Miss Elva Read online

  Rilla was half right. It was Gil who knew the clock fixer. They were coming up together from the beach, striding through those distant fields towards the cemetery on that unusually mild spring day. Let me see, Jane said, joining Elva by the open window. He’s taller than Gil, Elva noticed even though they were on the other side of the ponds. Well, if they were heading that way, Jane said she must be late and raced out of the room. Speed was the easiest way to lose Elva.

  Rilla was somewhere between here and Raven River, and since the strike, there hadn’t been any boarders, Amos not exactly the credit-extending kind. The screen door in the summer kitchen had banged, so Amos was back from the shitter, sprawled now in front of the parlour radio. He was dozing, wrapped in a blue cigarette haze, drifting off to white men pretending to be black, which Elva thought was foolish ’cause who’d want to be any colour but white, singing about mammies, which was just plain foolish.

  “Wait for me!” Elva called as she hobbled into the road. The cemetery in the Eye of the monastery was not far but there was all that grass clogged with breaching dunes. It made for hard going.

  “Can’t you leave me alone even for a minute?” Jane yelled back at her, but when she saw that her sister was determined she slowed grudgingly to a trot. Elva didn’t know why she was so fired up to hurry. Rilla didn’t want them to go and Amos sure wouldn’t like it if he found out, and Elva said so.

  “If you’re going to yabber, I’ll run, I will.”

  So Elva kept quiet, tried to keep up with Jane and wondered what the clock fixer’s name was.

  The gate was already open. They’d have to cross through the cemetery proper to get to the strip of pauper’s field against the pond. Once there, they hid behind a polished maroon obelisk to one of Demerett Bridge’s founding fathers.

  “Get back, they’ll see you,” said Jane, but Elva wasn’t touching the tombstone ’cause she saw cobwebs. Spiders can nest under your skin if you get bitten in a graveyard and then one day they’ll be so many they’ll crawl out your nose. Everyone knows that, and then they’d have to call her Spider Elva.

  “Don’t be so stupid,” said Jane.

  Apart from John Ingram, the sexton who for a price would dig even a suicide’s grave, they watched Dom and his mother, Jeanine, bury father and husband. But where’s Gil, his dog, and that clock fixer?

  The unnaturally short corpse was trucked to the grave on the back of a squeaking cart. Dom and his mother resembled the long granite faces tucked underneath the eaves on the post office building, holding up the roof. John gingerly lowered the canvas package into the pit. Stiff, the dead man fit in nicely, but John had to avoid touching the head. Still dripping.

  “You’re green,” Jane said.

  It all went to remind Elva of that other grave, and it was just like that Jane to act like it didn’t exist. Elva couldn’t forget. She started wiggling her toes. That was Rilla’s home remedy for a poor stomach, not having any money for drugstore physics. Guess if you were wiggling your toes, you weren’t thinking about throwing up. Wasn’t working for Elva.

  Beyond the tombstones, past the grape-leaf bars of the gates, the fields of spring seagrass, the black pond and the sea were quickly disappearing. Its coming reminded Elva of something she did when a drawing wasn’t right, blotting out the scene, like this fog did, with a blue-grey foam. It was moving fast, already cold on her face and the inside of her nose. Elva wondered what it would be like to start over. Really start over. God drawing you all fresh again, getting you right this time. She pulled her sweater about her tightly.

  That other grave was down by the beach where the Kirchoffer Place road turns from slate to sand. It was a small one. Only big enough for a bird, a sandpiper. Elva’s sandpiper. Murdered by Jane.

  The sandpiper was near dead in the pitch-like ooze when Elva found it, its wings black with tar. So weak, its eyes glassy, beseeching Elva, the poor bird meekly allowed her to carry it to the summer kitchen. You’ll be better in no time, she said, fashioning a hospital bed out of a cylinder of Quaker rolled oats by cutting it lengthways and layering it with scraps from Rilla’s sewing basket.

  For two days Elva ministered to her patient, swabbing its feathers as best she could, not even leaving it to sleep. When she was not gently rocking the rolled oats box, she was outside turning over rocks and digging for worms and grubs, not knowing if sandpipers ate them, but hoping to entice the poor thing to eat.

  It was after one of these forays that she returned to find Jane with the lifeless bird. She had just wrung its neck and there had been enough tar left on the bird to stain her hands.

  She carefully laid it back in the oats box.

  But I was cleaning its feathers with spirits, look, brown with speckles, right there in my hand, it let me, trembling, watching me, trusting me. Rilla was so angry ’cause I got black on my dress, but I couldn’t let it suffer.

  Elva sobbed convulsively, her muddy hands red with cold, wriggling worms falling to the ground.

  “It was suffering.” Jane spoke softly and unusually sympathetically. “And so were you. It was right to let it go.” Now that Jesus Christ had no value, that was as close to religious dogma as Jane got.

  Even though Jane helped plan an elaborate funeral for the sandpiper, which they buried on the beach with a procession and Our Father, Elva came as close as she ever had to hating her.

  The sexton waited expectantly after the last spade of dirt had been smoothed over Alphonse Barthélemy.

  “Damn you, John Ingram.” It was softly said by the widow, but a curse nonetheless.

  “It’s the Church who makes you pay.” What did he care as long as someone did.

  “Pay for unblessed ground? No words of comfort?” She couldn’t stand to look at him, pitying her.

  Dom pressed a few coins into the sexton’s hand.

  That’s when Jane made her move, stepping out from behind the obelisk, like she wanted to say something to Dom and maybe to his ma. Then from out of nowhere came Gil’s dog, barking, tail wagging, going right for her. Shush, go away! No! Jane fell back, but not before Dom and his mother turned and saw what looked like Jane and Elva playing with a dog.

  “You?” Of all folks to see Jeanine Barthélemy in her hour of trial, that half-breed girl from the other side of the tar ponds? It was too, too much.

  Jane slowly stepped forward, pushing Elva back from view, yet tightly holding her hand. I’m very sorry for your loss, was all she managed with a stiff and very unnatural curtsy.

  Dom’s mother was not a large woman, and seemed as bereft of sap as bleached driftwood. But she was a forceful one. She had held her family together during hardship and want and was stoically determined to force what was left of them through the scandal of this death and into the exalted heights of redemption she was sure Dom’s calling would provide. Come hell or high water.

  “Jane’s come to pay respects.” Dom’s eyes shifted awkwardly from his mother to Jane.

  Elva’s tightly gripped hand was starting to hurt.

  “Her respects? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she’s not here for that! I know about her kind, like her mother.”

  Elva closed her eyes and grit her teeth. She could just imagine what Jane’d have to say to that Barthélemy woman now, the fact she was Gil and Dom’s mother be damned. But Jane said nothing. Just stood there and took it. Elva couldn’t believe it. When she finally dared to look, there was Jane, looking confused, sheet white, like she had her wind knocked out.

  That same look had come upon Jane once before. Years ago now, even before that time Dom got real mad about the butterfly. A silly thing really. In other folks, forgotten with time. But not by Elva. Yup. Dom was madder than hell over it, and Elva’d remember that most whenever there was talk about Dom and God.

  No one intended to climb the tree. It just happened. Gil and Dom were up the limbs of the towering dead elm, like monkeys, in a heartbeat. C’mon, Jane! dared Gil.

  The tree bordered the Barthélemy property, and the boys h
ad been forbidden to climb it as their neighbour wasn’t partial to having Frenchies on his land, or over it, as the case may be. Said he’d shoot them like turkeys if he caught them and no law in the land would fault him for doing it. But you could see into Mr. Dorion’s upstairs windows from high up that tree, and Gil and Dom were at the age when they thought seeing Mrs. Dorion in her girdle would be sensational, without understanding why.

  Bet she can’t climb it, Gil had taunted. Dom said, Of course she can, even if she is just a girl. That was all Jane needed to hear. Her shoes scuffing against the bark, her clenched teeth holding back her breath, she worked her way up from branch to branch, snaking around the trunk. See, I told you I can do it! Good, Jane, good!

  Elva shielded her eyes from the sun. Oh, to be old enough to climb trees! Then, snap, kerr-ack! Jane free-falling without a word, the sound she made when she parachuted into the wild rugosa that coiled up against the fence would forever haunt Elva.

  Gil and Dom were down that tree fast, like maybe they’d fallen as well. She’s dead and it’s your fault, Dom said. Elva remembered it as strange, seeing the brothers fight, like watching yourself fight yourself. She didn’t know who to cheer for. Dom threw first, and Gil said, Hey, cut it out! His brother charged, but Gil was always the stronger of the two and hit back. Dom was not to be bested and surprised his brother with a slap to his face that instantly gave him a bloody nose and would later add a purple aura around his left eye. Gil went down. Dom stood over him, breathing hard, madder than anything.

  Elva started to cry. Jane wasn’t moving, but she did look grand framed in rugosa. It didn’t even look like she was breathing. Dom knelt beside her, desperate to do something but afraid to even touch her hand. She was white, like she’d gotten into Rilla’s flour box. Elva wailed that Jane was dead, but really she was only winded. By suppertime she’d be pink because Rilla had to paint Jane top to bottom in calamine lotion on account of the poison ivy in amongst the blooms.

  “You knew he’s back?” Jeanine’s attentions were swept off Jane when Gil and a tall, pale young man, a shock of purple on the side of his face, stepped into the open.

  Dom stared at his brother blankly. “No. I—No!”

  The widow shook off Dom’s arm. “I prayed to God never to see him again.”

  Gil looked at his feet, and there was Major. The dog was still dripping from a drink in the fountain. Jane was scrutinizing the other young man, who didn’t seem to know what to do. Elva thought this would be a great time to turn into a butterfly and flutter away over the coming fog to her fields of grass.

  “How can you share one face, one mother, and be so different? I’ve got one good … one good son left.”

  Dom took hold of his mother.

  “God’s granted me that.”

  “Let’s go,” the good son said.

  “You stay away, girl,” Jeanine hurled towards Jane.

  Elva was pretty sure that Gil then said, Jane’s just being kind, her coming here. Jane, when they talked about the funeral later at home, said it was Dom. Jane was certain of that. Dom, and not Gil, had stood up for her.

  “The rest of you, skedaddle,” John said as he packed up his tools.

  That’s when Jane knelt beside the freshly filled grave and did a very peculiar thing. From her pocket she retrieved a flattened bouquet of mayflowers and placed them gently.

  Elva sensed Gil’s friend standing very close to her. He made her nervous. That’s the worst state for you to be in, Rilla always said of Elva. Makes your mouth run on without thinking.

  “That’s because Mr. Barthélemy killed her dog for her,” Elva explained very lowly so only he’d hear, but of course, he’d not know anything about that.

  Gil was beside Jane, staring at his hands. She got up without help, dusted off her knees.

  “Fuck, it’s been five years.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Did you think she was going to say it’s okay? Gil? You did, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  From the silence that followed, Elva assumed that Jane herself believed Gil had a part in the death of his father, but she was mistaken. Jane didn’t care.

  John chased them out then so he could lock the gates. Fog was blowing in quickly now, like smoke from farmers’ frost fires set to keep warm fragile apple blossoms. It would be worse than walking home at night when at least the lights of Kirchoffer Place from across the tar ponds acted as beacons.

  Outside the gates the clock fixer said, “Give your mother a few days, then try and talk to her again.”

  Everyone stopped, Jane and Elva waiting for someone to finally say who the hell this guy was.

  Gil gestured. “This is just Oak.”

  “Hello, Just Oak,” Jane said.

  Elva wondered if the cut on his face hurt, but that was too familiar a question and they’d just met.

  “It won’t do any good,” Gil said, oblivious to Oak’s apparent awkwardness. “Maman’ll never change.”

  Nothing newsworthy about the Barthélemys’ religious convictions, as far as Jane and Elva were concerned. They were Catholics, like Rilla, although Rilla was a lot more quiet about her beliefs, probably on account of Amos not being partial to papist mumbo-jumbo.

  Gil once told the girls about a Sunday school his mother had made him and Dom attend and a Grey Nun in a wimple who made him toss out the daisies and day lilies he’d picked for her because she said they had bugs. He hadn’t cared for Sunday school after that. The nun’s lesson that particular morning was about sin and souls, and she drew a large circle on the board. The class of boys fidgeted, wishing they were stoning the whale that had washed up on the beach overnight, as Sister filled her circle in with chalk.

  When you tell a lie then a hole appears in your soul, the nun explained when at very long last she was done with the art portion of the lecture. She wiped a hole in the chalk, and the blackboard underneath stained her carefully coloured-in white soul. Only God’s grace through confession and penance and Communion can make it pure again. And God help you if you die with any of those black holes still on your soul. Apparently souls with holes sink to hell rather than float up to heaven.

  Jeanine Barthélemy concurred and threatened Gil, without much result, that he should be more like Dom or his back talking and wanderlust would send him to the bottom of Chezzetcook Bay, fish swimming through the great big holes in his soul. Eternity at the bottom of the sea.

  Dom was the floater in the family. Everyone said so. Nothing was going to mark the purity of that boy’s soul. Always by Father Cértain’s side serving Mass, not like Gil, who’d skive off to muck out stalls for a few coppers, even dig that pit for Amos when Elva’s father needed to move the shitter. Anything but go to church. Sure, he’d catch it from his father afterwards, but like he said to Dom, The whipping’s over soon enough and I still got the money.

  So when Jeanine started saying that Dom would be her offering back to God, her priest-in-the-family, her desperate way of winning back favour against the Barthélemy litany of woes, it was generally accepted by faithful Christians in town. And so far, so good. Dom was as true as any mother could hope for a son to be. He put out the texts at Sunday school and picked them up at the end of lessons. In winter, he hiked over frozen Ostrea Lake from Chezzetcook Bay to tend the church furnace so old ladies with blue hair didn’t get matching faces and fingers at first Mass. Dom studied hard and worked even harder supporting the family after his father’s accident.

  For every inch of bad in that boy, Jeanine liked to say about Gil, his brother had a yard of the Blessed in him.

  Gil was making light of strangling himself with an imaginary clerical collar, saying Dom was a mommie’s boy, but no one could see much in the fog.

  Elva wanted to know if anyone asked Dom if he wanted to be a priest. She thought she heard something like a chuckle from that Oak fellow. Jane said, Shut up.

  The fog had thickly set, and
the dull, monotonous horns in the harbour were resounding in sequence. Elva was shivering. No one was moving. Where to now? Major sniffed, running in and out of them on the hunt for moles.

  “Hey, Jane, your old man still taking in boarders? Would he take me? And Oak here?”

  In Jane’s opinion, Amos would truck with Lucifer if he could cough up coin of the realm. “Sure,” she said.

  They went single file, real close because of the fog. Elva knew they were nearing the beach because as the surf washed over the round beach stones, it giggled as it crawled its way back to the sea. She wasn’t too crazy about the tall grass tickling her ankles though. What if it was something else? When the talk amongst Jane and Gil trailed off, Elva began to sing something about Barbara Allen in a scarlet town and broken hearts and Sweet William who died ’cause she paid him no mind and briars and red, red roses. She sang partly because she couldn’t see and she was nervous, partly because she was happy being amongst the others. But it had a lot of verses and Jane finally said, Shut up, Elva.

  At first Elva heard only them walking through the beach grass. Then from Major, a low steady growl.

  “What is it, boy?”

  They must have been closer to the road than they thought, for a car sputtered and roared. Headlights cut through the fog. Oak, behind Elva, said, Listen, hearing what they all heard now, something heavy jumping quickly towards them through the field. Major barked. Jane screamed but it was cut short as though someone put a hand over her mouth.

  “Run!”

  Elva hit the ground, felled by a force from the side, dull and blunt. She struggled, but was pinned. She thought she heard a lightly accented nasal voice whisper, Just give you a love tap this time.

  “Lay still.” It was Oak trying to shield her. His silver watch was pressed close to her face.

  She couldn’t tell how many there were, only that it must be townies back for more because of the clock, or, from the muffled cries, what was happening to Gil and Jane, but Major had a hold of something and only let go with a silencing crack. Elva’s protector was lifted away to sounds like stones against an overturned hollow hull.