Olivia's Mine (18 page)

“I tot ye were unloaded.”

“It was a really good haul Frenchie. We had
enough to take to Vancouver and also some left for our own
interests, let’s say. Not too much mind you, given the mysterious
rudder problem and all. Just in case anyone is too curious. And not
short of your own special cargo either. In case you were
wondering.”

“Twelve for twelve?” Frenchie smiled.

“Double it up this time.”

Frenchie smiled wider. He loved to eat crab,
and although twenty-four of them were probably too much for him and
Maggie and Lucy, he was sure there were some deals to be made for
the rest. He’d get that Japanese woman, Akiko, to come down and
give his galley a clean. She’d be more than happy to take a few off
his hands while they were still alive and kicking. And a couple
would go to Olivia and Sarah, just because he still loved the
ladies, much to Maggie’s chagrin.

“At dusk?” Sharkey asked.

Frenchie nodded.

“No… wait,” he added. “Mon Dieu, where is my
‘ead? I’ll be ‘eadin’ down de coast dis afternoon. I’ve got some
special cargo of me own to take down south. Let’s just wait for
Frank to get lost and we’ll make de swap.”

He glanced up the dock. Frank had finally
left.

“Well der you go den,” Frenchie said. “Let’s
make de trade.”

Sharkey went below on his boat and brought up
what appeared to be a large cotton mailbag. Frenchie took it
gingerly.

“Des still a snappin’,” he smiled, taking it
below and coming back up with a box marked Coastal Marine Supply
held tightly in his arms.

“Dunt know what it be, inside ’ere. Must be
some of dem boat parts ye ordered,” he said loudly, just in case
Les or Frank were lurking around.

“Careful, it’s kinda ’eavy.”

As he passed Sharkey the box, the
unmistakable rattle of bottles could be heard.

“Must be bottles of teak oil,” Sharkey
laughed. “My deck has been getting rather weathered lately. I have
to do something about that.”

“Tought so.” Frenchie laughed back. He leaned
closer to Sharkey. “Only dis time, it’s not teak ale, it’s teak
scotch. I ‘ad a good haul too! I still owe ye one fer the salmon
you got me a few months back. We be even stevens now, okay?”

Sharkey was grinning ear to ear as he slunk
back to his own boat.

Frenchie went inside the galley and poured
himself another cup of coffee, and came back up on deck. He had
just sat comfortably in his chair when he saw Lucy walking by.

“Lucy!” he yelled.

She turned and looked at him.

“Lucy! Come ‘ere,” he yelled again.

She came down to the boat.

“Whatever is it Frenchie?” she asked.

He paused for a moment, his eyes shifting
side to side.

“Okay Frenchie,” she said. “Spill it. I know
you’re dying to tell me something.”

“Lucy, did I ever tell you de story ‘bout one
legg’d Davey McClegg?”

Lucy started to laugh.

“No, I don’t believe I’ve heard that
one.”

“Well, ye see, ‘es a buddy o’mine back est. I
mean east. I’m tryin’ to learn to talk better for Maggie.
Anyways...down on ‘is luck a bit Davey McLegg was. And one day ‘e
gets de idea to try to rob one of dose trains dat carry de mail. ‘E
tinks der is money on board and ‘es been ‘earin’ de stories about
Jesse James, bang, bang, shoot ‘em up, you know. So ‘e works out a
plan dat seems like a good idea, but ‘e forgets e’s got a wooden
leg, and ‘es a stubborn man and ‘e wants to do it all ‘iself. But
dat is a bad idea eh, cuz ‘e can’t ride a horse and ‘e can’t run
away. So ‘e tries it. De robbery I mean, and de lawmen on de train
shoot him bang, bang dead. At least dat’s what I ‘eard. Dey say dat
if ’ed only ’ad some ’elp, ’e might ’a pulled it off. Might of bin
a rich man. Sometimes ye need to trust people and tell dem yer plan
and ‘ave a liddle ‘elp. Sometimes ye need yer friends.”

“Frenchie,” Lucy said slowly. “What are you
getting at? You’re not asking me to help you rob a train are you?
Because it seems to me that all of your friends wind up losing body
parts.”

“So you’re not worried about de robbery
part?”

“Frenchie!”

“Okay, den. No robberies. I do need yer ‘elp
doh. I promise Lucy, no missin’ body parts. You ‘ave my word.
Besides you’d be no good fer a story cuz I can’t rhyme anytin’ wid
yer name. But come closer cuz I ‘ave a plan and I already got one
odder ‘elper, so we’ll have an accomplice like. We might even need
one more.”

Intrigued, Lucy came closer and Frenchie
whispered in her ear.

She listened, slightly alarmed at first, but
as Frenchie’s plan unfolded, she felt herself filling with
excitement.

“Frenchie,” she said. “You tell your other
helper that Juicy Lucy is in!”

Olivia held the dirty envelope she had pulled
from the trash. It was unopened, addressed to her in her mother’s
handwriting, and it had been thrown away. She sighed.

Tears started to run as she opened the
letter.

Olivia,

It’s been so long since we’ve seen you; I
can’t wait to see you when you come down for Emily’s wedding. She’s
so excited she’s started sleepwalking again. You remember when she
used to do that when you were younger, and you would have to go get
her in the yard and bring her back to bed! It’s hard to believe my
first batch of babies are all grown up. You haven’t met your new
baby brother Daniel yet. He’s already walking and talking. He’s
learned a few choice words from your father I’m afraid. And
speaking of your father, don’t tell him I’ve told you this, but he
is just giddy knowing that you’ll be home to see us soon. He always
says he loves all his children equally, but between us women, I
think he might just love you a teeny tiny bit more. Have a safe
journey.

Love Mother.

Sobbing, Olivia took the letter and threw it
back into the trash, carefully placing some garbage over it so
Frank wouldn’t discover she had found it.

Something inside her at that moment finally
gave way.

The last few months had been unbearable.
Frank was working overtime almost every day at the mine, and she
loved it. She loved it when he wasn’t around. He had asked her to
quit the ladies group and she had done so, not because she wanted
to, but because it pleased him and it was easier to please him than
to argue with him. He wanted her to stop seeing Lucy, so she had
told him she would. Lucy came by for a short visit once or twice a
week anyway because Lucy didn’t care what Frank did or didn’t want.
She would stop by in the afternoons when Frank worked the day shift
and early in the evening when he was working nights so he wouldn’t
find out. Olivia found herself envying Lucy’s freedom. She knew it
was because her own marriage was failing. She just didn’t know how
to go about changing it. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had
all started to go wrong, but it had been just around the time Frank
got the promotion to foreman. While she didn’t actually see Frank
spending much time with McMichael, she figured he must have been
with him a lot at work and perhaps McMichael’s abruptness was
rubbing off on him. Frank had seriousness about him she hadn’t seen
before. When they were in their teens he had been so carefree. Who
knows what the two were getting up to? Frank used to despise
McMichael, but lately? She didn’t know; it sometimes seemed as if
he were trying to emulate him. But why? All for this promise of a
new job, this more important job McMichael kept dangling over
Frank’s head. She would try to engage Frank in light-hearted
conversations about work, but he would ignore her, or worse, tell
her she couldn’t possibly understand.

He had become very controlling, she
recognized. That, combined with Britannia’s isolation, often made
her feel more like a family pet than a wife, only able to go out
when the master lets it. She remembered fondly the days when she
was a teenager, rebelling against everything, certainly not afraid
of male authority. Frank had always been a part of her schemes and
what fun they had together. She had snuck out of the house late at
night more times than she could count on two hands. She would
inevitably get caught, but she would stand up to her father.
Her
FATHER
! They had some
royal battles in their time, but it would always blow over. She
would take the punishment, usually more chores, and use the time to
daydream about her next great caper.

Her arguments with Frank however, were
nothing like her jousts with her father. They would simmer on the
boil, not cooling down for days or even occasionally weeks. On more
than one occasion he had raised his fist to her, and she was afraid
it was only a matter of time before a blow landed.

She remembered one occasion distinctly. The
idea of the store had been in the back of her mind since Easter
dinner. One night, when Frank seemed in a light-hearted mood, she
brought up the subject again. At first he laughed. Where would they
get the money? Where would they get the land? What would he do when
McMichael fired him? He had a grand chuckle about it all. But when
he realized that Olivia had good plausible answers for all these
questions, his tempter raged to a level she had never seen before.
She had gathered the courage to tell him that if he struck her, she
would leave him, and he backed off. But he kept her on a very short
leash from that point on. Since he was afraid she might leave and
never return, the allowance he had always given her, her mad money
as he would call it, was taken away. He would give her only enough
money for the groceries and asked her to provide him with a
receipt. Going to her sister’s wedding was out of the question he
had told her, the excuse always being that there was no money,
despite the hours of overtime he was putting in. He wagered she
wouldn’t go alone, that would be too much to explain to her family.
She was trapped.

So despite being a woman from a very
fine home, despite being a very clever woman, despite being an
educated woman and knowing what she knew she needed to do to make
herself happy, she still couldn’t bring herself to actually do it.
She
loved
him, she told
herself. She had made a very serious wedding vow. Although she
wanted to pull that letter from the middle of the trash can and put
it on top so that he would know that she knew it had arrived, she
left it there. She sat alone in the kitchen and cried.

There were two knocks on the door. She knew
it was Lucy. Lucy always knocked twice, that was the pre-arranged
signal, but she didn’t get up to let her in. She didn’t want any
company. She had however, left the door unlocked as everyone in the
town did, and Lucy, who had seen a light on, let herself in
anyway.

Olivia looked at her through tear stained
eyes.

“I need to borrow some of your clothes,” Lucy
said.

“What? Lucy, they won’t fit you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not for me.
Sarah wants to try some new styles and she’s about your size. Stop
crying okay?”

“And you need them right now? Right this
minute?”

“Well, it’s either that or listen to her go
on and on about needing to improve herself so she can get a man,
and not knowing how to do it without some fancy magazines to look
at. I swear I don’t know why the woman has suddenly adopted me, but
she has.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me what’s
wrong?”

“I know what’s wrong. The same thing that has
been wrong for months. You want to go to the wedding and you think
you can’t. So you’ve got yourself all worked up again.”

Lucy grabbed a paper bag from under the sink
and went into Olivia’s closet and began to pull some dresses
out.

“I think I’ll need another bag.”

“Lucy, I don’t know about this. Why are you
taking my underwear? That’s a little personal.”

“I won’t let her wear it silly. I just want
to show her she has options. Sarah needs to visualize. I need to
let her know there are more than white cotton fillies out there.
I’ve done laundry with you, I know you have some different coloured
ones. Mine are a little too risqué for our impressionable Sarah.
They’re silk. Akiko makes them for me. But these little pink ones,
they’ll do just fine.”

Lucy turned to Olivia.

“I have tried to knock some sense into you
woman, for the past two weeks. Just go. Do you hear me? Just go! I
will take up a collection for the fare and Frenchie will take you
down to Seattle and back. You’d be fine. I go down with him alone
all the time. He’s not going to try anything; you’ll be in no
danger. It’s your sisterly duty to go to the wedding. All the
ladies feel just terrible about it and would love to help you out
by helping with your expenses. They figure Frank’s not going to
help with it.”

“They know about this? Lucy, how do they know
about this?”

Olivia knew only too well how they knew about
it.

“Well, they just know, that’s all. And they
think it’s a shame. Your own flesh and blood and your husband won’t
take you to the wedding. He could get the time off Olivia. Sarah
says he has plenty of time off coming to him. In fact, she nagged
McMichael about this and he offered Frank time off.”

“She nagged McMichael? He knows? Lucy, Frank
will kill me. First I become a charity case for the ladies and then
this? Are you trying to get me killed? He’ll be absolutely furious
if he finds out.”

“In answer to your questions, yes, she
nagged McMichael. That’s what Sarah does for a living. And he must
enjoy it on some level or he’d fire her, which of course, he never
does. He fires everyone else. Yes, McMichael knows. He told Sarah
as he always does that she should mind her own business. Then later
that day Frank was in the office and McMichael said that he
appreciated the extra work Frank had been putting in, but that
Frank was looking a little tired, and would he like a little time
off this weekend? Frank said no. He said
NO
, Olivia! So then Sarah asked McMichael later
what he was going to do about it, and he said he was going to take
his own advice and mind his own business. And then Sarah said
McMichael smiled, which she found rather peculiar. And since he was
in such a great mood, Sarah said she asked him for some time off
for herself and he gave it to her. He gave the time off to
her
. So you see Olivia, Frank will
not find out from McMichael that McMichael knows, so there’s no
need to worry about that. I’m just telling you what Sarah told me
for your own good. Your eyes need to be opened. Next, the ladies do
not consider you a charity case. You had been so kind to so many of
them that they would like to do something a little special for you
because they never see you anymore. That, Olivia, they all can see
themselves, without my saying anything to them, thank you very
much. They got to know you when we were collecting for the war and
they miss you. Even Mrs. Schwindt says nice things about you. Can
you honestly say you’ve ever heard her say nice things about
anybody? Mary Alice wanted to make you a new dress for the wedding.
Okay, I talked her out of it, but at least she offered. If you are
embarrassed by their show of goodwill, then I won’t ask for their
help. But lastly, and you listen girl, what bothers me the most is
that there was an icy tone to your voice when you said Frank would
kill you. So help me Hannah, if he lays as much as a finger you,
and I find out about it, and find out about it I will, I swear I
will kidnap you and take you back to Seattle myself. After I’ve
rope tied him and strung him up on Mrs. Schwindt’s clothesline
naked, hanging by his ears.”