The Seary Line (26 page)

But he knew there were no more left. Extinct. Perhaps this excited creature was a jovial relative, jumping now on
the marshy bog, trying to lick the freckles from the back of his hand. He remembered his father telling him how gentle they were (even though they had a wily and vicious reputation), and how many years ago, when his own father was a young boy, there was a hefty bounty on the head of each wolf. Celebration when one was killed. How over the years, the ghostly howl had petered into silence.

Leander knelt down, placed his hands in her fur, shook away the water droplets that beaded in her coat. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Where in God's name did you come from?” He was never able to answer that question, but the dog followed him out of the woods, over the laneway, and into the sweet orange glow of their kitchen.

At first Stella had been nervous for the children, their few chickens. “She looks like a wolf. She howls like a wolf. She certainly eats like a wolf.” But after several months of yipping and dancing and making music with her curved nails on the wood floor, Stella told him, “Harriet Edgecombe is my easiest child.”

Robert had big plans for Harriet. During the fall, Leander and he had built a sleigh, painted it apple red. “When I goes down Andrews' Hill, Harriet can haul me right back up again. I don't never need to get off.” He tapped his chin, thinking. “Or I could charge a penny an hour and she could tug around someone else. I'll be right rich.” But on their first official outing, boy and dog, Harriet chomped at the snow, leaped after drifting flakes, barreled towards Robert, knocked him clear off his perch. “So much for that,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “She hopped aboard, wouldn't budge. Had to haul
her
home.”

Elise was the only family member who ignored the dog. In the beginning, she adored Harriet, but on Christmas morning, her tune changed to indifference. With feverish
determination, Elise had set about knitting a bright red wool sweater for Harriet, and worked night and day to finish it, wrapped the mess of loose ends and gaping holes in brown paper, slid it underneath the spruce tree in the front room. In the morning, Harriet hauled out the package, tore it open, and Elise pinned the dog down, slipped the tangle of red over Harriet's head, tied some strands around the barrel chest. Harriet cocked her head, looked at Elise with wet uncertain eyes, absence of appreciation, then pawed to get out. Five minutes later, she returned, sweater missing, Elise in tears when she glared out the window, saw her gift clinging to a splintery fence post, like a streak of unwanted blood against the holiday snow.

For the most part, Harriet was Leander's dog. Wherever Leander went, Harriet went. She was so attached, she howled outside the church as soon as Leander disappeared inside. Her wailing during the Sunday service drowned out Reverend Hickey's raspy sermonizing, and they took to barring her in the workshop, lest the Reverend use his last breath to be heard over a dog. When Leander entered his shed, knelt in front of Harriet, she would bolt towards him, press her body against his, head on his shoulder, weeping like a lonely child.

While Leander sanded and sawed and hammered and turned in his workshop, Harriet was always near his feet. More than once, her paw was nipped when she stood too close to the treadle of the lathe. During the long weekdays, when evening shadows arrived early, they chatted the afternoons away, Leander asking questions, Harriet responding with various pitches, stressing different portions of her howl. Even though Stella fed Harriet leftover scraps and plucked burrs from her impressive fur, Harriet never had much to say to Stella, and Stella growled
(half-jokingly), “If Harriet didn't go around on all fours, gob half open, I'd be some awful jealous.”

Harriet garnered a fair bit of attention. Throughout the year, people dropped by to see the “almost wolf,” for no one wanted to admit what she might actually be – the last of her kind. And whenever anyone questioned Leander about the dog, he replied, “I got no idea what she is. Other than our Miss Edgecombe. The household darling.”

Robert would beam, Elise grimace, and Stella would always add, “Long as we all knows she's the family pet. To the best of my knowledge, the Lord above frowns on man taking up two wives.”

“So sweet,” a young schoolteacher said to her sister as they ambled down the lane. “Take a gander at them over there.” She nodded out towards the wharf.

“Yes now,” the sister replied. “Youngsters today don't play like they used to. Right refreshing to see them getting along. Working together instead of trying to knock each other down.”

Though Elise and Robert Edgecombe were the subjects of the conversation, they didn't hear the women chatting. Instead, the children were dangling over the wharf, shoulders touching, blood filling their heads. Crabs, sculpins, connors, sea weed, they were hooking anything and everything that passed over their bent pins.

Birds cried overhead, flapping grey wings, faded feet spread, ready to pluck. One swooped down near them, and Elise twisted her head to look upwards, then shrieked, fell backwards on the wharf. It swooped again, stole a crushed snail, then ascended, beak full.
“You scared of a bird?” Robert said, his voice echoing beneath the wharf, rising up through the boards. “'Tis only a gull.”

When she heard a muffled giggle, Elise put her fingers to her cheeks, pressed. “That's what you think.”

“That's what I knows. Daddy told me. They's called gulls. Gulls starts with the letter ‘G.' And they loves to eat old fish and garbage. Garbage starts with ‘G' too.”

“And little boys.”

“What? That don't start with ‘G.'” “Them birds is right dangerous. Didn't Daddy tell you that?”

Robert slid back over the wood, sat up, eyes wide. He was light-headed, and his chest ached from the release of pressure. “Nope, he didn't say nothing about that.”

“Didn't want to worry you, I's guessing. Seeing as you's still a baby.”

“I idn't no baby.”

“But you's a brat. And you don't know nothing about birds. Can cart you right away if they gets the mind to do it.”

“What do you mean ‘cart me away'?”

Elise picked at the nail on her biggest toe, replied nonchalantly, “A hoard of them can come upon you, drive their claws into whatever they can get ahold of, your shirt, your skin. They idn't fussy. And they'll fly right up, and you'll be gone.”

“Gone where?” Voice a little wispy now.

“How should I know?” She flicked a curl of nail into the sea. “Off to their nests, I suppose. Maybe they'll feed you to their babies. Divide up the goods. Peel you up into bits.”

“Bits?”

“Someday, Mother'll find your bones. When the old nests rots, and they falls out onto the ground. Skinny bones of a five-year-old.”

“I's almost six.” Puffing up his chest.

“Don't matter. And you knows what? I bet she wouldn't even cry, Robert Edgecombe. Not one single tear. Now if you were Harriet she might, but she don't care about you. She'll be looking at your bones, and all she'll be thinking about is what kind of soup she can make.”

Robert sniffed hard, eyeballed his sister, then tried to spit into the ocean. He never leaned far enough and the bubbly gob landed on the rolled-up cuff of his trousers. “That's lies, Elise. All dirty lies.”

“I's telling the truth.”

“No, you idn't.”

“Honest to God.” She put her arms out, stared up at the sky. “Strike me down by lightning, oh Heavenly Father, if what I utters idn't the pure truth.”

Glancing up. “You swears?”

“Right on Nanny Abbott's grave.”

“I's going to ask Mommy.”

“That you won't then, you little brat. Else I'll make sure those birds get you. Get you good, you little bugger. I knows what they likes, and you don't.”

He stared at Elise, whimper suppressed, and when he saw the fat squawking birds circling above him, he wanted to run, push his face into his mother's skirt, into Harriet's protective fur. “Is I okay now?”

“Far as I can tell,” she said with a smirk.

They were silent then as they leaned back over the wharf, watched the murky green water. Within moments, a mottled brown shadow drifted over Robert's makeshift hook, and he sucked in his breath. His hands were sweaty, but he didn't dare lessen his grip on the string. When the glimmer of his hook disappeared, he yanked with all the force he could muster. Up flew a flatfish, an impressive
tethered arc, then smack onto the dried bleached wood of the wharf.

White belly up, Elise flipped it over with her toe, bare foot to steady it, and she tore out the pin. Kneeling down beside it, Robert watched as its fin began to slowly ooze, and he dug for the handkerchief in his back pocket, daubed the redness away.

“They don't feel nothing,” Elise said. “You're wasting your time.”

“How do you know?”

She picked up the pin, a fleck of fin still attached, and she jabbed it in the fish's stomach over and over again. “See? He didn't even budge.”

“Huh. I guess you're right.” And he smoothed the invisible holes with his finger, tried to pretend he hadn't seen her do that.

“Queer how a flatfish just sits, don't you think,” she continued. “Don't barely put up no kind of fight.”

“He did a bit.”

“Well, he's not going nuts like some of them. Trying to get back to the water.”

“Give him time.” Robert stroked its cool damp back, touched its pair of neatly arranged eyes, pressed ever so slightly. “Maybe he's a skipper.”

“Fish can't be skippers, stupid.”

“Well, maybe he's an old-timer. That's what I meant.”

“Old or not, he's not doing nothing. What kind of fish is that?” Foot drawn back, she offered up a swift kick, and the flatfish sailed out over the water, kissed the surface, and sank out of sight. Then, Elise strode off the wharf, and Robert grabbed his hook and string, skipped to catch up with her.

“Why'd you go and do that for?”

“Cause flatfishes is lame. That's why. Squids is funner. Squirting you square in the face.” She laughed, then turned, held her finger up to Robert. A warning. “Don't you go hauling up no more of them dumb flatfish. Stupidest fish in the sea.”

“You thinks?” Robert still had his handkerchief in one hand. He looked at the bloody streak in the cotton, put it to his nose, smelled pungent fishy metal. “Well, at least it worked.”

“What worked?”

“He got back to the water. Never had to do so much as lift his tail, and he got back to the water.” Robert balled up the handkerchief, jammed it into his back pocket. “Fooled you, he did.”

Elise was swift now, jaunting over the lacquered beach stones, braids bouncing. Over her shoulder, she glared at Robert, eyes like slits. “That's dumb too,” she yelled. “Dumb and stupid. Gulls don't like dumb and stupid, Robert. I'll tell you that. They don't like it. Not one teeny bit.”

On the day of the garden party, Leander took a moment to appraise his creation. He held a weighty bowling pin, eyed its fat belly, slender neck, curving crown. He ran his fingers over the slick coat of black paint, the thick white strip, cunning sliver of red. The sides were flawlessly smooth, base with the precise amount of instability, this individual pin a near exact replica of its four brothers. When they clanked together time and time again (Robert being the pinboy), the sound of wood against wood was joyful.

“So, Harriet. What do you think of my handiwork?” A triumphant howl was the response.

Leander reached down, patted Harriet's head as she
nudged his leg encouragingly. Though he admired his work, it was with some sense of embarrassment, a tinge of shame over how perfect it was. He had a gift with wood, he knew, recognized the bowling pins as he and Harriet strolled through the forest, when the five were still locked inside the trunks of maple trees.

Gus would arrive any moment, and the two men would cart the works to the yard by the new schoolhouse. Leander had constructed two sets, turned the pins and balls on his lathe, built lanes complete with gutters. Prizes had been donated: a silvery thimble, small china dish, paper bag of trout flies, a miniature wooden jigsaw puzzle in the shape of a fish (Leander had made this as well), and a pair of tall glasses, ideal for beer.