Kit's Law (15 page)

“You can find somebody else to do your charity work, Doctor. There’s enough men going back and forth out there that you don’t need Sid to chop wood. Only for looking bad in front of the others that I permitted it, but no more. It’s enough that we do, what with the reverend always lending himself out … ”

“All right, Mum, let’s go home,” Sid cut in loudly, shoving her towards the door and looking back apologetically at me and Doctor Hodgins.

“And there’s where you’ll be staying once we gets there,” Mrs. Ropson went on as the door shut behind them. “That I’ll guarantee you, my son … ”

Their voices faded away and Doctor Hodgins, looking wearily from me to Josie, pulled out the drawer to his desk and took out three red suckers. Popping one in his mouth, he tossed one each to me and Josie and, leaning back in his chair, lifted his feet to rest on the top of his desk.

“Just when you think you’ve had every kind of day,” he said, his words thick around the candied knob. Josie grunted and we popped our suckers into our mouths and all three sat there for some time, sucking on our suckers and getting our breath back.

A L
IGHT OF
W
OOD

T
HE NEXT DAY WE WERE COMING
out of school for lunch when I saw Sid leaning against the snow-capped post of the schoolyard, his black wool jacket unbuttoned, and his throat pink against the white of his shirt, as if he had been walking against the wind. He started towards me, then stopped when Margaret Eveleigh caught hold of my arm, and her and her crowd of best friends, all wrapped in matching scarfs and caps and mitts, circled around me, the way they always did since the day of the meeting when Margaret took it on as her Christian duty to watch over me at school. “Are you all right, Kit?” she asked, her ringlets falling over her shoulders as she looked me up and down. “My gawd, you must’ve got some fright when your mother near chopped off Sid’s finger.” “It’s not his finger,” I mumbled, standing still while she sized up my blue scarf Nan had knitted and the green mitts that Nan had argued was the same colour. “Poor Mrs. Ropson, she was in some state leavin’ the clinic,” Melanie Saunders said, chewing on the end of her pigtail and peering intently into my eyes. “And she told Mom Sid wouldn’t allowed to go choppin’ wood for you, no more.”

“I knows he wouldn’t bawlin’,” said Margaret, flicking a dust mote off my collar. “Sure, he was like the baby when he had the mumps that time, and his mother was makin’ him take the medicine. Spotty-faced Sid! Did you get the new blue ribbon Mom brought out to you?” she asked, peering around to the back of my head. “You should wear your hair in ponytails more often, Kit.”

“Ooh, there’s Sid with his finger now,” curly-haired Sarah Brett cried out.

“Let’s go see it,” Margaret breathed. Then they were off, leaving me feeling like a shipwrecked corpse as they skipped on to something a little more stinky further on down the shore—which, in this case, happened to be Sid.

I made it to my rock in the back of the schoolyard without attracting any further attention, and leaned back against the school, looking up over the dense, green woods. The wind sounded a dull rush, kneading through the trees, thickly padded with heavy, wet snow. I snuggled more comfortably inside my coat and was pulling a piece of jam bread out of my lunch bag when Sid popped around the corner, his breath fanning out in front of him, and his ears a bright red.

“Phew, what torment,” he said, rolling his eyes and squatting besides me.

I gave a sympathetic smile and, staring straight ahead into the woods, nibbled on my bread crust.

“Doctor Hodgins said it’s healing fine,” he said, holding up his bandaged hand. “How’s Josie?”

“She’s fine.”

“Heh,” he laughed. “I guess she got quite the fright.”

“Yeah!”

“How is she?”

“She’s fine.”

There was silence. Then, without straying my eyes from the woods, I said, “She’s tryin’ to cleave all the wood so’s you won’t have to do it.”

“Hey, now you tell her to stop that, that’s my job. I suppose you think I’m not coming back?” he added after a slight pause. “Don’t mind Mum. The worst possible fate is being a lone youngster.” He fell silent. Then, “I guess you’re a lone youngster, too.”

I shrugged.

“That’s not how Nan would put it.”

“Were you raised as sisters?”

“As daughters.”

I felt him staring at the side of my face and wished he would leave now.

“I don’t blame Lizzy for hating the reverend,” he said, scooping up a handful of snow and moulding it into a snowball. “It’s his twisted sense of Christian duty that made him treat her—and Josie—the way he did. Hell, there’s times I wish the devil’d take them both and spare Christ the bother.”

I looked at him, my mouth dropped in shock.

“You heard me,” he grinned.

“Were you a crybaby?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“More like my mother who’s the crybaby. Her arthritis keeps her from getting about the house most days, and with the reverend going off down the shore three to four days out of a week, it’s left to me to help her.” He shrugged. “What’s a lad suppose to do?”

“Who sits with her when you comes out to the gully?”

“I come on the days the reverend’s home. So what else do they say about me, aside from my walk, my talk and my being a crybaby?”

“You looks like a ghost.”

“Booo hooo,” he exclaimed, springing back, a startled look on his face.

I burst out laughing and quickly covered my mouth with my hand.

“That’s nice,” he said, leaning forward again.

“What?”

“Your laugh. It’s the first time I’ve seen you laugh.” Glancing at the school window just above our heads, he stood up and brushed off the seat of his pants. “There’s Haynes sneaking a look. I’d better go before he sends another report to the reverend.”

“Report?”

“Yeah. He keeps his eye on you. It was him that told the reverend about Josie and you being sick the time of the meeting, remember? Which makes him your spy, and not me, wouldn’t you say?” He grinned, then disappeared around the corner of the school.

It was a week to the day that Sid came back to the gully. And on that day he had to fight with Josie to get the axe back. When he threatened to leave again if she didn’t give it to him, she threw it down and ran behind the house. She never again sat down and watched Sid chop wood.

It got so that I didn’t mind the thumping sound of him wielding the axe into the birch. Lord knows he worked, coming about three to four times a week, splitting wood and chopping splits to start the fire.

“Come on, Josie, help me carry in a load of wood for the night,” he’d say when the splitting was done and the wood piled high besides the chopping block. “Fill your arms now, as much as you can carry, that’s what we calls a light of wood, not the half-load you got there.”

“Too heavy,” she’d complain, collapsing against the woodpile as he loaded more junks onto her outstretched arms.

“Nonsense,” he’d say, grabbing hold of her shoulder and pulling her forward. “Here, get up now, and in with the load. It’s good work, lugging in wood for the fire, for what’s a home without warmth.”

“Too heavy,” she’d bemoan some more, watching him as he squat besides her, stacking his arms full.

“Hah, too heavy,” he’d jeer. “How can a light of anything be too heavy when it calls only for that which you can carry. Ain’t that right, Kit?” he called out one evening, glancing to where I happened to be standing insides Nan’s room, near the window.

When he tired of chopping wood, he worked on a lean-to he started building from the pickets of an old rotting fence half-circling the back of the house. And after it was built, he neatly stacked it full with tiers of split birch. And when he tired of handling wood, he shovelled paths through the snow leading from the door place up to the road, and over to the lip of the gully. “For the Silent One,” he used to tease whenever I came out the door on sunny days and went looking for a quiet spot to sit down by Crooked Feeder. Oftentimes he’d follow me, but his ongoing wrestling and snowball fights with Josie slowed him down considerably, and by the time he’d trace my footsteps to whichever nook was sheltering me from the wind, I was usually feeling a bit chilled and starting back home again.

Sid wasn’t the only one coming to the gully on a regular basis. True to her word, May Eveleigh come every Saturday morning with a box of groceries and whatever garments of clothes she thought Josie and I might need. Jimmy Randall’s wife made the occasional trip, bringing over enough pairs of knitted socks, mitts and scarves to keep a flock of sheep sheared. Others came too from Haire’s Hollow, with their cleaning buckets and paint brushes, and in no time the house was cleaner than it ever was with poor Nan, or me and Aunt Drucie, trying to keep up with it. I thought they might’ve asked what colour I liked best, for they painted my room in a pink so bright that Pirate refused to come in during daylight hours on account of the brightness making him squint. I don’t think Josie liked hers either—yellow, the colour of mustard. She hated mustard. And all three of us—me, Josie and Aunt Drucie—screwed up our faces at the green they painted the kitchen. Thankfully they left Nan’s room alone, for I don’t think Nan could’ve borne it, as dead as she was, to have the women from Haire’s Hollow rooting through her room the way they rooted through mine and Josie’s while they worked.

I never minded Mrs. Haynes. Bringing her bags of hot, buttered sweet buns down from the car, she walked so carefully that I always felt as if it were her that was needing help. And she was always jumpy, especially when Pirate pounced out unexpectedly from behind a bush or the daybed. She was the only one of the women who didn’t plague me with questions such as—did Drucie drool into her bread dough, and did Josie have a man friend these days, and had I started menstruating yet and, everyone’s favourite, did I know who my father was? Nor did she eye the garbage box behind the stove, searching, as the other women were always doing, searching … always searching …

It was May Eveleigh who found my box of coloured glass. She brought it out on the door stoop one sunny Saturday afternoon, while I was sitting on a rock in the gully, watching the last of the winter’s ice being broken away from the rocks and carried along by the swollen waters. Josie sat on a birch junk by the wood pile, watching Sid carve a spin top out of a sewing-cotton reel.

“Is it safe to have all this glass in your room?” she asked, lifting off the lid and shaking the pieces of glass around. I started up in dismay as a feather belonging to the robin fluttered outside and drifted to the ground. Seeing the box in May’s hand, Josie scrabbled to her feet and dashed inside the house, knocking May against the door jamb as she did so.

“Landsakes, what’s got into her?” May asked.

Before either Sid or I could answer, Josie was ducking back out, clutching a small cardboard box similar to the one May was holding, and darted off down the gully.

“What’s that she got there?” May asked, staring after her.

I didn’t know. I had never seen the box before. Walking slowly towards May, I held out my hand for mine.

“Not before you tells me what you’re doin’ with all this glass,” she said, holding it out of my reach.

My nostrils flared. It felt like I was being smothered. But no words came.

“It’s Josie’s,” Sid said, coming to stand besides me. “Kit’s been hiding it from her. How did you find it?”

May started at Sid’s cutting in like that.

“It … was on the floor by Kit’s bed. I struck it with my foot when I laid Kit’s new stockin’s on her dresser.” She gave me a tight smile as she handed back the box. “There’s a new ribbon on your dresser. Mind you comes into the store tomorrow, and I measures you for your graduation dress.”

I took the box and stared at her as she called out her goodbyes to Aunt Drucie. Smiling at Sid, she walked slowly up over the bank towards her car.

“Nosey whore!” Sid muttered as she passed out of earshot.

“What’s that you say?” Aunt Drucie asked, coming out on the stoop, wiping her hands in her apron.

“I said close the door, Drucie, you’re letting the heat out,” Sid said, bending over to pick up the feather. “Here you go, Kit. What say we go find Josie?”

Laying the box down besides the stoop, I followed Sid down the gully, taking care not to slip on the muddied sides of the brook.

“It’s because they’re whores that they snoop around like that,” Sid burst out.

“It’s because Josie’s a tramp,” I replied quietly, in no mood for more of Sid’s preachings.

“Only difference between a tramp and a whore is a tramp looks like a tramp all the time, and some whores never look like tramps,” he said back. “And they’re the worst kind because they’re hypocrites passing themselves off as something else.”

I shrugged irritably.

“Makes no difference.”

“Hell it don’t. Who are they to call Josie a tramp when they’re nothing but hypocrites whoring their souls? The clothes and food that they give you?” He snickered. “Nothing more than salve that they smears over their own sins and thinks they’re fooling God into believing they’re saints.”

“They’re not all sinners.”

“Everyone’s a sinner, Kit. Some know it and some don’t. Some eat it for breakfast and pass it off as oats. You heard the almighty reverend. Is it for chopping wood, or spying, that he has me coming out here?”

“Mrs. Haynes isn’t a sinner.”

“Hah! She’s the biggest sinner of all. She lets herself be trampled over, then lends a helping hand to you. Why? She’s judged you worse off than herself. Haw! You got more gumption in your little toe. At least you fight for what you want.”

I kept quiet and concentrated on picking my steps down the flooded gully.

“So, what do you do with broken glass?” Sid asked as we came out onto the beach and headed for Crooked Feeder.

“Nothin’,” I said, then added after a short silence, “I used to pretend they were jewels.”

“Did you—ever have occasion to wear them?”

I gave him a sharp look.