to the blizzard outside.
She could not fit the voice to a body.
Most of the times they played cards – poker – and the yarn-spinning was given over to sporadic jokes and what sounded like ritual teasing. Even then, though less often, that grained, seasoned voice prevailed; and no amount of compulsory bluff-and-blarney could completely disguise the grit of authenticity at the core of it.
“Hear the one about the brewer who couldn’t swim?”
“Are you in or out?”
“In.”
“What’d he do, Luce?”
“Fell into a vat of his own beer. Raise you two.”
“See ya’. Did he drown or what?”
“Not right away.” Brief interlude of clinking coins. “He had to crawl out twice an’ take a piss.”
Belly laugh as big as moose country.
“Jesus Murphy, but who laughs louder at his own shit?”
“C’mon Luce, stop laughin’ an tell us what ya’ got.”
“Three aces. Sorry.”
“You son-of-a-bitch!”
All the coins see-sawed in one direction.
When they were all gone, clumping into the snowy dark, she waited fifteen minutes and then entered the parlour to clean up. She emptied the ashtrays into a can and was brushing the crumbs off the table when she noticed that one of the overstuffed chairs at the back was occupied. A coal-oil lamp, singed and smoking, threw a shadowed light across the face which was turned towards the door, though it did not appear to be looking at it. A smouldering briar pipe sat discarded on the low table beside the chair. Near it, as if flung aside in the same gesture, lay a puffed, expired hand. At the sound of falling glass, the face belonging to the hand swung numbly towards her, tried to focus on the source of irritation, failed, and swung back.
In that instant she knew who it was. She had an impression of size – of bulk and crag and underpracticed muscle – and a rumpled dignity of dress and demeanour. But it was only the face that registered: the grooved laugh-lines sagged and fleshed around the mouth – generous and quick but fallen now into the very shape it did everything to forestall- and around the eyes also that were capacious and coal-black and used to dancing for reasons the heart behind them kept to itself. At this moment, though, they slackened in their oversize sockets like exhausted gavottes. They saw nothing.
She fought to regain her breath, turning to go.
“Don’t, please. You’re not disturbin’ me.”
It was him. She left.
The tenor of the talk in the parlour of the Widow Jarvis had shifted several quarters as December of 1885 drew to a close.
“Herbert positively insists I go straight to Walker’s an’ order up the fanciest dress in the store.”
“It’s only New Years once a year,” said the Widow generously.
“And it is the biggest ball in town, sponsored by the railroad an’ all.”
“How’d you come by that invitation again?” Miss Spence prompted.
“All the veterans was given one, as is only right considerin’ Herbert risked his life for all of us.”
“Usually only the bigwigs an’ some railroad people’s invited,” said Miss Spence in awe.
“I don’t suppose anybody knows this but my dear Harold was a fightin’ man, a grenadier he was, an’ left me a widow almost twenty-two years ago, battlin’ them nigger-people over there somewhere near Egypt.”
They did know.
“Niggers, Indians, Frenchies, what’s the difference?” asked Miss Spence, her eyes pinned to the last row of Senior Book Four. “Can’t stop ‘em from fightin’, they love it. It’s born in them.”
“Poor Harold.”
She was doing the laundry, well away from the boisterous revels in the parlour. It was snowing again and the heat from the kitchen stove could not cut the damp cold that hung everywhere, stiffening the sheets and forcing her to fetch fresh pails of boiling water. Twice she scalded her left wrist. The sudden steam rushed hotly over her face with its illusory warmth, and soaked her hair – that coiled wherever it was struck. She thrashed the scrub-board to beat the blood to the surface of her skin and back again to the chill in her leg-bones. The sheets froze solid against the clothes-horse like opaque window-glass. The rollers nipped her right forefinger, but she didn’t feel the pain. Till later.
Long after she heard them clatter out of doors, she slipped back into the kitchen, pulled a stool in front of the stove and sat their motionless, without thought, without the compunction to commit a single redemptive act. Her tresses thawed, tattered, dripped. The fire swallowed its lone sound.
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
She turned around.
“Pardon me for interruptin’, but I assumed you was finished your work.”
She felt her hand in her hair.
“My name’s Burgher. Lucien Burgher. The fellas call me Luce.” His smile carried his mouth, his eyes and some further part of him with it.
She felt beads of sweat in the tiny hollow of her throat. She was wiping her hands on a towel.
“Of course my mother wouldn’t approve. She prefers Lucien. I tell them that, but they don’t pay no attention to me. No respect.”
“I thought you had –” she began.
“I waited for you,” he laughed, flashing his grin full upon her, then dropping his glance for a moment.
She watched his hands. They seemed shy but strong; at this moment they looked as if they could commandeer the world. One of them reached into the pocket of his engineer’s tunic.
“Would you like to dance?” he said.
She backed up a step, the heat surging behind her.
“What I mean is, could I have the pleasure of escorting you to the New Year’s dance?”
She let his eyes, at last, have hers.
“I can’t tell you exactly how I come by it, but this here’s an official invitation to the Grand Trunk Ball tomorrow night. Naturally, thought I’ve tried on occasion, I don’t dance too good by myself.”
She reached out with her left hand, exposing the scalded wrist, now blistering painfully. Confused, he pushed the white card into it.
“What’s your name,” he said gently.
She hesitated for a long moment, the invitation poised between them. At length she replied: “Cora.”
It was at the very moment of his asking that she had discovered what it was she had been trying to
quit forever. A picture had sprung fully-formed into her mind: she was lying in Southener’s arms and the Pottawatomie tom-toms were sounding through the smoke as the girl named White Blossom was transformed, by the dance of her elders and the dance inside her, into her new being: Seed-of-the-Snow-Apple. The seed-core. Cora. Beginning again.
“Cora,” he repeated. “Beautiful name. An old and sacred name. And?”
“Does a last name matter?”
“Not to me,” he grinned. “You’ll go then?”
She nodded.
PART TWO
Cora
41
By mid-April there was barely a trace of snow to be found anywhere in the village. The sun thawed, stirred, reminisced with the earth. And in the memorable warmth of the afternoons, workmen of every shape and ilk came to help with the making of Granny Coote’s cottage: a mason, a joiner, a sawyer, several carpenters, a lather and plasterer, two roofers, assorted painters and paperers, a clandestine electrician, a legitimate plumber, and countless helpers, apprentices, and sidewalk foremen. And each one, novice or seasoned hand, was watched over by the still figure outlined in the front window of the miserable shack across the street – a pale, disinterested ghost looking for new ground to haunt. Not once did she wave, nod, or in any other wise break her silent superintendence.
The workmen might have been relieved to learn that the supervising wraith behind the glass did not spend all of her watching time minutely observing their amateur, though enthusiastic, performance. True, she never left her post, but on most days, shortly after noon, she would cast an eye up or down the street to catch the eccentric stride of one or more of the young men en route to the site, and begin to trace its advance until some moment of sudden recognition occurred, as it inevitably did. Ah, that’s young Mike, Maggie Hare’s lad, she would think; Bunny, they used to call him and he’d come running home bawling and quivering with hurt, too tiny to fight back, to cast off the name that would dog him all his days, but I would always put down my mop and making sure Maggie was out of earshot, I would let him fling his eight-year-old arms around me and butt me in the stomach as hard as he wanted till he’d slow down real gradual and just hug me, and I’d reach into my apron, as if I’d thought of something special, and pull out a peppermint – like a prize for a clever strong boy who would never again let the bullies call him Bunny. He doesn’t remember that anymore. It was a long time ago, of course, and she and Maggie did have a falling out shortly after, and she had been, after all, a lifelong Alleywoman. By the time Granny looked up from such thoughts, the studding for a bedroom wall or a new doorway would have mysteriously come into being across the street. For Sunny’s sake, she did try to watch, but it was very, very hard.
There’s Slowboat Saunders, Eliza’s youngest. She was too old to have any more and she paid for it. Slowboat could drive a nail through his thumb and then wonder why he couldn’t pick his nose. Poor dear soul.
I’ve wiped that nose many a time after Alf got his leg crushed in a coal-tender’s bogies and Eliza went back to school teaching. He waves at me and grins, but I’m sure he can’t connect what he sees here behind glass with those days before Arthur, before Eddie, before the catastrophes of age. Even the Army wouldn’t take Slowboat – flat feet, they said. To her surprise, the last of the roof-boards – magically – had already been put in place. She could no longer see inside. I didn’t even hear the hammering, she thought.
Moments later she saw Sunny Denfield climb down from the roof, stand for a while with his arm on Slowboat’s shoulder, then detach himself and walk across the street towards her gate.
“I guess you remember the day when my father came lookin’ for me. He got the police out by tellin’ them I was under eighteen an’ pullin’ some strings in the government. Naturally they expected that, bein’ a young lad accustomed to money and pleasure, I would run off to the fleshpots of Montreal or Detroit. It never occurred to them that I might be runnin’ away from those very things. To be honest, I didn’t know what I was doin’ except findin’ some room to breathe an’ think an’ sort out my life. I suppose if I’d had a mother, I’d have stayed away just long enough to give them all a good scare, but I didn’t. To this day I haven’t a clue as to who tipped off my father that I might be livin’ in some little dump of a railroad town called Point Edward. Probably one of the big shots stayin’ at The Queen’s where I had that room near the back annex, you remember. Unfortunately I’m the spittin’ image of my father. Anyway, as you’ll recall, it was only a month after I’d settled in at the sheds – in September of ought-one – when he comes scoutin’ after his lost son.” He dunked one of Mrs. Carpenter’s cookies in his tea. “The whole village knew somethin’ was afoot,” he laughed.
Granny had written on her slate. She held it up: ‘We all heard him’.
“So did everyone in Port Huron and Sarnia. Imagine, comin’ to fetch a runaway back home in a horseless carriage, firin’ off sparks an’ fartin’ bedlam in every direction, deafenin’ dogs an’ spookin’ horses an’ givin’ old Mrs. Farrow a case of the hiccups she claimed took her ten years to get over.”
The sun was now shining through the west window over the sink. She felt its warmth around her ankles. Soon in her garden it would be tempting bulb and tuber.
“He left it sittin’ in front of The Queen’s, surrounded by townsfolk, an’ walked by himself across the fields towards our work gang; we were cuttin’ ragweed or somethin’, between boats, with our shirts stripped off showin’ our muscles an’ tan to the whole world. He didn’t know I saw him, but he stood near a little hawthorn, watchin’ us work an’ horse around as we always did, an’ by that time I was feelin’ like one of the gang, with all my blisters toughened up and all the kinks out of my arms an’ legs, an’ real earned money in my pocket. He never said a word, and I never let on I saw him. He just turned an’ walked away. We heard the poppin’ and jumpin’ of the automobile all the way across the marsh, and I remember one of the fellas sayin’: ‘Christ, it’s like ridin’ a Gatling Gun!”
Arthur – bless him for trying – built that little cupboard beside the sink, she was thinking. He let Eddie cut out the scrolls and curlicues with his coping saw. He was so patient, Arthur, with his hands on the piano, with anything in them. We were always going to fix up the outside, but there was never enough money and the property was not really ours and beside the inside was always cozy and full of music, and the nimbleness of Arthur’s fingers never did transfer from piano hammers to a carpenter’s, though he could never figure out why, staring up at her helplessly for absolution.
“You would have liked my Aunt Grace, Cora,” Sunny was saying. “I never could understand how she came to marry such a stuffed shirt as my Uncle Bramwell. You couldn’t picture two more opposite types. She cared nothing for money or fancy things: she loved people. Especially children, an’ she regretted, I know, bein’ able to have but one child. She almost died havin’ Ruth-Anne, I was told. I’m hopin’ you’ll get a chance to meet Ruth-Anne soon. I’ve been tryin’ to help her with her pursuit of her family tree. She insists her mother had relatives livin’ in this county, and is threatenin’ to come down here an’ prove it to herself. I hope she does. You’ll like her. She’s got her mother’s spunk.”
Granny smiled as best she could. She wrote a word on her slate: ‘When?’
“Two weeks,” he said, barely above a whisper. “The plaster an’ paint won’t take long. It’s gonna look real nice, Cora. Just the way you an’ me sketched it out. We’d like you to move in by the first of May. The monument man’s comin’ from London about then. We’re plannin’ a little ceremony for you – I know you don’t approve but it’s really to make the council feel good about it all, if you wouldn’t mind – but that won’t be till later because the lawyers are still sortin’ out the legal stuff. But I promise you, you’ll have a bona fide deed in your hand by June. You’ll own that piece of land an’ that cottage outright. Nobody’ll ever be able to take it away from you. It’s t
he least we owe you, the least you deserve.”
She was listening and not listening. She got up and walked slowly to the west window. She looked out over her dozing gardens. Sunny Denfield was at her side. He looked out with her. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. Her hand on his wrist said, I know.
A stranger, walking by, might have caught them in their window – glazed by a westering glow – and mistaken them for mother and son.
42
1
The Grand Trunk Ball was the social event of the winter season. For twenty years – years marked by unparalleled human progress (one or two depressions and the odd insurrection notwithstanding) – the affair had been held in the largest, most resplendent ballroom of western Ontario, the G.T.R. Station-Hotel on the docks of Point Edward. Burned to the ground by revisionist forces of Nature in 1871, it had been immediately resurrected, more capacious and vainglorious than ever. The three dozen Venetian chandeliers, reflected like minor galaxies in the ebony firmament of the walnut floors, were a testament to the depth and longing of the mercantilist fancy that confected them. And though the queenly edifice herself was imperceptibly aging – indeed about to be sacrificed to such commercial inevitabilities as mergers and corporate restructuring – she had fitted herself out for this annual ceremonial with no diminution of splendour and no intimation that the cracks at the edges of her smile might one day be irremediable. And whether by coincidence or design, the last evening of 1885 – a year which had seen the young nation riven by dissent, racial antagonism and rebellion – turned out to be clear, crisp and star-spangled.
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