The Gravesavers (7 page)

“Going out for my run, Nana!” I whooped out over the din. I was flying down those stairs. I knew if nothing else, I had a bit of speed going for me.

“Get back here. Minn! Cinnamon Elizabeth Hotchkiss! What do—?”

“Training, Nan, Dad must have told you.”

She was on the veranda then watching me stretch. “Going to the Olympics now, are you?” she huffed.

“Who knows?”

“Well, ambition’s good if you got talent to go with it and even talent’s not gonna do you a lick of good unless you got some breakfast in your belly first.”

“I’ve got my sports drink.”

“It’s blue.”

“So?”

“You can’t tell me that blue juice first thing in the morning is good for you. Gut rot. That’s what that is, gut rot. Eating anything blue is not natural.”

“What about blueberries?”

“Don’t you sass me!”

“See you in an hour!”

“Get back here! There’ll be no breakfast for you. I’m not running a restaurant here this summer … and furthermore … ah, Chicoutimi!”

As I rounded the bend, I heard the door slam. Slam dunk for me, I thought. She had to know from the start I didn’t need a babysitter or someone telling me what to do.

The running that morning wasn’t easy. Maybe it was all the energy I’d just wasted, maybe it was the dirt road, and maybe I should have had at least an orange. Ten minutes into my run, for crying out loud, for no reason at all, I started crying out loud. I don’t mean crying just a little, I mean bawling like a lunatic. I couldn’t seem to stop, either the running or the crying, and I don’t know what was running faster, my nose or me.

I slowed down a little, though, when I saw a black limousine snaking through the poplar trees up ahead on Poplar Hill. My heart did a cartwheel in my chest.

Carolina was right! It had been a rumour for years, but maybe just maybe Hardly Whynot did have a summer home here. Who else in Boulder Basin would be driving a limousine? It turned out of Poplar Lane and headed towards me. I could make out the silhouette of a chauffeur through the windshield. Hat, sunglasses. The real thing.

Any minute now, it would drive up alongside of me. The window of the limo would slide open silently. Mr. Whynot himself would lean out, saying, “Aye, mate, out for a run, are we?” I knew what he looked like and how he talked because my mother made me watch the old movies so many times. Then I would tell him that my mother was his biggest fan ever and he was the only man she ever loved besides my dad Corporal Ray and how her lifelong wish was to get his autograph. Could I please have one for her? He would say yes. And my mother would be grateful she had one daughter at least.

But not like this. I couldn’t meet someone that famous and British and make an impression looking like this! Not even for my mother. I knew my eyes were swollen from my yanging and my nose all crusty. No. Proper introductions are important in our house. I crossed the road.

I scrambled over the boulders lining the shore and started leaping from one rock to another towards the ocean. Jack be nimble, Minn be quick! I sang to myself. It was a dangerous thing to do, not because of the ocean—the tide was out—but it would be all too easy to sprain my ankle. That would be the end of my running for the summer, not to mention the only means of escape from my grandmother. I slowed down to smaller hops.

As the limo passed, I peeked back up. The chauffeur gave me a thumbs-up. His sunglasses were the ski goggle models. He was probably a bodyguard as well and was checking me out, making sure I wasn’t a sniper in disguise. He looked long enough to get a physical description. Subject:
Pre-teen girl. Hair: honeyblonde-brown. Eyes: bluegraygreen. Height: short. Wgt.: featherweight. Distinguishing feature: freckles unevenly distributed across bridge of nose. Status: newcomer. Potential stalker.

Cool as a cucumber, or so I hoped, I nodded. It was a nod that said: “To me you are just another limo and I am not suspicious about your boss. I am not impressed by your fancy car and I am not Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden, girl detective.” But that’s exactly how I felt.

The limo sped on down the road, leaving a plume of dust behind it.

At the water’s edge, I walked on for a while, stopping now and then to bend down and snap the seaweed pods. The clumps of dried-out seaweed by the road were the colour of ashes. Cheerleaders’ pompoms. But these clustered ones, the fresh ones, were the colour of dry mustard and made a snapping sound until they gave a little wheeze and oozed out a spit of water. The other kind of seaweed reminded me of lasagna: long ribbons of seaweed littered across the sand, as if the mermaids had had some wild party
and the streamers were left over next day for someone to come and pick up.

You can’t move anything by the ocean’s edge without noticing how everything is connected. The barnacles on the rocks, the tiny pool of water with crabs scuttling for safety. Then there’s the spiders, always looking like they are on some sort of mission. Spiders with a plan.
Must get to school, must get to market, must get to work and spin my web.

A few feet away from where the bank of rocks ended was a strip of beach. The sand was a fudgy brown and polka-dotted with clam holes. Just last summer we were in about this same spot, digging clams for supper. Corporal Ray loved to pretend he was the clam in each hole. In a squeaky voice like some cartoon character he’d start in:
Don’t dig here, please spare my life. Go next door—the meat is much more tender next door. Oh, thank you, kind sir, now I’m happy as a clam, ha ha ha.
By the time we had a bucket full and went home to boil them and dip them in butter, I could barely eat them for the guilt of taking their lives. But I had learned you eat what’s put in front of you at Nana’s. I laughed at the thought of my father and his foolishness. Then I had a flash: a picture of him and my mother holding hands in the sunset. They could have been the cover of one of Carolina’s romance novels, I thought as I walked back towards
Nana’s. So I erased the picture from my mind with a shake of my head, as if I had water in my ear. What was wrong with me? I had that sad throat again. I started beachcombing as if I was searching for gold.

I found a sand dollar, a starfish and a sea urchin and stuffed them in the pocket of my sweatshirt. Then I settled myself on a large, flat rock. The sun dried my face. The waves sloshed into shore in time with my breathing and the beating of my heart. I don’t know how long I sat there, but too soon the tide was coming back in—my signal to head back up the road.

In front of Nana’s house, the rocks were smaller and clacked together beneath my feet like marbles in a pouch. This gave me an idea. Perhaps I should bring her a peace offering. I started to look for heart-shaped rocks. I’d been collecting them for years. And so had Nana. It was the only thing you might say we had in common. All I ever found were crooked hearts, but it seemed to me that if I looked long enough, some day I might just find that perfect heart-shaped rock. Yes, I might even give it to the witch. Or not.

A person’s eyes could get buggy from looking so long at the ground.

Just as I was about to give up, an odd-shaped shell caught my eye. I figured some creature lived in it, judging from the shape it was in. Maybe the gulls ate the inside and bashed it on the rocks the way they did with mussels. It was the size of a tennis ball, I’d say, but more oval than round. I poked it with a stick at first, to make sure some spider with shark teeth wouldn’t attack. I turned it over. It was hard to believe that the scream I heard was my own.

It was a tiny, perfect human skull.

D
EPARTURES

The trip to Liverpool by train was grim. Mum cried as we pulled out of the station. Dad tried to lighten things but didn’t have much luck. I stared out at the countryside passing by until Dad gave up his cheery act and fell asleep. The only thing louder than his snoring was the train itself. The clickety-clack and screaming engines, the whistle blowing every time it slowed down and chugged through another village.

Thomas looked like someone dreaming while awake. Yes, he was with us! I was over the moon. But he sure wasn’t happy about it. Even I couldn’t get Rebecca’s face out of my mind. When they rushed up to the train and Thomas jumped on at the last second, her eyes were puffy from her sobbing. And she looked at me as if I’d committed a murder. She may as well have said if it weren’t for you my heart would not be breaking. I felt a pang—a little teeny pang—of guilt. Very teeny. After all, he was
my
brother before he was her beau.

But so much for the happy travels everyone had wished us. I tried to read, but the motion of the train turned my belly inside out. The smell of coal? Sickening! To make matters worse it started to rain. Since money was tight, we were riding in an open coach. We were getting wet.

Dad woke up and tried to cover us with a blanket and looked up into the night sky.

“Thank the good Lord for relatives,” he said. “I trust your cousin Libby will have a good meal and a dry bed for us. “Then he shouted and pointed. “Ahead, boys, Liverpool’s just ahead.”

Thomas and I stood up and strained over the tops of folks’ heads to get a look. There were pinpricks of fire in the distance.

“Gas lamps!” said Thomas.

I’d never seen anything like it. “It’s as if all the stars in the Milky Way have fallen from the sky!” I said.

“Liverpool today—tomorrow the world!” Dad clapped his hands together. “It’ll be good to taste that ocean air.” He kissed the top of Tom’s head. “You’ll see, son. All your life’s before you still.”

Thomas nodded and gave half a grin. For one second, his eyes danced. I beamed at him.

He narrowed his eyes and scowled.

F
AREWELLS

“Go do your business, John, it’ll be the last comfortable dump you have for weeks.”

“Thomas, really!” said Mum, blushing in front of her cousin. Thomas nudged me when she went round the back, though. First chance the water closet was vacant.

Libby’s husband, Harold, navigated the carriage through the narrow, crowded streets of the city to the dockyard. It was a grey day. The city was wrapped in fog thicker than a woollen blanket. Libby explained it was more than fog.