Mid-July and while he looked on, a boy with fiery hair and skin doused with burnt orange freckles, disappeared beneath the rippling surface, then rose up, shot a stream of water from his lips, and held up his hand. Pinched between thumb and forefinger was a perfect glass ball. “Look! A peppermint swirlie,” the boy cried out. “Found it on the bottom. I’s charmed today, fellers.” Then the boy waded through the water, found his trousers amongst the several slung over a branch near the shore, and tucked the treasure into his pocket, buttoned the flap.
As he watched the boy, he remembered: Bridgette, on the tree trunk, patting her pocket. Not a kiss she was offering at all. Not a kiss for him. But a marble, carefully made with twirls of red and blue, moving together but never touching. Escaped during the fall, leaving her pockets empty, pressed against her body as she traveled beyond.
That was his marble, he knew. His peppermint swirlie now possessed by someone else. He never said a word, didn’t want to own it, even though he knew it was a gem among boys. But, if she had of given it to him, if that had of happened, he would have held it in his palm, closed his fingers around it, cherished it. Her gift. He would have traded it for nothing.
“Dad?”
He heard her calling.
“Dad?”
And the river narrowed into a teardrop, trees that surrounded him shrank back into seeds. Scattered to the wind.
“Dad?”
Palm flipped upwards.
“I’m going to give you a little shave. Make you feel good.” Placing a towel across his chest, the woman massaged his cheeks and neck, scraped a warm blade across him. He lifted his chin, stretched his top lip, puffed out each cheek at the appropriate moments. While everything inside him was made of fog, he understood the motions for shaving, the correct way to lean, angle himself so that he escaped without a nick. Even though a nick was inconsequential, there was ridiculous pride in avoidance.
“All done.” She swiped his skin with a towel, then held up a round mirror, dull metal frame. “Still as handsome as ever, Dad.”
Was this his reflection? This man with yellowed skin and eyes nearly lost inside layers of wrinkles. Lips hidden, pulled in over gums. A strand of silver hair draped across his forehead. Each ear now so large, a bird might nest comfortably there. Who was this man? So disturbingly familiar. What’s all this about?
He reached up to knock the mirror away, and she lay it on the shelf over his head.
The woman drew the blanket out from beneath his arm, then covered him up. Under the blanket, his hand continued to move, but she patted it, said, “Please, Dad, get some rest.”
But he tried to resist, he had more to say. Why was she trying to quiet him? This woman, who reminded him of someone he once knew. An onion and a rabbit. A pair of pampooties. A lungful of cool night air. Wind rustling through the trees, carrying off the scent of pine. Through the canopy, a distant twinkling star. Yes, something there, and although he couldn’t quite reach it, he felt it all around him.
Hand to his cheek.
“You’re so cold, Dad. Leander, close the back door. Check the windows. More wood on the fire.”
“Plenty warm in here, maid,” Leander replied as he moved about, doing as she’d said.
“I don’t want no drafts.”
As she spoke, his lungs tightened, and his breathing moved to the very tip of his chest. He felt her fingers moving over his face, stroking his hair, and resting on the top of his head in the very spot where his bones had fused together as a baby. Inside, a newborn awe rinsed through him, and at the same time, he sensed a circle closing.
I’m going to fly now.
“I knows, Dad.”
I can feel the bumps beneath my skin. Feathers poking through.
“I knows.”
Can I fly?
Another quilt piled, and his hand was silenced by the weight. He gradually closed his eyes, began to doze, and felt warmth on his cheeks. An angel’s voice whispered, “There you go. A long rest’ll do you good.” And he fell asleep, breeze fluttery against him, palm twisted upwards. A perpetual question.
In the months after Percy’s death, Leander noticed that Stella had begun to act unusually. Several days in a row, he found her seated on a stool near the woodpile, axe in her hand and a mound of splits covering her feet. But she was not working, instead her top half was folded over her bottom half, and she was fast asleep. When he gently woke her, her face was a mess of reddened wrinkles, and he knew she had been dozing for a while.
On another occasion, he came in through the porch and found Stella on her knees, the lid of the salt pork bucket lifted, her head hanging inside, sniffing up lungfuls.
“Is there something in there?” he’d asked. “Something wrong with the bit of meat?”
“No,” she replied, and her voice inside the near-empty barrel was oddly hollow. “’Tis fine.”
“Is you counting what’s left?”
“Nope.”
“Then what’s you doing, missus?”
She lifted her head, and her face was pale but pleasant. “’Tis the smell. The brine and the blood and the wet wood. I could stay here all day gulping down that air.”
“Well, if that’s all it is,” he’d joked, nudging her in the backside, “then you best stick your head right back down into it, and carry on. Don’t let me stop you.”
Another time he found her seated at the kitchen table, bowl, flour, and starter before her, but no sign of any bread dough. She stared up at him, and there was a curious expression in her eyes. Something akin to guilt, but not quite. When he bent to kiss her, she coughed, powder exploding from her mouth. Her cheeks had been full of raw flour, and she was slowly swallowing it down.
“Couldn’t help myself,” she’d said, wiping the corners of her lips on her apron. She ran her fingers through the dust now coating the table. “’Twas all I could think about.”
Early fall, and she took to wandering. When he walked to the top of the garden, he would see her trailing the edge of the cliff, stopping sometimes to look out over the water. Wind would tug at her dress and play with the helpless grass around her feet. Then she would find a path, and it always alarmed him, to see her descending, as though she were sinking straight into the sea.
Whenever he asked her where she went, she didn’t have an answer. Only this most recent time, did she say, “Over to Devil’s Hole.”
“You mean that place where youngsters play?”
“Yes.”
“God’s Mouth.”
“No one calls it that no more, Leander.”
“Oh. What was you doing there?”
“Thinking.”
“About me, I bet.” He smiled, grabbed her hand.
“No. I don’t think about you all the time, you know.”
“Almost though, right?” His arms encircled her waist, and he twirled her around the kitchen.
“Yes, almost.”
“Something on your mind?”
“Yes.”
“Something bad?”
“No. Something good.”
“Then why idn’t you happy, maid?”
She hesitated, and her eyes watered. “Because good don’t seem to last for me, Leander. Good don’t never seem to last.”
“That’s not the least bit true, maid. You and me together have had years of good. Years of it.”
“And I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Like you should.”
The next time he saw her walking, he watched her more closely. Her walk had changed, and she swayed from side to side ever so slightly as she meandered along the winding path. Each step was careful, as though a fear of tumbling over the edge had taken root. When she reached the point where she usually disappeared, she stopped, faced the sun, and lifted her arms up over her head. And that’s when the wind helped him notice something he hadn’t before. Gusts pushed and pulled at her loose dress, and Leander was surprised to see his usually thin wife had grown plump.
When he came in from
the workshop for a lunch, the porch was a mess, sweaters and winter jackets mounded on the floor. His wife was seated in the kitchen, a bucket of warm sudsy water beside her. In her lap, she balanced the miniature tub.
“Lot of old dust,” she said, all business.
“Oh,” he replied, when he saw her cleaning the tub as gently as she might clean a baby. A jig played in his heart, and he began to dance. Even his bad foot couldn’t contain itself. “Yes. Yes, yes. Old dust. We don’t want none of that.”
After the baby was born, Leander crafted a miniature cradle from pale birch wood, carved a delicate set of wings into the head-piece. Warm afternoons, Stella placed the cradle on the back stoop, wrapped her daughter and laid her in. Cool salty air held the child in a state of calm, and the naps went on for hours.
Once, while she was snipping young dandelion greens to have with dinner, she heard birdsong coming from the stoop. Not sweet and tranquil, but a hasty, hesitant warble. When she turned to look, perched on the base of the cradle was a familiar bird, with a yellow band over its eyes, white-tipped wings.
Stella sat back on the rise of rock, mound of greens in the lap of her apron, and watched the bird throw back its head and sing up towards heaven. She listened wholeheartedly as it chirped and sang, and before she knew it, the sky behind her was tinged with orange, the baby mewing, hungry for milk.
She put a hand to her face, and though she would never admit it to another living soul, she was nearly overcome with pride, pleased that the small feathered creature was witness to the life she’d created. The apprehension in its song did nothing to diminish it.
chapter nine
Sometimes, when the drizzle coated the windowpanes and the dampness slowed the rising of her bread, Stella thought of Amos. She wondered what life might be like if he had returned with the other boys. Would he have been empty and angry, or bursting with joy that he had survived? Would he have been happy when she married Leander, and was blessed with two children, Elise, now aged five, and Robert, one? Might he have married Nettie Rose after all, and had a sweet brood of his own? Of course these questions had no answer, but they chided her until her imagination felt raw and irritated. She missed Amos. Especially when it rained. How unfair it was to have a whole portion of her life lopped off, all those connections dangling now in a murky mess of nothingness.
Recently, in a rare moment when they were alone, Nettie Rose had asked Stella about Amos. What was he like for a brother? Stella was kind in her recollections, told Nettie of the innocent tomfoolery, the sensitivity behind his handsome face, how he was shy about the colour of his hair. He could knit with his fingers and a strand of yarn, loved poking through old junk. Never threw out a bent nail, or backed down from an argument. Said that Amos liked any kind of sweet, sticks of candy from the general store, cakes and puddings, bakeapple jam, brown sugar in his tea.
“I likes brown sugar in my tea, too,” Nettie replied, a hint of wistfulness in her voice. “And I makes a wonderful rice pudding, sauce like silk.” She smoothed her wrinkled skirt, scratched at a whitish stain, dried spit-up. “What did he think of me, Stella? Do you know?”
Stella couldn’t stare into Nettie’s round bland face when she explained that Amos had loved Nettie, had thought she was beautiful. Instead, she focused on Nettie’s throat, the flesh rising and falling as Nettie kept swallowing something. Perhaps it was regret.
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Nettie pressed, “what did he think was beautiful about me?”
With this, Stella invented a few things, as Amos had never expressed appreciation for any particular feature of Nettie’s. It was simply clear that he was besotted with her, overwhelmed with teenaged adoration. Love needed no visible reasons to seize a beating heart, render it into liquid.
Nettie reached up to plump her dull hair, then daubed wetness from her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. “I didn’t know that,” she said. “I didn’t know he thought about me.”
“You never knowed?”
“Not a clue, maid.”
Stella knew Nettie was lying, and when Stella’s lips betrayed a hint of her inner scowl, Nettie announced curtly, “Not like it makes nar bit of difference now. Things is the way they is.”
Stella clamped her teeth together, angry at herself for participating in such nonsense. Even though Nettie was her sister-in-law and friend, this sort of airy discussion annoyed her. When her brother had been breathing, he’d been unable to charm her, though now that he was dead, Nettie furtively swooned over his ghost.
But when she reflected on her last visit with Nettie Rose, Stella understood. Nettie had married Gus Smith on a blustery day in January, only weeks after he’d returned from the war. Theirs was the sort of romance the community needed, young love, separated by forces beyond their control, amorous letters of devotion (read out by Nettie to every female willing to listen), then the homecoming, a spectacle of girlish squealing, macho smirks. They joined their hands in a gust, and within months, a baby on the way, this soon followed by another baby after another baby after another baby. The whole of Bended Knee felt it, this need to fill up the emptiness, replace the faces that were lost.
Then, after several years of rampant procreation, no one heeded them anymore. No one looked to plump and weary Nettie for an update on the bond between her and her husband. It was difficult to talk above the screeching children. At any given time, one would be yanking loose strands of her hair, or pinching her breasts, or trying to hide underneath her skirt. And no one mentioned the revelation that Gus had caught something over there – that something being a powerful thirst. Once married with umpteen children, his need to quench it overpowered him.
When Stella and Leander arrived last Saturday evening, Elise and Robert in tow, they could hear the racket from the front gate. Entering the porch, they came upon screaming twin girls in the corner crib, a toddler plunked in the middle of the floor, hand jammed down into his soiled cloth diaper, another boy picking a hole in his brother’s wool sweater, clutched a string of yarn as the older one ran away from him. Two daughters chasing another boy with wooden spoons, a single quiet child tucked in beside the woodstove, darning a sock with a fat needle.
Nettie was at the counter, mashing a heaping mound of turnip in a wide bowl. She smiled wanly when they came in, hollered over the din, “Find a place for yourselves. Don’t be fussy.”
There was no sign of Gus. Leander held his cap in his hand, opened his mouth, and Nettie spewed, “Don’t even ask. I got no idea where he’s to. But isn’t that lovely.” She nodded towards Grace, the darning daughter. “Not yet nine and she does a better job than her weary old mother.”
Stella went over to look, complimented Grace on her neat weave, and Grace maintained the placid lost expression that she consistently wore.
“What can I do?” Stella asked as she passed Robert, his black eyes like eclipsed moons, to Leander.
“Twins are teething. Daub some of that on those.” Nettie jutted her chin in the direction of a jug, beside it two balls of fabric tied with a string.
Stella retrieved the rum, dipped her finger in, then touched it off the fabric.
“Not like that,” Nettie said, wiped her hands in her apron, took the bottle from Stella and soaked each ball. Then she went to the twins, tugged their shiny fists from their chewing mouths, placed the dripping fabric on their gums, then pressed hard. They sputtered, fell back on their rumps, silent from the shock of the flavour. “There we go,” Nettie said. Then to the other children (excepting the diapered one and the darning one), she yelled, “Get your arses out of doors this instant, or I’ll give you all something to make noise over.” On the back stoop, more bellowing, “Thomas! Harold! Mary! Get down here and mind your brothers and sisters”.
“Elise,” Stella said. “You too. Out of doors until I calls you for dinner.”
Gus arrived in the exact moment a roasted chicken was placed on the table. Before even greeting them, he to
re the crispy knob off the rump from the back of the bird, jammed it into his mouth, licked greasy fingers.
“I’ll tell you one of my dreams, Stella, my love,” he slurred between vigorous crunches. “Do you want to know one of my dreams?”
“Of course,” Stella replied, hands folded in her lap. She could see the salt crystals around his mouth, drunken tongue darting out to retrieve them.
“A plate of pope’s noses. A load of the little beggars. Before I dies, that’s what I wants. To eat a whole plate of pope’s noses.”
Nettie snorted. “I allows. Keep dreaming.”
“What? A fellow can’t have a dream?” Gus leaned his chair back on two legs.
“You got your dream now, my son,” Nettie replied. Bickering tone.
“What? Is you cracked?” he said as he peeled the entire skin off the back of the bird, balled it, then popped it into his mouth.
“That’s not what you said all those years ago. When I was a girl.” Hurt, now. “Just a girl.”
“Get me a plate, missus.”
Stella glanced into Nettie’s faded eyes, and they reminded her of two steel-coloured beach stones, edges long gone. And she felt pity for Nettie, her friend, once so full of conviction and self-assurance, always a perfect ribbon pinned in her hair. She remembered Nettie boasting not so many years ago. How her and Gus, so deeply in love, even a whole world at war couldn’t touch it. They were charmed, she said. A couple of charmed lovers who were going to do things right. Then, in only a dozen or so years, she had managed to recreate the home she had left behind. A husband who didn’t understand his role. And so many children, she joked about having to search the outer limbs of the family tree to find enough names. Though perhaps Nettie never noticed the frenetic squalor, there was hardly time for observation.
“Well, now,” Stella replied. “A plate of pope’s noses. That’s something.” She tried to appear amused.
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