Downhill Chance (23 page)

“Leaving awful early, aren’t you?” said Willamena, standing puffy-eyed in the French doorway, her tone as accusing as Johnnie Regular’s wife, Rose’s.

“I don’t want to be late,” said Clair, brushing the crumbs off her mouth and pulling on her sweater.

“I suppose Luke kept you woke all night, did he?”

Clair shook her head.

“Umph, he kept me woke, then,” she muttered, shuffling along to the bin, taking down a teacup.

And Clair, driven by curiosity, asked most casually, “What’s—wrong with him, then?” as she did her buttons.

“Low-minded is what,” said Willamena, pouring tea. “He was with a fellow who shot hisself when they were youngsters and he got low-minded. Started having fits so he hid out in the woods so’s nobody could see him when they took. Now all he does is work in the woods all day and ramble about nighttime,” she grumbled, shuffling to the table.

“Does he still have them?”

“Who knows. He’s not home long enough for anybody to see.”

“Did he die?”

“Who?”

“The fellow that shot hisself.”

“He blowed his face off is all. Rather lose your face than your mind, I suppose, although you wouldn’t think so by the way they all praises Luke and shits on Gid.”

“Gid?”

“The fellow that shot hisself,” exclaimed Willamena crossly. “They was a family of no-goods that come here in a storm, but they moved to Corner Brook after the shooting. But you’d do well to leave off talking about it; the ones around here don’t like strangers snooping into their business.”

And for sure it ought to be school she was thinking about, thought Clair as she let herself out the door into the salty September morning and was besieged by a bunch of youngsters dawdling around the stoop, waiting for her. Partially reassured by their shy smiles, she allowed them to fight over who was going to hold her hand, and prancing by her side, they led her out onto the bank where the sea was washing noisily up over the shore, and the gulls were crying and gliding hungrily overhead.

“Mind you listens to your teacher!” a voice bawled out, raw with threat, and Clair glanced nervously as the old woman, Prude, appeared out of the shadow of the stagehead, her white braids coiled thickly around her head and her skirts flapping in the wind.

“We will, Gram!” said the smaller youngsters. “Go in the house, old woman,” muttered one of the older boys, Roddy, with the reddish brush cut, and Clair nodded politely, but Prude was already disappearing beneath the stagehead.

“She’s always under the stagehead,” said the boy Marty, same height as Roddy and as dark as Roddy was fair.

“Oh, yeah, she’s not, my son,” said Roddy.

“Yeah, she is,” said Marty, “every morning, anyways.”

“Saying her prayers to Joey,” said a younger one.

“You use the strap, miss?” asked Roddy.

“Hope not,” she replied.

“Might have to with them crowd,” said Marty, squinting towards a handful of youngsters strolling up from Lower Head.

“They’re always late,” said Roddy, fingering a rock that appeared to be itching his hand.

“Yeah, they’re always late!” chorused the younger ones.

“They’re not late this morning,” commented Clair.

“Better not put your head too close, miss; they got lice.”

“Shh,” Clair cautioned them. She squared her shoulders, alarmed at how faint her breathing was, and walked up over the bridge of the little white schoolhouse. Stepping in through its door, she took another deep breath, looking around the one room. The seats had been put back in neat little rows from the meeting the night before, and the potbellied stove, with its bucket of coals besides it, was highly polished, and the grey-painted floorboards cleanly swept. A small pile of books, a register and a bell sat tidied to the centre of the teacher’s desk, and a black leather strap hung besides the well-buffed blackboard. Someone had written Welcome, miss across the blackboard in large, gay lettering.

Shrieking and squirming, the youngsters clambered ahead of her, finding a seat of choice in the row designated for their grade level, and after much poking and giggling, they gradually quieted, looking to her as she took her place before the blackboard. She looked back, her mouth dry, and her legs beginning to quiver. What now, she asked, her heart beginning to pound, her mind as emptied as a church on Monday mornings.

Foolishness! she thought. Foolishness! They’re youngsters, no different from Missy when she used to read to her. And looking to the littlest in the farthest row, she asked in a voice that shook with nerves, “What’s your name?”

“Susie.”

“And yours?” she asked the next.

“Danny. Susie’s my sister.”

“And I’m Scottie, miss, and he’s my brother, Benny.”

“Yup, me and he’s brothers,” said Benny, “and we and them’s cousins.”

Thus it went, one after the other, the oldest being Roddy, son of Nate and Nora; second eldest, Marty, son of Beth and Calve; the curious brown eyes beneath the chopped-off bangs staring adoringly into her face, Frannie, Roddy’s sister; and so on till each pair of eyes staring at her became a name, and each name a family. And once they’d all been marked in the register, Clair raised her eyes over their heads, staring at some distant point in her mother’s kitchen, and announced in the same clear voice that she’d practised a thousand times with her father that there would be no lessons from their school books this morning, but rather a story about fairies and bluebells that she had learned from her younger sister, Missy, and after which some of them might like to stand before the teacher’s desk and tell her a story if they wished. The one who spoke the loudest and clearest would be given the bell to ring at recess, and this would be the way, then, that they would start all their mornings, with stories. Then, noting Willamena strolling by the front of the school, peering curiously in through the windows, “And our stories will be our secret,” she added most firmly, “so we can say whatever we wish and nobody will ever hear them but us, right here in this schoolhouse; do ye think ye can keep our stories a secret?”

“Yes, miss,” chorused the lot, and perching on the corner of her desk, Clair began her story.

Time moved, and within a blink, most of them were scattering out the door for recess and Nora was sauntering in through, shooing out young Frannie and the others loitering around their desks, cradling a cup of tea in her hands.

“Like I promised,” she said, laying the cup before Clair.

A cup of tea, thought Clair, no different from what her mother would make for Alma or those others coming for a visit. It struck her then, as she smiled her appreciation to Nora, that she wasn’t young Clair, Sare’s girl, any more, dallying with her cereal so’s to keep her spot at the table amidst the adult conversations or practising reading to her father from some far corner so’s she could make a grand teacher someday. She was now the teacher. Her heart expanded a little, as it had yesterday upon presenting Frankie with her pay to square off any debts owing; yet a sickening crept through her stomach, the same as she had felt upon seeing the first stain of menstrual blood upon her underwear. And as she had then, she sought to understand this new thing that had claimed her body and was now wrestling for her mind.

“The people feels bad about you having to leave the meeting yesterday,” Nora was saying, sitting on the seat nearest her, the crinkles around her eyes deepening as she smiled. “Most of us didn’t know you were coming—or Willamena—till the door opened. Anyways—” she raised her brow expressively “—whatever Frankie was trying to do in getting ye there, it never worked—you seen to that.”

“Me?” asked Clair, startled.

“Well, what you said about the five-year kitty sure struck a cord,” Nora grinned. “Frankie wouldn’t expecting that one. Anyways,” she said more seriously, “the people are proud to hear you thinks along the same lines as some of we about the merchant, and they wants you to know that you’re welcomed in their houses anytime you wants, and to let them know right away if their youngsters aren’t listening, and they’ll take the belt to them.”

“Oh—no—they’ve just been fine,” exclaimed Clair. “And tell them—the people—I’m grateful for them having me as their teacher.”

“They thinks it’s nice—having a woman teacher for a change. How are you finding it?”

Clair glanced around the room with an exaggerated shrug. “I never thought I’d be a teacher this week,” she said impulsively, then faltered.

Leaning forward, Nora touched one of her hands. “I pities the poor orphans born into the world without a mother and father,” she half whispered, “but my heart breaks for them that loses their mother so young. And may God have mercy on those that brings them more hurt by the carelessness of their tongues.”

Clair swallowed. “Was your brother talked about as well?” she asked.

The smile faded on Nora’s face, and Clair sat back, recognizing in its place a look akin to hers whenever others had asked after her poor father and her poor, poor mother, when it was their minds they wanted to know about, wanted to see deep down inside of, and pick and scratch and snip at whatever they deemed odd, improper or sick about it. And she had suffered their inquisitions the way a snail suffers the thousand incantations of youngsters playing on the beaches, to detach their jellied bodies from their protective shells and appear before them—that mountain of segmented parts luring them to their doom with sweetly crooning deceptions of their house being on fire and their children all alone. Sitting now, at her teacher’s desk, she wished a cure for her cursed tongue as this woman, Nora, with the warmth of her father’s eyes, was now set upon to suffer the same.

“I expect you’ve heard otherwise, but Luke’s as sound as any man or woman walking,” said Nora.

“No, no. I meant—I meant the one who went to war,” Clair said hastily.

Nora’s face reddened. Sitting back, she looked at Clair and spoke apologetically. “I expect we’re all guilty of listening to tongues wagging, despite our knowing that yarn gets stretched with every washing.” She rose, appearing slightly relieved as some of the younger ones started trailing back in.

“You’re doing fine, then? They’re listening?”

Clair nodded, rising along with her.

“That’s good, then,” said Nora, backing her way to the door. She paused, her foot on the stoop, a trace of her old warmth returning. “Just mind what the people says; they only keeps their door closed on account of the wind. And Frannie and the other girls are already fighting over who gets to name their dolly Clair,” and then she was gone, strolling back along the path leading past the woodpile.

The rest of the day passed with ease, and surprisingly, the rest of the week—even mealtimes with Willamena and Frankie on those rare occasions when Frankie took supper with them and wasn’t travelling around the island. And each time he returned, he always had much to say about the upcoming vote.

“The Confeds are painting a mighty fine picture, with their promises of old age pensions and family allowances and unemployment cheques,” he added one evening over baked mackerel and potato. “Plus all their talk of building new roads and wharves and opening up the island—yup, it’s a pretty picture.”

Willamena passed him a napkin that matched the yellow of the tablecloth and complimented the lamplight bronzing her face. “Nothing they haven’t had in Canada all this time,” she replied. “Still for all, it didn’t keep them from near starving to death back before the war. It was we, then, sending them fish, wouldn’t it? And there’s nobody starving around here, that’s for sure. Dad was saying last week how he could hardly keep up with the orders coming in for lumber.”

“That’s because of the war, not the government,” said Clair, and immediately took a long drink of water, wishing to wash away her words as Willamena turned to her, a thin veneer of a smile tarnishing the glow of lamplight.

“Where’d you hear that?” she asked. “I thought it was thieving merchants they blamed everything on.”

“Willamena’s still thinking the vote’s either for or agin her father,” said Frankie as Clair bent her head over her mackerel. “I hear you’ve been down Lower Head for dinner?”

And Clair, eager to bypass the merchant, was quick to relate the names of the people she’d met, and the good behaviour of the school youngsters; yet her one concern, she told them, was the Hurlys, who couldn’t get their boys to attend school and listen to a woman teacher.

“The Hurlys!” snorted Frankie. “They never listened to anybody in their life—what’s they going to start now for? Bar them out if they starts coming; they’re too big to be in school, anyway.”

“Listen to Frankie,” said Willamena, “I suppose they got as much right as anybody to get a education.”

“What for—so’s they can learn how to pile a cord of wood? Cripes, Willamena, they’re either going out in the boat, fishing, or in the woods, cutting; either way, it’s the broad of their backs that’s going to get them through life, not pencils and scribblers.”

“I suppose that’s for them to say—”

“Yup, and both the mister and missus had their say—at the meeting,” said Frankie, his ear cocking towards a dog’s yap outside. “Everyone was in agreement with Clair’s coming then, so there’ll be no more talk about it.”

“Where you going—wait for your tea,” said Willamena as he shoved back his chair, rising. “And don’t worry about him,” she added, rolling her eyes towards the door and the sound of the accordion starting up. “He’s been out there

every night this week, scrooping that box.”

“I’ll have it later,” said Frankie.

“Sir, you’re always running off,” cried Willamena, following him to the door, “and I got some gingersnaps made, too.”

“I’ll have one with tea.”

“Frankeee!”

“I’m just checking on the gear—I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Gear! Where you going—Frankie, you’re not going to Chouse agin—you just got home!”

“One night is all. You can come, if you wants,” said he impatiently as Willamena put herself between him and the door.

“Right, and spend the night with he in a bough-house.”

“Bough-whiffen—and we can make our own if you wants. And don’t mind her,” he said, tossing a grin to Clair as he moved Willamena aside. “She don’t like no one preaching for Confederation. Besides, she got it in for Luke ever since she got a fright once.”