The Gravesavers (12 page)

“Something to behold, isn’t it, Master Hindley.”
Her.

“Yes, miss.”

“Do you know any other words than those?”

“Yes, miss.”

Her laughter made me dizzier than the rigging I’d been looking up into.

I laughed too.

“That sure is a long ways up,” I said.

“Could you climb it?” she asked.

“That’s just what I was wondering.”

“What was your conclusion?”

“I thought not.”

“Well, I’m a person who thinks you can do anything if you want to. Or have to.”

“I don’t think I’d ever want to, miss, and unless I become a sailor I won’t have to.”

“Please call me Maryanna. Miss makes me feel so old. Ma’am is worse! I’m not a married woman yet.”

“Yet?”

“That’s why I’m sailing. My fiancé is waiting for me on the other side. In New York. I can hardly wait!” She jumped up a little when she said New York.

“Me too,” I said. “I mean, I’m going to New York, too! And my brother is going to send for his girl as soon as he can.” I brought up Thomas to make her know how well I understood love and passion.

“And you? No broken heart you left behind?”

I shook my head.

“Well, then. We’ll just have to keep each other good company, won’t we?”

She linked her arm in mine. I nodded like a fool.

I think Miss Rayborn was lonely. I was just a young boy to her. She probably had no idea how she affected me.

At that moment I needed another dose of those smelling salts.

W
HAT
P
ARENTS
D
O

“I don’t care if the king of England himself were sitting with us. When it’s time for a mother to speak, it has to be done.”

Sure enough, Mum had found out where we’d been. Thomas couldn’t help spilling the beans to Dad. Dad was right proud and boasted to everyone. What was he thinking?

Mum scowled. “Boys, over here, please, so the whole world won’t hear everything.”

We obeyed.

“Mr. Ryan O’Brien, that means you as well! Seeing as you’re their mate this trip and I wouldn’t mind having a handsome son like you anyhow, especially with that talent for making people laugh. But it goes with trouble, too.

“Now. Don’t you go pulling any shenanigans like that again. Dig the earwax out and hear me good, because I mean it.” She twisted our ears as she spoke.

“Ow.”

“Woah!”

“Mum!”

But truth be told, we were all trying not to laugh. Mum could twist hard enough to make it sting, but mostly it was never more than a pinch. She was such a biddy thing, and now that we were all taller than her, she had to stand on her tiptoes to wag a finger in our face.

“I can just imagine the language coming out of those men down there was not fit for any civilized gentleman.”

“I’m not so civilized as all that, Mum,” Thomas mumbled. “Heard worse at the mill, you know, every single day.”

“Well, good sir, man of the world, are you? So maybe there’s little hope for you, but your brother here is about to be an educated gentleman. He won’t be having any need for that sort of filth.”

“Yes, Ma. Sorry, Mum.”

It was true, my schooling was one of the main reasons Dad decided to leave Lancashire county and head off to New York.

“A boy like you to whom reading comes so easily needs more schooling, not the mill.” He’d said this the first time I came home from school and recited some little poem for them after supper one evening. It was something I was asked to do regularly, for entertainment on winter nights. But it was my last year of public school. There was no money for more, not back home in England. In America, I could continue school for free.

“Yes,” Dad said to me the night he told me of his plans. “You’ll get a better life than your old man’s, eh?” I knew what he meant, but the thing of it was, if I was to grow up to be a man like him, that would please me well enough.

“To Paddy, the man with a ready laugh and a huge heart and the strongest arms in the mill,” said the fellows when they lifted pints to him on the night of their farewell party. And that described him, all right. Yes, indeed. Patrick Hindley was the kind of man any son would be proud to grow up to be.

The water was cold. The pipes clanged in protest as I refilled my glass. I stood at the kitchen window as I sipped it, staring up at the hill. And right then, Beach Boy appeared out of nowhere and waved at me to join him. The glass slid out of my hand and shattered into a bazillion pieces on the tile floor. A shard of glass pricked my finger as I swept it into the dustpan, and blood spurted out like a mini geyser. After doctoring myself up, I started up the hill.

Burdock stuck to my socks, thistles scratched my ankles, and I had to thread carefully through tangles of spiderwebs. Fat spiders with yellow and black bodies sat content in the middle of lacy designs spread between the tips of timothy, like blankets at a picnic. I hate spiders. Still, I climbed.

“Hey!” I bellowed out to the sky and the wind. “Are you here?”

The sea crashed on the rocks below and eddied back out. My voice echoed back.
Here, here, here.
The
gulls screeched, and from the other side of the basin came the low groan of a motorboat put-putting towards the government dock.

I spotted Nana’s truck pulling into the driveway and I dove down, hoping the grass hid me.

“Minn!” she called towards the house. “Come help me lug in these berries.”

I flattened myself farther into the grass, waited until she’d gone in for the last time and then rolled over. The clouds were silvery white; the sky filled with scribbled chalky lines and shapes. I thought of hieroglyphs in ancient caves. Dinosaur, dolphin, castle, face of bear. After the morning’s workout, it was a perfect place to rest.

“Ida!” Harv’s voice interrupted my daydreams. I leaned up on my elbows to watch.

Nana came out of the house with two glasses of lemonade. Harv took them from her and placed them on the table. Then, to my disgust, they embraced. And worse, they kissed—like lovers kiss. Tongue and everything, it looked like. Gross.

They sat down and sipped their lemonade. A romance between Harv and my grandmother! Ew. Imagine what they’d be up to if I wasn’t around to cramp their style! Ew. Ew. Ew. Did my father know about this? Come to think of it, Harv did come with us last year to the Herring Choker Picnic and the potluck at the church.

Well, well. My grandmother and Harv. So much for Alex Trebek.

On the way down the hill, I hummed loud enough to give them plenty of warning in case they had any idea of giving in to their passion and making out. Dirty old geezers!

“Here’s the girl herself now,” said Harv as I walked up the steps.

“Strawberries in the kitchen need hullin’,” said my grandmother.

“Just a minute now, Ida. I brought your granddaughter a gift, I did.”

He reached inside the large pocket of his lumberjack shirt and produced the book I’d been looking at in his store.

“Marie says you took a real interest in this. I want you to have it.”

“Thanks, Harv,” I said.

“She said you were acting sort of strange. And …” He paused.
Don’t please don’t say anything about the boy.
He winked. “And you owe me a Gatorade.”
Whew.
“And … she said you took off like a bat outta hell!”

“Harv!” Nana barked like a teacher.

“Excuse me. Like a bat out of Tutuyukytuk!”

I knew it! Marie the checkout girl had ears and eyes like a hawk! She’d been checking me out, all right.

“It was just that I remembered Dad was going to call this morning and I didn’t want to miss it.”

“What’d he have to say?” asked Nana.

“Nothing much.”

“Do Eaton’s tell Sears their business?” Harv asked her.

“Eaton’s went
out
of business, last I heard,” snapped Nana.

“Got me there,” sighed Harv.

“How’s your mother?” Nana continued, one eyebrow arching up high. It was the first time she’d mentioned her. Maybe she figured I’d talk to her more in front of Harv. That his being there would force me to be polite.

“The same,” I mumbled, flipping through the book so I wouldn’t have to look her in the eye.

“She’ll be fine, I’m sure she will,” said Nana. Almost, I realized with a shock, almost as if she was trying to make me feel better. Sure, put on a show for your lover, so he won’t know what a witch you are.

“Whatever,” I said, and went into the house, letting the screen door slam behind me.

I expected her to shout out not to be so rude, but she stayed on her sweet as opposed to sour behaviour at the moment.

I threw the book on my bed, peeled off my
sweaty clothes and went to shower. I should have waited until after hulling the berries, because my fingers were stained red and my fingernails almost purple by the time I was through. It looked like I’d been splashing my hands in a puddle of blood.

Later that afternoon, Nana turned on the radio and we listened to the CBC as we mixed the biscuits for the strawberry shortcake.

“Harv’s coming over for dessert,” she announced. I bet he is, I wanted to say.

“He loves his strawberry shortcake, all right,” she said, “with real whip cream, though, not that artificial stuff that makes your teeth rot. Here, you can lick the beaters if you want.”

Supper was delicious, a feast of boiled potatoes, fresh peas, hot German sausages and sauerkraut. I left plenty of room for dessert.

“Now Shelley, he was a great poet,” said Harv afterwards, as he puffed on his pipe. “His life was too short and he would have written more poems, I am sure, that we’d still be remembering today.”

“Maybe not,” said Nana, puffing on her pipe as well. “Sometimes the best poetry is written in the prime of one’s life, in youth, when the emotions are still not in check and passions are high.”

“Are you saying old folks don’t have high passion?” I blurted.

Nana flushed and Harv nearly choked on his smoke.

“Well!” said Nana.

“I saw you two smooching on the porch this afternoon,” I teased.

Harv laughed. “Well, well, Ida, I guess our little secret is out.”

“Nosy little thing. It’s not polite to be spying on people.” Nana pouted like a kid.

“But I wasn’t spying,” I protested between my giggles. “I just happened to look down at the wrong time.”

This was fun, seeing her all kafuffled.

“I’d like to marry your grandmother,” said Harv like a courtly gentleman. “But she won’t have me.”

“Harv, now don’t start in,” warned my grandmother, her face almost as purple as an eggplant.

“Yup. Guess she thinks an old guy would only be getting in her way all the time.”

“Well, I do like my freedom,” sniffed Nana. “Besides, they’d only cut my old age pension, and a woman needs her own woodpile.”

“But I’m not a poor man exactly, Ida,” said Harv. There was weariness in his voice. I guessed they’d been over this a lot of times.

“Your family would not approve,” she said. “Probably call me a gold digger.”

“My children would be tickled pink, Ida. You know that!”

“That’s what you think now, Harv, but believe me, it’s a different story when the time comes.”

I think for a minute they forgot I was there as they squabbled like two old crows.

“Minn,” said Harv suddenly, as if he could read my thoughts, “you’d come to the wedding, wouldn’t ya?”

“I’d sing at it if I could sing,” I said. Then I began my own rendition of “Ave Maria.” The one with Corporal Ray’s country-and-western twang.

“Stop!” My grandmother covered her ears, laughing. “Lordie, that’s a good enough reason to never say yes.”

It seemed she was leaving the door open a bit.

I have to admit that knowing Harv loved my grandmother and wished to marry her painted her in a whole new light for me. Harv was a great guy. Even when I was little I knew he was a kind man. There’s a twinkle in certain grown-ups’ eyes that little kids know means this is a grown-up you can trust. And when they say “how are you?” they really mean
who
are you, and you know they want an answer. A real one, not just “fine, thank you.”