The Seary Line (43 page)

That was the last time Stella saw Miriam Seary. Nettie died within hours of their final visit, and because Stella perceived, at best, a tenuous, and now slightly awkward, connection to Miss Seary, she never went back again.

On a warm day in June, Miss Miriam Seary died while resting peacefully at Pine Ridge Retirement Centre. There was a small farewell with a handful of attendants, nursing staff mostly, a doctor. Though all were fond of Miriam, welcomed the ever-present smile on her sharply tilted head, they recognized that she would not be missed. No husband, no children, no loved ones worth mentioning. They felt a tinge of sadness when they acknowledged that kind Miriam Seary, who everyone joked might live forever, had died completely alone. “It's impossible,” one said, “given the constraints we're under, to spend any amount of time seated with one woman.”

But they were wrong. Miriam was not alone. Her mind was full, occupied with the good company found inside her recurring dream. Her hands moving over the warm pink
udders of the old girls, heavy with milk. Churning sweet butter with all her might. Lying down with a man who was gentle with her. The smell of spring grass, every blade bent and broken beneath her.

On that same day, a woman named Anita Hilliard paid her neighbour, young Henry Tuck, fifteen dollars to repair the squeaky floor of the attic bedroom in the home she had purchased in Bended Knee. With the small inheritance she received when a beloved great uncle died, she had decided to transform the abandoned farmhouse into a lively bed and breakfast. She recognized that those sorts of things were coming into vogue, and she wanted to be seated at the front of the investment bus. Plus, it was a good way for a single mature woman to earn an income while maintaining a respectable home.

The home had once belonged to a married couple named Willard and Berta May. They never had any children, only a few distant, distracted relatives who had no interest in a rundown farmhouse. Anita snapped up the long abandoned home at a steal, and when she toured the rooms, she could practically feel the old-fashioned character oozing out of the walls. Vandals had left behind plenty of smashed beer bottles, some pissy corners, but most of the contents remained intact. Being a thrifty lady, Anita decided to keep much of it. Taking it room by room, she re-papered walls, re-painted doors, re-sugared wilted doilies, vacuumed chairs, bought fresh pillows and sheets. Her handy neighbour, Henry Tuck, assisted with most of the hammer work. While she didn't mind the cosmetic fix-up, she was
not one to play with tools.

Though it could have gone under the heading for charm, the squeaking in the attic irritated her. Whenever she would enter the room, she'd shift her weight back and forth over those floorboards, aggravated by the song that rose upwards. As if the floor was trying to tell her something. But Anita, being a poor listener, wanted to shut it up. Stifle the whine. She moved the chatty floorboards to the top of Henry's list, felt a sense of finality as she heard his steady hammering.

If she had gotten down on all fours, which she rarely did, and felt along the floorboards of the attic room, she might have discovered the cause for the irritable squeaking. Several boards were loose, could be lifted easily with a set of eager, prying fingers. But instead, Henry Tuck securely nailed each end of the planks. Nail after nail after nail. Forever locking away a wooden box that was laid on the thick support beams beneath. Inside was a photo, covered lightly in oily loops and arches and whorls. And though no one would ever read them, the box also contained several letters written in scratchy, but legible handwriting. Impeccable spelling. Remarkable, considering the man who penned them. Each one carefully and lovingly addressed to
My darling Mirry
.

My name is Eldred James Wood. I lived in Bended Knee with Mr. and Mrs. Willard May from the age of seventeen years until my death. I wrote those letters, hid them under the floorboards. No one will ever find them and read them, share them. In twenty-three years, a simple swallow of time,
the old May farmhouse will burn down because of faulty wiring. My words will be turned to dull ash, then scattered by the very gusts that fed the flames.

Where am I now? Of course, I am long gone. Moved on, as some delicately call it. The narrow pine box, my final resting place, has long since degraded, collapsed under the weight of several feet of damp dirt, a flourishing bed of orange marigolds. There is nothing left of my woollen suit, my watery flesh, the paste that was my bones. With the help of life within the earth, I have travelled outwards, blended in with the soil, disintegrated.

Those in Bended Knee who remember me might think my life was insignificant. Likely they consider me nothing more than the dull-witted farmhand who turned soil on cloudy days. Or the peculiar man who wandered up and down the laneways in thick drizzle. Or perhaps they remember me as the piano player who could never read a note of music. However I exist within their minds, undoubtedly they view me as a lost soul without a purpose. Someone who had simply slipped in and out of existence without leaving as much as a wrinkle.

But they would all be wrong. Though I left a very quiet footprint on this earth, even I have a story to tell. We are all like that. Our lives, when they begin, may fit neatly on the head of a pin, but as we move through the years we are given, our lives expand until we have touched every star in the universe.

So, listen now. Those of you who think I don't belong here. I admit, it is a curious place for me to be, when my story so clearly should have ended near the beginning. But I will tell you what I must, to unravel the sadness, and set it free.

My mother, you see, was an angry woman. And much of that anger was directed towards me. Don't judge her
though, as she had every right to be. I let her down, down so deeply, she was never able to recover. In the long light of a warm September afternoon, I destroyed my mother. Only her obligation to me forced her to live like that for years, all the way dead inside. Through and through.

My father passed away when I was seven years old. He slipped off a damp rooftop he'd been helping to shingle, and broke his neck. I spent hours thinking about his last moments. Trying to create them inside my mind. Often I could be found stretched out on the very spot where he fell, staring up towards the now finished rooftop. I'd see his face coming towards me, mouth open, eyes locked with mine. And he would fall on me, into me, over and over again. What had he been thinking when he bungled his footing? Did he try to right himself as he tumbled, or did he accept gravity? Was there an instant, a single drawn out moment, when he knew he had made an irreversible error, and that he was going to die? Did he think of me before he was swathed in light? Knowing that now I would be man of the house.

Before he died, my father put four sons into my mother. I, of course, was one of them. The oldest, in fact. I had three younger brothers. My father always told me how lucky I was to have three shadows. My shadows, he called them. My own personal set of silhouettes. When my father died, my mother would soothe herself by repeating his little jokes. “Where are your shadows?” she'd ask. “Never was a boy so lucky as you, my son. Three shadows.” When we'd set out in the morning to turn salt fish on Skipper Murphy's flakes, my mother would say, “Always mind your shadows. Take good care of them.”

I promised I would, but I didn't.

There was an old well on our property, hadn't been
used for years. We all knew it was there, but we were forbidden to play near it. According to my mother, an old witch named Agnes lived at the bottom of the wide-mouthed well. She was wretched, frothed at the mouth, had black holes for eyeballs, a hairless scalp of mould, pale worms and water skeeters moved freely in and out of her ears and puckered mouth. “Agnes'll get you, my lovey, if you ever goes near that well. She'll smell you with her tongue, come after you.” We never went near the well. Never gave Agnes the chance to catch a whiff of us.

Until one day.

I never figured out who had pried the wooden lid off the well. It doesn't really matter. Someone did. And Ernie, when he saw the edges of the open well, cried out, “Agnes is gone.” In a fit of childish bravery, he ran towards the idle well, leaned hard over the side. Two days away from his fourth birthday, and he tumbled over the rim of smooth beach rocks. And I could hear him, my smallest shadow, splashing about inside a pit of darkness.

I was stuck to the spot, as though I was nothing more than a seven-year sapling. Elias, who was five, ran to his younger brother. We could hear his gurgling screams echoing against the dirt walls. Hoisting himself over the side, Elias yelled down with feigned irritation and conviction, “I'll get you out, you little bugger.”

Elias slipped slowly, and I watched him disappear. First his forearms, then his hands, then his fingers, for a blinding moment, the very tips of those white fingers, then nothing. I heard the second splash, and Elias was down there, with Ernie and Agnes, screaming out to Eugene and myself.

Eugene looked at me, his pupils wide like a deer who was caught, throat slit, bleeding out. We could both hear our brothers, high-pitched choking pleas, first Ernie, then
Elias, then little Ernie again. We both knew that they were scrambling to stay afloat, each one scraping away at the other, only one head above water at a time. “Maaaaaaaaaaaa, Maaaaaaa.” Eugene took quick sips of air, bounced on the spot, looked at me, the well, me, the well, me, the well, then lion-roared as he ran full force towards the well. I don't know what he intended to do, but he toppled into the well, as though diving down, head first. I heard a thud, and not a sound from him after.

My mother was carried across the back of our land on the gust of her continual shriek. She pitched herself against the well, waist hooked by the lip of rock, swiped the rank air with her open hands. “Please,” she bawled. “Please, please come out. Eldred. Don't stand there. Please, Eldred. God. God. God. Get them out.”

Silence in the well. Hysterical then, she flew towards me. Struck me with her fists. Spit as she spoke. “Get. Them. Out.” She fell to the earth, slapping herself in the head, flipping like a netted fish that just couldn't fathom life without water. “They were your shadows,” she moaned, her voice like two tall lifeless trees rubbing together in the wind. “Your shadows. Oh. Jesus. My babies. Precious. Drowned.”

At that moment, the earth shuddered, made my teeth chatter, blurred my vision. I couldn't take it in. What had happened? Only an hour earlier the four of us were stabbing tree blisters with a stick, coating the stems of dried leaves with turpentine, setting them to sail on a clear puddle. We had been doing that. I was certain. I smelled my fingers for proof, put them in my mouth and sucked the bitter turpentine off. And that's where I wanted to stay, beside the puddle. If only Time had hiccupped then and there. If only I had of grabbed them by their trousers, spoken sternly to all
three of them. Now fellers, what good's a shadow that don't stay put?

She clobbered me near unconscious every time the sun cast a dusky reminder behind me. Or in front of me. Beside me, even. Over the years, I learned to fear them, my shadows. They followed me relentlessly. Ghostly evidence of my failure sprouting from my own two feet. Sometimes, when the guilt had rendered my heart into a thin broth, I stepped up to my mother in the soft evening sun, never flinched when I took the best she could give.