Kit's Law (33 page)

“I didn’t make him leave!” I yelled at her one day when she snatched a slice of bread out of my hands and threw it on the floor.

“You’s farmed!” she yelled back. “You’s farmed!”

“It’s deformed,” I argued weakly. “Now you pick up that bread. Pick it up!”

“You pick it up!” she yelled, picking up the slice of bread and firing it across the room at me. “You pick it up!”

“I told you and I told you, it’s not my fault. I didn’t make Sid leave,” I cried out. “Can’t you hear me? I didn’t make Sid leave.”

“You’s farmed!”

“Who’s farmed?” a voice called through the kitchen window. It was Fonse.

A smile lit up Josie’s face, the same as if it had been Sid, and she boisterously hauled open the door and bounded outside, barking out her crazy laugh.

“I swear, it’s only him that she’ll listen to any more,” I said as Loret came in the door.

“That’s because she’s the only one around here with sense,” Loret replied, giving me a hug, a smile covering the look of concern on her fine features. Fonse poked his head in behind her.

“I’ll do up some splits and keep Josie entertained while you girls prattle,” he said.

“You won’t get her near an axe,” I said. “Not since … ”

Fonse nodded. “Then, we’ll go for walk down the brook.”

“There’s a good lad,” Loret said. She closed the door behind him and took a seat in the rocker. “Tell the truth, Kit. Is she gettin’ too hard for you to handle?”

“No,” I said reassuringly. “She gets mad over every little thing, but nothin’ I can’t help.”

“Sounded like you were about to come to blows just now.”

“She won’t get it out of her head that I didn’t send Sid away.”

“Perhaps whatever’s wrong with her to begin with might get harder to handle as she grows older. Now, now, don’t go arguin’ with me till you hears what I got to say,” Loret commanded as I opened my mouth to protest. “Poor old Effie Stride’s boy got worse over time. They had to strap him down sometimes, he got so hard to handle. I’m just worried about you here, all by yourself.”

“I’m not all by myself.”

“You got Doctor Hodgins, who’s just as worried as me and Fonse. Aside from that, you got no one, Kit.” Loret’s muddy brown eyes rounded like a cow’s.

“Oh God, Loret, are you going to start that agin?”

“Start what agin?”

“Start talkin’ me into leavin’ here.”

“Would you? If I was to say I needed you for a little while?”

“Don’t try to trick me, Loret.”

“Trick you? Well, if that’s what you thinks, maybe I won’t tell you anything else then.”

“All right. What is it?”

A tender look took a hold of her face, and she smiled.

“I’m havin’ another baby, and … ”

“Oh, Loret … ”

“That’s not what I’m on about,” she cut in, waving my fawning to one side. “Lord knows, there’s nothin’ wonderful about havin’ a baby, leastways, not till it starts breathin’ on its own.” She nestled deeper into the rocker, beaming me a smile that could guide drowning ships to shore. “It’s just that I’ve been spottin’ this past while, and the doc said it might be good for me to stay off my feet as much as possible. So Fonse and Mudder thought, perhaps, we could hire you to come live with us, just till the baby’s born,” she added quickly. “And perhaps for a few months after.” She leaned forward. “What’ll you say, Kit? You could be her godmother.”

A silence fell between us.

“It ain’t exactly a life’s sentence,” she said, laughing at my troubled look.

“I’m sorry, Loret. I’ll come, of course I’ll come. You need me.”

“Well don’t sound too excited now, Kittens, Lord Almighty!”

“No, I mean it, I want to help you, Loret.”

Loret got up and, tightly folding her arms, strolled over to the window.

“Oh, it’s me who should be sorry,” she said. “Puttin’ pressure on you this way, it’s not fair. You love your home, why should you leave it? For sure it’s pretty enough, lookin’ down over the water.”

“It’s pretty in Godfather’s Cove, I won’t mind.”

“No! No, you stay here,” she said, turning to me a determined air. “I only wanted it if it was what you wanted.”

“But the spottin’… ”

“Hah, the spottin’ was nothin’,” she said, looking a little sheepish. “I just thought I’d throw it in there, give you a good reason for comin’ should you feel you were being a burden, or some such foolishness. Hey now,” she said, as I kept looking at her worriedly, “I’m here to make sure you’re all right, not to add to your troubles. Come on.” She grasped me firmly by the shoulders. “Let’s make some tea. The savages are coming.”

She shot Fonse a warning look as he stepped inside, and no more was said about me and my mother moving down to Godfather’s Cove. I quietened Doctor Hodgins with the same troubled look when he came to visit the next day, and I was preparing a speech to deliver in case any of them ever tried to convince me of moving again, when Margaret come for a visit.

“My God, Kit, how can you stand livin’ out here all by yourself? I’d be mental.” She leaned closer, her ringlets falling over her shoulders. “They’re sayin’ there’s a strange footprint in the bog, same size as Shine’s, and it’s pointin’ to here. Have you heard any strange noises, lately?”

I shook my head.

“Oohh my God, gives me the shivers.” She looked at me quite shrewdly. “Someone’s been writin’ letters from all over the place to Fonse Ford, down in Godfather’s Cove. They says it’s Sid.” Margaret leaned closer. “I’m only tellin’ you in case it’s important that you know. Aunt Dottie Gilliam— that’s Mom’s cousin, she lives in Godfather’s Cove—well, she was up the other day and happened to see Sid’s handwritin’ on one of Mom’s store books. Well, she recognized it as the same as was on Fonse’s letter that she happened to see sittin’ on the counter in the post office, one day.”

“Thank you, Margaret. The kettle’s boiled.”

“Kit, you wouldn’t be hidin’ somethin’ from me, would you?”

“No. I never hear from Sid. And I never will. Please, don’t ask me to talk about it, Margaret.”

Margaret shook her head solemnly.

“Although I can’t say I’m not curious. But I’ll wait till you’re ready to talk.” Laying her cup on the arm of the rocking chair, she leaned forward. “Kit, there’s something that I wants to ask you. Me and Melissa—well, you knows Melissa goes out with Teddy Randall. And well, you knows I been datin’ Josh Jenkins. We was talkin’ the other night about there being no place to go. You know, have a beer without a dozen youngsters crawlin’ up your hole. So, we thought about comin’ out here some evenin’s. And young Arch Gale, well, he was saying how pretty you are, and we was thinkin’—perhaps now with Sid gone, might be time for you to start seein’ somebody else. You can’t go wastin’ away out here, Kit. What do you say?”

“I got to go find Josie,” I said. “You finish off your tea now, and don’t mind me leavin’ for a minute.”

I was out the door and down the gully in half the time Josie ever made it. Later that evening when I was sure Margaret was gone, I came back to the house and started hauling clothes out of the drawers and shoving it into a broken-strapped suitcase and Nan’s cotton flour bags she had put aside to make aprons and pudding bags. The next morning I had tea with Aunt Drucie, then walked into Haire’s Hollow and down to Old Joe’s brother’s shack and rapped on Doctor Hodgins’s door. That afternoon Josie and I were sitting on the beach with the suitcase and three stuffed flour bags as Old Joe’s kelp-green boat putted to shore with Old Joe bent over the bow and Doctor Hodgins steering from the stern. The suitcase come apart as Old Joe, standing on the beach in his hip rubbers, lifted it over the bow to Doctor Hodgins, and a clump of slips and stockings fell into the water, and along with it, the starfish, with the nail still protruding through its centre.

“What have we here,” said Old Joe as he snatched at the garments before they scarcely had a chance to get wet, and plunged his hand through the water to rescue the starfish.

“You might as well keep it,” I grunted, hoisting myself over the bow of the boat. “’Cuz its wishes must’ve been meant for you.”

Old Joe tossed me the undergarments and studied the fish with a quirked brow.

“Did you say the verse before you wished?” he asked.

“Yup,” I said, helping Doctor Hodgins stuff the clothes back into the suitcase.

“Hmm,” said Old Joe, shifting back his cap and smoothing back his hair. Then, “Did you know that if a starfish tears off its leg, it wishes upon wishes till it grows back a new one?”

“Nope.”

“And that the old leg wishes upon wishes till it grows its self into a new fish?”

“Nope.”

“Perhaps you give up wishin’ too quickly.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Or perhaps its wishes ran out after you scraped it from the sea.”

Old Joe scowled, and lifting up a rock, he nailed the fish to the bow of his boat.

“Might be it was meant for me,” he said, standing back and examining it with a grin. “Might be the first voice it hears is the only one it’ll answer to.”

“Might be,” said I as he pushed off the boat and leaped up, swinging his legs in over the side. Fixing myself comfortably on the seat, I faced the wind as Doctor Hodgins stood arms akimbo at the stern, and Old Joe squatted with Josie before the engine, putting our way to Godfather’s Cove.

D
OCTOR
H
ODGINS’S
P
ROMISE

B
RUDDY WAS THE fiRST TO SEE US
trucking up over

the garden.

“Kit!” he exclaimed, setting down the water buckets as he come outside the wellhouse and seen us. “Emmy, go get your mother,” he sung out as Loret’s girl followed out behind him, the water dipper in her hands. “Tell her it’s Kit, she’s come back.”

He come to meet us, his strides lengthy, his smile white against the brown of his skin.

“It’s good that you’ve come, Kit,” he said, taking the suitcase from Doctor Hodgins and warmly shaking Old Joe’s hand as I introduced them. “Loret’s worried sick about you.”

“Kit!”

It was Loret, coming out the door and down over the steps towards me. Behind her come Mudder, then Fudder and two or three of the youngsters, reminding me of the other time when it was Sid who was walking by my side up over the yard and not Doctor Hodgins and Old Joe. Tears sprung to my eyes, and thinking they were for her, Loret swooped her arms around me, hugging me tightly, while Mudder and Fudder nodded in welcome, shaking Old Joe’s and Doctor Hodgins’s hands. And then everyone was laughing at the sight of Josie, bounding across the yard with the boys in tow, barking out her crazy laugh, red hair flying on the wind.

“What was it that made her change her mind, Doctor?” Mudder asked, as we all trekked into the kitchen and Bruddy carried my bags up over the stairs.

“For sure it wouldn’t her own senses,” Loret chided.

“I haven’t got it figured out yet,” Doctor Hodgins replied, giving me a wink. “Have you, Joe?”

Old Joe shook his head.

“She’s not as open-mouthed as Lizzy, for sure,” he said, tousling young Jimmy’s head as he scooted by.

“Here, all you youngsters, outside till we calls ye,” Mudder sung out, bustling to the stove and pulling a dish of baked beans from the oven. “Now then, everybody sit down, we haves a bite.”

“I’m afraid we can’t stay … ” Doctor Hodgins began, but was interrupted by Mudder buckling a chair behind his knees and planking a plate of beans before him. “You knows you ain’t goin’ anywhere till you haves a bite,” she argued. “Haul in that chair besides you, Joe.”

“A bite, indeed,” Fonse said, rolling back the rug by the stove and hoisting up the cellar door. “This calls for a celebration, what’d you say, Bruddy?” he asked as his brother thumped down over the stairs and into the kitchen.

“And that it does,” agreed Bruddy with a grin. “It’s not every day we gets a chance to celebrate, what’d you say, Loret?”

“I say the both of you haul your arses to the table,” said Loret, wagging the bread knife at Bruddy as she finished slicing a loaf. “There’ll be time for celebratin’ after dinner. This is what you don’t miss in a man, Kit,” she said with a sigh. “They’re like a youngster for the tit when they gets a reason to drink.”

“Never mind it’s the middle of the day,” said Mudder, pouring up the tea. “How’d you like it, Joe?”

“To the top,” said Old Joe, eagerly eyeing the five-gallon jug of brew Fonse was hoisting up to Bruddy through the cellar door.

“How long you been around here, Doctor?” roared Fudder, wrinkling his weary old brow, and easing himself into a chair next to Doctor Hodgins.

“Oh, a good many years,” roared back Doctor Hodgins. “Since before Kit was born.” He give me a smile, then seriously studied the plate of bread Loret laid in the centre of the table. “Looks like we’re in for a scoff, old buddy,” he said with a grin as Old Joe pried his eyes from the jug of brew and lifted them to the plate of beans Mudder was placing before him.

“Aye, sir, it’s a scoff she be,” said Old Joe, his grin widening as I took a seat besides him. “Be a shame to miss it, heh, Kitty Kat?”

It was a wobbly Doctor Hodgins that strolled down over the garden later that evening.

“You’re keeping her pretty steady, Joe,” he said as Old Joe marched straight ahead towards his boat.

“Aye, ’tis a clear set of eyes you need to steer a boat,” said Old Joe.

“That’s right,” said Doctor Hodgins. “We could run her into a whale.”

“Aye. Or Big Island,” added Old Joe. “Wouldn’t be the first time a rudder got splintered on her shoals.”

“You’re fools to be leavin’ this late,” I chided, all the time wishing I was going back with them, to where the sound of Sid’s chopping wood still rose upon the wind, and his laugh carried up the gully, and there was the hope of waking some night and there he would be, his hair silver in the blue of the night, as he’d toss down the axe and come running towards me.

“Find happiness here, Kit,” Doctor Hodgins was saying, slowing his step as he spoke. “They’re a good people, salt of the earth, and they’ll treat you and Josie like their own. That’s all I ever wanted for you, Kit, a family of your own. Now that you have that, it can give me some rest. I can answer to her up above that I seen you through the best that I could, and that in the end you fared well.”