The Diviners (9 page)

“I
said
,” Miss McMurtrie's butcherknife voice, “I
said
are you tongue-tied, Morag?”

Morag's anger. Like shame, burning in her throat.

“You know I'm not.” Loud.

Miss McMurtrie's face gone reddish, splotched.

“Very well, then, if you're
not
tongue-tied, would you be so kind as to answer the question I asked you about ten minutes ago? You're wasting the class's time, Morag. I suppose I will have to repeat the question. Obviously you were away off in Cloud Cuckoo Land. How do you spell Egypt?”

Egypt
. Cleopatra, evil and beautiful, dying of a snake bite. Having put the snake right on herself. Ugh. Miss Plowright, last year, reading them
Tales from Shakespeare
. Was Shakespeare there? Did he see the snake being put on the
bare skin?
Cleopatra, drifting down the Nile River in a boat shaped like
a giant bird (coloured picture in the book) while her slaves fanned her with fans made out of pink green blue feathers. Plumes. Think of that. Classy.

“Well, Morag?”

If she could've written it down she could've got it. Always the same. But no writing-down allowed.

“E-y–”

“Wrong. Try again.”

“E-y-g-t–”

Miss McMurtrie shakes her starched-looking grey head. More in sorrow than anger, as she is always saying.

“You may sit down, Morag. All right, class, who can spell Egypt? Ross?”

“E-g-y-p-t.”

Show-off. Smart-aleck McVitie. Who cares? Morag, sitting down, will not look around. Neither to left nor to right. Finally, she takes a quick glance around to see if anybody is still looking at her. They better not be. She catches the eye of Skinner Tonnerre, who also sits in the back row out of choice.

He grins at her. Well, think of that. The grin means
Screw all of them, eh?
Astounded, Morag grins back.

Boys are generally mean. Those girls who have a hope of pleasing them, try. Those who haven't a hope, either stay out of their way or else act very tough and try to make fun of them first. Skinner is just the same as all the boys, in that way. He is mean. He knows a lot of swear words and isn't afraid to use them to make girls feel silly or cheap.
Hey, Vanessa, want me to fuck your ass? It's better that way.
He has never shouted like this at Morag, because he probably knows she wouldn't take it all meek. Or else doesn't think she's pretty enough to be worth embarrassing. The other boys in the class, even Mike Lobodiak, who is really big, never tangle with Skinner. They're scared of
him. Also, they think they're better than he is. Skinner is taller than any of the other boys, and has better muscles. He is about three years older than any of the rest of the class, which is why he and his sister Piquette are in the same class. Both having missed a lot of school. Sometimes Skinner goes off with his dad, old Lazarus Tonnerre, and disappears for weeks, setting traplines way up at Galloping Mountain, some say. The Tonnerres (there are an awful lot of them) are called
those breeds
, meaning halfbreeds. They are part Indian, part French, from away back. They are mysterious. People in Manawaka talk about them but don't talk
to
them. Lazarus makes home-brew down there in the shack in the Wachakwa valley, and is often arrested on Saturday nights. Morag knows. She has heard. They are dirty and unmentionable.

Skinner is thin and he has dark dark slanted eyes. He is always scowling. He wears worn unpatched jeans held up by a leather belt with a big brass buckle. Morag has always reckoned that he hated the other kids so much he never even noticed what they said about him and his gimpylegged sister and all of them (and about their Ma, who took off and went to cook for some crazy old man living alone on a farm oh shame). Maybe Skinner does notice the passed remarks? Maybe he just doesn't let on. Like her.

He is
not
like her. She does not glance in his direction again all day.

At ten minutes to four, Miss McMurtrie leads the class in “The Maple Leaf Forever”

 

Britannia's flag

On Ca-na-da's fair do-
MAIN
.

Here may it wave

Our boas' our pride

And join in
LUV
together

The
THISTLE SHAMROCK ROSE
entwine

The
MAPLE LEAF FOREVER
!

 

Morag loves this song and sings with all her guts. She also knows what the emblems mean. Thistle is Scots, like her and Christie (others, of course, too, including some stuck-up kids, but
her
, definitely, and they better not forget it). Shamrock is Irish like the Connors and Reillys and them. Rose is English, like Prin, once of good family. Suddenly she looks over to see if Skinner Tonnerre is singing. He has the best voice in the class, and he knows lots of cowboy songs, and dirty songs, and he sometimes sings them after school, walking down the street.

He is not singing now.

He comes from nowhere. He isn't anybody. She stops singing, not knowing why. Then she feels silly about stopping, so sings again.

Memorybank Movie: Christie's Gift of the Garbage-telling
Morag goes alone to the Nuisance Grounds. Not with Christie. Not with anyone. Eva wants to come along but Morag says No. Just for once she has to see what the place looks like. By herself.

She knows exactly where the spot is. Everybody knows that. A little above the town, the second hill, the same hill as the Manawaka cemetery. All the dead stuff together there on the same hill. Except that the cemetery is decent and respectable, with big spruce trees, and grass which is kept cut, and lots of the plots have flowers which people plant and tend.
Gunn
is just a
small stone with grass around it, no flowers. Morag has only been there the once and doesn't want to go again.

The Nuisance Grounds are on a large flat sort of plain, up there, and no trees grow, although the place is surrounded on all sides by poplars and clumps of chokecherry and pincherry bushes, screening it from sight. Morag approaches it quietly, cannily, looking around. Okay. Nobody here. She can feel the sun hot and dusty on her bare arms and legs, and her hair feels snarled and too long and hot for summer. She is sweating in this hot closed-in place. It isn't really that much closed-in. It just feels so. Should she maybe not have come here?

Oh. The Nuisance Grounds contain a billion trillion heaps of old muck. Such as:

 

a rusty car with no tires and one door off

mountains of empty tin cans, some with labels still on

Best Pie Pumpkin

moth-eaten sweaters and ragged coats

a whole bunch of bedsprings

green mould like fur on things

rotten fruits oranges bananas gone bad soft black

FLIES
on thema

car axle but no car

maple syrup tins with holes in them

saucepans and kettles also with holes

a sewing machine with no wheel or handle

broken bottles (beer milk rye and baby)

more rotten stuff cabbages phew

a cracked toilet bowl

wornout shoes some bulging where bunions have been

boxes of not-used rubber frenchies she knows what they're

for Eva told her (why thrown out? holes in the rubber is

why; that'd fool somebody ha ha)

a pile of clothes and old newspapers,
BURNING

and stench sour sicklysweet rotten many smells
STINKS

and a
ZILLION
crawling flies

 

A shadow. Somebody here. Morag whirls. He laughs (meanly?) showing teeth. He is close enough so she can smell the sweat and woodsmoke on him. The only good smells here. But she is scared. In his hands, an iron crowbar, bent, and a pair of pliers. Skinner Tonnerre.

“Hey, whatsamatter, kid?” he says. “You think I'm gonna–”

“Shut up,” Morag says. “What're
you
doing here?”

“Whatcha doin' here yerself?”

“None of your business.”

“Seein' the place where yer ol' man works, eh?”

He says
da
instead of
the
. He talks funny, kind of. He always has. Why? Then Morag feels really mad, thinking of what he has just said.

“Christie's not my old man! My dad is dead.”

“Sure, I know. So
he's
yer ol' man now, ain't he? What the diff?”

“Plenty. Plenty difference. So there.”

Skinner laughs. Hoarse. Like a crow's voice.

“Okay, okay.
Tabernac!
What's eatin' you?”

“My family is named Gunn, see? And you better not forget it.”

Skinner's eyes grow narrow. Cruel. Mean.

“That so? You t'ink that means yer somebody? You're a little half-cunt, dry one at that I betcha.”

“Listen here,” Morag spits, “my family's been around here for longer than anybody in this whole goddamn town, see?”

“Not longer than mine,” Skinner says, grinning.

“Oh yeh? Well, I'm related to Piper Gunn,
so there
.”

“Who in hell's he?”

“He–” She is afraid to speak it, now, in case Christie has got it wrong after all, but she can't quit. “He came from Scotland, and he led his people onto the ships when they were living on the rocks there in the Old Country and poor because they didn't have their farms because the Bitch-Duchess took them, and all, and they were scared, leaving there, but then Piper Gunn played the pipes and put the heart back into them.”

Skinner gapes at her. Then grins again.

“Where'd you get that crap, eh?”

“It's true. It's true!”

He looks at her. Then he sits down on an empty tar barrel, not worrying about getting tar on his jeans. He stretches out his long legs and gets out a packet of cigarettes.

“Want one?”

She shakes her head and he laughs. She would like to snatch the cigarette now and light it, but is too proud.

“You ever seen my place, Morag?”

“Yeh. Sometimes. Passing by.”

The Tonnerre place, right beside the Wachakwa River down there, is a square cabin made out of poplar poles chinked with mud. Also some other shanties, sheds and lean-tos, tacked onto the cabin and made out of old boards and pieces of flattened tin cans and tarpaper. Lots of old car parts and chicken wire and wornout car tires lying around, stuff like that.

Morag guesses that is why Skinner is here. Looking. Collecting.

“My grandad,” Skinner says, “he built the first of our place, and that was one hell of a long time ago, I'm tellin' you. He come back from The Troubles.”

“What's that?”

“Out west, there.
You
wouldn't know. You don' know nothin'. My grandad was lucky he never got killed, there. Lucky they never shot his balls off, my dad says. But they couldn't, because he was a better shot than them soldiers. I can shoot pretty good, too. I got his name, see? That means I got–”

He stops. Suddenly. Shuts up. Looks away.

“You mean his name was Skinner?” Morag asks.

“Don't be dumb. Jules. His name was Jules. Skinner ain't my real name.”

“Why'd they call you it, then?”

“Some say it's 'cause I useda be so damn skinny. Some say it's 'cause I am real good at skinning any damn t'ing, rabbit, muskrat, even deer. Want me to catch a gopher and show you?”

Morag shudders. No–please. Not a gopher. He will do it and she will throw up. But he only laughs.

“Scared, eh, Morag?”

“Tell me about your grandad. Aw, come on.”

He jumps to his feet and leaps over the tar barrel.

“Shit, I can't remember. It's all crap. Anyhows, I wouldn' tell
you
.”

“Why not? Why not?”

“It ain't none of yer business. I tell you one t'ing, though. Long time before my grandad, there's one Tonnerre they call Chevalier, and no man can ride like him and he is one helluva shot. My grandad, he tol' my dad about that guy, there.”

“What means
Chevalier
?”

“Rider. It means Rider. Lazarus, he says so. Ah, what's it to
you
?”

Skinner begins to walk away, singing “The Old Strawberry Roan,” really really loud and sort of through his nose as well as his throat, like the cowboys singing on the radio.

Rattle-rattle-crunk-crash-gronk. Slow horse steps. Grinding wheels, Christie and his wagon. Morag jumps up and heads for the chokeberry bushes, but he has seen her.

“Jesus in sweet paradise, Morag, girl, what in the christly hell are you doing here? And who the fuck's
that
? Oh–hello, Skinner. Found anything today?”

Skinner scowls but does not reply. The crowbar and pliers still lie beside the tar barrel. The air reeks of smoke and rot. The sweat is snaking down Morag's back and between her legs.

Christie's blue workshirt is rolled up at the sleeves, and the sweat trickles through the sandy hairs on his arms. He starts to unload the wagon, swallowing his spit with the effort of the work, his Adam's apple yo-yoing in his throat. He is shovelling off a whole pile of eggshells, vegetable peelings, orange rinds, bones with shreds of cooked meat still on them. Skinner and Morag stand silent, watching.

“Did I ever tell you,” Christie says, “how to tell the garbage, Morag, like telling fortunes?”

“
What?
”

Skinner snorts with laughter. Morag hates Christie. Maybe he will fall down, right now, this second, with a
heart attack
. He doesn't. He is chortling, enjoying himself. He likes the sound of his own voice. With him, it's either yak-yak-yakkity-yak or dead silence. No silence now. No such luck. Would it be worse if someone like Jamie Halpern or Stacey Cameron were here, listening? Yes. Let us be grateful for small mercies, Prin always says.