Downhill Chance (11 page)

“A lot of fighting going on there,” said Ralph, tossing up the last of the turrs. “Read it in the newspaper that come off the steamer last week.”

“You’d think he’d write,” said Rose, “with your poor mother in such a way.”

“I say now there’ll be a bunch come all at once,” said Alma, noting the look of concern on Clair’s face at Ralph’s words. “With the way the mail is, and coming from all the way from over the seas, you never can tell. Sure Darryl Day’s wife, over in Trinity Bay, she got forty letters all at once when her husband went over to the first war—and that was the day he stepped off the boat, back home agin. He keeped them all, he did, and brought them home with him when he come. Imagine that, now. Funny things, my dear, war does to a man. And I allows that’s what your father’ll do, just climb off the boat someday, with the rest of his letters sticking out a shirt pocket. Who’s that coming up there?” she asked abruptly, squinting past Clair to a boat moving towards them, some distance off.

“Looks like that young fellow Frankie from Rocky Head,” said Ralph, wheezing heavily as he tossed the last bird onto the wharf and climbed up the ladder. “For sure he’s the only one to come up here, rough frigging water like this.”

“Yes, and balls, brother, after spotting that submarine.”

“Aahh, a seal, more likely,” scoffed Alma.

“That’s what they probably thought on that ferry that got torpedoed,” said Rose. “And we knows what that got them. Sir, you got the set of ears,” she exclaimed as the store door was shoved open behind her, and Willamena, a heavy shawl wrapped around her shoulders, poked her head outside, her features appearing doubly pointed as she peered through the blowing snow at the lone figure in the boat cutting steadily towards them.

“Not that hard to hear you, Alma maid,” piped Willamena. “How’s you doing, Clair?” she asked, her interest heightening at the sight of Clair attempting to sidestep her way into the store. “We hears your mother’s some sick.”

Clair shrugged, “She’s not sick—”

“That’s not what young Missy says, then.”

“She gets a bad head, that’s all,” said Clair, standing back impatiently as Willamena guarded the entrance to the store.

“You’d think you’d quit school and help her out if she’s that sick. Nothing the school board can do if you quits to help your mother—that’s what I done—quit to help Dad.”

Clair was struck silent with surprise. “I’m—I’m getting my grade eleven,” she finally stammered.

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” said Willamena with feigned seriousness, “You’re going to be a grand teacher someday. That’s what your father was always going on about, wasn’t it?” Taking stock of Alma and Rose’s rapt attention, and Ralph approaching them from behind, pulling his cap up over an ear the size of a conch, Willamena took face to ask what they’d all been querying about for months now. “According to young Missy, your mother’s getting a bit low-minded, is she?”

And as was when she had crouched behind the lobster pots listening to them badmouth her father, Clair rose to her full height and was about to turn on her heel and march back up the hill again, if not for Saul pulling the door open farther, his eyes as hard as two grey beach rocks as he stared fixedly at his daughter.

“With those looks, you’d think she’d be trying to bring the customers in, not freezing them to death on the stoop,” he said past her to Alma, and Clair bit back a satisfied retort as a flush reddened Willamena’s face.

“Tasty figs grows on trees no matter how blight the blossoms,” Willamena snapped at her father, flouncing back in the store, but not without a backward glance at the young fellow from Rocky Head who was now tying up at the wharf.

“And what’s a duff without a fig, hey, maid?” said Alma, as they all crowded in behind her, stomping the snow off their boots. “That fellow Frankie looks in the need of a good prune. I don’t suppose she got plans for he, now, do she, Saul?”

“Yes, watch out now I goes with someone from Rocky Head,” said Willamena haughtily from behind the counter.

“They’re a working people, and that’s something they can teach some of we,” said Saul, tightening his apron around his waist. “Tend to her,” he ordered Willamena, beckoning towards Clair standing silently at the counter.

“A pound of tea and a bar of soap,” said Clair as Willamena sauntered towards her, but her order was washed out by the door swinging open and Frankie pushing in through, a burlap sack tossed over one shoulder, the salty smell of the sea clinging to his heavy winter clothes, and with a bold smile that demanded acceptance as much as willed it.

“You’re back already,” exclaimed Willamena, scampering over to the far side of the counter, greeting him.

“Good day, good day to you, sir,” said Saul.

“Not what I’d call a good one,” replied Frankie in the broad, flat talk of the Rocky Head crowd as he nodded pleasantly to those standing around, “but there’s more than a few companies of turrs out there.”

“That’s what there is then, brother, thousands,” said Ralph, taking a seat atop the apple barrel. “And poor, too, they is.”

“Broody as an old hen to buff,” said Rose. “That’s not more knitting you got brought up,” she asked as Frankie rolled his burlap bag onto the counter.

“Yup, that’s what she is, then,” said Frankie.

“Sure, how do the women find time for buffing birds with all the knitting youse is doing?” said Alma. “My, look at that stitching, Rose,” she added, mauling through the pairs of knitted socks and mitts Saul was emptying from the bag onto the counter. “Tighter than Aunt Sulaney’s, I think.”

“Yup, too bad it’s for government purposes and not our own,” said Frankie, an admiring eye upon his goods as he doffed his cap, patting down his slicked-back hair with the knife-edge part. Spotting Clair, he stepped back, sending her a smile of such charm that it tinted her cheeks and brought Willamena scurrying towards her once more, demanding her order.

“No doubt, sir, there’s a market somewhere,” Saul was saying, holding open the burlap bag as Alma shoved the knitted goods back inside. “There’s more money being won in this war than land; the merchants of death don’t die with wars. Find the goods, I always say, and the rest is in your pocket.”

“Fancy words, them is,” grunted Ralph. “How come all it gets me is store bills to stuff me pockets with?”

“What’s on the bills stuffs your gut, don’t it?” retorted Willamena, coming back to the counter with Clair’s tea and soap. And ignoring the sudden flare of Ralph’s nostrils, and her father’s look of warning, she sidled up to Clair, laying the goods on the counter, asking loudly, “Do you got money?”

Clair blinked. Money! Aside from the scattered copper, she’d never seen money, and never in the store where everything was always marked down and deducted from her father’s work, or his army cheque since he’d gone to war.

“Well, they’re over their limit,” said Willamena, pushing the bill book at her father as he stared at her, equally as perplexed. “I told that to Sim twice this week when he was here carrying up stuff to Sare.”

“He—he don’t carry up stuff to we,” said Clair, hearing naught but the shuffling of Frankie’s feet, and the sudden quiet from Alma and the others.

“I knows what I’m marking down,” said Willamena. “And what do you know anyway about what he brings to your mother when you’re in school all day?”

“I gets the groceries,” said Clair. She turned confusedly to Saul as he reached past Willamena, pushing her bagged goods in front of her. “Well—do we owe more—?” she asked, faltering as her tongue thickened in the sudden dryness of her mouth. And scarcely hearing Saul’s reply that he’d fix it up some other way, she took the bag off the counter and walked hotly out through the door.

Decidedly, in a soul still clean with youth, there is nothing of the dirtied greys to temper a judgment, but a clarity that shows decisively what is white and what is not white. And this—this theft of the uncle’s, bringing the shame of charity to her father’s name, along with the lies he told of his labours on his brother’s stoop—seeded scorn in Clair’s brain, a scorn that watered itself with rage, anguish, fear and other ills that, left alone, become too monumental to disperse within and is charted into that darker unknown self. And as is with most things that grow, it seeks light. And whereas before this encounter over her father’s credit it had flowered into thoughts of pulverized bodies rotting the ground they’d plundered, it now took the form of the living. And as a duckling follows whom or whatever its eyes first light upon, so did the uncle become the harbinger of the rot festering in Clair’s mind.

Missy was kneeling upon a chair, jabbing a junk of wood into the stove when Clair burst in through the door. One look at the scowl on her sister’s face and Missy clanked the poker across the stove and, scampering off the chair, dove for the stairwell.

“You wait there,” yelled Clair, kicking off her boots and diving after her.

“Clair’s after me, Clair’s after me!” said Missy, the thrill of the chase sounding wildly through her cries as she scrabbled up over the stairs.

“What’re you after doing now?” sighed Sare, trailing out of her room, a few garments of dirty clothes hanging limply from her hands.

“Clair’s after me,” shrieked Missy, darting behind her mother, clinging to her skirt.

“She’s blabbing off to Willamena at the store agin,” yelled out Clair from the bottom of the stairs. “I’ve told her and told her not to go blabbing off to Willamena at the store.”

“No, I never!”

“Yes you did.”

“I never blabs!”

“Yes she did, Mommy, and there’s something else too—” But Clair’s accusation was cut off as her mother’s wearied look was suddenly replaced by one of fright. Dropping the garments of clothing, she came running down over the stairs, her eyes locked onto a curl of smoke drifting from the kitchen. Clair’s insides quickened and she darted into the kitchen after her mother.

“Are you trying to burn us down?” Sare cried, snatching the burning-hot poker off the floor and scuffing at the charred spot on the canvas. “That’s just what your poor father needs to come home to—his house burned to the ground.”

“It’s Missy’s fault.”

“No it wasn’t!” hollered Missy from the stairwell.

“Don’t start that agin,” sighed Sare, laying the poker back on the stove, and sliding the stove top in place. “I allows it’ll break your father’s heart the way you’ve been fighting, and especially after him asking you to help take care of Missy, Clair—mercy, the singing out, the singing out—I swear I can’t stand it; it’s like the claws of a bird gripping my temples.”

But Clair was not wanting to commiserate with her mother’s pain right now. “He’s stealing from us, Mommy,” she shouted. “Uncle Sim’s stealing from us. He’s marking down stuff on our store bill and carrying it to his own place.” She paused as her mother turned on her, a look of surprise chasing away her pained look. “We’re already over our limit for this month,” she added more quietly, “and we still got another week before Daddy’s cheque comes. Saul said he’d fix it up, but that means he’d be giving us food, and—and Willamena was there—and everybody else, too—” She faltered as her mother stared helplessly around the room, her hands falling to her sides.

“What’re we going to do, Mommy? I can go get him.”

“Nothing. We do nothing,” said her mother thickly.

“Nothing!”

“It’s how your father would have it. It’s not the first time your uncle’s done this—your father knows. He’s turned his back on account of his taking it up to his mother—and that’s what we’ll do, too. Lord knows, we can’t afford it now, but it’s how your father would have it—we’ll do with less, that’s all—that’s what he’s doing over there, somewhere—half starving himself to death—and we’re nowhere near that.”

“But it’s stealing!”

“It’s how your father would have it,” Sare returned sharply. “And I’ll not hear more about it. And you’re not to take it up either—promise you’ll not say a word. Promise,” she demanded as Clair stood tight-lipped with anger.

Ignoring her mother’s command and the trembling in her hand as she raised it to her brow, Clair turned on her heel and stomped to the window, staring hard outside. The divan creaked as her mother lowered her weight onto it, then there was silence. Loud, smothering silence. And the ceaseless ticking of the clock became louder as it struck down at her from the kitchen wall, interrupting all thought and holding her bound in this stayed moment with her mother. Her eyes sought out the flower patch, frozen beneath its blanket of snow and ice. Yet, there was a root down there somewhere that would respond to the first rays of the sun’s heat and grow new life from those frozen stems. She turned a little, glimpsing her mother now sitting forward and holding her hands towards the stove, drawing its heat. Hadn’t she said they were the walking roots of their own souls? Was not she the one who seeded this home? Was she not, then, its root? Where, then, was the warmth now needed to nurture its growth? And in that moment when the ills of the day began to fold in, crimping all thought into weariness, she looked to her mother’s reflection vaguely outlined in the window and whimpered in a voice unlike her own, “How come you don’t knit socks for the soldiers?”

There was a silence at first, then the shuffling of her mother’s slippered feet as she rose from her place of rest. “Is that what they’re asking,” she whispered, “why I don’t knit socks for the soldiers?” When greeted by silence, she commanded, “Answer me, Clair.”

Clair pressed shut her eyes, wishing she could undo the moment.

“Perhaps it’s you who’s doing the asking, then, is it?” asked Sare. And as Clair refused to speak, she took another step towards her daughter, taking hold of her shoulder. “Then, it’s you I’ll answer to,” she said, the trembling leaving her hands and the fall light glancing greyly off her eyes as she hauled Clair around more fully to face her.

“It’s because my husband
is
a soldier, that’s why I’m not knitting,” she said, her tone clipped with bitterness. “And if I’ve got to do without him while he fights for all of them, the least they can do is put socks on his feet. You hear me, young Clair? I sent my husband, I did, and they’re sending socks. Wouldn’t I gladly change places with them that knits socks and their own husbands sitting across from them? I’ll knit enough socks to warm the feet of a thousand men when Job comes back to me. And I’ll knit enough socks and mitts to warm the feet and hands of every frostbitten soldier in all of Europe when they brings my man home. But for now, for as long as I breathes, not knowing if he’s dead or alive, I’ll do nothing. I’ll mourn him gone. I’ll mourn his every breath that he takes without me sitting alongside of him to hear it. You tell them that asks why I’m not knitting socks, you tell them I’m a miser that walks these floors—a miser that prays with every breath she takes in, and curses with every breath she heaves out. You hear me, young Clair? I didn’t choose to offer him that holds my heart. And that gives me no right to sit in charitable company and hope. And I feels no shame. God forgive me, but there’s a stinginess in my soul and I’ll play no part in this gambit. Now, is that what you asked me, child? Is that what you wanted to hear from your poor mother this day?”