Miss Elva (5 page)

Finding out that Gil wanted to leave Demerett Bridge that first time, leave behind, as Elva felt, the entire world as she’d come to know, startled her. The day had been grey with winter and began with the sharpness of a single shot ringing through still-sleeping white hills.

The boys had been unusually absent for days, and even though Elva thought she overheard Dom tell Gil that it was bound to happen and Gil replied angrily, Shut the fuck up, the idea that something was wrong still came as a surprise. Shortly after the gunshot, Gil passed through Kirchoffer Place carrying only a cloth sack, over trails of fresh snow that by day’s end, would
be dull with soot from the foundry chimneys. No sleigh. No Old Mickey.

Elva was at her window, keeping quiet to not wake Jane, and was using her fingers to draw pictures on the frosted glass. Hey, she said, not knowing if it was Gil or Dom, and wouldn’t until he spoke. She pulled on her coat and slipped down the stairs and out the front door.

“I’m heading south.”

So it was Gil. His dirty face was streaked with new tears he quickly brushed away. Thrusting out his jaw, he almost pulled off looking stoic. If he lowered his voice he sounded unafraid and maybe just a bit older. Then it didn’t sound so much like he was running away.

A rent in the distant sky spewed broken cloud and sun over the sea.

“Can I come?”

Overwhelmed that morning in his father’s old boots, an oversized coat hanging loosely past his knees, Gil shook his head.

“I’m going to Halifax. Maybe one day, even Toronto.”

A place with more people than Demerett Bridge was a concept too great for six-year-old Elva. The very notion of going somewhere as mythical as Toronto elevated the eleven-year-old Gil to manhood in her eyes.

“I’ll get work, and some day I’ll have a big house with a stable in the back. Just for horses.” He looked back in the direction of his home. Just for horses, he reiterated.

“Please, let me come?”

“No. No one can.”

Elva fell in stride and tried to keep pace.

“Why away?”

“Pappa wanted me to shoot Old Mickey and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. He said I was a coward and can’t stand the sight of me.”

That horse was legendary in Demerett Bridge. He’d been rescued from a rocky bluff near Chezzetcook Bay by Gil’s father after a steamer hit a sandbar. The horse survived the wreck and swam to nearby rocks accessible only by sea. When Alphonse finally managed to free the animal by tying it to his dory and pulling it into the water, it fought back so hard it almost drowned from exhaustion. The poor animal was so weak from hunger and shock that a bullet through the head was the humane thing. No one, especially Alphonse, could have reckoned on the persuasive powers of the Barthélemy brothers.

For weeks Gil and Dom nursed him, persevering beyond the hopes of the most stalwart of grown men, grudgingly winning the admiration of their hamlet and reclaiming the life of the horse. Old Mickey took his place in the household, and wherever Gil and Dom went, so too went the much-loved horse.

“He got the cough.” Gil fought to blink the tears back. “Said Old Mickey was my horse, more so than Dom’s because I spoke first to keep him. Said a man wouldn’t let an animal suffer.”

“Oh, Gil, you didn’t—”

“How could I? I never would, Elva! Dom did it. He’s a better shot. I guess I’m not much of a man.”

The last word was whispered, torn between the loss of a beloved pet and falling short of a father’s yardstick.

Elva knew there was only one thing to do. Running back to the house, she gathered her life into a Red Rose tea tin: three crayons, a broken mother-of-pearl clasp and a hanky Rilla gave her embroidered with Jane’s initial. Armed against the cold with a scarf and extra mittens, she hurried back. Elva slipped her hand into Gil’s, walking along in a winter silence, broken only by her occasional deep sigh, grieving for his loss. Kirchoffer Place was soon behind.

“You really can’t walk it, Elva. It’s too far for you.”

Yes I can.

But she was struggling with the deepening drifts. Gil put her on his shoulders and continued through snow-buried fields. The stacks of the foundry appeared and disappeared and the path meandered upward into the fir-covered powdery hills surrounding Ostrea Lake. Elva sang, making up the words because she didn’t like to know how a song ended, a chickadee’s voice cutting clear across long frozen shadows, holding at bay the wind that was struggling to shriek against their reddened ears.

“It’s not for Dom, the sea. He gets sick. I’m different. And I’m big for my age. I’ll sail somewhere where it’s always warm.”

“Won’t you miss them?”

“No one’ll even know I’m gone. All they care about is Dom. Oh, I don’t mind. He’s smarter and Maman is sure he’s called.”

“Called by who?”

“God. She says God wants him to do His work. I dunno. Never heard Him, I guess. Ever wonder what God sounds like?”

“I know!”

“No, you don’t. Maman says you can’t hear God ’cause you’re a mongrel bitch on account of your mom’s an Indian with no wedding ring and Amos is a drunkard.”

Elva’d have to ask Jane, when she was finished running away, what mongrel bitch and drunkard meant but she did know what God sounds like. The clasp was making a tinny banging noise in the tea box like an idea that had to get out.

It’s like when the wind curls itself and makes that hollow-shell sound, when you can lick the salt from the ocean off your face, when oat grass rattles before snow comes and winter gales bend it to the ground. That’s what God sounds like.

Gil was not to be convinced by a voice that did not speak with words or spoke to lesser beings like Elva.

They stopped by the tracing of a barn in stone, its wood long since rotted away. The sliver of sunlight over the sea was diminishing rapidly with the short day.

“It’s getting late.”

Elva said she was hungry and did he think they’d be in Halifax soon?

At first, Gil said nothing. His eyes were firmly fixed in the direction of home.

“I expect Dom’ll bury Old Mickey behind the stall.”

They huddled together out of the wind. Gil, being the son of a fisherman and thereby prepared for such an expedition, emptied his pockets. They feasted on saltwater taffy and root-cellar apples he’d secured for his flight to freedom.

“Say, it’s really dark.”

But Gil was somewhere else.

“I’m glad I’m a twin. Part of me gets to always be here.”

Gil sure wasn’t like other boys she knew. He was more, like, soft. Fancy nancy, Amos’d say.

“I’d never leave my mother and Jane.” The last of the taffy was slowly easing down the back of Elva’s throat. Oh yeah? That’s exactly what she was doing.

“Hey, look.” Gil stood.

Down the hill, towards the lake, a tiny orange light bouncing. Then another. Another. A dozen, maybe more.

“Can you hear that?”

Gee-ohm! Gee-ohm! No one called for Elva.

Although it was faint and far away, Elva could hear in the raw voice of Gil’s mother that she’d been calling for some time. Neither Gil nor Elva could know until
later that broken ice on the rivulet up behind Elva’s house had fuelled the worst of parental fears.

“Serves them right. Let them look,” said Gil.

It sure was getting cold. Gil wiped his nose on his coat sleeve and sat down. He tightened his arms about Elva, all of Demerett Bridge, the shimmering sea and the churning heavens beyond, resplendent at her feet.

Let her sister have Dom. How strong and comforting Gil’s arms felt. Like they belonged there. Like she had the right to them. For once, she didn’t want to be Jane. She said, I don’t care if no one’s looking for me. I’ll go to Halifax with you.
Like you said, serves them right.

But Gil wasn’t listening. Lights flickered on the horizon and he wondered where that ship was going. Probably somewhere really far where things like letters, if you wrote them, took months, maybe years, to get delivered. Then the reader would be much older than the words when they were written. Something could have even happened to the reader by then, and he’d never know.

“If I’m not there to help with the firewood, Dom’ll have to load it and sell it all by himself.”

Wood is heavy, Elva conceded.

The voices looking for them were carried the other way, out to sea. Silence. Only the wind now. Elva relaxed into Gil’s arms.

“Did you bring shoes?”

She shook her head, which was under his chin.

“What happens if your feet get wet?”

He had a point, even if he hadn’t brought extras for himself, and she was getting sleepy. Maybe they’d done enough running away for one day.

“That’s Rilla’s Sunday dress.”

Jane’s glowing skin was beaded with moisture from her bath, making the dress cling in patches to her body. Curls of wet hair stuck to her cheek as she danced about, saying Hotcha! Hotcha! to the music in her head, much too delighted at the prospect of a funeral.

“She won’t know unless some little mouse tells her.” Rilla was up with the birds that Saturday morning to return the clean laundry to the boys of Raven River. “Want me to go naked and shake my titties in front of Dom and Gil’s mother? It’ll be your fault if I go to jail.”

Elva didn’t think Jeanine Barthélemy would be happy to see the likes of them naked or otherwise. Hard piece of biscuit, that one. Jane rolled her eyes and shimmied to Charleston, Charleston … da, da, ta-da, da da da …

“Help me with these buttons.” Jane was pleased with what the mirror was doing.

“Amos will see it when we—”

“He’s sick in the shitter again. I warmed him some milk. And you’re not coming.”

Jane hummed some more, twirling in front of her reflection. Although not a proper funeral, it nonetheless felt sacrilegious to Elva for Jane to be dolling up for it.

“What if he drips on Father Cértain? You know. With blood?”

“Jesus Christ, Elva! The things in that knobby head of yours.”

Jesus Christ
was Jane’s latest rage because, as she announced with full solemnity in the privacy of the room she shared with Elva, God did not exist. So it was perfectly all right to use
Jesus Christ
like any ol’ word without fear of eternal damnation. As yet, that bold sentiment copied from screen flapper Joan Crawford hadn’t been echoed in front of Rilla. Elva knew what their mother’d have to say to that.

“Well, you won’t get close enough to see.” Jane turned her gaze out the window while brushing her waist-length shiny hair. “You can’t expect people to look at cripples at a funeral. It’s just hurtful when they feel bad enough. Plain church’s different. Being thankful it’s you and not them makes them put more money in the collection. Looks like there’ll be fog.”

“Gil’s
my
friend.”

Hadn’t that been the arrangement? Two brothers, so alike, Jane couldn’t possibly need or want to covet both. One for her, one for Elva. And Elva always assumed that Gil was her, well, friend, on account that he was the brother no one seemed to care about. More
so after the
Meghan Rose.
Only problem was, Jane never agreed to split them. Jane never agreed to anything that wasn’t completely in her favour.

“You’re nothing but a field mouse to him.”

She smiled condescendingly while Elva, sitting on the window seat, looked at the black pond across the road.

Like a festering old scab.

That tar pond was more accurately a meandering gallery of holes caulked with decades of effluent from the foundry. Nothing, unless you counted Jane and Elva, grew round it. Pools of rain formed on its surface, reflecting oily disembodied rainbows. Strong sea winds flung bits of it against the road. Rilla had long since given up trying to keep the front of the boarding house on Kirchoffer Place free from this windborne menace; she devoted her attentions to the patch garden behind the shed. But tar found its way even there. Flowers in the yard were rare, and if they did bloom, Amos didn’t want them stinking up the house.

Jane hated the ponds. The smell sickened her and made her feel dirty in the summer heat, a reminder that the south side of town was reserved for factories, the dead, and them. A bogeyman place where old people with their brains rotted out stumbled into quicksandlike tar ponds. Amos said, It’s a kindness to their families because they’d never get their wits back and who
wants to change shit-filled diapers on some eighty-three-year-old man who spits gibberish like a baby.

Just how many tar babies do you think are down there? Jane once asked Elva, fascinated with the idea of corpses being preserved forever.

That was the sort of folksy myth that kept you up all night worrying about keeping birds out of the begonias seventy years down the road. Elva didn’t know, didn’t want to think about that. Sometimes, on a moonlit, cloudless night, the stars reflected their way across the black surface as if the sky and earth had traded places. The ponds were kind of peaceful then. As though even in their corruption they had a reason. Still, there were times when Elva would find Jane by their window staring at them like an adversary. That could only be because of Buttons.

Elva couldn’t remember the dog. Mostly what she knew was cobbled together from what she pieced from Jane and from the wooden crate Jane kept hidden underneath her bed. Missing lettered slats, what remained had faded:
FL RIDA ORAN ES.
It was the one thing left of Buttons, the only tangible proof that Jane had a father and was therefore not, as Amos claimed, crapped into the street from the arse of a mule.

Oh yes, her real father used to buy her lots of fine things, and not just on birthdays! Jane swore she always had new dresses when her father was around, not like Amos, who made Rilla make do so that eventually
everything went from her to Jane to Elva to the rag bag. Buttons had been one such gift to Jane when she and Rilla lived on Breton Street.

Jane wanted to remember it as the house on Breton Street, posh like. Understandable, considering the landlord went by
Madam
and calculated her rent from the number of men who visited the women tenants. It was a walk-up that froze in the winter and droned with horseflies in the summer, spit-through walls and so leaky it couldn’t hold out a sun shower. Jane never knew the rooms could be let by the hour.