Throughout the meal, Leander nipped away at the rum, while Gus threw the drinks into his mouth, swishing it around his teeth as though trying to dislodge strands of chicken. He shook his glass over his open mouth, then winked at Stella, said, “Like the old woman who pissed in the sea says, Every drop counts.”
Once the children were fed and the women started clearing, Leander hoisted the accordion on his lap, began to squeeze music from its stiff body. Not three notes in the air, and Gus was up from his chair, spinning his children around the room. One by one, each clung to his willowy trunk as their feet left the floor. They stared at Gus with absolute adoration, captivated, his boisterousness pressing at the walls of the warm room. The younger boys knocked their hair forward, a lock covering their eyes just like their father’s. Older boys swaggered. After Mary and Grace and Lucy and Anne danced, they all blushed when he tapped his bristly cheek, said, “Give a kiss to your old father.” Even Elise, suddenly shy, took a turn. “What do you think of your old Uncle Gus?” he said to her. “Lighter on my feet now than a seal on his flippers.”
Nettie poured steaming water from the pot on the back of the stove into a washbasin. Dishes clanked harder than necessary as she dropped them in, scrubbing fiercely enough to damage the finish, water too hot for a sane person’s hands. As Stella dried, she could hear Nettie mumbling to herself, inflection indicating endless questions.
But after each available child had been twirled around the kitchen dance floor, Gus came up behind Nettie, formed his body into her back. Instantly, the frown disappeared, and her face flushed when he held her waist, turned her around, and opened his hand towards the centre of the room. “Ma lady,” he whispered, and she struck him gently on his shoulder, smiled, bitterness dissolving.
Leander slowed the pace of the music. Nettie and Gus began to waltz, his hand firmly on her lower back, her face resting on his shoulder, eyes closed. He danced her across the kitchen, into the porch, twirled her through the door and onto the back stoop. They swayed there in the evening glow of summer sun, and after several minutes, he danced her back again.
Stella glanced over at Leander, and he winked at her. They were thinking the same thing, this dip and climb of emotion was likely creating the simple foundation for yet another child.
Dance complete, and Nettie sat down, nudged Grace and Mary towards the sink.
Gus clapped his hands now, hollered, “Line up, you little beggars. Hop to it now. Show your father how it’s done.”
The children, Elise included, dodged and weaved, arranging themselves in order of height, backs straight, chests jutting out. Gus could have been at the head of the pack, his freckles and thick reddish hair making him look more like a brother than their father. But instead, he walked before them, dug his hand deep into his pocket, jingled his change, then plucked out a fistful of shiny nickels, placed one in the open palm of each. “Toffees for the load of you.” Mouths open wide in disbelief, they stared at their coins, turned them over and over. Then, they stormed their father, squeezed him, squealed, “I loves you, Dad. You’s the best father ever.”
Nettie erupted from her chair. “That’s what you don’t then,” she cried. Fog in hot sunlight, her afterglow from the moment of romance had burned off. “What do you think? Money grows on trees? Giving children the pittance we got to survive. What? You don’t want to eat? Is you mad?”
Elise was the first one to fork it over, followed by the older ones. Nettie then pried the money from the sweaty hands of the younger children. Johnnie, though, would not relinquish his treasure, and she tugged at his hands until he flopped down on the floor, curled in a ball, hiding his money. Flurry of words: “But I loves toffees. Loves them, Mommy. I wants them. Wants them. Wants. Pleeeeease.”
The accordion, which had slowed to a background melody, now choked on its bit of air, and everyone stared when Nettie hissed, “By Jaysus.” She reached her hand underneath Johnnie’s wild hair, tweaked the back of his neck. The veins in her forehead stood at attention, her heart pumping certain acrimony.
“I wants it,” he cried, twisting on the floor. “Please, Mommy.”
“That’s what you don’t then, you little bugger.”
She freed his arm, bent back his wrist until he cried out in pain, the nickel dropping to the ground. “One gets it, they all wants it.” Talking to herself now.
When he jumped to his feet, Nettie gripped his chin, spoke firmly, “That’ll teach you to disobey your mother.” And Johnnie, lips bunched up and ready, spit in her eye.
“Blood of a bitch,” Nettie cried as she stepped back wards, stung. Her face looked like greased dough, and her mouth wrinkled as the anger dribbled off her, replaced by something different. Flouncing down on the pine floor, nickels rolling in every direction, she stared at Stella, began to whimper, “How is this fair? How is this fair? I cooks their oatmeal and washes their arses and scrubs their grimy clothes. Sews their trousers. Combs out their snarls. Daubs salve on their cuts. But they despises me. Despises me in spite of all I does. Spite of it. And that,” nod towards drowsy Gus, “does not a thing but come home drunk, rile them up with his madness, fill them up with garbage thoughts. But they loves him. Loves HIM!”
Leander laid the accordion beside his chair and moved towards her. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he said, “Calm down, maid. You’re frightening the young ones.”
“I can’t take it no more.” Nettie began to cry. “Take him away, Lee, for the love of God. Take the bastard away.”
Hasty retreats, and Stella and Nettie Rose were left alone. As Nettie tucked her head into her arms, folded on the kitchen table, Stella sent all of the children to bed. “Elise. Stay up there with your cousins until I comes and gets you.” And without so much as a squeak, the pack of them slipped out of the room, tip-toed up over the narrow stairwell into the two large bedrooms above.
Stella went to the crib then, peered down at the three sleeping children, nestled together like bunnies, two of them doused in rum. Robert’s mouth was slightly open, and she leaned in closer to check his upper gum. It was still swollen and she could see a blood blister forming, but no sign of the tooth.
“Goodness, those babes can sleep.”
Nettie lifted her head, wiped her stained face in her apron. “’Tis shameful. The racket I made.”
“They didn’t seem to mind in the least. Never even stirred.” Stella sat down at the table, placed her hand over Nettie’s, her friend’s skin chapped and cracked, yet moist at the same time. There was a strong odour of metal from the money that was once locked in Nettie’s fist, and Stella had to resist checking her own hand, to see if that smell had transferred. “Is you going to be all right?”
“Fine, maid.”
“Tea?”
“A dozen years of peace and quiet’d be better, but I’ll take the tea, seeing as you’re offering it.”
When Stella placed the cup and saucer on the table, Nettie lifted both, winced when her jittery hands made them tinkle. She let the steam rise over her face, and when she blinked, Stella noticed her eyelids were so swollen, each lash had a generous amount of room.
“Don’t know what come over me, maid,” Nettie said.
“Happens to every one of us. We can’t keep everything together all of the time.”
“I knows.”
“No sense in being hard on yourself.”
“I don’t think it had nothing to do with those nickels.”
“No one even paid that any mind.”
“Half of them gone now, anyway. Cracks in the floor.”
“Oh, Johnnie’ll root those out. You needn’t worry.”
“Not when I’m in the kitchen, I doubts. Sometimes he puts the devil right in me, he do.”
“I knows.”
“And I finds myself wishing time and time again, that when he’s growed and has got his own, he gets it back. The misery he’s caused me.”
“’Tis always a gamble, maid. You never knows what type of child you’ll get until
it’s sitting at your table with its mouth open.”
Nettie laid the tea down, pressed her fingers into her cheeks. “I wonders where Gus is to.”
“They’s fine, my dear. Probably out tormenting someone else.”
Nettie sighed. “I loves him,” she said. “I really does. I loves my husband. Don’t know that any other man could turn me right into a girl like he do. That being part of the trouble, mind you.” She smiled wryly. “Yes, I loves him. But I hates him too. Hates his guts, like they was rotted through and through. Some days I believes I’d be better off if I’d married someone else.”
“I knows, maid.”
Nettie shook her head, as though she were answering her own question. “You’d think that would cancel itself out, wouldn’t you? The love and the hate of him. Two of they would knock up against each other, and cancel themselves out. But somehow, I can’t manage it. I prays for numbness every day, Stella. Prays for it, but God don’t grant it.”
“You don’t want that, Nettie.”
“No?”
“When all you feels is nothing, then your life is over.”
Nettie slurped her tea, grimaced. “I burned my mouth.”
“Drop of water?”
“No. I don’t mind. Serves me right. Never could catch hold to an ounce of patience.”
Stella patted Nettie’s hand. “Well, God love you if that’s your worst failing.”
“You know what I even thought once or twice?”
“What’s that?”
“To dump a boiling cup of tea down over myself.”
“What? Down over yourself where?”
“You knows. Right into my lap. Spoil myself. Down below. Just to spite him.”
“You didn’t think that now.” Stella shook her head, clicked her tongue.
“I did then. ’Tis a terrible sin.”
Stella began to giggle. Nettie ground her polished nose into her face, and glared at Stella. “What’s you laughing at? Is it that stupid?”
“No, maid,” she said. “I’s sorry. But I just couldn’t help but think. . .”
“What?”
“That from what you’ve told me about your times with Gus, scalding yourself won’t make nar bit of difference. He wouldn’t bat an eye at that.” Stella glanced over at Grace’s work resting on the arm of a chair. “My dear, you’d be better off darning the whole works over.”
Noise burst from Nettie’s throat, and Stella held her breath for a second while she figured out what sort of noise it was. Ah, laughter, emerging with a force, as though it were snagged in the wretchedness, now suddenly released.
“You’re terrible,” Nettie hooted between snorts. “You’re right, but you’re terrible.”
Stella snorting too. “And a good strong yarn at that.”
“Double it over.”
“What a start he’d get.” Breathless with laughter, Stella, bent at the waist, eyes squinted, screeched, “Sorry, darling. We’re closed for business.”
Screaming, Nettie slapped her fat cheeks, was barely able to mouth, “For the next fifty years.”
“Mother?” Grace was at the door to the kitchen, sheepishly staring in at the two women.
Nettie coughed, wiped both hands across her face, sucked in a lungful that was meant to calm. “Yes, my child.”
“I just wondered if I could finish.”
“Finish what?”
“On the sock. I was fixing the hole.”
With this new mention of darning, Stella and Nettie locked eyes, then collapsed in a fresh fit of laughter. “The hole,” Nettie squealed in a thin tinny voice, and this new level of secret girlish crassness forced tears from their eyes.
“Go ahead, Gracie,” Nettie panted, once again wiping her face in her apron. “Fix that hole so it don’t come undone for a good long time. Nothing would make your poor mother prouder.”
Gus squinted in the evening sunlight, rubbed his hands over his face, then reached into his shirt pocket, retrieved a narrow tin. He and Leander were outside Fuller’s general store, Leander seated on a picnic table bench, Gus perched atop the table itself. Just beyond them, the ocean lapped at the shore, waves arriving in perfect succession.
“I wonders will she ever stop?” Gus said. He opened the silver tin, plucked out a cigarette, and stuck it between his teeth.
“Nah, Nettie can go on forever.”
“I was talking about the water.” He cupped a hand over the lit match, brought it to his mouth. “Don’t she get tired of licking the same rocks over and over again?”
“I got no idea about that.”
“She’s a lot like me, though, I finds.”
“How’s that?”
“’Tis too much trouble to tell you. But we both does–” Mid-sentence, Gus tossed his half-smoked cigarette, then reached into his mouth with two fingers, dug around. Fingers clear, he cast a sideways glance at Leander, said, “Ever get an itchy tongue?”
“Can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure, Gus.”
“Nah, no pleasure in the ailment, though there’s some to be found in the cure.” Gus smirked, sat on the table, let his legs dangle over the sides. He clicked his chin towards the store. “Don’t suppose Fuller got a little something in there to wet the whistle, do you? You knows, on the credit?”
“I doubts it,” Leander lied. “Nettie would lose her mind, and besides he’s as chaste as a–”
Gus made a sucking sound. “I’s awful dry, Lee. Could use a drop.”
“Why don’t we just sit tight? Enjoy the evening.”
“Enjoy the evening, you says. There’s no finer show to be had. Watching the sea. Look out there, just off from Quint’s Island, I sees a woman in the waves. Look, look. She don’t got a stitch on.”
“I don’t see a thing,” Leander said, hand shielding his eyes from the low sun.
“She’s lovely, even though she’s blue.” Gus craned his neck. “Now look, ’tis changing. Aw, Christ Almighty.” Hands thrown up. “It done turned into a feller. What kind of cheating is that?”
Leander laughed. “Got some mind on you, I allows.”
Gus tapped the cigarette tin on the table, turning it over and over. “Powerful thirst, I got.”
“That’ll pass.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“The dryness. Me and the sea. The sea and me. I knows why she don’t stop licking rocks. Can’t stand the dryness.”
“Well now, all right.” Leander scratched the back of his head. “You might be right. I don’t got no clue.”
Gus then told Leander he’d come home from the war with this yearning, only he hadn’t realized the strength of it until his eighth child was born. “I knows the reason why I wanted so many babies. Yeah, I knows. Wanted to be surrounded by them, I did. Drowned in babies. Drowned in the life.”
“That’s a noble thing, sure, Gus.”
“But things don’t always work out.”
“Well, you got your crowd. No doubting that.”
“That I did.” He lit a cigarette, tucked another behind his ear, then snapped the case closed. “But, I never counted on the racket. The constant squabble. Like they’s mostly made up of mouth. Babies bawling over top of it all.”
“Well now, Gus. That’s part and parcel, I’d imagine. Nettie don’t like what you’re doing, I knows,” Leander said, staring down at his bad foot. “She told Stella. She don’t like the drink. Says she wants you good and sober.”
Gus raked his fingers through his hair and laughed lightly. “I’ll tell you a little known fact now, Leander. Women thinks ’tis the drop that makes you drunk, but if the truth be told, ’tis the drop that keeps you sober.”
“That don’t make nar bit of sense.”
“Lucky you. That tells me you got nar reason to drink.”
Once again, Leander glanced down at his bad foot, scraped it over the worn grass so that it rested neatly beside the other one. As he grew older, he was beginning to recog
nize that his body’s imperfection was less a hindrance and more of an endowment. Having an impediment had kept him on a certain wobbly path, obliging him to slow down, be mindful of the ditches.
“Lee,” Gus said. “Did you ever hear a man die before?”
“Hear?”
“Yes, listen to it. Listen to them.” Gus’s voice had lost its slur, his zeal degraded into dejection.
“No, Gus. Can’t say that I have.”
“When I was over there, you knows, all kinds of stuff happened. You could do what you wanted, it made no difference.”
Leander nodded.
“The feller next to me was shot, you knows. Shot somewhere, I got no idea. In his guts, I guessed. And I spent some time guessing. We was stuck there, right stuck, and I couldn’t do nothing to help the beggar. And when he realized he was bleeding out, he wasn’t all quiet, like you’d think him to be. Like you’d wish him to be. No, he started in talking, and talking, and talking. Non-stop. Then it turned to jabber. And he babbled and babbled until he was slurring, and I couldn’t make a word out. Though I gave it an honest try, I swears to God I did. A few minutes of pure gibberish, and then he starts in with the bawling, gob hanging open, and the screeches coming right out of him. And those screeches petered out into whimpers. Then this sucking sound, awful, awful. And finally, he shut up. All his sounds was used. And then he was dead.”
Leander blew a stream of air out through pursed lips. “Must’ve been right awful.”
“Don’t be talking.”
Both nodded.
“I can’t hear that ever again, Lee. And sometimes, up there in the house with your sister, I hears it all at once.” Gus lit another cigarette, stuck it to his dry bottom lip, let it dangle as he spoke. “After a drink or ten, then I don’t heed it no more. All I hears is the water. Shushing in my mind.”
“I sees.”
“No you don’t.”
“Maybe I don’t, Gus.”
“But you means well. That’s one thing I’ve always known about you, you means well.”
“Well.” Leander didn’t know what else to say.
“God damn, she’s lovely”.
“Who?”
The Seary Line Page 17
