Rhubarb for Sale

The house around the cove stood not far from the dirt road, it's narrow driveway stayed partially overgrown with weeds and patches of wild rhubarb grew on either side.  A tired old canoe lay on its side on the rocky stretch of beach.   It was a perfectly ordinary house, two story with chipped shutters on the windows and dirty window panes but there was something, all the island children knew, that was forbidding.  We had to pass it coming and going but we didn't linger to skip stones or splash in the ditch.  There was a sense of very faint menace here, too unfocused to explain to our parents, too shadowy to bring into detail but we all felt it.  Frank and Rita Davis had no children and were glad of it - Nana said something had turned them mean and spiteful and unwelcoming - but she wouldn't say what.  We just knew to keep our heads down and hurry past, fearful that Frank or Rita might emerge and give us the evil eye or shout at us to Keep movin'!

There was no good reason to be afraid, of course.  Frank and Rita were simple, solitary people who asked for nothing and gave nothing, who liked their life undisturbed.  They sometimes stood by the side of the road and sold bunches of rhubarb for a quarter and once a week would paddle the canoe across the cove to Norman's, stock up on flour, sugar, tobacco and the like, and then paddle back.  Frank was a small, wiry man with a crooked back, bad teeth, a coarse black beard and malice in his eyes.  He rarely spoke - presenting Aunt Jenny with a wrinkled grocery list and paying in crumpled up, dirty dollar bills that he pulled from his ragged undershirt - she would return his change by counting it out and laying it on the counter, not wanting to put it in his hand as she did with everyone else.  Wish he'd shop at McIntyre's, she'd been heard to say more than once and Norman would snap, Shut yer mouth, woman, his money's as good as anybody else's.  Rita, plain faced with a hawkish nose and chin hairs, was tall and scrawny and reptilian-eyed.  If Frank scared us, Rita terrified us with her fierce glare.  We weren't entirely sure, but there were rumors she could turn a child to stone on a whim.  There was evil in the swish of her skirts - the sound was like dirt falling on a new grave - and we had all seen "The Wizard of Oz" and knew a witch on sight, were sure if she spoke it would be with a high pitched cackle.  Frank chased off children with a violent shout and a nasty wave of his shovel but Rita would advance upon us, broom in a two fisted grip and the look of the devil in her snake-like eyes.

It was a mystery to me that two life long islanders, both of whose families went back generations, would choose to live such hostile and isolated lives, turning their backs on the community and frightening little children for no clear purpose.  What dreadful secrets did they keep within their walls, we wondered, what wretched evil possessed them?  We were too young and filled with imagination to look for anything more rational so when Miss Clara remarked that rhubarb, while good for the digestion, was known to make a body mean, we accepted it.

Besides, Aunt Vi added, Some folks just ain't natcherly sociable.

If you ask me, Aunt Pearl chimed in, Some folks are too sociable for they's own good.

Mind your tongue, Pearl, Nana told her sharply, There's children about. 

But Pearl just shrugged.  Fine, Alice, she said mildly, But you can't protect'em forever.

I never cared much for rhubarb, Miss Clara added firmly and the women laughed a little nervously.  

One bright winter morning after a particularly cruel storm, the house around the cove burned clean to the ground and took Frank and Rita Davis with it.  Smoke and flames lit up the sky even though snow was still falling and it wasn't until the following summer that the site was cleared and the debris hauled away.  It was hard, wearying work, more so because so few island men wanted to lend their hands - it took John Sullivan and his brother the better part of four days - and after the timbers were gone and the foundation uprooted, the bricks from the chimney were dismantled and the land was burned black again.  The minister was persuaded to come and say a prayer over it but it wasn't enough - nothing was saved and nothing was ever rebuilt.

It wasn't the rhubarb, my friend Ruthie said to me years later when we were closer to grown and knew about such things as incest and inbreeeding.

No, I said, It wasn't the rhubarb.

And we walked away from that place arm in arm and didn't look back.