The Gravesavers (23 page)

“Enough,” my father finally said. “You’ve had your fifteen minutes of fame.”

Nana gushed about what was happening down at Riley Tucker’s office.

“Apparently,” she said, “somebody dumped bones at his office doorstep! Imagine!”

I gawked at her. Or was it Max?

Everybody thought I’d taken the boat out myself.

“I didn’t,” I told them.

“Who was with you?” Corporal Ray was furious.

“I never knew his real name,” I told them. “He’s left town. Just some guy.” I shrugged.

Harv patted my hand. “Don’t be heartbroken over a lad that won’t give you his name and leaves town first sign of trouble. Besides, he’s not the only fish in the sea.” I winced. Bad choice of words.

And I didn’t escape Nana’s tongue-lashing when she figured I was recovered enough to hear.

“Stupid! That’s what it was! A stupid, stupid stunt! Foolhardy! A rapscallion! That’s what you are. A rapscallion! Good word for you! You might think I’m some old obstreperous curmudgeon, but that is nothing compared to you!”

“My head hurts, Nana!” I protested, hoping that would shut her up.

“Good, I hope it aches for a good while yet! Every time it does, may you reflect on what you’ve done! If
you weren’t lying there I’d take a hickory switch to your behind, that’s what I’d be doing if you were my child! Harv risked his life for you. Imagine!”

Harv had been the brave one to figure out where I’d headed and go out in the middle of the night to Elbow Island. My hero. With the way the wind had kicked up, the coast guard had advised against it. And he got to me anyhow. And that other man—this camper who
prefers to remain anonymous, the
papers said—had already found me after I fell through the rotting floorboards of the Clancy cabin.

“He and Harv got you to the hospital in record time.” Nana repeated her version of events every time she came to visit. There I was, alone in the room with the Vinegar Witch, at her mercy. Oh yeah, the witch wasn’t long resurfacing! The whole room turned sour with every breath she took. Vapours of oatmeal and Lux soap mixed up together. Nana Vinegar was on a roll.

I was relieved when visiting hours were over. But that didn’t put a stop to visitations.

Thomas—Max—crept sideways into my room. He looked at me as though I’d spring from my bed and attack him at any moment. I would have if I could have!

“How are you?”

“Tickety-boo. What’s it look like?”

“I am sorry, Minn, I am. I never meant …”

I turned my face to the wall.

“You had to do it alone but you couldn’t be completely alone … so I was there for moral support …”

He showed me a headline in a provincial newspaper:

13-YEAR-OLD GIRL A GRAVESAVER!

“That’s you—a gravesaver!” There was my face below a map of Elbow Island and a picture of the SS
Atlantic.

I began to read.

I tossed it aside.

“Whatever,” I said. And I’m
almost
thirteen! And you … used me! You needed
me
to get to John, right?”

“Is that so bad? I’ve missed him for the longest time. He wouldn’t come any closer than Elbow Island because he blamed himself for … well, for living. We
wasted a lot of time. I brought you something.”

“Just go, okay?”

But he didn’t. “Take this first.” He opened his hand. In his palm was a rock. “It’s yours,” he said. “It belongs to you, I think.”

A heart-shaped rock. A white one.

“I found it yesterday,” he said. “It’s still a little crooked.”

“It’s perfect,” I managed to croak out as he put it into my hand. But his hand did not touch mine. Still, he got close enough so I could smell that fresh-air smell about him.

“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “If I were a young lad now, I want you to know …”

Then he leaned down and, yes, kissed me.
On the lips.

“Gotta go. But this isn’t farewell. Not yet.”

He kissed me again.

He tasted like oranges.

N
O
H
APPY
E
VER
A
FTER

The longer I lived, the more I wanted my family back. The more I missed having an older brother. I guess the truth is I drank and I fought.

I once dreamed of being an engineer and designing a bridge, something that carried people safely across the water. Instead, I quit school and went to work on the Brooklyn Bridge. Wasn’t afraid one bit of falling. Those suspension cables were just like the rigging. I was still scared of water, though. So I held on tight and did a fine job.

I never fell in love or married or had children.

At times I’d think of finding my way back to Nova Scotia and living a simple life.

Sometimes I scribbled poems. The night I died, I wrote this one.

So you see, I’m no shining example of how you overcome disaster. Is that what you thought? I survived the best I could for as long as I could.

I watch now from this place and I like to think I’ve learned a lot. I’ve seen how some folks go through things, and they not only survive, they go forward and thrive.

I am no hero. Heroes are people who never give up hope. No matter what. Giving up is never an answer. I didn’t that night on the mizzen. But I did eventually, and drowned in my own sorrow.

I was twenty-two years old the day they opened the Brooklyn Bridge. I celebrated a bit too much. For the record—so you’ll know—I stumbled. I didn’t jump.

But when I heard the train, I didn’t move, either. The railroad ties underneath me looked like a ladder. I hung on like it was the mizzen.

It was instant.

Decapitation.

Next morning, after the bedpans and sponge bath, I was told I had more visitors. The chauffeur ambled into my room. He twisted the brim of his hat nervously in his hands. His hair was so silver I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses.

I have a thing for eyes, I guess. His were kind and sea glass green. He wasn’t as old as I thought. His smile was charming. To think I thought he was a drug smuggler. You have to get close to people to know them. There is so much you can’t tell from a distance.

“Minn, I’m Paul Dubbins.”

The shock must have registered on my face. Paul Dubbins was a famous artist.

“We met briefly. I rent the Fullerton place. I’m an artist.”

“You are?” I said. “I mean, I know.”

“Let me guess.” He smiled. “You were thinking I was Hardly Whynot’s driver, right?”

I nodded. “You said you wanted my picture for an album.”

He laughed and slapped his thigh. “A
photo
album! I sometimes paint from photos. And I’d still like yours.”

“Bad hair day,” I said.

“So it
was
you!” he exclaimed.

“Me?”

“The informer. The other day these four women came to my house asking for my boss’s autograph. They were most disappointed to discover I was not the chauffeur for the famous singer of the Ladybugs. They told me some young girl had told them I was his driver.”

I know I turned red as my hot water bottle. “Well, there’s always been this rumour, and I was hoping to get his autograph. For my mother.”

“Gave me a good enough laugh. How about you take my autograph on this?”

He handed me a cheque. There were a lot of zeros. It was made out to The SS
Atlantic
Heritage Project.

“Oh. My,” I managed to mumble. “Thank you,” I said. And then into the room burst the Cackleberry Women with huge bouquets of flowers.

“Ladies, good day,” Paul Dubbins said and winked at me as he was leaving.

“Sooo cute,” one whispered to the other. “Rich and famous. Your Nana was right,” sighed another.

The Cackleberry Women turned out to be nice as anything. They fussed. One kissed me. They said they’d donate some money too. Then they were gone. Their perfume lingered.

Nana bristled back into the room and immediately sneezed. “Uppity Canadians! Hospitals are supposed to be scent-free zones!” No doubt she was going to continue her lecture on my harbour of stupidity.

I handed her the cheque signed by Mr. Dubbins.

She looked at it. Her eyes were wide as pie plates.

“But,” I said, taking the cheque away, “you might not want it—seeing as he’s a CFA.”

Then she leaned over me, sour old witch, so close I could have bitten off those three chin hairs.

“I have never, ever known a child to harbour such hope and determination in her heart,” she said.

Then she kissed my cheek. And smiled. She didn’t smell sour at all.

“You idiot! You total idiot!” Carolina had a new haircut and was brown as a berry. “I could have lost my best friend ever in the world!” She burst into tears.

“Now who’s being melodramatic?” But I hugged her tight and started blatting too. My father mumbled something about hormones and left the room with my mother.

Getting home meant telling everything to her. Well, almost everything.

“Whatever happened to that cutie you met?”

“Oh yeah. He was a real dream,” I said.

“What happened?” she squealed. “Did you kiss? Mouth open?”

“Ew. Carolina! No! We did
not
kiss. Not like that.”

“Oh you! Only Minn! You’re still such a tomboy!”

No, I wanted to say, I’m
Tom’s girl
.

“Once you’ve had a real kiss, you’ll know! I do, I do!” And she started to tell me the details. Like something
out of one of her bodice-ripper romances. She calls me a snob when I tell her those books are so much garboon. She says she’s sure I’ll grow into them!

Even to Carolina, I couldn’t tell the deepest secret of my heart.

At least she was interested in what happened. She pored over the old articles about the shipwreck from the
Boulder Basin Bulletin.
Nana had given me photocopies the day I left.

It was good to get back home and see her and the neighbourhood and all things familiar. Familiar but changed.

The baby’s room was gone, for one thing. It was a cedar-lined storage closet instead. But my room was different as well. They’d placed a cradle in a corner of my room. It was filled with my old stuffed animals and a few dolls. “If you want it?” my mother said.

“Where did you guys find this, anyway?” I asked her.

“A friend of your grandmother’s attic. It’s really old.”

When she was gone, I crawled underneath it. Sure enough. Scratched out and faded were the initials P. H.

Patrick Hindley? I wanted to scream and cry and laugh. Everything and nothing made sense.

Mr. Forest, who was still taking it easy because of his angina, came to visit me with books galore. One was a science book on clouds. I searched that book page by page. Nowhere did the book suggest that clouds we’re spirits. So I had no scientific proof for anything—no rational explanation. So then I read all the Harry Potters. They made more sense. We rented the DVD of
Titanic
.

Coach Rigby brought me chocolates. And some more Rigbyisms to try to cheer me up because I wasn’t allowed to run. I pleaded and screamed with my parents. I cursed many benedictuses. All to no good. I begged Coach Rigby. He handed me another Rigbyism.