Sunny Dreams (19 page)

So there we sat, Fraser and me, with Johnny Lee at his dining room table in Riverview. It was three months, nearly to the day, since Jackson and Benoit had first walked into our back yard.

“The man was a Negro,” Johnny said now.

“Yes,” said I.

Johnny blew his nose in Fraser’s handkerchief.

“One of his hands stuck out of the thistles right next to the rail,” he said. “That’s how we decided that he was a coloured man. We still weren’t sure, though. Artie thought he mighta just turned dark because he was dead. I don’t know very much about dead people yet. He was my first one ever. Artie saw his grandmother after she died, but she was in a coffin and all fixed up for the viewing. There weren’t any flies or missing pieces. He said she looked pretty white to him. Whiter than usual even.”

“Is there anything else, Johnny?” I asked after a full minute went by. “Anything at all you’d like to tell us?”

“No.”

“Would you be willing to take us there?” I asked.

“Violet, I don’t think…” Fraser began.

“I can’t leave my sister and it’s too far to take her,” Johnny said.

“Of course,” I said. What did I know about younger sisters? My lack of knowledge about the topic could have filled several boxcars.

“I could draw you a map,” he said.

“Great idea!”

He tried to hand the soaked handkerchief back to Fraser.

“Keep it,” Fraser said.

Johnny got a piece of paper and a pencil from the kitchen and with his lips pressed together in a taut thin line he drew a clear and complete map of the area, including approximate distances. He even added a few trees and a square box that represented the J.S. Coal Company. It was just north of the coal company that they had found Tag.

“This is fantastic,” I said. I dug in the pocket of my skirt for my change purse and pulled out a dollar bill.

Johnny’s mouth opened and shut, opened and shut.

“The Negro’s thumb had come away from his hand,” he said. “I think the train did it, but neatly, not like with his head. The thumb was lying on its own just inside the rail.”

Apparently, I had bought myself more information.

“Artie picked it up. I told him to leave it but he wouldn’t. He put in his pocket. He said no one would miss it.”

Fraser and I exchanged a look. Artie was probably right.

“That’s when I threw my wiener away, I think,” Johnny said. “And then I threw up.”

“So Artie kept the thumb?” I asked. “He took it home with him?”

“Yup,” said Johnny. “He sure did. We went up to the fire station to tell what we saw and the whole time we were talkin’ to the firemen Artie had the dead man’s thumb in his pocket.”

“Holy doodle,” I said.

“Yup,” he said.

We got a tiny smile out of him then, the only one we saw.

Johnny saw us to the back door. I felt bad leaving him, but I was pretty sure he felt okay about talking to us.

“Promise you won’t tell the part about Artie taking the man’s thumb,” he said through the screen door.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said, going through the actions. It was the least I could do.

“Okay.”

“Thanks, Johnny.”

His sister, Muriel, was in the sandbox with a friend, making what looked to be sand cakes and cookies and setting them on a sand table for them to pretend to eat.

“’Bye, Muriel,” I said and gave a small wave as we headed towards the back gate.

“I love the baby Jesus and she loves me,” she called after us.

“Me too,” shouted her friend who was even smaller than she was.

“I think Jesus was a boy,” I called back.

They looked at me in stunned surprise.

All the stuff I could have taught Sunny through the years, all the things she could have taught me, made me dizzy. I tried to look forward to what was still ahead for us. Looking back at all that could have been was much too sad, especially the fragile shadow that was my mother. If only she could have been here for Sunny’s return.

Fraser and I walked down Osborne Street past the St. Mary’s Cemetery toward downtown. Following the directions on Johnny’s map, we turned right on Mulvey Avenue East and as soon as we could we climbed up onto the tracks. We walked along on the wooden slats, the spaces between them not quite wide enough for a grown-up’s stride. It would have been just right for two eleven-year-olds.

There were no police markers or anything at all to distinguish the area where Tag had been placed to die. But I’m pretty sure it would have found me even if we hadn’t had Johnny’s good map. Maybe Benny was rubbing off on me. A funny thing happened: it started out slow at first, a buzzing sound in my head and a dizziness that brought me to my knees without my realizing it.

“Are you okay, Violet?” Fraser asked.

The sound grew louder and higher pitched. It was like strange voices in a faraway marketplace with the clatter and noise of life filling in the spaces around them. It rose and fell, filling my head, then withdrawing with an abruptness that made me look around for it, as though it were something that could be seen.

“I think this is it,” I said. “This is the spot.”

Fraser looked at the map and identified a dead tree that Johnny had pencilled in. He had described it as “the hanging tree.”

“I think you’re right,” he said. “Come away, Violet, let’s sit over here on this pile of dirt.”

There was nothing left there to describe what had happened to Tag. I stood up and poked my foot around in the gravel and dirt but nothing leapt out at me. I don’t know what I was looking for.

The wind came up and blew dirt into our faces.

“Let’s just go, Fraser,” I said.

We stumbled back through the
CN
yards till we got to Osborne. The Rome Café was on the other side of the street so we crossed over and stopped in for a drink. I had coffee and Fraser had tea. We were the only customers.

“Nasty business, that,” said the man behind the counter and gestured with his head toward the other side of the street. I guess he had watched us come up from the river.

Neither of us answered. My coffee tasted like slop.

We took a streetcar home; we were both too exhausted to walk.

That night Fraser got hold of some lemon gin and I got drunk for the second time in my life. We mixed it with ginger ale and drank the whole mickey between us down by the river, across from the icehouse. It was pleasant; the gin made me fuzzy and dull, which was exactly what I wanted. Fraser walked me home at midnight and kissed me on the lips.

I went to visit Warren on a late October morning when only the most stubborn of leaves remained clinging to their black branches. It was my least favourite time of year, dismal and grey, with thoughts of winter on everyone’s mind. If last winter was anything to go by, we were in for a deep dark freeze. A low feeling always came over me in the autumn of the year, but not this low. I shivered in my fall coat and welcomed the warm air of the hospital lobby.

Warren was sitting up on the side of his bed smiling from ear to ear. A young orderly was detaching a brace from his weak leg. Some of the feeling had come back to it.

“Hi, Violet!” he said. “I’ve decided what I’m going to be when I grow up.”

The orderly smiled at me as he stowed the brace away in a cupboard by the bed.

“Do you want to stay sitting up, Sport?” he asked Warren.

“Yes, please, Martin, for a while, anyway.”

Martin adjusted some pillows behind Warren and helped him to arrange his legs under a sheet.

“So what are you gonna be when you grow up?” I asked when the orderly was gone.

“A brace maker,” said Warren. “They’re called calipers sometimes and that’s what I’m going to call them. The name of my company is going to be Comfy Calipers. See, this one that I’ve been using is horrible.” He pointed to the cupboard. “It rubs in all the wrong places and hurts. So I’m gonna redesign it till it feels good, till it feels like I’m wearing nothing at all and then I’m going to sell it to the world and become rich and maybe even famous.”

“Sounds good,” I said, and sat down in the straight-backed chair next to the bed.

“Where’s Gwen?” he asked. He no longer mentioned his mum.

“She got a job,” I said. “That’s my big news. She got a job at Eaton’s mail order, so between the two of you, you’ll be fabulously wealthy in no time.”

“I think it may take me a little while to get my project off the ground.” Warren grinned. “I thought they turned Gwen down again.”

“They did, but they got back in touch yesterday and she’s hired on as of this morning.”

“Great!”

“Yeah, it is great,” I said.

I reached in my bag and pulled out a Tootsie Roll, a drawing pad and some pencils of different widths sharpened to fine points. “These are for you to mess around with,” I said.

Warren’s eyes got big. “This is terrific, Violet. I can draw calipers.”

“You can draw whatever you want,” I said and looked around. “Where’s Robert?”

“He’s gone home.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said.

“Yeah, but I miss him.” He started unwrapping the Tootsie Roll.

“Still.”

“Yeah.”

There was a small boy on a rocking bed and an even smaller boy attached to a Bradford frame. His head looked too big for his body.

“I can talk to them when Martin helps me get up and around,” said Warren, nodding toward his two roommates. “I’ve been getting quite a bit more exercise now that I have more feeling in my leg.”

“Things are going well, aren’t they, Warren?”

He was beginning to slump slightly against his pillows with his treat still unbitten, so I helped him lie down and started toward the door to let him rest.

“Why did Tag have to die, Violet?” he asked.

I came back to the side of his bed.

“That’s a tough question, Warren, and I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to it. Not any answer that makes sense, anyway.”

“I heard they caught the guys who did it.”

“Yeah.”

I wondered if Warren knew about his mother’s involvement.

“It was the Willis twins,” I said.

“And Dirk,” said Warren.

“Yeah, he was more like the foreman. He gave the orders and the Willis boys did the work.”

“I knew he was bad.”

“Yeah. I know you did.”

“What will happen to them?”

“I don’t know. They’re all in jail now, I know that much. But they have yet to come to trial.”

“How could Gwen have been so stupid as to like him?” Warren asked.

“I don’t know, Warren. Sometimes even smart people do stupid things. She sure doesn’t like him anymore.”

“Did Tag’s brother Duke ever turn up?” Warren asked.

“He’s back in Detroit,” I said. “And Benoit took Tag home to his folks there as well.”

“That’s good,” Warren said.

“Tag was an Episcopalian,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not sure. I think it sits somewhere between a Catholic and a Protestant.”

When I thought Warren had drifted off, I began to leave again.

“Let’s build a monument,” he said.

I turned back. “Yes, let’s.”

“For Tag,” he said. And then I was sure he was asleep.

And he was going to be able to walk.

I stopped at the motorboat launch on my way home, sat on the wooden dock and thought carefully for a long, long time. It was mid-afternoon, not a bad time of day. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so sad and so happy all at the same time. My breaths came easily and I savoured the feeling that I was getting enough air to survive, to thrive even.

My schoolwork had gotten away on me. I was already so far behind that I had decided to quit and take the year off. When I told my dad, he didn’t object, and Helen was glad. It was my job, and hers, to help Sunny learn to live inside a new family and I needed to be around.

With Dirk and the Willis twins and Gert Walker all blaming each other, and the train doing the actual killing, it was difficult to sort things out clearly in court. But they all spent time behind bars.

Dirk went to the Headingly Correctional Institution just west of Winnipeg, where he spent just three years. The Botham family moved away from the province of Manitoba. The speculation was that they wished to avoid humiliation and receive Dirk on his release and offer him a new start where the family was not known.

The Willis boys went to Stony Mountain Penitentiary. Their previous records hurt them and they both ended up dying in jail, one from tuberculosis and one from having his throat slit, ear to ear.

And Gert went to the new Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario. She wasn’t able to weasel her way out of a prison sentence. So she lost her cleaning jobs and her little house on Lawndale Avenue. She’d already lost her kids. She was probably out of prison in just a few years; I can picture her tricking people into thinking she was behaving well. But she never reappeared in Winnipeg as far as I know. For a while I pictured her as a scrubwoman in a bleak industrial town in the east. And then I stopped picturing her at all.

Two surprising things came out in the courtroom. One was that the old man at the Willis place, long dead now — the man I’d seen cutting his toenails — was the twins’ father as well as their grandfather. Their mother, therefore, was also their sister. That really threw people for a loop.

The second surprising thing was that Gwen’s mother, Gert, turned out to be Galechka Wynchenko, a Ukrainian girl from across the tracks in the North End. And all her talk of garlic eaters and bohunks! I guess she was ashamed of her beginnings, as so many are, and was never who she said she was.

Not even Gwen knew.

“You’d think she could have picked a better name than Gert,” I said to her, after she had stopped being completely stunned.

“She could have told me,” Gwen said. “I wish she would have told me.”

I don’t know how much Gwen revealed to Warren at the time. She made me promise to leave it up to her and not go blurting things out to him. Eventually, I’m sure he heard all of it. He wasn’t the type of boy you held things back from.

Gwen and Mary became good friends; they worked in the same office at Eaton’s. They rented a big beautiful suite together on the first floor of the Ladywood Block on Edmonton Street. Warren went to live with them there and enrolled after Christmas at Isbister School on Vaughan Street. Tippy joined them in their new home after several weeks at our house. By the following summer Warren walked with a barely discernible limp. And by the time he was in high school he was going by the name of Warren Wynchenko. Comfy Calipers fell by the wayside; Warren went on to become a builder of houses.

The man who kidnapped Sunny was never found. And we never discovered how he got away. Jackson’s dad had not been involved at all. It was Evelyn Shirde who hired the man to find her a baby. My memory, if that’s what it was, of the man in the tan suit, was no more helpful today than someone else’s memory of him had been eleven years before. I mentioned it to Mr. Foote anyway. He was so happy for us, but he berated himself for the rest of his life for not trying harder to find our girl.

Mrs. Shirde was judged to be incompetent, needing round-the-clock professional care, and was to be institutionalized for the rest of her life.

Jackson would stay in touch with Sunny over the years, so to me he became like a half-brother once-removed or something at least as confusing. There was no real name for what we were to each other. It was strange at first, having loved him the way I had. Those kinds of feelings had no place in the new life. It was necessary to begin again with him in a completely different way.

We never saw Benoit again, after he left on the train to take Tag home. Whether he finally slipped through a fissure or simply went back to Montreal, I don’t know.

My dad went back to work at his law office in the fall and put off painting the garage till the spring of ’37. He asked Hedley Larkin to give him a hand and they finally got the job done.

Helen worried me. That summer left her different. It was as though something had been stolen from her, something irreplaceable. Sunny’s sweet new presence went a long way, but there was something sucked out of Helen that never returned. The person I had always looked to for comfort was still there, but I had to search for her anew each time I needed her. Maybe it was someone else’s turn now. I think some people allow themselves to be squeezed dry by those around them and they have to change into someone else in order to continue on. This may be what happened to Helen. And I was one of the ones who squeezed her.

As I came to see her more clearly, I knew that in my own mind I had skewed her feelings for Jackson. Maybe I hadn’t exaggerated the strength of her love, but I’d skewed it, drastically.

Sunny never cut her hair after she came to live with us, except to trim the ends. She struggled and she wept for the mother she left in Montreal. But she also laughed and grew strong and pursued a career in nursing, like Aunt Helen. And she has never strayed far from her home. Sunny is a rare beauty; she looks like our mother.

Eventually I returned to college where I took my arts degree, but I never could decide on a career. Motherhood took care of that and my regrets rear up just occasionally. Fraser Foote became a policeman like his dad and I became Fraser’s wife. It’s 1960 as I write these last words and we are the proud parents of a fine son named Frank. I worried when he was young that he would be snatched away from me as Sunny had been, but Fraser has helped me not to smother him.

Jackson Shirt — I could never get used to Shirde — returned to Montreal but we continue to see him now and then when he comes to visit Sunny. I still like to think that he never kissed me because he thought of me as a sort of half-sister. Looking at him as time passes I struggle to find the boy I loved so much inside the man’s portly frame. I prefer to close my eyes and conjure up that summer of ’36. I hang on to it like it was a golden time, like it was really something.