How Loveta Got Her Baby (3 page)

“Don't get down on yourself, Henry,” said Aaron, “that's the worst. Somedays we're not so bad off here, other days I don't know.”

Then he told Henry what he'd seen on TV.

“Baghdad, the whole place over there's a mess. It's shambled, it's wrecked, there's nothing there to lose. That remind you of anything, Henry?”

“No not really.”

“It's like us, here with the fish, like right here, that's what it reminds me of. But the difference is this: over there, once they get their hands on those antique treasures, off they go to Paris France, to the black market. They get hundreds of thousands of dollars then for one piece of stone with writing on it. Scratches really. Here, on the other hand, we get a boatload of fish, illegal too mind you, and we get nothing. Nothing. Zero. And that's the whole idea, Henry. Remember those fossils out there, Mistaken Point?”

So were mentioned the fateful words for the first time. Mistaken Point.

Sure, Henry Fiander remembered. They'd been out there all their lives. Five miles or more out of town, right down by the edge of the sea on a black tilted floor of rock, all kinds of nice patterns. They looked like fishbones, or plants, you could walk on them, slide around on a nice day, pack a lunch, enjoy the breeze. What's that? they'd say. Looks like a leaf, a giant bug, a fish with legs. You name it, those fossils could look like anything. All of them were out there on a shelf of black rock the size of, well, say the Legion dance floor stretched out sideways. A dance floor balanced out over the ocean. You slid down from the edge of the meadowgrass, there you were.

“Henry, all those rocks, those fossils, they're priceless. Same as the stones in Baghdad.”

“Priceless?”

“That's the word those professors used when they came out here. You remember?”

“Sort of. In their pick-ups, their Zodiacs, their floppy hats, yes I remember.”

“Right,” said Aaron, “they all had the same beard, we laughed at that, they had their fancy, heavy-duty klieg lights set up on tripods in the middle of the day.”

“They took a million photographs. They had wetsuits.”

“More to the point, Henry, they said that these scratchings are priceless national treasures, a million years old, a trillion years old or whatever. Priceless, that was the word. And what else, Henry? They said, you here are the local guardians for these treasures.”

Aaron had already put his cue down against the table. It looked like he'd finished playing pool.

“Local guardians. So the way I see it now is this. There are hundreds of thousands of American dollars waiting for us, we are the local guardians, right now on our own doorstep, buddy.”

The two of them went outside. There was a chill to the wind that whipped at them both and they looked out to the ocean, which was flat and grey with just a ripple on it. They wrapped scarves around their faces, over their noses.

“Now we look like Arabs, sort of, scarves like this,” said Aaron Stoodley.

His voice came muffled through the cloth.

“Hard to breathe into this wind,” said Henry.

So they took off their temporary facial-protection disguises, went inside, locked up, went home and the next morning the two of them drove out there, to the Point, or at least as close as they could get, before the road ran out.

“Time to reconnoitre,” Aaron said, “make sure the fossils are there, still ripe for the picking.”

“Where could they go after all those millions of years?”

“You never know with nature. There could be a cataclysm. They could rise and fall into the deep. Witness Mount Vesuvius, Krakatoa East of Java, and the various implosions within our lifetime. Henry, you can never be too sure.”

It was a long walk from where the road ended to the fossil bed and the whole countryside had a wild feeling about it. There was miles of sky. The two of them were a good half hour up and half hour down in the bog and the crowberry. There were no trees because the wind, over the years, blew anything higher than a rabbit right over, or bent it down so far that it reattached itself to the earth and lay there, servile.

Finally there they were. They stood at the edge of the meadow where it tipped down to the sea. It was almost calm out on the ocean, very little surge coming in and the black shale, where the fossils rested, was dry. Footing was good. There was a bit of raggedness on the horizon, that's all.

“Oh they're perfect,” said Aaron. “Look at them. There's our little gold mine. All accounted for.”

The fossils were impressive, there was no denying it. You couldn't put your foot over them, they were so big, and there were hundreds of them plain as day, like patterns on a black shiny quilt.

“They do seem to be stuck in there,” said Henry.

“That's right,” said Aaron. “We need technical help to jar these guys loose. But we got the inventory, that's for sure.”

They headed on back and thought about what was next.

“You know, what we need, we need Black and Decker, something like that, we just can't just peel them off like labels,” said Aaron.

The more they thought about it, the more they needed another hand. An accomplice with tools. The money was going to be good enough, a three-way split would be fine.

“Eunice?” Henry Fiander said, as though he just thought of it.

When Henry looked back upon the adventure much later, this was the one thing he did. He was the one who suggested Eunice. The rest of it all just cooked along without much more input from him.

“Eunice Cluett? She'd fit,” said Aaron. “Her father had tools in his day, lots of them. I don't know what she thinks of us though. Familiarity breeds contempt, the way she looks at us, I don't know, Henry.”

They'd all gone through school together.

“Maybe we do not fit high in her esteem, is what I mean.”

“I think she'd let bygones be bygones, if there are any,” said Henry.

“She could use the money, that's for sure,” said Aaron Stoodley.

Eunice Cluett had blonde hair. Henry could see it when he thought of her, how she kept it up in a ponytail. At the present time, there she was with her two-year-old in a small house down by the shore. There was no man around that anyone could see, and her clothesline was right now double-bow-stringed down with the weight of rabbits she caught herself.

A long long time ago, when the fossils were a few years younger, Henry Fiander lost the grade seven spelling bee to Eunice Cluett. The word she got, the one he missed? He remembered it still:
tarmac
.

“How can you lose with that?” Henry's father said back then.

“By not spelling it right,” said his mother. “That Eunice Cluett, she's as smart as she is pretty.”

Being smart didn't save Eunice from some kind of trouble though. Her family moved away, closed down the house, shuttered it blind, and then all of a sudden she was back, all alone, and now she had a baby girl, Queenie, along for the ride.

“Don't ask her where Queenie came from,” everybody said. “It'll all come out in the wash, give her time.”

Aaron and Henry walked over to her place.

“Well hi there, boys,” she said through the screen door.

“Eunice, how'd you like eight dollars for all them rabbits?” said Aaron.

“Eight dollars? I don't think so. They're worth more than that. And they sure look better than you do, Aaron Stoodley, they got less facial hair.”

Her screen door had a tear in it at dog level. Aaron picked up on that right away.

“Miss Cluett,” he said, “granted my appearance is somewhat grizzled, but let me ask you this—how'd you like to fix up this here fractured screen with golden threads the size of gillnetting, from an inexhaustable supply of golden twine?”

She must have just washed her hair because it was wet and hanging straight down. Like Henry's mother said, she was pretty. She smiled. She was in a good mood all the time, really, no matter what happened. And she didn't look the slightest bit put out to see the two of them standing there, even with Aaron talking in those riddles of his.

Aaron leaned up against the door jamb.

“Lend us your chainsaw, Eunice, your acetylene torch, your Honda generator, your welding mask, your rock chisels! Bring forth your hammers, your cutting tools, your cooling jets of water, your power thrusters!”

Henry Fiander just said, “Hi, Eunice.”

“Come on in,” said Eunice, “don't wake up the baby.”

They went into the kitchen on tip-toe. They took their shoes off. Eunice put the kettle on and Aaron set out his plan, how he figured it, for the three of them.

“You got to be kidding. We don't own those fossils,” said Eunice.

“Oh I think we do, it's the same as the berries out there,” said Aaron. “You pick 'em, you sell 'em. Now, let's look at those tools, without which all our plans are nought.”

Down they went to the basement. Eunice flicked on the light. There were the tools, lots of them lined up on the wall, hanging there on special hooks. They were so highly polished, light flashed off them, they glinted like silver plate.

“Look at that chainsaw,” said Aaron Stoodley, “look at that, Henry. I could do anything with that, cut those fossils out of bare rock. Mind you, need a steady hand for that.”

“Better off with a rock saw,” said Eunice, “but we don't have one of those.”

When she said those words, it was obvious that just like Henry Fiander had done earlier, Eunice Cluett had decided, okay, she'd throw her hand in too with Aaron Stoodley. Why not, what's to lose?

“Great, we'll start right in on the inventory tomorrow,” said Aaron, “things go our way, it's a couple hundred thousand dollars by nightfall. We'll bring all those chisels too.”

So it was that Henry and Aaron both left Eunice's feeling good about the plan they had, even though it was far-fetched, even though there was a ring around the full moon like a handcuff, even though the barometer started to fall as they slept. Worried fingers tapped the glass all along the Southern Shore. The marine forecast told fishermen, any of those that were left: stay home. And over in Baghdad, when it came down to it, despite the TV programme, very few of those poor Arabs were running off to Paris France for any sort of payday at all.

No matter. Next day, Henry was over to Aaron's early and he waited by the van they were going to use for the fossil run. He stood out of the wind, which was rising. He'd heard it start up in the middle of the night with an easy low moan and now the moan was more like a whistle, higher pitched. Aaron came out a few minutes later. His legs were so skinny, you could see his kneecaps through his jeans.

“Where we at for low tide?” asked Henry.

“Missed it, we'll make do,” said Aaron Stoodley.

The original idea had been to sneak up on the fossils at the lowest tide possible. That way, there'd be lots of room on the rocks for the three of them, the crew. But low tide as it turned out was 3 a.m., in the middle of the night, so that part of the plan was overboard.

“Some wind this morning,” said Henry.

“Lots of racket, sure,” said Aaron, “but on the other hand, this is the best kind of weather for the chainsaw, my friend. No one hears a thing.”

They picked up Eunice Cluett. She was dressed for the part all right. She had a lumberjack shirt on, and her coat said Cat Diesel Power over the left side of the chest. She was back in her ponytail again.

“Where's the baby?” said Henry.

“Up to Rhynie's for the day,” she said.

Together they loaded up what they had. There was a chainsaw, lube oil, three large sledgehammers, a can of mix 20 to 1, and Eunice had those chisels of hers that still gleamed like money. Into the back of the van went the generator and the big torches and the welding mask, and off they went down the rock-and-dirt-and-gravel road due east, pitch-steep here and there, up and down in the gullies and washouts.

“Drive a new Buick out next time, Aaron Stoodley,” Henry said.

“Why, sure, that'll be easy with the new funds,” said Eunice, “all the black-market money. Maybe, Aaron Stoodley, you could buy a new set of jeans without holes.”

“Hey, son of a gun, we're low on gas,” said Aaron Stoodley, “damn, how'd that happen?”

It was no big deal to turn around, they'd only gone half-way.

“There goes another half hour by the tide,” Henry said.

Ed, at the pumps, was surprised to see the three of them together.

“You okay, Eunice? What's up with these two?”

“Camping,” she said.

Aaron went into the store, came out with some Cheesies and paid for the gas with what he called his nest egg for the endeavour, and again they started out in the van, back towards the Cape, and twenty minutes later they pulled over by the sign that said
Mistaken Point
.

They couldn't see the ocean; there was a dull roar out there to the south and there was mist in the air.

“They must have planted that sign real deep,” said Eunice. “Otherwise she's gone.”

In fact the wind was so strong, once they got out of the van, it was hard work to even stand up.

“Forget the heavy stuff in this,” said Aaron. “We're going to have to travel light.”

So Eunice took her lunch along and she carried the leather bag full of chisels, Henry took the gas and the oil, and Aaron had the Cheesies and he wouldn't let go of the chainsaw. Off they went into the blowing mist, peering into it.

“Lean and mean, see you there,” said Aaron.

Off he went and then came Eunice and Henry. It was warm for October. The barrens were already red and brown all over. Aaron was so fast, he got out of earshot, whistling. His long legs ate up the yards. In another world and another time and with another personality, this would have been the perfect place for Henry to reach out and touch Eunice Cluett on the arm of her coat, and say something to her, something nice, something witty, something wry and something kind, and in that other world, she'd stop and put down those chisels and sweep the loose hair off her forehead and smile one of those smiles at him, a smile that said, “Okay, this is all right with me.” But he didn't have it, that kind of smooth skill. He knew for him it would always be awkward, the stumbling word, the averted eye, and thus the missed opportunity.