Crow Lake (5 page)

That when it came to the rest of us … here Aunt Annie, for all her straight back, had some difficulty. She looked away, then looked back, her eyes skating over Matt and me and finally coming to rest on Bo … when it came to the rest of us, unfortunately none of the various branches of the family was in a position to take on three extra children. Indeed, financial circumstances were such that none of them could afford to take on even two. Therefore, in order to keep at least Bo and me together, it had been decided that if Matt were willing, he would go back with her to the farm. He would be an asset there, and the money he earned would go toward supporting his sisters. Luke, it was hoped, would be able to contribute as soon as he had qualified and found a job. In the meantime, Matt’s earnings, plus contributions from the rest of the family, would enable Aunt Emily and Uncle Ian, who lived in Rivière-du-Loup and who had four children of their own, to take in Bo and me.

chapter
FIVE

You see the suffering of children all the time nowadays. Wars and famines are played out before us in our living rooms, and almost every week there are pictures of children who have been through unimaginable loss and horror. Mostly they look very calm. You see them looking into the camera, directly at the lens, and knowing what they have been through you expect to see terror or grief in their eyes, yet often there’s no visible emotion at all. They look so blank it would be easy to imagine that they weren’t feeling much.

And though I do not for a moment equate what I went through with the suffering of those children, I do remember feeling as they look. I remember Matt talking to me—others as well, but mostly Matt—and I remember the enormous effort required even to hear what he said. I was so swamped by unmanageable emotions that I couldn’t feel a thing. It was like being at the bottom of the sea.

“Kate?”

I was looking at his knees. My knees were thin and brown and knobbled. Matt’s, extending from his shorts, were at least twice as big around.

“Kate?”

“What?”

“Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Look at the map. It isn’t far, see? I’ll be able to come and visit you. It isn’t all that far. D’you see?”

There were fewer hairs on his knees than on his thighs or calves, and the skin was different. Creased, from bending. I had no hairs on my knees at all, and the creases were smaller.

“Look at this, Kate.”

We spent a lot of time here, sitting on the sofa. He and Luke were working for Mr. Pye again, but in the evenings he took me back to the ponds, or if it was raining or too late to go to the ponds, he sat with me and talked about what our new lives would be like and how we would get together. I listened. Or I tried to listen. But there was a whirlwind howling through me, and it made it difficult to hear.

“We can work it out,” Matt said. “There’s a scale here, see? It tells you how many miles to an inch.”

It wasn’t a very good map. New Richmond, which was the nearest town to Aunt Annie’s farm, wasn’t marked on it, but Matt had asked Aunt Annie to show us where it was and then he took a pen, and although you weren’t ever supposed to write in books he put a dot in the right place and then printed the name, New Richmond, very neatly beside it.

We were all to stay on in Crow Lake until Luke went to college and then the four of us, Aunt Annie, Matt, Bo, and myself, would travel east together. Matt and Aunt Annie would come to Rivière-du-Loup with Bo and me and stay there with us for three days while Bo and I got used to our new home. Then they would leave us, and travel on to Aunt Annie’s farm.

In the meantime, Calvin Pye was desperate for help and Aunt Annie said there was no reason why the boys shouldn’t earn a bit of money. She did not intend me to hear her tell them that it would also help Bo and me get used to not having them around.

“Put your thumb against the scale, Kate. That’s right. Now look. That first joint of your thumb, from there to there, is about a hundred miles. See? Now lay it against the map. Look at that. It’s not much more than a hundred miles, is it? A hundred and fifty at the most. I’ll be able to visit you easily.”

He talked, and the whirlwind howled.

“Who’s this?” Aunt Annie said. “Kate? Who’s this coming down the drive?”

“Miss Carrington.”

“And who is Miss Carrington?”

“My teacher.”

“Oh,” Aunt Annie said, sounding interested. “She looks young to be a teacher.”

We were sitting on the veranda, topping beans. Aunt Annie was of the school which believed that useful work was the best remedy for any ill. She made me talk. She was better at it than Matt because she was more ruthless.

“Is she a good teacher? Do you like her?”

“Yes.”

“What do you like about her?” Blank silence.

“Kate? What do you like about Miss Carrington?”

“She’s nice.”

And then I was spared any more questions because Miss Carrington was too close.

“Hello,” Aunt Annie said, putting down her basket of beans and standing up to greet her. “I understand you’re Kate’s teacher. I’m Annie Morrison.”

They shook hands, rather formally. Aunt Annie said, “Would you like a cold drink? Or tea? You’ve walked from the village?”

“Yes,” Miss Carrington said. “Thank you. I’d love some tea. Hello, Kate. I see you’re hard at work.” She gave me a faint smile, and I saw that she was nervous. I wasn’t noticing much, those days, but I noticed that because it was so unusual.

“Kate, do you think you could make us a pot of tea?” Aunt Annie asked. “You could use the best china, don’t you think? As it’s Miss Carrington?” She smiled at Miss Carrington and said, “Kate makes the best pot of tea of anyone I know.”

I got up and went into the house and put the kettle on. The house was very quiet. Bo was in our bedroom— Aunt Annie had put her there for her afternoon nap and Bo had roared her head off, but now she seemed to have gone to sleep.

While the kettle was boiling I climbed onto a chair and got down my mother’s best teapot from the high shelf in the kitchen. The pot was round and smooth and a rich cream colour and had a branch of an apple tree painted on it, with several dark green leaves and two very red apples. The apples were not only painted but were raised, so that you could feel their roundness with your hands. There was a small cream jug and a covered sugar bowl to go with it, and six cups and six saucers and six little plates, all of them with apples on and none of them with chips. Aunt Annie had told me that the tea service was a wedding present to my parents from a lady in New Richmond and that it would be mine when I was older, but that I could use it now, if I liked, when especially important people came to call. I knew I was supposed to be pleased.

I warmed the pot and made the tea. I put the pot on the best tray and covered it with the tea cozy. I set out two cups and saucers, the milk and sugar, and carried it carefully to the door. I could see Miss Carrington and Aunt Annie through the screen door. Miss Carrington was saying, “I hope you won’t mind, Miss Morrison. I hope you won’t take it amiss.”

Aunt Annie saw me and got up to open the door for me.

She said, “Thank you Kate. You’ve set things out very nicely. Now then, Miss Carrington and I have things to discuss. Do you think you could take the beans into the kitchen and finish them for me? Or take them to the beach, if you prefer. Which would you prefer?”

“The beach,” I said, not caring one way or the other. I gathered up the beans and the pot and the knife and walked down the veranda steps and around the corner of the house. Just around the corner I dropped the knife. It must have been right at my feet, but the grass was long and I couldn’t see it. I carefully combed the grass with my toes, holding the beans and their pot out to the side, and I heard Miss Carrington say, “I realize it’s none of my business, but I felt I had to speak. They’re all bright children, of course, but Matt is more than that. He has a love of learning—he is a scholar, Miss Morrison. A natural scholar. He is the cleverest child I have ever taught.
Much
the cleverest. And he has only the one year of high school left—”

“Two years, surely,” Aunt Annie said.

“No, just one. He skipped a grade, you see. So although he’s two years younger than Luke, he’s only one year behind. He’ll take his exams next spring. And he will win a scholarship to university. Certainly. Beyond any question.”

There was silence. My toes came up against something cool and hard. I bent down and picked up the knife.

Aunt Annie said, “Would it cover everything? All of his living expenses? His lodgings?”

“Well no. But it would cover his tuition. And something could be sorted out about his lodgings. I’m sure it could. I’m sure some way could be found. Miss Morrison, I do apologize for pressing this, but you must understand—it would be a tragedy if Matt did not go to university. Genuinely it would be a tragedy.”

After a minute Aunt Annie said gently, “Miss Carrington, a worse tragedy than that has already taken place here.”

“I know! Oh my goodness, I realize that! But that is why it seems so wrong that this double blow should fall on Matt!”

Silence. A sigh from Aunt Annie. Finally, her tone still gentle, she said, “I don’t think you quite understand the position. We would help Matt if we possibly could. We would help all the children. But there is no money. I realize that sounds unlikely, but that is the case. The last five years—six years—have been very hard for all the farms in the Gaspé. Both of my brothers are in debt. My father is in debt. At the end of his life, he is in debt, and he has never owed a penny before.”

“But this house—”

“The money from this house, together with what Robert left, will see Luke through teachers’ college and provide a very small sum to give to each of the others when they reach twenty-one. A very small sum. We could not in all conscience deprive the girls of that in order that Matt go to university. And in any case there would not be enough.”

“But surely—”

“Miss Carrington, please listen. I should not tell you this, it is most … inappropriate … but I want you to understand. I appreciate your concern for Matt and I want you to understand how … painful this is for the family. The reason Robert left so little is that he has been helping out the rest of us. He felt he was beholden to us, you see. My brothers sacrificed so that he could have his chance, and he took the chance and he did very well, so of course when things went badly for us, he felt he had to help out. Which was very generous of him. And of course he could not know that his children—he would have assumed a good salary coming in for years to come.”

There was silence. I prodded at the beans with my knife.

Miss Carrington said bleakly, “A tragedy then. As you say.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You couldn’t—you couldn’t at least let him finish high school. Miss Morrison, he
deserves
at
least
to finish high school.”

“My dear, my sister—not the one who is taking Kate and Elizabeth—has four sons, all of whom deserved to finish high school, all of whom deserved to go to university, come to that. They are clever boys. It is, I believe, a clever family. But they are all on the fishing boats now. There is no future for them even on the farm. And you might well call it a tragedy, but it is one that most of the world is familiar with. To be honest with you, I feel far worse about having to split up those children than I do about Matt not finishing high school. He has more education than most already.”

More silence. I imagined Miss Carrington, her mouth gone thin, as it did in class when she was cross.

Aunt Annie said, “We should count our blessings, you know. The children could have been in that car.”

I made my way down to the beach. When I had finished topping the beans, I sat for a bit, watching the waves, listening to their steady swish. Their sound, in all its variety, had been the background to my life. From the moment of my birth, I had never been without it.

After a while I picked up the knife again and pressed the point against my finger. It dented the skin, and then a small drop of dark glistening blood welled out. It hardly hurt at all.

chapter
SIX

Oh, the chances, the fragile little incidents which determine the course of our lives. If I say my life took a certain course because my parents died, well, that is understandable, that is a major event, that would shape anyone’s future. But if I say my life took a certain course because Miss Carrington came that day, and I dropped a knife, and Matt, a few hours later, still wretchedly trying to help me, persisted in asking me questions, and Luke happened to be there at the time, trying to read the paper, and Bo was screaming …

“You’ve cut your finger,” Matt said.

We were sitting on the sofa. Supper was over and I’d finished drying the dishes for Aunt Annie, who now, persisting grimly in her efforts to get us accustomed to a new order, was putting Bo to bed. You could hear Bo raging through two closed doors. “Not!” she was yelling. “Not! Not! Not!”

What she meant was not Aunt Annie. We all knew that, Aunt Annie best of all.

Luke was on his knees and elbows on the floor, pretending to read the paper. His hands were clenched against his jaw.

“How did you cut your finger?” Matt said.

“On a knife.”

“What were you doing with a knife?”

“Topping beans.”

“You should be more careful.”

He leaned back, waggled his shoulder blades, and groaned. “My back’s killing me. You’d rather be topping beans than doing what Luke and I were doing, I can tell you.”

He wanted me to ask him what they’d been doing. I knew that, but the words seemed to be so far down inside me that I couldn’t drag them out.

He told me anyway.

“Today we were pitching straw. And I tell you, that is one awful job. The dust gets up your nose and in your mouth and the straw gets in your shirt and down your pants and the sweat and the dust turn into this sort of glue between your toes and Old Man Pye stands there leaning on his fork like some old troll, just hoping you’ll slacken off so he’ll have an excuse to eat you.”

He wanted me to laugh, but that was more than I could manage. I smiled at him though. He smiled back and said, “Now tell me about your day. What exciting things happened today, apart from beans?”

I couldn’t think of anything. Thinking had become as difficult as speaking. My mind seemed to have been swallowed up like a boat in a fog.

“Come on, Katie. What did you do? Did anyone come to visit?”

“Miss Carrington.”

“Miss Carrington? That’s nice. What did Miss Carrington have to say?”

I dredged around in the fog. “She said you were clever.”

Matt laughed. “Did she?”

But I was remembering now. She’d been nervous. She’d been scared of Aunt Annie and she’d had to force herself to say what she wanted to say, and it had made her voice funny

“She said you were the cleverest child she’d ever taught. She said it would be a … tradegy … a
tragedy …
if you didn’t go to university.”

There was a moment’s silence. Matt said, “Good old Miss Carrington. It always pays to suck up to a teacher, Kate. Take it from me.”

His voice was funny now. I looked at him, but he was looking at Luke and his face was red. Luke had looked up from his paper and they were staring at each other. Then Luke, speaking to me but with his eyes still on Matt, said, “What did Aunt Annie say?”

I tried to remember. “She said there wasn’t enough money.” She’d said more, but I couldn’t remember what.

Luke nodded. He was still looking at Matt.

After a minute Matt said, “Well she’s right. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

Luke didn’t say anything.

Out of the blue, Matt seemed to be angry. He said, “If you want to spend your life feeling guilty because you were born first that’s up to you, but don’t waste it on me.”

Luke didn’t reply. He turned away and started reading his paper again. Matt bent forward and picked up another bit of the paper. He looked at it and then tossed it on the floor again. He looked at his watch and said, “We should go to the ponds. It’ll be light for another hour,” but neither of us moved.

In the background we could hear Bo, still screaming.

Luke abruptly heaved himself to his feet and left the room, and we heard him going into Bo’s and my room. We heard voices, his angry and Aunt Annie’s very firm, and Bo’s, heartbroken now, really sobbing; you could almost see her arms reaching out for Luke. Then, surprisingly clear and sharp, Aunt Annie saying, “You’re not helping her, Luke. Not one bit.”

Then we heard Luke’s footsteps, loud and angry, and the door slamming as he left the house.

Here’s the thing about Luke. Up until the very day our parents died, I don’t remember him ever picking Bo up. Not once. Matt would pick her up, but not Luke. I also don’t remember ever having a proper conversation with him. Thousands with Matt, none with Luke. Apart from the occasional row or bit of bantering between him and Matt, I don’t recall Luke ever showing that he knew—or cared—that the rest of us existed.

In the morning he wasn’t there.

His bed had been slept in and there was a cereal bowl on the kitchen counter, but there was no sign of him. He and Matt were supposed to be working on the farm.

“Maybe he’s gone already,” Aunt Annie said. “Making an early start.”

“Not a chance,” Matt said. He was very angry. He was pulling on his workboots by the door, tying the laces savagely, yanking the cuffs of his jeans down over the tops of them to stop the straw getting in.

“Where’s he gone?” I said.

“I don’t know, Kate. If he’d left a note, I’d know, but he hasn’t. Which is typical. The day Luke bothers to tell anyone what he’s doing will be a great, great day.”

This was true. Luke, the old Luke, the Luke of two months ago, had infuriated our parents by failing to keep them informed of his comings and goings. In those days Matt hadn’t cared much, because it didn’t affect him.

I started gnawing at my finger where I’d cut it. I was afraid Luke had left us. Run away or died.

“But where do you think he’s gone?”

“Kate, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What matters is unless he’s back in about two minutes we’re going to be late for work.”

“You’ll just have to go without him,” Aunt Annie said. She was making sandwiches for their lunch—farm worker’s sandwiches, great hunks of bread with slabs of ham half an inch thick. “He’ll have to make his own excuses. Could he have gone to town for some reason? Would he have any way of getting to town?”

“He could have gone in with the milk. Mr. Janie leaves about four in the morning—he could have got a lift on the milk truck with him.”

“Will he come back?” My voice was starting to shake. After all, our parents had gone to town.

“Of course he’ll come back. All I’m worried about is what I’m going to tell Old Man Pye. He’s going to go up in smoke.”

“But how do you
know
he’ll come back?”

“Kate, I know. Leave your finger alone.” He pulled my hand away from my mouth. “I know, okay? I know.”

I spent the morning doing chores and most of the afternoon on the beach with Bo. Bo had declared war on Aunt Annie. I guess as she saw it, Aunt Annie was responsible for everything that had gone wrong with her life, and the only solution was to fight her to the death. I think she would have won, too. I suspect Aunt Annie thought so as well.

So we were exiled from the house to give Aunt Annie a chance to marshall her defences. I can picture the two of us on the path to the beach, hand in hand, me dragging myself along, Bo stomping so hard little puffs of dust shot out from under her feet at every step. My hair would be hanging limp and lifeless, hers would be standing out from her head, radiating rage like a heat wave. A lovely pair of sisters.

We sat on the hot sand and watched the lake. It was dead calm. You could just see it breathing, slow deep breaths under its flat, shining, silver skin. Bo sat beside me, pinching pebbles between her fingers and sighing every now and then around her thumb.

I tried to still the whirlwind inside me, but when I succeeded, when by force of will I managed to calm it so that individual thoughts could settle and be looked at, the thoughts themselves overwhelmed me. Being without Matt. Being without Luke. Leaving our home. Going to live with strangers. Aunt Annie had told me about them; she had said there were four children, three boys and one girl. They were all older than Bo and me, but she said they were nice. But she wouldn’t really know if they were nice, you would only know that if you were a child yourself. Matt had said that I must look after Bo, but he must know that I couldn’t. I was too afraid. I was much more afraid than Bo was.

I focused hard on a small boat out in the lake and made myself concentrate on it. I knew whose boat it was—Jim Sumack’s, a friend of Luke’s who lived on the Indian reserve.

“That’s Big Jim Sumack,” I said loudly to Bo. I wanted to talk, to drown out the thoughts.

Bo sighed and sucked harder. Nowadays her thumb looked all waterlogged, and it was getting a big white callus on the top.

“He’s going fishing,” I said. “He’s going to catch a fish for dinner. He’s called Big Jim Sumack because he weighs more than two hundred pounds. He doesn’t go to school any more, but Mary Sumack’s in grade three. In the winter she didn’t come to school, and they went to see her mum and it was because she didn’t have any shoes. The Indians are really poor.”

My mother had said we should all be ashamed. I hadn’t been sure what it was she thought we should be ashamed of, and I’d felt obscurely to blame. I thought of my mother. I tried to summon up her face, but I couldn’t get it to come clear. Bo had already stopped asking for her.

A loon popped up out of nowhere twenty yards out from the shore. “There’s a loon,” I said.

Bo sighed again, and the loon disappeared.

“Uke?” Bo said suddenly, taking her thumb out and looking at me.

“He’s not here.”

“Att?”

“He’s not here either. They’ll be home in a while.”

I looked around for something to distract her, to stop her winding herself up into a rage. A spider was heading toward us across the sand, dragging a dead deerfly. Or rather he was tailing toward us, moving backwards, holding the fly with his jaws and front legs and scrabbling hard with the rest. Once Matt and I had watched a small spider trying to drag a mayfly three times his size out of a hollow in the sand. The sand was dry, and every time he got his burden halfway up the slope the sides of the hollow caved in and he slid to the bottom again. He tried again and again, never varying his route, never slackening his pace. Matt had said, “Here’s the question, Katie: Is he very very determined, or is his memory so short that he forgets what happened two seconds ago, so he always thinks he’s doing it for the first time? That’s the question.”

We’d watched him for almost half an hour, and in the end, to our delight, he succeeded, so we decided he was not only very determined but also very smart.

“Look, Bo,” I said. “See the spider? He’s got a fly, and he’s dragging him home to his nest, see? And when he gets him home he’ll spin a cocoon around him and then later, when he’s hungry, he’ll eat him.”

I wasn’t trying to share my fascination with her as Matt had shared his with me. My goal was less exalted. I merely hoped that she would be interested, instead of angry, because I didn’t feel up to coping with one of her rages.

It didn’t work, though. I thought it was working, because she leaned forward and watched the spider intently for a couple of seconds, but then she took her thumb out, got to her feet, staggered over to him, and stamped on him.