The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (42 page)

“It’s all ice out there,” Idella said. “It’s just terrible. I’m dripping icicles.”

“Any luck, Idella?” Emma came up to her as she walked back into the church, stomping the wet off her boots.

“The lines are definitely down in Connecticut. The operator can’t get through at all.”

“And Edward?”

“Still no answer. But it appears to be ringing.”

 

“The scrape of them wipers is vibrating my whole head,” Avis said. They were riding on into the night with only the greeny lights of the dashboard to outline their three huddled shapes. Avis sighed and closed her eyes. She was exhausted from staring past the smeared windshield, trying to follow the wavery headlight beams as they reached out, feebly, for the road.

Dalton was pressed against her, snoring. “Nothing like bacon and eggs to set the world right” had been his last and only words after they’d left the diner. He’d been asleep since they’d pulled back onto the road.

“Don’t worry, Stan,” Avis whispered, “I’m not going to sleep.”

“I’m into my third wind here. That coffee helped. I just wish we’d been able to get through up there. No one up to the house. They must all be waiting at the church, God love ’em.”

Avis kept her eyes shut. She folded her hands and listened to the sounds around her—the steady
bump-thump
of the wipers, the slooshing of the tires as they spewed rain and snow out from under them, Dalton’s raspy, smoke-heavy breath as he slept with his head pressed against the side window, his long body all curled on itself like a fiddle-head.

As cold and cramped and tired as they all were, she didn’t quite want this ride to ever end. She had the only three men that she’d ever really loved, and who she knew for a fact loved her, all to herself. Della and Emma loved her, like sisters. But they weren’t as forgiving. She supposed Dwight loved her, poor old soul that he was, but she couldn’t return it. She was grateful to him for his kindness, for marrying her in spite of who she was instead of because of it, for putting a roof over her head. But she was beholden to him, and that brought out the worst in her.

Dalton twisted in his sleep, pushing his knee into her legs. She pushed it back. Just enough flesh on it to cover the bone. She and Dalton had never been too good at doing what they were supposed to, or what was expected of them—except now that they were expected by everyone to drink and screw things up, they did manage to do that pretty good.

Even when they bickered, which was plenty, they were still fighting a war alone against the others. They’d always been in cahoots. There was that scheme when they were about ten and fifteen—they’d worked a way to sell lobsters to the passengers on the trains going through Uncle Sam’s property. The train would stop for water, and the two of them would climb aboard and sell whatever catch Dalton had managed from taking out that little boat he’d built. Avis did the talking, knowing even then that the way you asked for things, and how you looked doing it, mattered. They sold the lobsters for six cents apiece and lorded their mounting proceeds over the others at every opportunity. Dalton finally spent his getting more traps and then lost interest in the whole enterprise.

Avis had kept her money—it wasn’t even five dollars total—in a variety of hiding places, each more elaborate than the last, till one day Dad ran across it when he went to empty out a seed bag in the barn. It was drunk and gone by the time Avis discovered it missing. “That’s what you get for being so secretive,” Idella’d said. No sympathy from her. “If you’d put it in the bedroom and left it there, this wouldn’t have happened.” Hiding it from Idella had been half the fun.

Avis knew she was Dad’s favorite. They had found comfort in each other. She closed her eyes tighter. There were times when she’d be overcome by the need to be alone in the world with Dad, holed up in some room lying next to him, giving each other a bodily comfort that went right through them. It was like being home when she could just lie there quiet in his arms. Even Stan, dear Stan, probably thinks the worst, thinks they were being dirty. But they weren’t. They were both so lonely, her and Dad, standing on earth like that godforsaken house they lived in, spindly and forlorn atop that great cliff, exposed to every wind that blew from any direction. That’s how Avis had felt, as a little girl, after Mother died and there was no one to talk to about her secrets or fears. Della was, what? Too distrustful? Too scared herself to offer any real comfort.

No one who saw Dad bluster and bang, who heard him drink and yell and carry on, would ever know the agony that man went through, for years, after Mother died. He didn’t let on, after the funeral and all, after that first stretch of time passed and people thought he’d gotten over it enough to keep going. But Avis knew.

It was Avis that first went down, unbidden, when she knew that Della was sleeping. She slipped out from next to her and tiptoed down the stairs and into his bedroom. Without a word she crawled in beside him, and he turned and scooped up her puny little nothing of a body and wrapped his arms around her and they went off to sleep. Dad must have woken up sometime and brought her upstairs, because she woke up the next morning curled beside her sister. That was how it began, their special closeness, that lasted right on through.

Avis knew that people wondered about her and Dad. She could feel their eyes trying to look through her. The old biddies up in Canada would make judgments about her. “She’s been to prison,” their eyes said when they looked at her. They’d gotten themselves through many a long afternoon discussing Avis. She could just hear them—Maisey Moore and Mrs. Doncaster—clinking their teacups and crunching their dry toast, hardly waiting to get the words out before they swallowed. “Sent away, you know, for luring men up to her room down in Boston.” “Took up with a gangster of some kind.” “He was handsome, I hear. He got her to do all sorts of things till they finally got caught.” Avis sighed. Tommy was handsome, there was no denying.

It was Dad who drove down to Boston and got her out of that hellhole after two years of being locked up. Neither of her sisters knew the half of what she put up with, of what got done to her. All they knew is she got certified as a beautician. Like she was in some kind of finishing school.

At least Idella didn’t say anything to that damn fool Edward. Poor Idella would never know the number of times he’d tried getting his big, clumsy hands up inside her skirt. Even at the wake, with Dad laid out in her parlor and the house all full of people, Edward had come lumbering after her down into the cellar to “help her fix the furnace.” Damn fool. He wanted to start a fire, all right, but not in the furnace. Put more than two drinks in him and he was nothing but trouble. Avis started to laugh.

“What are you finding so funny? I sure as hell could use a laugh right about now.”

Avis looked over at Stan’s familiar shape, all angles and points, as Hillock as they come. He was leaned over staring hard at what little bits of road he could see. He was getting tired. The storm, by the look of it, was getting worse.

“Oh, I was laughing about Edward. He tumbled head over heels down the cellar stairs and looked so funny with that bandage all around his head. When he put that damned brimmed hat on he’s always wearing, perched up on top of all that gauze, I about peed my pants.”

“Poor Eddie.” Stan chuckled. “If you act like a damn fool, then damn-fool things are going to happen to you.”

“He brought it on himself,” Avis said.

“What are you two finding to laugh about?” Dalton was coming to. “Damned if something don’t ache, it hurts, if it don’t hurt, it’s wet. I feel like throwing Dad out of that damned box. I need it more than he does.” He peered forward. “My God, it’s ice now, ain’t it?”

“Been more ice than rain this last half hour. I’d like to pull over to scrape some off the windshield,” Stan said, “but I’m afraid if we stop, we won’t get going again. The defroster in this hearse isn’t up to this.”

“I guess they don’t want too much getting defrosted, if you know what I mean,” Dalton suggested.

“Yep. Maybe that’s it,” Stan agreed.

“Let’s change the subject,” Avis said.

 

“What have you heard, Idella? Any news? Could you get through?” The pews were filled up. People had turned askew so as to talk better. Voices were coming at her from all directions.

She stood at the front of the little English church where the casket was supposed to be and talked loud so that everyone could hear. “I can’t get through to Dwight. Those lines are down. But I
did
finally get ahold of Donna, down in Maine—she’s my second-oldest. I don’t know where Edward is. Donna said, ‘They lost the box. Stanley has gone to get it. He’s got the box.’” Idella repeated that exact quote from Donna slowly and deliberately. “That’s the message she had to give us from Katherine—Stan’s wife. Evidently Avis, or Dalton, or both, lost the box—the casket—with Dad in it—evidently they lost it somewhere between here and there, closer to there, and Stan’s got himself a hearse and he’s gone to get them. They’re on the road somewheres, is my understanding.”

A cheer went up through the church with shouts of “Good old Stan!” and “You can count on Stan!”

“Now, I know”—Idella put up her hands to calm things and raised her voice a little—“I know that if Stanley is involved, he’ll get them here.” She nodded her head, to give her speech a little ending. She’d never spoken like this before a crowd. “Thank you all for coming.” She continued standing there and raised her head up. “Now I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, we’re not leaving!” Everyone started shouting that they were sticking it out.

“Come have a drink, Idella,” Uncle Sam was beckoning to her.

“We can’t drink in the church!” Idella said, knowing full well that bottles were being passed up and down the pews like collection plates on Sunday morning.

“Goddamn, it’s pure ice out there.” Uncle Guy was at the window. “It’s sticking like a new coat of paint.”

Sam was on his feet now, leaning over the front of a pew. “I want to drink to Bill, to my big brother, Bill Hillock. May he rest in peace, wherever the hell he is.”

Bottles were raised all up and down. Seems more had one than didn’t. “To Bill” went murmuring through the little church, some voices together, some out of sync.

Then the lights went. There was a loud crack, and total darkness came down over them as if a black velvet curtain had dropped.

“Holy Mother of God,” a lone voice rose up.

“Goddamn,” another answered from the blackness.

 

“Damn it all to hell,” muttered Dalton, staring down at the back wheel of the hearse as it spun in response to Avis’s foot on the gas pedal.

“Take your foot off it, Avis!” Stan called in to her. “Just that back wheel we got to get up onto the road.”

“Never seen ice like this.” Dalton looked at the lunging shapes on either side of the road. The trees were stooped down low by the weight of ice that had been steadily falling.

“We got to get something in there for traction,” Stan said. He was scooching down and feeling around the wheel.

“Where’s Edward with his bag of sand when you need him?” Avis joined the two men at the end of the car. “How ’bout my hat? It’s all shot to hell anyway. Being run over by a hearse could only improve it.”

“If that’s the case,” Dalton said, “why don’t I lie down there in front of the wheel. There’s one thing I ought to be good for.”

A sudden crack ricocheted from out of the woods behind them.

“What the hell!” Avis yelled.

“They got me,” Dalton whispered, without moving.

“Tree snapped,” Stan said. “That ice’ll snap whole trees. Give me that hat, Avis. It’ll give it something more to go on for them few inches.”

A second and third crack shot out from dark woods. Dalton joined Stan behind the rear of the car and prepared to help push. Avis crawled in behind the wheel.

“Go on, Avis,” Stan said. “Slow and steady. If we get her up on the road, we’re not stopping.” Dalton and Stanley leaned into the car with their shoulders, their fingers grabbing under the fender. “A little more!” Stan called. “Push like hell!” The two of them heaved the hearse forward, over the hat and up onto the road. It lurched forward, swerved its long behind to the left, and came to a tentative, cockeyed halt.

“There’s a God in heaven!” Dalton called out into the darkness.

“Get my hat!”

Stan bent himself back down behind the wheel. “I reckon it’s three more hours of slow and steady. It’ll be well after midnight.”

“I’m sorry we got you into this pickle.” Avis pushed Stan’s glasses back up his long nose.

“I’d swear them trees cracking back there was Dad firing off his last shots.” Dalton pulled his door to and locked it.

 

“It’s well after midnight,” Idella said.

“The time don’t matter no more,” Emma said. “We’re in it.”

Idella settled down onto a pew. Some of the men had gotten lanterns from the back of the church and hung them all about from the rafters. Long gray shadows lurched up the walls to the ceiling. It was spooky, but it was beautiful. Everyone looked so tall, looming like giants. She pulled her squirrel coat tighter. It was cold in here, and damp. The softness of the fur was comforting and luxurious. She felt like a squirrel curling up in its hole, waiting for the storm to pass. The wind was still wrapping around and around the little church, making an eerie sound up in the bell tower. It whumped the bell back and forth, and sometimes the bell would ring out, though no one was pulling the rope. “That’s Bill, now, up in heaven, ringing for room service” is what they all started saying every time it rang. “He’s ordering more whiskey.”

And the frozen rain kept coming. It’d let up a bit, and the tapping sound, like thousands of little chickens pecking on the floor and walls and windows trying to get in, would get so gentle you could barely hear it, and then it’d start right up again.