Kit's Law (9 page)

“Duty is a fine thing and I’m sure the good Lord sees straight through to your souls,” Doctor Hodgins said much too quickly. “However, Drucie has been a friend of Lizzy’s all her life and has a way with Josie. I don’t anticipate any trouble.”

There was a studied silence. Then Mrs. Ropson cleared her throat.

“It’s not always easy putting the well-being of the congregation over your own, Doctor,” she said with a touch of scorn. “Duty to one side, there are concerns here that affect others in the community as well.” She flicked her glance to May, like one passing over the reins of a horse.

“Well, yes,” May said, shifting further to the edge of the daybed. “About Josie and … her ways. Well, now that Lizzy’s gone, things might get out of hand … and be a bad influence on Kit.”

“We can trust to Lizzy’s upbringing that Kit is well aware of her mother’s
ways
,” Doctor Hodgins replied sharply. “And that she’s well adapted to dealing with those
ways
.” He turned to Mrs. Ropson ruefully. “There are other things of greater concern here. Perhaps, that’s where your worries lie?”

Doctor Hodgins and Mrs. Ropson eyed each other like two dogs that just nosed onto the other’s territory, leaving May Eveleigh staring after them with a sudden scent of another intrigue. Sensing her neighbour’s perked ears, Mrs. Ropson dropped her eyes from Doctor Hodgins and turned to May with an apologetic smile.

“Our good doctor is well aware of the worries I have to put up with—Sidney’s asthma attacks and my arthritis. It’s hard taking on the concerns of others when you can’t get out of bed most days, although nobody can say the reverend or I have fallen slack in our duties.”

“Tut-tut my dear, no one can say you don’t carry out the church’s work,” May said, her voice expressing shock at the thought. “Is that what’s being said, Doctor?”

“No, no,” Doctor Hodgins shook his head and smiled at the two women. “I’ve heard nothing but good about the charitable nature of the reverend and his wife. And about you as well, May. That’s why I have no concerns about Kit and her mother’s well-being. What the good Lord don’t provide, I’m sure you ladies will. Hah,” he exclaimed, glancing out the window looking up to the road, “here comes Drucie. Why don’t Kit and I leave you to talk privately with her and rest your worries?”

I sprang to my feet and headed for the door.

“Where is Josie?” May asked, a strong look at Mrs. Ropson as she made a final attempt to hold Doctor Hodgins back and keep the meeting going.

“Out scouting Lizzy’s partridgeberry patch,” Doctor Hodgins replied.

“Berry patch! Well, well,” May said, her interest suddenly snagged in another direction. “I’ll be glad to help pick Lizzy’s partridgeberries, if I knew where her patch was. Goodness, no one’s ever been able to find that patch.”

“And cursed will be the ones who do search it out,” Doctor Hodgins said, jarring the door. “I guess it’s for Kit to decide what’s to be done with the patch.”

May Eveleigh watched as I pulled on a heavy wool sweater that Nan knitted, and moved to stand besides Doctor Hodgins.

“Well, if you needs help, Kit,” she said, trying to keep her voice soft, like one not quite knowing how to talk to a baby.

“A bit late for picking berries, isn’t it?” Mrs. Ropson asked.

“Hah, the later the sweeter,” Doctor Hodgins replied. “Right up to the second and third snowfall, isn’t that what Lizzy claims, Kit?”

I nodded and, toeing the door open, squirmed outside just as Aunt Drucie come puffing up to the stoop, her skinny, wrinkled face a brownish pink from walking in the chilly air.

“How you doin’, Kit?” she asked breathlessly, unknotting her bandanna from beneath her chin and shoving past me to get inside out of the cold. “My, my, it’s not fit, the wind’s not fit.”

“Good day, Drucie,” Doctor Hodgins said heartily, standing to one side to give her room. “You’ve got some visitors. You be sure and have a nice chat, now,” he said, patting her shoulder as she suddenly went quiet upon seeing the upper-ups that had come to visit. Quickly closing the door behind him, Doctor Hodgins laid an arm around my shoulders and we walked down the gully. Josie was squat behind a rock, keeping watch on who was coming and going.

“There you are, Jose,” Doctor Hodgins called out. “How come you didn’t come in to greet your guest? Follow along now, there’s things we have to talk about.”

There were a lot of things Doctor Hodgins talked about as we strolled down the gully and onto the beach, mostly warning Josie about running off with her men friends and risking having me sent away, and her left alone to fend for herself. And make sure you keep the house clean, he went on, and that you, Kit, go to school every single morning. You don’t want to give them any reason to come snooping around, and if they do, you want a clean house to greet them and a clean hand to shake theirs.

For the most part Josie listened. Then, as Doctor Hodgins neared the end of his talk, and I slipped on a wet rock, she gave me a shove, toppling me sideways, and ran off towards Crooked Feeder.

“Hey, Josie,” Doctor Hodgins called after her.

“She thinks I killed Nan,” I said, taking hold of Doctor Hodgins’s arm to steady myself.

“It’s not going to be easy, Kit,” he sighed, watching as she bounded sure-footed over the slush-covered rocks. He turned to me and, laying his hands on my shoulders, bent down and shook me, gently. “You’ve got your own grieving to do, along with fending off Josie’s. But you’ll do it. There’s a lot of Lizzy in you, probably more than what’s good for you.” He smiled the saddest smile and, pulling my head against the breast of his jacket, continued speaking in his quiet, gruff way. “I wish I could make it easier for you, Kit. You can come live with me and Elsie any time, you know that, don’t you?”

I nodded, his wool jacket scratching against my face.

“Are you sure you don’t want to?”

“I’m sure,” I muffled into his coat. He patted the back of my head.

“I know. I know. This is your home, why would you want to leave it?” He pulled back and looked at me, his eyes grey slits beneath their bushy brow. “Just remember what I told you—come to me if you need anything. Anything! You promise?”

I nodded.

“Promise me!” he repeated.

“I promise.”

He stroked my cheek with the pad of his thumb and I was back to thinking on Nan buffing turrs again, and being careful not to break the skin and sap the oil. And then he was squinting his eyes into the salty wind as we started walking up the beach after Josie. His hand gripped my shoulder as our feet scrunched over the beach rocks and the loneliest seagull in the world cried out above us, drawing a single tear down the side of Doctor Hodgins’s coarsened cheek.

G
RIEVING
N
AN

D
ESPITE EVERYONE’S WORRIES ABOUT
me and Josie, it was a good year that passed. Shine never came back. Doctor Hodgins came faithfully twice, sometimes three times, a week, and had supper with us. Old Joe and his brother kept bringing out truckloads of birch, and there was always someone dropping off a fresh fish, a bottle of beets or a chunk of moose meat. Aunt Drucie dodged over every morning, sometimes after I had already left for school, and she went home again right after supper each evening. Her sleeping sickness kept her occupied most of the time that she was with us. Feeling all tuckered out from her walk over, she liked to take a nap in the rocker to get her breath back, giving me time on the weekends to get the dishes washed, beds made and floors mopped. By the time she woke up, she’d forgotten that she’d seen an unmade bed and was telling everybody in Haire’s Hollow how clean me and Josie was, and how we were the nicest girls in the world to work for because we never whined, mouthed back or asked for anything.

I took to watching how she cooked, and before the year was up, I could make a pot of pease soup, scrape and fry up a salmon, or throw together a pot of moose stew as quick as Nan; anything to get Aunt Drucie out of the house early. Not that I minded her so much, but I could best hear Nan when I had the place to myself, and when I could best find comfort. Sitting in her rocking chair, with the fire crackling in the stove and the wind hurtling the snow against the window, I could forget that she had passed on and feel her humming all around me, and see and hear everything she ever did and said, like looking at a picture, only I saw it in sounds: the creaking of the floor beneath the weight of her step, her ongoing arguing, the twittering in her throat as she sucked on the hard green candies and the rumbling in her belly while she filled up with gas. And it’s like there’s a smell that comes with the picture—a mixed-up smell of powder and skin and oily hair. And sometimes, when I just happened to be sitting there doing my homework or listening to the fire crackling, something—like the whistling of the kettle or a whiff of dried salt from the starfish nailed to the inside of my room door— would trigger the picture and bring a feeling over me, like something soft, and nice, and big—so big that it felt like I was going to see something, like when you have a dream sometimes and you wake up and you can’t remember it, but the feeling is so strong that it’s almost as if the feeling is the dream itself. And then, when I get that feeling, I get another one that hurts all over—like a big ache. And no matter how well everything was going with Aunt Drucie and school, that’s what I felt like every single solitary minute since the day Nan passed on—like a big ache that hurt all over.

One night I woke up to the sounds of the rocker creaking. It was one of them nights where it felt as if Nan had lain with me and I felt warm no matter how cold the canvased floor. Hopping out of bed I crept down the hall and looked into the kitchen, half expecting to see her sitting there. It was Josie. A thin shaft of moonlight shone through the window, outlining her bulky form in the rocker next to the cold stove. She was still mad at me for Nan’s passing, and I thought to go back to bed. But she looked cold, and Nan wouldn’t have wanted her feeling cold. I took a step towards her and yelped as she suddenly reached out and grabbed me and pulled me into her arms. Still yelping, I scrabbled to get away, but she pinned me to her chest and started rocking. Hearing her sob, I went still. I noticed that the smell of fermenting dogberries wasn’t so strong. And I noticed that she had laid her chin on the crown of my head, like Nan used to do when I was little. Despite feeling a pain in my side from where her fingers were digging into me, and despite my being too big to fit even a small bit comfortably on her lap, that aching feeling came in my throat and I stayed still for a long time with her rocking me like that—rocking and weeping, rocking and weeping. It was almost dawn when her arms slackened and I nearly slipped to the floor. Creeping back to bed, I listened as she soon got up from the rocker and went down the hall to her room.

The next morning she stomped past me in the hall and started cranking splits into the stove and lighting the fire like she always did before Nan’s passing. And I made her tea and toast like I always did since Nan’s passing. Yet despite her getting over her anger towards me, she hardly did any of the things she used to do while Nan was alive, like bounding up and down the gully, racing noisily across the house with muddied feet, barking out that crazy laugh at just about anything or shoving her face up to mine and sticking out her tongue. Mostly, she just sat in the rocking chair, or trudged off down the gully somewhere for hours on end. I couldn’t think what she did with her time. Doctor Hodgins said she was seeking solitude to grieve Nan’s leaving and it was best to leave her be. So, I left her be. One small blessing that came with her not doing any of the things that she used to do was that she never went off with the men when they came blowing their horns up on the road any more. And the smell of rotting dogberries slowly disappeared from her body.

One evening in late September, just a year since Nan’s passing, I was coming down over the bank from the road, just home from the store, when I caught sight of Josie treading across the meadow towards the secret path leading to Nan’s partridgeberry patch. I always remember the way she looked walking off across the meadow that day with the grass up to her waist, and the sun, a bloody red, going down behind the hill, touching on her hair and making it look like a flame that burned smaller and smaller the further she went. I told her that when she came home for supper. We were eating baked beans and Aunt Drucie was dozing in the rocking chair.

“Who looks like a flame? You looks like a flame!” She slapped her hand on the table and stared at me. I stared back. She had freckles that had faded and were now blended into her skin so’s you couldn’t see the spots any more, you just saw that she used to have freckles. Her teeth were jumbled in front and her eyes were a greenish brown with queer yellow flecks spotting them. Sometimes she had a way of staring at you till it felt like the flecks were small beams of yellow light shining straight through your head, lighting up your very thought. Then, most times she’d just walk away, leaving you wondering if she knew what you had been thinking, or if it just felt that way.

“What do you look like?” she demanded, slapping the table harder.

“Like Nan,” I said, eyeing her carefully as I placed a forkful of beans into my mouth. She went silent at the mentioning of Nan’s name, and sullenly picked at her bread. I thought to ask her then, who my father was. But I remembered Nan once saying to Aunt Drucie that that would be like asking which bean in the can made her fart.

My father! From the first day I entered the schoolyard I was told by Margaret Eveleigh, and everybody else around me, that I didn’t have a father. Then, when Josh Jenkins figured out everybody got to have a father, him and Margaret pinned me in the corner, sizing up my features and trying to figure out whose father I looked like.

“You don’t look like nobody,” Margaret had said accusingly, and I ran off home to Nan, crying that I had a father and that I didn’t look like nobody.

“Aye, it’s not just the youngsters sizin’ up your features,” Nan had said. “For sure they’re all frightened to death that you’re goin’ to start lookin’ like one of theirs someday.”