Downhill Chance (29 page)

“That’s a fine idea,” said Willamena. “I’ll be sure to tell her, soon as she wakes up.”

Clair pulled back from her window as Nate traipsed across the patch, calling out warnings to one of the youngsters poking a stick at a cornered hen. And when he’d gone inside, she pulled her suitcase near the window and sat, watching outside as she coaxed the pup into drinking some milk from the bottle dropper. It was growing dark when he at last swung down the path from the woods. The last of the youngsters had been called in for the evening, and taking a quick look around the patch, his glance dallying around her window, he went inside his house. Clair began to rock, stroking the pup more quickly. The clack-clack-clack of the telegraph sounded through the house, as did Willamena’s footsteps as she hurried across the kitchen. Her French door squeaked open the same instant as Prude’s door swung open and Luke stepped back outside, a fall jacket tossed over his shoulders and his accordion hooked off his thumb by a leather strap. He sat down on the stoop, settling the instrument onto his knee, fiddling with the keys. Clair kept rocking. The French door creaked again and Willamena’s footsteps drew nearer.

“Clair. Clair, you got a telegram. Clair?” she called out again, tapping on the door when Clair didn’t answer. “My, I thought you was sleeping,” she said, her eyes widening questioningly as she nudged open the door, peering in at Clair perched on the edge of her suitcase, staring out her window, her scarf rolled into a ball and held to her throat. “Still got a bad head?”

“I’s fine. Who’s it from?”

“Maid, it’s from Sim. Your grandmother’s getting worse. He wants you home tomorrow.”

Clair nodded.

“You want a cup of tea?” asked Willamena, lingering.

“No—thank you.”

“You want I should go get Nate? Perhaps he might take you up tonight.”

“No. Don’t do that.”

“Well, then,” said Willamena, and with nothing else forthcoming from Clair, she withdrew, quietly closing the door. A fleeting melody danced from his fingers outside, then deepened into a long drone that throbbed as though it wore the pressure of the finger plying the key. Clair rose, lifting her coat off the bed.

“Change your mind, did you?” asked Willamena as Clair came out of her room, the drone ripening into a more tender pulse behind her. “Sure, I can go get Nate if you wants.”

Clair didn’t answer. And ignoring Willamena’s eyes burrowing after her, and ignoring the trembling in her knees and the pounding of her heart, she walked across the kitchen and out into the porch, her lips twitching spasmodically, her breathing erratic, and the hollow of her throat quivering at the rate of a hummingbird’s. Reaching for the doorknob, she quietly opened the door and stepped out in the cold, salty night, raising her eyes to those of the fair-haired young man rising to greet her.

BOOK TWO

Hannah

CHAPTER TEN

H
ANNAH SQUATTED BESIDES HER AUNT MISSY,
helping her root up the newly budding sweet williams and replace them with the bluebells they’d dug up from the bottom of the yard. “Go, spread them around the fairy ring,” said Missy, brushing the sweet williams to one side. “Hurry now, I’m getting too hot.”

“It’s not hot,” chided Hannah, scooping up the flowers.

“Go, get,” said the aunt, dropping a kiss onto her niece’s nose.

Clutching the flowers to her chest, Hannah ran with them across the yard to a circle of beaten-down grass, and began dropping the pink-and-purple buds around its outer ring. All done, she snatched a seeding dandelion from its stem, blew its fluff into the air and began skipping around the circle, chanting, “Fairies, fairies, one, two, three; fairies, fairies, come to we; banshees, banshees go to hell; little girl sleeps in her little bluebell.”

Her aunt turned to her, and the laughter that usually rippled from her throat like a chorus of morning chickadees was subdued this afternoon and, in fact, had been for some weeks now—perhaps even months.

“Come, Aunt Missy, let’s go to the thicket,” called Hannah, leaping out of the ring, disliking this new quietude.

Missy shook her head, rising, her face flushed with heat. “Your mother’ll be here soon,” she said, pushing her fingers through her mat of curls and fastening them behind her ears. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“We’re going to ask if I can stay, right?” said Hannah, scooting back across the yard.

“We’ll ask,” said Missy.

“We’ll make her let me, won’t we?” said Hannah.

After they had washed and fed on raspberry syrup and crackers, Hannah trailed to the door, pleading, “Now, can we go to the thicket?”

“Lord, Hannie, I can’t keep up with you these days,” said Missy, yawning and settling herself on the divan, her hair puffing up like her cushion beneath her head as she lay back. “Come, lie down with me. Come on,” she coaxed as Hannah groaned, dragging her step towards her. “I’ll tell you a story.”

“A fairy story!” exclaimed Hannah. She hopped onto the divan besides her aunt.

“An old-man story,” said Missy. She shifted to one side, cuddling her niece besides her. “He was ugly, very ugly, and he drank some squaw-root tea so’s he could see the fairies. At first, the fairies didn’t mind that he could see them because he left them alone. But one day, he got greedy and thought he could catch one and sell him for a lot of money. So one night he set a trap in the woods. And the next morning when he went to check his trap—guess what?”

“What?”

“A hundred fairies jumped on him.”

“Ooh, what did they do?”

“They stole his eyes.”

“They blinded him?”

“Now every day the fairies leaves him bread and butter— fairy butter—so’s he won’t starve to death. And he won’t ever leave them because he waits and waits and waits for them to give back his eyes.”

“We won’t try to catch one, will we?”

“Noo, never. But tonight’s a full moon,” said Missy, her eyes bluer than the sea as they poured into Hannah’s, “and if Clair lets you stay, we’ll scrape some fairy butter and leave it wrapped in a handkerchief besides the huckleberry bushes. If the fairies likes the butter, they’ll spread the hanky over a spider’s web, and by morning, the dew will have marked in silvery letters the day we’re going to die.”

“Ooh—” A shuffling sounded at the door, and Hannah sprang up on her elbow. “What’s that—it’s Uncle Sim,” she then shouted, and leapt to her feet, running to greet the uncle as he pushed his way in through the door, his grizzled face partially shadowed by the peak of his cap, and his thin frame hunching forward as he ambled past her towards the bin, reminding Hannah of the old mule her father once told her about, forever needing a mulberry bush to woo him forward.

“She’s not come yet?” he asked, his tone more gnarled than the knotted fingers holding a skipper of trout.

“Nope,” said Hannah, prancing around to the other side of him, poking her fingers at the frozen fish eyes, “and when she does, Aunt Missy’s going to ask if I can stay the night, aren’t we, Aunt Missy?”

“Grumpy,” chided Missy as the uncle more snorted than sniffed, laying his trout into the dishpan. “You want tea?” she asked, rising, stifling a yawn, but it was Clair’s voice that answered—calling out Hannah’s name from the front of the house.

“Mommy!” said Hannah. “Come on, Aunt Missy, let’s go ask,” but her aunt had sunk back down at the sound of Clair’s voice.

“Hannah! Missy!” called Clair, and Hannah darted to the door. “Coming, Mommy,” she called out. “Aunt Missy, you coming?”

“Go, go,” said her aunt impatiently, waving her outside.

“Mommy! Mommy, can I stay the night,” sang out Hannah, bursting onto the step. “Aunt Missy said I could and I really wants too. Mommy—?” Her voice faded. Her mother was leaving the roadside, where she always stood whenever she came to collect her, and was now coming down through the gate, her eyes on the uprooted flower bed as if refusing the sight of the bluebells standing there, so preserved in memory were the pink-and-purple sweet williams they had replaced.

“He did this, didn’t he?” she declared, as Missy appeared in the doorway besides Hannah.

Hannah inwardly groaned. There was always a tinge of anger riding her mother whenever she came collecting her, reserved for the uncle, no doubt, for stealing her father’s house after he died, and putting her mother out to work— leastways that’s what Lynn, Uncle Frankie’s girl and only two weeks older than she, always told her. And not wanting this anger to spill over onto her aunt before getting consent for the evening’s sleepover, Hannah hopped off the stoop. “No, Mommy—we did it—we made a fairy ring,” she sang out, skipping towards the trodden-down circle of grass, decorated with the wilting pink-and-purple buds. “Come see, Mommy—now the fairies can sleep right here in the bluebells and we can hear them if they rings.” She trailed to a stop, turning back. Her mother was clutching on to the gatepost, gazing at her aunt, who was standing quietly in the doorway, looking as petulant as she, Hannah, when caught in the bigness of a wrong committed with full knowing. But her mother was seeing nothing of her aunt’s look. She could tell by the discomfited look in her eyes that her mother had gone to that place again, the one her father told her about once, as she’d sat on the spindle, pouting that her mother had yelled and was mad at her again.

“No, lovie, she’s not mad; she’s not even here,” he’d said, easing his foot on the treadle and pressing the blade of his axe on the mounted grindstone. “Remember I showed you once the big burst of sparks from where Chouse crashes into the sea? Well, them’s little fishies making them sparks, and that’s where your mother is right now, thrashing with the fishies amidst the waters of Chouse. And best to leave her alone, lovie, when you finds her thrashing the waters of Chouse.”

“They were getting root rot, Clair,” said Missy, the sullenness of her tone belying the carelessness of her shrug, and had Hannah been older, she would’ve known that her aunt was not without knowing this place of unquiet within her mother, and that by digging up the sweet williams, she had sought to broaden these waters of unrest and to flood what pools of quiet might be found. But she was neither older nor clever. And seeing her aunt step off the stoop and toe the ground more firmly around one of the bluebells, and knowing from deeds past done that the wait for the hand to fall is far more torturous than any slap it should beget, she ran to her aunt’s side.

“We likes the bluebells best—don’t we, Aunt Missy.” Hoping to persuade her mother of the same, she flashed a quick smile and starting up her prancing again, calling out, “Come, Mommy, come hear our song.” Plucking a dandelion from its stem and puffing its seeds high over her head, she raised her face to their descent, hopping and skipping around the ring of dead grass, chanting, “Fairies, fairies, one, two, three; fairies, fairies, come to we—come on, Mommy, come on, Aunt Missy—banshees, banshees, go to hell, the little girl’s sleeping in her little bluebell.” She shrieked in surprise as her mother’s hand suddenly snapped around her wrist, pulling her out of the fairy ring. “You don’t like our song,” she cried out as her mother bent over, picking up one of the dead flowers.

“How could you?” asked Clair, her tone tight with anger, her short, curly dark hair falling away from her forehead as she watched her younger sister trail towards her.

“You’ve never bothered with them before,” said Missy.

Clair rose, palming the flower as one might a dying baby bird, her eyes hard as they beheld Missy’s. Then dropping the flower, she marched back towards the gate, her back rigid.

“Mommeee!” Hannah wailed. “I wants to stay the night— you never lets me stay the night,” she wailed louder as her mother reached out her hand for her to follow.

“Perhaps she thinks I can’t look after you properly,” cut in Missy, as Clair kept walking. “Perhaps she thinks I’m mental—like Daddy was—is that what you thinks, Clair— that I’m mental?” she called out, and as her sister’s step faltered Missy leapt into the fairy ring and skipped around as Hannah had done. “Perhaps I am. Perhaps I thinks I’m a fairy.” And swinging her arms off from her sides, she started hopping and skipping faster and faster around the ring, her hair bouncing around her shoulders, her voice feigning a little girl sound, she half-chanted, half-shouted, “Perhaps I’m a changeling bought by the fairies. Or an angel. Wouldn’t that be nice, Clair—to be an angel? Mommy always said I was real little angel, and perhaps that’s what I am—not Missy at all but a wee little angel, weee.” Leaping into the middle of the ring, she slumped down, looking up at Clair through eyes scarcely visible behind the curtain of curls screening her face.

There is a moment when what is known most comfortably can present itself most queerly if seen through an eye of sudden distortion, like a horse emerging through a dense fog. And in that moment, with Missy slumped before her, the sun flushing out the blue of her eyes through the yellow of her hair, and the bundles of dead flowers scattered around her feet, Clair put her hand to her stomach as in sudden fright.

“It’s all right,” said Missy, rising, smoothing her hair back from her face. “I’m not mental yet—leastways, I don’t think I am.” She attempted a laugh as Clair continued staring at her. “It’s because of Uncle Sim that you won’t let her stay, isn’t it?”

“She’s—she’s too young,” said Clair, her voice guttural, her words thick. And with the same weight slowing her movements as thickening her speech, she took hold of Hannah’s hand and began walking to the gate. Opening her mouth, Hannah let out the bawl of a bull moose, but it could well have been the mewling of a kitten, so unhearing was her mother as she marched woodenly through the gate.

“She’s older than I was when I started sleeping at the grandmother’s,” Missy called out, her tone more accusing than declaring, but Clair never faltered, despite Hannah’s hanging back, fuming against every step that took her farther and farther from the big white house with the bluebells swaying beneath its kitchen window.

“We were going to scrape fairy butter,” she cried, near tripping over a ratty-looking cat scooting between her legs. Her mother looked back, and so tightly did her hand clutch Hannah’s it were as if she saw the ghost of the father that her aunt Missy sometimes told her about, who’d sit in the window, watching through blackened eyes that were horribly wrinkled, making noises in his throat, and screaming horrid demon screams. Turning back to the road, she began walking faster and faster down towards the wharf until Hannah was almost running to keep up with her.