Kit's Law (38 page)

“Tonight?” he asked in surprise.

“Yes! Please.” I grabbed onto his shirt. “I need to see Doctor Hodgins.”

“Doctor … Kit, are you sick?”

“No—Yes! It’s not serious, but I need to see him—before it becomes serious. Please, take me,” I begged. “I-I don’t want to worry Loret.”

“Loret! Cripes, you’d have them all out wringin’ their hands if they woke up and found us gone in the middle of the night.”

“Then let’s leave now. We’ll be back before anyone’s awake.”

He looked at me quietly, contemplatingly.

“Why can’t we leave in the mornin’?”

“Because Loret will want to know everything. And I just don’t want to have to explain. Not yet. I’ll tell her when we gets back.”

“Is it to do with Sid?” he asked quietly.

“Yes!” I say deeply. Then, “Yes it does, Bruddy. I need to give his mother back something, to be rid of her once and for all. Do you understand? And I need to do it now, right now before Loret talks me out of it or … or … something else happens and makes me change my mind.”

He stood hesitating, and I knew he was thinking on his feelings for me, and how my ending things with Sid’s mother might be a way of ending things with Sid as well.

“Don’t ask me anything more about it, Bruddy. Just take me. Now!” I stood back staring at him so hard I was trembling. “Please, Bruddy.”

“You can’t go in your housecoat,” he mumbled, looking down over the cove with a sigh.

“You’ll take me, then?”

“Be quick. It’ll be black as tar if we loses the bit of moon.”

“Thank you, Bruddy, thank you,” I breathed, clutching at his hands.

“Thank me after I get us there,” he said, brushing me off and heading down over the garden towards the cove.

It was as if my ankles had sprouted wings. I flew in through the house and up over the stairs and climbed the ladder to the attic without making the barest of creaking sounds. Taking the money out of the envelope Mrs. Ropson had give me, I put it into my cloth bag along with the money Sid had been sending over the past two years. Tossing a dress and some other garments into the bag, I hurriedly crept back down the stairs and prayed that everyone would stay sleeping for a minute longer. God answered my prayer, and I took it as a sign that this was a journey he was wanting me to make and ran faster down over the garden to the cove where Bruddy was waiting with the boat.

There was a small lop on, nothing to be worried about. The thin crescent moon glimpsed through the clouds, casting light on Bruddy’s worried face and highlighting for him the determined look on mine. We spoke little. It was as if he knew that once we set off from shore, my only need of him was to steer the boat.

It was close to three in the morning when we finally put ashore by the wharf in Haire’s Hollow. Climbing onto the wharf, I knelt down as Bruddy was about to toss up the painter for me to loop around the post.

“No, wait,” I stopped him. “I’m not going back, Bruddy.”

He stared at me for a second, then, “Now, listen, Kit, I just can’t let you run off … ”

“And you can’t stop me, neither,” I cut in. “Just tell Loret I’m with Doctor Hodgins and he’ll be down the morrow or the next day to explain everything.” I scrabbled to my feet and started backing away. “I-I’m sorry, Bruddy. Take care of Josie; I’ll be back.”

Then he was leaping up over the side of the wharf, and I turned and ran. His hands came down heavy on my shoulders, and as if I were no more than Little Kitty, he spun me around to face him.

“You’re goin’ after him, aren’t you?” he asked.

Closing my eyes, I held my head down and said nothing. His grip slackened, feeling more like a squeezing embrace.

“You’ve got courage, to go after him, Kit,” he half whispered. “More than him. If you were mine, I would never have left you. Never!”

I stared at him and, with a twist of my shoulders, escaped his hold and ran off.

“Go on,” he shouted after me. “Go get him that don’t want you.”

Ducking off the wharf onto the beach, I turned, checking the windows of Haire’s Hollow. There were no lights about. Running past Jimmy Randall’s stage, I threw one last look behind me to make sure Bruddy wasn’t following. He wasn’t. He wasn’t leaving, either, just standing there in the middle of the wharf, his arms folded as he watched after me. I would’ve liked to have gone back, to explain things better to him, to make him understand why Sid had left me, why he had never come back. Had I been
able
to explain why. Bruddy had hit upon the one thing that no amount of restless thinking had been able to defend—why Sid had never come back, if only to see that things were all right with me, and all right with Josie. But there was no time now to think about such things. The sense of urgency that had been growing within me since I first heard the news about Sid’s girl was driving me towards some distant point that I could not even perceive. Taking off up the shore, I kept to the shadows of the bank, straining to see through the dark and keep myself from tripping over pieces of driftwood and rusted tin cans. Ten minutes later, I was coming around the turn to Old Joe’s brother’s shack and Doctor Hodgins. I rapped as easy as I could, not wanting to startle him, but his eyes fair bulged out of his head when he opened the door and seen me standing there.

“Nothin’s happened,” I said quickly, stepping past him. “Loret and everyone says hello. They just dropped me off on the wharf and is fixin’ to go on back.”

He stared after me in silence, then closed the door. Moving quietly, he struck a match and lit the lamp sitting on the table. Raising the wick, he turned to look at me as a dim light shadowed the room.

“Now then, young lady, what brings you here in the middle of the night?”

“I’m goin’ to St. John’s. To get Sid.”

He groaned, partly from dread, partly from expectancy, like Loret whenever she come upon the youngsters doing something that they were warned off from, yet, with the knowing it was what they were apt to do, no matter how many warnings were offered.

“You’ve heard from him?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Kit, if he had wanted you, he would’ve gone down to Godfather’s Cove after the reverend’s funeral.”

“Sid was here?”

Doctor Hodgins looked at me in surprise.

“I thought you would’ve heard by now. I’m sorry. With Old Joe … I forgot to mention it.”

I turned to the window, thinking on Mrs. Ropson.

“He got here just as the funeral was starting,” Doctor Hodgins said. “His mother was near hysterical with relief, but he left right after.”

I nodded. Sid was here. And he never come to see me.

“Did he go to the gully?”

“I’m sorry, Kit.”

“Did he go to the gully?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you take me to the train in the mornin’?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Will you?”

“You oughtn’t to be doing this.”

“You said you’d be here for me, no matter what.”

“I’m not going to help you make a mistake.”

“It’s not yours to judge.”

“It’s mine if I help you make it.”

I stared at him steadily.

“Very well then, I’ll do it without you,” I said, walking to the door.

“Just a minute,” he ordered, holding up his hand. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“St. John’s.”

He snorted.

“You’d get to the end of the road and wouldn’t know which way to turn. Listen to me, Kit … ”

“No! I’m done listenin’,” I say. “I’ve been listenin’ to others all my life. And fightin’! Fightin’ to hold onto what’s mine. And thankin’ everybody for lettin’ me do so. Well, I’m tired of smilin’ for your blessin’s, all the time smilin’, feelin’ grateful but never proud. I want to live my own life, as I see fit. And I want Sid. You can help me if you wants. But I’m goin’ after him.”

Running his hands through his thinning tufts of hair, he yanked open the door and strolled outside to where the water was lapping at the shore.

“I’m not one of your faces,” I snapped, the wind taking my words as I chased after him. “And whether Sid comes back or not, I won’t ever be. I’m makin’ my own decisions now, and you’re not responsible for them.”

“It’s wrong.”

“Not in my mind. And I won’t be spendin’ my days broodin’ on a stoop, either,” I said, “no matter how I come to think on things. There’s other ways to pay penance, ways more deservin’ of time.”

The wind ruffled the shirt against his back. I stood still watching him. He shivered, his hands deep in his pockets. Finally, when I was shivering too, he turned.

“Might as well get some sleep,” he said tiredly, brushing past me. “We can’t go anywhere till morning.”

I stepped inside the shack behind him and shut the door.

“What now?” he asked, as I stayed where I was, staring after him expectantly.

“I want you to fix it so’s I can never have babies.”

His brow rose in utter astonishment.

“Christ almighty,” he swore, coming towards me and seizing me by the shoulders. “How the hell do you know about such things?”

“It’s the only way I can be with Sid.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You did it to Josie.” His mouth dropped, and I hurried on. “Nan told me, but she never meant to. I swear she never said it to a livin’ soul, except to mutter it out loud once, when she got mad at Josie for runnin’ off.” I paused. “I always remembered it, although I never knew what she meant. Till now. Till I started thinkin’ on the same thing, myself.”

He sat down heavily. And for the first time that I’d known him, he looked sorely shaken. “It don’t seem fair that I’m askin’ somethin’ more from you,” I whispered. “But it all seems to be sproutin’ from the same seed, somehow. Well it weren’t me that planted those seeds. And I’m not settlin’ no more for what someone else thought up for me. God must’ve meant for you to help me, else he wouldn’t have took Nan and put you in her place.” I gave a small laugh. “He must’ve known she wouldn’t been able to keep up with everything that’s after happened—wouldn’t been able to keep protectin’… my mother.”

I stared off and Doctor Hodgins raised his hand and held onto mine. We looked at each other with a quiet that spoke beyond the secrets that we shared, and told of a long-lasting trust. And of an understanding and an acceptance of the way things were with me. And in a strange way, with him.

“I didn’t do anything to Josie,” he said finally. “Perhaps I could have intervened, but I felt it was God’s wish that you be her only child. There’s a pill he probably intended for you, a new method to control pregnancy. I’ll get it for you.”

“Is it for sure?”

“If you take it right.”

“Sid won’t trust that. I want what God did to my mother.”

“You’ll do as I say on this one,” he almost roared, hauling a blanket off the bunk. “Now get some sleep; you’ll need rest. I swear to God the old girl’s come back,” he muttered, snapping open the door and shutting it firmly behind him. I watched through the window as he settled himself heavily into his chair and, tossing the blanket up over his shoulders, pulled a box of matches and his pipe out of his pocket. Hauling another blanket off the bunk, I sat down in a chair besides the window, looking out over his shoulder at the sea rolling up over the shore. Wrapping the blanket around me, I settled more comfortably in the chair. This was one night when I was going to sit, watching and brooding, alongside of him.

K
IT’S
L
AW

T
HE NEXT DAY
I
WAS ON MY WAY TO
S
T.
J
OHN’S.
It was hard to tell if it was the journey itself or its destination that was filling me with the most fear. Clinging to my rattling seat in the Newfie Bullet, we thundered across meadows and plains at forty miles an hour, and entered deep forests, and crossed over bridges and rivers, outrunning herds of caribou and moose around each winding turn. Doctor Hodgins had assured me as I was climbing on board that there was nothing to be scared of, and had pressed a piece of paper with the name and address of his friend’s boarding house into my hand. He was bawling out instructions on how to get a taxi, and warning me about the Portuguese sailors down on the docks, even as the train was pulling out of the station and hurriedly leaving him behind. And if it weren’t for Maisie Rice about to give birth to a breeched baby, I’ve no doubts that he would’ve been climbing aboard the train himself, and going to St. John’s alongside of me. Despite my fears about heading into the city alone—and it so far away—it felt right that I do so. Like Loret, going out into the storm-driven night with Fonse. No fear had she for what might come. Such was her strength, and her trust in his. And such was their love, built upon strength. Neither had I felt fear with Sid, no matter how frightening a decision. Like our marriage. It was because I loved him that I married him. And it was because I still loved him that I was going to fight for him. No more watching and brooding, watching and brooding. And if he was unwilling to move back to Haire’s Hollow now that he had a taste of living somewhere else, then I was willing to take up living right alongside of him no matter where it was. And Josie would just have to make do. I was willing to do most anything, as long as it would put me next to Sid for the rest of my life, and the closer we got to St. John’s, the more unsettled I became over another fear—that of Sid himself. Supposing it wasn’t because we were half-brother and -sister that he no longer wanted me? My stomach lurched sickly. Supposing he wanted the other woman more?

I squeezed my eyes shut every time the thought shot through my mind, which was every second that brought me closer and closer to knowing. And when the train finally trudged its way through the rusted meadow of steel tracks that lay at the feet of the grey, windswept city, with its hundreds of rain-soaked windows staring down at me, I became more and more determined to cling to my seat and wait for the train to move off again, taking me back to the gully and Josie and Loret and Fonse, and everything else that was loving and warm and comfortable in its commonness.