Downhill Chance (44 page)

Funny how the shoreline looked so different now that she walked along it, for she had motored past here a hundred times in boat, yet nothing seemed familiar. It would be good to get to her aunt soon, and she wished she had a way of knowing the time, for it would help to know how close she was, and when, perhaps, to start calling out and letting Missy know she was coming. And she wished, too, she had thought to take some bread, for hunger pangs were making themselves felt, reminding her that aside from a couple forkfuls of salad, she hadn’t really eaten much the whole day. Thinking about the salad made her feel hungrier, and before long it felt as though a giant hole was gnawing its way through her stomach. She tripped on a stick embedded in the ground, and with her hands in her pockets and nothing to brace herself, she fell flat, smacking her face onto the hard-packed ground, and bringing a stream of blood from her nose.

Ohh, Lord, was there anything as frightening as blood streaming from one’s face? Pulling her mitts out of her pocket, she pressed one of them against her nose and sat back on her haunches, holding back her head as Grammy Prude would have her do, waiting for it to stop. Thankfully, it soon held, and tossing the blood-soaked mitt to one side, she used the other to wipe her face clean of any more dirt and blood, then stuffed it in her pocket, should she need it further. Keeping her head held back, she got to her feet and began walking once more, much more slowly, so’s to not start it bleeding again.

Her feet were becoming cold, and a chill crept up her back. Despite the warmth of the fall jacket, her thin cotton slacks and sneakers were no match for the fog-driven easterlies. Too, light was beginning to fall now with the fog, and she still couldn’t see any signs of Copy-Cat Cove. Would that be it up there—where a clump of trees nearly reached down to the waterline?

She quickened her step, emboldened by the thought of her journey’s end, but no, it was nothing more than a clump of trees, beyond which was more grey, rocky beach, made more difficult to walk now as the rocks became larger and larger, giving way to boulders, some too big to even climb upon. This took some getting used to, leapfrogging, one rock at a time, and then having to walk around some, and in no time her breathing was harsh and the back of her throat dry for want of water.

Water. She wished she had taken some water. There was the brook besides the shack, she remembered, consoling herself, but she was becoming more and more tired now, and her stomach almost sick from hunger. And how fast the light was going with the fog darkening the sky. She ought to be getting close by now. She’d been walking for a long, long time, most certainly an hour, and that’s how long it would take to walk in over the barrens with her father to the caribou herd—an hour. And she never became tired with her father. But then, he would take little spells along the way, pointing out tracks of rabbits or moose, and lifting her onto his shoulders over boggy areas so’s to keep her feet dry and save her sneakers. Oh, how she longed for her father now, and crouching behind a boulder for a little spell, she huddled inside her coat for warmth, wishing upon wishing for the warmth of his strong arms around her, and the calm of his voice as he talked to her about caplin and stuff. Even to be in the kitchen with Brother bawling, and the rocking chair creaking as her mother tried rocking him to sleep, and he with his bottom all sore from the rash, and her burning flour on the stove so’s to heal it. Even Willamena’s voice would be a blessing right now, she thought, staring miserably back along shore, anything other than the wind creaking and rustling the trees, and the waves drowning out even that, sometimes. But no, she’d gone too far now to turn back. The thought of all these boulders and the long stretch of beach behind it, and with the easterlies blasting like ice into her face—no, it was too much. Easier now to keep going, because for sure she must soon be there. No fear of getting lost, as her father often said—as long as you stick to the shoreline, you’ll be sure to come out somewhere; it’s only in the woods that a man becomes a fool and starts walking around in circles till he drops from dizziness.

Onward then, she thought, rising. The medallion moved coldly across her chest, and she shivered. Slipping her hand beneath her blouse, she grasped hold of it, but gone was its warmth she had felt earlier today as she had walked besides her aunt Nora, carrying her brother, and gone was the sense of adventure it stirred within her. Moreover, she was beginning to feel a chafing from where the rawhide strung around her neck.

A faint spray of sea mist dampened her face from the waves surging upon shore. The sea had become quite choppy, broken with whitecaps—fairy horses, Prude called them, horses that the fairies used to steer ships to shore whenever they became lost upon the sea in stormy weather. I should hope they don’t steer Mommy’s boat to shore, then, she thought, as a particularly nasty wave sloused farther up over the beach than its predecessors. And in this dismally greying evening, with the cold becoming more and more numbing, the thoughts of her mother suddenly appearing in boat, calling out to her, became more and more insistent, almost a prayer inside of her. But there were no signs of anybody out on the water this evening.

Pulling the one mitt out of her pocket, she shoved her hand into it, and trying to keep the other hand in her pocket for warmth, she started leapfrogging again, much slower now, as her legs had become a little numb, and with her feet becoming quite soaked from trapped pools of water peppering her path, she could no longer feel her toes and was not sure of her footing. Then suddenly what she thought was a point of land jutting out into the sea was a cliff, studded with trees and cutting off any means of getting around it. She stood there, so shocked that she near sat down and cried. How was she to get around this? Then she saw the footpath leading through the trees, up over the darkening hillside, and her heart leaped with fear. Fairies! Had not her Grandy seen one in the woods once, late in the evening, and been led astray till he became lost? And had not her father said the woods was where men became fools and walked in circles, becoming so dizzy they walked over cliffs?

The wind pummelled her back, and the cold of her hand was becoming unbearable. There was nothing for it; she had to take the path. It was a relief, almost, to be rid of the wind, for the trees buckled all around her, buffeting her from its onslaught, and the ground was at least dry under her feet. If only it wouldn’t go too far inland, she prayed; if only it would take her around to the other side of the cliff before she had time to become lost, for it was much darker here in the woods, and easy to see how one might get lost. Oh, how comforting now were thoughts of her father’s fires at Chouse as he cooked the trout and boiled the slut kettle for tea. Even without milk and sugar, she would’ve drunk every drop at this minute, with her hands wrapped around the heat of the mug. And how tasty the trout when her father fried its skin to a crisp in pork scrunchions, and traces of wood smoke flavoured the pink flesh beneath.

The hill became steeper, and huffing and puffing, both hands out, climbing like a monkey, she grasped at underlying branches to pull herself onward, digging both feet into the dirt, shoving upward, moving farther and farther away from the roar of the sea. Her slacks snagged on a stick, and she grimaced to hear the material ripping, but never once looked down to inspect the damage. What fear had she now of her mother’s wrath over a ripped pair of slacks when all of her fingernails were broken and caked with dirt, and her hands scratched and bleeding, and her hair knotted and sticking to the snot on her face and her sneakers in ruins upon her feet. In fact, the farther she climbed, the more meaningless it all became: her mother, the tear and even her aunt Missy. None of it seemed real any more, only the cold, the wet, the hunger—and the fear. And when finally the hill levelled off, beginning an immediate downward slope, she began to cry. She wasn’t to become lost, after all! And surely they were in their boat by now, scouring the shoreline looking for her. And if she could only hurry, because it was all downhill now.

“Ohh, Mommy will find me,” she said, her thoughts becoming entangled with her voice, “I know she will, and once she sees I’m all right, and wraps me up in a blanket and feeds me, I’ll take her to Aunt Missy and she’ll be so proud.” Then without warning her foot reached into emptiness and suddenly with a shriek of shock, she was swooshing down a grassy incline, and coming out with wonder onto the beach again, the cliff besides her, its lee a shelter from the wind, and the sky much brighter. And looking up the shore, she wept aloud. Ohh, blessed Lord, but there was Copy-Cat Cove, only a few hundred yards away, and was that not a light she saw flickering through the woods? Ohh, sweet Christ, it was her aunt Missy after all, and she wasn’t suffering inside the cavern with a broken leg, but nursing it inside the shack, all warm beneath the blankets, and nibbling, no doubt, on some berries the stranger might’ve left. Ohh, scarcely able to contain her pleasure, she picked herself up, running, singing out, “Aunt Missy! Aunt Missy!”

IT WAS HER DAUGHTER’S CRY
as she plunged down the incline that prodded Clair onward, for she hadn’t been far behind. Luke had spotted the black ridge creeping forward from the horizon, and within minutes they were stowed into the boat, her sitting midway for balance, facing him, and he hunched over the tiller, peering past her shoulder, attempting to gauge the wind’s velocity as they raced full throttle up the bay from Cat Arm en route to Rocky Head. She liked it, Clair did, this urgency in racing the wind, for it suited the sense of immediacy within her to get home to Missy and tell all that she’d discovered in their old abandoned cabin.

“Won’t be scared, will you, lovey?” asked Luke as the southerlies died around them, making room for the full-blown easterlies drawing closer.

“No,” she answered, and strangely she wasn’t, not with him rising as he was, squinting back at the approaching wind, guiding the tiller with his foot as he took them to the middle of the bay to avoid the groundswells. She watched as he flicked a stray lock of hair aside with an ease born out of recklessness in that he wasn’t concerned about the coming winds, merely putt-putting along, assuming his boat’s stability. Indeed, many times during the past nine years Clair wondered, along with Prude, how he hadn’t plunged to his death or drowned or become lost in his faith of his habitat, for no matter what he was doing, he took his thoughts with him, moulding them to the rhythm of his swinging axe, the push and pull of his bucksaw, the keys of his accordion. And there was always a calmness about him, brought on, no doubt, by the harmonizing of his thoughts with the cadence of his deeds over the years. And now as he glanced towards her, his eyes sombre yet intent upon her face as he smiled, the indolence around the curve of his mouth was as if it held the time of the universe.

Leaning towards her, he held out his hand. “Come sit with me,” he said. Gripping her hand, he guided her past the engine house and sat with his arms around her as they leaned against the stern, the wind to their backs and the sun full in their faces.

She remembered those first days. Much to Willamena’s glee, even Nora and Beth took up talk when she donned a pair of men’s pants and accompanied him in the woods most days, or across the bay when he went fishing at Chouse. He showed her where he stood on the cliff overlooking the patch that first moment he seen her coming around the corner of his mother’s house, nearly getting trampled by a sheep, and looking taller than a doorpost, despite her shrinking at the sight of Nate lugging her suitcase inside Willamena’s. And he showed her the path Roddy had taken to find him that final day of school, and how he’d followed Roddy home and watched her from the woods as she ran out the door, swooping before him, needling him for his talk with a rock, and then sat in the window with the pup to her throat, listening as Roddy repeated the story he had so painstakingly taught him. And he showed her from where he had watched her despairing besides the old, dead log the day she discovered she would be leaving Rocky Head. Once, he confessed, sitting across a campfire from her, boiling the kettle for lunch, that when the light was just so, he could sit on the cliff and see through her room window before she closed her curtains for the evening, and watch as she rocked on the edge of her bed, or just sat.

The cold spray of a breaker dampened her neck, and she cuddled to him. “Remember when you used to imagine me breaking my ankle?” she asked.

“Yup. That’s what I’d imagine; you slipping on a rock and breaking both ankles and I’d find you and lift you into my arms, and carry you off into the woods and keep you in a bough-whiffen close by wherever I was cutting.”

“
Both
ankles!”

He grinned. “Case you tried to get away.”

“What else did you imagine?”

“Nothing else,” he said with a grin, “for I’d always go to sleep with you in the whiffen, and when I woke up, it was time to go work and start thinking about you slipping down all over agin. Remember the first time I took you to Chouse?”

She remembered. “Go back in the house,” he had roared, pushing the punt off from shore and springing aboard, his mother’s cries assailing him from beneath the stagehead to “watch the wind, Luuke! Watch the wind.” And she, Clair, had waved reassuringly back at Prude as a breeze crinkled the smooth surface of the sea, the expression of his mother’s face worrying after them. “Aren’t you glad I’ve such a place?” he had asked, swinging out his arms after he had rowed them in through the tree-covered entrance to Chouse. She’d smiled and told him of her father standing at the bottom of the snow-covered hills in Cat Arm, swinging open his arms and declaring it Eden, and how she wished she could be there again. And he touched her cheek and whispered he would take her there again someday, whenever she was wanting to go back. Later, as they stood with their fishing lines floating past them, he had leaned over, nuzzling her cheek, his attentions growing more and more persistent till finally he’d thrown his rod into the water. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her to shore, lying with her on a grassy knoll, his eyes shining through a sheen of hair as he whispered to her about the time he forgot to hook the wood sled to the horse one day whilst thinking about her, and come all the ways home out of the woods with the horse towing nothing. And how he’d walked around foolish for the rest of the day, spying on through the part in her curtains as she peeled off her stockings, readying for bed that evening, and how he then slouched on the stoop and played and played his accordion till his fingers numbed and his mind numbed. And then he’d gone to bed and thrashed and thrashed so much he drove his poor mother nuts. And his dog too went nuts because his dog used to sleep with him; and despite having a pup, Tricksy ran away that night because she didn’t want to live with a lunatic no more. And if he could’ve, he would’ve ran away with his dog, because his blood was seething so furiously he couldn’t rest, work or think—only mesmerize himself with pictures of her peeling off her stockings through half-parted curtains.