The Gravesavers (15 page)

I was dreaming of New York. Again. The city was a dazzle in the sun as the ship sailed into the harbour. A throng of people lined the shore, waving us in. Everyone on board was cheering. There was the victory blast of the ship’s horn. Even the air smelled of hope, of newness, like fresh sheets blown dry by wind. This time, the dream was so real, I even felt my sister’s arms as she reached out to hug me after we disembarked. Thomas and I helped Dad load the crate and cradle onto a carriage.

Then the Black Knight strolled by. Clang clang clang. Thomas yelled and pointed. The cradle tipped and fell. It made a sound that shuddered through my entire body. I woke with a start. But I wasn’t in my bunk. I had been thrown clear through the cabin door.

The cracking sound continued, thunderclaps beneath the ship instead of overhead in the sky. There was a stampede of feet by my head. Men stormed into the passageway. I staggered to my feet as they elbowed their way past.

“This way, boy, get up on deck.” Someone tugged at my sleeve. I pulled away.

“Thomas!” I yelled. I couldn’t see my brother in the crowd of bodies pressing around me.

The ship lurched. I fell sideways. I tried to crawl through a tangle of legs back towards the cabin.

“Thomas!”

“Don’t go in there boy, don’t.” But it was too late. The upper and lower bunks had collapsed in on one another.

“Thomas!”
I screamed.

My brother’s eyes were open, filled with a look of surprise. Unblinking. His head was dangling by a thread of skin.

“Know how to slit a dead man’s throat?”

I nodded. “Kinda sorta.” Corporal Ray’s been trying to teach me for years. I’m not very good.”

“Come on, Minikin. Give me what you’ve got.” He placed a small round stone in my hand.

“Minikin? Is that a word?”

“Look it up if you don’t believe me.”

I gave it my best. The rock went up up up then kachunk!

“Not bad for a—” He stopped himself. “But here’s how it’s done.”

He angled his body sideways. Then took a run and flung his arm up.

“Perfect slit, eh what?”

I nodded, impressed. “How did you do that?”

“Years of practice.”

“You lived here all your life?”

“Most of it, yes.”

“Suppose you know all about the disaster, then?”

He glanced at me. His eyes were hard. “Which one? The Swissair crash a few years ago, down the coast a bit?”

I shuddered. Nana and Harv and most Boulder Basin folks were involved in helping the victims’ families. There had been no survivors that night.

“No. This was a shipwreck over a century ago. The SS
Atlantic”

“I know a bit.” He was skipping rocks by then. He was good at that too.

So I told him about my grandmother and her hope to save the grave. And my petition.

“Minn the gravesaver, eh?”

I shrugged. “The petition’s not working. No one signed it yet.”

“Why not go door to door? Makes it more personal.”

“I don’t know anybody, though.”

“I’ll tell ya what you want to know.” He pointed to the house on our left. “Mabel Langille. Never married. When she was little, kids used to call her plug ugly. She was born with a cleft palate. Nicest soul you’d ever want to meet. But folks are cruel. Some folks, anyhow. She’s a friend of your grandmother’s. Mabel looked after her folks until they died, then took one trip. She went to Niagara Falls. Walks her cat every day. Cat sits on her shoulder and they walk
down the beach. Other than that, she doesn’t go out much. Other than your grandmother, she doesn’t get much company.”

Mabel. Nana had mentioned her but I’d never met her.

Then he pointed to the right. “Roger Verlong. Famous for farting in church.”

I burst out laughing.

“I’m serious. Farting or snoring. But again, don’t let appearances and gas attacks rule him out. He’s a regular teddy bear. A farting, snoring, God-fearing man.”

I had to wipe tears of laugher out of my eyes. “We sat right behind the man last Sunday.”

“Lucky you!”

“Where do
you
live?” I asked before I even thought the thought.

He pointed. Up, over, up, across. “Near East Boulder.”

“Any brothers or sisters?”

He nodded yes. “You?”

“None,” I said.

I guess he sensed my irritation.

“Race you to the next birch?”

He beat me for the first time.

“Cnicus benedictus! I guess I better practise harder!”

“I had a head start.” It wasn’t true. He
was
nice, I decided right then.

“Want to come with me when I take my petition around?” I asked. “Maybe tonight?” What was I doing? Asking him out?
Ditz! I am a total ditz.

“Terribly sorry. I work at night.”

Yeah, like when I saw him walking in the sunset.

“But I’ll be with you in spirit.” He flashed those pearly whites and put his hand over his heart. “Honest.”

A
PRIL
1ST
, 1873

“Thomas!”

I screamed out my brother’s name until my voice was hoarse and my breathing was laboured. I was paralyzed, motionless there on the floor until the ship lurched again. This time it was a long as well as violent shuddering. I was spit back out into the passageway and slammed repeatedly against a wall. Splinters of wood gouged my head and I felt the warm gush of my own blood running down my cheek, into my mouth. There’s little doubt I was badly dazed for it was as if the world dropped away suddenly. I was in my body and yet not in my body, like some perplexed and helpless observer watching the bedlam which ensued.

Sounds were muffled and voices warbled much the way it is if ever you have tried to blow bubbles beneath water. Time was no longer time, it was like an accordion. Seconds bent back upon themselves and doubled and then stretched out again. There was such a hurly-burly of men with their faces contorted and mouths twisted open but all I heard was a growling, like fierce dogs in a fight. I
tried to decipher the sounds as if translating from a foreign language.

“Out! Now!”

Was that my father’s voice? Wherewasmydadmymum?

Someone, but no—not my father, yanked me by the arm so hard I thought my elbow dislodged from its socket. I staggered about on my feet but not for long. They lifted me, a whole line of them, and then thrust me forward, hand over hand, head over head, until I reached a small porthole someone had smashed open.

“Heave!” I heard them shout. I closed my eyes as I shot right through like a canyon ball, exploding out onto what remained of the deck. Needlepoint slivers of glass pricked my skin. I looked back to the opening and saw only a hand clawing the air. I knew with certainty I was the only one small enough to make that egress to safety.

The ship keeled again, both sideways and forward. With every wave, it was if the entire vessel was being swallowed, gulp by gulp, by the greedy mouth of the sea. A shark-toothed wind bit into my flesh and a cascade of waves swept me up and water filled my throat. I gagged and coughed but my throat was still closed. My lungs were filling faster than the pigs bladders we blew up to use for sport. The ship groaned and creaked and heaved once more. I was thumped against the deck again, a lucky blow this time because finally I choked and had a gasp of air.

But I had no hold.

I was spinning and sliding down towards the rest of them. Folks were piling atop each other, but still jostling, grabbing, clenched in a stranglehold between life and death.

Then? They were falling.

So numerous were they that I thought of dead flies on an old pane of glass in spring. Except dead flies cannot even buzz, let alone cry out with such ungodly shrieks and wails.

“John!” Strong arms had me by the waist.

“Dad?”

But it was Frith with a rope and he pointed to the mizzen.

“Climb and I’ll join you as soon as I can!”

Rung by rung in the rigging I climbed. The tip of the mast was as spindly as the top part of a tree branch and I feared it would snap in the wind. I stopped mid way then tied a bowline knot, securing my ankles to the rigging. Back and forth I swayed and teetered. A boy in a swing.

Below me was the real pit of hell, filled with water not fire.

“John!
”

“Ryan!”

He shinnied the ropes as nimble as ever, with a smile of relief and gratitude on his face. But then I saw it. I saw behind him a mountain of wave cresting higher and higher. There was a roar as it hit the deck and became a
pummeling wall of water. Ryan held his hand up to me. I was beyond his reach, I was certain of it, and did not extend my hand to him. When the wave receded, Ryan was gone.

One after each after another, those below were vanishing before my eyes. I watched a man with his wife and baby for the longest time. He had hold of a bit of railing and was praying. His eyes locked mine just before the wave came that swept them under. Perhaps he said a prayer for me. I heard that baby crying, I did, for several godforsaken minutes longer.

Once again, time slowed down. The ship rolled over on its belly, gentle like, as if it were some old man merely trying to settle into a good night’s sleep. I was then staring almost face down at the frenzy of waves below. I flapped about, like a rag in the wind. My fingers were just frozen nubs.

The vessel dipped and then I was flying outwards wondering why it was the moon had simply disappeared.

Hamamelis virginiana!
Translation: witch hazel! Or maybe my grandmother was a chameleon. That’s all there was to it, I decided. Just when I thought I was getting a handle on her, just as I was changing my feelings about her in light of Harv’s great love and endless devotion to her, just as our mutual interest in the shipwreck was bonding us together in a loose kind of way, I was brought up short. Another side of her emerged. The Wacko Witch. My grandmother truly was a witch of sorts.

“Hurry up, now, get outta bed, my clients will be here by ten. Lazy Mary, will you get up,” she began to sing. I covered my ears.

“And I can’t have you clattering about the kitchen. I’ll need quiet for concentrating.”

She stood in the doorway of my bedroom, one hand on her hip as if she was about to go into an “I’m a little teapot” routine. Well, she
was
short and stout, like the song said. This particular morning she was
dressed up by her standards—brown corduroy pants and a moss green sweater that matched her eyes. For once, she wasn’t wearing that hat and her hair was brushed. It was a mop of gentle curls the colour of ashes from the end of a cigar.

“Have you got any lipstick?” she asked.

“Dad won’t let me wear it yet,” I said, blinking the sleep, as well as the surprise, out of my eyes. Carolina warned me people would think I was a tomboy because I didn’t give a hoot about make-up. She insisted I put on lip gloss at school. Corporal Ray did not know.

But the Vinegar Witch wearing lipstick?

“Well, that still doesn’t mean you don’t have any in that bag of yours.”

She looked at me all wide eyed. She’d been snooping!

I threw back the covers, glad I’d brought my flannel pyjamas and kept on my socks. The floor, even through my socks, felt colder than a skating rink.

“It’s cranberry,” I said.

“That’ll do fine. My lips are dry, is all.”

She fumbled in front of the mirror and smudged it on.

“Do this, Nana,” I said, poking my finger in my mouth and smacking. “That way it won’t rub off on your teeth.”

“That right?” she said. “Well now.” She did as I said and giggled. “Never been much into beautifying, you know,” she said.

Like I hadn’t noticed.

She handed me back the tube.

“No, keep it,” I said. “I think I only ever wore it at Halloween.”

“Thanks.” She even managed a wobbly cranberry smile. She looked almost pretty. Now if only she’d do something about that chin hair.

“So, Nan, what’s the occasion? Getting hitched to Harv today?”

“That’s enough out of you now.”

“And what do you mean, clients?”

I was back in bed with the covers up to my chin, shivering. She sat down on the foot of my bed. She started picking threads on the worn-out quilt. Then she looked around the room.