The Gravesavers (24 page)
Authors: Sheree Fitch
Tags: #Historical, #Mystery, #Young Adult, #Adventure
“Where do you get these from, fortune cookies?” I snarled. He looked hurt. “Sorry,” I said. I still had harbours of mean thoughts and actions.
He shook his head and left. I felt like a snivelling brat. I was. I looked at his Rigbyism again. What comes next? As a runner, I was washed up. I am a failure, I decided.
Then one day, when I was feeling real sorry for
myself, I looked up
minikin.
It was a real word. It made me feel a whole lot better.
School started, and life almost seemed normal. But how, really, would it ever be normal?
We picked out a tombstone for Pippa. It was a statue of a little girl I found at a flea market.
“It’s a lawn ornament, honey,” said Corporal Ray. Delicate as could be.
“No, Ray, it’s perfect,” said my mother. She hugged me.
So we brought it home and made a new flower bed in the backyard. We dug deep, with our hands, and placed the vase of ashes ever so gently down into the earth.
We cried a little.
Corporal Ray carved a wooden plaque for her. “Pippa” is all it says.
Maybe a lot of people would think it morbid to bury the ashes of an unborn child in your own backyard. I personally think Pippa loves it there, especially when the sunflowers bloom among the pink and purple cosmos.
Besides, in Boulder Basin there was a woman who buried her miniature schnauzer in her front
yard. She put a white wrought-iron fence all around it. The tombstone read: “Fergus—loyal dog and friend.”
There are no limits to how important it is to mark the passing of the dead from one world to the next, no matter where you might believe they end up. Or even if you believe.
We have a bench by Pippa’s burial spot, too. We can visit her whenever we want. I still remember John telling me that sometimes it takes the living to reunite the dead.
Sometimes, it takes the dead to reunite the living, too.
A lot more than the Isthmus of Chignecto—say that fast three times—separates the province of Nova Scotia from the province of New Brunswick. Fairvale was home sweet home but I missed the sound of gulls, the salty air, the lap of waves.
My mother kept telling me I had to find the time to write Nana a nice little thank you note. Thank her for what exactly?
Then one Saturday afternoon, Mum and Corporal Ray were cutting up cucumbers and making mustard pickles. The kitchen was filled with a vinegar smell so strong it made my eyes water. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d picked up my pen.
DEAR NANA,
Well, it’s been a month since I’ve been home and I thought I should catch you up with the news. I know how you hate to talk on the phone and so
I am writing. Hope you can read this letter okay. My hand is still wobbly!
I am bursting to know what is happening with the restoration plan. How is Harv doing? Have you had many clients?
The doctor and Corporal Ray and Mum, even Coach Rigby, would not let me compete in the provincials. I felt just fine! Raring to go, in fact. So I went to the track and watched from the sidelines. The winner of the 100 metres had a slower time than my last best! That first-place ribbon should have been mine! Oh well. Like Coach Rigby said, there’s a reason for everything and there’s always next year. Still, all that work and all that training.
Mum and Dad are fine. Finer than fine, actually. Things seem normal around here again. No more Kraft Dinner! Mum has gone back to work at the paint store. This fall, she’s really on an orange craze. How many ways could you describe orange, you must be thinking. Least I know I did. Well, how about Orange Sparkle, Organic Orange, Orange Tequila! That’s Mexican orange, she told me. Then there’s Sunburst Orange, Ember Orange and Mandarin Orange. I knew she was really feeling better when she came up with Ya-Ya-Yam! Between you and me, I can’t tell much difference between any of them, but with all her mixing and matching, I
guess there must be something the trained eye can pick up.
Anyhow, she’s humming happy Ladybugs songs again. Between her shrieks and Corporal Ray’s yodels, I feel like I’m living in an audition hall. I’d say she’s put last winter far from her mind. Anyhow, hope all is well and write when you can.
Yours truly, Minn
DEAR MINN,
Orange! I’d feel like I was living inside a piece of Canadian cheddar if I painted a room orange.
I am sorry to hear about your track meet. No one knows more than I do how hard you worked, although half the time I figured you were just running away from me. Still, with a stunt like you pulled you needed some sort of consequence to teach you not to go doing anything so foolish ever again in your life!
Some days I still get in a wicked rage thinking about what you did! You are one stubborn young lady! Then again, I suppose it runs in the family. (Harv told me I had to write that in.)
The exciting news is how fast things are coming together. Thanks to that generous contribution Mr. Dubbins made, I guess other folks were almost ashamed and started putting in their two cents’ worth. Even though you scared the Kapoopsie out of
all of us, your plan worked, Minn. We are aiming for an official opening next July. Imagine! We are even going to invite the premier.
Well, I might as well not be coy about my own big news. Hang on to your hat—I said yes to Harv’s most recent proposal of marriage! You should have seen his face. He went white as a ghost. I had a great chuckle. Then I was worried. Thinking maybe I’d turned him down so long he never meant what he was asking, you know what I mean? See, what I never wanted to tell him was that the main reason I always said no was I did not want to be married to that store. It ran his whole life! I’m not a real sociable kind of person and the thought that I might have to go help out and pump gas and smile at those come from aways—not on your life! Well, he’s been thinking about selling that store and now there’s someone who’s made him a pretty good offer. I figured it would be nice to spend our life more together than apart. The truth is, Minn, this summer I thought I was going to lose the two people I loved most in the world in one night. Besides your father, I mean. So better make hay while the sun shines. We’re going to Nunavut for our honeymoon. I’ve always wanted to see the North and the aurora borealis.
We thought we’d get hitched as they say around here about the same time as the official opening of
the SS
Atlantic
Heritage Site. You folks will be here, and so will Harv’s children. So it will be a good party, eh? I’m going to start cooking soon! I haven’t told your parents yet. I have a request. Could you read this letter out loud to them for me. Thank you.
Your grandmother, the bride to be
P.S. Enclosed is a package that came addressed to you from England. Yes, I wanted to snoop, but I didn’t. Cross my heart.
DEAR NANA,
YOU AND HARV! Congratulations!!! YEAH!!! And more good news! You will never guess! Mr. Dubbins is going to do a special portrait in time for the ceremony!
But even more exciting than that! Mr. Dubbins somehow got Hardly Whynot’s autograph for Mum! It is a picture of him when he was younger and that is a good thing. That is how Mum likes him best. In the lower left-hand corner it says: To Dory, with love and best wishes, Hardly Whynot. Can you believe that? Turns out Mr. Dubbins said he had a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend and so on who had the means to get it!
Mum screamed like she was on
Much Music
and pulled at her hair! Weird! That night Dad brought
home an old photo of himself all blown up. On it he had written: To Dory, with love and best wishes, your true love, Ray! He put it on the dresser beside old Hardly. They laughed like kids. Then they played “I’m in Love with You You You” (the Hardly version) and danced. It was really sucky. Sorry I know you don’t like that word. It was though. Big time. But it made my heart burst all the same.
Here comes the bride, dum dum dee dum.
Your granddaughter,
Minn
Truth be told, Nana and me got along a lot better apart than we did when we were together. I’m pretty sure she had something to do with me being asked to be a speaker at the official opening of the SS
Atlantic
Heritage Site. I almost said no because I had never spoken in public before. But then my father said, Think before you decide, and my mother said she’d help me practice and then Nana sent this:
DEAR MINN,
Thought you should see the enclosed letter, which turned up in my friend Mabel’s attic. She was related to the Clancys who lived in the cabin out on Elbow
Island. The one you almost got yourself killed in. Looks like a letter from the one boy who survived the disaster. Did you get around to reading the article on him I had? It was in a Moirs Pot of Gold box. There is even a picture. We are getting lots of other artifacts for the interpretation centre. A beautiful knife showed up the other day, rusted of course, but the case is gorgeous.
September 27, 1873
Dear Mrs. Clancy:
You asked me to write and let you know how things were here in New York City. As you kindly cautioned me, my arrival here was both bitter and sweet. To see my sisters again was a joy. It was a tearful reunion. Then there was something to contend with I had not anticipated. We were intruded upon, rudely at times, by the press. At Grand Central Depot, they were waiting. My sister called them vultures. To make a curiosity out of me and not give our family adequate time for our grief was, she said, like picking at the bones of the dead. They took a photograph of me. I am so shocked looking in that picture I shall not send it to you. That nice man in Halifax has a better one. Perhaps he might send one to me?
The mayor of New York City extended an official welcome to me. I was given a tour along the Hudson River and of City Hall and then the Stock Exchange. I am sorry to say that when I arrived there, something happened. I had a spell. Being there amidst all that confusion, I was swept back to the night on ship. I ran around confused until I collapsed.
The other event is almost funny to me now. Mr P. T. Barnum wanted me to join his travelling show! He was ready to have me travel from town to town on a train and jump into a pool of water. He offered money. I said no but I was quite pleased to meet him, as my friend Ryan would have wanted that!
I quite like my teacher. His name is Mr. O’Riley and his Irish accent puts me in mind of my father. He makes learning fun, too, although he is particular about us doing our very best. Lately, he has been giving me extra books he thinks I can learn from, as I am mightily bored with what we do in school most oft. These books are written by a Mr. Peter Parley and he makes geography an exciting tale rather than facts one has to learn. I especially like the verses Mr. Parley has penned at the beginning of each lesson.
And there is something to rejoice about. Bridgit’s baby was born, and a big strapping lad he’ll be. He has those bean black eyes of my father and the goodly natured grin of my brother’s, I swear. They have baptized him Patrick Thomas Hindley.
Each day on my return from school, I play with him while Bridgit fixes supper. I rock him for Ma. I feel her presence with me often then. Then I think of you—I hope your baby is snug in my father’s cradle. I’m flattered you called him John. As I was flattered and honoured at your offer of adoption. But I knew my place was here with my family.
Sometimes, I recite poems to Bridgit’s baby I remember and new ones I am learning. This calms my own nerves as well before I sleep. Sometimes, I am still prone to spells of passing out, and the nightmares continue, but less so.
To arrive in the city of my dreams without my folks and brother is not the way it should be. But school has started and so, it seems, has my new life. There is much to learn and yes, still, so much to forget.
Sometimes, I wake up in the darkest part of the night and shadows seem to swallow me like the waves of that ocean. I swear I can hear the moaning of the ship’s rafters beneath me, the roar of that
murderous sea, and the wailing of the dying. I cry then—a sea of tears upon my pillow. Quiet as I can for fear of waking up the baby and my family, the one I now have left.
I miss them all, of course. My mother, Thomas, even Ryan, a friend of such short duration. He pops in and out of my reveries from time to time doing his jig and bowing and tipping his hat. This memory makes me laugh and those are in short enough supply. Yet I have learned something about memory. We can select what comes forth. We can. I have learned also that in this life, one does not want to know what the future holds. For if we could, we might not have courage to go another day. And we must.
It is my father whose face returns to me most often—his face that night he burst in through the door holding those tickets in his fist like bits of gold. I see the light shine in his eyes and feel the warmth of his arms as I run and jump up and he hugs me in, scratching my face with the stubble of whiskers on his chin. I smell the tobacco and ale and the wind in March. The joy. I can feel it. And every time I do, I am no longer afraid. Or alone.
Forgive my indulgence in writing details that might bore you. I will always feel close to you, as without your care I might have perished. Thanks
for remembering me and please remember me to your family and Boulder Basin folks. Also, I wish to thank you for paying visits to the cemetery and placing flowers there on my behalf. Please pass on my fondest regards to Mr. Rev. William Ancient. I’m not sure I adequately thanked him for saving my life. He is a true hero.
John Hindley