Lily's Story (56 page)

Not every
evening did Ti-Jean stay with them after their supper was done,
though the boys made his periodic escape difficult. He had some
young friends in town (“a
girl
friend,” Robbie
breathed) or he had a book to finish reading in his refurbished
quarters. But sometimes he stayed on for a few moments after the
boys were ordered to bed to have a quiet cup of coffee with Lily.
As soon as they were alone, he became very shy, and only by gentle
questioning could Lily – knitting or sifting patches for her quilts
– get him to talk about himself. It wasn’t long before she learned
to their mutual surprise that although he was born and raised in
Woodston, his mother had come there from Sandwich in 1835. As a
girl she had known Maman LaRouche, a LaPeche like her and a second
cousin. Lily found it fascinating to hear of the Frenchman’s
exploits in the War of 1812 narrated once again, but this time
through a different set of filters. Maman herself came through as
lively and as special as she had been in real life. Lily added some
of her own favourite ‘Maman’ stories to the legend, the happier
ones, the ones she cherished. Lily and Ti-Jean lapsed so easily
into French that Lily was often unaware of it until some exotic
phrase momentarily jolted the flow of their evening-soft, embering
soliloquies. It was much later – and sandwiched between longer,
more reminiscent narratives – that Lily was able to piece together
his own story, and then only as a fragmented outline. His father
had come to the Huron Tract with John Galt and Tiger Dunlop. He was
a lusty primitive who lived for cutting trees and trekking miles
into the snow-bound bushlands of the county. Ti-Jean was the oldest
of eleven children, his mother wanted him to stay in school, he
wanted to stay in school but at thirteen he was side by side with
his father in a pinery. His father roughed him up on a whim or in a
whiskey rage, he slapped his wife when she dared to intervene, and
Ti-Jean, who was almost twenty and no longer
petit
,
blackened both of his father’s eyes, keeping him out of the bush
for a week, and his mother cried over her son and said she was
ashamed of him, so he left to seek his fortune out of the bush, on
the docks or the railroad or in a factory, he didn’t write and he
didn’t go home for Christmas. He would never go home
again.

“I
t’s a beautiful baby
girl with the sweetest big blue eyes I’ve ever seen,” Maudie said,
then flushed and looked at her tea.

“
When was it
born?” Lily asked.

“
Just before
Christmas. A few weeks late.”

“
Clara was
never one for bein’ on time,” Lily said and saw the puzzlement in
Maudie’s face. “I’m kiddin’,” she added. Maudie appeared to be
thrown into worse confusion, but after a strong dose of fresh tea
she recovered.

“
You need to
get into town more,” she said.

“
Sarnia’s a
long ways for me.”

“
You know I
mean the Point. Us. Our Wednesday afternoons.”

“
I know. I
don’t want you to ever feel I’m ungrateful. You an’ Garth saved my
life. I’ll come. Soon.”

“
Clara wants
desperately to see you, but she’s shy about bringin’ the baby out
here. She’d like you to come to the Christenin’ next
Sunday.”

Lily listened for a while to
Robbie barking his hopeless commands at Dick and Diamond, the team
of Belgians with a mind of their own. “I just can’t, Maudie. Not
yet.”

“
We
understand, we honestly do. But will you think about comin’ to the
wedding in March, then? We’re cookin’ up a shivaree.” Lily smiled
on cue. “You know Steve, Garth’s younger brother, an’ his girl
Elaine is just the sweetest thing you’d ever wanna
meet.”

Lily waited for the
codicil.

“’
Course,
she’s Baptist, but still an’ all –”

Ti-Jean let out an oak-rattling
whoop and the horses, chained logs, master and apprentices could be
heard moving through the woods towards the winding road that led
all the way to Sarnia.

Maudie dropped her voice
into a deeper, minor key, full of inescapable regret. Lily leaned
back. “You know, of course, it don’t mean nothin’ to me, or Garth
for that matter, but I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t
tell you what kind of ugly, disgustin’ gossip is goin’ around
town.”

“
Folks don’t
like me cuttin’ down the windbreak?”

Maudie skidded
a bit but got right back on the rails: “It’s
about...
him
.”

“
Who?”

“
You know who,
the Frenchie.”

“
Ti-Jean
Thériault?”

“
Lily, I’m
serious. I’m worried about your welfare even if you ain’t. You
gotta remember your boys’re gonna be in school next fall. Think of
them, for God’s sake.”

“
They like the
Frenchie.”

“
That ain’t
the point an’ you know it perfectly well. Folks are sayin’, out
loud mind you, that he’s livin’ out here, that he used to be seen
comin’ home from here every afternoon at a respectable hour but
after New Year’s he’s only been back to town three or four times.”
She cast a furtive glance towards the bedrooms, blushed, and
plunged into the mire: “People are wonderin’ just where he’s
hangin’ up his socks, if you get my meanin’.”

“
In the barn,”
Lily said. She followed Maudie’s gaze around to the window and out
across the drifts to where the smoke hung sweetly nicely above the
chimney-pipe Ti-Jean had rigged up. “Ain’t that where Frenchie’s
usually live?”

“
Thank the
Lord,” sighed Maudie, depleted and relieved. “I’ll spread the
word.” She finished her tea, took Lily by the hand and just
squeezed it. For some occasions even Maudie had no
words.

“
I
will
think about the weddin’,” Lily said and brushed her
friend’s forehead with a kiss. “By the way,” she added, handing
Maudie a package wrapped in tissue, “I made this little quilt for
the baby.”

T
he windbreak was
down. The west wind that blew over the village now continued across
the open fields and ruffled the shingles on the house where Lily
Marshall and her boys lived. All the logs had been taken to the
mill on Sarnia Bay. Ti-Jean received his pay. A wagonload of sawn
boards and joists arrived in the last week of February and were
stored in Benjamin’s stall until the first crack in the winter
weather. A few days later it thawed a bit, and Ti-Jean and his
helpers cleared the ground and drew the outlines of two coops in
the softening earth. Indoors, they sketched plans and Ti-Jean
explained the intricacies of squaring and gabling. The boys begged
to go with Ti-Jean into Sarnia to buy nails and two tack-hammers.
But Brad came down with a hacking cough, had to stay home, and
despite having made up his mind to sulk all day, he was delighted
to discover his mother could sing in French as well as that other
weird tongue. He fell asleep and when he woke she was sitting on
his bed.

Just as Ti-Jean and Robbie came
up the lane, the wind changed direction, slicing down unopposed
from the north-west. By the time they had their boots off, the snow
had started in earnest.

Robbie was exhausted. Lily
managed to get a little soup into Brad before he fell into a deep
slumber beside his brother. She drew the comforter lingeringly over
them. Ti-Jean was behind her in the doorway, watching. She kissed
each of her sons, and when she turned to slip out, Ti-Jean was no
longer there.

She found him in front of
the fire, propped on one elbow and staring into the flames,
enlivened by the storm swirling above them. On the window sills
fresh snow flowered. The room drew itself inward. Lily sat down on
the sheepskin next to Ti-Jean, then lay back, succumbing to the
languorous, sleepy heat of the fire already beginning to wane.
Ti-Jean slipped his sweater over his head – his skin rubbed copper
in the ebb of light. Behind her, the kitchen lamp sputtered, and
she felt the darkness against the calves of her legs, her bare
arms, the nape of her neck. Outside, the snow ceased, as if touched
by a wizard’s wand.

Ti-Jean rose up slowly dreamily
– his torso bent like a paladin’s shield, burnished and rippled
from splendid use, his eyes as bright as Lancelot’s might have been
above Guinevere’s sudden beauty. He leaned over, captured her wrist
and drew her up with him so they were standing together, only the
fold of their hands fluttering between the reach and yearn of their
bodies. His open hand folded around her waist, he eased her breast
against his, he launched her clasped hand outward with his, upward
like the wing of a revived bird, he was moving his legs against
hers, nudging urging coaxing them into sensual motion. They were
dancing. Hesitant, anapest, with no music but the song they were
singing – separately – in their loneliness. They were dancing, in a
circle no rounder than the moon’s on All Hallow’s Eve. His teeth
crushed her lips; she nipped his tongue with her own. A wave of
chilling air shot between them.

“
I got to go
home,” he said. “For a little while.”

Lily gathered her breath, some
strength and said, “Of course, you must. They been waitin’ a long
time for you.”

“
I’ll come
back.”

“
Don’t
promise.”

L
ily helped him pack
his few belongings. She was surprised to note that it was only
about eight o’clock. The wind had eased off and fresh snow
glittered as the moon sailed in and out of the thick clouds.
Ti-Jean said that there was a way-freight leaving for the north
from the rail-yards in about an hour. He knew the engineer; he
could be home by midnight. He was a long time in the boys’ bedroom,
though he did not wake them up to say goodbye. He held Lily again
at the door, and for a second neither of them was willing to admit
the impossibility of what they both desired. Then he turned and
left. He didn’t stop to wave, as he did with Lily’s
boys.

Lily fell exhausted into
Uncle Chester’s chair. Only the feeble glow from the spent fire
gave any relief to the gathering gloom. Before she lit the lamp
beside the quilting frame, she spoke into the darkness: “See what
you’ve done? See what you’ve brought me to? Why did you leave me,
Tom?”

20

When the snow stopped falling early in the
evening, it seemed providential to the roisterers at the wedding of
young Stevie Bacon and Elaine. The dining room of the Richmond
House had scarcely been able to contain such exuberant well-wishing
during the lengthy toasts and fractious dancing that followed.
Several carollers toppled out-of-doors into the alleys behind,
where they butted and boasted uproariously, making repeated use of
the goosedown drifts. Nevertheless, there was a hearty cheer when
the wind died and the moon intermittently winked their way again.
It was nearing ten o’clock and almost time for the bride-and-groom
to board the royal carriage and be whisked away to reconsummate
their passion in the snug bower prepared for them at the very end
of Victoria Street – where First Bush loomed and offered sanctuary
to conspirators. Conspiracy had been afoot for days, led by the
groom’s treacherous sibling, who had selected the brightest and the
best only to take up the roles in his shivaree. “Just give ’em
fifteen minutes,” Garth commanded with a fratricidal leer, “I know
my brother!” A special ‘theme’ had been chosen for the costumes and
musical score – wild creatures of the wood and tundra, a great
notion somewhere confounded, however, when ten of the fifteen elect
arrived wearing the ceremonial outfits of Blackfoot Indian Chiefs –
the kind of natives invented to meet the original expectations of
the first Europeans. But several pygmy-lie trolls, a diaphanous
jinn (female class), and a brownish bear of indistinct origins
served to vie the troupe-as-a-whole a more representative cast.
Tom-toms abounded as well as horns to simulate the sounds of Arcady
gone beserk.

The wedding-sleigh had no
sooner turned the corner at Edward Street when the revellers
emptied out of a dozen secret places of the Richmond House into the
vacant lot next door, where they hooted, admired, tested and
tumbled towards assembly. The bear ambled after one of the squaws,
licking her chin as if it were a honeycomb until she was, alas,
rescued. From The Queen’s livery stable across the street a
beer-wagon, devoid of barrels, came skidding behind the
bit-chomping fury of matched Percherons. The coachman had some
difficulty in checking their devotion long enough for the carousing
tribesmen to come aboard, but even the bear was pulled, rump-first,
into this racing, four-masted schooner of delight. The runners over
the snow sang in sibilants only; the wassailers tipped their flasks
starward and hugged and rehearsed the ages-old scenes of
carnivale
.

As prearranged, the sled was brought to a
halt a block away from the victim’s house. Garth Bacon,
straightening his eagle’s feathers, called for silence, then peered
ahead of him, looking at the ground in a puzzling manner that sent
an icy shiver rippling back through the crowd. “No tracks.” The
news was passed along in a sinking whisper. Garth came back from
his inspection of the house and peered disconsolately into the
faces agleam with war-paint and blazing, expectant eyes. “They sure
didn’t come here,” he said loudly. “There’s no sign of horses and
no footprints anywhere near the place. We’ve been hoodwinked.”
“Where in hell’d they go?” Much fruitless speculation here. Two
braves came to blows; no one noticed. Harvey Shawyer spoke up. “No
wonder my Bess was actin’ queer all day.” “Queerer than usual, you
mean.” “Shut up, Digger.” Harvey was the bride’s uncle by marriage.
“She blushed every time I mentioned Woodston for the last two
weeks.” “Woodston?” “Bess’s sister lives up there. An’ her
husband’s the engineer on the way-freight!” “An’ the way-freight
was sittin’ there, an hour late, waitin’ for them!” “Hoodwinked,”
Garth said, his regalia adroop. “C’mon, Mose, turn ’em around, we
still got a bit of the night left.”