Miss Elva (14 page)

“We’re not supposed to go near town,” Elva said when she realized where Jane was heading.

“I’m not.”

“Why so fast?”

“You’re slow. That’s not my fault.”

A distant dog was barking the untie-me-please bark.

“You’re going to the Abbey!”

Jane said she wasn’t.

A lie, and Elva didn’t have to wait until they got to the lake to know that. The ruins, usually with exploding colours and wrapped under the weighty boughs of emerald foliage, appeared to float disembodied through frothy clouds. The island was releasing itself from its earthly confines, slowly returning to heaven.

“Rilla said—”

“Shut it, Elva, will ya!”

She could have responded that she knew what was up with Jane. Something to do with that letter, Elva figured. Maybe Jane hoped to meet Dom again, but
he’s not here.

“Jane, I have to tell you—”

“Can’t you shut up even for a minute? I’m going over there and you’re staying here.”

“Rilla said to stay together.”

Jane only got angrier when Elva sulked; she hated to be reminded that Elva had feelings.

“Fine! What did you want to say?”

But Elva did have feelings and they’d been hurt. To hell with telling Jane about Dom, then. Easily enough remedied. Jane pushed her into the snow and slipped barefoot into the water.

Elva waited until her sister had disappeared into the trees on the other side, then she followed. The water was stinging, but Jane be damned, Elva wasn’t going to miss seeing the Abbey like this and so what if she spied on Jane again. Serves that Jane right.

Ipswich Abbey was a remarkable place at any time of year, but ice-crystal-covered grottoes and cloisters, stone paths frozen into mirrors and icicles made Elva almost forget about Jane. As the June air melted the snow, Elva gathered frozen blossoms, made a snow angel that looked like a gnome and ate handfuls of snow until her head ached and she heard their voices.

“Every morning I’ve been here waiting, at the same hour,” he said. “Since I got your note.”

Elva had not realized she was so close to them, separated only by a clotted row of shrubs. She worked her way into the branches, having to dance out the snow that fell down the back of her dress, until she could see Jane smother his face with kisses.

“This was the first morning I could get away,” Jane said. “My mother thinks there won’t be much union trouble ’cause of the snow. She made me bring you-know-who, though. As if that thing would be any help if I got into trouble.”

“Where is she?”

She wrapped her arms about his neck and laid her head against his chest.

“Don’t you worry about Elva. Ditched her way back.”

His large hand reached behind Jane’s head and easily cradled it. He dropped his mouth to hers.

Jane pulled away.

“What?” He held her but she resisted.

“You can’t fool me.”

“Jane, don’t.”

“Gil, let me go!”

Jane clawed. A short scream fanned across the placid waters of the lake.

“Be quiet!” Gil slapped her, then dragged her down into the snow. “Oh Jesus, I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t, please don’t!”

He tossed off his shirt.

“Gil, why?”

“I have to … you know I do.”

“Dom’ll kill you for this!”

Gil pressed down on her, covering her, entangling himself in the idea of her to the tearing of fabric and rapid short breaths. Jane turned her face away from Gil’s body and saw under the snow-covered green the brown-strapped shoes, the sagging socks, the twisted face watching her. Elva receded into the shrubs, confused by words that didn’t match actions, the call for help that never came.

He was supposed to be mine, she thought.
Mine.

She’d seen that look on Jane before, on someone else.

Jane lay motionless. Was she breathing? Her eyes were open and, thank god, she blinked. Gil wearily struggled into his clothes and stumbled into the trees, stopping once to glance back and throw up. Elva thought he was
crying. Jane rolled on her side, clutching her dress, and saw Elva still squatting under the bushes.

Now she reached out a hand. “Get me home.”

It took some doing, Elva being her crutch, stopping only when Jane faltered. They did not speak. It took them a very long time. When they reached the fields skirting the tar ponds, Jane collapsed.

“Say nothing. Ever. Swear!”

Elva couldn’t speak. Why wasn’t Jane angry? Across the road, Rilla got into the truck and pulled out of the laneway. Laundry run.

“Swear!”

Jane believed her sister was beyond jealousy, because Jane could not comprehend that crippled and ugly Elva was capable of feeling anything, least of all the sting of passion.

“Okay,” said Elva.

The last few steps to the house were the hardest for Elva, fading fast under the weight of her sister’s ordeal.

“Get me upstairs,” Jane said on the porch, “and don’t let Amos hear.”

Melting snow was dripping from everything, everywhere. Their clothes were soaked, Jane’s torn.

“Bury them in the garden,” she said after Elva helped her into bed.

Elva did as she was instructed, then crawled in beside her sister to warm her. Then out it came, a torrent of I knew about Dom being away, Oak knew, and
I tried to tell you I really did but the snow and the letter to Gil, but he promised, he promised to give it to Dom and Dom on a fishing boat, hiccup, hiccup, and he wants to marry you.

“I’m sorry! It’s my fault!” Elva was sobbing, hardly comprehending her own words.

Jane was not at all angry. Something else. Elva remembered where she’d seen that look on her sister’s face before. Pleasure from pain. Gil and Oak.

Jane with Gil had been the same as Gil with Oak.

I
N
A
UGUST OF
1927, the American owners of the Maritime Foundry Corporation issued its manager, Urban Dransfield, with this ultimatum: blacken the skies over Demerett Bridge with smelter smoke or sell the damned foundry. Dransfield’s subsequent actions resulted in the second and unquestionably worse riot related to the strike.

The Corporation would later claim Dransfield acted on his own when he fired all the striking workers and then put out word that he was hiring—at half the former salary. There were enough destitute men out there, some from as far away as New Brunswick, that the employment call produced a line at the gate over a thousand men strong. Many of these men had been former employees unable to feed their families any longer on union platitudes, watching scabs take their jobs anyhow. But Dransfield’s victory was short-lived.

The strikers’ bitterness exploded in the Corporation’s compound. Dransfield ordered buses, windows sealed over with plywood, to break up the riot by driving recklessly through the crowd. Dozens were maimed. Enraged strikers stormed and rocked the buses, overturning several. When Dransfield ordered his security guards to fire over the crowd, three men were accidentally shot. The gate and main offices were overrun. Dransfield was dragged into the compound and beaten and would later die from his injuries.

Demerett Bridge had had enough. The government agreed. Now it was a war, and troops, in the form of constabulary from all over the Maritimes, were sent in to restore order. All this, and in a few short years, no one would even remember why it began.

“I’m still head of this house,” Amos said, leaning against the door jamb, looking shrunken and old.

They had become so accustomed to his absences that a place at supper was no longer set.

“What are you two crows staring at?” He sat across the table from Jane and Elva.

Rilla rose with an apology and fitted out a plate for him. Amos dumped it on the floor.

“Let that be a lesson to you, woman.” He handed back the empty plate. “Fill it again.”

She did, without protest, and set it in front of him.

“Now clean the floor.”

Rilla moved.

“Not you. Her.” Meaning Jane.

“I don’t mind,” said Rilla, but as she bent to clear away the food, Amos shoved her ass and she fell against the cupboards.

“Girl, clean the floor.”

Rilla stood. “Amos, please.”

“On your knees and wash that goddamn floor.”

“No.”

“Jane, please, like he says,” Rilla said.

“No.”

“Look at her,” he said to Rilla. “Christ, but that little bitch hates me.” Amos sat back and laughed. Watching Jane, he took a bite of his food, grimaced and spit.

“Christ, woman, you trying to kill me with that spicy shit and my punk gut?”

He spun the plate against the wall, bringing Oak, hammer in hand, from the summer kitchen.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Nothing,” Rilla said, anxiously looking for Oak to do just that.

Amos grumbled, same old song about it being that Barthélemy’s goddamned fault the house got torched in the first place.

“It’s all right,” said Rilla, nodding her champion out of the room. Oak reluctantly went back to work.

“What’s with that toady motherfucker anyway? Gives me a chill.”

“You don’t look right, Amos. Maybe you should be in bed.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Me outa your hair so you and this bunch can act like you own the place.”

Rilla wiped her hands against her dress as she went about cleaning the mess. Damn! Gravy had seeped in between the floorboards. Now the ants would come.

“Do that later. Bring me something I can eat. And stop staring at me, you little bitch. You’ve been a moody puss for weeks. Yeah, I’ve seen you mooning about like a sick dog! Isn’t it enough I’m off my food?”

Don’t look, Elva told herself. Rilla put a fresh plate in front of Amos.

“He’d better be paying his board, Rilla.”

The sound of hammering resumed. Amos pushed his food around with a fork. Jane looked as if she was trying to burn a hole through him with her eyes as Rilla filled a washbucket.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Jane said.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.”

What did you say? Nothing? What Gil did to you and you’re supposed to marry Dom and Oak doesn’t know what Gil did and I know he doesn’t ’cause he’
s
my friend now and he’d say for sure and you won’t say what Gil did and make me swear not to tell …
But Elva just took another mouthful of peas and no one noticed.

“Not eating? You were hungry enough when I took you in. You weren’t so high and miss mighty then.”

Rilla glanced up nervously. “Leave her, Amos, she’s not well.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

His own bedridden decline made it easy for him to dismiss the inner torment, and sinking, of Jane. Her colour was waxy, her temperament listless. Bones had replaced shoulders and hips, and her once luxurious hair was falling out in handfuls.

“She’s got the ’fluenza.” Elva wanted to spare Jane any more scrutiny.

“My goddamn sorry arse she has. Eat, goddamn you!”

Jane said no, but the imploring gaze from Rilla down on the floor convinced her that it would be prudent for all if she at least tried. In went a spoonful of beans and peas, up it came, and out went Jane into the hall.

“The bitch did that on purpose,” Amos said as Jane returned, somewhat unsteadily.

“No, she didn’t,” Elva said. “Jane’s sick like that a lot.”

“Shut it, Elva,” said Jane.

Amos put his fork down. “I’ll be some goddamned! That bitch whore’s got herself knocked up.”

And Elva knew it too.

Rilla pulled her hands out of the washbucket, slumped against the lower cupboard like her body had turned to water, Jane’s silence confirming her worst fears. Oak hammered away obliviously outside.

“Fuck me blind,” Amos cursed, slowly standing. “Whose is it?”

Jane stepped out of his way.

“No, Amos!” Rilla got a smack to the face with his elbow.

He lunged again.

“I should have beaten the fuckin’ crap out of you a long time ago, you ungrateful slut! Make me a laughingstock, will you? I’ll throw your sorry arse back into the street where you belong. Christ, you goddamn Indians can’t keep your legs crossed!”

Elva got shoved out of the way. Nothing more.

“Don’t touch me!”

Amos overreached and fell, catching his side on the table edge. His face blanched with pain as he went down to hollering garbled fragments of sounds. The upset brought Oak back through the screen door.

Rilla was instantly by Amos’s side, pulling her man’s head into her lap, dabbing the spit from his chin with her apron. Elva had never seen convulsions before, trembling one moment, then like the man’s arms and legs were being pulled out in opposite directions. He’d gone very pale, with little blue patches at the corners of his mouth, his eyes rolling back and forth into their pits.

Only Jane was calm, and she knelt, bending low to Amos’s ear.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?”

Something that might have been, Oh Christ, came out of the man.

“You can’t imagine how you’ll suffer, like we’ve all suffered for years. But don’t worry. Your liver’s turned to stone. Soon you’ll be dead.”

His eyes flared, but Amos had lost the ability to speak.

Rilla had not. “Girl, what are you saying?”