Bodies and Sole (6 page)

Chapter Ten

Marlene was so excited by her idea – in spite of the immediate
opposition from Gus and Moira – that she swallowed her pride and her dislike and phoned Hy.

“Hy? Marlene.”

Marlene? Marlene who? thought Hy.

A long pause.

“Marlene Weeks.”

Still no lights went on. Hy was on the point of hanging up.

“…Ministry of Tourism.”

“Oh… Hi, Marlene.” No enthusiasm.

“Look, I have a great idea for the bicentenary.”

“Does it involve marigolds?”

Now Marlene was on the point of hanging up, but she needed Hy to move her plans forward. She squeezed out a weak laugh as a peace offering.

Marlene decided it was worth a small piece of her tiny budget to bring Hy on side.

“Why don't we meet at that seafood restaurant at Big Bay. My treat. I'd appreciate your suggestions for my overall plan.” Marlene chose her wording carefully to hold onto ownership of her idea.

“Okay. When?”

“No time like the present.” Marlene's tone was overly cheerful now that she'd got her way. “Say tomorrow…at noon?”

“Sure. Fine.”

Hy was preoccupied with what Moira was going to wear to her wedding – and where it would take place. Not on the beach. The first attempt there had been a disaster.

Helluva mess. Moira had been furious. This time, Moira had chosen the conventional safety of the hall.

“Where she shoulda done it in the first place,” said Gladys Fraser, President of the Women's Institute.

“The never-ending bridesmaid.” Hy sighed as she checked another e-mail from Moira, who'd been issuing online instructions of various kinds since before the aborted wedding last summer. Most of them lately revolved around the dress. Moira still didn't have one, and she was panicking. Her original dress, her mother's, had, like the wedding, been ruined. The Sears catalogue had failed to produce anything suitable.

So had her reluctant bridesmaid.

Hy had no idea what to suggest.

Marlene showed up before Hy for their lunch meeting, and was gratified to see that a couple of the shacks had been painted, and that one appeared to have been leased.

Hy rolled in on her bicycle, as Marlene was squinting through nearsighted eyes at a rather strange sign overhanging the door:
Do Tell a Sole. Fish Skin Clothing.
On a sandwich board beside the door, it read: Wear a trout when you go out. A sign in the window invited potential customers to
Slip into some sole.

What the…?

This was not the crafty kind of store she'd had in mind. It was weird, definitely weird.

Hy had a big grin on her face as Marlene marched along the wharf, heading straight for the offending storefront. She followed at a discreet distance, waving at a few fishermen who were loafing around, the day's catch taken in and taken care of.

They smiled and winked. No one liked the tourism woman.

At the door of the fish skin clothing store stood a strange little man with bowed legs and dark, slicked-back hair.

“Mornin', ma'am.” He held out a hand as Marlene strode up to him. She ignored it. Instead she looked with distaste at his sign – and him. She ventured a peek inside the store, full of what appeared to be leather jackets.

“Salmon,” he said. “You won't find finer. I sell to a couture house in Paris.” He motioned her inside the store, and, in spite of herself, she entered. She kept her distance from the merchandise.

“But who…who would buy these?”

“Not everyone. I agree with you there, ma'am. You gotta have money. They don't come cheap.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Free country, I guess. Save on supply and delivery bills. A bit of PR…advertising, connecting myself to this here village celebrating two hundred years.”

Hy slipped into the shack. It was dark and a bit damp inside. It smelled fishy, and…something else…

Up front was a rack of jackets. They looked like the skin on the salmon filet she'd had last night.

“Made out of salmon? For real?”

“Yup. Go ahead. Touch one. It won't fall apart.”

It felt just like leather.

“Try it on.”

Hy slipped into it. It felt like any leather jacket. It looked like fish.

Marlene entered the shop and looked around with disapproval, resisting holding her nose. The jackets looked like fish. Smelled like fish.

“I'm Catfish Cloutier. Friends call me Cat. Funny, when I'm in the fish business. Used to be for real, you know. Then I got looking at them skins. Well, here, let me show you.”

He scurried, ungainly, to a counter at the back of the shack, and returned with a tray of fish skins, all neatly labeled.

He set it down on a display counter at the front of the store. Hy leaned forward to have a look. Marlene stepped back.

“Now this'd be your tuna.” He pointed to a thick, dark grey slab of skin.

“Call it the denim of fish skin. Rough. Tough. Gotta be, to hold in five hundred pounds of fish.”

He jabbed a finger at a salmon skin sample. “This you seen. In demand this one. Dries faster than the tuna. And more elegant. That's why it's in demand.”

Hy caught Marlene mouthing the word “elegant?” in disbelief. Cat skipped by the next, with a brief comment.

“Pike, now there's a lovely fish. Skin so soft.” Hy wondered if it repelled mosquitoes.

“And here's the charmer.” He stroked a delicate thin skin.

“Sole. It's the silk of the fish skin line. Not easy to do. Lose as much as you produce. Very, very fragile. Nobody does the sole but me. That's my specialty. There are others, but them's my top ones.

“Got a lovely outfit right here. Salmon skirt. Sole blouse. Both wraparound.”

The skirt shimmered, iridescent shades of grey and pink and green, and fell in a fetching shape to the floor. The blouse was soft and flowing. They were beautifully crafted. Hy fell in love with them.

“Who made these?”

“My wife, when she was alive. Skilled seamstress.”

“I'll take them.” Hy grabbed the two pieces of clothing as Marlene looked on in horror.

“Won't you try them?”

Hy grinned. Shrugged. “Not here. Not now. Pretty sure they'll fit – wraparound. If not, I assume you'll take them back.”

“How'd you get the idea?” Hy asked as she paid and he wrapped the items.

“It's been around a long time. That's why I thought it'd fit your bicentennial.”

Marlene gave a “not if I can help it” face.

“It's heritage.” Cat lifted the tray and took it back to the counter. He gestured to the first of a series of wall mountings, each illuminated by a pool of light.

“The native people of North America…probably the world, them that lived by the ocean, they made all kinds of things from fish.”

The wall mounting had graphics of parkas, mittens, boots, headgear – all made of fish skin.

“Waterproof, that's the thing. Waterproof and flexible.”

Cat moved to the next mounting.

“They'd smoke the fish, see…”

That was it. The other smell.

“…I do that right here…in back. You smoke 'em so's they dry nice and slow and stay flexible. Keeps the oils in and bacteria out.”

Marlene let out a heavy sigh. She was imagining bugs crawling all over the clothes. She kept her distance from the bag in Hy's hand.

“I don't see what that has to do…”

“Like I said. Heritage.”

Marlene's lip curled.

“Native heritage. Not European.”

Cat's eyes popped open in wide disbelief as he darted a look at Hy.

“I expect if you checked out your genes, you'd find a Mi'kmaw in your closet.”

Marlene took a sharp breath.

It was perhaps because of that, that Cat brought up the next item with more than usual pleasure.

“Piss, they used.”

“What?” Marlene looked even more disgusted. Hy had to stifle a laugh.

“Piss. Men's piss. The good stuff. Strong as detergent. Used it as a cleanser before they smoked 'em.”

Marlene turned her back on him. That just got him going. He pointed to a pair of moccasin-style boots.

“Don't want to step in any kind of poo in them boots. They'll just disintegrate. Fast. Sum'pn to do with proteins and enzymes and collagen.”

Hy continued to look at the wall mountings – photographs of artifacts of clothing made from fish skin and bird skin.

“Birds?”

“Oh, yes. Me, I wouldn't use birds. Gulls mebbe. Nasty dirty scat-throwing scum. But I do have some other species here.”

He led her to a display case.

Belts and trinkets of various kinds made with snakeskin.

“You have to have the small items some folks will buy as a thank you for the entertainment. More snakes than I expected around here.”

“Only two species, though.” Hy looked closer into the cabinet. “Not all the ones here.”

“Oh, yep, those are all island snakes.”

“They can't be island snakes. There are only two kinds here. They must be from away.”

“Caught 'em and skinned them myself.”

And then it came to her. The snakes were from away – and from the island. The bizarre fall of snakes from the sky last summer. An unexplained phenomenon that had chosen The Shores as it target. There'd been no official recording of them by species. They fell too fast and slithered away just as quickly. Truth was, Ian, the self-styled scientist, was terrified of snakes, and hadn't pursued even one.

As they left Big Bay, the idea began to unfold in Hy's mind about Moira's wedding dress.

But would she go for it?

Chapter Eleven

The boys were settled, her art in place.

Vera took turns spending evenings with them. She'd never been that handy but she'd learned that elderly gentlemen liked a woman knitting or crocheting or engaging in some form of feminine art, sitting with them in the evening. She'd taken the habit of making crocheted covers for toilet paper in pastel Phentex yarn. She'd expanded from there to making antimacassars to keep natural oils off the backs of armchairs. Only one of her boys used an armchair, and he was not the least bit oily, but she had to do something to while away the hours.

None of them were great conversationalists, or was it just that they had run out of conversation with her?

“What are you reading, dear?”

The most she got was a grunt. Or at least it sounded like a grunt. Blair's eyes were, as usual, glued to his latest book.

She looked at the walls around them. In fact, she couldn't see any walls. They were all covered, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in bookshelves jammed with books.

He'd read every single one of them and Frank delivered more every day.

She was surprised Blair could even keep up with them. He was having a hard time. They were stacked in piles at his feet, tomes as yet unread.

He was plowing – chronologically – through every work of fiction ever written, she thought. Certainly all the main stuff. He was now well into the nineteenth century – terrain that was more familiar and palatable to her than Beowulf and Chaucer's incomprehensible early English. But she never read herself, just crocheted at his side every third evening and anticipated when he'd come to the last page.

Even then he rarely uttered a word, not one that she could remember in recent history. He just held up that book in a certain way, and she knew. He was finished. She'd slip it out of his hands, find it a place in the bookshelves, arranged alphabetically by author, and then pick up one of the ones at his feet and slip it into his waiting hands. It didn't usually matter which one. He always seemed content with her selection. He certainly never objected. The smile on his face was her reward.

Each of her ex-husbands got two evenings a week of her company, and all three appeared satisfied with the arrangement.

The truth was that Vera was an incredibly boring woman, and
so they were probably happy to be left mostly to themselves.

Charlie, the artist, would not even turn from his easel to greet her when she came in. He was a slow and meticulous painter, and the same work could sit on that easel night after night, week after week, month after month. He always returned, though, to the same unfinished painting. The painting of her. There it would be, suddenly produced and propped up on the easel.
There would be no crocheting then. She would have to stand and pose for him. Sometimes she felt his eyes were hinting at more – at a renewal of their marital relations. But he'd never been any good at it, and the thought of him pawing her body made her shudder. You would have thought his artist's hands would have been more sensitive, but no. It was as if he were a potter, not a painter, and had been digging into her flesh in hopes of entirely reshaping the clay.

On the nights when she saw the lust in his eyes, she cut their evening short. After all, she had to be fair to all of her boys. What she gave to one she must give to another and she would not turn her house into a bordello. Besides, at her age, sex was ridiculous. She hoped that her next husband would agree.

She didn't have to worry about Hank. His eyes barely grazed her when she came into the room. They were fixed on the television, the remote control gripped in his right hand. It was hard to say what he was taking in. He, poor lamb, had had a stroke, and though he was left physically able, with no apparent damage to his body, his mind was gone. She doubted he even knew who she was. She often cheated on him, leaving him alone before nine o'clock, because she was convinced that it made no difference to him.

Those were her dutiful six nights of the week, two nights apiece spent with each of her ex-husbands. It was the least she could do. They were really not much bother, not at all demanding. Even so, she treasured the seventh evening, her evening of rest.

She would go upstairs and call out from the hall:

“Good night.”

And they would chorus back in a charming harmony of male vocal power:

“Good night.”

She'd toss the crochet hook aside, kick off her lambskin slippers, roll down her support hose and relax. No reading, no television, no arts and crafts. Just time for Vera. Time alone. Time to think up her next move on the marry-go-round.

Today, she thought she'd hooked a live one.