The Diviners (4 page)

So many kids, there. All yelling. Some very big kids. Some about Morag’s size. Morag knows for sure only Eva Winkler, who lives next door on Hill Street.

“Do I have to, Christie?”

“Aye. Just give them hell, Morag, and you’ll be fine. Just don’t you take any smart-aleck stuff from any of that lot, there. They’re only muck the same as any of us. Skin and bone and the odd bit of guts.”

“Yeh.” But not knowing what he means.

She and Christie walk up the cement steps. Forty miles.
LAUGHTER
? Why? She turns. Many laughers. All around. On the steps and on the gravel. Large and small kids. Some looking away. Some going ho ho har har.

“Lookut her dress–it’s down to her ankles!”

“Oh, it isn’t, Helen! It’s sure away below her knees, though.”

Her dress? What’s wrong? Prin sewed it. Out of a wraparound which Prin is now too stout to wear.

Girls here. Some bigger, some smaller than Morag. Skipping with skipping ropes. Singing.

Jamie Halpern, so they say,

Goes a’ courting night and day,

Sword an’ pistol by his side,

Takes Junie Foster for his bride.

And oh

Their dresses are very short, away above their knees. Some very bright blue yellow green and new cloth, new right
out of the store. You can see the pattern very clear, polka dots flowers and that.

Well oh

Eva Winkler’s dress same as Morag’s.

“Hello, Eva. Hello there, Eva!” Morag’s voice loud.

But Eva is bawling her eyes out. By herself.

In the front hall, dark dark floor stinking of oil bad-smelling oil. Boys’ voices. Mean.

“Hey, you know who
that
is?”

“Sure, old man Logan. He’s the–”

“Sh! Al Cates, you shut your face.” Girlvoice.

“Oh shut up, Mavis. He’s the–
SCAVENGER
!”

What means
Scavenger
? Morag cannot ask. Christie’s face is stone.

“Phew! Can’t you smell him from here?”

“Gabby little turds,” Christie mutters.

The room. Grade One. Christie gone. Morag alone with all the other kids. Having taken a seat at one of the desks in the back row. Holding hard onto her wooden pencil-case. Never mind. They are only gabby turds, these kids. And when she goes home today she will know how to read.

The teacher is a lady. Tall, giant, like a big tree walking and waving its arms. A tree wearing spectacles. Morag giggles, but inside.

Then the worst thought. What if she has to pee or shit? Is there a backhouse in this place?

The teacher says a whole lot of stuff welcome boys and girls I know we’re going to get along just beautifully and I know you’re going to work hard and not make any trouble and I may as well say right now that troublemakers will find
themselves
in trouble and it is the ruler across the hands for
them and the really bad behavers get the strap from the Principal.

What means
Principal
? What is
Strap
?

“Stand up and say your names, please. You, the girl at the back in this row, you begin.”

Who?
Her. Morag. She knows she won’t be able to say. Or will wet her pants. She struggles up, stooping a bit so as to hide her tallness. She is taller than any of the other girls, what a disgrace.

Mumble.

“Speak up, dear, we can’t hear you.”

“Morag Gunn.”

“Thank you, Morag. You may sit down. Next, now.”

All the names. Stacey Cameron. Mavis Duncan. Julie Kazlik. Ross McVitie. Mike Lobodiak. Al Cates. Steve Kowalski. Vanessa MacLeod. Jamie Halpern. Eva Winkler. And so on and so on.

Teacher’s name–Miss Crawford.

“Miss Crawfish,” Jamie Halpern whispers.

Eva Winkler’s tears go drip-drip-drip-splot onto her scribbler. Morag wants to cry, too. But doesn’t. Miss Crawfish is gabbing again. All sorts of stuff now boys and girls if you want to leave the room you must hold up your hand for permission either one finger or two you take my meaning of course.

What means
Leave the Room
? Morag does not think it really means you can go home if you want to. One finger? Two fingers? What for?

“Number One and Number Two,” somebody whispers. “If you gotta do Number Two, she lets you go out right away. My brother told me.”

Morag now sees that she cannot see what is written on the blackboard. Her ears, though, are of the best. Maybe this
will make up for not having a brother who tells you things.

Eva Winkler’s brothers are all younger. None yet at school.

A horrible smell everywhere. Who? Eva Winkler bawls out loud now. All eyes on her. Morag clenches her own stomach, holding on. She mustn’t. She can’t hold up her hand. Not in front of everybody. Especially now.

“Eva–have you had an accident?” Miss Crawfish asks.

Eva cries and cries. Some kids laugh.

“That’s
enough
, class. Eva, why didn’t you ask permission? To leave the room.”

“I never knew–”

“But I told you, Eva. Stand up beside your desk.”

“I
can’t
. It’ll go on the floor, the poop will.”

“
Please
. Never use such an expression in this room again. Very well, you had better go to the washroom, Eva, and then go home. You can come back this afternoon when you’ve got cleaned up. Now, don’t worry. It’s all right. Just don’t let it happen again.”

Eva scuffs out. Plop-plop-plop behind her as she begins to run, and the floor has stuff on it yellow-brownish and smelly.

“Jamie Halpern,” Teacher says. “Go and find the janitor. In the basement.”

A man comes into the room after a while. Hairy and dark, grinning at the kids. Friendly? Mr. Doherty. Winks once or twice when Teacher not looking. Carries a bag, a broom, a dustpan. Empties bag, with greenish powder, onto Eva’s shame shame. Morag knows what the powder is. Paris Green. What a music name for that poison stuff. He sweeps up everything and goes.

Recess.
Recess
means you go out onto the gravel. Morag listens, hanging around the edges of bunches of kids who are friends. No talk about Scavenger now. All about Eva. Eva
Weakguts, pale pale face and pale yellow hair. Kids are saying lots of things scared to ask permission doing it on the floor wow wait’ll we see her face this afternoon bet you she’ll be blushing like a rose yeh but not smelling like one oh Ross think you’re so smart dontcha well aren’t I and what about you stuckup Stacey and lots of other things.

Morag’s head is thinking thinking figuring out.

At four o’clock they can go home. She still does not know how to read. Some school this turned out to be. But has learned one thing for sure.

Hang onto your shit and never let them know you are ascared.

Memorybank Movie: Morag, Much Older

Seven is much older than six. A person knows a hell of a sight more. And can read. Some kids still can’t read yet. But they are dumb, dumb-bells, dumb bunnies. Morag can read like sixty. Sometimes she doesn’t let on in school, though. Just depends on how she feels. So there.

Prin is sitting in the kitchen when Morag gets home from school. Prin is getting fatter all the time, and she looks like a great big huge pear. She buys jelly doughnuts at Parsons’ Bakery and sometimes she gives one to Morag. Mostly the bagful has gone by the time Morag gets home. Prin doesn’t mean to be mean. She sits all the afternoon in the squashy leather-seated easy chair in the kitchen, chewing, and then she looks and lo and behold no doughnuts are left.

Prin’s family was English. She has told Morag about it. Prin’s father was a remittance man. That meant his family in The Old Country didn’t like him so good, and were pretty mean and all, even though he was a gentleman, a real one, and so they made him come to this country where he didn’t want
to come to, and for a while, there, they sent him some money, but then they didn’t. He wasn’t much of a farmer, but he meant well, Prin said. She was the only child and wasn’t none too bright (you were supposed to say wasn’t
any
too bright but Prin didn’t know that) and couldn’t be too much help, but then her dad died anyway. Her mother had died Before. When would that be? Long ago in olden times. Prin married Christie when he came back from the Great War. The town said good job too; a pity to spoil two families. Which was mean. But funny, too.

Prin’s real Christian name is Princess. Morag thinks this is the funniest thing she has ever heard. But once when she said so to Christie, he told her to shut her trap.

“Hi,” Morag says. “Can I have something to eat?”

“Sure. You want some bread and sugar?”

Morag nods and goes to fetch it. Soft brown sugar spread on white storeboughten bread. Her favourite. Prin used to make her own bread, but gave it up. Too hot to bake in summer and too hard in winter to find a place neither too warm nor too cold for the dough to rise proper. Morag is glad. The soft fluffy bread from Parsons’ is better. More delicate. Morag is very delicate-minded. She prides herself on it, although she never lets on, of course. Vanessa and Mavis and like them have storeboughten bread in their houses all the time. Or so she guesses, never having been into their houses. Never so much as a bite of anything else, heaven forbid. Storeboughten cookies are another thing. She is sure
their
mothers make cookies because when the class had a valentine’s party, they and some others brought heart-shaped cookies with pink icing. Storeboughten cookies are looked down on.

The hell with them. Screw them all. They are stupid buggers.

Morag loves to swear, but doesn’t do it at school because you get the strap or else have to stand out in the hall by yourself where the coats are hung.

“Christie has to go out with the wagon again, now. I’m sure I don’t know why. I’ll bet a nickel to a doughnut hole they won’t pay him extra.”

Prin’s voice is kind of small and high, like a little kid’s. Prin really likes Christie. But she is a born whiner.

Christie comes in from the stable at the back where Ginger and the wagon are kept. He wipes some sweat from around his eyes and grins at Morag.

“Hello, lass. Did they
learn
you much today, then?”

He knows better. He says it like that on purpose. A joke. Prin would say it not on purpose.

“No.” Morag turns away from him.

Christie is short, skinny, but actually quite strong. He looks
peculiar
. His head sort of comes forward when he walks, like he is in a hurry, but he isn’t ever in a hurry. His hair, what’s left of it, is sandy. Blue eyes, but all cloudy and with little red lines on the white part. Wires (hair, actually) grow out of his chin–he doesn’t shave every day. The lump in his throat is called his Adam’s apple, what a name. His teeth are bad and one is missing at the front but he never tries to hide it by putting his hand over or smiling with his mouth closed, oh no, not him. He always wears a blue heavy shirt, and overalls too big so they fall around him and make him look silly.

That is the worst. How silly he looks. No. The worst is that he smells. He does wash. But he never gets rid of the smell. How much do other people notice? Plenty. You bet. Horseshit and garbage, putrid stuff, vegetables and that, rotten eggs and mouldy old clothes.

“Gotta pick up a load of scrap from the blacksmith’s,” Christie says. “Want to come along, Morag?”

Morag hesitates. She has never gone with Christie in the wagon. Just for once she would like to go, to see the Nuisance Grounds. She nods.

“C’mon, then,” he says. “Haven’t got all night.”

Ginger is a rusty colour. A gelding. Morag knows what
that
means, too, ha ha. Ginger is thin, and his hipbones stick out under the leather skin. Morag climbs up onto the wagon beside Christie.

Why is Christie called Scavenger? Morag does not yet know this and will not ask. She knows what he
does
, collecting the town garbage and taking it to dump in the Nuisance Grounds. But what, really, means
Scavenger
? She is afraid to ask. And why
Nuisance Grounds
? Because all that awful old stuff and rotten stuff is a nuisance and nice people don’t want to have anything to do with it?

Clank-clonk. The wooden cart crawls up Hill Street, turning north on the main drag. All the stores are up the other end of Main. Here there is only the Granite Works, which makes gravestones in two colours, red or black, speckled stone, some plain and some fancy with flowers and scrolls and that. Then Christie turns in at a sign above a dark dark brick cave.
W. Saunders, Blacksmith.
Morag isn’t going to go down there. She stays on the wagon, looking into the blackness. At the very end of the gloomy dark there is a fire, glowing red but not seeming to light up the place at all. Smells: heat, horses, sweat. An old man is sitting on an overturned nail barrel outside, and inside a younger man suddenly swings a big hammer onto the iron slab and for a second the whole place is full of stars. Christie loads the wagon with scrap iron, old horseshoes,
crooked pieces of rusty oily metal, and they are off again. Morag thinks of the sparks, the stars, and sees them again inside her head. Stars! Fire-stars! How does it happen? She wants to ask, but won’t. Christie would think she was dumb. She isn’t the dumb one. Christie is.

Now they are going along the streets where some of the big houses are, big yellow brick houses or wooden houses painted really nice. Lawns all neat and cut, and sprinklers sprinkling, swirling around and making water rainbows. Flower gardens with pink and purple petunias, and red snapdragons like velvet, really
rich
velvet, and orange lilies with freckles on the throats. The blinds are pulled down over the front windows of the houses, to keep out the heat. Cream-coloured blinds, all fringed with lace and tassels. The windows are the eyes, closed, and the blinds are the eyelids, all creamy, fringed with lacy lashes. Blinds make the houses to be blind. Ha ha.

Morag is enjoying this ride more than she thought she would. Then it happens. A gang of kids. Some from her class in school. Voices. Yelling. Whistling.

“Hey–there goes Old Man Logan on his chariot!”

“Giddup! Hey, giddup there, ya old swayback!”