Dollybird (5 page)

“My wife just...” Who the hell was this woman? “You got no right.” I wanted to snatch Casey out of her arms, to protect him from this blustering whale of a woman. But the whale was right. I needed her to keep Casey alive, at least for now. No idea how I'd pay her. And if I couldn't, would Casey simply die in this godforsaken town? Not for the first time I felt a sick longing for home, mostly for my mother.

“I don't do cooking and cleaning and such. Only for the baby and myself. So you'll have to take care of the rest.” She waved her arms around the room and the flabby undersides flapped like wings. Suddenly she got this sly look, her eyes all but disappearing into the volume of her cheeks. “Unless, of course, you can pay. Then things can be arranged.”

“How much?”

“Dollar a day.”

I was stunned, but faked like I'd expected it. “Just do it then. I'll pay.” I looked at her more closely, trying to decide if I could trust her with Casey, knowing I had no choice. “What's your name then?”

“Fran Brody.” She picked up Casey and began to unbutton her dress. “You get out of here now. Unless you want to watch?” Her eyebrows flicked up and down, flirting like, and she lowered her great bulk onto the bed where the imprint of Taffy's body was still warm. Casey was lying across her lap. “Scrawny thing, isn't he?”

Scrambling to put my shoes on, I rushed to the door. She called out, sounding almost sorry. “Gibson paid those two to come get her. Says they'll have to burn her, ‘cause you can't afford anything else.”

I slammed the door behind me so the horses in the livery jumped. One pulled back hard on its halter.

“Hey!” The stable hand ran to calm the mare. “What the hell's the matter with you?”

I reeled out onto the street, almost stumbling over Ralph lying in the warmth coming from under the livery door.

“Fucker.” He spit it at me.

I must have looked half mad, ‘cause he pulled back into the shadows when I turned on him. And then I ran. Hard. Pumping my arms and legs ‘til they were rubber, ‘til my breath came in great gulps, ‘til I decided crying wasn't gonna get me far and Mrs. Brody was a piss-poor substitute for a parent, ‘til I found myself back outside the livery, girding myself for the battle to come.

The livery boss took one look at Casey and offered me a job.

“We stick together,” he muttered, Irish accent thick. “Only for a few months, mind.”

His pity was embarrassing. I worked like a dog to make up for it. Don't know he ever noticed. The whole time I was there he ducked so's I couldn't see his face, but the pity never left it. Getting up early with Casey, I learned to change diapers and keep the boy happy until Mrs. Brody showed up for the day. In the evening I went for a pint with other working men just scraping to provide for their families. Heading home after, it felt almost a normal life until I got to the door, where Mrs. Brody was always impatient for her pay. Then I'd hold Casey on my knee, tell him stories of Taffy and Arichat. And every night before I conked on the bed, I'd touch the cedar box I made to hold my wife's ashes.

“I'll make it better for him someday, Taffy. I will.”

Eight months later I was still forking horseshit, every cent spent to keep Brody. But I was feeding Casey more mashed potatoes from my own plate and doing more of the cleaning and washing at the end of the day. Brody always had an excuse.

“Oh look at my feet, so swollen from chasing the boy all day.”

“He never quits. I can't even keep up with the diapers let alone the cleaning.”

She didn't do much more than watch Casey. And on the way
home I'd hear her hollering at him as though the boy's sole purpose in shitting his diaper was to irritate her. And when I'd get there just wanting her to leave, she'd putter about, picking up the few toys I'd managed to find for Casey, asking about
my
day as though it were the most interesting thing she'd heard. Made me wonder if maybe she was worse off than me.

Finally I came home one night to Casey screaming, tied in his crib, diaper soaked and dirty, every bit of food gone from the cupboard. And a note.

Sorry to leave, but the pay wasn't enough. Your son can survive without me now. Gibson found a new orphan for me to raise.

She had written
good luck
at the bottom, like one of them PSs, like the wish was only something she thought of after, like she thought she should say something nice.

It was the word
orphan
that sent me back home to Arichat. Sure Casey didn't have a mother, but he sure as hell wasn't no orphan. A father's gotta be worth something in the mix even if he isn't so good at diapers and cuddling. I was learning that too. Had to. And if I was honest, I'd have to say I was glad. I knew more about my boy at six months old than my father knew about me in twenty years. But I needed a real job and Casey needed some real mothering, so I headed home to show my father what he'd never given me.

Only he'd gone off to Sydney, to work in the coal mines. It suited me just fine.

“Your father refuses to come home.” Mother sounded proud, like this alone would redeem him, like he was finally proving why she'd stayed with him all those years. It was a shock to see her. She looked like hell. Skin looking for bones to wrap itself around, that's all was left. Even when things were at their worst-a new baby hanging on her, little ones with croup, Da drunk and ugly – her eyes always had a spark. But when I got home and hugged her tight, there was only the skin. Until she saw Casey; he lit her up with laughing and crying all at once.

Almost a year I was a dockhand, loading and unloading the few ships still stopping in our small harbour. Casey grew, Mother teaching him to walk, to say a few words, his young uncles and aunts spoiling him every day after school.

I hardly recognized Da when he finally came home. He was like the ivy my mother tried to keep alive in our shack where the sun never reached, his body hunched like brown, curled leaves, his arms and legs the spindly vines. His face was pinched and black with soot in the deep creases. And he was old. He coughed and hacked, bringing up the black shit and wheezing afterward, hardly able to catch his wind.

“It's almost the end for me now, boy.” His breath was hot and rank. “I wanted to see my grandson before I go.”

Da nudged me and nodded at the four other children crowding around the bed where Casey was putting on a show, making faces at his audience. He went outside, stopping to lean against the table when another hacking fit caught him. I shivered and stood up just as Mother swooped in on Casey.

“Come on, little one, let's see if you can go on the pot before your nap.” She was nuzzling Casey's neck, kissing his nose and cheeks while he flailed at her for interrupting his fun. “He's figuring out what he has to do.” She laughed and disappeared into the curtained-off bedroom.

I found father on the sagging front stoop, rolling a cigarette with one hand and holding a bottle to his mouth with the other. He looked at me hard and for so long I felt skinned, like my pelt was hanging from the rail, him waiting to devour my raw insides. The hair on my neck prickled. Finally he flicked his ashes into the shrubs beside the porch and pulled on the bottle again.

“You should've taken better care of Taffy.” The voice rattled from his chest. “You'll never get anything from her old man now.”

Oh he knew what he was saying. Knew it would send me at him. His bony figure blurred to red, my breath coming too fast, shoulders heaving. I was on him in two strides. “You bastard.” I grabbed his arm and wrenched it behind his back. “That's all that mattered then? Her family havin' money?”

He tried to lurch away, the cigarette falling from his lips. “Don't hurt me, boy.” His voice was pleading, pathetic, and I saw how very small he was. “I didn't mean nothin'.”

I pushed him away.

“But they owed it to your grandfather, bless his soul. Taking his land, sending him over half-starved from the famine.” His voice rose and his bent body uncurled, his finger stabbing the air.

He gave me a long hard look as though I had something to do with any of it. And finally I saw what he'd been waiting for since I could remember. Since the time I was a wee thing listening to him whine and wait for
those bastards to give him a chance
, to lift him from the muck hole he was wallowing in.

He suddenly leaned over the porch rail, spitting blood, hanging on the door frame to steady himself. And he was pathetic, not just because he was scared and sick, but because he'd wasted his whole life in waiting for it to start.

“Taffy was right,” I told him, not too harsh. “I could have worked at the mill. Probably would have enjoyed it.”

“But you left.”

“It wasn't no handout either. I would have made something of myself.”

“Why didn't you then.” He sneered. “Chicken? Too pansy?”

“You prick.” My voice went quiet, a huge weight of sadness resting on my chest. “I left because all you wanted was a ticket out of this hell hole.”

“Yeah right.” He tried to sound mean, but the meanness was leaving him. He saw that I knew.

“Nobody owes you a life, you sorry bastard.” I opened the door and looked back. “You don't deserve one.”

It was the last time I saw my family. Da had forced the decision between the poverty I knew and a dreamer's chance at something better. Casey and I were both orphaned, so in the late fall of 1906 I laid ten dollars on the counter and bought a ticket on the last Harvest Train heading to Saskatchewan.

CHAPTER 6

i
i
i

The train weren't so bad,
but for the three days of hard slatted seats, bad food and nervous women. My God, you'd think they'd never seen a man hold a babe before. Buggered off soon's I came near their precious wee ones, like my boy had some kind of contagion. Then some other dames, asking after Casey, so I yammered away and they could laugh at the bohunk fresh from the sea. But those weren't no good girls hiding behind their fancy gloves. And their shoes. Taffy would've laughed. They wouldn't have lasted a minute in the rock and mud of Arichat. It was the shoes that proved it. Only bad girls wore heels like that. They'd have given me a roll if I'd asked. Not that I would, seeing as how I'd just lost Taffy and all.

But the other one, the one with curly hair and sensible shoes. Not real pretty, but handsome. Don't know what a decent girl like her was doing on a train full of men. She looked on, smiling like she knew about me. Women like her know things, things like my being a bloody liar, and Casey's mother being dead, and it being all my fault.

Casey slept most of the time. The hum of the rails seemed to lull him. Couldn't get off the train in Toronto, even when the conductor came up and said it was okay. The uniform made me nervous. Figured I must have done something wrong to get his attention.

“It would do you good to stretch your legs. It's a long trip.” He was a nice enough fellow. “And the little one could use some fresh air. You've lots of time.”

I shook my head. The crowd out the window was huge, so many people my throat went dry and my chest pounding so I figured they could hear it out there on the platform. No way in hell I was exploring with so many watching. The train pulling out again was a relief. There was nothing expected of me now except to ride, and I finally dozed in fits and starts, waking at Casey's every move, every time the train lurched. I knew we'd be snaking across the Canadian Shield. My mother had taught me geography. She loved it, poring over maps, pointing out the continents, the oceans and Ireland, where my clan come from. That night, somewhere in Manitoba, the train rolled onto the prairie.

The other men were up all night. I pretended to sleep when they went by to take a piss off the platform outside. They were loud and ugly, their voices carrying through every time the door was opened between cars. I'd seen such men in Halifax: far from home, no women to keep them in line. A few months earlier I might have laughed at them and maybe, if they weren't too far gone, have joined in.

Near dawn we stopped at the Regina station. A scuffle broke out down the corridor, but I didn't move, didn't want to risk getting involved. Then a roar of men's voices shook the air and I had to take a look out the window, careful, like a detective, Casey pawing at me to let him see. Five or six of the men were hanging off the side of the train. They shouted encouragements to a drunk who'd come out of a tavern near where the train was stopped, and he lurched toward a beautiful horse saddled and tied out front. The horse was a prize. The man staggered in front of it while it reared up on its rope with nostrils flared and eyes wild. Just missed getting a hoof in the head, the idiot, until he finally got the rope in his hand and a foot in the stirrup. He swung himself up and rode the terrified thing out of sight behind the train. The men shouted, jubilant at the daring of another to steal such a fine animal. The train started moving and it was over, the men staggering off to bed to sleep off their whiskey. I held tight to Casey.

What changes when you're holding a kid you fathered? Do your gonads suddenly shrink ‘cause they've proven their worth? Or maybe they swell at the idea of what you've done? Maybe that's what makes you a man. Or maybe it's you know how men can be and it scares you that something so innocent might see what his father's capable of. I felt like a ninny for being nervous, protective and pissed off on Casey's behalf.

It never fails. The moment you fall into a deep sleep after a restless night, the sun comes up to shine in your eyes. That and Casey wailing for his breakfast. I dragged my head out of the fog and stuck a cup of sugar water in Casey's greedy hands. His face twisted like I was trying to poison him, and he babbled on, mad as hell at the lack of milk. He kept glaring at me from over the rim, but settled into the crook of my arm like always. The sun was higher. Out the window, great fields of wheat and grass stretched to the horizon, like beautiful waves bowing to the wind. My throat closed up with a homesick lump.

i i i

We arrived in Moose Jaw to a heat I'd never known.

“Hey, Casey,” I picked him up and wiped a shirt sleeve under his runny nose. “Maybe we've died and this is hell then?”

Police met us on the station platform, setting suspicious eyes on each of us, asking after anyone who'd seen the man who stole the horse at Regina. They passed me over quick when Casey started fussing. Stealing a man's horse was low, almost worse than stealing a man's wife I figure, but I wasn't saying anything. I was too afraid to get involved. I grabbed our things and hit the road as soon as they let the barricade down. A member of the North West Mounted Police looked me over real slow from his perch on a broad grey gelding.

“Hey. You. With the kid.”

I turned back terrified. “Me?”

“You're the only one carrying a kid.”

“Yeah.”

“They're looking for workers on a crew in Ibsen, couple hours' ride south.” He looked away over the barricade again.

Under my shirt I could feel my sweat go cold. “Uh, thanks.” He didn't look at me again.

It was hell, hitching rides with a little one. You'd have thought I was carrying a live skunk the way people wrinkled their noses and drove their horses a little faster as they went by. Finally I had to leave Casey out of sight in the tall grass at the side of the trail until a wagon slowed. Then I'd quick grab him and hoist us both up onto the back until they kicked us off. Some let us ride. Some didn't, cursing all bums and delinquents, as though I was some kind of representative.

Finally a driver stopped of his own accord and a woman's hands reached down to take Casey. They were a husband and wife, maybe fifty years old, a flash of smile between them when they made room on the seat for me. She reached behind to a basket and pulled out a cheese sandwich and jar of milk.

“Thanks.” The bread melted in my mouth.

“Looks like you've had some hard luck,” she said.

I nodded, looking down at the holes in my boots and the bundle of dirty grey clothes that was Casey.

“Going to the crew?” her husband asked, sizing me up with his one good eye. The other wandered to the left a little, so I wasn't sure where he was looking. I took my chances on the straight eye and spoke to it.

“I was told they were looking for men in Ibsen.”

“Yeah, so they say.” He thought for a minute. “But watch
yourself. There's some of those outfits don't give a damn how
they treat ya. Look for a big guy named Henry. He'll steer you right.”

“What will you do with this little guy?” The woman shifted Casey on her knee and smiled down at him. “You're a sweet thing, aren't you?”

Casey mumbled through the sandwich he chewed.

“Well, ma'am, I don't know.” I was thinking quick so she wouldn't think me an idiot. “I was hoping the farm women would watch him while I worked.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Oh Lord, those women won't have time for another little one underfoot. They'll be too busy cooking for the crew and tending to their own.” Her husband looked at her, she raised her eyebrows at him and he nodded. “It's none of my business, but where's his mother?”

A lump rose in my throat. No one except Doctor Gibson and Mrs. Brody knew how bad Taffy's death had been. The memory was like a sore that had mossed over, ugly with festering, but hidden from everyone, so saying it out loud was like ripping off a scab. “She died of the typhoid the day he was born.”

The woman's eyes went soft, concern creasing at her forehead. “Oh Lord.” She held Casey too close and he squirmed to get away.

“I tried to make it in Halifax, but there was no work. We was practically starving and Taffy pregnant and then...” My voice broke and I hated myself, because part of me enjoyed the telling and the sympathy it brought. Part of me wanted there to be a clean white scar where the wound was. See it the way these people saw it. But when I ducked my head to fake tears, all I could think of was the part I wasn't telling where it was my fault.

“Don't you worry...?”

“Dillan.”

“Dillan. This little fellow can stay with us while you work the harvest.”

“I'll make out okay.” My hands unclenched and shoulders relaxed even as I protested. Someone else to worry over Casey, to figure out what he needed, to be responsible.

“Nonsense. Look, we're Mr. and Mrs. George Miller. You come have supper with us, ask about us in town if you like, see if we're trustworthy enough.” She glanced at her husband and laughed out loud. “The boy will be fine.”

I liked her. She was straight-on, looked at you when she spoke, and her eyes were kind. “Yes, I believe he will be. I'll make it up to you, Mrs. Miller. I promise.”

When we got to their farm, I washed up and helped Casey do the same. Mrs. Miller's fried potatoes and salt pork were like honey on my tongue. She bounced around her small kitchen, talking of her garden, her husband's crops, laughing with Casey as she tickled his naked belly and washed him clean of the livery and the train and the past. The boy and I slept like we were dead, wrapped in a feather tick on a bed of straw in the barn. And in the morning, Mr. Miller squeezed my shoulder and pointed me toward town.

“The crews are assembling at the end of Main Street,” he said.

I reached for Casey, struggling in Mrs. Miller's arms. “Gotta say goodbye.”

Strange feelings tugged at my belly when I hugged him – relief he'd be cared for, scared witless for him at the same time. Relief too, at being alone in the world again, the strange combination of freedom and fear you get on entering a pub where no one knows you or anything about you, the sense you will have to make it on your own legs. I'd used Taffy's story to my advantage. Casey too. But now I'd have no excuses.

“Go now.” Mrs. Miller looked at me sorrowfully, took my hands and squeezed them. Her hands were like my mother's hands, hard with life, gentle with love. “Go and work out your grief. Then you'll be ready to raise this young thing properly.”

I couldn't tell her it wasn't grief keeping me poor and hopeless. The grief was easy compared to the guilt. I handed Casey to her and walked away slow, looked back and waved. Casey wouldn't understand this leaving. How could he? I turned back at least twice, and finally started to run, faster and faster until the wind drowned out Casey's cries, until my lungs were bursting with the great gulps of blue sky burning them.