Grave Concern, page 7
Weak with laughter, Kate declined to ask what.
“What, you ask?” J.P. said. “Hey, since you’re so cute,” he winked, “I’ll fill you in. So first they bring them in from some nun factory on a trial basis to find out how much they hate kids. They hire whoever comes up to ten on the scale, that’s the highest. And then, the other thing they check” — here J.P. slipped his arm around Kate’s shoulder, which set her aquiver — “the other thing is how ugly she is. If you like kids and yer ugly, they don’t even give you a chance. If you hate kids but yer pretty, that’s no good either, they throw you out immediately if not sooner.” Kate’s laughter escalated and she collapsed into his side.
“Hey, my arm’s bouncing up and down like those cement drills,” J.P. said. “Anyway, as I was saying, if you’re good-lookin’ you’re out for sure, but if yer ugly as sin, you’re in like a dirty hair shirt. The very meanest and ugliest get shipped automatically up here to St. Mary’s. And, for sure you didn’t know this …”
Kate, helpless now with laughter, managed to shake her head. “See, there’s a secret list. It’s titled, “Schools Hiring Hideous Nuns That Torment Kids,” and St. Mary’s is on the very top of that list, meaning it’ll take the absolute worst. So anyway, that’s when us kids have to take over,” he said.
Kate could no longer speak she was laughing so hard, and her legs felt weak.
“How, you ask?” J.P. went on. His grip tightened on her shoulder to hold her up. “Well, let me tell you. The very first thing you got to do with a nun is get on her bad side. You want to get her rattled enough so she’ll leave voluntarily. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of work. You gotta start getting your hands dirty, y’know, like tying the hem of her habit to a heating grate when she’s not looking. Or, or a better one is you steal the strap from her desk, then sometime when she’s kneeling down praying in the chapel, you sneak up behind her, wrap the belt tight around her piss-ugly ankles — they always have piss-ugly ankles — and cry ‘Fire!’ Shit like that.
“It’s way better, though, if you can drive them out before it gets that far. Not saying that stuff can’t be fun. But you get beyond it. You know, snakes under the wimple. Frogs in the collection box. Kid stuff. Although I gotta say I’d like to tie the fuckin’ rosary to the shoelace one more time before I die.” J.P. slapped his thigh. “She was hopping along like a three-legged skunk!”
Kate was now pretty much crying with nervous laughter, and J.P. fed the fire, piling the fuel higher and higher.
But now they were nearing Kate’s house. J.P. slipped into the garage before Kate knew he was gone. Kate flew up the front steps on adrenaline.
When she re-emerged from the house, half-thinking he would have split, J.P. re-appeared. He steered them down the hill toward the log cabin by the river. Everyone called it “the old Indian cabin” and indeed that’s what it was, having been lived in by an extended Algonquin family before the dam-builders came along.
Officially the cabin was boarded up against just this kind of thing. But J.P. knew a way in, through a loose section of roof. Kate stood before the daunting prospect of climbing a vertical wall, looking up at the cabin roof through the light steam of her breath in the fast-cooling night. Before she had licked the dryness from her lips, they were smothered by his, her whole body likewise pressed between J.P.’s torso and the hands that had materialized at her back, holding her against him. His lips were not full but were firm, if a little chapped, willful yet pliable, yielding as hers gained confidence.
“For luck,” he said, and smiled. His smile was impish but open, like a child’s.
Climbing up the chinked logs and around the overhang was the hardest physical work Kate had ever done. On top, they had to lift the loose plank and jump down blindly, hoping not to land on anything dangerous. Finally they stood in pitch dark on what felt like a wood floor. J.P. slid his coat from Kate’s shoulders and laid it down. He kicked her gently behind one knee and held her as she buckled.
“What’d you tell your folks?” he asked, folding them down together.
“They think I’m at Kathleen’s. I had to make up a bit of a story, about stopping for a Coke with my ‘ride’ and running into Kath at the drugstore.”
J.P. said nothing, but pushed her gently from sitting to lying down. The cabin was chilly but warmer than outside.
“You’re shaking like a leaf,” he said, and spread himself like a blanket on top of her. Even his legs mirrored hers, the only difference being his boots extended out further. Something hit a wall, his boot or knee. Propping his chin in his hands, J.P. started up on the nuns again, making her laugh until Kate told him to stop, she was going to pee herself.
Until now, the vaguely unnerving fact of his actual presence had kept a growing physical urgency in check. But lying blind under J.P.’s weight, her body became hollowed-out — like a bead strung on wire. Moreover, Kate sensed a more specific pressure, against her pubic bone. Kate’s grasp on male anatomy, let alone its workings, was basic. Statues she’d seen here and there in the city taught only the fundamentals. (On the whole, she’d thought, relative to body mass, the male organ seemed comically outsized.)
But this new pressure could not be ignored. Kate felt herself respond. Should she be embarrassed? Or worried? Which of them should do something about it? And how, exactly? To forestall the avalanche of feeling — an occurrence that by all indications in health class led only to a girl’s doom — Kate ignored what her body was clearly demanding, scraped up her last scraps of self-restraint, and determinedly refocused her attention.
“He was a virgin!” crowed Mary, when Kate paused. They were drinking hot mochaccinos at the Beanery, trying to thaw out after a second unsuccessful attempt to find the grave.
“As was I,” Kate shot back. Surely that wasn’t the point.
“He didn’t know how to proceed!” Mary enthused, as if this proved some universal truth.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” said Kate. “I think we were both just shit-scared.”
“Same thing,” said Mary.
“No. No, it isn’t. Remember back then? We maybe knew the basics, but taking precautions wasn’t easy. You had to get past a pharmacist. The pharmacist knew your parents. You had to communicate with the partner. Think of it, Mary. Who talked in those days? Girls and guys were on different planets. Completely. And the consequences if you screwed up! You, of all people, Doctor Know-It-All, should be keenly aware of that.”
“Okay, okay, I concede. Where I come from, dear, sixteen-year-olds never had such heroic self-restraint. I can think of numerous examples of Juliets and Romeos married with kids well before they’d cleared teenage-hood. I myself was barely twenty when I tied the fateful knot.”
Kate looked down at the decorative cream-swirls in her cup. How could she be so stupid, going on about this? Forgetting Mary, who’d lost everything — husband and fourteen-year-old son. A terrible business. It was the spring of 2004. Matt and Joss had been part of an impromptu flotilla trying to rescue some sealers on an icepan drifting out to sea. Somehow, father and son got separated from the group, not much, but enough that when their boat was swamped by a rogue wave and they froze in the icy water where they sat, the rest failed to get there in time. Mary had been in a neighbouring village at the time, delivering a baby. She was whooping it up, joking around with the local midwife after a difficult but successful delivery, when the news came in.
Not long after that, Mary answered the ad in a medical journal and moved halfway across the country — as it happened, to Pine Rapids — in an effort to get away from the sympathy-wracked faces and sorrow-fringed memories. Pity Point’s loss was Pine Rapids’ — and Kate’s — gain. She couldn’t imagine life now without Mary.
“I’m sorry, Mare. I’m a total bore, I know. Thanks for coming today. I really appreciate it.”
“Forget it. Now, about next week’s expedition. I’ll be away, dear, at a conference. You’re going to have to seek out Adonis’s grave by yourself.”
“Hey, let’s be heels again,” J.P. smiled. A fresh cigarette hung from his lips, unlikely to be lit.
“What? Oh!” Nicholas turned upwind and hauled in on his sheet. The boat immediately heeled up. “You mean like this?”
“Yeah, cool,” J.P. said.
They sailed along nicely for a while. But the wind was becoming unsteady — sharp squalls punctuated by short lulls, during which Nicholas repeatedly had to shift his weight drastically to leeward, to keep the boat from reverse-tipping.
“Not exactly a Caribbean cruise, eh?” said J.P., shifting nervously on the wet deck.
“Fuckin’ ay. Havin’ fun yet?”
J.P. looked skeptical. “Speaking of fun, you gettin’ laid?”
Caught off guard, Nicholas said No before he could think of a cooler response. “You?”
“Fuckin’ right.”
Nicholas couldn’t help a look of surprise. “Oh, yeah? Who?”
“Guess.”
Guess was the last thing Nicholas wanted to do.
“Speaking of dope,” J.P. continued, “you got some?”
Something in this irritated Nicholas, and he just shook his head. “You were offering me some, just a bit ago.”
“Running out,” was all J.P. said.
“Anyway, crew has to balance the boat. That’s you. Get down in the middle, there. Otherwise we’ll reverse heel,” he said.
“You’re kiddin’ me, right?”
“No, I’m not kidding. Do it now,” Nicholas said.
Reluctantly, J.P. squatted across the centerboard trunk, pantomiming distress over loss of his private parts. “Is it normal to castrate the crew like this?”
Nicholas laughed. “You want to skip?” he said.
“You mean trade?” J.P. said.
“Yeah.”
J.P. was already making his way toward Nicholas’s spot, forcing Nicholas to dive toward the centre to avoid dumping.
Nicholas’s idea in switching places had been to scare the shit out of J.P. and smarten him up. Sailing was a team undertaking, and J.P. wasn’t exactly being co-operative. But it seemed he’d mainly succeeded in scaring himself.
Nicholas moved forward to man the jib, while handing the tiller and mainsail sheet to J.P. “Here ya go,” he said. “For now just keep the sheet cleated where it is and worry about the steering.”
Having never touched a traditional tiller in his life, J.P. made two classic mistakes: number one, over-adjusting; and number two, performing number one in the same direction he wanted to go, like a steering wheel.
Nick had barely tucked in by the forward deck when the boat lifted on a precipitous tilt. It had veered way downwind, and a squall hitting the close-hauled sails drove the starboard deck underwater, pitching them up like a drunk keeling over. Nicholas let the jib fly loose to spill wind. But he couldn’t reach the mainsail cleat. Their only hope of not tipping was for J.P. to push the tiller down hard, away from himself, while keeping his weight up on the windward side. Not an easy manoeuvre.
“Push it down, push it down!” Nicholas cried. J.P. did. Miraculously, they began to heave up again into the wind, restoring an edgy equilibrium.
“Thank Christ,” breathed Nicholas. “Didn’t feel like swimming.” He reached back and slackened off the mainsail to avoid a repeat performance.
J.P.’s face was white. But he regained composure quickly. “You never said not to turn,” he deadpanned.
Now that the crisis had passed, Nicholas found the whole thing humorous, and laughed. “I guess I’m not the best teacher. Next time, just ask before you do something stupid.”
Chastened, J.P. stared straight ahead. After a long while spent squinting into the light and distance, he allowed, “It’s pretty cool out here, eh?”
Nicholas followed J.P.’s gaze. A low tumble of hills made a peaceful picture on the horizon.
One hand still firm on the tiller, J.P. flipped the cigarette out of his mouth with the other. The cigarette flew back and landed in the water several yards behind the boat.
“What’s with that?” said Nicholas.
J.P. grinned, “Old Indian Mom knew. Used to come outa the woods and shoot the shit at our place. Used to give tobacco offerings. I figure we need all the luck we can get.”
Nicholas could just see the bobbing white cigarette, now far behind. “Wow, we’ve — ”
But he never finished the thought. Suddenly, he was underwater, struggling to keep his eyes open and not give in to the sting of sand particles suspended in the murky depths. Okay, so they’d dumped. First thing was to get to the surface, then check J.P. was all right. They’d worry about the boat later. They could probably right it on their own, depending how far gone it was.
Nicholas wasn’t far from the surface; he could easily see light. But it seemed to be taking forever to reach it. His breath was running out. Why couldn’t he break free? Something was keeping him down, under the surface. He peered through the watery gloom. The goddamn jib sheet. Somehow, despite being careful about ropes, as his dad had taught him, it had wound around his ankle and caught on his shoe. He was so close, so close to air.
Breath nearly gone, Nicholas dove down toward his right foot. But his foot only jerked up, pulling the rope tight. Goddamn! With that last effort, his lungs were giving out. Was this it? He was friggin’ going to croak in this deep, dark hell, taking J.P. with him? Not exactly model sailors. Nothing to inspire confidence in parents. Parents. Never see them again. And Kate.
Lungs bursting, Nicholas let out tiny nibs of air in short blips. He’d read somewhere this would help. It did, for about three seconds. His chest filled with death, the worst thing he’d ever felt. No choice, now. Let go, Nick. A strange lightness filled his head even as his body sank down. Crossing over, he thought, and passed out.
After the lightness, a heavy heaviness. A terrible angel was screaming.
“Open your eyes openyourgoddamn eyes, Link!”
Nicholas struggled to obey. Something, a vise, gripped his ribs. If only it would ease up.
“I’ve got ya!” J.P. screamed. “Just open your goddamned motherfucking eyes!”
Nicholas could breathe. He could breathe! He was not underwater, encased. He was mashed up against something hard, and J.P.’s forearm was squeezing his belly so tight it hurt. Underwater, he was propped on something, J.P.’s knee.
“Just a sec. I’ll get rid of this.” Nicholas heard a clunk up above in the boat. The boat.
“There. You still okay?” J.P. said.
Nicholas couldn’t speak for coughing. But he could breathe a bit. He could breathe.
“Okay, Link, my man, yer gonna fuckin’ hold on, you hear?” Hoisting Nicholas from behind, J.P. folded Nicholas’s arms over the transom and mashed his hands into the floorboards, pushing his fingers down through the narrow strips of wood. Continued screaming. “Don’t move those fuckin’ hands one fuckin’ inch!”
No, Nicholas definitely would not move them one fucking inch. The dark angel had spoken. Nicholas was little, lying in the snow, limbs carving out four giant angel wings. Angel of indentation. Angel of absence and cold. And when summer came? What became of a frozen angel? Melted into a pool, of course, concave to convex. It made such perfect sense. How did everyone not know? He would tell them. Tell the world what he knew. A smile of satisfaction came over Nicholas’s wet lips. The hollow in the snow became the solid thing you wrestled with.
The boat. The boat rolling over them like a whale. Whooosh! Nicholas sank down, down for what seemed like forever. Back to the lung-breaking blackness. But he felt the hand on his, and realized it had been there all along. J.P.’s hand. Mashing his hand flat on wood. And now there was air. And the boat was somehow upright. J.P. was up above him, miraculously in the boat, grabbing his wrists. Nicholas’s nose and chin and ribs scraped the hull. His arms nearly yanked from their sockets. And then he was piked over the deck, face mashed against the floorboards, feet hanging in air.
The familiar wooden bars imprinting his forehead brought him back to the world. Nicholas raised his head, which hit the main cleat. He looked at the cleat a long time. No sheet. Good. Someone had had the sense to uncleat it. He let his head drop again. Something about angels. A dream of light and dark angels and a vortex of snowy whorls turning inside out.
Far above him, the dark angel spoke. “Now, how the fuck do you run this thing?”
Kate finished up work on a couple of graves and stood up straight, wondering how many more years of this her back could take. On the bright side, spring was in the air, the snow was gone — except for a few patches in the shade — and having remembered to wear rubber boots, she had dry feet. It took Kate a couple of trips to tote the grave care paraphernalia back to her car: a vase in need of proper washing, the few weeds that had grown separately bagged from the grass clippings according to their destiny as garbage or compost, large clippers, camera, ragbag and spray cleaner for the smooth-polished stones. At the car, it came to Kate she had no desire to leave. A stunning day, nothing pressing — plenty of time for a stroll.
Kate knew just about every name in this cemetery. Most of those buried were her parents’ or grandparents’ contemporaries, but there was the odd baby (usually from old, less medically enlightened times). Worse than the babies, for Kate, were the two or three she’d known in school, who never made it past their teens. She stopped now at a plot she usually hurried past:
Kate cringed, as always, at the misplaced humour, which the family could hardly have intended. She could only suppose that, blind with grief, they didn’t see the effect until too late. And again, Kate marvelled at how a middle name, laid out like that, made her feel like a voyeur, how it took someone and stripped them naked for all to see. Arnold. After a grandfather, most likely. A farmer or a trainman from the heady days of logging and mining, when goods would arrive from the north by river, from the south by rail, to be redistributed from Pine Rapids’ little station, once an important hub.
