The Gravesavers (19 page)

Another dent in my bubble: Hardly Whynot was being interviewed on TV. He was on tour in Russia. This meant, of course, he was not the man at the Fullerton mansion. So trying to get his help restoring the grave, or his autograph, was useless. I could just forget about sparking his interest or getting his money for the gravesite—unless he was going to take a private jet here right after the tour ended.

Who was I kidding? Even I couldn’t find a scrap of imaginary hope to hang on to. Some little bubble to hide inside when everything is a disaster. I mean, not going your way.

Max didn’t keep his word. I looked for him all day. I ran two entire extra sets of my regular route around Boulder Basin. No luck.

At the end of the day, my legs were so tired I wanted to cry. I studied John’s photo again.
Do something,
I imagined him saying. “I will, I promise,” I whispered. His eyes smiled at me. Or maybe it was just shadows playing tricks.

“So what exactly is a herring choker, Harv?”

Harv was lighting his pipe. He and Nana had just informed me that the Herring Choker Picnic and Folk Festival was happening Saturday.

“Some think the word originally meant the one who deboned the fish before selling it, but over time, it was used more to describe a fisherman and then sometimes a certain kind of person. An unsavoury character, you might say. A scoundrel. You know, like we’d say, ‘That Stubby McIsaac, what a herring choker he is, all right!’”

“Stubby!” I giggled. “How on earth would anyone get a name like that?”

“Take a gander,” puffed Harv.

“Was he short and stubby?”

“No. Tall and thin, matter of fact.”

“Did he smoke stubs of cigarettes?”

“He smoked the whole thing—no filtered kind.”

“Did he have a stubble of whiskers?”

“Full beard.”

“I know! He was stubborn! Stubby’s short for stubborn?”

Nana chimed in, “Maybe that should be your new name!”

“Ha! Ha!” I said, not even looking in her direction.

Harv shook his head at us.

“Girls, girls! What am I going to do with you? Would it hurt you two to be civil to each other for a minute? Guess you’re too much alike.”

Nana laughed at this. Snorted, rather, pig-like. I was too insulted to speak. I knew Harv did not mean to hurt my feelings.

“C’mon, Harv, I give. Why would a man be called Stubby?”

“Stubby’s another name for a low-necked bottle of beer or a bottle that holds other spirits. Stubby was our local bootlegger after he took over a thriving business from his uncle Gordie. Leastways he was until he got spooked out on Elbow Island one night and changed into a God-fearing man and ran a scrap metal business instead.”

My ears quivered.
Elbow Island.

“What happened?”

“The story’s never really come out, but according to the Boulder Basin Gospel of Gossip at the time, he
rowed out one night to Elbow Island, to where he kept one of his stills. No one knows what happened ’cept a storm came up and he spent the night, came home and went directly to Reverend Hardy’s and asked to be rebaptized. They had a special ceremony that very Sunday, and Stubby never touched a drop again. Some think he had some sort of encounter with spirits drowned out there in the shipwreck.”

“Are there ghosts out there, Harv? Even Nana thinks there are.”

“Do not!” she snapped. Not very convincingly.

“Do too!” I said.

“Don’t get him going with those ghost stories of Elbow Island.” Nana shook her head in warning. “He’s the one who got me half-believing.”

“She should know some local history, Ida,” said Harv as he relit his pipe.

“Harv, it’s hogwash. Well, most of it anyhow.” She started scraping furiously at dirt underneath her fingernail.

“Minn, my very own father said it was so. He spent one April the first out there. He was just a kid, and he took a dare. If he could spend the anniversary of the wreck of the
Atlantic
out there and survive, his buddies were going to pay him some cash. Even then, there were stories of ghosts out there. It’s not such a long row on a calm night. Ten, maybe twelve minutes if you
leave from Boutillier’s Point. Anyhow, he got there and started scouting around for a place to set up camp. He heard footsteps. He stopped. The footsteps stopped. He shrugged it off and kept going. Heard footsteps again. He stopped. The footsteps stopped. He was too scared to look around, he said. Tried to tell himself it was the wind, or his mind playing games. So he went on like this for at least half an hour, getting more and more spooked with each passing minute. Finally he stopped, and this time—the footsteps kept coming. Closer and closer and closer. He almost ran screaming over the cliff, but he held his ground. And then—”

“Harv!” Nana was shrill.

“What happened?” I shrieked. My heart was bouncing around like a tennis ball.

“From out of the mist right up alongside of him, someone brushed right by. A man carrying his head beneath his arm. A headless man, he said. ‘I swear on my life,’ my dear old dad used to say, ‘he passed me by and kept on going, fading back into that mist.’”

“Your father
saw
that? Really? Harv! No way.”

“He swore up and down and used to make my mother so mad when he’d tell it. My father wasn’t much of a joker or tease, so we kids all believed him.”

Nana cleared her throat. “Pugwash!”

“Harv, do you think that’s what happened to Stubby McIsaac? He saw the headless man?”

“All I know is he sure enough was a changed man. Still reads his Bible every day, I hear.”

“He’s still alive?” My heart did a flutter kick.

“Yep. Old, though. Been living up in the Sunnyvale Nursing Home for years now.”

“So how about it, Minn,” Nana said, “will you be coming to the picnic with us on Sayrday?”

“If by Sayrday, you mean Saturday,” I mocked, “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Well, no flies off my back if you don’t. I was thinking you could ask your beau.”

“My beau? As if.”

“Well, you might have fun enough, all the same,” said Harv.

“I’ll think about it, Harv. How about some reciting?”

“Tuckered out now, I’m afraid. Ida, it’s your turn.”

“The Cremation of Sam
McGee, maybe, since we’re on such a morbid topic.”

I shrugged. She began. It made me think of Corporal Ray. It was his favourite. Guess he’d learned it from Nana.

As her voice droned on, I thought of Harv’s father and especially of Stubby McIsaac. What did he know that could help me? I wasn’t sure, but something told me to follow that funny little flutter kick my heart did a few moments ago.

Sunnyvale Nursing Home is just across the road from St. John the Baptist Anglican Church. It was Nana’s church and we’d gone every Sunday since I’d been in Boulder Basin.

“There’s no point in kicking up a fuss over going,” she’d warned me the first Sunday. “It’s important to have a spiritual community. For now, you’re here in this community, maybe against your own wishes, but you’ll be coming with me. You can pray for the health of your mother.” If only she knew how I’d prayed—all last winter—and a fat lot of good that did.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the singing. Well, most folks’ singing, that is. Nana knew most of the hymns by heart and sang them full blast off key. It was almost as bad as Corporal Ray’s yodelling. I spent most of the service staring at the stained-glass windows and out the side door, which was propped open with a broom handle. Even then, the church was always stuffy and smelled of candles and lemon oil.

Through the door, I could see right across the street to the nursing home. Looked to me like those old folks spent the Sabbath having wheelchair races up and down the sidewalk.

“I’ve come to visit Stubby McIsaac,” I announced with as much confidence as I could to the woman behind the desk.

“Relative?” she asked, and then looked at me hard. “Why no, you’re not!”

My mouth twitched but I held my smile in place.

“You’ve got to be Ida Hennigar’s granddaughter. I’d know you anywhere—you’re the spitting image of her.” She beamed at me.

I rubbed my chin to see if there was hair growing there I hadn’t noticed before.

“I used to date your father in high school,” she said.

My eyes must have shown my surprise.

“A regular dream boat, he was!” she sighed, then caught herself. “Stubby will be thrilled to have a young visitor. Those grandkids of his hardly ever get in here to see him. Come this way. He’s right over here.

“STUBBY! SOMEONE TO SEE YOU, DEAR!” She sounded like she was talking through a megaphone.

“EH?” he yelled back, cupping his ear.

His face was so shrivelled he reminded me of those little dolls people make out of shrivelled-up apples.

“A GIRL TO SEE YOU!”

“THAT SO?” he said, eyeing me up and down. The woman patted me on the shoulder and left.

“WHO IS YOU, YOUNG LADY? ONE OF MY GRANDCHILDREN?”

“MY NAME’S CINNAMON HOTCHKISS,” I yelled.

“DID YOU SAY CINNAMON? THAT’S A FUNNY NAME!” Like he should talk. “CINNAMON LIKE THE SPICE?”

I nodded.

“AND HOTCHKISS?”

I nodded again. This was going to be painful. Big mistake coming here.

“RELATED TO BURNS HOTCHKISS?”

I bobbed my head up and down like a yo-yo. He was a great-uncle or something.

Stubby McIsaac touched one of his ears and then the other. “There now, speak up, but you don’t have to yell.”

The old devil! He’d had his hearing aid off the whole time!

“So what brings you here?” he said.

There wasn’t time to beat around the bush. This place smelled like cat pee and blue cheese. I wanted
out as fast as I could. In the corner, a woman with no hair was sitting rocking a doll and singing to it. Her scalp was the same pink as the doll.

“Lullaby and good night with roses delight,” she wailed and then just sang, “Lo lo lo lo lo lo lo lo lo lo.”

I swallowed. “I heard a story,” I said. “About you.”

“Oh Lord in heaven, dear,” he wheezed, “don’t believe half of what you hear around these parts!”

“I am doing some, um, independent research on the SS
Atlantic,”
I told him. I heard Nana telling Harv one night her
independent research
on herbs was coming along fine.

Stubby’s eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. “I see.”

“I need to know what happened the night you went out to Elbow Island. I heard it changed your life.”

“For the better,” he agreed, not once taking his eyes off my face. “But I’ve not told a soul the truth all these years. Why should I tell you now?”

“Because,” I hesitated and then went for it. “Because, Mr. McIsaac, I would like to help save the gravesite.”

He coughed. He smiled—a sad sort of smile. As though he felt sorry for me. “Found some bones, didn’t you.”

I nodded.

“I know all about it. You find the bones and then you’re pulled into it. You find out what you can, right? I didn’t read much but I did lots of askin’. You try to not think on it too much. But it’s always there, isn’t it. The bones speak. ‘Who am I? Come find out.’”

“You do know.”

“I do. And is it true what I’ve heard? The grave is almost washed back out to sea?”

“There’s not much time left to save it,” I said.

“Well, finally, a person with a good enough reason to tell my story to. Maybe.”

“Please, I know it was a long time ago but …”

He slapped his thigh and chuckled. “Honey, I might not remember where I put my teeth last night but I’ll ’member what happened that night until the day I die, which isn’t so very far down the road, I suppose. Yes, well, maybe I should tell someone. Someone who might believe.”

I smiled like a prize student who’d just got the right answer.

“How brave are ya?” he asked.

“Why?”

“It’s not a tale for the faint of heart.”

“I can take it.”

“Why don’t you wheel me out front and park me under that tree? It stinks in this place!”

As soon as I settled on a bench across from him, Stubby nodded off to sleep. Great, I thought. But with his eyes still shut he mumbled, “I’m just gathering my thoughts. Clearing the cobwebs. The memories are sharp, but sometimes I lose the words.”

As I waited for him to find them again, I thought about a lost and found for words that went missing. If I had that box full of lost words, I’d give it to the poor old man. Imagine seeing pictures in your head and searching for the words. Is being that old like always doing a crossword puzzle? My mother, in the good old days, coloured the world with her words. Perky Paprika! Fiddlehead Green! Vampire Vermillion. No, she’d never been at a loss for words—until she’d slipped into that silent place where words dribbled instead of gushed from her mouth.

The church bells began to ring. Like a signal, when the last chime drifted out to sea, Stubby finally cleared his throat and started in.

“It was fine enough weather when I headed out that evening. I’d had a hard day and thought I’d make an overnight of it—something I’d always been meaning to do but never had. Thank God I had a few supplies, ’cause I no sooner anchored my boat than the wind kicked up something fierce. Then again, you know what they say about the weather round here. If you don’t like it, wait five minutes, it’s bound to change. She changes in a blink. We all know this.

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

“Twelve,” I said.

“Well, then, I suppose I can tell you a bit more honestly. The thing of it is, my dear, I was three sheets to the wind that night.”

“Pardon me?”

“Skunk drunk in the first place. I went out to Elbow Island that night to dip into my own supply. Can’t really remember for the life of me now how that felt, to be that thirsty, but to one who’s got the disease, well, you’d do most anything to get more when you haven’t had enough. So there I was stumbling around on those slippery rocks, talking to myself and trying to make my way towards the still. That’s when the rain started up. And I mean rain. Pour-down rain like the folks up yonder had turned on shower taps full blast. And the howl! The wind that night was like a chorus of voices, human voices
rising and falling, you know the sound, a kind of Eou! Eou! Eou! sound. High then low then circling your head. Eou! Eou! Eou!”