Finding My Own Way (9 page)

“I won't, sir. Not here.”

He took the small paper bag the girl behind the counter held out for him and dropped the change into the baggy pocket of his jacket. “What are they paying you, if you don't mind my asking?”

“Forty-three cents an hour,” I whispered.

“Really?” He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Seems rather low to me.”

I shrugged. “It's what they pay their students, so I said I'd take it. It's a job. Till I find a better one.”

William Thomas frowned at the bag of chips, the glass of Coke. “That's not lunch, I hope,” he remarked.

“Today it is,” I grimaced. “I was in such a hurry to get here that I forgot to pack myself something. Can you imagine?”

He put a hand back into his pocket and came out with an apple. “Here, take this. No, I insist. Marge packed an extra one in my lunch today, and I'll just end up taking it home again. You'll be saving me from a tongue-lashing.”

Returning to the floor after my noon break, I spent some time trying to make an artistic arrangement out of the little packages of baby shirts and the bigger bundles of flannelette diapers. I was folding a pile of ladies' sweaters when a young man with a foxy-coloured brush cut approached. He had a baby face, almost transparent blue eyes, and a smooth, fair complexion. “You're Libby Eaton, I guess.” He stuck out a slim hand. “I'm the assistant manager.” Bobby Baker couldn't have been any more than nineteen. He wore a string tie with his white dress shirt, the sleeves of which he'd turned up to his elbows, revealing pale, freckled forearms.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said. I'd heard about this young man from Margaret.

“So, how's it going?” His tone was friendly as he struck a casual pose against the counter full of ladies' lingerie and eyed me up and down.

“Fine, I think,” I replied, feeling my cheeks grow warm under his gaze. “I helped Pat do some price changes this morning. When she went on her lunch, she
told me to do some tidying.” I bent over my folding job again.

“Always lots of that to do,” Bobby agreed amiably. “The way some people paw through the merchandise! Mr. Forth keeping you busy enough?”

I didn't look up. “I haven't really seen him. He said just to look around, get to know where things are, until you came in. That you'd be in charge of finding things for me to do.”

“That's right.” He uncrossed his ankles and pushed himself away from the counter. “Do you know how to weigh out candy?”

“Not yet,” I admitted.

“Come on over to the candy counter, then. I'll get Gloria to show you. You can help her there this afternoon. We've had a new shipment, and I just brought some cases to her on the dolly. The bins will all need filling.”

I followed him down the creaking floor to a block of glass cases. “Hey, Blondie,” Bobby greeted a pretty girl who was wiping finger marks off the front of the glass. “I brought you some help.”

Gloria straightened up and gave me a friendly smile. The assistant manager moved in closer to her. “Now, don't say I never do anything for you.” His voice was a husky growl.

With a town as small as Pinkney Corners, I'd seen Gloria Hooper around, but I didn't know her personally. She was, I discovered, fun to work with. She had a lively sense of humour and kept up a constant chatter while we opened boxes and scooped candy into the compartments
in the glass-fronted case. She was eager to make me feel right at home. Gloria knew all the staff and the regular customers and seemed to know everything about them. Working with her made the afternoon hours fly past.

The first time I saw Gloria pop a French cream into her mouth, I was horrified. “My favourites,” she grinned mischievously. With her pink circle skirt, her white blouse, her hair blonder than blonde, she looked like a piece of candy herself.

“You're allowed to eat them?” I asked.

“Sure. Everybody does. Just don't let Freddie Forth catch you. But if Bobby's on, he's the worst of the lot. Comes in and grabs a whole handful of the mixed nuts.” Her face darkened. “Just watch out that's all he grabs,” she finished, cryptically.

Gloria and I had been scooping candy together for a couple of hours, and Bobby had cruised by several times. I knew from the way she had dissected the other employees that it was just a matter of time before she filled me in on all the juicy gossip about the assistant manager.

“Let me give you a word of advice about that one,” Gloria said in a conspiratorial tone, as we broke open a carton of butterscotch wafers under the counter. “Watch out.”

“Oh?” I queried cautiously, aware of being the newcomer here and not knowing what the relationship between these two might be. “He seems very friendly.”

Gloria snorted at my observation. “That's the understatement of the year! He's engaged to a girl in the town where he took his training. Karen comes in to check on him sometimes. Would you believe I'd gone out with
him three times before he told me about their engagement? So, you be careful. Especially seeing as you're new. You'll have to make it plain to him that you're strictly business.” She gave me a knowing look. “Unless you aren't.”

“He's not really my type,” I said, thinking of Michael.

Over the next few weeks, my work days developed a definite rhythm. I rose early, in order to have time to write a few pages in my journal while my mind was still clear. Then I dressed, ate my breakfast and biked in to work.

Each evening after supper I would sit outside with my writing supplies and the dog, until the mosquitoes and the darkness drove us in again. I'd do the dishes, fix my lunch for the next day, climb the stairs to bed and read till I fell asleep. In the morning, the whole cycle would begin again.

As for Ernie, his days were free for rambling. He never went further than the corner in one direction or the McIntyres' farm in the other.

During the course of my comings and goings, I came to the conclusion that something had died in the back kitchen. At first, it was just a suspicion, a hint in the air when I went by—a sweet, rubbery smell. Like skunk. I tried to ignore it, but with each day the stench got worse. I knew I couldn't avoid using the back door forever, and one Sunday, when Savaway was closed and I had a day
off, I decided to tackle the problem.

I propped the outside door open and began moving things, one by one, out into the yard. The back kitchen, a fancy name for a shed built onto the back of the house, was packed with stored items. The original floor had rotted away in places, and new boards had been nailed down lengthways over the holes. The two tiny windows had disappeared behind the chaos. There were stacks of stained berry boxes, assorted wash tubs, pails and basins, rolls of rubber hose, floor mops, a teetering tower of six-quart baskets, endless empty sealer jars, bits of wood, an enormous pair of rubber boots, straw hats, several bags containing rags, and two cardboard boxes that were filled to the brim with papers.

My nose eventually led me to the source of the smell—a bloated field mouse, caught in one of Alex's traps, down behind a box of kindling and old newspapers. How one small dead animal could smell so awful was beyond me.

Field mice were pretty common at our place, and Alex had developed her own tried-and-true way of catching them whenever they got inside. She used to tie a bit of bread onto the mousetrap, pinching the bread into a small cube of dough and securing it to the trap with white thread. Her theory was that the mouse would get its teeth caught in the thread and set off the trap.

I hadn't thought about how I would dispose of the offending creature when I found it, and, still undecided, I carried the corpse, trap and all, outside on the end of a shovel. I couldn't bring myself to touch the trap to free the little grey mouse, didn't even want to look at it. Ernie
was already too interested in it for my liking. If I dug a hole to bury it, he just might dig it up again.

In the end, I hurled it as far away from me as I could into the river. I watched it float slowly away and immediately felt sorry that I hadn't dispatched the little creature with more dignity.

It was a fact of life that there would be more field mice, and no way of keeping them out of the back kitchen. Because I wasn't going to set any more traps, I decided we would have to learn to coexist. My plan was to rattle the inside door first on my way out, to warn them that I was coming, and stamp my feet as I went through. And I could always let Ernie out ahead of me so that he'd go bounding along to the outside door. No creature would stay after such an exuberant exit.

Pleased with my decision, I went back up to the house and moved everything inside again, creating some order in the process. Then I spent the rest of the morning stuffing pieces of rag with a kitchen knife into any crack I could find. I discovered another loaded trap under the sink and set it off. I wanted no more surprises. I fed the morsel of dried bread to Ernie who, ever curious, had manoeuvred his head and shoulders into the cupboard to watch me.

Just as I was washing my hands and thinking of lunch, Ernie gave a low, warning growl. He scrambled to his feet as I moved to the window to see what it was he'd heard. There, not twenty yards from my back door, stood a strange man looking down towards the river, in no hurry to move on. He was a large man, with unkempt, yellowing hair that straggled down the back of his neck
from under a grimy cap. He wore a tattered T-shirt from which the sleeves had been ripped and a pair of wrinkled pants that may once have been part of a suit. Strapped to his back he had a large bundle, like a bedroll. While I watched, he loosened the pack and let it down onto the ground, stretching long arms over his head.

“You're not staying here, mister!” I muttered to myself, because it looked like that was what he was planning. Ernie cocked one ear at the sound of my voice. I decided to let the dog out and see what happened.

It was clear that Ernie startled the man, but what followed was an impasse. Ernie planted himself, barking incessantly, within three feet of the man, and both of them stood their ground. I realized after a few moments that unless I wanted the stranger to think no one was home, I would have to make an appearance.

I unhooked the scissors from the nail on the wall and dropped them into the pocket of my shorts. “Ernie, come,” I commanded from just outside the door. Obediently, Ernie bounded towards me, and I grabbed for his collar.

“That dog,” the man called, “is he vicious?”

“Only if there are strangers on the property,” I retorted.

He started to come towards me. His face was grizzled with white whiskers, and the skin above his nose and around his eyes was deeply tanned. “Are there fish in this part of the river?” he asked, revealing a gap in the front of his mouth where several teeth were missing.

“Suckers, mostly,” I told him. “It dries up pretty much in the hot weather.” I pulled Ernie back against me as if
the dog might lunge at the man. “Easy, boy,” I warned. Ernie grinned up at me.

“I didn't think anyone lived here any more,” the man admitted. His voice was harsh, and he gave a moist cough to clear his throat.

“Well, we've been away,” I said. “But now we're back. To stay. Me and my father. Dad's in the house. He's hooking up the water line. We drained the pipes before we left.”

The stranger glanced at the upstairs window, then looked again at me. “I'll be on my way, then,” he decided. He pulled the cloth cap more securely over his matted hair, put his arms back through the straps of his pack and moved off to the far side of the house, making a wide circle to avoid the dog.

As soon as he had gone, I hauled Ernie back inside. I slid the bolt on the back door and hurried through to the front. There was no sign of the man on the road. Had we scared him off? Which way would he have gone? The McIntyres' farm was at the end of the road, but asking them if they'd seen a stranger hanging around would only arouse their suspicions. I didn't want them alerting Irene, although this time I felt really shaken. This man had acted as if he had the right to be here.

The stranger had admitted he thought the place was vacant. Did that mean he'd been here before? Was
this
the one who'd broken in months ago? And was he planning to spread his bedroll out in my house again?

Be reasonable, I said to myself. He hadn't threatened us in any way. He was just
there
. Maybe he really
did
want to know how good the fishing was. But if he'd been
hanging around, he'd know there was no father on the premises, know that I'd only been bluffing.

I leaned against the front door, the warm sun heating my back through the wood, in spite of the chill I felt inside. How could I make it look as if there was someone here with me? For one thing, I determined, if there were two people living here it wouldn't be this quiet. I returned to the kitchen and turned on the radio.

Suddenly, I spotted the bag of rags that I'd been using to fill the cracks—an old sugar bag where we'd stuffed worn-out clothing that was soft enough for cleaning rags. There were two more bags in the back kitchen.

Dumping them out on the floor, I sorted through the piles. Amongst the jumble were several long-sleeved shirts that could have belonged to a man, although I remembered Alex wearing something similar when she'd painted the new bathroom. From the last bag I dragged a pair of ragged work pants. The old jacket that hung on a peg by the back door, where it was handy to slip on when taking out the washing on cool mornings, would complete the ensemble.

I filled the sink with water and immersed all the clothing with the exception of the jacket. Then, wringing out the pieces, I took them outside and hung them on the clothesline, glancing uneasily over my shoulder all the while. I pegged the jacket to a wire hanger and hung it out as if it needed airing. Finally, I set the over-sized rubber boots on the back step. That should make him think twice about coming any closer.