Downhill Chance (31 page)

“Frankie’s going down Gold Cove to buy some jiggers. Go with him, Luke, and see about the stranger.”

“Frankie will see about the stranger.”

“I don’t trust Frankie,” Prude said. “He’s liable to say anything, he is, to keep us quiet about the road.”

“There’s not going to be no road,” said Luke, holding his axe blade to the tip of his nose for a clearer look.

“We don’t want no road, Luke.”

“I already said there won’t be no road.”

“Frankie says it, then. They’ll blast it through the woods, he says; that’s what they’re doing in the country behind the Basin—blasting it through the woods.”

“Woods is a far cry from a bit of beach, walled in by cliff and sea.”

“I don’t trust Frankie putting a stop to it—he’s the bloody hangashore, he is—singing hymns on a Sunday, and making with the devil on a Monday. You go with him, Luke; you go see what that stranger wants. You wasn’t always this calm,” she cried out as Luke exclaimed impatiently, heaving himself off the spindle and sinking the axe blade into a junk of wood. “I minds a time when you wasn’t so calm.”

“Christ, Mother, be done with it,” said Luke, swinging towards her.

“Away with ye, then. You’ll be singing a different tune soon enough, for I seen it in me cup I did; twice now, I seen it in me cup—there’s no good coming from that stranger— mark my words, Luke Osmond; mark my words!”

“One of them days I allows I’m going to wrap her up in canvas and banish her off from shore,” muttered Luke, turning back to the woodpile as his mother marched back whence she came, her arguing resounding around the patch. “Come on, lovey,” he ordered Hannah, dragging the junk of wood onto the chopping block, “else it’ll be dark before we sups this evening.”

Shuffling off the spindle, Hannah sat at the foot of the woodpile, picking up the splits he had chopped earlier, listening to her aunt Beth bawling out at her mother to go in the house, and she wondered at the old woman’s fear. Hard it was to hold on to a pout around such elderly upheaval, and in years to come she would think back to this moment and ponder that whether to fate or chance, life oftentimes offers up circumstance that attests to the most lowly of prophecies, raising them to the sublime, as was with her grammy Prude’s concerning the stranger rowed ashore down Gold Cove that day. But a seed just planted grows slowly in the womb, and whilst all of its readiness is tendered in flesh, there is a time before it unleashes itself into the world, and another time again before it finds itself aligning the same footpath as those others it will soon collide with. And oftentimes in looking back, she was never sure that the circumstance was its starting point, or, like the stranger’s arrival at Rocky Head, merely a moment that arises out of the ordinariness, calling attention to a process that had already started with the virgin breath of all those others in collision with it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HE STRANGER WAS AN OLD VET
, Frankie reported upon his return that evening, from the First World War, and who was now spending his time rowing around the bay, visiting old acquaintances and making new ones. After several weeks’ speculations and the odd snippet of a tale brought up the bay from a visiting fisher or logger, it was the liquor cellars whose acquaintances the old vet appeared to be more interested in making, and after a while even Prude stopped standing on the bank, squinting down the shore, keeping watch.

“I swear, I don’t know how she’d manage if we do get a road and got people driving back and forth every day,” said Clair one evening at supper, after Prude had just been for tea, fretting over more news about the possibilities of a road coming through.

“She’s fretting for nothing, is what,” grumbled Luke, scruffing the back of Hannah’s head as he took his seat besides her.

“You’re worse than your mother for shutting things out, Luke,” said Clair, spooning dumplings into his soup bowl. “If the petition goes through, they could be blasting by next fall.”

“Petition,” scoffed Luke. “We got ten thousand miles of coastline around this island, and peppered with outports, some no bigger than ourn—and they’re all sending petitions. I allows now they’re all going to be getting roads—they might be a big government, but they haven’t got that much money.”

“According to Frankie they do. And he ought to know; he’s been travelling around enough since he got voted member for parliament. Hannah, pass your bowl.”

“If we gets a car, can I go see Aunt Missy?”

“Promise you won’t keep pouting every time you got to leave,” said Clair.

“Geezes, lovey, how can you encourage her about things like that—they’re never going to get a road down here, no matter how much blasting they does—the sea’ll flood it out in a day. I seen combers ten feet high crashing along that shore.”

“You sounds like a hangashore, Luke, tossing a squall into his boat so’s he won’t have to go to sea today. Sometimes I don’t think you wants the road any more than your mother does.”

“Matters none to me.”

“It mattered once.”

“Now who’s starting to sound like the old woman,” said Luke irritably. “Be cripes if she’s not always harping back twenty years.”

Clair smiled apologetically. “You’re too good a man to deserve that, Luke Osmond.”

He softened. “Been a spell since I thought about going to Africa, that’s all, lovey—or going anywhere out there. It’s a funny thought, this notion of going out there,” he carried on, halving a dumpling with the side of his spoon and settling more comfortably into his talk. “Think about it, Clair—if all the ones out there comes over here, and all the ones over here goes out there, then where in kingdom come is ‘out there’ or ‘over here’? No, no, listen,” he said, as Clair rolled her eyes towards Hannah in recognition of another of his ongoing suppositions about life, “I thinks, sir, that ‘out there’ and ‘over here’ is just one spot, and it’s right here where I’m sitting. What’d you think, lovey?” he asked, cracking Hannah across the knuckles with his dirty spoon.

“Ouch. I thinks it’s at Aunt Missy’s,” said Hannah, licking her knuckle and slewing a look at her mother.

“I swear, you’re both like Prude for holding on to things. But I suppose it’s just as well she thinks that way, because if they builds the new school up the Basin, that’s where she’ll be spending her days,” said Clair.

Hannah snapped to attention, as did her father. “I’ll be going to school up the Basin?”

“What talk is this?” followed Luke, his voice suddenly quiet.

“More than just talk,” said Clair. “The government’s already starting to build bigger schools in some of the larger outports. They’re going to drive the higher grades back and forth every day—them that got roads, that is. Some places will be boarding their youngsters near the schools—”

Hannah gasped with excitement. “I can live with Aunt Missy?”

“Ooh, eat your soup,” chided Clair. “It’ll be years yet should such a thing happen—if it happens at all.”

“How long have you known this?” asked Luke.

“Known what?” asked Clair. “Goodness, there’s nothing to know,” she quickly added as Luke shoved back his chair, ready to rise. “As I said, it’d be years should it happen—and then, only to those who have roads.”

“It’s what you’d want, isn’t it?” he said evenly.

She shrugged. “A better school for Hannah is what I’d want. Whether it’s up the Basin or no, I haven’t given thought.”

“Haven’t you?”

“What’s there to think about—as I said, it’ll be years—”

“I wants to go,” said Hannah.

“I’ll tell you one thing right now,” said Luke as Clair shushed Hannah into silence, “when either of mine leaves this house, it’ll be when they’ve minds of their own, and not what a government thinks up for them—nor their mother.”

Clair turned to him. “What does that mean?”

“That it’s not right to put grand plans in the head of another, that’s all—even if it is your own youngsters. If she wants to be a teacher, let her think of it—I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing, Clair,” he said deeply as her face took on the look of a youngster, who in a moment of largesse, shares her most prized blanket, only to have it taken and waved before her as a matador’s cape before a bull. “I’m just saying its something you might be wanting.”

“My wanting her to have a good education is no different than you wanting her—or all of us, comes to that—living at Chouse in a bough-whiffen,” replied Clair.

“The worse kind of thievery is to steal a youngster’s thoughts, and replace them with your own,” said Luke. “Perhaps I expects us both to bide our tongues.”

Clair rose, her eyes hard fastened onto him. “If making sure my daughter gets a good education and a chance to do something with her life is stealing her thoughts, then that’s what I aim to be, Luke, a thief.” And stacking her bowl and spoon onto a dirtied plate, she marched with them towards the bin. Luke rose to follow, but noting Hannah’s wide-eyed silence, he sat back down, his shoulders slumping like a melting candle.

“Finish your soup,” he said, beckoning her attention to the spoon lying limp in her hands, “and mind you helps your mother with the dishes.” Rising once again, he walked out the door.

His fingers lay heavily on the keys of his accordion that evening as he sat on the stoop. Hannah was in bed, listening, wanting to go out and sit besides him as she sometimes did, but sleep came relatively quickly that evening. And when next she awakened, it was to Frankie’s voice speaking quietly to her father out on the patch.

“I was down Gold Cove this evening,” he was saying, “having another word with the old vet. Seems he served in the second war as well. By the sight of him, I’d say he’s still serving; drunker than old man O’Mara, and just as sly. But he’s still keeping the ones in Gold Cove entertained with his stories. And they keeps paying him with another shot of shine. But I allows they’ll soon be getting sick of him—like everyone else up and down the shore, and then I allows he’ll be making his way up here.”

“Did he say he knowed Joey?”

“Says he got a problem remembering names, but he’s thinking on it.” Frankie gave a short laugh. “I hears them words often enough, talking to other politicians. Uses them myself when I wants to get away from something. I wouldn’t trust him for a copper, Luke. He’s liable to say anything for a swig of shine. Minding you of someone?”

She missed what her father said, so low was his voice, then Frankie’s took up again. “Speaking of the O’Maras, I saw Gid in Corner Brook last week. He was up from the Labrador— the old man died. He—you were the first thing he asked about.

“He’s different,” added Frankie, as Luke didn’t speak. “Educated. The missionaries done him good. Said he was going to spend some time with his mother and the rest of them. He carries it well, Luke—his scar. He don’t suffer none with it.”

“No one knows a man’s suffering, Frankie, unless he wants to show it.”

The accordion grew louder, covering the rest of their words and feeding Hannah’s ear with a rhythm that finally lulled her back to sleep. In what felt like seconds later, she was being roused awake by her father, leaning over her bed, whispering for her to get dressed, they were going to Chouse.

“Why isn’t Mommy coming?” she asked after they’d breakfasted on toast and tea and were standing on the beach, stowing the gear into the punt.

“Brother’s fussing this morning—pass me the worms.” He turned towards the house as the door opened and Clair stood out on the step in her nightdress and stocking feet, her hair ruffled prettily around her face, and her eyes puffy with sleep.

“You’ll be back for supper?” she called out.

“Yup. Go back to bed, lovey—you’ll catch cold,” he said as she left off the stoop, starting towards them.

“Here, you’ll be cold on the water,” she said, bending before Hannah and buttoning her sweater. “Mind you don’t go wandering, now.”

“I won’t.”

“You warm enough?”

Hannah nodded, her mother’s sleepy warmth a fine wrap against the chill of the morning. And as she finished buttoning her sweater, she lifted her face as she might to her aunt, for a quick kiss on the top of her nose. But her mother was already straightening, minding her father again to watch for the wind, and to be back in time for supper and to be sure and bring back no trout that weren’t already gutted.

“Squeamish,” said her father, “and getting worse.” Picking up Hannah, he dumped her into the punt like a sack of spuds. And assuring her mother that he’d watch for the wind, he shoved off the punt and leaped aboard, grabbing for the paddle to steer them off from shore. Gazing down into the ever-deepening water, Hannah trailed her fingers through its icy coldness, watching a caplin dart here, there, and then towards shore.

“Don’t go leaning over,” her mother called. “And mind you don’t go wandering either; Luke, mind she don’t go wandering.”

“She won’t,” her father called back, dipping the oars into the sea, the thole-pins creaking as he plied them, gliding them over the water. The sun tipped a ray over the hills, turning the black face of the sea into a milky brown, the colour of her mother’s eyes watching after them.

Leaning over the stern, Hannah watched as a flatfish swam straight up, straight up, straight, straight up, its nose appearing to break through the surface any second, yet still it kept swimming straight up, then ducking sideways, disappearing under the boat.

“Some deep, hey, Daddy,” she’d once called out to her father, a little anxious with a sudden wind.

“Yup, lovey, that’s what she is,” he’d called back. “You’ve a right to be scared, for it’s our birthing waters, she is, and she’ll feed us and wash us and rock us, but you don’t ever challenge her, lovey, you don’t ever challenge her; there’s centuries of ribs littering her floors, and there’s room for centuries more. Yup, she’s one to watch, lovey, for she might be a breast forever full, but she’s one forever searching, she is, and God help the mortal who gets caught sleeping in her thrashings.”

She turned now, to this man plying his paddles against the sea. The smile that usually lifted the corners of his mouth as he leaned back and forth, steadily heaving to and fro, to and fro, was absent this morning, and in its stead was the worried look of her mother whenever she was thrashing the waters of Chouse.