The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (41 page)

What in God’s name Edward thought he was going to do to help fix Avis’s furnace, she’d never know. He couldn’t change a lightbulb without having a fit. There was always something to get in his way. The bulbs were too delicate, breaking in his hand, or the screwing mechanism didn’t work right, or something. He acted like the bulbs were purposely designed to make it hard for him, Edward Jensen.

He hadn’t wanted to let her come up here, even. But there was no way he was keeping her from coming. After Dad’s services in Connecticut, she was bound and determined to proceed up to Canada and see Dad get laid to rest next to Mother, these many years later. “I’m going all the way,” she’d said. “All the way!” Edward had finally closed his trap.

Idella looked around her. She was the only one left on the platform. It was miserable out, and she needed to pee. She turned her coat collar up and walked into the small wooden station. “I got my air,” she said as she closed the door behind her.

People were huddled in clumps with their coats and boots and hats still on. She could hear conversations hissing around her like steam from a roomful of kettles, everyone pondering what to do next.

Idella stamped the slush from her feet, adding to the dark puddles on the old wooden floor. She started to brush the pellets from off her coat before they melted and got the fur wet.

“Jesus, Della,” said Uncle Sam, “I never seen so much fur except on a bear. Have you, Guy?”

“No, I ain’t.” Uncle Guy stretched out his long legs and winked at Idella. “Unless it was on your backside, Sam.” They’d get on this bone together and gnaw it clean to help pass the time.

Uncle Sam and Uncle Guy had been teasing Idella about her fur coat ever since she got out of the car. Everyone had taken note of it and made little comments. You couldn’t have anything really nice without people acting like you didn’t deserve it, or had betrayed them, or were putting on airs. It was only squirrel, for God’s sake, and Idella had earned it, working in that airplane factory all during the war, standing in that line assembling parts. She’d earned it.

“Looks mighty wet, Idella,” Uncle Sam continued. “Give yourself a good shake.”

“Well, don’t shake that thing over here,” Guy said, his head rising up from the group and looking over.

Idella shook her coat off by the door and headed for the ladies’ room. It was empty, thank God. None of the stalls had toilet paper. It was a good thing she had some Kleenex in her purse. She stepped into a stall. The door had no lock. She sighed and pulled down her pants, bracing one elbow against her spread-out knees, holding the door shut with her other hand, and scooching over the cold toilet seat. There was no way she was going to sit down on that seat.

To get to the faucet, she had to step around pooled water on the cement floor. She slipped her hands quickly under the tap and out again. It was ice cold. The hot never worked in these places. She wiped her hands with a Kleenex and tucked the rest neatly into her pocketbook. She decided to put on lipstick. Her lips got so dry all the time, especially in the winter. She stretched her lips into two horizontal lines, spread them with color in the gray light, and smooshed them sideways over each other. There. She smacked her lips and gave herself a dim little smile in the mirror.

When she left the ladies’ room, she found Emma huddled in front of the woodstove. The Hillock girls were given the best seats. She fluttered her hands in front of the fire.

“The way I see it . . .” Uncle Sam’s voice rose up from behind Idella. He was speaking to the whole roomful of people, and everyone turned to listen. “Bill’s just taking his own sweet time to get here, following his own route. That’s his way. I say we wait over to the church and be ready to receive him. Let’s make the best of it for Bill.”

Idella looked over at Sam’s familiar face, so like Dad’s. There weren’t too many teeth left in his mouth now, but the sweetness came through when he smiled. He’d been a handsome man. People down here didn’t know much about caring for teeth. If you happened to get dealt a poor set, you just lived with them or pulled them out.

Mr. Farley, the stationmaster, shuffled over to the woodstove and stoked the fire. He moved from group to group, nodding and smiling. There were more people crowded into his little station today than since the war started and men headed out to go shoot the Germans. “You folks stay here as long as you want.” Mr. Farley was being a real host. He was a gentleman in his way. “I won’t close till the last one’s out. It’s an unusual time.”

Mr. Farley had helped Idella onto the train the day she left here to go down to the States, to get the hell out of here, nearly forty years ago. He’d shaken her hand, as if he knew something big was taking place, and wished her well on her journey. He’d used that word, “journey.” She’d been so scared and so determined, with no more than twenty dollars tucked in her shoe. Dad had gotten it from someone—Uncle Sam, probably—and given it to her right here at this station, just before she’d boarded. “Tell them you’ve got two hundred,” he’d told her. “When you get to the border. Two hundred.” Dad knew. He knew she had to go.

Now she was back, maybe for the last time. The farm’d stand empty for a while. Then someone would see a good thing and move on in. To people up here, that old house would look like a good thing. She wouldn’t be surprised if some of these relatives were feeling each other out right now as to who might be taking up residence.

Course, it’d all go to Dalton, legally. He was the oldest and the male. Nothing left for the sisters but what they might scrounge from the house, which was another way of saying nothing.

“Let’s head over to the church, then.” Emma stood up. “No use waiting for a train that won’t come.”

Idella joined her. “I could call down to Maine, see if Edward has heard anything.”

They stood side by side, staring into the flickering woodstove.

“Where in hell are they?” Emma asked.

Idella sighed. “The fools.”

“The goddamned fools.”

They pulled their coats tight about them, shaking their heads in unconscious unison.

 

“Where in hell are we?” Avis was squeezed into the middle of the front seat between Dalton and Stanley.

“There’s the one road and we’re on it,” Stan answered. “We’re nearly to Bangor.”

“Did I fall asleep?”

“Yep. You could call it that.”

“Christ. How long we been driving?”

“Going on eight hours.” Stan drove steadily through the darkness, the wipers of the hearse thumping back and forth like a steadily rocked chair.

“Storming the whole time?”

“Yep.”

“I feel like a puckered-up pea wedged between two stalks of corn. There’s no room for my legs.” Avis shifted herself around on the seat. “I’m numb. My ‘dairy-aire’ isn’t there.”

“Well, don’t put it here.” Dalton was slowly emerging from sleep. “Christ. My elbows is down behind my knees somewhere.” He stared dully out his window. “Jesus, Mother of God. What’s it doing out there?”

“Some of everything. Snowed from Boston to Portland. Rained near the coast. Few times it freezed and come down like pellets.”

“What a mess.” Avis stared out the windshield.

“Been that the whole time.”

“I don’t just mean the weather,” Avis said.

“Me neither,” Stan replied.

Dalton scraped his fingernail down his side window. “It’s all blurry.”

“Be blurred to you with the sun shining, the shape you two were in.” Stan’s long body was folded at sharp angles behind the wheel of the hearse. His neck was hunched over like a vulture’s, trying to see through the windshield.

“I assume we got Dad in the back?” Avis tried to turn her head and peer through the little window.

“Yep. We got Bill for ballast. Took four grown men to get him in there.”

“Was I one of ’em?” Dalton rubbed his eyes.

“Nope.”

“He said grown men, Dalton.”

“I’m grown.”

“I didn’t know which port you two were holed up in when I got to North Station. I thought I’d best get Bill in back so we wouldn’t drive off without him.”

“Were you waiting on us long?” Avis asked, looking over at Stan. The collar of his familiar flannel shirt was poking out around his neck. Avis knew he’d have suspenders on under his coat.

“Long enough to notice.”

“I’m sorry, Stan. We lost track of the time.”

“You lost track of everything. Do either of you remember me pulling you out of that bar at the station?”

“Not really.” Avis sighed.

Dalton shook his head, slowly taking stock of his position. “Can you drive this thing all the way up? You want I should take the wheel?”

“No use showing up with four bodies.” Stan glanced over at Dalton.

“Hell, they could bury us all and be done with it.” Avis laughed. “Emma and Della will be ready to string us up in the barn.”

Stan leaned even closer to the windshield. “I can’t see but what’s two inches in front of me.”

“That’d be your nose.” Avis snickered.

Stan laughed. “It’s good to have some company. Even the likes of you two.”

“Who but you, Stan, could come up with a hearse in the middle of a goddamned nor’easter?” Avis ran her hand over the front of the dashboard. MITCHELL’S FUNERAL HOME—GORHAM, MAINE was printed in gold letters across the leather.

“Promised Mitchell a well dug out back of his place come spring,” Stan said. “We’re counting on the Gorham population to remain steady for the next few days.”

“Here’s to the population of Gorham!” Avis rummaged into her purse to unearth a flask. “You want to drink to Gorham, Dalton?”

“I never liked Gorham.” Dalton reached for Avis’s bottle and took a drink.

“I promised Mitchell that every Hillock this side of the North Pole—and there’s a lot of them—would be obliged. Said we’d all throw our business his way when the time comes.”

“I’ll try to remember,” Dalton said, taking another drink. “When my time comes.”

They rode along without talking for a long while. The sounds of the storm filled up the car—splatters and taps and whining winds. Stan kept his attention riveted on the road. Avis and Dalton stared ahead, the wipers screeching to and fro in front of them.

“The old goat is dead.” Dalton’s voice was clear and unexpected.

Avis looked over at him. “You sound glad.”

“I can breathe. Never did when he was living.”

“You get the farm, you bastard.”

“That’ll change my life. Lording over that pile of wind and rock.”

“You inherit it all,” Avis said. “Being the only male.”

“The only male we know about.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s more than one Hillock walking that goes by the name of bastard. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them had French accents or Indian braids.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Hell, he probably didn’t know the half of them. Why do you think there was so many French girls come and gone so quick as housemaids?”

“They were dumb cows, is why.”

“Hell, if he’d kept his hands off Mother some of the time, instead of filling her with his stinking seed, maybe she wouldn’t of died birthing one.”

“That’s a fine way to refer to us. If they’d stopped with just you, things’d be a lot better, is that what you’re saying, Dalton?”

“Before that, even,” Dalton said softly.

“Seems like I was having more fun when you two were asleep. Maybe you’d best say nothing.”

 

“Any word yet, Idella?” Uncle Sam stood up in the pew as she walked into the church.

“Nothing. Dwight don’t answer. Edward don’t either. Just keeps ringing.” Idella had been trying to get through for almost an hour.

“The lines must be down,” Uncle Guy offered.

“It’s awful cackley, that’s true,” Idella said. “I don’t know what’s become of them.”

 

“Move over.” Avis elbowed Dalton.

“The only way I can move over is to open the door and fall out.”

“Well, go on, then. I can’t sit like this much longer.”

“If you’re so cramped, why don’t you go lay down in the back next to Dad?”

“Maybe I will.”

“I understand it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean.”

“I know what you think you mean, you half-assed son of a bitch, and it’s not true.”

“Quit yammering, the both of you. We’re coming into Houlton. We’ll get some coffee and try to call up there again and tell ’em we’ve got Bill.”

“I need to piddle,” Avis said.

“There’s a diner up ahead, by the look of it. Don’t look quite open or quite closed.” Stan slowly pulled the hearse up in front of the dimly lit restaurant. “One of them signs is lit anyway, and I see someone in there behind the counter.” He opened his door and climbed out. “Jesus God Almighty, that’s a tight fit.”

“It’s pissing down like a horse,” Dalton said as he stuck one long leg and then the other out of the car.

“Don’t let’s talk about pissing till I’ve done it,” Avis said from inside the car. “One of you is going to have to peel me out of here.”

“I preferred the snow,” Stan said, tugging Avis out of the car. “At least you can see it.”