Spirits Rising

“I’m not sure about this latte thing, Rachel,” my elderly neighbour said. Steam billowed from the bright blue-and-yellow mug in her hands that read, BEST GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER, the second “great” having been scribbled above the other with a black marker. She sniffed, her face uncertain.

“Go on, Mrs. Saunders,” I urged. “I think you’ll like it. Where’s my mail?”

She shot me her signature “don’t rush me, missy” look before saying, “It’s in the basket by the microwave. I got Amy to pick it up from the post office for you every few days.”

“I’ll give her a call tomorrow and thank her.” Amy was Mrs. Saunders’s great-great-niece who lived three villages down the road and was such a sweetheart about running errands for people. I retrieved the wicker basket from the counter. The mail was six inches high, so I carried the entire basket back to the table. Mrs. Saunders took a cautious sip of the steaming beverage. No reaction yet. She took another sip.

The old lady lived next door and was perhaps my best friend since I’d moved to Newfoundland. I’d never called her by her first name. As the oldest woman in the entire Northern peninsula of the province, she received the
Mrs.
honourific; no one used Mrs. Saunders’s first name. It was one of those Newfoundland rules, or so I’d been told. I’d met eighty-year-olds who called her “Mrs. Saunders.”

“Well?”

She shot me a look. “It’s too hot and it has frothy stuff on top.” She took another sip and smacked her lips.

I grinned and turned to my mail pile. It consisted of a month’s worth of bills, junk mail, and a postcard from the dentist reminding me I was overdue for a visit. In other words, perfectly normal.

I looked at the old lady suspiciously. “Well?”

Mrs. Saunders ignored my glare and pointed at her kitchen counter. “Be a good girl and put a spot of gin in this.”

I had meant the question in reference to the mail, which she bloody well knew from that impish smile on her face. I shook my finger at her, but I walked over to the kitchen counter again, where a near-empty bottle of gin sat in the corner, under one of the dozens of crucifixes scattered throughout the hundred-year-old house. Next to the gin sat a bag of molasses cookies, an apple pie, and two jars of homemade raspberry jam, all neatly arranged like a pagan offering to the gin god.

I gave her a disapproving glare. “I thought the doctor told you to lay off the sweets.”

She swatted at my butt when I walked by her. “Don’t start with me, missy.”

I dribbled a few drops of the pungent booze into her hot drink.
Gin latte
. The baristas would not approve. While I gave her a hard time on occasion, I didn’t want to harp on her. No point to it. She had a great-grandchild my age. What did I know?

She at me. “Oh, that’s not enough for a baby with colic. Give me a proper shot’s worth,” she chided me, swatting my butt again. When I jumped, she giggled with her hand over her mouth. “You’ve been putting on weight. You didn’t get pregnant in Mexico, did you now?”

“Women don’t carry babies in their bums, Mrs. Saunders. You should know that, seeing how you’ve had thirteen of your own.”

“Only because birth control was illegal back when I was poppin’ out the youngsters. Now, top that thing up.”

I shot her my best annoyed look and poured enough gin into her coffee mug to raise the liquid inside by a good centimetre. “You’re not having any more.”

She sipped at the beverage. “Ah, that’s better. Latte, you said?”

I nodded and put the bottle in the middle of the small kitchen table, circa 1970s, complete with polished chrome. It was my Christmas gift to her. I wanted to buy her a new one, but she insisted on this garage-sale table.

“So, where is the rest of my mail?” I asked accusingly.

She took another taste and smacked her lips. “Gin makes everything better. I’m happy you’re back ’ome.”

I knew she was putting me off, but I decided to go along with it for a bit. I smiled at her and stretched my rather short legs as best I physically was able and propped them up on the adjacent chair. “It’s good to be back. Mexico was nice, though.”

The old woman scowled, sipping her beverage. “You young people travel too much. Until you came along, I hadn’t left the Peninsula in forty-seven years.”

I smiled. “Let’s drive into St. John’s this weekend and see your great-great-grandson. He should be crawling by now.”

She waved off my suggestion, like she always did. In a couple of days, though, she’d bring it up again and ask if I wanted to go for a drive. It was her way and I loved her for it. I had nothing else to do anyway, other than dodge my mother’s voicemails over why I didn’t have a job yet.

I rifled through the mail again, just in case I missed something, while Mrs. Saunders talked about the latest gas prices (even though she didn’t drive), the cost of apples (even though she had no teeth), and the general gossip that circulates around a small town. 

I peered over at Mrs. Saunders and cocked an eyebrow. “All right. Where is the rest of it?”

A moment passed before she said, “I burned it. I ran out of kindling and starting a fire is about the only good use for that foolishness. It poisons me to see that nonsense goin’ on.”

I knew she’d taken it. “It’s a crime to steal mail, you know. I should have Jeremy arrest you,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. I wasn’t upset she burned the stupid religious tracts that kept showing up in my mailbox; rather, I was upset a woman approaching a century old had to even see that level of hate.

I frowned, recalling that the mysterious “they” had taped an anti-Catholic tract on my front door before they started with their “pagans work for the devil” propaganda crap. Inaccurate, since I’m neither Catholic nor pagan. “They didn’t send the one about Catholics and the Pope burning in Hell did they?” I prayed they had not; Mrs. Saunders was a devoted Catholic. I figured a woman her age shouldn’t have to read anything hateful or upsetting about her religious beliefs; she’d earned the right.

Mrs. Saunders looked genuinely disappointed. “I would have kept that one to put on the fridge. This one was the ‘burn the witches.’ It had Bible verses and everything. Shame on whoever is turning the holy word into that . . .” she lowered her voice, “shit.”

I let out a frustrated sigh. “I wish they’d send something new. Or, stop sending them. It makes a woman feel unwelcome when she gets regular hate mail from her neighbours.”

“Now, now, your neighbours aren’t the ones doing this. We’re good Christian folks around here. It’s no-one from Wisemen’s Cove, I’ll tell you that right now. It’s one of those fools from St. Anthony, coming up here to cause trouble.”

Mrs. Saunders shivered and put her mug down. She made her way to the cast-iron stove at the opposite end of the kitchen. It was the old-fashioned style you usually find in pioneer school houses, as opposed to someone’s kitchen. Hers was fancier than most, coated in white ceramic on the sides with a large top hutch where bread was kept warm for supper. She cooked on the stove top and still used the old oven to bake her cookies and molasses buns.

I didn’t offer to help her. I’ve been haunted by centuries-old ghosts that weren’t as strong and determined as her. The last time, she yelled at me and smacked me with the wood poker. Only, she forgot it had been inside the fire and singed my jeans.

She didn’t look at me when she spoke. “I told Father Frank about all this, just so you know. I spoke to that new Pentecostal fellow, Pastor Roberts, too, said he won’t be gettin’ any souls saved letting his crowd harass harmless folk like you.”

“Mrs. Saunders,” I said in a patient voice, “I have no interest in converting to Christianity. I’m suspicious of the lot of them.”

She shook the fire poker at me. “I’m a Christian, young lady. Watch your mouth.”

“You know what I mean. I’ve just had bad experiences with some.”

“Can’t paint us all with the same brush.”

She turned her back and I picked up her mug and sipped. My throat burned. Gin latte, indeed.

“And you working with the policemen, persons, whatever you feminists call yours.” She gave an indignant grunt. “No respect these young people have today for the law.”

I smiled, even though she couldn’t see me. My own mother didn’t meddle as much as this woman. “I’m not working for them anymore, remember? My contract expired. I’m unemployed now.” I left out
as my mother reminds me daily
. “Besides, I was a grief counsellor. It wasn’t like I was a cop or anything.”

Mrs. Saunders waved me off. She reached down and, using one hand to brace herself against the wall, picked up a piece of birch firewood from the neat stack next to the stove. Using a hook, she pulled up a circular insert from the top and stuffed the log into the hole. Smoke puffed and curled up from the stove when she poked at the fire to stir up the flame.

“Mrs. Saunders . . .” I started, but gave up almost as fast. I knew she meant well, and I didn’t want her to think I was ungrateful. I wasn’t. “It doesn’t bother me that people are afraid of me. I’m used to it. Maybe moving here wasn’t the best choice.”

She shook her finger at me. “None of that foolishness. Back in my time, we had no problem with sensitive people like you. Even the Church recognizes that angels and demons and bad spirits are out there. You just happen to feel them more than the rest of us. No ’arm in that.”

The weariness lifted from my soul a little. When I first moved to the northern Newfoundland town, a number of the older people called me “sensitive.” I took a bit of offence to it, at first, until Jeremy, a local Mountie and good friend, told me it was shorthand for “sensitive to the paranormal.”

If that didn’t sum me up, nothing would.

If only I could pop that skill into Mrs. Saunders’s stove like a piece of birch firewood, life would be a whole lot simpler, to say nothing of quieter.

My cell phone buzzed. I grabbed my purse from the floor and answered.

“Ah, Miss Mills?” a young man’s shaky voice asked.

“Yes,” I said. The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Um, it’s Manuel O’Toole. I’m really sorry to call, but I heard you’re back in town and I’m . . . I need help.”

I glanced at the wall clock. The arms of Jesus read 8:25 p.m.

“It’s a bit early for needing a ride from a party, isn’t it?”

I rolled my eyes at Mrs. Saunders who clucked her tongue. The town teens knew they could call me and I’d give them an anonymous lift home to avoid them drinking and driving. While I had a lot of support from all the tiny towns around the area—some parents even joined me in offering rides—some became very angry at me for doing it. It probably had something to do with my driving home some of their drunken kids.