My father passed away when I was seven years old. He slipped off a damp rooftop he’d been helping to shingle, and broke his neck. I spent hours thinking about his last moments. Trying to create them inside my mind. Often I could be found stretched out on the very spot where he fell, staring up towards the now finished rooftop. I’d see his face coming towards me, mouth open, eyes locked with mine. And he would fall on me, into me, over and over again. What had he been thinking when he bungled his footing? Did he try to right himself as he tumbled, or did he accept gravity? Was there an instant, a single drawn out moment, when he knew he had made an irreversible error, and that he was going to die? Did he think of me before he was swathed in light? Knowing that now I would be man of the house.
Before he died, my father put four sons into my mother. I, of course, was one of them. The oldest, in fact. I had three younger brothers. My father always told me how lucky I was to have three shadows. My shadows, he called them. My own personal set of silhouettes. When my father died, my mother would soothe herself by repeating his little jokes. “Where are your shadows?” she’d ask. “Never was a boy so lucky as you, my son. Three shadows.” When we’d set out in the morning to turn salt fish on Skipper Murphy’s flakes, my mother would say, “Always mind your shadows. Take good care of them.”
I promised I would, but I didn’t.
There was an old well on our property, hadn’t been used for years. We all knew it was there, but we were forbidden to play near it. According to my mother, an old witch named Agnes lived at the bottom of the wide-mouthed well. She was wretched, frothed at the mouth, had black holes for eyeballs, a hairless scalp of mould, pale worms and water skeeters moved freely in and out of her ears and puckered mouth. “Agnes’ll get you, my lovey, if you ever goes near that well. She’ll smell you with her tongue, come after you.” We never went near the well. Never gave Agnes the chance to catch a whiff of us.
Until one day.
I never figured out who had pried the wooden lid off the well. It doesn’t really matter. Someone did. And Ernie, when he saw the edges of the open well, cried out, “Agnes is gone.” In a fit of childish bravery, he ran towards the idle well, leaned hard over the side. Two days away from his fourth birthday, and he tumbled over the rim of smooth beach rocks. And I could hear him, my smallest shadow, splashing about inside a pit of darkness.
I was stuck to the spot, as though I was nothing more than a seven-year sapling. Elias, who was five, ran to his younger brother. We could hear his gurgling screams echoing against the dirt walls. Hoisting himself over the side, Elias yelled down with feigned irritation and conviction, “I’ll get you out, you little bugger.”
Elias slipped slowly, and I watched him disappear. First his forearms, then his hands, then his fingers, for a blinding moment, the very tips of those white fingers, then nothing. I heard the second splash, and Elias was down there, with Ernie and Agnes, screaming out to Eugene and myself.
Eugene looked at me, his pupils wide like a deer who was caught, throat slit, bleeding out. We could both hear our brothers, high-pitched choking pleas, first Ernie, then Elias, then little Ernie again. We both knew that they were scrambling to stay afloat, each one scraping away at the other, only one head above water at a time. “Maaaaaaaaaaaa, Maaaaaaa.” Eugene took quick sips of air, bounced on the spot, looked at me, the well, me, the well, me, the well, then lion-roared as he ran full force towards the well. I don’t know what he intended to do, but he toppled into the well, as though diving down, head first. I heard a thud, and not a sound from him after.
My mother was carried across the back of our land on the gust of her continual shriek. She pitched herself against the well, waist hooked by the lip of rock, swiped the rank air with her open hands. “Please,” she bawled. “Please, please come out. Eldred. Don’t stand there. Please, Eldred. God. God. God. Get them out.”
Silence in the well. Hysterical then, she flew towards me. Struck me with her fists. Spit as she spoke. “Get. Them. Out.” She fell to the earth, slapping herself in the head, flipping like a netted fish that just couldn’t fathom life without water. “They were your shadows,” she moaned, her voice like two tall lifeless trees rubbing together in the wind. “Your shadows. Oh. Jesus. My babies. Precious. Drowned.”
At that moment, the earth shuddered, made my teeth chatter, blurred my vision. I couldn’t take it in. What had happened? Only an hour earlier the four of us were stabbing tree blisters with a stick, coating the stems of dried leaves with turpentine, setting them to sail on a clear puddle. We had been doing that. I was certain. I smelled my fingers for proof, put them in my mouth and sucked the bitter turpentine off. And that’s where I wanted to stay, beside the puddle. If only Time had hiccupped then and there. If only I had of grabbed them by their trousers, spoken sternly to all three of them. Now fellers, what good’s a shadow that don’t stay put?
She clobbered me near unconscious every time the sun cast a dusky reminder behind me. Or in front of me. Beside me, even. Over the years, I learned to fear them, my shadows. They followed me relentlessly. Ghostly evidence of my failure sprouting from my own two feet. Sometimes, when the guilt had rendered my heart into a thin broth, I stepped up to my mother in the soft evening sun, never flinched when I took the best she could give.
She never smiled again. Wore black on her body, black over her head. Proclaimed her hatred of God to anyone who might listen, called him a cruel child-eating son-of-a-bitch. Then, on my sixteenth birthday, when my body had finished growing into a man, she made her way up the hill towards the well, and with a bucket of stale rainwater, a securely tied knot, my mother destroyed herself.
I lived alone for one miserable year. I found it difficult to care for myself, and soon became a burden on my great aunt. After that year had passed, she determined the time was right to sell my mother’s house. She meant to include me in the bundle – the purchaser would pay a cut-rate price on the property, home, chattels, and I was to remain on the land. My care would be transferred to the new owner, and in exchange for shelter and a meal, I would work. At first, nobody was interested in the house, the meager furnishings, the wild grassy hill where Agnes continued to reside. Too many spirits. Too much sadness, they said. Until, on the advice of a potential buyer, I moved to Bended Knee. Into the dusty attic of Uncle and Berta May. Then my mother’s house sold quickly. Free and clear of shadows.
Uncle and Berta May were kind to me, spoke to me as though I were a man. Uncle Sir never had cause to beat me, all those years, and I did my best for him – working the fields when thick clouds filled the sky, tinkering in the barn or cellar when the sun shone. The Missus fed me, mended my clothes, and on blustery afternoons in the wintertime, she taught me to shape letters and words, to read the Bible. Many years passed, filled with the comfort of predictability.
People thought me simple. And, in some ways that was true. I rarely spoke, found words something of an annoyance. I was often alone. Occasionally, when the evening sky was like a battered tin plate, the air filled with drizzle, I wandered up and down the laneways. Stared into lighted windows, to watch families move around each other, to see husbands and wives embrace. Once, Mr. Johnson caught me outside his bedroom window. I had been watching while Mrs. Johnson unknotted her waist-length brown hair and Mr. Johnson brushed it by the low light of a lantern. I leaned forward when he buried his face in handfuls of her hair, and branches snapped beneath my feet. Mr. Johnson was beside me in a flash, knocked me twice with a fisherman’s strong fist, loosening my front teeth, deafening me in my left ear. He never gave me a moment to explain myself. That I wasn’t gazing out of depravity, I was trying to learn. To learn how people love.
There was talk about what to do. Uncle Sir and the Missus were too old to be concerned over it, said I was as stun as a flatfish. Nothing more than a curious child. “Anyways, decent folks should draw their curtains,” the Missus had offered. She gave me a beginner’s piano book, opened the creaky lid that covered the keys, suggested, “Have
a go at this. Maybe it’ll keep you out of trouble.” I could not make sense of the book, but the music still arrived through my fingers.
No woman took an interest in me before Miriam Seary. She arrived at the farm when I was nearly forty years old. At first I was afraid of her, would barely glance over as she lingered near the piano, her back hunched gently, side smile. In hopes of seeing her sway out of the corner of my eye, I played jaunty tunes. Felt incredibly brazen doing so.
I noticed her staring at me frequently, through the streaky windows of the house when I was outside, across the dinner table while we ate. I would swallow my food in lumps, made my stomach feel as though I’d drank a strong cupful of black tea without toast or a biscuit. I didn’t understand it, how I felt happy and ill at the same time. For months I wondered on it. Until she came to me in the barn.
Yes, I confess, I had witnessed some tangled antics when I peered into bedroom windows while wandering at night. It all seemed so angry and aggressive, particularly Skipper Whelan, his pinning and his biting and his rocking. The sounds that emerged from his small wife hidden beneath him filled me up with a nervous energy, and I would run for an hour or more, until exhausted. My tightly laced shoes, like Skipper and his missus, slapping, slapping against the damp road.
I couldn’t grasp the meaning of it. Not until Miriam placed her warm hand between my shoulder blades in the loft of the barn. I believe it was the first time someone had ever touched me with kindness in their fingers. Her palm released a warmth that traveled through my flannel shirt and flared out through my entire body. I had no idea what I was doing when I balanced my lanky frame on her bulky hips, round abdomen. But Miriam helped me, and while my bones were lost in her folds, I tucked my face into the creases of her neck, her smell like summer butter.
During much of my younger life, I had found Time dragged its hoary heels, now there was never enough of it. Chores on the farm. Errands for the Missus. Tending the animals. There was never enough moments to be with Miriam. She and I lay down together every chance we had. Mostly outdoors during those warmer months. Tall grasses, untouched by scythe or sickle, offered convenient privacy. I never knew a woman could be pleasant and sweet. Never would have guessed that Miriam’s body, her quiet ways could become a salve for my childhood guilt. I began to love Miriam Seary, and I was certain that some greater power had brought her towards me as a gift, letting me know that it was time to let go.
As the months went by, her waist became even thicker, and I knew I had put a baby into her. The Missus began to eye me warily, as though she knew what Miriam and I had been doing up over the hill on the fallow land. Uncle Sir became agitated, distant, spent long hours staring at the dull green sea. Miriam fashioned a soft blanket with a fat hook and white wool. Full of tiny holes. “Don’t expect that’ll keep it much warm,” I told her. “Keep it warm, keep it warm,” she’d said, whole face smiling before a loud burp escaped from her lips. “Sure, you’s no more than a baby yourself, Miriam. Passing gas like that,” the Missus had scolded. “I’s the baby, I’s the baby. I’s the babe that sails the ship.”
I stayed in the garden when the baby was climbing out, trenched up the same potato plant over and over again. Couldn’t stand to hear Miriam screaming. Like she was dying. And I stayed outside, even when the sun threatened to burn through the clouds, because I was all filled up with sick and happy again. My eyes were watering the earth.
Shortly after the child was out of her, Uncle Sir left the house with a bundle in his arms, what looked like the holey blanket, and he made his way down the laneway. Though I didn’t realize at that moment, I soon learned he’d given the child to some capable folks. I forgave him for that, as he knew better than I did. I’d guessed that’s what Miriam had wanted. Though I never had the chance to ask her.
When Miriam disappeared, she emptied me out. In some ways, I think it might have been easier to have never felt so full, because it hurt like the devil to have all that goodness drawn out of me. Everything changed when she left, and I decided that this was my punishment. I was with them now, my brothers. Down there inside that abandoned well with the three of them. Darkness and cold, my bargainings with God echoing up the dripping walls, making my poor ears bleed. No one was listening. My Mirry never came back.
For a fleeting moment, I had thought to leave and try to find her. Instead, for weeks I ran circles around Bended Knee in the moonlight, and then again in the mornings before the sun wounded the calm night sky. Silliness, it was, she could’ve been anywhere. But I didn’t stop until I wore holes through my only shoes, through my woolen socks, left tender skin from my soles on the dirt laneways. The Missus told me to give it up, do something I enjoyed. But the songs that emerged when my hands moved over those scratched white keys were mournful. That’s all I could manage.
Nothing now for me, but watch the child. Watch her grow. And I did that, as often as I could. I followed Delia Abbott as she strolled along the sea, baby nestled in her slender arms. I watched the girl haul seaweed with her father a few years later. I noticed her eyes, red and swollen, when the young men went off to war. Though the bright day made my legs shake, I stood nearby, as she emerged from the church, a glowing bride. Stella. She was a star. Is a star. Pure light. I wove each image of my child into the fabric of my heart. Though this may sound stale, those glimpses of her sewed me up inside. Kept me breathing for many years.
And now, since my death, I will tell you what is happening. My awareness has been spiraling outwards, in a gradual drift, breaking, re-joining, like an enormous mound of cotton candy, a million tiny fingers pinching off sugary filaments for a million swallowing mouths. At first I felt a deep sense of loss, my memories, my very life was dissolving. But then I came to understand that inside this thinning mass is a stronger core, an energy that clings to itself, holds itself together. My love for Miriam and our daughter resides in that mass. Waiting in that place. So simple.
There are no shadows here.
chapter sixteen
“I’ve had a vision,” Jane Edgecombe announced one morning at the breakfast table. “A simply perfect vision of how to end our little holiday.”
“Well?” Elise asked, looking towards her sister-in-law, though never meeting her eyes. Instead, she stared at the contents of the spoon in Jane’s hand. It was overflowing with Elise’s last bit of good raspberry jam, and Jane was pressing it into a toasted English muffin, going back for more. She was not one to deny herself, even though her body, no more than a spindle, showed little evidence of it. “Well, what sort of vision now?”
“It came to me last night as I was reading the Telegram in bed.”
“In bed? Who reads a newspaper in bed? You’re bound to get black on the sheets.”
Jane ignored the comment, dropped the spoon into the near empty jar. “And there it was, a tiny advertisement. Laid out like that, as though it were meant to be.”
“My knees are too old for anything crazy now, Jane,” Robert said, glancing over his bifocals. “I remember last time–”
“Yes. Knees,” she said, face and eyes alight. “But just one. Bended Knee.”
“Bended Knee?” Elise leaned her head back, chin lost in a pinkish wattle. “Why on earth would we want to go there?”
“All kinds of reasons, Elise, my dear. I’d love to see where my husband grew up. See your old haunts. You know. Have the boys experience some rustic Newfoundland living. It would be fun.”
“Now, Jane, none of us have any interest in flushing out old ghosts.”
“Too late. I’ve already called and booked us all in, Robert. Authentic historic farmhouse from the 1800s, it said. The ad in the paper.” Jane nibbled her overloaded toast, sipped her coffee. “Charm galore. Plus, it might nudge you know who out of her funk.” She opened her eyes wide, leaned her head sharply to one side.
No one looked directly at the chair, though they all saw the woman in their peripheral vision. A pair of neatly slippered feet, permanently creased pants. Cardigan with easy
to handle buttons. Head covered with short, soft, bluish hair. Gnarled fingers moving a crochet hook in and out, in and out, ever so slowly, around the edges of a goliath granny square.
“Bring her around.” Another sip of scalding coffee. Wincing. “Let’s end this whole thing on a high note, shall we?”
Anita Hilliard, sole proprietor of The May House Bed and Breakfast, was used to young guests, and she knew how to extract a smile out of them. Two boys, she guessed around seven and nine years old, were seated at the kitchen table, staring at her with expectation. “Well now, what do I do for a thrill. Is that the bit of information you’re after? Hmmm.” Plump hand to her chin. “A few mice, that’s what. They’s my biggest thrill these days.”
Elise Lane cleared her throat. Hard. These boys were her great nephews, but instead of affection, their infantile antics evoked only a general sense of irritation – the emotion she might have while using a dull grater on a carrot. And she guessed, from her sister-in-law’s continually flushed cheeks, that Jane’s heart housed much the same sentiment. Elise was betting that Jane and her brother Robert were ruing their decision to bring them along when they travelled from Toronto.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than checking my traps each morning, seeing a reward for my efforts. Those bright black eyes and grey fur.”
“Gross,” Jason, the older one, said with a wide grin.
“I uses peanut butter,” she confided in a hushed tone. “And more than once you’ll get one eating the face right off the other. Talk about ignorant,” she said with a snort.
“Ooo, double gross.” Andrew, the younger one now. Elise followed the trail of painted baseboards around the small kitchen, scanning for cracks and holes. Then, she cleared her throat again, ventured with an unintentional squeak, “Many mice here?”
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