Spit Delaney's Island (13 page)

But she stopped coming altogether years later when he sold the seaside
house and moved in with a woman far up a gravel road behind town, in a
junky unpainted house beside a swamp. She had nearly a dozen children
from various fathers, some Scandinavian, two Indian, and one Chinese,
and her name was Netty Conroy. Which meant, Aunt Nora Macken was
soon able to discover after a little investigation, that she was related to
more than half the people who lived in that mainland town, not to mention most who lived in the countryside around it. It was a strange thing,
she told The Immediate Family, but she still felt closer to Gerry Mack
than to any of the rest of them. Perhaps it was because she, too, had had a
tendency to cut off her nose to spite her face. Everyone laughed at the
notion because of course, they said, Aunt Nora had always had everything
just the way she wanted it in this world.

“If that Big Glad Littlestone ever gets married,” some people said, “there
won't be a church aisle on the Island wide enough for her to walk down.”

“Poor girl,” the more sensitive said of her. “The size of a logging truck
and almost as loud. Thirty-six years old already and still no sign of a father
for that boy of hers.”

But Big Glad didn't waste time on people's opinions. Because here it
was June again, which was her lucky month. It seemed to her that in all
the years she had lived in this old house (measured by the life of that heavy
lilac bush, covering half the yard) there had never been a June that felt so
lucky. In the woods, all tangled up beneath the fallen hemlock slash, and
hidden in the copper grass behind her place, the wild blackberries were
ripening early and every day she found a brand-new patch to pick and fill
her pail to make her wine. And the honeysuckle flowers all over the side
of her house had never smelled so sweet.

But the early evening was the best time, the luckiest time. Every day
that month, as soon as she had finished washing up her supper dishes and
got Roger started at his piano practice, she came out onto the porch, stood
breathing deep with her hands on her hips to take in all the scents the sun
had stirred up during the afternoon, then walked out into her yard to
water the tomato plants. And every day, too, she wore the same clothes:
those little red sneakers, that same white bulging T-shirt, those striped
knee-length shorts. And, of course, that was the way Mr. Swingler first
saw her, in those clothes, in that garden, bending over her precious tomato
plants, a sprinkling can in one hand.

What
she
saw first was a little round head that rode the top of the picket
fence to the gate, then stopped and turned and looked at her, unblinking,
perhaps trying to believe she was real. For a long time she stared right
back. Then the gate swung open and a small bow-legged body carried that
head down her path.

“Hey mister,” she said. “Get your feet off of my gardeshias.”

The little man hopped one step to the side and looked down at the flowers he had crushed. “Them ain't gardeshias, missus, they're geraniums.”

“It's Miss,” she said and stepped back, for she was spraying water on her
own foot. “Miss Littlestone. And I don't know one flower from the other.
When the logging camp closed down and they hauled all the other houses
away I just went from yard to yard and pulled up what I liked.”

The man lowered his eyes again but they popped back up to stare at
her. She waited for him to speak but he just went on chewing and staring.
Those eyes looked like two painted rubber balls controlled from behind
by elastic strings.

Well, she couldn't stare back all day. She went up on the front verandah
and picked a large red apple out of a box. “Have an apple,” she said, and
held it out for him.

“No thank you,” he said. “The name's Swingler. This time of year I
wouldn't say thank you to no man for an apple dried up and wrinkled as
a old prune.”

“Not store-bought ones,” she said, and took a bite to prove it. “These are
store-bought ones I got last Saturday in town. Must be grown in California
or somewhere down there.”

“No thank you,” he said again, though she had half eaten it by now. For
some time she stood there on that verandah, eating the apple, trying not to
stare back at those rubber-ball eyes, and trying even harder to think of
something to say. Her teeth started working around the core and she spat
three seeds over the railing.

“That,” she said at last, with a slight nod towards the mountain off behind her house, “is the prettiest sight on this island.” She said this as if the
mountain were fenced right into her own back yard and her name tacked
on it.

The little man turned and put both hands on his hips to study the mountain, head cocked. “Not bad,” he said.

“Not bad?” she said. “You won't see prettier.”

“But you don't own it,” he said. “Nobody owns a mountain.”

This sounded like criticism to Big Glad, a reflection on her character. In
a voice hard enough to show that no one walks uninvited into her yard and
insults her, she said, “Where are you headed for anyway?”

“Paper mill,” he said, eyes still on that mountain. “Looking for a job.”

“Then you're a little off course, mister.” She threw the core across the
fence right from where she stood. “Took the wrong turn twelve miles back.
Paper mill is on the coast; you're headed straight into mountains. Are you
walking?”

“Don't see no taxi parked, do you?”

He said this without expression, certainly without sarcasm, yet it was too
much for her. She drew back against the wall and folded her arms. “Well,
I'm the only one lives in here, me and my son, and I got a car all right but
I ain't driving you all the way back to the highway. You got a long walk
ahead of you.”

For answer he swung to look at her again and said, “Lady, you got the
daintiest feet I ever seen.”

Now Big Glad knew this was the luckiest month ever. She crossed her
ankles and stood with the toe of one red sneaker pointed like a ballet
dancer. “Thank you, kind sir,” she said, and did a mock curtsey. Then she
did a complete turn, on one foot, for him to see every side.

“Don't mention it, I'm sure,” he said and jammed a cigarette into his
mouth.

That he had a mouth she hadn't noticed before. Now she realized that
there was more to his face, to his body, than two painted rubber-ball eyes.
The top half of his head came forward—forehead, eyes, nose—as if something behind were pushing on it. The bottom half, his mouth, his chin, slid
away from her, sucked back as if he had swallowed his own teeth and half
his jaw. In fact, she thought, if he'd just turn his head he'd probably have
no chin at all.

Because he wore a pair of loose overalls and a plaid shirt so big the
sleeves had to be rolled up to meet his wrists, she couldn't tell what his
body was really like. She guessed his age at fifty-five.

“Forty-seven,” he said. He lighted the cigarette and ground the match
into the gravel of her path. “Born forty-seven years ago on my old man's
farm down near Victoria, lived every place on this island you could name
since then. Never been in here before, though.”

“Me, I was born in this old shack. There's been a new coat of paint on
those shakes every year of my life. Only time I ever leave the place is to go
to town, or when I go off for a month or two to cook in a logging camp up
the coast.”

Mr. Swingler looked around the clearing, at the bare spots in the grass,
the piles of old brick and overgrown lilac. “How come they all moved?”
he said. “Why didn't they stay right here like you?”

“Oh, as soon as the camp shut down they fell all over themselves to buy
the same house they'd been crabbing about for years while they rented
them. Then they hauled them out to the highway so they could watch the
traffic go by. Front lawns the size of aprons. And for Saturday-night entertainment they sit at the front window and hope for an accident.”

“Why didn't you move too?”

“Mister Swingler, that is a silly question. I like it here, it's much better
with all them people gone. Sounds of trucks and cars and brakes squealing
can't measure up to a squirrel's chattering or a deer in the underbrush.”

Mr. Swingler did not say anything to that; he looked right past her. His
chewing stopped. “What's that?” he said, and the chewing started again.

“Where?”

“Behind you. In the doorway.”

Big Glad looked and there was Roger standing with his nose pressed
flat against the screen door. “That's my boy,” she said to the man, and, “Get
your face away from that filthy screen,” to the boy. Then she said to Mr.
Swingler, who had moved up to stand at the foot of the verandah steps
below her, “He's got plenty of talent, everyone says. Just ten years old, too.”

Mr. Swingler glowered at the boy as if talent was the one thing this
world could do without. He scratched behind one ear for a full minute.
“Talent's all right,” he said. “But you got to have guts as well.”

At this the child's face faded into the shadow of the room behind. Big
Glad moved in front of the door as if to protect her son. The boards
creaked beneath her.

“Roger's all right,” she said.

“Sure,” he said. His gaze tried to penetrate the screen.

“They all say he'll go far.”

“Sure,” Mr. Swingler said. He walked over to one side of the lawn. He
came back with both hands in his pockets. “Where's the best place for
looking at that mountain?” he said, while inside the house the boy started
finger exercises on the piano.

Big Glad came down off the verandah and took another look at the
mountain. Maybe he had seen something she'd missed. “What do you
mean?” she said. “That looks good from anyplace.”

He took the time to look at her as if she were a simple child. Then,
lowering his eyes, he shrugged and turned his back to her. “I'm going to
paint it.”

“Well, why didn't you
say
you were an artist? The best view anywhere
is right from the top of my roof. But where do you keep your paints and
stuff?”

Mr. Swingler looked at the steep gable roof like an engineer estimating
its strength. Satisfied with what he saw (Lord, he'd need to be, she'd had
it all re-done just three years ago, before Momma died), he nodded, said,
“Show me where your ladder is and get me a few pieces of paper and your
kid's water colours,” and turned again to the view.

Big Glad had her thoughts on
that
kind of talk but this time she kept
them to herself. Instead she asked, “Don't you carry nothing with you?
Artists are supposed to carry a knapsack at least, but you just rely on people having kids with water colours?”

“A toothbrush,” he said and without even turning to face her pulled a
blue worn brush from one pocket. “And a razor.” And he pulled that out
too, from the other pocket, and held them both up high in case there was
something wrong with her eyes. Then he faced her. “Now if you'll just
show me where you keep your ladder.”

She did. She pointed to where it was lying in the long grass down one
side of the house. Then, because she had never met an artist before—an
eccentric one at that—she hurried into the house, excited, to get him his
paper and paints.

He went up the roof first, holding the pad of paper and Roger's Donald
Duck paint set, and sat on the peak. She followed him on her hands and
knees, carrying a glass of water and a pencil, cursing the tiny stones that
cut into her skin and broke her fingernails. Then, puffing (Oh Lord, if
Momma were alive she'd have another heart attack just at the thought of
her daring), she sat beside him on the ridge facing the mountain and tried
to make herself comfortable. “My goodness,” she said, “this
is
nice up here.
A little hard on the rear end, though.”

Mr. Swingler braced himself by putting his feet wide apart. “You'll
have to be quiet,” he said.

She held her breath to please him and saw that he held the pad of paper
on his lap, ready for action. The tin of paints was on the roof between his
feet, one end propped up on a rock to keep it level. She heaved a great sigh
and offered her face up to the sun as if here she was, ready for whatever
was ahead. Let it happen, she thought, and planted her feet wide apart for
balance, like him.

When she looked down again he had sketched in the scene with his
pencil and was putting a light blue wash over the whole paper. She sniffed
hard, said, “Just smell that lilac,” and folded her arms under her great
breasts.

But Mr. Swingler wasn't smelling flowers. Without even slowing the
motion of his brush on that paper he said. “Can't you get that racket to
stop?”

“What racket?”

“That kid of yours. That piano racket right below us.”

She hadn't even noticed. Roger practised so much his noise had become
part of the natural background for her. She had always thought there was
nothing like music to calm the nerves. But apparently Mr. Swingler didn't
agree, so she stomped one foot hard three times on the roof and listened to
make sure the message was understood.

It was. The sounds from the piano became so soft they might have been
coming with the sun from across the woods.

“That was Rachmaninoff,” she said.

For a long time, for perhaps five minutes, she remained silent and
watched him work. When the sun had dried the wash (he held the paper
up as if to catch the rays that came at them horizontally across the tops of
the firs), he began to work at filling in the colours of the lower slopes of that
mountain. She couldn't see how a paint brush would be able to put in all
those black snags that stood like rigid hairs down the burned-off side, but
that was his problem.