Sylvanus Now (11 page)

She winced, and not solely from the conveyer belt starting up again with a shrill whine, but from where her thoughts had taken her. For just as beauty of face goes no further than to bring attention to the person beneath, so was marriage a sham, bringing attention to silly things like rings and veils and nice kitchens, distracting the mind from fancy pressed suits getting exchanged for oilskins, and babies swelling out bellies, and the eternity of days to come, ravaged by the deadening detail of domestics.

A blast of cold air struck her, and she shivered, laying down her knife and buttoning the top button of the sweater she wore beneath her frock. A side door opened beyond the faulty conveyer belt, letting in a flash of light that vanished instantly the door shut, like a star sucked from its nebulae and extinguished in a dark hole. Which was exactly how she felt walking to work each morning: like a body forced through light, then sucked inside a dark hole. No wonder she needed to be sanctified. No wonder her thoughts kept turning to the desiring eyes of Sylvanus Now. She conjured again the sweetness of his meadow. Even those times he carried her across the brook to visit his mother were nice, no matter the old woman’s quietude—or aloofness, for she appeared that, Adelaide thought, aloof and a bit disapproving of her son’s bringing home a girl from up-along somewhere. But no matter. That was the very thing Adelaide liked about her: her keeping to herself, knitting in her rocker and watching out the window as the kettle’s humming filled the room around her.

Sure, once, when Sylvanus had gone to fetch something, and she, Adelaide, had been sitting back on the daybed, nodding hypnotically to the clicking of the old woman’s needles, her cheek fanned by the same breeze as was fanning through the window onto the old woman’s fissured cheek, she, Adelaide, had actually slept.

Another scream from the broken conveyor belt and Adelaide quailed, her knife falling from her hand. Picking it up, she wiped it clean against her apron and cursed this hellish hole that wouldn’t allow even for a waft of thought on this cold, drizzly morning.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE LAST SCHOONER SAILS

“E
LECTRIC WASHER
,” pleaded Ivy that evening as Adelaide and her mother trudged wearily into the house, still wearing their frocks, and staring aghast at the sorted bundles of dirty clothes spread out over the floor, boots strewn about, and plastic balls and smatterings of pebbles spilling from an old sun-bleached plastic bucket. “Can we? can we
please?
” “

“Name of gawd, can we
what
?” cried Florry. “

“Get an electric washer when we gets electricity.”

“Praise the Lord, is that what you’re waiting for? How come you got nothing done?” wailed Florry, eyes anguishing past the dirtied clothes and onto the dirtied dishes covering the sink. “And where’s the youngsters—where’s all the youngsters?”

“I sent them out so’s I could get some washing done, but then the sink plugged—” “In this weather? You sent them out in this weather— praise the Lord, and what’re you doing, starting the washing on a Wednesday—and this late in the day?”

“Because I can’t do it tomorrow. I’m going to Carol Ann’s,” she ended pleadingly. “Her father’s showing the new western show and she said I can stay and watch. That old sink’s always plugging up. If we ever gets electricity—”

“Electricity!” scoffed Adelaide, picking her way across the kitchen, shrugging out of her frock. “What’s that going to do for a plugged sink? And who’ll be taking care of the house whilst you’re watching shows in the middle of the day?”

Ivy faced her. “Think I’m just going to run off and leave everything?” she yelled defiantly.

“Might as well for all you got done today.”

Ivy pulled a sour face. “You stay home, then. See how much you gets done!”

“Yeah, think she’s just going to run off and leave everybody?” snitted Janie from across the room. “I’m helping her look after them—if that’s all right with you,” she ended brazenly.

Adelaide snorted, brushing a pile of clothes off a chair and sinking onto it. “You’ll take care of them, all right. From the looks of this place, it takes the two of ye to fold a pudding bag. Oh, don’t bother me,” she ended tiredly as Ivy started toward her, howling in protest.

“And don’t you bother we, either,” yelled Janie.

“Well, she’s always at
us!
” said Ivy as her mother held up a fist of warning at Janie. “And I was taking Johnnie and Alf with me to the show, so it’s only the small ones Janie was looking after. Oh, what odds,” she ended in a wail, kicking a bundle of clothing aside, “I never get a chance to go anywhere.”

“Big mouth,” said Janie, fishing a ratchet out of the drawer and glaring at Adelaide. “Perhaps you’re jealous and wants to go yourself.”

“Mind now, Janie,” said Florry, “be none of ye going nowhere we don’t get this mess cleaned up. What’re you doing with the ratchet? You got something dropped down the sink? What you got dropped down the sink?”

“We got nothing dropped down the sink,” both Janie and Ivy cried at once. “It’s just plugged, is all, like it always is,” continued Ivy, “and if we had hot water, we could run it down the drain and cut through the fat.”

“Fat!” said Adelaide. “You got fat poured down the drain?”

“I never said I poured fat down the drain! You never hears nothing I says. Everybody else is getting their houses wired. How come we’re not getting ours wired?”

“Oh, for the love of the Lord, don’t bring up nothing else,” moaned Florry, sinking into her rocker and easing her feet out of her rubber boots. “Go out and find the youngsters, for gawd’s sake—go on, and no more saucing. Who’s that talking outside the window? Addie, take a look. Well, sir!” she exclaimed as Adelaide, her boots kicked off, rose and walked past the window without a glance. “Was that too much to ask—take a look through the window? Cripes! Go see, Janie, go see who’s outside the window. Janie? Well, sir, what’s she at!” she cried as Janie, halfway inside the cupboard by now, started hammering at the pipe with the ratchet. “Wait, hold on. That’s not how you uses it; name of gawd, it’s not a hammer! Get it from her, Addie, quick, before she breaks the pipe.”

Adelaide was pouring hot water from the kettle into a faded plastic pan at the washstand. “Watch out!” she yelled as Ivy, hauling on a coat, barrelled past her, near causing her to lose her grip on the kettle. “Trying to bloody scald me,” she yelped, then huffed in exasperation as Ivy flung herself out the door, leaving it wide open behind her. “Born on a bloody raft,” she muttered, kicking it shut.

Immediately the door popped open again, and thinking it was Ivy ducking back for a last retort, Adelaide drew in front of it, holding out the kettle threateningly. It was her father, Leamond. Still wearing his sou’wester, his jowls blackened by a month’s growth, and his eyes a brighter blue than she remembered, he stood squinting into the room as though he were still searching out horizons from the bow of a schooner.

“Leam!” exclaimed Florry. “Well, sir, I thought ’twas you I heard out by the window. My gawd, Addie, stand aside and let him in. Sir, what’re you doing home middle of the month?” and kicking aside her rubbers, she lifted herself out of the rocker, skirting her way around the assorted piles of dirty clothes toward him. Adelaide stood aside as he edged his thick frame through the door, his shoulder bent painfully beneath the strap of a heavily stuffed duffle bag and a pair of logans dangling by their laces from around his neck.

“Lift it off, lift it off,” he croaked impatiently, nudging his bent shoulder toward her. Adelaide pulled back, a constrained look on her face at his odour of schooners and rust.

“Squeamish, Lord, how squeamish is she!” cried Florry, as Adelaide hooked a finger beneath the strap of her father’s bag, giving it a little tug. “Get away, here, get away,” said Florry, grabbing the strap from her daughter and yanking it off Leamond’s shoulder. “Gentle Mary, what’ve you got in there, rocks?” she exclaimed as it thudded to the floor. “How come you’re home, my son? What’s wrong, haven’t got yourself hurt, have you?”

“Nothing, there’s nothing wrong,” Leamond replied in that whiny, quarrelsome manner Adelaide hated, as though he was always caught in argument. And in effect he was, she thought, eyeing him as she laid the kettle back on the stove, for he reminded her of a tuckamore, forever beaten by the wind, his limbs gnarled in protest, his trunk thickened and stunted, and his scruff of hair flattened mat-like atop his head—as was Sylvanus’s, she recalled, that day on the cliffs, standing bowlegged as he leaned into the wind, pointing out to her the nest of a carey chick. Her heart lurched sickeningly as she now watched her father crossing the room with a bowlegged gait.

Ooh, were you once dark and tall? she cried silently. Were you once the upright juniper, now dwarfed by the wind? Ooh, and unable to deal with such a thought, she rooted through the dirty dishes in the sink, looking for the soap that was forever missing from the washstand, listening intently for her father’s reply, as her mother never gave pause with her haranguing.

“Then what’s you doing home? You only been gone a few weeks. Name of gawd, Janie, stop clanging at that pipe. Take that ratchet—or the wrench, whatever the hell it is she got in her hands—away from her, Addie. Didn’t I tell you to take it from her? Here, sit down, Leam, before you falls, and don’t tell me you’re not sick, else you’d not be home in the middle of the season. Mind now, Addie, you don’t hurt her,” she cried as Adelaide, her sleeves shoved up and about to immerse her hands into the pan of hot water, now trod impatiently across the room, grabbing her younger sister by the ankles.

“My Lord, they got me drove foolish,” Florry carried on as Janie let out a series of yelps, clinging to the pipe and kicking at Adelaide trying to drag her out, “I wish you would stay home, Leam, I wish you would, for the older they gets, the worse they gets. Janie!”

“You can’t just hit at it,” yelled Adelaide as Janie kept kicking and clinging to the pipe.

“I’m not just
hitting
at it. I’m loosening it.”

“A bit more and you’ll have a sink full of water drowning you!”

“I got a bucket to catch it, you idiot. You think I’m stun like you?”

“Hear them? Hear them? That’s what they’re like all day long,” said Florry, “like savages. I wish you would leave the boats, Leam, or else take the whole brood out to sea with you. Now, that’d be a blessing, that would, all of them floating on a boat for the rest of their days.”

Leamond huffed, as though deciding between sitting at the table or joining the ruckus over the ratchet. “What boats! Neither one left to float on,” he said testily, choosing to sit and scratch at his weather-reddened neck. “Nothing, sir, nothing! Last schooner sailed today—the last one. Goddamn arse-up governments,” he muttered, oblivious to Adelaide and Florry, who both turned to him in astonishment.

“What’s that—what’s you saying?” asked Florry, shaking her head as if she never heard right. Pulling up a chair, she sat, leaning toward him as he spouted off more about the last schooner sailing, and goddamn arse-up governments.

“Catches on to something new, the first thing they does is get rid of the old. You wouldn’t know, bejesus, fresh fish was God’s gift to Peter, never mind we salters who been eating it and working it since before the Ark.”

“Well—not for good,” said Florry, still struggling to understand, “you don’t mean the last schooner sailed for good.”

“You knows that’s what I means,” shrilled Leamond. “What the hell do you think I means? The last schooner sailed! She’s over. Everybody’s getting liners and selling straight to the plants—goddamn stuff!”

“Aah, not that bad, now. They can’t sell everything to the plants, not that many around to sell everything to.”

“No, not yet, there’s not. Give them another year and we’ll see what’s out there—more plants than flakes, I guarantee you that! Soon won’t see a flake, you watch.” He grunted. “Not that it matters, price of salt fish low as it is. They’ll never get it back up this time—and they’re not bleeding trying, either, arse-up governments! They wants everybody off the flakes, they do, and into them plants, you watch and see if that’s not what they’re scheming for—getting rid of salt fish and working only with fresh.”

“Ah, you worries about nothing,” said Florry. “Always be markets for salt fish. And I don’t mind the prices going down. Up and down like a dog’s stomach, the price of fish. Been like that since I can remember. Gawd, the stink of you, knock a cat off a gut-wagon. Take off that shirt and get over here,” she ordered, shoving herself to her feet and trudging wearily to the washstand. “Hurry up, I gets a wash myself. Lord, I’m dead on my feet this evening. Oh, what’s the matter now?” she cried out as Adelaide, the ratchet wrestled out of Janie’s hand, let out a yelp as her father, stripping off his shirt, headed for her pan of water. “Name of gawd, Addie, you can let your father have a wash, can’t you?”

“Women and youngsters,” spluttered Leamond, dipping his hands into the water and dousing his face, “that’s what spoiled our salt fish markets—letting women and youngsters working the fish”
splash splash
“bringing down quality”
splash splash
“and it was the big fish-killers that done that; bringing in more fish than they could handle. Goddamn fools”
splash splash splash
“can’t keep up quality with women and youngsters working the fish. Where’s the soap, Flo, where’s the soap—got any soap?”

“Ah, you can’t keep it, sir, for the youngsters forever running off with it. Janie, what they got done with the soap? Love of God, Addie, you going to stand there all night pouting? Get that halibut I brought home for supper. Scrub your neck, Leam—I knows now, women can’t work a bit of fish.”

Adelaide slammed the ratchet into the drawer. “More than one maggoty fish I let go then,” she said loudly, then turned to find her father’s eyes stricken upon her, water dripping from his whiskers.

“I like to have them here now!” he roared at her. “You’d be eating them for supper if I did, you slovenly thing!”