Snow Apples (2 page)

The sausages were a crisp brown by the time I heard my brothers outside. Their timing, as usual, was perfect. You could call and search and never find them, but have a meal ready to be put on the table, and they would appear out of nowhere. I considered it a special talent of theirs.

Paul, my oldest brother, was away in the air force. That left three brothers at home. Tom was fourteen, and being so close in age, we were rivals in everything, from who got the highest marks at school to who could stay up latest at night. Jim was eleven and Mike was ten.

They were good-looking boys, even if they were my brothers. Everyone said so. It griped me that they had the best features of both parents or else—somehow—it looked better on them. But my mother just told me, “It's what's inside that's important.”

She was strong on character. That was the big difference between my parents. My father thought the here and now were to be enjoyed. She thought we would be rewarded later, when we died and went to heaven. In the meantime there was work to be done and responsibilities to be met. Dad loved to drink beer and talk. She wanted the
outhouse whitewashed and some money put aside for a rainy day.

My mother said I took after my father, and the way she said it, this was not a good thing. It was true that we both had brown eyes and dark skin that tanned quickly in the summer, but it was my character, or lack of it, that she meant.

The boys came in with armfuls of wood and cedar kindling. Jim and Mike had been riding horses, they said. This was free-range country, and it wasn't much trouble to get hold of a horse if you wanted one.

Tom smelled of fish and salt water. The cat roused herself from the couch and coiled herself around his legs so that he couldn't move to unload his armful of wood.

“Sheila,” he said, “unwind this animal from me.” As I moved closer to him, I caught a glimpse of a cigarette package in his jacket pocket. I had one on him now, something that would counter any threat of him telling that I wore lipstick at school.

When we were seated at the table for dinner, I couldn't help smiling at Tom.

“What's the matter with you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Nothing,” I answered. We were back to a normal day. Helga, the shrill whistles of the circling fish boats, the German surrender, my father's homecoming—they had all faded to the background. Our hands reached for the food.

“Sheila, Tom, Jim, Mike.” My mother strung our names out in a litany. “We will say grace first, please.”

“Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts...” I sneaked a look at the plate of sausages. There were eighteen. That meant three each and one extra for the boys because my mother said they needed more protein for growing than girls did. “...Amen.”

S
O THAT
was Tuesday. VE Day, May 9, 1945. The day Mr. Percy said would go down in the history books.

The girls' basketball team was to play against Port Mellon on the Victoria Day weekend, and I was one of the forwards. Sonia was the other. A fish boat had been hired by the school board to take us up to Port Mellon, a pulp-mill town whose smell often drifted down the Sound, depending on which way the wind blew.

“Do you think there will be any cute guys there?” I asked Sonia as we huddled together at the stern of the
Mimi 1
. The smell of the diesel was rich with adventure, the sound of the engine was music.

Sonia shrugged. She didn't really care.

I did. My mother accused me of being boy-crazy, and
for once I had to agree with her. I felt kind of funny around boys. Too excited. Too interested. At the same time, I was afraid of them because of the longings they caused.

Even in Edmonton when I had been a couple of years younger, I'd felt it. One of the neighbor boys my age had been kicking a soccer ball around, and it had landed in front of me. Without thinking, I'd grabbed it and started running. He had run after me and tackled, and we'd rolled around on the grass. There had been a sharp rapping on the window, and my mother had called me in.

“No more wrestling with boys,” she'd said. I'd acted as if I didn't know what she'd meant, but I had been aware of the sharp, sweet ache within me when I had been on the ground with the boy above me, his head blotting out the sun, a halo around his head. I had felt dizzy, scared, stirred.

*  *  *

We were in the last quarter of the game. The score was tied. The Port Mellon team had a loud cheering section. We had no one because there hadn't been room on the fish boat. To make matters worse, a male voice was making rude remarks every time I got hold of the ball.

“Who is that creep?” I asked one of the Port Mellon girls when a time-out was called for a foul.

“Bob McLean. His father runs the mill.” Then there was no more time for conversation because the whistle blew, and the game was on again.

Sonia got the ball and passed it to me. I was at the
halfway line of the court, and I pivoted, looking for Sonia to move forward toward our basket.

“Watch the dum-dum drop it!” Bob McLean yelled from the bleachers.

I pivoted again, and with the momentum of that plus the anger that exploded inside me, I brought the ball up from my side in a great sweeping arc. The ball swished through the net without even touching the rim.

No one was more astonished than I was. Back of the whistling and applauding, I heard Bob McLean again.

“Wow-eee,” he called.

At the dance following the game, he came straight over to me. I expected him to be conceited, and he was.

He had every reason to be. He looked like an ad for tennis sweaters: good-looking, well built. I couldn't help wondering why he was bothering with me. He could have had any girl there.

“You're pretty good,” he said.

If I'd been honest, I would have told him it had just been a lucky shot. But I just smiled.

“Let's get out of here,” he said, “and go over to my house and listen to records. Do you like Jackie Teagarden?”

It didn't occur to me not to go. This was what I'd come to Port Mellon for. But still, I had to be careful.

“I can only stay a little while. I don't want to miss the boat home.”

“We'll be back in plenty of time,” he promised.

We walked along the wooden sidewalks that led from
the community hall past all the identical houses where the mill workers lived. The windows were curtainless, and I could see the workers in their kitchens, suspenders down, underwear showing. One had a radio on loudly. From another house I heard the wail of a baby.

At our right were the buildings of the mill. Naked light bulbs hung high, showing the heavy wooden beams supporting the structures. The saws whined, and the wood shrieked as if the logs were being desecrated.

The McLean house was far from the sound of the mill and set in the middle of a terraced garden. From the living room we could see the glow of the lights of Vancouver reflected in the southern sky. Out in the night, frogs croaked.

Bob's parents were out for the evening. They never minded, he told me, if he brought someone home even if they weren't there.

He let me choose the records while he got the fireplace going. He had Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra—everything. When the logs had caught and the flames were dancing flickers up the chimney, Bob went out into the kitchen and made us each a cup of hot chocolate.

While we drank that, I looked around. I'd never been in a house like this before. Leather chairs and books and rich oil paintings of cedar trees and Indian totems and logged-off mountains. Then I felt his arm on my shoulders as he turned me to kiss him. In the background Bunny Berrigan was singing: “I've flown around the world in a plane/I've
settled revolutions in Spain/Now the North Pole I have charted/Still I can't get started with you.”

I was beginning to come apart inside. Bob touched my breast. But then he got up abruptly and turned away from me, going to the picture window to stare out at the stars.

Had I put him off somehow?

When he came back to stand in front of me, he just said in a serious voice, “Come on. Let's go back now.”

The dance was beginning to break up by the time we got back. Bob walked with me down to the government float where the
Mimi 1
was tied up.

“I'll write you,” he said, “and I'll come down to see you. How about next weekend? Would that be all right with your family? I could come down Friday night and leave on the Sunday noon boat.”

Did he mean stay at my house? I was so astounded, I couldn't answer. He kissed me goodbye in front of everybody.

Even when the lights of Port Mellon had faded in the distance, I was still numb. His was obviously a world I knew nothing about. Maybe his parents didn't mind if he had guests, even overnight ones. My mother would have a fit. I already slept on a cot in the living room. My three brothers slept in one of the two bedrooms, Mom and Dad (when he was home on leave) in the other. We had calendars on the walls, not oil paintings. The dishes didn't match. There was no bathroom, just the outhouse down a little path and shielded by alders.

It was impossible.

“But, oh, Sonia,” I said, turning to her there on the
Mimi 1
on our way home through the darkness. “Just think! He wanted to.”

*  *  *

I woke up the next morning at ten. Pep, our dog, was barking and tugging at the sleeve of my nightgown.

“Mom!” But there was no answer. She must have been out working in the barn.

I hurried to dress. What could be the matter? Pep kept whining and running around in a tight circle. Perhaps Jim or Mike was in trouble. This was the day they were going to catch Big Red and try to ride him.

Big Red was one of a band of horses that ran free-range on the peninsula, practically wild. Jim and Mike swore they would catch Big Red one day and ride him.

Pep ran ahead of me, barking and turning every so often to make sure I was following him. He led me along the side of the creek toward the base of the mountain.

Ten minutes in, I saw a piece of Jim's red shirt caught on a blackberry vine. A little farther on there were fresh orange peels curled in a fern. Around me robins sang of summer coming.

Pep was snuffling along the trail, slobbering in his excitement. And then, there was Jim lying across the trail, his head in a pool of blood.

I could see the deep gash over his left ear. The blood was
a dark crimson and oozed slowly. I had to fight panic when I couldn't rouse him. It was as though he were in a deep sleep.

I quickly took off the white blouse and flowered dirndl skirt I wore and then my slip. The slip was an old cotton one but clean, and I thought it would do to make a pad to staunch the flow of blood matting the pine needles on the trail. I wadded it under Jim's head. Using my fingers, I pressed hard on the upper side of the gash until the bleeding stopped. But every time I took my fingers away, the blood would begin to seep again.

I remembered that my mother used to mix saliva and sugar to stop any of our badly bleeding cuts. Jim had some sugar cubes for the horses in his pocket. I put a couple in my mouth. The minute they dissolved, I let the mixture drop into the wound to mix with the blood. It seemed to work.

Pulling on my skirt and buttoning my blouse, I went to look for Mike. Pep stayed with Jim, laying his nose on his paws and watching him, all the time making a high-pitched whine.

I heard Mike moaning. He was about thirty feet away. His freckles stood out against the whiteness of his face. I'd never known he had so many. Or noticed how small he was, lying down. One of his legs was at a crazy angle.

Kneeling beside him, I said, “I'm going for help. Jim's unconscious. What happened?”

He stopped moaning. He looked scared.

“Big Red spooked when we were on him, and we... went flying. Hurry, Sheila.”

I ran. I scrambled over fallen trees. Tore through blackberry vines. Thundered over the wooden bridge. Damp. Breathless. Scared. Wondering how I could get help quickly.

There was Helga Ness at work in her vegetable garden, an old gunny sack around her waist for an apron. I hesitated to tell her what had happened. But I was afraid to take the time to find my mother.

She surprised me.

“Get Mr. Percy,” she told me. Then she took off for her woodshed and was already putting a chainsaw on a pack-board when I left.

When Mr. Percy and I arrived back in his truck, she had everything ready for us. Mr. Percy took the chainsaw. I had two blankets and a coil of rope to carry. She took a machete.

Mr. Percy went ahead and cleared the trail of windfalls. Helga slashed at the blackberry vines, and I came behind clearing away the debris. It seemed to take forever, and all I could think of was the blood oozing out of Jim's head, and Mike's twisted leg.

There at last was Jim, just as I had left him, lying in the same position and still unconscious, a large clot formed on the wound. I ran over to where Mike lay. There was a film of sweat on his forehead. I held his hand, something I'd never done before.