Downhill Chance (48 page)

No fear had Luke of spending thirty years in a house. For it became a dread to be walled in, and only the woods offered him solace from the ever-threatening demon that ruled overhead; the bird of prey that took from him when it pleased, whether he was spooning back a bowl of soup before his mother and father, or chopping down a spruce in the thick of the woods with only himself as witness. Out of the two, it was the woods he chose. At least there it was only himself looking skyward to gauge when his next fit would be.

In time when he learned that his lungs would always refill, and his heart would never burst, he turned to this demon flying low, and with nothing in his hands, challenged it to attack whenever it wanted, for here, alone with the birds, the trees, the rocks, the rivers, he had begun creating a cloister that contained him in his torment. For he had shivered his way through the cold of winter’s night on the downs, and learned to burrow for warmth like a dog into the very thing that threatens it. And he had seen the terror of innocence as a young caribou is mauled by a bear. And he learned not to question why pricklebacks eat their young, and weasels eat each other, and the beauty of a morning glory lies in its ability to choke the lily whilst climbing towards the sun. And it marred not the perfection of a bead of dew, clinging like a silver teardrop to the tip of a dandelion. Nor did it taint the flesh of the young caribou that he roasted after the bear had gone, and feasted upon as the sun crimsoned beyond yonder hills. One day whilst the wind rocked the trees as one, three crows flew overhead. He watched as two found shelter in the branches and one perched on the highest treetop, flapping its wings as it fought for footing, and never resting. He watched it for a while, this crow that braved the wind that forever kept him struggling. He marvelled it should continue to do so, when all others roosted more comfortably below him. And he learned, too, to brave that which threatened him.

Then she came, like a dove over the seas, bringing with her a twig from a world he’d washed asunder, and perched with it on her windowsill, taunting him to come closer, closer; stroking, caressing him with her wing till his heart pounded with a new rhythm, and his face reddened with a new dawn. Sitting on the stoop with his accordion, pleading through the rhythm of his lament that she come sit with him, he allowed not a muscle to tense as she opened the door, her sweater clutched tight around her as she slowly walked towards him. And when he shifted aside to make room for her to sit, it was with the quiet of a pond that the blood sat in his veins. For those things were within him now, the calm, the fierceness, the strength and much, much more. He had sown himself into the earth, and had grown himself an anchor that would find sanctuary in any port—except one. And that was the one he found himself before this cold fall night with just a spattering of stars above him for warmth. For it was more than his heart, his lungs, his mind even, that he had lost in this cave—and those things he had retrieved. It was his soul that he’d never fully recaptured, that was now braying out to him from the pit of this rocky cavern.

“Luke! I’ll fight with you, Luke! I’m not scared! I’m not scared!” He had stood there, fear swamping him like a leaky boat as the three strangers bolted towards him. He swung around and plunged back into the water. “Run, Gid! Run! Run!”

“They’re coming after you, Luke, they’re coming after you!” roared Frankie. “Run! Run!” Like yesterday he felt the cold of the water freezing his legs, his feet slipping on the kelp-covered rocks, the kelp tangling around his legs, pulling him, pulling him till he felt nothing but the cold wet darkness of the cavern’s water swallowing him, smothering him, its roar deafening his ears. Gagging for breath he surfaced, clawing the kelp from across his face and staring around him blindly. There was Frankie, slousing through the water behind him, holding the gun, his eyes wide with fright. Stumbling behind Frankie was Gid, flailing at the air for balance. The strangers—where were they? There they were, standing on the beach near the opening to the cove. They weren’t running or chasing after them; just standing there. One of them was calling out—who to? Frankie. He was calling out to Frankie and there was caution in his tone. “Watch out! Watch out, buddy, careful with that gun!”

“Frankie, Frankie, they’re not chasing us, Frankie—be careful, Frankie—the gun; don’t run with the gun,” and slousing back through the water, he grabbed the gun from Frankie and swung around to face Gid. “It’s all right,” he was to shout, “it’s all right!” but a loud shot split through the air, deafening Luke. Gid’s eye exploded, the white showing all around the brown before breaking into red and running down his cheek as he started falling, slowly, slowly, into the sea—his one eye frozen onto Luke, the other like a ruptured jellyfish.

He closed his eyes, blinded by sight, then opened them to darkness. The yellow gold of the kelp seeped through and he stared unblinkingly. He couldn’t see Gid at first, his hair the same browny gold of the kelp and floating amongst it. Then he saw where the blood was reddest and mixing amongst the kelp like sprigs of berries on a sea of autumn leaves. Frankie appeared, grabbing hold of Gid’s shirt and pulling him to the surface. “Help me, Luke; help me,” he cried, but Luke’s hands were frozen around the gun, his finger still pressed against its trigger. He looked skyward, and at the black rock walls surrounding him. He was cold, shivering. And his knee hurt from where he had fallen. He thought to move, to start lunging through the water, to help Frankie drag Gid to shore. But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Maybe in a while, if he waited, Gid would awaken, his one eye looking up at him, and the other just a little hurt. He heard Frankie saying something about the men being gone now, but he couldn’t hear clearly, labouring, as he was, to drag air into his lungs. The rock wall of the cavern loomed dream-like in front of him, all wavering and ballooning, and then the sun burst over the cliffs, its colours too sharp. Letting slip the gun, he ploughed through the water towards the beach where Frankie was bending over Gid, turning him onto his back. And there was Gid, his one eye closed and the other shattered amongst chards of bone, yet trembling still, willing him to touch it, and the colours broke, all running together and with a wrenching cry, he dropped onto his haunches, burying his face in his hands.

“We’ll tell them he did it, right, Luke?” Frankie was crying. “We’ll tell them he took the gun and fell down with it, that he shot hisself, right, Luke? Luke?”

“
LUKE
?”

Luke started. He was hunched down at the mouth of the cove, staring into the cavern, locked into its darkness. He closed his eyes as Gideon hunched down besides him and bowed his head.

“I’m so ashamed,” he whispered.

“What shames you, Luke?”

Luke shook his head, burrowing deeper into his palms. “It was me that shot you, Gid. It was me that had the gun.”

Gid fell silent, lost in the cavern’s darkness as Luke had been a few minutes earlier. When finally he spoke, his tone was quiet. “Over the years I’ve made myself believe it was no accident. That I didn’t trip and fall. That I turned the gun onto myself.” He paused. “And I’ve credited you with the courage it took for me to pull that trigger, Luke.”

Luke turned to him. “Courage?” he asked incredulously. “I ran like chickenshit.”

“Yeah. We were all running. Before I met you, I was running. Rocky Head wasn’t going to be no final stop for we—not with our old man. But then it was. And that’s to do with you.” Gid smiled at Luke and clasped his hands as though to keep from reaching out. “You showed me what it was to be a boy. And to feel love. I haven’t run since. But I fear what it might’ve took from you. They say you’ve never been back. How come you’ve never been back?”

Luke turned to the dark of the cavern, the rustling of the kelp and sea. “Fear,” he said quietly.

“Fear?”

“Of finding I got no courage. That I’m still the same chickenshit that ran. And I am,” he said with a short laugh. “A part of me will always be chickenshit. I’m learning not to run, is all.” He turned back to Gid. “It’s one thing for a man to stand strong in the wake of his own follies, but it’s for them he hurt to cast the final say.”

“It was a good bullet, my friend. And a good lie at the time. I’m chickenshit, too, Luke. All this time sitting here, too scared to go visit with you. Yeah, scared,” he added. “I’ve been protecting them memories of you—running around the way we used to do, building bough-whiffens.” He smiled, bowing his head in the manner of Luke earlier. “Guess I’ve been scared of finding that you wouldn’t be the same now. That you wouldn’t remember things the same way as I do.”

Luke turned to the scarred face partially hidden beneath the scarf. Reaching, haltingly at first, he pulled the scarf back over Gid’s forehead, gazing over his head somewhere. Then slowly he brought his eyes back to the scarred cheek, the ravaged socket, long since healed, but its flesh now purple with the cold of the night air. A drooping brown eye bored into his, but he refused it, focusing instead onto his fingers as he raised them and laid their tips onto the bottom of Gid’s cheek where the scar began. Slowly, gently, he traced along the path of the bullet as one might a lover’s mouth. And when finally he reached the socket, a finger strayed to its corner, and he pressed it there, allowing himself to look now, into the one brown eye staring back at him.

“You won’t find me the same,” he whispered.

“Nor would I want to,” said Gideon. “I’d rather the man who can now touch me.”

A glimpse of a smile touched the corner of Luke’s mouth, and he lowered his head once more, as did Gideon, their foreheads touching, their hands grasping the other’s shoulders. “It’s good you’ve come back,” said Luke. “Cripes,” he then mumbled, pulling back and stuffing his hands into his pockets, “there’s time I’ve wished to be Frankie, going and doing whatever he pleases, nothing bothering him, nothing sticking.”

“Nay,” said Gideon, “rather the soul that suffers love than the one who baits it.”

Luke looked to the one drooping eye. “We could’ve done more,” he half whispered. “Your mother—the rest of the youngsters—we could’ve done more.”

“He was a Godless man, my father. Nobody can carry the weight of a Godless man, Luke.” He grinned. “That’s something I learned from Prude, although it took me some time to put it in place.” His grin broadened and he was about to say more but quieted as Clair’s voice cut through the dark.

“We’re ready to go,” she called out to them, appearing onto the beach before the brambles. “Gideon, she wants to speak with you.”

Gideon was already rising. Touching Luke’s arm, he spoke with a sense of urgency. “I’ve a confession too, Luke. It’s not just you that’s kept me here all this time, camped out by a dirty pond on a boggy hillside. Yeah,” he added, and leaving Luke staring after him with a drawn brow, he strolled off towards the shack, pulling his scarf down over his scar, and fitting his grizzled hair more tightly into a ponytail. He stopped to have a word with Clair.

Luke made to follow, but a faint scratching sound drew his eyes back to the black mouth of the cavern. The wind was dying out now, and the sky had cleared considerably. By morning the land and sea would be quiet. And once the tide was out and the sun broke over the treetops, the cavern would be flooded with light, the mussel bed glistening like a field of goldenrod after a heavy rain. He thought of Job’s desperate search for a downhill chance out of hell back to the peaceful waters of Cat Arm and he shivered. It’s the one garden, Job, b’ye, he thought, it’s all the one garden. And as he turned back to the beach and Clair walking towards him, her chin tilted proud as she watched him, his heart swelled. His dove. “Aye,” he said in the words of the old vet, “it’s too sublime, too sublime.”

ABOUT THE BOOK

With her award-winning first novel,
Kit’s Law
, Donna Morrissey established herself as the fresh new voice of Newfoundland. With
Downhill Chance,
her second novel, she cements that position.

Winner of the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Prize in 2003,
Downhill Chance
has all the melodrama and gritty realism of
Kit’s Law
, as well as Morrissey’s subtle playfulness. Rich with local dialect, the novel immediately brings readers back to the craggy coast of Newfoundland, to tiny communities where secrets lie in wait to test the strength of characters we’ve come to hold dear.

Told in three parts,
Downhill Chance
begins with Luke Osmond, a young man itching to be free of his overbearing mother, Prude, and their stifling six-family village in Rocky Head. Then Gid O’Mara and his family wash up on the shore one “dirty old night,” setting off a series of events that will plague Luke well into his adulthood.

From there, Morrissey takes us to The Baison, a virtual metropolis compared with Rocky Head, where we meet Clair Gale along with her father, Job, mother, Sare, and younger sister, Missy. The family is close, full of love and laughter—but it’s not to last. The violence of World War II is closing in on pre-Confederation Newfoundland, and as Job leaves to fight in the war, he takes with him Clair’s childhood and all the peace and security she has ever known. Forced to fend for herself at age sixteen, Clair accepts a teaching position in Rocky Head, and from there Morrissey begins to weave the two narrative threads together.