Miss Elva Read online

  “What if we get caught? I heard Americans shoot bootleggers and dump them overboard so they don’t waste time with jail.”

  “Stay here, then, and take your chances from the boys in Halifax. You know what that beating you took was really about.”

  Below the ceiling, Amos’s snoring said he was dead for the night. Overhead, the ping of rain on the shingles. Elva was about to crawl back to her room when she saw Oak put away his watch hobby, get up, hesitate, and walk over to his friend hunched over his calculations.

  “You’re tired,” he whispered, his mouth close to Gil’s ear.

  Gil shrugged him off. Oak persisted.

  What’s he saying? Louder! Elva pushed her ear against the crack in the plaster.

  Then Oak pulled a resisting Gil to his feet and wrapped his arms about him.

  “No—”

  The sound of Gil’s voice was cut off by Oak’s embrace, his lips pressed to another man’s.

  “Come to the bed.”

  They kissed like they meant it, Gil then offering half-hearted resistance and a feeble, No. Oak pulled back, as if this demonstration of virtue was some sort of ritual that had to be played out. Gil came back angrily. There’d be nothing tender in this, peeling off vests and shirts, the pale shades of their skin soon caught up in the sheets, little boys running, laughing, playing in the surf like a day at the beach. Elva, wide-eyed, remembered what Jane said about Gil having an undertow.

  She pressed closer to see, at risk of breaking through the wall, shaking, no context, unable to turn away. Even Jane had not whispered this touching between men to her. Part need to master, part desire to succumb, their wrestling for release left them wet and satiated and panting hungrily for air. When they were done, Elva brushed away the wet from her eyes. Not because they were beautiful. Not because it had been beautiful. But because Gil was supposed to be hers. Mine! And Elva bit into the horse blanket.

  “Not again. Not here. It’s not right.” Gil clung to the edge of the bed. He hadn’t said: never again. “Jesus, I hate you for this.”

  “No, you’ll never hate me.”

  Gil rubbed his hands through the hair on his chest and down his belly as if his hard body was both a joy and a curse to his touch.

  “Do you think your brother will become a priest?”

  “Why?”

  “I know you.”

  Gil smiled. “I didn’t tell you this. The night you got whacked, I followed Jane out to the lake. My brother was waiting for her. I haven’t been out there in years. Even in the dark, it’s wonderful, still wonderful. Perfect place to go if you don’t want to be found. I was just a kid my first time there. I’d seen those towers from the shore, but never up close. Maman forbid it, something about that man who built them made her people pack up and leave Grand Pré a million years ago, but she blamed that on anyone who spoke English. So I stole a canoe and rode out from the other side of the lake. No one saw.” He chuckled.

  “Old Purvis had seen me coming and greeted me like I was the King of Siam. Walked me through his gardens, pointing out every tree and flower in Latin, like I knew what that was. Odd sort of fellow. Still is, I guess.”

  Oak was not paying attention. Why do you look at her, why do you try and be around her, why do you need to please her, what do you want her to see in you, why, why, why? But all he said was, “Why’d you follow her?”

  “I dunno.”

  “They’re lovers, aren’t they?”

  “Well, Dom fucked her.”

  “You surprised?”

  “That she’s like an animal? Partly, I guess.”

  “And that he’s a … man?” Would Oak have said, Normal?

  “How could I be half my brother and not know that side of him?”

  “He doesn’t know this side of you.” Oak caressed his friend’s back. Gil said, Don’t.

  “How long do you think they’ve been that way?”

  “Jealous of your own brother?”

  Oak had Gil’s arm and tried to pull him back, but Elva was no longer paying attention.

  Gil had been at the Abbey! He must have brought Elva home. I was in his arms! She hadn’t lost Gil to Oak. She was sharing him!

  She lay back, hugging that sweetness to herself, smiling at the wooden slats overhead.

  The popping of glass and a barking Major woke Elva and Jane and they rushed to join Gil and Oak on the landing. Below, Amos was picking up the stone hurled through the front-door window.

  “Pink-whiskered Christ!” Amos looked from SCAB, crudely painted in red on the rock in his hand to Gil and Oak. “You bastards! I heard wind the company was … I knew you were up to something, Barthélemy!” The aggravation was churning up his stomach. “Did you know about this, bitch?”

  Rilla shook her head.

  “They’re out by morning, or by Christ—”

  Gil and Oak denied nothing. “We’ll cause you no more trouble, Mr. Stearns.”

  Elva felt Gil’s hand lightly graze her back, and flinched the flinch of the guilty. There’d been no looking him or Oak in the eye, convinced she’d find, we know about you watching us.

  Couldn’t they stay? Elva wondered to Jane as she crawled back into bed. Her sister didn’t seem to care. Jane sighed the kind of sigh that wanted Elva to ask, What’s wrong? But Elva didn’t. She had her own things bumping around inside her head that needed working out. Jane was on her own.

  From downstairs, the whack of hammers as Gil and Oak covered over the broken window with an old piece of siding from the shed. They must have stayed in the parlour on watch because Elva lay awake all night and did not hear them come back up. Jane didn’t sleep much either.

  Amos had one of his attacks next morning. So violent in nature, Rilla drove into Demerett Bridge for the doctor.

  It’s a mystery to me, was all the field of medicine could offer. Amos would be bedridden for days.

  Rilla, stuck with yet another bill, did the unthinkable.

  “There’s a room over the shed that can be fitted up nicely,” she said to Gil and Oak. “No need for him to know.”

  THANKS TO LONGER DAYS, next evening found Elva behind the shed with Rilla, weeding the square patch of vegetables. She hated crawling and picking and swatting at blackflies, listening to Rilla say, Stop fussing, girl, you’ll be thankful for potatoes come the fall. If they made it, thought Elva. What produce the squirrels and rabbits didn’t scamper off with barely amounted to anything in soil that reeked of turpentine, of all things.

  The worst about that damned chore for Elva was the black fingernails and why couldn’t she at least wear gloves? She had a hell of a time getting that tarry soil out and Amos didn’t want to see dirty hands at his table, but Rilla thought Elva was just being vain.

  “Be sure to take that brush to you,” Rilla said on the way into the summer kitchen.

  She and Elva found Jane, Oak and the brothers Barthélemy standing awkwardly in the hallway by the front door. This is funny, thought Elva, nobody knowing that everyone knows. Rilla said they looked as if they been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and at least go out on the porch so Amos don’t hear.

  “Dom’s brought news from town,” said Jane.

  Oak dragged maple porch chairs around for everyone. There weren’t enough so he sat on the railing by Gil. Gil, quite innocently, moved beside Jane, Major dutifully following, Dom on the other side. Elva mentally weaved a daisy chain of who here feels what about whom, unable to keep track of everyone’s secrets.

  “Jane, cut up some of that leftover Simple Simon cake you made for the boys,” said Rilla.

  Jane wasn’t much of a cook but her white sponge cake with brown sugar and butter icing was somewhat of a treat and Amos liked it to finish off a Sunday dinner because it was cheap to make. Rilla was allowing herself some good manners in the offer, since Amos passed out sick upstairs would be none the wiser. Jane just looked glad to be doing something.

  That’s not like her, thought Elva.

  “Came fr
om the church,” Dom said. “Father Cértain wanted help boarding up the windows. He’s worried about the stained glass.”

  “Are things that bad?”

  “Oh yes, ma’am.”

  Dom stood and pulled the front page of the Halifax Evening Mail from his back pocket. It was a few days old, but the large photograph captured a man and woman being beaten with sticks. Knowing that Elva couldn’t read, Rilla and Jane just barely, Dom delicately explained that rioters had dragged King Duplak and his wife into the street, kicked the shit out of him, roughed her up some, looted his emporium to emptiness, and kissed the storefront plate window with a great big rod of iron.

  “Don’t look like Mr. Duplak,” Rilla said.

  “Looks like it’s a composograph,” said Oak.

  “A what?”

  Jane returned with a plate of cake slices, the screen door banging after her.

  “It’s made up. Papers in the city do it all the time when they don’t have a real picture. They take other pictures, cut pieces of them together and make one that fits the story.”

  “Doesn’t seem like that’s right.”

  Oak shrugged.

  “Well, was he hurt?”

  Dom couldn’t say for sure, but the newspaper said the shopkeep had to be taken to a hospital in the city.

  While Rilla wasn’t particularly sorry about that, neither did she have a wish for any harm to come to King Duplak and couldn’t understand why this had happened.

  “It’s the strikers, ma’am. Folks have been saying for years that Mr. Duplak sets his prices by what the Corporation tells him, and now with people having a hard time making ends meet, it was bound to happen. Especially now. Rumour is, they’re going to truck in even more scabs and get the foundry up to full production.”

  No one was eating Jane’s cake.

  “What? What’s wrong?” asked Dom.

  “Gil’s—”

  “Shut up!” said Jane and she slapped Elva on the wrist.

  “Well?”

  Big long pause.

  “I’m working at the foundry, Dom,” Gil said.

  “Jesus Christ! Are you nuts?”

  While everyone else thought so, no one said.

  “But why?”

  “Money, what else?”

  “Gil, they’re going after anyone they even think is doing it. I came here to tell you to stay away from town, don’t even go past the ponds. It’s not safe.”

  Elva figured this visit was really for Dom to tell Jane, No more trips to the Abbey.

  “Promise me you won’t do it again. It’s too dangerous. If they find you out, they’ll come here.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” Rilla said. She explained about the rock.

  “Oh, Gil!”

  Elva knew Dom was angry because Gil’s actions jeopardized Jane, but Dom couldn’t raise too much of a stink, could he?

  “You have to stop,” Dom said. “Please, Gil.”

  He excused himself by saying he had to get home, didn’t like to leave his mother alone with so much unrest about. No chance for a private word with Jane. Amos was awake upstairs and shouting, Rilla!

  “Warm me up some milk,” she said to Jane, going inside. “Bring it up when it’s ready.”

  There were flies now, on the untouched cake slices.

  After Rilla made Gil explain to her the precautions being taken to keep scabs’ identities secret—decoy buses, alternating which factory entrances they used, even paying off strikers to keep their mouths shut—she agreed to turn a blind eye. What choice did she have with Amos upstairs puking his guts out and shitting red? They’d just all have to continue to tread lightly and make sure the sick man didn’t find out. But Jane and Elva were forbidden to leave Kirchoffer Place.

  Like that was going to do any good. It’s not fair, Jane chafed under house arrest, but exactly not fair to whom Elva didn’t know. She knew that Rilla’s admonishment to avoid town was losing potency with each day. Jane missed Dom, wanted him, and while his very reflection dogged her step in the house, it brought no solace. Just the opposite. She took out her frustration on Elva, flushing her out of her sight with tear-wringing pinches.

  Elva wasn’t the only one to suffer. Rilla, ever mindful of keeping food on the table and Amos alive—and consequently, the roof over head—barely noticed anything amiss in her daughter’s behaviour. Wasn’t that just Jane? Oak was different. He once had the misfortune to be holding a fresh cup of tea during one of her moody passes through the hall. Pardon, he begged, the tea splashing down onto his leg. Not a boo of complaint from Oak, although Elva later found him slathering a butter poultice on a large raised blister. He smiled gently, said that Jane scared the hell out of him and he missed having that tea.

  If Elva and Oak got in Jane’s way, Gil was getting at her heart. Of course Gil had to know that she was frustrated being apart from Dom, but rather than stay away from her, Gil seemingly taunted her. Hello, Jane, how’d you sleep? Can I get something for you, Jane? Shall I read to you, Jane? What would you like to listen to on the radio, Jane?

  Don’t I look like my brother, Jane!

  To Elva, Jane should have been revelling in two brothers adoring her. And if she didn’t care a fig for Gil, why not enjoy being his harmless fantasy? It’s not like she was asking for his attention. Yet Gil’s flattery enraged her. Elva couldn’t figure it out. Nor could she understand why Jane did everything she could to stay in Gil’s sights.

  Nope. It just didn’t make sense to Elva at all.

  Rilla was desperate to get the man some relief and thought berries might settle Amos’s stomach. She and Elva were out back.

  “Gruson’s Field. They ripen there first.”

  A hearty ocean wind blew the tall grass flat and gave the few scrappy alders in the yard a workout.

  “They won’t be ready,” said Elva.

  “Look for the higher plants. They get more sun.”

  “They’ll be too small.”

  “They’re the tasty ones.”

  Elva, not much help with heavier housework, had been delegated to pick strawberries. Amos liked them with his breakfast, said it helped to keep his food down. Although the afternoon was perfect for such a chore, the field was several miles away and no way was Elva going out there on her own.

  “Gruson’s Field is nowhere near town.”

  But what if, what if, what if …

  “We’ll just ask the berries to hold off ripening till the strike’s over” pretty much summed up Rilla’s thoughts on that. “Fine, then. The boys’ll be home soon. Ask one of them to go with you.”

  Elva got her wooden basket and plunked herself down on the back stoop. Gil and Oak, their hours at the foundry irregular, soon came up the lane. They’d found it easier and safer to slip through a hole in the foundry fence and make their own way home rather than take the bus. Those strikers out for scabs by the gates wouldn’t spare time for a couple of stragglers.

  “Hey, Elva, what’s up?”

  “Gotta pick strawberries for him upstairs and I’m afraid to go by myself.”

  “We’ll go with you,” said Oak and he grabbed an empty Mason jar off the window sill.

  Gil looked to the door. “Yeah, why not, eh?”

  Oak, it turned out, was a consummate berry picker. Fast, delicate, stopping only now and then to stretch and gaze out over the low rolling meadow overlooking Cape Jeddore Head.

  Gil would have none of that. He stripped off his sweat-stained coveralls and singing loudly about a waltzing Australian Matilda, he washed himself clean in a pool of rainwater collected in a mossy basin of bedrock. It was ice cold and made him scream, Aye Nellie! Then he lazily spread himself on a carpet of lichen, his head resting on his hands. Overhead, white outraged faces were being pushed unceremoniously across the heavens while the Major tore after dragonflies.

  “What? You’ve seen me naked before.”

  That was as a boy when they swam at the beach. He didn’t know about the crack in the bed ro
om closet thing. This was different. Gil didn’t care. Or he didn’t care that it was Elva who saw. She thought Gil was looking mighty pleased with himself one minute, perplexed by a riddle the next.

  “If you could have one wish, Elva, what would it be?” he said dreamily, Oak too far away to hear.

  “To be Jane,” she replied without thinking.

  Gil sat up. Elva looked away from Gil quickly and went back to picking.

  “Yeah? You know, I pretended to be my brother. Years ago. We only tried it the once. Dom got caught nippin’ into the wine at church when he was an altar boy.” From the look that got from Elva, Gil added quickly, “Now don’t you ever let this out, you, or Dom’ll skin me alive! It’s our secret, okay?”

  “What happened?”

  “He got pissed is what happened. That crazy old Father Bourque marched him all the way home, goin’ on about hell and sin and if you kiss a girl and something starts to stiffen, you’re in mortal sin. Thought Maman was going to have a fit. Said when my father got home, Dom was going to get it. Belt, get it. Dom was throwing up all over the place saying, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. Fun-ny!”

  “Did he get it?”

  “Naw, I took his place when my pappa got home.”

  “How come?”

  “We both knew my old man would whip Dom some good with that belt of his. I wasn’t going to let everyone in town see my brother looking beat up the next time he was serving Mass.”

  “Did they find out?”

  “Sure, but by then, they’d calmed down some. Dom was okay.” Then: “Why you, Elva? Why do you want to be Jane?”

  She bent her face away, regretting she’d said anything.

  “Elva, everyone’s, well … crippled in some way, even Jane.”

  She wondered what he saw about Jane that was deformed. Even so. Folks don’t mind cripples if they’re like Jane—or you—and you’ll prefer anything over me, and always will. I know that, don’t I, Gil?

  “Now me, I’d be one of those clouds. Not a thought in my head. Spending all day drifting about looking down on you lugs. I’d be in Barbados by dinner, Brazil by supper.”