Silver Rain (6 page)

Elsie rushed into the bedroom, where she found Nan sitting on the bed with her hands folded in her lap. Nan doing nothing!

Dog Bob was slumped on the floor beside her. He blinked up at Elsie.

“Everyone's going, Nan,” Elsie cried. “I don't want them to go.” She gulped and felt the tears flood her eyes.

“Nor me, my child.” Nan ran her hand down Elsie's cheek, then pulled her into her wide lap. “Nor me.” It had been a long time since Elsie had sat there. Nan's chin came down on the top of Elsie's head and her voice rumbled through her skull. “But we all have to find a way to do the best we can. These are hard times, child, and everyone should do their bit. Your mother says her friend is well situated, so she'll have good food there, and there will be one less mouth to feed here for a while. Meanwhile, she can lend a hand to someone in need. Your uncle? Well, that one's another story. But he's got to bring some money into this house if he's to stay.”

Elsie felt so tired. How could she ever get everyone to stay in one place long enough to be a complete family again? Just for the moment, sitting in Nan's lap was the best place to be in the world. She closed her eyes and followed the feel of her grandmother's hands as they stroked her hair and ran down her back. “The time will go quickly,” Nan was saying. “Your mother will come home as soon as her friend is better. And we can hope that Daniel does nothing rash this time. A bit of farm work might do the man good.” Just as Elsie thought she could fall asleep in her soft lap, Nan pushed her away. “No moping, now. You and I will be good company for each other. And this beast…” She gave Dog Bob a shove. “He's on my feet. Never mind my rheumatism. Come on, it's time you were in bed.” Nan heaved herself up with a sigh and disappeared through the curtain into the living room before Elsie could say anything.

She changed into her pajamas very slowly and climbed under the covers. She needed to go to the outhouse. But she'd rather wet the bed than face Mother again.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

A
few days later, Elsie and Ruth Cohen linked arms all the way home, chanting “Easy Ivy Over.”

Maybe Ruth could be her best friend now that she and Scoop were on the outs. He'd trailed behind for a while, then cut up an alley when Elsie didn't answer after he'd called to them for the third time.

She was still mad at him for being such a bad loser and being so rude about the collage. It didn't look like a dog's breakfast; it was bright and colorful, hanging on the wall at the back of the classroom, behind the old cast-iron stove.

Ruth went home in a sulk after Elsie won three rounds of five stones. Maybe she was not best-friend material, thought Elsie as she sat on the cold sidewalk playing cat's cradle with some leftover yarn Nan had given her. Dog Bob lay on the grass beside her, chewing the hair between his pads, making disgusting wet sounds and growling at himself.

Elsie looked up when she heard whistling behind her. Scoop skidded to a halt beside her. “What's happenin'?” He plopped down and folded his skinny legs under him. “You got over the hump?”

“You got mad first,” she said. “Sulking! Just like crybaby Ruth Cohen.”

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

Scoop grinned. “I'll quit if you'll quit.” He held his curled hand toward Elsie, his little finger sticking out. She looked at it for a moment, then linked fingers with him. They shook.

“Enough is enough,” said Elsie.

“Enough is enough,” echoed Scoop. He thwacked her on the back, which she knew boys did instead of hugging.

It felt good to be friends again. Elsie picked up the five stones from the gutter. “Wanna play?”

Scoop brushed the stones from her open hand. “Dumb girls' stuff. I've got better things to do.” He scratched the top of his head so his hair stuck up like a rooster's comb.

“I wish I did,” said Elsie. “Nan wants me to stay close by until supper.” She nodded toward the garage. “She's spring cleaning. She's always cleaning or doing wash. It wears me out.” She shuddered. “Anyway, I'm not going inside until Mother and Uncle Dannell come home. I just decided.”

“Now who's got the hump? What about your supper? Hey. Did you get a letter yet?”

Elsie shook her head. Still no news from her father. And Mother hadn't yet written to let them know she'd arrived safely in New Westminster, or to say when she might be home.

“Aren't you just dying to know if she's dead or alive? Her friend, I mean?” asked Scoop.

“Do you think maybe Mother's never coming home? Like Father?” asked Elsie. “He never wrote either.”

“Nah.” Scoop didn't sound very sure of himself. “Maybe you just haven't exhausted all avenues. Trying to find your dad, I mean.”

“Which avenues? We looked everywhere.”

“Not those kind of avenues. It's reporter lingo for trying everything.”

“When Nan went to the police, they said if they had to track down every man who left home without a word, they'd never catch the real criminals,” Elsie told Scoop. “It's something to do with the times. Lots of men leave home without a word to anyone. He's not in the hospitals. Mother checked. And Uncle Dannell did too.” Elsie bit hard on the inside of her lip to stop herself crying. She had discovered this helped at night when she felt Nan's bulgy backside against her in the old iron bed, and only cold sheets and drafts on the other side, where Mother should have been.

“If you're going to cry, I'm going home,” Scoop said. “One of the Noises' gentlemen friends has let her down
—
don't know how, no one will give me the details
—
but I get enough tears at my house. Don't you blubber on me, hear?” He nudged her hard with his bony elbow.

Scoop must have more bones than anyone she'd ever met, thought Elsie. They seemed to stick out long past where his body should have ended. At his shoulders. His knees.

Elsie hugged her knees. She could feel the rough gravel poking through the seat of her pants. “Nan pretends she's not bothered about Mother,” she told him, “but each time the mailman's due, she finds something to do out by the Tipson's mailbox. Do you think Father wrote us a letter and they never passed it on? That Jimmy is so mean, I bet he'd do it. Do you think he's been hiding Mother's letter?” Elsie rested her chin on her knees and watched Scoop poke a stick in circles along the sidewalk. She looked at him sideways when he didn't answer. “Well? Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“You're not listening.”

“What I was thinking was…we need to explore all avenues, like I said. So tomorrow? There's no school, so we can head out to that shantytown. Put the word about.”

“What word? The Reverend said those places are dangerous. He said they're desperate, some of those hoboes. Though they looked okay to me the other day. Just rough maybe.”

“I'll go then, if you're chicken,” said Scoop. “I can do the investigating myself. If we find your father, maybe you won't mind so much about your mother.”

Elsie stared at Scoop. Could he really think that as long as she had one parent at home, it wouldn't matter where the other was? Maybe it was easier for him
—
his father couldn't come home no matter how much anyone else wanted him to. Dead is dead and done for, as Nan would say.

Elsie felt a chill as soon as she thought the words. Surely she'd know. She'd feel it somehow, if Father was dead. Wouldn't she?

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

“I'
ll need a description.” Scoop rooted around in his pocket for his pencil.

“You know what Father looks like.” Elsie didn't want to admit that sometimes she could hardly remember her father's face. She took out a photograph from her back pocket and smoothed it against her knee. “I pinched this from Mother's suitcase. She'd packed it to take on her trip to New Westminster.”

Scoop grabbed it. He peered at it and nodded. “This will do. Better than a description.” He took his notebook from his overalls, opened it up and carefully laid the photograph between the pages.

Elsie could already feel the empty space where the picture had been. She'd got used to putting her hand in her pocket during the day, just to be sure the snapshot was still there. At night she stuck it under her pillow, then imagined she could feel it under her head all night, like the story about the princess and the pea. “I want it back, mind,” she told him.

“Sure,” said Scoop. “When the Reverend told you not to go to the shantytowns, what did you do?” he asked. He rolled up his trouser leg and picked at the edges of a scab on his knee.

“The magic nod,” said Elsie. “That says I heard him. But no promises.”

“That's the ticket. So you could come if you want to.”

“What about Mother?”

Scoop flapped an arm in the air. “She's just in New Westminster, waiting for her friend to die. There'll be a letter soon.” He rolled down his trouser leg and then looked up at her again. “Do you think it will be a long, slow, agonizing death?”

Elsie didn't say anything. It was another of those questions that didn't really need an answer.

She and Scoop sat with their feet in the gutter, flicking stones at the few cars that passed by. Even though they missed every time, it was almost as good as skipping stones on the river, where the tugboats steamed past dragging log booms. She would have suggested that they go down there now, but Nan had said to stay close to home. With Father gone, then Mother and Uncle Dannell, perhaps Nan wanted her close by for her own sake. Not for Elsie's. Besides, the Reverend Hampton was coming by after supper. Elsie had told him she needed some trousers; the ones she had were at least three inches too short for her already, and her ankles got cold on the way to school. He had promised to see what he could find in the church rummage. She would go indoors when the Reverend got here.

After Scoop and Elsie arranged to meet at the end of the block outside Lewis's Repair Shop the next morning, they practiced whistling. Scoop could only spit noisily. Elsie whistled “Yankee Doodle” right through without hardly taking a breath.

“What are you children doing sitting in the dirt?” Elsie turned to see Nan coming down the path toward them. “I've been calling you for supper, miss. Time for you to go too, young man. Get on with you.”

“Where's the fire?” muttered Scoop. He leaned over to give Dog Bob a tummy tickle. Then he stood and hitched up his pants. He was the only person in the world who wasn't scared of Nan.

He said goodbye, then strolled down the road, his hands in his pockets, his elbows sticking out in triangles as he rocked from side to side. Nan laughed as she watched him go. “He's a case, that one. Come along now.” She put one hand on Elsie's back as they walked toward the garage, Dog Bob trotting ahead of them. “And that hat comes off as soon as you go inside,” Nan told Elsie. “How many times!”

But Elsie wasn't listening. Uncle Dannell said that with the proper training, Dog Bob would have been the perfect sheepdog. Even without it, it was in his nature to try and keep everyone in his pack together. It had to do with instincts, he told her.

Maybe she had the right instincts for finding her father. If he was down in the shantytown with all the other hoboes, she would find him and bring him home.

As she waited for Scoop the next morning in front of Lewis's Repair Shop, Elsie studied the radios in the window. She ran her finger down the glass, then rubbed the black smudge off on her coat. She paced back and forth along the sidewalk, dodging out of the way when someone wanted to go into the shop. Dog Bob drifted off to sniff around, then came back and sat beside Elsie for a bit before leaving again.

After she had asked three passersby the time, Elsie figured Scoop wasn't coming. She checked the street one way, then the other, so many times she was almost dizzy. She could go over to his house. But if he was stuck at home doing chores, he'd want her to stay and help. She did enough of them at home now that there was only Nan and her.

A streetcar rattled past with a boy hanging off the back, one arm and one leg stuck out in a V. He yelled as he passed, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. Scoop had tried that once. He'd ripped his pants and got a long gouge along his leg when he fell off. Try explaining that to Nan if
she
tried such a stunt, thought Elsie.

Checking one more time that Scoop wasn't coming, Elsie looked toward home once, and then she headed off in the direction of the shantytown alone. She stuck her hands in her pockets and stuck her elbows out like Scoop, to make herself feel brave. Dog Bob would keep her company, even if her best friend had left her high and dry.

The closer Elsie got to the shantytown, the fewer cars were on the road. There weren't many newspaper vendors about either. Or ladies with their shopping bags and high heels. Most of the storefronts Elsie passed were all locked up, with strips of wood making big Xs across the windows. Others had metal grilles and fat padlocks keeping them shut up tight. Two young men tottered past, leaning against each other as they gulped from a bottle sticking out of a paper bag. When one of them dribbled down his jacket, he pulled up the lapel to his face and licked it off.