Downhill Chance (22 page)

“Oh, Lord,” groaned Nora, as Willamena hopped off the desk, mindless of Frankie raising a hand to stay her.

“My father never turned his back on a man in his life,” she said haughtily to the last speaker, “and it’s more than one that stood before our counter looking for credit—even when there wasn’t a man in the house to cut a log or bring in a fish. And I wonders that some of you mightn’t stand up and speak to that.” She took a step back, eyes fixed onto Clair’s.

Clair stiffened, her cheeks suffusing with colour. Loud protests greeted Willamena’s words, and accusations were hurled against Frankie for his bad judgment in having the merchant’s daughter present at their meeting.

“Perhaps you’re right, perhaps you’re right,” he pleaded, holding up his hand for silence as he led Willamena to a seat besides Beth. “Let’s just take a minute and pacify Willamena that it’s a good man her father is, and she’s right in that he’s done many a good turn for the people up in the Basin, things you probably wouldn’t hear about down here,” and then he was seeking Clair, his eyes holding hers as he ran his hand back over his knife-edge part. “And perhaps our teacher might have a word to say about that—after the meetings over and she meets everybody—because for sure her father was a good man, a wonderful man, and he worked for the merchant all his life. And we knows too how the merchant served him and kept serving him.” He paused as Clair moved forward, as if to speak. “Clair?” he asked, aiding her.

And as everyone’s eyes rested on her, she spoke with the clearness of tone that her father was always so fond of. “Mother always said Father had a big enough kitty with the merchant to do us an extra five years.”

“Oh, my,” gasped Nora besides her, and murmurs of surprise filled the room.

“It’s a funny thing, sir, how nobody calls us cheating merchants when they’re standing at the counter looking for charity,” said Willamena equally as clearly.

“It’s not charity if it’s what’s owing now, is it?” asked Harve.

“Cripes, if that’s charity, then his taking our money must be thievery,” cut in another.

“We knows different than that,” sighed Frankie, trudging across the front of the room as might a resigned teacher watching his carefully composed school play come tumbling apart. “And if Saul heard us talking like this, he’d have a fit. What Willamena means—but didn’t say very well—is there’s lots of situations families can find themselves in, and no stranger—a businessman at that—is going to take on them kinds of responsibilities and make amends. It’s only them that lives amongst us takes on that, them that knows us, knows our fathers, our youngsters—”

“Be cripes, if it’s to have our names slandered after, then I’d rather starve,” cried out Beth.

“Let her talk, let her talk,” said Uncle Herm, catching the warning look Nora threw at her sister. “That’s what we’re here for, ain’t it—to spake our minds, and I’ll not be afeared to spake mine, brother; no sir, be geezes, not when I pays forty fish for every one that comes back on me table. I don’t mind one for one, or even two for one, but it’s the other thirty-seven I be wanting coppers for.”

“How you figuring on that, old man—thirty-seven fish for one, when you haven’t been on the water in five year?” snickered Aunt Char.

“Fish, logs, what the hell difference do it make?” shouted Uncle Herm, his face red. “Thirty-seven for one is what I’m on about, thirty-seven for one. Be geezes, you might convince me to vote for one devil over another, but you won’t convince me thirty-seven equals one. It’s poor I am, not stupid.”

“All right, b’ye, all right,” said Nate, clapping Uncle Herm’s back. “And you keep a distance, old woman,” he added to Aunt Char.

“Yes, we said there’d be no arguing now,” said Nora, “else we would’ve left you home with Mother.”

“It’s not arguing when people spakes their minds,” said Aunt Char contrarily.

“It’s arguing when you starts calling them names for spaking their minds,” countered Uncle Herm.

“I never called nobody names,” said Aunt Char. “I’m calling this foolery is all—this talk of government and money—bloody foolery. I remembers how bad things was before the merchant come. Be cripes, I’d like to see one of ye living on seal’s fat and rabbits for a year, and I haven’t been wanting since Saul come along; no sir, not for one thing have I been wanting. He might be a merchant, but he’s never been stingy with his grub, and nobody can argue that.”

“And that’s what this meeting is about—talking over the good and the bad,” Frankie quickly took up. “And you were right, Nora, Nate—it’s not fair to expect Willamena to sit here and not get a bit upset when it sounds as though it’s her father that’s being talked about, for they’re close, they are,” he added, nodding sympathetically at Willamena. “And who wouldn’t come to their own father’s defence? And going back to what we said before—it’s not Saul we’re talking about, but a way of running things. Everybody here can appreciate the good Saul has done—it’s the way we’re questioning. Perhaps, Willamena, everyone’s right and it’d be better if you were to wait at home. Clair? Would you go with her? And then after the meeting we’ll send for ye both to come back and Willamena can introduce you around.”

“Never mind meeting anybody this evening,” said Nora, rising along with Clair. “She’ll meet us time enough, and perhaps then we might have a smile for her instead of a scowl. I’ll be over at recess in the morning, with a cup of tea.” Clair nodded gratefully, casting a glance around the room and hurried after Frankie as he led Willamena outside the door.

“You!” Willamena hissed with the fury of a March wind at Clair as she stepped over the stoop behind them, “You knows nothing about what we done for you since your father died—” But her words were chopped as Frankie grasped hold of her arm, bustling her ahead of him down over the steps and around the corner of the school. Their voices rose and fell on the wind and Clair stood quietly, waiting, till Willamena was running off along the path. She met Frankie coming back around the corner.

“What is it ye’ve done?” she asked, her voice small.

“Nothing,” said Frankie. “Nor the merchant—at least nothing that wouldn’t be paid back by the government after the bill was tallied. I expect I owes you an apology. I swear to you, I meant no offence to your father.”

“I knows that,” she replied, her eyes, she imagined, as hard-caked as his a minute ago while talking to his wife. “I’ll take no pay for teaching here.”

“Whoa,” he exclaimed, catching hold of her shoulder as she was about to disappear along the same path as Willamena, “it wasn’t me or Willamena that picked you to come here and teach; we asked the teacher up the Basin and he said you was our best bet. And it’s the school board who’s paying you—not we.”

“After you’ve taken your board, give the rest to the school,” she replied, stepping back from the hand still holding her shoulder. “That’ll pay for anything extra Daddy might’ve owed.”

“Your father owes nothing.”

“It’s his gift, then,” she said, “for what was done for him.” And turning from him, she followed Willamena’s footsteps back along the path, her ears closed to the protests he was calling after her, and her heart inflamed with the potency of her deed.

Her step slowed as she crossed the patch, nearing Willamena’s door. Finding it ajar, she crept inside the porch and into the kitchen. Finding no one about, she thankfully let herself into her own tiny room, leaning heavily upon the door as she closed it behind her, and her eyes flitted despondently over the narrow bed, a dresser and her suitcase lodged in the far corner. A window, walled behind a fall of dark cotton, faced out onto the patch. Trailing towards her bed, she sank down, jiggling it a little, more to relieve the tension unnerving her body than to test the bedsprings, and then lay back upon her pillow, watching as twilight dulled the crack of light caught between the curtains. A sheep baaed somewhere a ways away, and the old woman, Prude, could be heard from behind some closed door, bawling out a warning to a youngster. Overcome by fatigue, her body began to lighten, the mattress softening beneath her. Her eyes drooped, then closed, but were startled open as the image of her mother’s smile flashed before them, frozen in the curve of a cheek that lay comfortably upon a bed of pink velvety petals. Calming the sudden pounding of her heart, she rolled her head to one side and fought off the vision of her father’s eyes, as frozen as her mother’s smile, as they stared, shackled, to its unseen phantom.

Sighing, she rolled onto her back, hugging her pillow tight to her cheek, its starched whiteness supplanting the sweet of Missy’s hair.

The crack of light betwixt the curtains became darker. Somewhere, the soft strains of an accordion curled through the evening air and she slumbered as it found its way through her wall of curtains, murmuring softly against her ear. After what felt like an eternity of sleep, the whine of a dog, followed by a man’s voice soothing it, wakened her. Another voice sounded—Frankie’s—and then a heavy trudging across the kitchen floor. Blinking herself awake, Clair listened as the back door opened, and Willamena called across the patch, “Having another meeting, are ye? I thought with all you got to say about the vote, you’d be the first one there this evening.” Her tone, Clair noted, was much more mollifying than it had been inside the schoolhouse earlier, even with the touch of scorn in her chuckle.

“He was coming, but he got lost, wouldn’t it, Luke?” said Frankie.

“Yup,” said the one who must’ve been Luke.

“Lost? I thought you knowed the woods like your own door-place?”

“Was a funny thing,” said Luke.

“But he’s found now,” said Frankie.

“My. What a good thing,” said Willamena. “And I guess it’s a good thing, too, he got you to tell him everything he missed, hey, Frankie?”

“Yup, good thing,” said Frankie over the rising sounds of the accordion.

“My, how civilized—helping each other out for the next round,” said Willamena.

“Round! Thought we was having a meeting,” said Frankie. “What’s we doing, Luke, meeting or fighting?”

“Well, b’ye, they says it’s only saints that follows the one road,” said Luke.

“I guess that’s what you are, then,” said Willamena, “a saint—at least according to what you’re preaching about the vote, because for sure you’re only harking on the one path there.”

“I think the meeting just ended, Luke,” said Frankie, the stoop creaking as he must’ve rose. “See you down Chouse tomorrow. Running good, are they?”

“Twelve pounders, b’ye, and sparkling like silver.”

“That’s Chouse for you, a fisher’s dream,” said Frankie, and the accordion took up louder as he let himself in the door, snapping it shut.

“You’re always sticking up for him,” accused Willamena as they entered the kitchen. “He’s always preaching against we, and you’re always sticking up for him.”

“To bed,” said Frankie, the French door squeaking open.

“Well, you do,” said Willamena, “and what do he know anyway, always in the woods, the way he is.”

“He knows the way of things,” said Frankie, “and that’s why them like your father’s not going to have a wharf to tie their punts onto after his vote—because they’re too busy scholaring and not thinking.”

“You thinks we’re going to lose?”

“Yup.”

“You acts as if it was nothing,” said Willamena. “How can you go fishing with him out there, when it’s his addled mouth that’s turning people against us?”

Frankie’s foot lay heavily on the floor. “You don’t ever call him that agin, you hear me?”

“Lord, Frankie, whose side you on, anyway?” whined Willamena.

“The side what wins,” said Frankie. “And there’s some things you’ll follow me on, else you’ll be back on the same rotting wharf I took you off, hear it? You don’t ever slander him. And you’ll be respectful to her whilst she’s here.” Then footsteps and the sound of the room door snapping shut.

As if to spare Clair further, a fun-filled jig danced its way through her window, causing her to lean forward and lift the corner of her curtain, peering out through it. A dim glow of lamplight dappled through one of Prude’s cluttered windows onto a short-haired bitch, squatting on its haunches, looking up at a young man whom she recognized instantly as the one who had sat in his boat with his back to the crowd, and who had appeared on her doorstep that night, looking for her father. He was sitting on the edge of Prude’s stoop, his fair hair and the white of his accordion keys barely discernable in the dark, his shoulders doing a dance of their own to the song his fingers were plying into the night. The dog yapped and the young man lifted a foot, rubbing it against the dog’s chest, a laugh sounding over his song as the dog yapped twice more, then scuttled beneath the house. Leaning back, he swung the accordion her way, his face shadowed by the night, and she quickly dropped her curtain into place. Lying back down, she stared wide-eyed at her ceiling, one ear tuned to the reel of the accordion, the other to the muted harsh whispers escaping through the high-polished glass of Willamena’s French door.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HE NEXT MORNING CLAIR WAS WAKENED
by the first crow of the cock. Peering out the corner of her room window, she watched as the men came out their doors, whistling good-morning to one another, and making their way up over the hill, their bucksaws and canvas lunch bags tossed over their shoulders. Likewise, Frankie was out of bed, treading lightly through the kitchen and leaving the house without breakfast. He must’ve went in boat, perhaps up to the Basin to work with the merchant, thought Clair, as he made no appearance onto the patch. There was no sign of Luke either, and the memory of him sitting on the steps the night before, his fingers dancing over the keys of an accordion, and the bitch yapping at his feet, might well have been a dream.

Climbing out of bed, she hastily washed herself in cold water, combed her hair, then dressed in her stockings and skirt. Thankfully, Willamena didn’t emerge from her bedroom till she had finished a slice of bread with a glass of iced tea, and was on her way to the door, hoping to get to the schoolhouse early before the youngsters arrived.