Somewhere I Belong (2 page)

A forest of frosted evergreens ended abruptly at a snow-covered field. Thick slabs of grey-blue ice heaved up in every direction along the adjacent shore. Light reflected off them and off the chunks of ice and snowy sludge that drifted over the narrow Northumberland Strait. I strained to see a strip of land under the grey horizon, but saw nothing. It looked empty and desolate and cold. There was none of the grassy field and red, sandy beach I remembered from our last trip there.

“I thought we were supposed to be able to see Prince Edward Island from here,” I said to no one in particular.

“If it was lighter out, you could see it.” Ma spoke in a hushed tone, so as not to wake Alfred. “It's not far.”

Alfred slept with his head on Ma's lap, the two of them huddled
under the grey woollen blanket a porter had passed through the door the night before. His hand hung over the blanket, thumb out, ready for business.

Larry crawled out from under his own blanket and stood by the
window. “Wow! There's nothing but ice.”

Helen peered over his shoulder. “How are we going to get across?”

“It's an ice-breaker ferry,” Ma said. “We'll get there just fine.”

The train chugged and then rolled down a ramp and into the belly
of the boat. Larry and I soon found our way to the upper deck. We
leaned over the railing, listened to the roar of the engines, and watched the propellers churn up the sea. As the ferry slipped away, I faced the direction I thought was south, watched the mainland disappear, and promised myself that, as soon as I got to where we were going, I would find a way back.

“We're here, everyone,” Ma said the minute the train screeched into
Montague Station. She pulled our ja ckets down from the racks above
our seats and helped Alfred on with his. “Button up, it's no doubt
freezing out there.” She fussed with Alfred's jacket and looped a scarf around his neck.

“Ow!” he hollered. “That hurt.”

“Hush up, it didn't.” Ma sounded tired and irritable. And it was about time she called Alfred on his babyish behaviour.

Alfred stuck out his lower lip and pouted at her.

Ignoring him, Ma wiped a circle of condensation off the window and peered through it. Snow blew in wisps across an empty, grey platform.
A trolley sat idle in front of a single-storey wooden building. Thick
icicles hung low from its eaves, as if locking it into a deep freeze. A mittened hand scraped a thin layer of frost from a window. A group of people clustered in a single, dark silhouette, and strained to get a view of our passenger car.

“There's your Uncle Jim,” Ma said, waving frantically. “He's the tall fellow in the back.”

I peered around her and tried to find him among the dark figures obscured by the dim light and the frost on the windowpane. No doubt Ma could tell it was him by the way he craned his neck and towered over everybody. He disappeared, then pushed through the single wooden door, and soon found our passenger car. He smiled up at us and waved eagerly. His red cheeks glowed beneath a grey woollen hat pulled down
to his eyebrows. He stood back on the platform and waited as we
gathered up our belongings and Ma rushed us down the aisle.

We piled down the stairs and stepped directly into frigid air. The wind blew against us in heavy bursts. It seeped through my corduroy trousers and bit through my woollen mitts. My nostrils stung and my throat burned with every breath. I pulled my scarf up over my nose and my woollen hat down over my ears, and moved closer to Larry.
Thinking how it never got this cold back in Everett. Hoping Larry
would block the wind.

Uncle Jim threw his arms open as Ma descended the stairs. She smiled and fell into him and they hugged for a moment. He held her back and angled his head this way and that, checking her over. Up to then, “Uncle Jim” was a name we had attached to an old photo Ma had kept in an album in the parlour back home. To us kids, he was a near-complete stranger. But looking at him, dead-on, I saw something familiar in his tall, lanky build. He had the same pale-blue eyes and high cheekbones as Ma. Only, he looked a little younger and was more roughly hewn, as if God had forgotten to take out the sandpaper to smooth out his edges.

“Ma-tha, my de-ah,” he said, trying to mimic a New England accent, “you don't look a day over fo-tee.” His high-pitched voice carried through the crisp air.

Ma's face lit up for the first time since Dad died. All the tension that had sat over her for the past two weeks seemed to fall away as she laughed and swatted my uncle with her scarf. For a moment, I thought she was coming around to her old self. But she still moved in the same tired, deliberate way she had since Dad's funeral.

Uncle Jim turned to where we kids stood. He looked at Larry and smiled the same smile I had seen, over and over again, on the people
at Dad's wake in Aunt Mayme's parlour. I saw the same sadness in
his eyes and heard the same hesitation in his voice when he held out a hand and gripped Larry's in both of his. “So you're the man of the house now, aren't you, Larry?”

“I suppose you're right,” Larry said, in the same polite way he had since Dad died. He smiled briefly, then backed away and stared at his boots.

Uncle Jim turned to Helen, took her hand, and raised it up. “You've become quite the little lady, Miss Helen.”

Helen stared up at him, trying to figure him out. If I didn't remember Uncle Jim, she sure as heck didn't. Before he had even let go of her hand, he tilted his head and smiled down at me. “Well, this must be Pius James. We've heard all about you.”

I tossed him the same blank expression Helen had and wondered what it was he'd heard about me. My only memory of my uncle was from Ma's stories of him and that single family photograph with him standing stiffly amidst Ma and a bunch of uncles and aunts, most of whom had since dispersed across the continent. They looked serious and tight-mouthed. The men wore dark suits, white shirts, high, stiff collars, and neckties that looked tight enough to strangle them. The women had tied their hair loosely back in buns. Their skirts brushed the floor. And they all stood crammed up against each other and glared at the photographer, which made me wonder if he had just said something wrong.

There was something about Uncle Jim that seemed rehearsed or
a little nervous. His forced cheerfulness reminded me of some of my
friends who had come to see me at Dad's wake. They shuffled past
Dad's closed coffin and bit their lips when they smiled and shook my hand. Some of them even repeated the same line we had heard from most of the adults, “I'm sorry for your loss.” It made me realize that it must be hard to talk to someone who had a dead person in the family, especially a dead husband or dad. Uncle Jim sure was trying hard.

“We'd best look after your baggage,” he said. He turned to move down the platform to where a porter was already piling it onto a trolley. Ma shooed me and Larry along to help.

Uncle Jim took the handle of the trolley from the porter. Larry and I moved in behind it to push. The wheels stuck in the snow and our boots slid on the ice as we urged the trolley across the platform. It was tough going. The harder we pushed, the more we slid. We passed a snowy embankment and moved onto flat ground that had been partially cleared of snow. Then we saw two magnificent horses waiting patiently in their traces in front of an old box sleigh.

“Hey, Big Ned,” Uncle Jim said. “Hey, Lu.” He eased the trolley beside the sleigh, grabbed a burlap bag from the front seat, and retrieved two apples. “They're real beauts, ain't they?” He circled back to the horses. “Genuine Perch'ens. Eighteen hands, the both of 'em.”

Lu nickered softly and gently bit off a piece of apple with her huge teeth. Big Ned just snorted like the mini locomotive he appeared to be and devoured the apple whole. The two horses made a beautiful pair. They were huge, exquisitely built, and perfectly aligned. Their barrel
chests held up the heavy wooden shafts with apparent ease. Their
hooves were the size of dinner plates. Big Ned had a more muscular build. His brown coat and black mane and tail shone, even in the dull afternoon light. His forelock partially covered his large brown eyes. Lu was chestnut all over, with a blond mane and tail. She seemed more wary than Big Ned. She watched me as I stepped cautiously toward
them. She waited momentarily, then turned her head toward Uncle
Jim. I wondered at the strength these two horses must have had to
pull such a large contraption, loaded down with all of us and what
remained of our belongings.

Uncle Jim placed the last of Lu's apple in my hand. “Hold it out flat,” he said, hardly giving me a sideways glance. “She won't hurt you, will you, old girl?”

I eased up to her, the way I had seen Uncle Jim do it. I balanced the apple on the flat of my palm, held my breath, and feared she would bite off my hand or crush my foot under an enormous hoof. Lu hesitated, then lowered her huge head and sniffed the apple. Then she plucked it up and left a trace of saliva on my mitt. When she had finished, she looked down at me and snorted a soft snort that was almost a purr. I reached up and stroked her huge neck, while Big Ned nodded his head on the other side of the shaft. These were the biggest animals I had ever seen, and they were as trusting and gentle as kittens.

Uncle Jim's box sleigh was a large, rectangular, wooden contraption that sat low off the ground on two sturdy runners. The front bench had a backrest and a slab of wood directly beneath it for the feet. A second bench, behind it, appeared to be temporary; it tilted forward and lacked a support for the back. Uncle Jim and Larry tucked boxes around it to hold it steady. They loaded on Ma's trunk and we all climbed aboard. Alfred sat up front between Ma and Uncle Jim. Larry, Helen, and I perched on the crooked backbench and pushed our feet to the floorboards to hold it steady, boxes to our backs. Uncle Jim handed Ma a buffalo rug and another one to us. We spread it out around our ankles and pulled it up to our chins. Then he slapped the reins and hollered, “Gee-up.”

Big Ned and Lu lowered their heads, straining in their traces; the box sleigh creaked and groaned and glided over the frozen ground. Peaked-roof houses lined both sides of a narrow, snowy road covered in ruts. Grey clouds gathered and slowly darkened the sky. We turned
up a hill and soon left the tiny town behind us. We passed isolated farmhouses and fields that lay fallow under a thick, white blanket.
Snow began to fall as we headed east. The cold slowly seeped through
the floorboards and turned our feet to ice. Everything around us
appeared to be stuck in a snow-covered deep-freeze. The wind picked up and blew directly at us. Larry, Helen, and I huddled under the heavy buffalo rug for shelter.

Adults have a way of talking about you as if you aren't even there. Ma started the minute we pulled away from Montague Station. First, she complained about the constant clacking of the train and the whistle that had blown as we approached every town. Then she went on and on about the passengers that had clobbered up and down the aisle, jabbered outside our compartment, and kept her up all night. When she had exhausted all that, she started in on me.

“You should have seen it, Jim. Dear little Alfred, just sitting there, minding his own business, and Pius James hauls off and smacks him.”

Ma always took Alfred's side, even when he started it. And her blabbing on to Uncle Jim about me was just another example of the same old crap I had to put up with because of the little bugger. It took me right back to the day Dad died. It seemed like yesterday and a lifetime ago, all at the same time. Alfred had got into my stuff, like usual. And when all I wanted to do was get it back, he threw another one of his stupid fits. Naturally, Ma blamed it on me.

I was walking home from school with Larry and some of the guys that Friday. We were planning a hockey game at Glendale Park's outdoor rink. Larry and I were keen to go. Our plan was to hurry home and grab a quick snack. Then we were to gather up our sticks and skates and Dad's, and wait for him to get home from work. Dad always played hockey with us on Fridays. The plant's siren sounded in the distance, announcing the end of his shift. The sun sat low in the mid-afternoon sky. We knew we still had two hours of good light.

I could smell Ma's baking as I ran up the front steps of the house
and in through the front door. I took my jacket off and unlaced my
boots by the front closet. The lights were on in the hallway and in the kitchen. The floor lamp glowed in the parlour, where Alfred sat cross-legged on Ma's hand-hooked rug. He had my baseball in a hand and was tossing it up and trying to catch it. The baseball I had put on the kitchen table that morning. The one I was supposed to bring for my school project. Ma had taken it from me and forgotten to give it back. Now Alfred had his grubby hands all over it and was dropping it on the floor—my Babe Ruth baseball!

“Hey Alfred,” I hollered. “Where'd you get that?” I rushed across
the hallway, leaving a trail of snow on Ma's newly waxed floor. Alfred was a quick little bugger, so I fell onto him, held him down fast, and grabbed my baseball.

“Yow! Ma, P.J. hit me!” Alfred screamed.

I barely touched him. God, he was loud.

Larry threw off his jacket and boots and dashed into the parlour. “He's only playing with it, P.J.” He grabbed my baseball and held it away from me. “Get off him or you'll upset Ma.”

I climbed over Alfred and reached toward Larry. Alfred raised his head up and screamed again, not quite getting Ma's name out, before I pushed his face and his mouth back into the rug.

Ma stormed down the hallway. She caught me sitting on Alfred's head, his hand grasping through the air. Larry still stood over me, holding my baseball out of reach. Ma hauled me off Alfred. “You just wait 'til your father gets home, young man.” She always left the scolding for Dad. And I always caught it for upsetting Alfred, even when he took my stuff without asking. I got the feeling that Alfred liked setting Ma against me. That he enjoyed watching her send me to my room with the point of a finger and a hand to a hip.