Miss Elva (21 page)

So Elva was not completely alone even though her husband’s cabin was a few miles outside Demerett. When the roads became snow clogged and she wrapped herself in a felt car blanket against draughts, days passed before she’d see anyone drive by. She liked these times most of all. Surrounded by spring-in-pots, armed with an idea given to her years ago by Oak, Elva conceived her vision as a series of panels, carefully sketching them out on a sheet of plywood, noting every detail before daubing colour to wall, to banister, to stair riser, to stove pipe, to window. Winters hated them. What’s the fucking point about decoration? is what he wanted to know.
He wanted her to paint only what he could sell. But each time he returned home after a lengthy absence, another section of house had been storied.

Seeing her gaily painted cottage door and window, folks on the way to the cathedral would stop, sometimes for a picture. By the end of the sixties, tourists were driving from as far as Boston just to see her. Elva’s painted squares of linoleum, her breadbox and clay flowerpots garnered her a growing reputation and acquainted her with many friendly admirers. Winters was on-board now, always on the scavenge for leftover paint to bring home to Elva. A small gallery in Halifax had exhibited some of her work, albeit to derision in the press that such childish images could be considered art. Those who admired Elva’s work differed. Often her visitors left with a painting. Sometimes they asked, Are you the girl of the fountain? Always they left wondering, Why don’t you speak?

Winters never imagined that he could charge people to stick their head inside the house to see the mess she’d made of things. It allowed him to forgive Elva for what happened with his mother-in-law’s place. Long before Rilla’s bizarre death, Amos’s relatives appeared from St. Stephen and said no way would he have left property to a Mi’kmaq and she’d better stop calling herself his missus. Rilla feared the courts, certain she’d lose her home. Thank God, she’d say to Elva, that justice in this province is like maple sap in a cold spring. Rilla, never
legally the wife of Amos Stearns, was not ruled by the courts the unlawful owner of the house at Kirchoffer Place until after her death. Looked like the five hundred dollars was all Winters could expect.

He was eventually compensated, however, with the full jar of silver her art brought in, buried underneath the back stoop. Happy enough, in fact, that he often feared Ol’ Noddie might one day float to heaven, or possibly hop a bus to Halifax. Winters would dig up the dollars every so often, count them and bury them without Elva knowing. Insurance.

Winters’s property abutted a large parcel of Crown land wedged beside the Demerett town limits. By 1970, Demerett, owing to tourism, looked to expand. The land was viewed for development, you know, golf course, swimming pools, houses mere mortals could never hope to afford—until the Mi’kmaq community said no way. They’d been hunting and fishing on that land for generations. They cited a 1759 treaty.

The sale went forward indifferently. Over a period of months, the standoff between town and native community escalated from name-calling in editorials to threats to highway barricades. The premier ordered the provincial police to reopen roads and restore order. Miscommunication further escalated and shots were threatened before sanity prevailed.

It was first suggested in an editorial in
The Mail-Star
that Brother Dom, long reclusive, mediate the conflict. He came from the area, might understand local native issues, and was a man of God. The only problem was that Brother Dom refused to be involved in secular matters. Particularly public ones.

It took several months of persuasion from almost every segment of the community and the threat of violence to change his mind. While no one had as yet been hurt, the unresolved issue was likely to become explosive. Only after a personal plea from the premier, the mayor of Demerett and Mi’kmaq leaders did Brother Dom reluctantly agree.

I
T WAS MID-AUGUST.
The windows in the tiny house were open to the salt air. The brown and orange of black-eyed Susans twitched by the sills, like naughty children peeking inside.

Winters was standing at the doorway, counting and cursing the cars as they came and went. The blocked road and lack of tourists, the tent fringed with flapping
sides like those used for garden parties and bigger than their house, no one to buy Elva’s paintings or look inside the house—all of it was hurting. How much longer was this to go on?

“It’s the goddamned Indians’ fault,” he said, more to himself than to Elva. “Why not claim the whole fuckin’ country for huntin’ and fishin’?” Then he turned from the door and pointed at her. “That’s what they want, you know. Won’t be satisfied until they’ve got the whole fuckin’ Jesus lot and then we won’t even be allowed to speak English any more. Those city bastards better not cave in to them.”

Elva was painting a winter scene. They sold well in the summer, as summer ones did in the winter. Who knew why tourists wanted what they did?

“They never said anything ’bout closing the road. We’re losing trade, Ol’ Noddie.” And why for Christ’s sake did they have to hold that goddamned meeting right next door? “It’s not right. Not right.”

She glanced up when someone outside yelled. Looking through the open door, past where Winters blocked her view, she watched men rush out of the tent, looking as if they were carrying someone. They appeared confused and stood by the road until Elva heard, There, over there! Then, ten, fifteen, maybe more men in white shirts with sweat stains, some with ties and jackets looking very uncomfortable, others with cameras and tape recorders, raced towards them.

A man had fainted under the stifling air of the big top. The cabin with the droopy flowers on the door seemed just the place to recover. Winters was hustled out of the way. It all happened so quickly and it wasn’t just any man.

“Put him down there!”

“Feet up, get his feet up!”

Someone was standing in front of Elva, asking for water. She pointed to the teddy bear on the shelf by the window.

“Here, give him a drink.”

Winters stood gaping at the visitor. Someone was apologizing to him for the intrusion.

Elva couldn’t see for those around her. She carefully laid down her tray and, with some difficulty, stood. She had expected him to have altered over the decades as she had, but not to the degree she found. His hair, growing in patches from his scarred scalp, was white. He eschewed the dress of the Franciscans, never having actually taken orders, and wore a golf shirt and black trousers.

“Give him some air, let him breathe.”

“Has someone gone for an ambulance?”

By now the tiny house was surrounded. Questions were being asked. No one heard answers. Where was the doctor?

“We need to clear the place out, give him some air!”

Someone official, or just acting that way, began ushering everyone outside on orders of the young
Franciscan, Brother Rafe, who appeared to be the man’s aide.

“C’mon, c’mon, give the man some privacy.”

Winters was saying it was his house. Yes, yes, but they ushered him out as well.

Elva was in the corner.

“You’ll have to leave,” Brother Rafe instructed her.

So Elva joined the others outside under the hot sun. No one appeared to know what was happening, how the old man was or how this might affect negotiations. Winters was howling about compensation to anyone who’d listen. It would be some time before anyone noticed Elva melting lopsided in the heat and understood the significance of this chance encounter.

But it was not lost on her, and she dreaded the instant the connection was made. When it happened, she knew. They stopped talking. They stared. And almost en masse, they rushed towards the girl from the fountain just as the door to her home opened.

“He wants to see her,” Brother Rafe announced.

What does this mean? Why? What does he want with her?

“I’m her husband,” Winters said, following.

Looking much recovered, but shaken, Brother Dom was sitting up on the weathered horsehair sofa that was also Elva’s bed. The shutters over the small window had been closed, but the brightness of day filtered through the slats to illuminate the walls with a deeper, more
thoughtful richness. Evidently, her images had caught his attention.

Winters was his usual self. “Well, sir, you like them? She paints them though you’d not think it by lookin’ at her. Can sell you a piece if you’re partial to it. Cut it right out if you want. Something to drink, sir, tea, maybe something a bit more powerful—Oh, excuse me, your holiness, you being a man of God and all, not meanin’ no disrespect.”

“Leave us,” he said. “Both of you.”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

The old man was silent. Brother Rafe capitulated.

Well that doesn’t seem right, Winters protested, but the ensuing icy silence from so important a visitor reluctantly forced him out on the tail of his opinions. “I’ll be right outside this door, Ol’—my dear, if you need me.”

Alone, Dom graciously gestured for her to sit back among her paints and geraniums in the corner. The panels, hundreds of miniature voices in every colour shouting from the walls, from the ceiling, from the floor, Come back to us! One side of his face unaltered, the other like it had melted. Standing, he retrieved his cane and hobbled, gazing intently at the pictograms, sometimes lightly brushing his fingertips over them, hearing them. Yes, yes, he said occasionally.

For almost a full half-hour he studied the walls and then he paced out the floor. His hand went up to his heart as if the panels had magic to inflict pain. He shook
violently, groaning like a wounded dog, dropping his cane. Elva saw a tear in his right eye, the one not melted. She reached down for his cane.

“The only miracle in this town is that the likes of you could create this wonderful … vision of hell.”

She rose stiffly and went to him, to steady him. He nodded and took her gnarled hands into his, kissing them.

He gestured to the panels. “We’ve watched those fools build a miracle on falsehoods and deceit and profit from it, haven’t we, Elva?”

She nodded.

“So much time wasted. And I’ve not said their names in over forty years. Not since, not since—” He winced.

Go, you’re free now.

He smiled. “You thought I was Gil hiding in Dom’s world.”

Once. Yes.

“There hasn’t been a moment in all this long life that I haven’t wished I was in that grave.”

Do they wait in your dreams too?
This was said by wiping away his tear.

He thought she meant to silence him. “No, no, hear me, Elva. Let me make it right. Hear the truth, while I’ve courage.”

Look around you. See the truth.

“Elva, I’m still Catholic enough to fear hell. Be my confessor?” She nodded, shyly. “Jane. There. I’ve said it. Jane! Jane, my Jane. She begged me to take her to
the Abbey, our Abbey. That’s where she told me about Gil. That she couldn’t hate him for what he’d done. And the baby, his.”

Tears streamed down one side of his face.

“I blamed her, blamed him. I wanted the pain to go away. And then he showed up. My own brother! My own self. The gun to keep her safe, it just went off. I shot them both. I didn’t mean it, Elva. They never knew that about Jane. The baby, it was too late to do anything. It just happened, you must believe that. Then that damned dog of his almost tore me apart. I panicked. That’s when I stumbled across the tool shed and the gasoline. I just wanted to make everything seem like an accident. Only it went all wrong. When I got back to shore, the monks found me and gave me this life. Believe me, Elva, no prison sentence could have punished me more.”

Dom watched Winters, strutting and muttering, through the shutters. The press perched like shit hawks on the wharf waiting for someone to empty the chum bucket.

“Then there was that idiot John who started everything else, thinking that an old fountain and rain was some kind of miracle. Christ, it rains here all the time!”

They both managed a smile at that.

“And somehow that hound of Gil’s survived. Goddamn it, but I watched you and that dog every morning for nine years and 226 days sit by his grave
outside my window. Even watched you bury the thing by him when you thought no one noticed. That’s how I knew you knew I wasn’t Gil. God help me, Elva. The only thing I’ve regretted all these years is that I didn’t say, when they found me, I was him.”

Dom started to shake again. Elva opened her arms and he went to her. That’s how Brother Rafe found them.

“Seems a shame to cover ’em up,” April said as more of the walls succumbed.

Winters’s women were like months: May, June and now this one, April. He dipped into a can of white paint.

“That’s none of your business. Besides, she won’t say nothing, never heard Ol’ Noddie speak a word. Well, not since after the good Lord poked her in the head.”

“Never?”

“Christ, woman, you deaf too?”

April was still being broken in, so she didn’t know much. In that sweaty time in the loft after he’d gone at her like he was jacking up a Dodge Ram, he’d explained about Elva in the fountain.