Miss Elva (7 page)

No one intended to climb the tree. It just happened. Gil and Dom were up the limbs of the towering
dead elm, like monkeys, in a heartbeat. C’mon, Jane! dared Gil.

The tree bordered the Barthélemy property, and the boys had been forbidden to climb it as their neighbour wasn’t partial to having Frenchies on his land, or over it, as the case may be. Said he’d shoot them like turkeys if he caught them and no law in the land would fault him for doing it. But you could see into Mr. Dorion’s upstairs windows from high up that tree, and Gil and Dom were at the age when they thought seeing Mrs. Dorion in her girdle would be sensational, without understanding why.

Bet she can’t climb it, Gil had taunted. Dom said, Of course she can, even if she is just a girl. That was all Jane needed to hear. Her shoes scuffing against the bark, her clenched teeth holding back her breath, she worked her way up from branch to branch, snaking around the trunk. See, I told you I can do it! Good, Jane, good!

Elva shielded her eyes from the sun. Oh, to be old enough to climb trees! Then,
snap, kerr-ack!
Jane free-falling without a word, the sound she made when she parachuted into the wild rugosa that coiled up against the fence would forever haunt Elva.

Gil and Dom were down that tree fast, like maybe they’d fallen as well. She’s dead and it’s your fault, Dom said. Elva remembered it as strange, seeing the brothers fight, like watching yourself fight yourself. She didn’t
know who to cheer for. Dom threw first, and Gil said, Hey, cut it out! His brother charged, but Gil was always the stronger of the two and hit back. Dom was not to be bested and surprised his brother with a slap to his face that instantly gave him a bloody nose and would later add a purple aura around his left eye. Gil went down. Dom stood over him, breathing hard, madder than anything.

Elva started to cry. Jane wasn’t moving, but she did look grand framed in rugosa. It didn’t even look like she was breathing. Dom knelt beside her, desperate to do something but afraid to even touch her hand. She was white, like she’d gotten into Rilla’s flour box. Elva wailed that Jane was dead, but really she was only winded. By suppertime she’d be pink because Rilla had to paint Jane top to bottom in calamine lotion on account of the poison ivy in amongst the blooms.

“You knew he’s back?” Jeanine’s attentions were swept off Jane when Gil and a tall, pale young man, a shock of purple on the side of his face, stepped into the open.

Dom stared at his brother blankly. “No. I—No!”

The widow shook off Dom’s arm. “I prayed to God never to see him again.”

Gil looked at his feet, and there was Major. The dog was still dripping from a drink in the fountain. Jane was scrutinizing the other young man, who didn’t seem to know what to do. Elva thought this would be a great
time to turn into a butterfly and flutter away over the coming fog to her fields of grass.

“How can you share one face, one mother, and be so different? I’ve got one good … one good son left.”

Dom took hold of his mother.

“God’s granted me that.”

“Let’s go,” the good son said.

“You stay away, girl,” Jeanine hurled towards Jane.

Elva was pretty sure that Gil then said, Jane’s just being kind, her coming here. Jane, when they talked about the funeral later at home, said it was Dom. Jane was certain of that. Dom, and not Gil, had stood up for her.

“The rest of you, skedaddle,” John said as he packed up his tools.

That’s when Jane knelt beside the freshly filled grave and did a very peculiar thing. From her pocket she retrieved a flattened bouquet of mayflowers and placed them gently.

Elva sensed Gil’s friend standing very close to her. He made her nervous. That’s the worst state for you to be in, Rilla always said of Elva. Makes your mouth run on without thinking.

“That’s because Mr. Barthélemy killed her dog for her,” Elva explained very lowly so only he’d hear, but of course, he’d not know anything about that.

Gil was beside Jane, staring at his hands. She got up without help, dusted off her knees.

“Fuck, it’s been five years.”

“What did you expect?”

“I dunno.”

“Did you think she was going to say it’s okay? Gil? You did, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

From the silence that followed, Elva assumed that Jane herself believed Gil had a part in the death of his father, but she was mistaken. Jane didn’t care.

John chased them out then so he could lock the gates. Fog was blowing in quickly now, like smoke from farmers’ frost fires set to keep warm fragile apple blossoms. It would be worse than walking home at night when at least the lights of Kirchoffer Place from across the tar ponds acted as beacons.

Outside the gates the clock fixer said, “Give your mother a few days, then try and talk to her again.”

Everyone stopped, Jane and Elva waiting for someone to finally say who the hell this guy was.

Gil gestured. “This is just Oak.”

“Hello, Just Oak,” Jane said.

Elva wondered if the cut on his face hurt, but that was too familiar a question and they’d just met.

“It won’t do any good,” Gil said, oblivious to Oak’s apparent awkwardness. “Maman’ll never change.”

Nothing newsworthy about the Barthélemys’ religious convictions, as far as Jane and Elva were concerned. They were Catholics, like Rilla, although Rilla
was a lot more quiet about her beliefs, probably on account of Amos not being partial to papist mumbo-jumbo.

Gil once told the girls about a Sunday school his mother had made him and Dom attend and a Grey Nun in a wimple who made him toss out the daisies and day lilies he’d picked for her because she said they had bugs. He hadn’t cared for Sunday school after that. The nun’s lesson that particular morning was about sin and souls, and she drew a large circle on the board. The class of boys fidgeted, wishing they were stoning the whale that had washed up on the beach overnight, as Sister filled her circle in with chalk.

When you tell a lie then a hole appears in your soul, the nun explained when at very long last she was done with the art portion of the lecture. She wiped a hole in the chalk, and the blackboard underneath stained her carefully coloured-in white soul. Only God’s grace through confession and penance and Communion can make it pure again. And God help you if you die with any of those black holes still on your soul. Apparently souls with holes sink to hell rather than float up to heaven.

Jeanine Barthélemy concurred and threatened Gil, without much result, that he should be more like Dom or his back talking and wanderlust would send him to the bottom of Chezzetcook Bay, fish swimming through the great big holes in his soul. Eternity at the bottom of the sea.

Dom was the floater in the family. Everyone said so. Nothing was going to mark the purity of that boy’s soul. Always by Father Cértain’s side serving Mass, not like Gil, who’d skive off to muck out stalls for a few coppers, even dig that pit for Amos when Elva’s father needed to move the shitter. Anything but go to church. Sure, he’d catch it from his father afterwards, but like he said to Dom, The whipping’s over soon enough and I still got the money.

So when Jeanine started saying that Dom would be her offering back to God, her priest-in-the-family, her desperate way of winning back favour against the Barthélemy litany of woes, it was generally accepted by faithful Christians in town. And so far, so good. Dom was as true as any mother could hope for a son to be. He put out the texts at Sunday school and picked them up at the end of lessons. In winter, he hiked over frozen Ostrea Lake from Chezzetcook Bay to tend the church furnace so old ladies with blue hair didn’t get matching faces and fingers at first Mass. Dom studied hard and worked even harder supporting the family after his father’s accident.

For every inch of bad in that boy, Jeanine liked to say about Gil, his brother had a yard of the Blessed in him.

Gil was making light of strangling himself with an imaginary clerical collar, saying Dom was a mommie’s boy, but no one could see much in the fog.

Elva wanted to know if anyone asked Dom if he wanted to be a priest. She thought she heard something like a chuckle from that Oak fellow. Jane said, Shut up.

The fog had thickly set, and the dull, monotonous horns in the harbour were resounding in sequence. Elva was shivering. No one was moving. Where to now? Major sniffed, running in and out of them on the hunt for moles.

“Hey, Jane, your old man still taking in boarders? Would he take me? And Oak here?”

In Jane’s opinion, Amos would truck with Lucifer if he could cough up coin of the realm. “Sure,” she said.

They went single file, real close because of the fog. Elva knew they were nearing the beach because as the surf washed over the round beach stones, it giggled as it crawled its way back to the sea. She wasn’t too crazy about the tall grass tickling her ankles though. What if it was something else? When the talk amongst Jane and Gil trailed off, Elva began to sing something about Barbara Allen in a scarlet town and broken hearts and Sweet William who died ’cause she paid him no mind and briars and red, red roses. She sang partly because she couldn’t see and she was nervous, partly because she was happy being amongst the others. But it had a lot of verses and Jane finally said, Shut up, Elva.

At first Elva heard only them walking through the beach grass. Then from Major, a low steady growl.

“What is it, boy?”

They must have been closer to the road than they thought, for a car sputtered and roared. Headlights cut through the fog. Oak, behind Elva, said, Listen, hearing what they all heard now, something heavy jumping quickly towards them through the field. Major barked. Jane screamed but it was cut short as though someone put a hand over her mouth.

“Run!”

Elva hit the ground, felled by a force from the side, dull and blunt. She struggled, but was pinned. She thought she heard a lightly accented nasal voice whisper, Just give you a love tap this time.

“Lay still.” It was Oak trying to shield her. His silver watch was pressed close to her face.

She couldn’t tell how many there were, only that it must be townies back for more because of the clock, or, from the muffled cries, what was happening to Gil and Jane, but Major had a hold of something and only let go with a silencing crack. Elva’s protector was lifted away to sounds like stones against an overturned hollow hull.

“Don’t you touch him! Don’t you fucking touch him! Oak?” That was Gil shouting.

His friend never let out a sound. When the pummelling stopped, whoever was responsible tossed Oak into the sand and went as shadows toward the car.

O
N THE RADIO DOWNSTAIRS:
Runnin’ wild, lost control; Runnin’ wild, mighty bold; feelin’ gay, reckless too
…

“He’s got a funny name,” said Elva. “Here.” She offered Gil a mug of steaming tea thick with cream and honey, but he was still too upset to touch it. Amos’d be mad if it was just going to waste.

Jane and Gil had carried Oak to the boarding
house, Elva bringing up the rear. Literally. The unconscious boy was too heavy for just Gil and Jane, and Elva did her best to prop up his middle during the staircase manoeuvres. Thankfully, Amos was slurring consonants when they carried him in. Feebly stirring from his stupor in front of the radio, he was easily appeased by, They can pay.

“Fuck ’im goddamned, take ’im upstairs, then.”

Amos’d not trouble a soul until morning. By then Rilla, not back yet from Raven River—probably off by the side of the road somewhere waiting for the fog to lift—would be home to deal with the shakes, the pounding head and all the good things that came after swimming inside a bottle.

The room they put Oak in was next to Jane and Elva’s. It used to belong to Gentien Rangeard, a welder from Labrador City, but he’d moved on when the foundry strike went from weeks to months and no end in sight. I’ve a family back home that must eat, he explained with a what-else-can-I-do shrug to Rilla, knowing she’d be in the lurch, her roster of boarders dwindling.

Gentien had happened upon Elva drawing one evening on the porch. Amos didn’t like to see her waste time on such foolishness. Jane, well, Jane just laughed at anything she did, so Elva often hid her scratchings. She was startled, struggling by the last bits of light with cows and sleighs and a farmer with a can of milk, when the welder caught her off guard.

Bien! Such majesty, Mademoiselle Elva! he said in that silly teasing way of his. She had no idea what
perspective
in her art was, but Elva knew something was askew when she saw it. The welder dismissed her concerns. She was tickled. Jane said their boarder was just being nice, but Gentien insisted Elva present him with three of her finest works. He then fashioned frames for them and decorated them with pine boughs before he mounted them on his wall, so that Elva’s images appeared to peek out from the trees.

The boughs had long since dried out and fallen off, but the pictures were as Gentien hung them, where Oak would be able to see them when he awoke.

He’d been pretty banged up. Lots of cuts and, Gil thought, maybe even a broken rib or two, but how would he know? They bathed and wrapped Oak Egyptian-like, from the neck to the waist, another bandage across the side of his face. Jane then slipped out to the summer kitchen to wash the blood out of Oak’s shirt, not sure, judging from the stain, if it was worth saving.