Blasted (3 page)

My father had gone off on his annual freak-out back-to-nature thing, so we had the house to ourselves. Mom didn't have to tell me to keep the costume a secret from Gramma and Grandpa next door; she entered into the clandestine project with an enthusiasm almost equal to mine. I suppose her desperation with her in-laws had reached a fever pitch.

In Newfoundland, the Indians are, well, dead. There's a small native community, the Mi'kmaq, about which we learned precisely nothing in school or anywhere else. In my ignorance I knew simply that there had been Red Indians, and we had killed them all. All the Beothuks. And Shanawdithit had been the last one. I loved this story, would cry at night just thinking about it, until my pillow was soaked. I tried to imagine how she must have felt, being the last of her people. I knew I was the only one who really understood, the only one who felt her loss so deeply. I would wander up on the Hill, alone, imagining I was the last of the Beothuks searching for my people. Perhaps tuberculosis and guns and starvation hadn't killed them all. Perhaps they were still out there, somewhere, and if they knew you were to be trusted they'd show themselves. I would be the only one they'd come to, fellow-fugitives.

The image that haunted me most was Shanawdithit's head. Or, the lack thereof. We'd all grown up with the story that after she died of tuberculosis and was given a Christian burial, some white guys had cut off her head and pickled it in the interest of medical science. Some said that it was lost during one of the World Wars, en route to England. No one knew where it now lay: collecting dust in a museum basement, or gathering barnacles at the bottom of the North Atlantic. Myself, I knew that Shanawdithit still walked the Southside Hills near the monument marking the spot of her burial. I knew it, because I'd seen her.

It hadn't been a particularly special day, the day I had seen Shanawdithit. It was late in September, a month before I went out on my first Hallowe'en. Dad had already left the house, taken off on his trek over the Hill carrying nothing but the clothes on his back; this always made Mom irritable, and I guess I'd had about enough of it. He had left. He always left, he always came back. Couldn't she pay more attention to
me
? I was spiteful in the way that only ten-year-old girls can be: didn't like this, didn't like that, I hated the dinner she'd cooked, and finally she lost her temper entirely and said if I didn't eat it she'd send me up to my room. “Just try it!” I shrieked, and leapt off my chair and went rattling out the back door and up the Hill, just like my father. I'd show her.

The sun was slipping over the horizon; the air was rich with berries and growing things putting out their last effort before winter. As the light died, a chill wind cut into my left cheek from over the water. The cold wouldn't stop me; I'd go to my favourite place, the Fairy Rock.

I'd asked my parents and my grandparents why it was called that; their answers had been hopelessly vague. But I loved it there. I caught sight of it and its ring of small, broken stones. I ran toward it, ready for the way the wind always went still in that perfectly round shelter. I crested the ridge and skidded to a stop. Someone was there. Several someones, in fact. Women, dressed identically in white, with red coverings on their heads – scarves or hats, I couldn't tell. They had white shawls made of something lacy that shifted under my eyes. They hadn't seen me, or at least showed no sign of it; I sank to my knees, peering through bushes at them. They stood in a circle, just stood there, arms at their sides. The wind had fallen; it was quiet. Gradually they began to sway, back and forth. One of them raised her arms, and I almost cried out: her sleeves slid back, her limbs white bones. Then the light shifted and I saw that she had arms, ordinary arms like a person, raised up to the sky. She lowered them and then all of the figures began to move around the rock in a circle, shuffling from foot to foot. I'd been wrong – they weren't women at all – they were children, or small as children. Smaller even. They crouched as they shuffled and swayed, and disappeared, one by one, behind the rock. They didn't come out again. Soon only the one who'd raised her arms was left. She turned her head and looked at me, right through the bushes, and I knew she'd seen me all along. Her eyes black and flat as a night lake, she looked at me and then she, too, vanished behind the rock.

I crouched there waiting for her to come out again, but the sun was long gone and I shivered alone in the chill. At last, heart in mouth, I crept into the depression and approached the rock. I went around it carefully. Was there an opening into the earth I'd never seen before, a cave, even? My breath came faster; I parted the blueberry bushes, looking for an opening. There was none. The rock stuck firmly into the earth, unmovable.

Suddenly I was scared. It was getting dark and I was alone. No one knew where I was. A taste of metal flooded my mouth. I ran down the Hill, careened into the back yard and caught sight of my grandmother's cat Snow Puff, a nice cat who generously tolerated my caresses. I stopped quickly, knowing cats didn't like people running, and crouched down, offering her my hand. Snow Puff turned sideways, arched her back and hissed. She hissed again. I clucked,
puss-puss
, a sound I'd always used with her. She spat, spun around and ran away.

When I walked into the house, I could tell my mother had been crying.

She sent me to my room for the rest of the night.

Lying awake in the dark I thought: the Beothuk. Maybe they were Beothuk. That's how they'd disappeared like that. Red Indians could disappear in a way that seemed like magic, everyone knew that. I'd never heard of them wearing white lace, but I quickly dismissed this objection because I liked so very much the idea of having seen Shanawdithit. She'd looked at me before going away – she'd known who I was.

After that my fascination with Shanawdithit took a huge leap forward. I became, I suppose, obsessed. She was the perfect companion. I'd make up scenes in my head and imagine them over and over: me, accompanying a girl-child Shanawdithit through magic woods, we'd find the remaining Beothuks, dancing in circles under the full moon or a crazy yellow sun. They'd welcome me into their circle, take me underground, under the Mountain, the Southside Hill, into caves and tunnels I knew had to be there, and I'd stay there for ever and ever.

Strange thing, though: Snow Puff never let me touch her after that.

Another strange thing: like a flock of malevolent birds, all the other kids up and down the road knew what I was doing. My supposedly private imaginings, so precious to me, might as well have been published in the
Evening Telegram
.

So a month later, on that Hallowe'en when I showed up at Juanita's house in my little Beothuk outfit and the other kids converged to go trick-or-treating, they surrounded me.

“Ooooh, look at Ruby Jones.”

“Mommy let you out trick-or-treating this year?”

“My, my, Ruby, aren't you the prettiest thing under the sky!”

“You're not allowed any candy, because
your
family don't give any out, so there.”

“Indian!”

“Freak!”

“Ruby stinks!”

This last from Eddy, an overgrown hulk of a fellow; what he lacked in originality he made up for in brutality. He grabbed my homemade bow and started running around the yard, clapping his hand over his mouth and hooting, his breath coming out in smoky puffs, distress signals in the frosty air.

“Hoo, hoo, hoo!”

Soon the other kids joined in. “Hoo, hoo, hoo!”

“Give it back!”

“Whaa, whaa, whaa!”

“Give it
back.
” I made a grab for the bow. Eddy held it out of my reach, and laughed. I tried to hit him. Another kid grabbed a feather from my hair, removing a good deal of hair in the process. Much laughter. “Oooh, did we hurt you, Shanawdithit?”

“Come on, let's just go trick-or-treating, okay?” It scared me, the way they used that name.

“I don't think we want to go with a dead old Indian!”

“Shut up!”

“Who's your best friend, Ruby?”

“Yeah, who's your best friend?”

“Juanita,” I said, turning desperately to her. She backed away from me, laughing.

“Oh, no.” Her eyes darted around the group. “Ruby's best friend is Shanawdithit!” She opened her mouth wide to laugh. They all joined in. I looked at her with hatred.

They broke my bow, scattered my arrows and took all my feathers, pinned me to the ground and kicked me for a while. Then Juanita, feeling guilty perhaps, came up with an excuse to lure them all away. I crept home but I didn't go inside, sick at the thought of facing my mother: I had let her down. Instead, I hid shivering in the shadows until a reasonable amount of time went by, then told Mom I'd had a good time but someone had stolen my candy. I don't know if she believed me, but she didn't ask any questions. I was afraid my grandparents would see me and know my mother and I had broken the Hallowe'en ban. I needn't have worried; their blinds were drawn and their lights were off, just like every year. Just like someone had died.

The next week, everywhere I went – at school, along the road, at the store – I heard kids whisper.
Shanawdithit, Shanawdithit
they'd hiss, until I could've screamed. I stopped eating, and dragged around, and had to stand in the corner at school almost every day for “daydreaming in class.”

One day the teacher read out Newfoundland poetry to us. Little rhyming ditties, most of it, arr-me-hearties stuff about fish-flakes. Like we cared. And then the worst happened. She said, “This next poem is about the last of the Beothuks, Shanawdithit.” I raised horrified eyes to her face. She looked sad and a little misty, struck anew by the tragedy of the Beothuks' passing from this world, but her expression changed when, a second later, the entire class roared with laughter. I put my head down on the desk and prayed for death.

“What's so funny, class?” The laughter grew hysterical. At last the teacher brought out her Field Marshall persona and they shut up. Then she read out the poem, her voice hard now, eyes darting over the top of the book.

It was an awful poem. Even at the age of ten I could tell. Looking back, I think it was a sort of love poem motivated by white guilt and repressed lust. At the time I only knew that God wasn't going to grant my wish. I wasn't going to die. I was going to stay alive and suffer, my whole body burning with shame.

And suddenly I felt very angry.

And then I had an idea.

I had to do something so bad, so shocking, so callous, it would amaze even Eddy.

Now, I knew this wouldn't be easy. Eddy's latest stunt had been to burn a derelict CN shed to the ground. Every kid up and down the Southside Road had been party to small acts of vandalism and violence; this would be a tough crowd to please. But I knew my target: the monument down the road. I had to put a dent in that thing, in Shanawdithit, a dent that would endure. By the end of the poem I could see the monument in my mind's eye, and I knew what to do.

At dinner time I approached the Southside group of kids. We usually hung out together, shunned by those from more affluent parts of town. Sometimes we'd mingle with kids from Fort Amherst, so far down the road it was practically a different continent, or even the ones from the Brow, the top of the Hill; that was a
really
terrifying place. Today it was just the Southsiders in the parking lot, scuffling around. I sauntered up, my hands in my pockets, braced inside.

“How'd you like that poem, Ruby?”

“Yeah, did you write that poem?”

“Yeah, did you write it?”

I spat on the ground. It was a sunny day, painfully bright, and their faces bleached white in the light, their eyes black slits. I faced them.

“It was stupid.”

“What, you're calling your
self
stupid?”

They jeered for a while, but I just stood there, looking at them. Finally the taunts died down. This was my moment.

“I got an idea.”

“Oh, Stupid has an idea!” said a little squirt of a girl, but they ignored her. They recognized trouble brewing.

I told them. We arranged to meet after supper. The bell rang; we trooped inside full of excitement. Or, at least, they were excited. I felt as though I was being tossed inside a crushing big wave.

My mother and I had supper that evening with the back door open to the dark eastern sky, to the Hill. I knew she was hoping Dad would come home, but we didn't talk about that; we never did. After helping with the dishes I pretended to read in my room until I heard Mom climb the stairs.

“Brush your teeth. Goodnight,” she said through the door. I'd recently instituted a strict privacy rule about my room.

“Okay,” I called back.

The floor creaked in the hall and I thought she'd walked away, but then, “Ruby?”

“What?” I turned and faced the door, expecting her to come in, wondering if I was in trouble – had she read my mind about tonight? – if she came in, I'd grab the moral high ground, getting mad about her breach of the privacy rule. But she didn't touch my door.

“Never mind,” she said at last. “Sweet dreams.”

I listened to water running in the bathroom, her footsteps coming back down the hall, the click of the light going on in her room. I slipped down the hall to the bathroom and noisily brushed my teeth, having learned from hard experience that her mother's radar would know if I hadn't. I went back to my room, and waited until I heard her bedroom door click shut.

Then, quiet as could be, I changed into dark clothing and crept down into my Dad's basement workshop. I found a hammer, a chisel and a heavy wrench. I slipped out the back door and ran all the way to Shanawdithit. At first it looked like no one else was there, and my heart sank. A shadow detached itself from the monument. I jumped, then realized it was Juanita.