Miss Elva (18 page)

D
ON’T MIND,
Elva thought in regards to her lost voice. Wherever it had gone, it had taken away the images of Oak on that road. She figured it’d be back. In time, she came to think of it gone as a blessing. When she was asked what happened out there, or what about Jane, she’d hear answers in her head. No one else would. The thing about that, not actually saying the
words made her not quite feel the pain of Jane being gone, pain at all for that matter. So it was that she was able to lie beside the fresh-turned ground and miss Oak instead of grieve for him.

They’d buried him beside the north stone wall, hidden under a grove of larches and the nearby sound of the fountain. It was private, out of the way, and every fall he’d be covered with a yellow bower. She thought Oak would like that. Elva knew she’d not find any wildflowers this late in the season so she’d brought her writing tablet, one that he’d given her, and sketched out a bouquet. She’d been working on that when she felt tired and thought, close my eyes a few minutes and I’ll finish it.

Elva was awakened suddenly by sharp cries and yells. Thousands of glowing fireflies were falling, stinging her arms and legs and face, the afternoon gone dark, the air thick with smoke.

Hurry! Hurry! This way, someone was yelling, the sound of metal gates swinging open. People were running, coughing, calling out names. On the dirt mound beside Elva, the pages of her writing tablet curled up one after the other in flame.

The sizzling came first, then the stench from her burning hair. Elva scrambled to her feet, swatting her head, but the smoke filling her after every sob emptied out more breath. It grew hotter and harder to find air and the voices sounded more distant. She heard a window shatter.

“Elva!”

Then she heard it again.

“Elva! Elva!”

He groaned as he caught her, falling, dragging her against the stone wall for what little protection it afforded. She could not see him clearly, but she could feel his rough skin, heard the tipple of water. That roughness, it was gauze, bandages.

There was another voice now, panicky, rapid, saying Dom what is Elva doing here you have to get out of here now, hurry Dom, hurry! It was John the sexton, arms flapping under the stinging rain.

The brownness of the air was lightening to orange, becoming hotter and thicker, blowing in from all sides.

“For fuck’s sake, you have to get out!”

The wounded man wrapped himself around Elva and she heard him say they’d never make it to the gate. He rolled her, the pain pinching an unholy sound from him, placing Elva into the lower bowl of the fountain.

“Are you crazy?” John was shouting. “Get out! Get out!”

“Jesus Christ!” he replied as much from the pain as to try and shut the sexton up. Cupping his hands, he bathed Elva’s face and hair.

Thunder rattled somewhere out over the sea and the drops began. Heavy. Plunking drops sounding like pebbles. Then more and faster, until the rain cooled the stinging on Elva’s face.

The inquiry began at the end of the month, and the only place large enough to handle the proceedings and the crush of the curious was the Towne Theatre, already doing double duty rehearsing the Christmas pageant due to smoke damage at the parish hall. Each evening the movie screen would have to be restored on the former
burlesque stage, taken down in the morning under the bemused but unblinking eyes of the papier-mâché caryatids in each corner, blue-painted tassels hanging from the nipples of their gravity-defying tits. With breaks and adjournments, even the odd fainting spell, the schedules between the two conflicting spectacles overlapped. Often the gallery for the inquiry was filled with high-school girls who made up the retinue of fairies and snow princesses, all lithe and thin, humming their dance numbers and cheerfully waving cigarettes around, careful not to sear each other’s wings or the goat for the Baby-Jesus-in-the-Manger sequence.

Rilla wore her new hat, the first piece of brand-new store-bought clothing she’d ever owned. She had purchased it for Jane’s funeral. Black felt, round like a cereal bowl, with a purple ribbon. With her daughter laid to rest and it being close to Christmas, Rilla thought nothing of adding a sprig of spruce and a couple of cranberries. No lifetime of mourning for her. A preacher from Preston—part of the sideshow camped out in front of the theatre each day, and backed up by a humming choir swaying like bullrushes—thought her disrespectful of the solemn proceedings and didn’t mind saying so.

Alighting from a crucifix-adorned staging as if slow marching up a wedding aisle, the preacher man pointed an accusing finger at the cranberries. Such bold finery meant only one thing, an errant, prideful woman, and
there was still time to heel to God’s almighty call! The bullrushes in behind were praising the Lord. Those who’d gathered to try to get a seat for the proceedings surged forward. The newsreel cameras started whirring and clicking. Rilla’s arms circled Elva as the flashes went off:
poomff! poomff!
Look this way! Poomff. Spent bulbs shattering on the pavement.

The delay caused them to miss out on seats in the orchestra, making Rilla forget she’d brought apples for them to eat, and she never wore that damned hat again. They’d have to go up. Rilla said, Follow the angels’ wings and saddle shoes to the balcony, where one of them asked Elva to be a luv and light her fag because her nails were still wet with polish. Rilla gently pulled Elva away and they took two seats at the front.

Someone was yelling for quiet and to please take the Christmas pageant goat outside.

They sat by the balcony railing, where Elva rested her chin on her hands and looked down. Almost like a church crowd except that there had been fights to get in and no church that Elva knew smelled like cold cream and pancake makeup. She self-consciously felt for the healing scar on her forehead where her hair had burned. Let it alone, said Rilla.

There was buzzing in the gallery about the just-over strike. Union men, rushing to the buckets, had saved their livelihood from ruin. In turn, the grateful owners of the Maritime Foundry Corporation yielded to demands
for higher wages and a shorter work week. Boarders were already returning to Kirchoffer Place.

“Would John Solomon Purvis please step forward,” began the day’s affairs after a call to order and some official swearing of stuff on Bibles. Rilla had told her daughter that everyone has to tell the truth after swearing, but Elva wasn’t clear if the book made you do it or it was something you yourself had to come up with. Might be a bit of a flaw in the whole thing as far as Elva was concerned.

When the elderly man came in, he glanced up and nodded to Rilla. Not like that Jeanine Barthélemy, sitting down there in the same row as the mayor and town council. She never looked at Elva or Rilla again. But Mr. Purvis did. Elva knew him now on account of him being such a kindly man when after the fire he said, Might as well bury them here, place is ruined for anything else. So they did. Elva was glad. Everything black and crunchy didn’t seem so hurtful surrounded by all that cool lake water.

He was directed by one of the three men sitting at a long table on the stage, flanked by red-velvet curtains. They all wore dark suits, and the man in the middle, who appeared to be the leader but who never spoke except behind his hand when he leaned sideways to the others, had round glasses and a wooden hammer. It was only an inquiry and not a court with milords, but he’d hammer away just the same.

Mr. Purvis stepped onto the stage aided by a cane more for show than support. He’d told Elva it was called a shillelagh, came all the way from Ireland and if anyone got out of sorts at the proceedings, he’d bop them on the head. She managed her first smile in weeks after that.

His elegant, suited appearance silenced the theatre to hushed whispers. Well, take a good look. This was the crackpot who’d built that oversized playground on the island. The first witness of the day sat at the small table in the corner and folded his hands.

Did he swear to tell the truth? the man on the left was asking.

“Naturally.” He gave his name and said he was retired from the Bickford-Ensign Company. “Yes, sir, indeed they do make fuses.”

Where was he from?

“Connecticut, where I make my home, but I summer here. I came years ago on vacation. That’s how I purchased the land. A hobby of sorts.”

So he was, in fact, the owner of the island in Ostrea Lake.

Mr. Purvis nodded.

What could he say of the damage?

“Destroyed completely.”

“Where you aware of any machinery stored on the island?”

“From time to time, for the gardens, to build the structures.”

“Any petrol?”

“Yes, I believe so. In a shed, by a shed, maybe.” He looked around the theatre as if to add, I bet you sons-of-bitches will all come now to see the island.

They thanked Mr. Purvis.

And that was that.

Rilla said, “Sit back, Elva, and pay attention.”

Someone with a round silver microphone from the radio station in Halifax was explaining to “Hello out there in Radioland!” that Mr. Purvis had just left the stand. Very silkily he added that the sponsor for this hour was McCaffery’s Tooth Powder, for the happiest smiles of your life.

The policeman was next.

He appeared smaller down on the stage than in person. When he sat, he removed his hat and put it on the table beside him. Elva hadn’t noticed before that he was balding and he’d shaved off what was left. He looked very nervous.

“You led the investigation of the island after the fire?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“What were your findings?”

“The fire started on the island. We found two bodies, sir. On the shore farthest away from town.”

There was a gasp in the theatre, although everyone already knew that.

“Were you able to identify them?”

The policeman’s head was sweating but he made no move to wipe if off, in case it was rude.

“Yes, sir. Guillaume Barthélemy and the Indian girl, Jane Twohig.”

No, it’s not Gil,
said Elva.

“Anything else?”

“Well, sir.” The policeman swallowed like a big lemon jujube had gone down sideways. “She looked as if she’d … miscarried.”

The official man in the middle had to hammer the table to bring order. Folks weren’t used to hearing about dead babies in public like that. The radio man was talking a mile a minute into his microphone.

“All from Demerett Bridge,” the policeman added when he could.

Elva wasn’t sure if you could say that about the baby considering it hadn’t been around long enough to be from anywhere.

“What can you say about the deceased?”

“Well, the Indian girl looked like she was dead before the fire.”

“What makes you say that, and remember, constable, there are ladies present.”

He said there was no evidence that she’d fought the flames.

“And young Barthélemy?”

No evidence of that either.