Extensions (38 page)

“Praise God, another sign. God speaks to us in deep sleep and I knew you would be coming. And because all prophecies say the end of the world is near, I was certain He wouldn't waste any time. He didn't tell me who or when, but when you stood at the door, I knew. I did not expect you to be as young and comely as you are. Years ago, Sara's daughter paid me a visit, but I had no sign then. Just before Christmas, I had a dream about Mommy and Daddy holding hands with twin girls and they were all smiling. I awoke knowing Jesus wanted me to receive you and tell the story.”

If I was sitting across the table from a lunatic, I felt an odd kinship with her. The hermetically sealed spirit of the little girl who made life bearable for Sara had really not matured since then, and in a weird way, I now became the other end of that chain. Her old face was remarkably unlined by experience, doubts, curiosity, or hard-won wisdom. Stunted yet preserved by her mother's convictions, she retained her innocence. No breakdown needed for her salvation, it was hers by extension.

And what was I but an extension, through Dad, of Sara? Just as this elderly cousin coasted on what her mother had gone through and passed on, so were our comfortable lives determined by what Sara had borne, distilled, and set in motion for us. But forget the go-betweens — Laura and I both sat together at this table because of Jane. The Owens line got her here; the Hughes merger brought me along a different path to this juncture.

Just then, a synapse in my brain sparked an unplanned question. “Did you happen to know Roland Hughes?”

Laura had to think who I meant before her breaths began pumping out words — her reprieve had not lasted long. “Uncle Roland? Yes, I met him when Daddy died. After the funeral, he came to the house. Mommy had taken to her bed from the strain of Daddy's death, so I sat with him there in the parlour.”

I glanced backward to make sure the doily-encrusted room was the parlour she was talking about. My jitters continued.

“Uncle Roland wanted me to know that Daddy had been his best friend when he was young. Even before he became his brother-in-law. Funny, how I never forget anything about Daddy. I still miss him so. I can picture Uncle Roland sitting on the chesterfield telling how he went to work in the mines as a boy of thirteen because his mother was dead and his father was mean and drunk. He said that Daddy, being a few years older, looked out for him underground, and the Owens house was the only place he felt any kindness. Uncle Roland's parents came from the same part of Wales as Daddy did.”

I swallowed, wishing I had a notebook to record this rap sheet on my great-grandfather for Monty. “Tell me more about him.”

Despite her shaking body, the flush of revelation had taken years off Laura's face. Basking in her unique authority, she might have drawn energy from my own hot cheeks. It's possible she had never felt this powerful before in her long, cloistered life. “He was small and stooped and looked old. Lucky he had a strong wife with him.”

“Wife?”

“Kay. They took the ferry over from Vancouver just for the day. He said he had to pay his respects to Daddy if it was the last thing he did. And then he touched Kay's shoulder and said if she hadn't saved him from the bottle, he wouldn't have lasted long enough to do it.”

“What was she like, this Kay?”

“Seemed a nice lady. Younger than him. Bigger too. They didn't stay long because Mommy was moaning in the bedroom and Edna and Myrtle and their families were in and out. He apologized that they weren't close family, but it was important for him to talk about Daddy. I remember his soft voice.”

“Did he ask about Sara?”

Laura's flush was fading and her words more laboured. She almost whispered: “He wondered where she was. I didn't know because Mommy never talked about her and was in no condition to be questioned then. The next day we received a card from Sara with money in it and I could have given him her address. But it was too late.”

Suddenly I'd had enough of missed opportunities. I stood up. Our family situation was no less absurd than many domestics I'd attended: a reminder that we are never as far removed from one another as we like to think. I walked around the table and bent down to kiss Laura's cheek. “Thank you. You don't know what this means to me.”

Her eyes looked past me to a clock on the wall above the refrigerator. A film of indifference told me I was quickly becoming invisible. “Meals on Wheels will be here right away.” She started to lift herself from the chair; I took her arm gently to help her to a standing position where she could ease the stiffness out of her old joints. “I can't miss them,” she said, urgency growing in her voice.

Routine sustained her as much as the food — I knew that from Dad. I walked ahead of her through the front room and cold verandah, turning back at the door to say, “You've given life to my ancestors and you're the only one who could have done it.”

Her bobbing head scanned the street, oblivious to me now, though she did look my way one last time to say: “Praise the Lord. May all their souls rest in peace.”

“Amen.”

When a car stopped, she became more agitated, but I had to disappoint her. “It's my ride, Laura,” I said, waving as I walked to Uncle Lawrence's car. “I'm sure yours will be along soon.” As we pulled away, I was thankful to see a minivan take our spot.

Janetta's eyes were bright. “Perfect timing. You must have something to tell, if you're still here.”

I began my account, allowing my own flush and pulse to decrease as I did. Janetta's eagerness for details matched mine, from the tragedy of the twins' deliberate separation to news of a step-grandmother no one had known of. One of the stories I asked Mom to read to me over and over as a kid was “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” The darker elements of someone picking up first rats and then children and leading them through the streets into a mountain fascinated me. Looking at my aunt's rapt expression turned back from the front seat, and even Lawrence's ear half-cocked in my direction in spite of himself, I felt like the Pied Piper. The unravelling story had drawn in Gail and Monty, Dad, Janetta, Wendell Mingus, and now Laura Owens. Mona Mingus hardly qualified as being under the spell, but she was still part of it. Then as now, I wondered what was in the mountain.

“That's Mount Benson,” said Lawrence, now back in Chase River. “You got time for a quick tour of Extension? That's where Mrs. Dryvynsydes was born, after all.”

It took me a second to realize he was talking about Sara. Most men did not refer to their mothers-in-law so formally. “By all means.”

Turning north in Chase River onto Extension Road, I tried to picture Jane walking this distance when she left her mother to marry Roland Hughes and live at Extension. What would the area have looked like then? We soon dipped into the legendary mine site — the remains of it, that is.

A large slag heap, almost overgrown with brush and trees, was only noticeable if you were looking for it. The winding cinder roads through the little valley were thick with trees which Lawrence identified as arbutus, maple, alder, cedar, and often intermingled with rock walls that had split into crevasses or boulders. Miners' cabins still stood along the streets; some cedar shingle sidings were so discoloured they might have been relics from the Great Strike, but the old trucks and piles of firewood outside suggested they were still occupied. A few had been improved with newer vehicles in the yards, and even modern houses with landscaped lawns surprised us once or twice. There was no central core with services, though we did discover a boarded-up school and general store where a main corner must once have flourished. I was seeking a clear lookout from which we could see the whole little valley, but despite Lawrence's patience, we kept circling through the same few streets with no vantage point. A derelict wildness had taken over the craggy, wooded lots that my cop's instincts said could provide a convenient cover for criminals and drug dealers.

“I do remember spectacular dogwood and delphiniums one spring, years ago, when we took a drive out here,” Janetta said brightly.

Maybe I should come back again in April.

Lawrence remarked that the bluffs seemed higher than before, maybe because the fir trees at the top had grown so tall. I thought of the Louis Strong case. Were those the same bluffs where his body was found?

In the midst of my father's history, territory, and relatives, a bittersweet flash of my mother caught me off-guard. She would have been as delighted as Sara to think a love of learning had finally rubbed off — from the Pied Piper of Hamelin to college textbooks. The stubborn daughter, whose curiosity she had tried so hard to inspire, was beginning to understand why she — and her mother-in-law — had driven herself to know more. And more.

Janetta's face, still half-turned toward me, held the same awe I felt at being here. But in the end, there was no more to see of this forgotten colony.

“We've got time for lunch before the ferry,” said Lawrence, climbing the road out of Extension and swinging back onto the Trans-Canada Highway. “There's a good fish and chip shop in Departure Bay.”

“Never thinks of cholesterol with all this sausage and fried food.” Janetta winked at me.

As we indulged, she reviewed all our findings and promised a visit to the Nanaimo cemetery on my next trip to the island. Jane Hughes was buried there, but finding the grave would take some time. When they dropped me at the ferry, she squeezed in one more mission with her strong hug. “Mona Mingus has two more letters. Be sure to let me know what you can get from her.”

Easy for the followers to say. The Pied Piper had roads to travel and work to do.

“FIVE MORE DEATHS,” says Roland, tossing a bag of sugar on the kitchen table.

Jane's elation at the sight of the scarce commodity is frozen by his words.

“Two in combat, three from flu.”

Jane knows the wire would come directly to them if Llewellyn were among the casualties, but she holds her breath. “Any we know?”

“Not the soldiers. Young fella from Lantzville and a lumber man with a big family from Ladysmith. Tommy would know him.”

“And the flu deaths?” She still does not exhale.

“Black, white, and purple.”

“The black?” she whispers, impatient at Roland's stalling with the colours of sashes on doors to denote a dead adult, child, or senior citizen.

Roland nods and says softly. “Marjorie.”

Jane's breath is expelled in a sob. Roland puts his spindly arms around her until she collects herself and wipes her eyes with her apron.

Her best friend. Just four mornings ago they were cleaning their adjoining cabbage patches when Malcolm Stockand, a snooty bookkeeper, strutted down the street past them and tripped on a piece of horse manure. The look on Marjorie's face provoked a giggle from Jane, triggering such an explosion of laughter that Sara, Janet, and Marjorie's daughters stopped playing tag to stare at their mothers doubled over, holding their sides. Then, suddenly, Marjorie, still laughing, clutched the sides of her head and said, “I must have burst a blood vessel behind my eyes from all this laughing we do.”

When the pain in Marjorie's head removed the smile from her face, Jane's went with it. And when Marjorie's nose began oozing blood, Jane followed her through the gate they never shut between their properties and replaced her sopping handkerchief with her own clean one. Since then Jane's head has been filled with prayer.

“When?”

“Just now. Kids were at the store lined up for sugar with the rest of us when Milt came to get them. Saddest thing to see your camphor necklaces swinging on them all. Like inmates escaped from prison.”

As a precaution against the rampant disease, Jane had wrapped camphor gum in flannel and tied it to cords to be worn around the necks of the Gilchrist family. She also made masks out of gingham muslin to elude the airborne virus — enough for her family and for Marjorie's mother, who came from Comox two days ago to help. The house was now in quarantine, much to the dismay of Sara and Janet, who spent every possible minute with Suzanne and June, including walking to school together. Jane wore gloves when she handed food and pans of ground onions for chest poultices across the threshold to Milt or Mrs. Osler, speaking through closed lips.