The Gravesavers (5 page)

“Once folks leave this town, those left behind don’t have a good word to say about them anyhow, Mum. They’re all wanting to get out of the mill and are just plain jealous when some folks do. Don’t fuss.”

Thomas should have known better. “Scrub!” repeated Mum.

All around the room our belongings were stacked in piles. Things to go to family and friends, things to go to St. Michael’s parish for folks with less, things we were
taking with us. Simple enough. But simple does not mean easy. Not at all.

“Feels like I’m throwing away bits of myself,” muttered Mum. Mostly we were down to linens and dishes and a few books, including the Bible.

“I brought it with me from Ireland,” Dad said, “when I was about the same age Thomas is now.”

“There isn’t a hope” Mum snapped, “that a lifetime is going to fit into two wooden crates.”

It seemed the closer we were getting to leaving, the crosser she was getting.

“That’s the point, Mare,” Dad said patiently. “They’re only
things.
We have a new life ahead, so we take only what is absolutely necessary of the old life. We’ll get what we need when we get there.”

Mum snorted and disappeared into their bedroom. A few minutes later a scraping sound made us wince as she hauled a cradle out into the middle of the room.

“Now, about this, then.”

“Now that, I was thinking, could fetch me a good price.”

“Patrick, you made that cradle with your bare hands practically and hardly a tool save a saw, a hammer and a knife. Look at that carving! You’ll never get what it’s worth. Besides, my babies were rocked to sleep in that cradle and now I’m going to rock my grandkids in it. Yes, I am.”
“Mare, there’s no room. Two crates, I said.”

“If it’s money that’s the problem, fine. One crate then, and this strapped to the top of that.”

He sighed. “All right. One crate and the cradle.”

Thomas and I exchanged amused glances.

That was the end of their squabble. As always, Dad put up the best argument he could but Mum won him over to her way of thinking. I never heard them fight fierce, not like my chum Michael’s folks. Underneath their angry words was hate, you could tell. Hindley folks didn’t know about that kind of wounding. Sometimes Michael didn’t even go home nights. I couldn’t imagine that.

Unlike Thomas. He had no sense of family loyalty from what I could tell. He was acting like some traitor in my eyes. He was still torn between coming and going. And he was hardly home.

“Where you going now?” I’d ask.

“Out,” he’d say. Or, “Mind your business.” Or just slam the door.

I spent my last evenings in Ashton-under-Lyne gathering memories. I shuffled past the row houses in our neighbourhood, peeking in the amber windows where families were snuggled in. The sounds of laughter and even quarrels tugged at me. It would be strange leaving. I glimpsed Tom from time to time on these outings, but he didn’t see me. He was otherwise occupied, you might say. He walked arm in arm with Rebecca, her head against his shoulder.

He stayed out a lot later than me. He often could not sleep and began a strange sort of ritual. He’d get up after tossing and turning about and go out for long runs all the way to Lord’s fields he told me. He’d come back, breathless, his lungs still bursting from the cold March air.

“Let him be,” I heard Mum warn Dad one night. “He’s just chasing after his heart’s truth.”

“A new life in a new city with your folks and your brother? What’s more important than that?” I asked one night when he woke me up getting into his bed.

“She cried.”

“What’s that?”

“Rebecca cried when I told her. Cried until the collar of my shirt was soaked with her tears.”

“You going to let a few tears lock you in this place forever?”

But the picture was disturbing, even to me. Rebecca was bright eyed and cherub faced. And always smiling—especially around Thomas.

Thomas seemed to read my thoughts.

“She’s got a smile that could crack your heart wide open.” He sighed. “A new life without Becca would be like a sunrise without sun.”

I groaned. “I thought I was supposed to be the poetic one.”

“Shut your mouth,” he said. In our house, that expression was worse than cussing.

I did feel some for him. How was a person to ever know when a decision was the right one or the wrong one? Especially if it meant leaving someone you loved?

By that time I knew Thomas had more than an itchy rash.

P
ERSUASIONS

“I’d trade places with Thomas in a second,” said Michael. “Sure wish I was going.”

“Me, too.” Silence hung between us heavier than a soggy blanket on a line.

“Maybe you could be a stowaway,” I suggested. This was something I had proposed to Thomas—that we could sneak Rebecca onto the ship somehow.

“Are you living on the moon?” he’d snapped. “Cracked in the head? There are rats as big as Dad on a ship like that for one thing.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was only trying to help.” I was also being as sugary nice as I could at every possible moment. “Why don’t you go on over and see her. I don’t mind doing your scrubbing.” He was off like he was on fire. No thank you, of course, but he did give me a playful cuff on the side of my head.

Michael, though? He perked right up at my idea. “A stowaway! Maybe I could,” he said.

“Really? I should tell you about the rats …”

“Rats? My dad’s the rat. I’d go, but I couldn’t leave my mum to be alone with that bugger.” He spit on the ground. “Some day, though, I’ll join you, right?”

“Right.” Even to my own ears, my voice lacked conviction.

We sat on the bank of the canal, skipped some rocks and threw sticks in the river, watching them swirl around and be carried off.

To just get on that train to Liverpool! All the packing and sorting and scrubbing and saying goodbye was exhausting. Even I began to wonder whether sailing to a new life was a good thing or not. I hated the waiting. My mother did too, though she kept telling me to have patience. “It’s a virtue,” she reminded me. Well, I wasn’t very virtuous. Besides, every moment that went by, I felt my chances of getting Thomas to come with us were slipping away. He was still droopy eyed as a cocker spaniel and so
silent.

I went to my parents. They were sympathetic but no help, really. They told me it was his business. I noticed, however, that my mother was cooking all his favourite meals.

So I came up with another plan. I decided it was time to use the powers of persuasion my teachers told me I possessed. I waited until we were side by side in our beds a few nights before our leaving date.

“Thomas?”

“What?”

“You coming with us or what?”

“Go to sleep.”

“Tom?”

“What is it?”

“When are you going to know your mind?”

“I know my mind.”

“You’re staying?”

Silence. Almost breathless, I plunged in.

“Thing is, I’ve been thinking this through.”

“You have, have you?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“Here’s what I think I’d do.”

“You never even kissed a girl.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t think. In fact, seems to me my thinking’s not as muddy as yours.”

“Muddy?”

“All dirtied up with the scum of love.”

Thomas laughed. “Where on earth do you get those expressions of yours? But truth of it is, I don’t know what to think.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“You come with us, see? Get work at the tannery with our brother-in-laws. Gareth and Simon would put in a good word for you, right? Save your money, send for Rebecca, get married and live right next door to me.”

Thomas laughed and stifled a yawn. “Live next door to you?”

“Well, figure you’ll need your privacy some.”

“Why would we live next door to you, then?”

“That way,” I continued, “I can watch your wee ones for you.”

The pillow hit me square in the face.

“Go to sleep John.”

“I can’t.”

“Recite me one of them poems from all that learning of yours.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Always puts
me
to sleep right away.”

I threw the pillow back and cleared my throat.

Thomas chuckled. “One of yours?”

“Penned especially for the occasion,” I confessed.

“Cut the ruckus, boys,” yelled Dad from below. “Or the Black Knight will get ya!”

Thomas snickered. No matter how old we got, our father still thought stories of the Black Knight could scare us. The Black Knight was said to prowl the streets of
Ashton after dark ready to snatch naughty children. I had more than my share of nightmares when I was younger. Once I imagined I heard the clang of his suit of armour outside the window. I screamed for Mum. But it was only Thomas, banging on a pot. He got in big trouble for that one. But he was scaring me more with all his silence and indecision.

“And besides … if you stay in Ashton …,” I began.

“What of it?”

“I’ll be all alone.”

And that was
my
heart’s truth.

He didn’t say a word in reply.

Black Knight? Black night. We turned our backs to each other. It was a long time before either one of us slept.

The day before we left, he handed me a book.
Around the World in Eighty Days, by Mr. Jules Verne, I
read.

“I figure it’ll keep you company,” Thomas said.

It must have cost him every shilling he ever saved. I’d never owned a real new book before.

“You’re supposed to open it in the middle first,” he said. “That way pages won’t fall out.”

I did. The book cracked with newness. Then I turned to the front.

Thomas was never one for proper writing but I could still make out his message. Only too well.

Happy sailing!
Your big brother—
Always,
Thomas

The bus trip was like taking a bath in diesel fuel. It was a five-hour trip on the Acadia Bus Lines, and we stopped at just about every Tim Hortons along the way. I had so many Timbits, my stomach was sugar coated. I popped the Gravol that Corporal Ray had given me just in case. It made me drowsy but I couldn’t seem to get comfortable enough to sleep. Instead, I watched the clouds reflected in the window. It was as if the entire sky had flooded the window and changed it the bright blue of a computer screen. The clouds were chalky. If I were to reach out my hand, I was sure I could rub them away. “Cirrus, cumulus, stratus,” I chanted to myself in a whisper. Cirrus. Cumulus. Stratus. Words that made me feel as if I was talking in another language. Almost like praying. Usually I forgot what kind of cloud was which and it never mattered much to me before, but now it did. Clouds had taken on a whole new meaning for me. Pippa, when she visited, only once—in a dream—was on a cloud.

“The stars at night and the clouds by day,” my father told me that night after the God question. “That’s how I feel close to those I’ve lost. Remember that, too, Minn. When in doubt, or feeling alone or afraid, lift up your eyes to the sky.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt lonelier in my life as I did that whole bus trip. I was being sent away from those I loved. Banished. Exiled. Afraid? Well, my O.I. was kicking in again. Sometimes an overactive imagination can be damaging to your mental health. The man across the aisle from me looked like a newly released convict ready to go back to his hometown to seek revenge. He’d been guzzling liquor out of a brown paper bag the whole time. You could smell it plain as anything. Around Londonderry, he started up singing to himself. After he nodded off to sleep, his head began bumping against the windowpane, leaving grease smudges all over. Spittle dribbled down his chin like baby drool. I felt sorry for him more than afraid. Still, I wouldn’t look him in the eye when he woke up. I knew better. Corporal Ray had warned me about talking to strangers. This buddy was a strange one for sure.

I plugged into my Walkman. It was a gift from my parents before I left.