Kit's Law (37 page)

“Please don’t go,” I cried.

“Now, now, Kit, don’t you start,” said Loret, hauling Fudder’s wool cap down over her head. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged tightly. “Won’t be so bad on the water, there’ll be no driftin’ snow. Keep the fire goin’, and don’t fret too much.”

Then Fonse was shooing her outside, giving me a sympathetic look before shutting the door behind them. I ran to the window and watched as they hurried down over the back steps, black hulks struggling against the blacker night. The wind parted the snowclouds every scattered second, allowing pale, moon-lit glimpses as they vanished into the snow-whipped haze. Old Joe was out there, somewhere. Alone. And cold. And no doubt Doctor Hodgins was sitting alone right now, watching his waves pitching up over the blackened shoreline, thinking, praying, that Old Joe’s wouldn’t be a face to come rolling upon his shores by morning. Mercy on this night, I prayed. Mercy on this night.

I dragged the rocker over to the window and sat down. Josie got up and emptied her chamber pot into the slop pail at the end of the hall. I thought to call out, to tell her of what was going on, but I felt stronger reaching out to Old Joe with my thoughts, sitting alone in the half-light of the lamp. And for sure if I prayed hard enough, and all those others missing him as well, Old Joe would feel us helping him through this night.

The wind drifted the clouds further and further apart, allowing more light. Once, in between the gusts of wind, the drifting snow settled long enough for me to glimpse something dark moving up over the yard. I kept watching, then I saw it again, a dark shape crawling clumsily towards me. I rose from the rocker and pressed my face against the window, my hand covering my beating heart. The snow lifted again, and all was wiped out. I pressed harder, my hands cupped to block the reflection of the lamp. Then I saw them—Loret, Fonse and Bruddy—all holding onto each other, and all walking and stumbling and falling as if they were one. I rose from the rocker and stood with my back to the heat of the stove. They were a fright to look at as they stumbled through the door, their sou’westers dripping water and snow, their faces fixed in shocked horror. Loret cried out as she seen me, and Fonse tightened the arm he held around her shoulders to steady her. His other hand, he held onto the door jamb to steady himself. No one moved for the moment, as if we were turned to stone. Then Mudder come running down over the stairs, her hands held out in prayer as she come into the kitchen.

“What’s happened?” she cried out, then reached out as Loret fell towards her.

“Kit! Oh, gawd, it’s bad,” said Fonse, staggering towards me and laying a cold, wet hand onto my arm.

“He got his boat caught in the nets,” said Bruddy, wild-eyed with fright. “He was swamped. He—he’s dead.” His words ended in a choked whisper.

“He know’d about the nets,” said Fonse. “But one of ’em had floated farther out, what with the wind. He never cut his engine in time.”

“Praise be the Lord,” moaned Mudder.

“I guess he must’ve figured on comin’ here for the night,” whispered Bruddy. “Too far to go home in this wind, and no gear to hold over in Chouse Brook for the night. He could’ve done it, too … ”

Some of Loret’s cries and Mudder’s prayers sounded through the dim noise that was rising in my ears.

“Did you find him?” I cried out.

“We found him,” said Fonse, drawing me closer. “He— he didn’t drown. He was—he was … ” Another silence fell in the room, then Loret turned to me with an anguished cry.

“He had himself tied to the bow of his boat. Why’d he do that?”

I closed my eyes and allowed Fonse to rock me, his hands ice cold through the cotton of my nightdress, his rubber coat wet against my cheek.

“Why?” Loret cried out again, then broke down sobbing. “I’ll never forget it, seein’ him tied to his bow like that, his head just floatin’ above the water, all chilled with ice.”

“Stop it, Loret,” Bruddy moaned.

“No, don’t hold it back, my child, cry it out,” soothed Mudder. “You, too, Bruddy. ’Tis a hard thing to see a body dead, but it’s only a body, emptied now, its soul in heaven no doubt, ’cuz he was a good man, else he wouldn’t have helped Kit and her poor mother the way he did.”

“We would’ve missed him,” whispered Fonse. “Thought it was a piece of driftwood, till Bruddy’s torch caught hold of something orange. It was a starfish. Nailed to his bow.”

A shivering sob swept through me. A starfish. Old Joe’s starfish. Was he praying hard, I silently anguished, and Fonse held me tighter as I broke down sobbing harder than Loret, thinking on Old Joe strapping himself to the bow of his boat, praying Starfish, Star bright, Starfish, Star bright …

After I had spent my tears and was gulping back shivering sobs, Fonse held me away, looking gently into my face.

“Here now, I’ve made you all wet. Loret, help her get dry. Bruddy and me’ll go wire a message to Haire’s Hollow. I expect his family’s all sittin’ up, waitin’ for word. We got him fixed away in our boat. Perhaps, if they don’t mind the wait, we’ll take him home ourselves, in the mornin’, soon as the wind dies down.”

Old Joe’s brother and one of his brothers-in-law was down before sunrise. I hid in my room, not wanting to see Old Joe anywhere but squatting on the wharf, calling out my name, and grinning his gummy grin as I hurried by on my way to school.

They stopped, just long enough to hear what Fonse had to say about the drowning, and finding Old Joe. Then they put him in their boat and took him home. Fonse and Bruddy slipped a tow rope around the bow of Old Joe’s boat, which was still floating above the water, and towed it to shore. We waited a couple of days, then, leaving the youngsters and Josie with Mudder and Fudder, Fonse, Loret, Bruddy and I climbed into Fonse’s boat and headed up the bay to Old Joe’s funeral.

The wind had died itself out finally, but the swells rolled us around frighteningly so, grey and bloated beneath the sunless sky. I fought from becoming seasick, and judging from the ashen colour of Loret’s face, mine wasn’t the only weak stomach making this journey. My eyes lingered on the gully as we boated past, and a pang of loneliness swept over me as I saw the old grey house leaning back against the side of the hill, its door and windows boarded up, and its chimney bereft of smoke. But a larger pang took hold of me as we rounded Fox Point and Haire’s Hollow sprung into view, with its wharf jutting out from the side of the road and the one boat missing from the dozen that bobbed colourfully on the harbour.

The service was started by the time we got to the church. All of Haire’s Hollow was crowded inside, heads bowed, silently weeping alongside of the family. Loret, Fonse and I stood with those standing behind the back pews. I searched amongst the bowed heads, half expecting to see Sid’s. He wasn’t there. Neither was Doctor Hodgins. I bowed my head and listened to the new minister, a little younger than the Reverend Ropson, lead the congregation in prayer over Old Joe’s coffin.

“I’ll be back,” I whispered to Loret when the last hymn was sung and the pallbearers were fixing to take Old Joe to the cemetery. Backing out the church door, I looked once more to where a kelp-green boat used to be moored off from the wharf, and ran along the beach to Old Joe’s brother’s shack. Doctor Hodgins was sitting outside puffing on his pipe, a blanket draped across his legs against the damp air, and a tumbler of brew resting on the wooden bench besides him.

He lifted the tumbler off the bench as I come up to him, and nodded for me to sit.

“Broodin’ with the waves, agin?” I asked.

He was silent, and I noted the dried pathway down his cheek from where a tear had travelled some time before, and I was minded of the last time a tear had travelled down Doctor Hodgins’s cheek, the day Nan had passed on, and he had been walking with me along the beach, listening to a seagull wail. Taking hold of his hand, I held it against my cheek.

“It ain’t fair,” I said, and began to sob.

Doctor Hodgins laid his arm around my shoulder and brought his forehead to rest on mine. “No, it isn’t,” he answered, his voice breaking as he spoke. “And the fault is ours for expecting it to be so.”

“I d-don’t understand,” I cried.

“No. Nor I. That’s the mystery of life, Kit, we enter it, we leave it. We just got to learn to allow for it.”

“He t-tied himself to the cleats. So’s the f-fish wouldn’t get him.”

“He had the last say in that, didn’t he?” Doctor Hodgins whispered, turning his head to look out to sea. The swells were foaming hard upon the beach, brazen, relentless.

“I just thinks of him, sittin’ there,” I cried, “watchin’ the water comin’ into his boat. He must’ve been c-cold.” I began to sob harder.

“Sshh now, water numbs the skin. God got ways of making death bearable. Shh now.”

I sobbed some more, then pulled back from Doctor Hodgins, wiping my nose with the back of my coat sleeve.

“It was the starfish that told them where he was,” I quavered. “Fonse said the rope wouldn’t have held him till mornin’.”

“He must’ve been wishing really hard.”

“For sure he must’ve. What will you do now—without your fishin’ partner?”

“I guess I’m going to have to find another one,” he said, balancing his brew between his knees and relighting his pipe. “Old Joe wouldn’t want his nets rotting on the shore.”

“You could come live with us. Down in Godfather’s Cove.”

“I expect it’s getting rather crowded around Mudder’s table.”

“There’s other shacks. I mean … ”

He gave a small grin.

“I know what you mean, Kit. And perhaps I will someday. Perhaps I will.”

I tightened my scarf.

“Fonse and Loret are waitin’ for me, I’d better go.”

I stayed sitting for a minute, then, “Do you think I never wished hard enough for Sid?”

He puffed his pipe, then took a swallow of brew.

“You’re right, Kit, it ain’t always fair,” he said, looking at me sadly. “It can be damn bloody wearying. But some things can never be changed, no matter how hard we wish.”

“Starfish can re-grow themselves.”

“That’s the way of starfish.”

“Sid has another girl.”

He took another swallow, then turned back to the sea.

“You were talking to him?” he asked.

“No. Loret told me.”

“It’s time to move on, Kit.”

Sensing the same stubbornness rising in his tone that always come whenever I talked about Sid, I rose to leave. He laid his tumbler and pipe on the bench and rose alongside of me.

“You’ve got spirit, Kit,” he said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “A strong spirit. It’ll go a long ways to colour things right for you. I promise you that.”

I kept my eyes down and, despite his mindset against me and Sid, crushed my face against the comforting, tobacco smell of his coat. Then pushing away, I hurried along the shore, looking worriedly over my shoulder at him sitting there in the cold, thinking the same tormenting thoughts I was thinking myself—about Old Joe wishing upon wishing to a starfish as the water swamped him, and of Sid taking another girl.

“I swear, it would take a thousand suns to brighten up the faces around here,” Loret said some days later as I moped around the house, idly picking up after the youngsters and missing something else that she had said.

“I’m sorry, Loret,” I mumbled, and wandered into the sitting room, looking out the window. Indeed, things just kept looking greyer and greyer since Old Joe’s funeral, and the restlessness I had been feeling the days leading up to his death had become a consuming fire. Always, I kept seeing Loret standing up to Fonse the night in the kitchen, and taking her place besides him as they went into the ill night to search for Old Joe. Always, I kept thinking of Old Joe wishing upon wishing on his starfish and having his wish come to be. And always, I kept thinking about Doctor Hodgins, sitting alone in front of his shack, brooding with the waves.

That’s where I should be, I mumbled angrily, tossing and turning in my bunk: sitting besides Doctor Hodgins, watching and brooding, watching and brooding. That’s what I’d been doing since the day Sid left, watching and brooding for him to come back. And now he was never coming back. Not if he married another girl.

I tore out of bed and, pulling on my housecoat, crept down over the ladder, the stairs, and made my way outside. It was a quiet night, fit for the torment inside of me. Bruddy found me walking through the potato garden, kicking at the ground foundering over from the beds.

“Not a night for sleepin’,” he said, appearing from behind me, his cowlick carefully combed into place.

“Goodness!” I exclaimed, jumping back and clasping my hands to my heart.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said softly. “You’re get-tin’ dirt on your nightdress.”

“It’s a housecoat,” I said, for want of better words.

“It’s a woman’s garment, for sure,” he said with a grin. “I don’t know too much about them, except for what I sees on clotheslines.”

His teeth shone whitely through the night, and I imagined the warmth melting his brown eyes.

“There’s lots of girls in Godfather’s Cove that would like to teach you about women’s garments, Bruddy.”

The night hid from him the blush that followed my bold words. But there was a driving recklessness stirring inside me as the sudden truth of what Sid was about came crashing in on me. His was not a love that could fade like the coloured roses on an often-washed dress. Like mine, it had rooted in a parched soul, and each shuddering sob that had passed between us had worked to bring together two hearts as one, like the single trunk of a tree, and was now too grown to ever take apart without destroying the whole of what was flowering above it. And I wasn’t about to let him do that.

Bruddy was chuckling.

“How do you know about what other girls might be wantin’ to teach me?”

“Loret.”

“Loret!” Bruddy laughed. “If she said it, then it must be. There’s not much she don’t see.”

I glanced anxiously towards her room window. It was dark.

“Take me to Haire’s Hollow,” I gasped to Bruddy, the words coming out of my mouth before I even knew they were in my head. “Please take me, Bruddy. Now! While Loret’s still sleepin’.”