Kit's Law (7 page)

“Heh, me darlin’,” she said, so low that it might have been the wind whispering. “I’m not one for pretty words, but it was a blessed evenin’ the day that you were born, ’cuz the shack’s been warmed ever since—even though I knows the cold you feels sometimes.”

The berries rolled onto the ground and I turned my face from Nan’s as I tried to pick them back up.

“Do you want your tea?” I asked.

“There’s a girl,” Nan said, sitting back on her rear, and splaying her black-stockinged legs out in front of her like two rounded stovepipes. “You got me maudlin, you have. Now, go stand on them rocks and see where Jose is. Heh, I dare say she’s tucked into a sod, havin’ a nap by now. Be the Jesus, she’s not one for work, heh?”

Josie was nowhere to be seen. I scampered around several more mounds, calling out her name and searching over the barrens. Nothing. I heard Nan bawling out something and I turned back. Climbing on top of the knoll where I had last seen Josie, I saw Nan standing on the edge of the cliff, her fists raised and flailing through the air, the wind breaking her screams and tossing them thither. I stood for a minute, a sickness creeping through my stomach. Then Nan started running back to where we had left our backpacks. Only it wasn’t a backpack that she was reaching for, but the rifle. Turning, she ran towards the edge of the cliff again, her body loping from side to side as she thrust her heavy frame forward. Then I was running, too.

“Get the hell’s flames back, Kit!” Nan hollered as I come up behind her on the edge of the cliff. Roaring out Josie’s name, she pointed the gun down to the beach and fired. I shoved myself in front of her and stared in horror as Josie, cuddling up to Shine on a log besides a bonfire, dropped the liquor jug that she was holding to her mouth and, scrabbling to her feet, started running up the beach. Shine come to his feet behind her, a stream of blood running down his face from where Nan’s bullet had winged him, and railed his fists up towards Nan.

Bang! Another shot fired out from besides me and Shine leaped backwards as the bullet slammed into the rocks beneath his feet. Then he was running down the opposite end of the beach from Josie.

“Run, you bastard!” Nan screamed, firing off another shot, this time at a punt that was pulled up alongside and must have been Shine’s. It jumped as the bullet rammed into its side, and Shine come running back into sight, swinging his fist up at Nan, and trying to push his boat off from shore. Another bang, and a piece of the rudder splintered beneath Shine’s hand, and Shine, his roars broken on the wind, cursed Nan to hell before scrabbling out of sight down the beach again, blood dripping from his face and fingers.

“Get everything together, Kit,” Nan sung out, swinging herself back to the backpacks. “There’s no tellin’ what that bastard’ll do next.”

“What about Josie?” I asked, hurrying after her.

“She’ll make her way home along the beach,” Nan said. “There’ll be no catchin’ her on this day.”

“S’pose the tide comes in.”

“Then she’ll have to swim alongside the cliffs, and it’ll be one bleedin’, bloody lesson she won’t forget for a song.”

Tossing a backpack on my back, and picking up the buckets with their bottoms scarcely covered with berries, I chased through the woods after Nan.

J
OSIE’S
B
ATH

I
T WAS AROUND TWO IN THE AFTERNOON
when we got home. There was no sign of Josie. Nan paced back and forth, back and forth across the kitchen, stopping every so often to rest her elbows on the windowsill and look through the window down over the gully. Then she’d sit back in the rocking chair and rock, her arms folded across her breasts, and a deep scowl etched across her brow. I picked the few berries clean that we had brought back, and stewed them in a dipper on the stove, checking out the window myself at the slightest sound made by the wind or by Pirate. “We’ll give her another twenty minutes,” Nan finally said, coming to her feet and crossing over to look through the window, again. “If she’s not back by then, you’ll have to run for Old Joe, Kit, and tell ’em to come over in his boat, I wants him. And you don’t tell nobody what it is we wants with him,” Nan ordered, pointing a warning finger my way. “They got enough dirt on us to wag their tongues about, they don’t need more. Especially the shootin’,” she added, walking back to the rocking chair and sitting back down. “That’s just what the Reverend Ropson needs, be Jesus, a reason to bring the law on us. Then it won’t be just you and your mother he’ll be tryin’ to poke away somewheres, but me too. And that’s where I’d shoot him dead, swear to God.”

The door suddenly thrust open and Josie was standing there, her hair a wind-tangled heap around her muddied face, and her clothes soaked from the waist down. Nan come to her feet, but before she had chance to open her mouth, Josie was stomping past her, down the hallway to her room.

I shut the door behind her, wrinkling my nose. There was always a smell that come off her, like the smell of rotting dogberries after they had dropped and laid fermenting over time. And it was always strongest when she came back from being with her men friends. Today, mixed with the smell of moonshine and saltwater, it smelled worse.

“What’re you wrinklin’ your nose, at?” Nan demanded.

“She stinks,” I muttered, going over to the stove, not thinking to take a look at Nan before speaking. A blast of air swiped across my face as Nan reared her face before mine and let go with the spite she had been saving for Josie.

“Stinks! Oh, she stinks do she, Miss High and Mighty Sweet Smellin’ Kit Pitman!”

“That’s what May Eveleigh says,” I whimpered, backing away.

“May Eveleigh says?! Who says May Eveleigh says?”

“Margaret said she says.”

“Haa! Back to Margaret, agin, is we? That brazen little bitch!”

Then Nan went into a fit as ever I’d seen. Snatching the poker from behind the stove, she stoked up the fire, cursing and swearing, and then dragged the wooden wash tub out from the back room and kicked it up the hall to the middle of the kitchen floor. Emptying the kettle of hot water into it, and dipping out what was left in the hot-water tank on the side of the stove, she stalked, still cursing and swearing, to the hallway and bawled out Josie’s name. Josie yanked open her room door, still wearing her wet clothes, and stood glaring down the hallway at Nan.

“Come here!” Nan roared.

“I won’t come here, you come here,” Josie roared back, stomping up the hall into the kitchen. Then all hell broke loose.

“You’ll come here like I tells you,” Nan bawled out, catching Josie by the arm and dragging her, kicking and barking, towards the tub of steaming hot water. “Be the Jesus, it’s a God-given right to be clean, but He left it for we to do some of the work,” Nan ranted, ripping open the front of Josie’s blouse and sending the buttons spinning through the air like ice pellets.

“Who’s clean? You’s clean! Stop, stop!” Josie yelled.

“I’ll stop when I’s finished,” Nan yelled back, hauling the blouse off Josie’s back, and raking the straps of her slip down over her arms. Gripping her by the bare shoulders, she shoved her to her knees by the side of the tub and I was reminded of Mary Magdalene at the Altar of Benediction, weeping over Jesus’ feet and then wiping them dry with her hair. Only there were no humbling tears on Josie’s face as Nan snatched up handfuls of her thick, matted strands and shoved Josie’s head into the soapy water—just bubbles, burbling up to mix with the rest of the suds. Pulling her head back up, Nan slouzed the cloth across her face and down the broad of her back and beyond, scrubbing with the same vigour she used on dirty socks, lathered in lye and splayed across the front of the scrub board.

Gripping onto the edge of the tub, Josie screwed up her face and cried like a baby. Still Nan kept scrubbing. When finally she was done, Josie got to her feet and tandered down the hall to her room, her body redder than a cooked beet.

“You’ll be next, young martle, if you goes puttin’ on airs around here,” Nan threatened, pointing the dripping wet rag at me as I inched my way after Josie. “She might be a tramp, but she’s better than them that made her so, for it’s a damn sight easier to clean the rot off a crotch than the shame off a dirtied soul. Think about that before you starts hangin’ your head before the likes of Margaret Eveleigh.” She took a threatening step my way, and without losing a precious second I tore off to my room and slammed the door.

The next morning I got up, but Nan didn’t. Inching open her room door, I peered inside and turned to stone. She was lying with the back of her head on her pillow, her eyes rolled back in her head, and her mouth dropped open like she was about to sing out to one of us when God took her. I slumped against the wall and crouched down to the floor. I couldn’t see her face from here, only the bottoms of her feet sticking out from beneath the blanket—greyish white, the creases caked white with dried dead skin, and her toenails, thick and yellowed, curling back over the pads of her toes. Josie come thumping down the hall, and catching sight of Nan’s face through the doorway, she poked her head inside for a closer look. Then she walked over to the bed. Staring hard at Nan’s face, she reached out and slapped her.

“You wake up!” She slapped, again. “Wake up!”

“She’s dead!” I said weakly, the words sounding as though they were coming from someone else’s mouth.

“Who’s dead? She’s not dead. Wake up!”

Leaping to my feet, I grabbed hold of her arm as she went to hit Nan again.

“She’s dead!” I half yelled. “See her eyes? You don’t sleep with your eyes open.”

She stared at Nan’s eyes, then pushed me back and poked at them with her fingers.

“Stop it!” I shrieked.

“You stop it! You stop it! What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do nothin’!”

“You did! Yes you did! Stop it! Stop it!” She fought against me as I tried to hold onto her hands. Then she drew back and struck me a stunning blow to the face. When my head cleared, she was gone. I ran to the door, then stopped and dropped onto the stoop. There would be no catching her on this day. And what would I be wanting her for anyway?

I don’t know how long I sat there. Seagulls cried. The wind gusted. But I only saw dead! Nan, dead! The gully, dead! Nan, dead! The first snow fluttered around my feet like ripped lace. And still I sat, thinking nothing, feeling nothing. Doctor Hodgins pulled up by the side of the road in his car with Josie sitting besides him. She slammed out of the car and tore down over the bank and inside the house. Doctor Hodgins came hurrying behind her, the wind tugging his tufts of hair, and Josie’s frenzy quickening his step. He paused besides me, my frozen state mirroring that of Nan’s, and laying a hand gently on my head, he hastened inside at the sound of Josie slapping Nan.

“You can’t wake her, Josie,” I heard him say. There was a shuffling as he tried to hold her back. Then she was barking and shrieking, followed by a thump as he must’ve got her up against a wall. Then she was charging out through the door, her hand jamming my head against the side of the door jamb as she climbed past me and ran down the gully. She didn’t go far, just to the other side. Then she squatted down and stared back at me as I stayed sitting on the stoop.

Slowly, her body began to rock—back and forth, back and forth—and a hard moaning started coming from her. Her hair slipped further and further forward as she rocked, till her face was screened by a curtain of red. Still she rocked. It felt like every inch of her soul was thrown into that moaning and rocking, and as I watched, I felt my head nodding too. And then the snow was swirling around her, and the rocks, and the brook, till it seemed like the whole gully was rocking and moaning alongside of her and alongside of me. Tears swelled in my eyes and I felt Doctor Hodgins sit down besides me as great wrenching sobs heaved out of my chest. And if it weren’t for his hands holding onto my shoulders, I believe I would’ve sobbed my soul into heaven that day, leaving behind a sack of skin and bones as dry as the skin coating Nan’s feet.

M
RS.
R
OPSON’S
D
UTY

D
OCTOR
H
ODGINS LAID
N
AN OUT
in the church to keep Josie from slapping at her face. He wanted to take us into his home, but his wife, sick with tuberculosis for all these years, was worsening. So he had Aunt Drucie come stay with us until after the funeral. What with her never having youngsters, and her husband sinking through a bog hole and drowning ten years ago, she had no one to stay home for. Plus, she was the closest to us, her house being halfway between the gully and Haire’s Hollow. I didn’t mind her coming too much. She’d had the sleeping sickness for some years now and spent most of her time napping on the daybed, or slouched back in Nan’s rocker, dozing. Josie wasn’t home long enough to notice who was staying with us. Since the day of Nan’s passing she hardly spoke to me, except to yell and then run off down the gully. On the day of the burial, Doctor Hodgins went looking for her. I sat at the table, wearing my new red shift that Nan had brought from May Eveleigh’s store and had hid away in her room for me for Christmas. Aunt Drucie sat across from me, her green veiled hat pinned a little crookedly on her head, and her eyes and nose red from bawling.

“I don’t know what’s goin’ to happen to ye, Kit,” she sniffled. “You and your poor mother. The reverend’s all for sendin’ you off to the orphanage in St. John’s, but Doc Hodgins won’t stand for it and is figurin’ on askin’ me to come servin’ for you. You knows I’d do it; she was my best friend, Lizzy was.” Aunt Drucie broke down sobbing again, wiping her nose with a scrap of white, wrinkled cotton she had hemmed around for a handkerchief. “And too, we’re family, no different than if I raised ye, meself.” Blowing her nose, she reached across the table and patted my hand. “Would you want that, Kit—Aunt Drucie to come look after ye?”

I nodded, as I did to everything asked of me the past days, my heart too laden to do much of anything else.