Kit's Law (34 page)

Come the moment we were standing on the beach, and Doctor Hodgins clasped his hands around my face as Old Joe stood quietly besides him.

“You’re not too unhappy, are you, Kit?” Doctor Hodgins asked.

“Will you come visit?”

“Sure I will! Plenty of times.”

“And you, too?” I asked Old Joe.

“You knows I will, Kit. I’ll miss seein’ you runnin’ past the wharf every day,” Old Joe’s voice cracked. “Always had a smile for Old Joe, you did, you and Lizzy. It won’t be the same without havin’ one of ye to visit in the gully.”

My mouth screwed up, and before I could stop myself, I burst out crying. Doctor Hodgins’s arms went around me and he pulled me tight, crushing my face into the sweet-smelling wool of his jacket as I cried. And cried.

“It’s a deep pruning you’ve taken, Kitty,” he hushed, rocking me. “A deep pruning. But, it’s those that are well pruned that bring forward the strongest rose. Hush now, hush.” After I’d cried myself out, he wiped the wet off my face with his hands and cupped my face gently. “You know where to find me. I’m never leaving that shack till the good Lord takes me. No matter what it is, I’ll be there for you.”

“I’m here, too, Kitty Kat,” said Old Joe, wiping at his eyes. “Just like I was always there for Lizzy. You just come for me. Any time.”

Then they were shoving off the boat and climbing aboard. I watched as they dipped their paddles into the water and began steering clear of Fudder’s nets.

“Bye, Kit,” Doctor Hodgins sang out as they faded into the dark.

I stood listening to their banter, their paddles splashing into the water and scraping against the boat. Their voices became more muffled, then the pistons popped into life as they cleared the nets, and the put-put of the engine sounded their course as they motored their way out through the mouth of the cove.

I stood there for a minute, listening as they faded away, and saw in the full light of the moon a face unfurling in one of the cursed waves as it lopped upon shore. A prickling of goosebumps swept over my arms. I made to call out to Doctor Hodgins, but chiding myself for my foolishness, I wiped away my tears instead, and walked back up over the garden to where the Fords were waiting to show me my room.

Opening their home as well as their hearts, they unpacked me and Josie in a small attic room that looked down over the garden and the gill-netted waters of the cove. I stayed there as much as I could during those first few days, listening to the house rock with laughter, yelling and tears. And when I did venture down, I said nothing, satisfied to watch the others coming and going like a herd of caribou during hunting season, yet moving around each other with the grace of a roomful of square dancers. It seemed like day or night, there was always someone stoking the fire or stirring sugar into a cup of tea; and during the day, there was always someone sitting at the table, scoffing back a lunch, and Mudder running to and fro, serving and baking and cooking.

Despite her being half the size and with half the words of Nan, Mudder had a rock-iron will and spite enough to see her orders carried through. Like the captain of a ship, she bellowed out orders from the helm—which, in her case, was the kitchen—and gave out lashings to any who dared lip back.

“Loret said you’re not goin’ to church,” she said, marching into the sitting room where I was tidying the daybed my first Sunday in the cove.

I held a cushion before me, a feeling of discomfort stirring inside. No doubt Fonse and Loret had full knowledge of the circumstances surrounding my birth and upbringing and of Sid’s leaving, yet thus far, no word had been spoken and I felt grateful for not having to relive the knotted journey that had brought me before them. Now, with Mudder standing accusingly before me, her Sunday coat buttoned to her throat and her green feathered hat clamped tightly across her coiled braids, I stood with a sinking feeling, wondering how I was to bring forward bits of the past to explain why I never wanted to go to church no more.

“Now, Mudder!” said Loret, coming through the doorway behind her. “You knows why … ”

“Leave us be, Loret,” warned Mudder, her eyes not budging from my face. “Now, I’m not a hard woman, Kit,” she said, her voice lowering. “I knows what chased you out of church, and I knows what chased you to our door. And I welcome you, you knows that. But there’s certain things we abides by in this house, and Sundays with the Lord is one of ’em. And from what I’ve heard about your grandmother, I expect church is where she’d be marchin’ you this day ’cuz, after all, we got our own reverend here.”

“Aye, a bleedin’ drunk,” cut in Bruddy, popping his head in behind Loret. “For gawd’s sake, Mudder … ”

“A bleedin’ drunk or not, it matters little to me,” snapped Mudder. “I holds me own counsel with God when I sits in that pew, and the reverend can tend to his. Now, are you comin’, Kit?”

“It ain’t only in church that you find God,” I said, my voice little more than a whimper.

“Aye, but it’s in church that He’ll find the Fords on a Sunday,” she replied. “We can’t always expect Him to come lookin’ for us. And it’s a message we sends to our neighbours when we dresses up outta respect to Him.”

My feelings of discomfort grew with each second of silence that greeted Mudder’s words, then Loret was bustling across the room and taking hold of my arm.

“Landsakes, Mudder, you got the poor thing near frightened to death. Why don’t you go on, and me and Kit’ll catch up with you. Is that all right, Kit?” she murmured.

I swallowed, my throat dry. Mudder had turned and was leaving the room as Loret spoke. She stopped as she come abreast to Bruddy, who was leaning against the door jamb, reminding me of Sid, the time he had stayed in the house like an old fishwife whilst I stood arguing with May Eveleigh about my not wanting to wear Margaret’s polka-dotted dress to the graduation.

“Go get your brother,” Mudder said sharply as she bustled past him. “He’s been fixin’ the toggle to bar the wellhouse door for near on an hour, now. Must be some toggle that takes more than a dozen minutes to fix.”

Bruddy slewed his eyes towards me and Loret as Mudder sailed past him, and giving her the grand salute, as would any well-trained sailor to his captain, he sauntered out behind her.

“I’ll get my hat,” I said, and despite my resentment at being ordered around like a youngster by Mudder, I gave Loret a reassuring smile and ran up over the stairs and into the attic. Scrounging around inside one of the flour sacks, I pulled out my hat. It was crumpled, but I smoothed it out the best as I could and perched it on my head. No doubt Mudder was right about Nan wanting me in church on Sundays. And what was to stop me now? There was no Reverend Ropson brazening down at me from the pulpit, and, as was with Mudder, I’d always kept a clear counsel with God.

The house was quiet when I ran back downstairs. Bruddy was waiting outside, his hands deep in his pockets, a concerned look quietening his muddied, brown eyes.

“Mudder hurried everyone on before the youngsters got too dirty,” he said. “So Loret asked me wait for you.”

I smiled and started down the rutted dirt path towards the church, still feeling awkward over Mudder’s talking-to.

“Don’t mind Mudder,” said Bruddy, as if knowing my thoughts. “She comes between all of us like a sabre whenever heads butt, whether it be Fudder and Fonse, Loret and me, or Emmy and Georgie.” He chuckled. “And she don’t let no one outta her sight either, till the matter’s settled.”

“I guess she’s had lots of practisin’,” I said. “What with so many runnin’ around.”

“Aye, she’s had her fill all right. And God help us when it’s her who gets mad. I tell you, brother, the house becomes quieter than a mouse in a pan of bread flour.”

“Does she stay mad for long?”

“Nay. Only for as long as it takes to hear her out. Then we chides with whoever it was that made her mad in the first place, and teases and tickles her till she gives over.” He chuckled again. “It ain’t always a pretty sight watchin’ Mudder and Fonse goin’ at it, but you’ll get used to it.”

I grinned, my awkwardness disappearing at the thoughts of Fonse shrinking back from Mudder’s small, wiry frame. No doubt he was the bull-strength in the family, rigging up the boat for fishing in summer, and cutting and hauling eight-foot logs for selling to the logging company in the winter. In between times, he tarred roofs and mended fences and collapsing cellar walls, while haranguing with Bruddy, who was always alongside of him, and whipping his boys into helping hands whenever they happened in sight.

Fudder peddled along, his wiry body bent over with arthritic cramps that kept his fingers too scrammy for doing close work, and his hearing too far gone to hear Fonse’s cries of warning over a recklessly tossed hammer or junk of wood, and his step too slow to step aside from a falling chopped tree—all of which sent Fonse into a round of cursing whenever he near missed Fudder, which he immediately blamed on the boys so’s as to not make Fudder feel that he was in the way.

The boys never felt their father’s cursing, and most times continued on with whatever it was they was talking about before he started his ranting, and more often than not, they wouldn’t have been able to repeat in a month of Sundays whatever it was that had started the telling-off to begin with. And with Josie along, barking and bounding, and teasing and tripping the boys, or flicking at their caps with a stick, there was an added distraction for Fonse to be careful over, giving way to an increase in his rounds of swearing and ranting, and an increase in his list of daily prayers to the Saints.

All this flowed past Loret like an irksome summer’s rain that drenched you to the skin, while bathing you in its softness. Coaxing Fudder inside the house for another cup of tea, whilst lecturing Fonse over her shoulder for his ficklemindedness, and fixing the boys’ caps straight on their heads as she walked past them, she appeared to be in all places at once—kneading down the bread for Mudder, sewing up doll’s clothes with Emmy, sweeping, mopping, washing, and when she seen her way through the housework, was out ripping the rind off the birch as Fonse sawed up the firewood, tacking down haystacks with the boys, and making fast work out of any notion I might have about her not feeling well. The air was sharp with her bawling out orders, yet Mudder argued her laugh could sweeten a pantry full of crabapple tarts and nourish the most sullen of scowls into the sweetest, most savoury of smiles.

It was an argument that tested well with Josie. From the moment she leaped out of Old Joe’s boat in the cove and bounded across the garden with Loret and Fonse’s youngsters, her scowls over Sid’s leaving disappeared. There were times during those first few weeks when I would sometimes catch her looking at me, the old sullenness souring her face. And each time I attempted to question her why, or explain how Sid’s leaving was hurting me, too, she would bound out the door with a loud bark to silence me. But with helping Fonse split wood and mend fences, and tormenting the boys into a quarrelling, wrestling frenzy, her scowls appeared less and less as time went by, till she was giving me as many smiles as she was Loret’s crabapple pies.

I smiled too. I smiled till my face ached, to show them how grateful I was to have been taken into their family. Still, my head pounded from all of their talking, and when everyone was talking at once, I closed my eyes to follow the thoughts of one, before getting carried away on the words of another. Sensing my confusion, Loret put me in charge of making the beds, and weeding the potatoes and turnips, all of which kept me out of the crossroads in the kitchen, and gave me moments of quiet. And when the baby was born, it became my special job to keep her little garments washed outside of the family’s, and a stack of diapers, cleaned and softened, by the side of Loret’s bed.

She was a special little thing, they all claimed, and what with her brown curly hair and eyes like cocoa, she was more of a Ford than ever was. And from the way she took to following Fudder’s finger as he moved it from side to side in front of her eyes, it was clear that she was the quickest yet to learn, and probably the smartest little girl ever to have been born in the cove, perhaps even in the whole of White Bay. At least, that’s what Fonse was often heard to say over his tumbler of brew. And sometimes when I picked the little thing up in my arms, and she held onto my finger whilst staring straight through to my heart, I was forced to agree that this truly was a case where Fonse was right, and Little Kitty was a gift straight from the Gods.

“Do you like her?” I asked Josie one early summer’s morning. She had strayed along the beach from the rest of the youngsters to where I was perched on a rock in the sun, rocking Little Kitty and watching as Loret and Fonse, leaning over the side of a punt a couple of hundred yards away from shore, lowered the last of the gill nets into the calm, flat waters of the cove.

“I like her,” Josie replied. Bending over, she shoved her face near Kitty’s and bellowed, “Boo! Boo!” as she had seen Fudder do a hundred times or more.

“Sshh, not so loud,” I said as Little Kitty’s eyes startled awake. Loret looked over Fonse’s shoulder and waved as Josie leaned over Little Kitty again, this time sounding her boos a little softer.

“I wanna rock,” she demanded, plopping herself down on a rock next to me.

“Just for a minute, then,” I said. Wrapping the bunting blanket more snugly around Little Kitty, I laid her in Josie’s lap. “Don’t hold her too tight. Make sure the blanket stays around her feet, it’s still a bit cold.”

It must have been how it looked to Nan, watching Josie rocking me, her hair, flaming red in the noonday sun, falling around me like a blanket, her hand awkwardly patting my side, unable to gain a proper rhythm. I squat down on my haunches, staring up at her with a sudden curiosity.

“Do you remember when I was a baby?” I asked.

“You not a baby. Kitty’s a baby,” said Josie.

“But I used to be a baby. Do you remember?”

She studied my face, a frown puckering her brow.

“You not a baby,” she said, wrinkling her nose and tweaking one of Little Kitty’s fingers. Then her eyes caught mine, the yellow flicks growing brighter.