The Gravesavers (4 page)

Harbour. I thought the word was a noun up until then. A place where boats anchored and little houses like crooked rows of teeth painted happy colours lined the shore, where dinghies bobbed up and down on waves and lobster traps were stacked atop each other, stinking in the sun. Harbour, a safe place to stay out of the wind.

Yes, I had a harbour of hate in my heart. And she knew it. So let’s say we’ve never been on the best of terms since then.

Summer would be torture, I told Carolina.

“You are so melodramatic,” she said. “Get a grip.”

“My life is a
disaster.
A total
disaster,”
I wailed.

I realize, now, I didn’t know the meaning of the word.

T
HE
A
NNOUNCEMENT

I was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire County, England in eighteen hundred and sixty-one, the youngest son of Patrick and Mary Hindley and the baby brother of Bridget, Lucy and Thomas. My father emigrated from Ireland during the potato famine and found work at one of the cotton mills. Shortly thereafter, he met one Mary Cook of Stalybridge. “Black rot was the reason I came to England,” he loved to say, “and your mother’s the reason I stayed.”

After the birth of my sisters, they moved into one of the brick row houses owned by the mill. It was the house I was born into, and the place I’d always known as home. But on the evening of March the eighth, 1873, our family’s destiny changed forever.

Ashton-under-Lyne, 1873

“Can’t we eat supper without him?” Thomas was three years older and a head taller than me. And whining like some big baby. “I’m starving,” he grumbled.

Lovesick was more like it. Soon as he’d slopped up the last bit of supper, belched, brushed his teeth and combed his hair, he’d be off like some panting puppy. Lickety-split, up the road, two lanes over to a red-brick row house identical to ours he’d run, straight into the waiting arms of his girl, Rebecca. My big brother, a regular Romeo! Lot of bother, if you asked me. Then again, I was only twelve. According to Thomas, it was just a matter of time before I understood real passion.
Pa-shun.
Sounded to me like a rash you caught that made you itchy. Since he’d been seeing her, he was nothing but a pain and twitch.

“Mum?”

Our mother was peering out the window, lost in a heap of worry.

“Where have you got to now, Patrick Hindley?” she muttered.

“Mu-um?”
Thomas looked at me in exasperation. “Do you think she even hears me?”

I shrugged.

“I heard all right, and you know better. Eat supper without your father? Not in this house.”

Thomas groaned and began drumming his fingers on the tabletop.

“Let off!” I said. “I’m trying to write neat as I can.” He drummed louder and faster.

Mum rapped his shoulder with the ladle. “For heaven’s sake, Tom, get up here and make yourself useful. Stir the stew!” She pushed him to the stove.

When she turned back to the window he imitated her frown so perfectly I burst out laughing.

“And what’s so funny?” she snapped at me.

“Nothing, Mum. Sorry, Mum!”

“Get your head back in those books, then, or you’ll be sorrier still whereonearthisthatman?”

Sometimes Mum talked whole nights without taking a breath.

“Ow!” It was Thomas.

“Serves you right,” said Mum without even looking over her shoulder. “For making fun of your mother and sneaking a taste.”

She really did have a second set of eyes in the back of her head.

Thomas’s eyes watered with pain.

“Oh poor Tom-tom,” I teased. “Maybe Becca will kiss it better.” I made loud smooching sounds. He looked ready to throttle me.

“Back to the books,” Mum ordered, but giggled despite herself. “Thomas, your face is as red as those
embers in the fire. And John, some fine day it’ll be you.”

“Not likely,” I muttered.

“The stew’s burning, I think. Maybe we should eat it?”

Thomas was persistent; I’ll give him that.

Mum shooed him away from the stove and he sat back down beside me.

“Suppose Dad’s at the pub? We left the mill together and he
was
acting kind of strange,” he whispered.

I shook my head. Our father was not a drinker. Besides, I knew where he was. But I’d been sworn to secrecy.

“Then where could he be?” Thomas leaned in closer. “There’s been some trouble at the mill, you know. Talk of strikes.”

“It’s okay, Tom. Really, it is,” I said.

“You know where he’s got to, don’t you?”

I nodded but held my finger up to my lips. “It’s a surprise,” I wrote out and slid the paper over to him.

A thumping of feet at the door then, and Dad burst in the room like a gust of wind. He smelled like clean night air mixed with tobacco and ale. Mum sniffed the air suspiciously. She arched one eyebrow and put her hand on her hip.

“He
has
been drinking,” hissed Thomas.

Dad’s eyes were full of fun, his cheeks as red as if he’d just been slapped. When he took off his hat, his thick black hair stood on end like a rooster’s comb. Mum
reached out, smoothed it down and smothered the urge to laugh. His voice blared like a trumpet.

“Look, Mare, I did it! Look here, one-way tickets for us all!” He started to sing in his deep Irish off-key voice as he jigged towards her.

Thomas sat bolt upright. “What’s that again?”

Mum’s mouth opened in a tiny startled circle. She dropped the crockery pot filled with stew and it smashed on the stone floor.

Ignoring the mess, Dad wrapped his arms around Mum. He danced her around the room.

“Patrick Hindley! You’re not kidding this time, are you? It’s for real? We’re going to see my girls? Tell me I’m not dreaming.”

He pinched her on the bottom “You’re not dreaming, Mare.” He spun her again, hugged her close.

I started mopping up the mess for something to do. Thomas was holding his head in his hands.

Our parents continued to rock back and forth as if we were invisible.

“Your girls, Mare, and your grandkids too.” Mum was sniffling by that time. Dad stroked her hair, like she was a dog needing petting. He winked at us over the top of her head.

“We’ll be leaving in a fortnight,” Dad said. “It’s not a lot of time. Will we be ready, boys?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, grinning from ear to ear.

Thomas said nothing.

“Tom?”

We all waited.

“Yes, but—,” said Thomas.

Thomas was thinking about Becca? At a time like this? Well, too bad for him, I thought.

Ever since our sisters had married and sailed across the sea, ever since they started sending those letters filled with excitement about the sights of New York, I’d been dreaming of joining them. New World, new life. Our mother missed her daughters something fierce. She’d weep for no reason, knit her brow as tightly as the bonnets she was making—“for my grandchildren who I’ll never ever ever
ever
see,” she’d say. And her sigh would last longer than a month.

My father finally made the decision to join them. “Family’s meant to be together,” he’d told me when he confided his plans.

“John, catch me, catch me, catch me can!” he shouted then.

“Patrick, he’s too heavy and you’re too old,” Mum started in. Too late. I ran across the room, jumped into outstretched arms and wrapped my legs around my father’s waist. It was a game we’d played since I was a tot. He step-danced with me attached like a raggedy doll, hanging upside down.

“Look here, Mare, the boy’s so big now, his hair can sweep up the floor for us!”

Next thing I knew Dad was dumping me down like one of his sacks of cotton at the mill. He threw Thomas on top and hugged us in. Mum didn’t get away either.

“Imagine,” she said, gasping for breath. “Imagine if someone could see in this place now, what a bunch of raving fools they’d think we must be.”

Thomas wriggled out from under the pile.

“Tom?” Dad’s smile crumpled into an awkward lopsided grin. “Tom?”

“Got some thinking to do, if that’s okay with you. Got to think over whether I’ll be sailing with you.”

Silence followed.

“You’re old enough to make the right decision,” Dad replied.

I watched Tom pull on his coat and walk out the door.

“Gurls,” I said to my folks. “Nothing but a whole heap of trouble.”

My parents exchanged worried glances.

My hunger was gone, replaced by what felt like a lump of coal in my belly. Sure, Thomas wasn’t perfect, but I couldn’t imagine not having my big brother by my side.

P
REPARATIONS

“For folks that got nothing, we sure got a lot,” said Thomas.

Mum wiped the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of one of Dad’s old shirts. Then she bit into the shirt to make a tear and ripped it in three. She tossed two rags at us and dipped her piece in a pail of sudsy water.

“We’re not leaving this place dirty,” she warned us. “No one’s going to say the Hindleys left filth behind for someone else to mop up. Scrub!”

She was thinking of the Grovers, who moved away the year before. People still talked about the smell of rotten eggs they left for the new tenants to try to get rid of.