A Little Pain, A Lot of Itch

I realize the thought isn't quite rational but I'm beginning to wonder if the fleas haven't organized, rented a union hall somewhere, elected officers and recruited dues paying members.

It takes five cans of flea spray, most of the afternoon, and every bit of energy I have, but the house finally gets treated from one end to the other.  I wash and dry all the bedding, towels, sheets, comforters, blankets and spray in every nook and crannie I can find.  I open and spray drawers and closets and cabinets - at one point even crawling under the bed - prop up furniture to spray the bottoms, moving everything that isn't nailed down.  Three hours in I'm past the point of no return, two more and I'm finished and too exhausted to do anything but crawl into a cool shower.  It's a bitter battle, I'm insecticided-out, and the dogs despite being bathed and treated are still scratching.  Who knew that a society capable of sending a man to the moon wouldn't be able to defeat a simple flea.  It really is the small things in life, sometimes things that you can't even see, that suck the life out of you and wreck your sanity - temporarily, praise the Lord - but still.

The back deck is littered with dead leaves, a sure but so far solitary sign of fall.  Dark is beginning to come a little earlier but not so much that anyone notices.  Sitting outside I can hear the squirrels at play in the treetops while the no-see-ums chew and suck at my ankles and arms.  I don't feel the bites at the time - it will be several minutes later after I'm inside that the itching will start and I'll eventually reach for the wire brush that I use on the dogs and scratch my skin til it's raw and bleeding - I've always preferred a little pain to a lot of itch.

Rafferty's

They tore down Rafferty's yesterday.  

The only actual tavern the island had ever known was cleared out, its fixtures sold for scrap, it's lumber hauled away.   It had taken a week to break things down - two days alone for the auction - and we'd watched sadly as the tables and chairs were carried out, the glassware packed in styrofoam, the kegs dismantled.  Some things found new homes - the jukebox, the first most of us had even seen, was sold to a nightclub in Halifax - and it turned out that the current doctor had a passion for billiards.  Rafferty's pride and joy pool table and all its accessories took up a new residence in his front waiting room.  There was no leftover inventory and by dusk on the last day all that was left was the remnants of the foundation, still flaky with sawdust, and a ruined old chimney.  We gathered around in a tight circle to watch the last dump trucks caravan down the narrow dirt road from the cove, just in time for the last ferry.  Uncle Willie surreptitiously picked up a half dozen sooty bricks and slipped them behind the seat of his pickup.

Reckon somebody oughta have somethin' to remember the ol' place by, he told Shad, Ain't likely we'll be gettin' another bar.  Mebbe somebody oughta say some words.

Sweet Jaysus, Willie, Shad said good naturedly, If you ain't seven kinds of a fool!  Place weren't nuthin' but somewheres to git drunk and start a fight!  

And you hadda pay for the priv'lidge, John Sullivan added with a crooked grin.

Mebbe, Willie shrugged, but I's sorry as sin to see it go.  Reckon we had us some high ol' Saturday nights here when ol' Rafferty was startin' out.

'Member that bartendin' gal he brung in from St. John?  Jacob Sullivan asked and laughed out loud. 

Uncle Shad smiled in spite of himself, kicked absently at a clod of dirt with one dusty boot.  Ayuh, he allowed thoughtfully, Woman was uglier'n a mud fence but I reckon she had a good heart.

Ayuh, Willie nodded, Heard tell she hitched up with a travelin' salesman fella outta the States that last summer after she and Rafferty split up.

Like hell, Jacob corrected him, She run off with a bootlegger from The Valley.

That was the second gal, his brother John said, The one with one eye, name o' Mildred or somesuch.

Called her Millie or Billie, mebbe, Shad frowned, I disremember but I shore recall that black eye patch and Jaysus on a cross, she could cuss like a sailor.

Like a sailor, the others agreed.

The men shuffled toward the patch of dead grass that had served as a parking lot, climbed into their trucks and coaxed the engines to life.  One after another they chugged down the dirt road in a steady cloud of dust, leaving the remnants of Rafferty's behind.  We watched from the treeline, waiting until the dust settled, then followed.  It was full dark by the time we reached The Point and supper was waiting.

Somewhere far from the island, I wondered, were Rafferty and two gals - one as ugly as a mud fence and one in a black eye patch - watching and feeling as sad as I was.

Cow Ledge

“Wait,” my cousin Arden said to me, placing one enormous hand on my small shoulder as we approached the end of the dirt road where the houses became shacks and the path a rocky, rugged, ocean-edged obstacle course.  “Wait.  I hear…….slithering.”

I jumped backwards as if I’d been shot, never for an instant doubting him and not giving whatever nasty reptilian thing he was hearing a chance to get close.   Spiders didn’t concern me, mice were more scared of me than I was of them, even the odd ill-tempered gull could be chased off but serpents, as everyone knew, were creatures from the very pit of hell.   I couldn’t even say their common name for fear of the nightmares that would follow and once in a magazine when I’d come across a picture of one, I’d dropped it like it was on fire and was running for my life before it hit the ground.

Now I stood stiff and paralyzed with terror, my breath frozen in my throat, tears welling up and spilling down my face.  The only sound I could hear was the roaring of my own heartbeat and I knew it was about to leap out of my chest.  I’d be dead before I hit the ground, I thought distractedly and suddenly found my voice and screamed for all I was worth.  A hand unexpectedly and roughly closed over my eyes and I was abruptly airborne.

“Hush now,” Arden said softly, holding me - cradling and swinging me - against his chest, “Hush now, it’s gone.”

I clung to him, smelling Old Spice and pipe tobacco and salt fish, feeling his course denim shirt against my cheek, waiting for the world to come back into focus.

“Was it a sn…..”  I managed to stammer though my tears.

“Oh, ay-uh,” he replied gently, “But it’s gone.  You can look.”

“Which way did it…..”

“Away from us, child, that’s all you need to know.”  He set me down on the dirt road, felt for my face and wiped my tears.   “Here, take my hand so’s I don’t fall and break a leg.”  Gnarled fingers brushed back my hair, gave my chin an affectionate  tweak.  “Lead on, McDuff.”

I set out on the narrow path, walking carefully and mindful that I was leading a blind man who might could hear something slithering through the tall grass but wouldn’t see it.  It’d had been his idea to make the trek over Cow Ledge on this bright and beautiful summer day - he’d complained that the dirt roads were no longer much of a challenge - and after some serious coaxing he’d worn my grandmother down and persuaded her to let me take him.

“Mind the tide,” she’d said a dozen times if she’d said it once, “Stay on the path and no rock climbing or dare devil nonsense.  And if you’re not at Clara’s by noon, I’m calling out the marines.”

Arden had laughed and kissed her powdery cheek.

“Rest easy, old girl,” he’d said good- naturedly, “I’m blind but I ain’t stupid.  We’ll be careful as church mice and twice as quiet.”

Nana hadn’t liked it much but she’d gone along, giving me a final warning look, one that clearly said Don’t make me sorry I agreed to this!

Cow Ledge was a stretch of coastline that began at the breakwater and wound its way up island, all the way to Beautiful Cove.   It was common land with just one or two falling down shacks at the beginning, then a mile or so of untended, overgrown wildness until you reached Miss Clara’s.  It was all rock and driftwood and tidepools with the ocean on one side, woods on the other, and only a narrow footpath in between and even the path disappeared a quarter mile in.  There were places you had to climb and scramble, places where a single misstep could easily turn into a fall and a fall could skin your knees or, God forbid, break your leg.  The further we went, the more I thought of those places and the blind man behind me.   What had seemed like a grand adventure was now looking like an invitation to disaster.

“Arden,” I said tentatively, “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.  If we turn back now.....”

He was on his hands and knees, feeling his way cautiously across a sharp edged patch of shale and breathing like a hard run horse.  A thin trickle of blood had stained one cuff of his work shirt and there was a ragged tear at the hip of his overalls.

“Turn back?” he demanded harshly, “Give up?”

“It’s gonna get worse,” I said reasonably, “And Nana’ll be taking me to the woodshed for sure if…..” but this was not a sentence I got to finish.  Cousin Arden steadied himself, wiped his face with one bloody hand and turned toward the incoming tide.

“Child,” he said softly, but there was steel in his tone, “I ain’t give up in forty some odd years and I ain’t gonna start now.  You don’t get nowhere here givin’ up and you’d best be rememberin’ that.”

On we went.

Miss Clara’s cabin was in sight by the time the noon factory whistle shrieked and the painted pony whinnied in reply.  Smoke curled from the chimney and spread out like cobwebs against the blue pastel sky, Miss Clara herself was placidly rocking on the veranda.   She stood, shielding her eyes from the sun and gave us an unconcerned wave.    Here the treacherous shale and undergrowth gave way for a path again, the path eased into sand, and the sand led to the little cabin at the edge of the woods.

“Made good time,” Clara observed with a critical look at Arden’s face and hands, “Though I ‘spect you could use a bit of doctorin’, boy.”  She nodded at me and smiled.  “Fetch me my kit, child, up on the kitchen shelf.”

I fetched bandages and tape and the familiar little bottle of iodine while Clara poured iced tea and set a plate of corn muffins on the barrel-turned-tabletop by the rocking chair.

“Turn to me,” she told Arden briskly and he obediently turned his face for inspection.  “And your hands,” she ordered and he stretched out both, fingers spread, palms down, then palms up.

“Scrapes and bruises,” she decreed cheerfully, “Nothin’ to keep an ol’ blind fool down for long.”

“Who you callin’ a fool, ol’ woman?” Arden said gruffly and winced as Clara dabbed iodine on his cheek, his hand, and a nasty looking near- gash just above his eyebrow.

“Reckon any blind man willin’ to take on Cow Edge ain’t nothin’ but a natural fool,” she said mildly, “Drink another glass of tea, boy, you still got a long ride ahead.”

The painted pony carried us home in high style with the sun high and warm and the tide washing up onto the shore in long, languid strokes.  To a child who didn’t know any better and a blind man who did, every high-spirited step was a victory dance.

Mrs. Whidden's Wake

Inside the funeral home it was cool and dark and almost eerily quiet.  The central air hummed  so efficiently and discreetly that it barely stirred the heavy drapes and the thick carpet muffled any other sounds. The telephones rang softly, low and muted like voices from another room and even the front doorbell chimed delicately as if from a great distance.  It smelled of furniture polish and flowers.  Death commanded respect in this once elegant and gracious old building, now shabby in places and outdated but still a place of comfort for the sorrowful, the grieving, the ones left behind.

These were the public rooms.  A small front office with two leather chairs, an old desk and a non-working fireplace.   A chapel with stained glass windows and an organ.  Two visitation rooms.  Upstairs another smaller office and four more understated and dimly lit rooms.  And beyond that, through heavy doors that were always closed and marked PRIVATE, living quarters for the staff and interns who were on call 24 hours of every day.  A tiny tv room, a tinier kitchen, a few closet sized cubbyholes with bunkbeds, the morgue.  It was here we spent our evenings when my daddy had to work and my mother was out at her numerous lodge meetings.  The two sides - one so well appointed and designed, the other spartan and plain - were kept carefully separate.

When the service was over, my daddy would collect us but on the night of Mrs. Whidden’s wake, he had leftover paperwork to finish and we were allowed the run of the place.   We crept through the doors that divided the public and private areas and made our way downstairs.  The boys started a wild game of tag but I tiptoed into the chapel.  Apart from my great grandmother who had died a long and lingering death over the course of one summer, I’d never seen a dead body and I was too young to understand death.  Curiosity killed the cat, I could hear my mother saying, but I went in anyway.

A casket lay in the half-light.  I could see the white satin lining and gleaming brass handles.  Light from the stain glass windows played on the glowing mahogany and made pastel shadows that danced through the flower baskets and wreaths, some even played on the body, making prisms from the rosary beads twined through her peacefully clasped hands.  She wore a simple navy dress with a rounded white collar and white cuffs.  A pearl choker lay across her throat with matching earrings and a smooth gold band sparkled on the third finger of her left hand.  On her right there was a delicate looking and finely etched cameo ring.  Her fingernails were manicured, her hair framed her face in soft-looking silver ringlets, there was a hint of blue shadow on her closed eyes.

 My daddy, elegantly attired in his three piece dark grey suit and polished black shoes, took my hand in his and gave me a sad-eyed smile.

“This is Mrs. Whidden.” he said quietly.

“She’s dead.” I said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, my, yes, “ he agreed and very nearly smiled, “She certainly is.  But doesn’t she look well for her age and condition.  You’d think she was sleeping.”

I considered this. 

“She was very old.” I ventured, thinking that you might think many things of Mrs. Whidden, but definitely not that she was sleeping.  Not with those rouged cheeks and the makeup seeped into the creases of her face, not with that look of powder and dust that might be blown away by a single too-near or careless breath.  Not with those wrinkled, papery hands clutching those beads.  Everything about her was proper and demure and very ladylike but she was clearly, most assuredly, no question about it, not asleep.

“Ninety-two,” my daddy said, “Died in her sleep, at home in her own bed.” 

There was something almost wistful in the way he spoke, something like hope or maybe gratitude.  It didn’t fit with the paper mache-ish body in the satin-lined casket.  I watched him slowly lower the upper half of the coffin and latch it, leaving Mrs. Whidden alone and in the dark.  I was suddenly out of curiosity and filled with fright.

“God was kind to her,” my daddy said more to himself than to me.

I was seized by a need to be picked up and held, to be comforted, but before I could reach my arms up to him, there was a wild yell, a violent thump, and a howl of pain.  The temptation of the sleekly curved old bannister had been too much for one of my brothers - he had mounted and flown down it like a shrieking roller coaster ride - but now lay in a tearful heap at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Good God,” my daddy exclaimed, “You’ll wake the dead!”

It was, I realized, standing in the darkened chapel alone except for Mrs. Whidden, exactly what I was afraid of.   Gently and watchfully, I began backing away from the casket, one small step at a time, feeling my way and never taking my eyes off it.  Then unaccountably, my daddy realized what he’d said and began to laugh, a cheerful, genuine sound that I followed into the light.  He was standing by the front door, my brother clinging to one trousered leg and sniffling. 

“No offense, Mrs. Whidden,” he managed but he was still laughing and it was several minutes before he regained his composure. 

Looking back, I doubt she minded, ‘course you never know.

Up in the Attic

It's a great pity, my Aunt Vi remarked as she dug into the old trunk up in the attic and began haphazardly flinging it's contents over her shoulder, that old clothes go out of style.

A single black button top shoe whizzed by my ear for emphasis, followed closely by a pair of striped denim overalls, then a floppy-brimmed straw hat with knotted tassels.  The last snagged on the cord of the single lightbulb and spun around like a mixmaster.  For several eerie seconds, the attic was transformed in a maze of high contrast light and shadow, a carnival of chaos and high flying old clothes.

Whatcha doin', Aunt Vi?  I asked tentatively and ducked as a pale, pink corset whipped past me and hit the wall with a distinct thud then fell into a heap of metal hooks and eyes, Nana says to tell you lunch is ready.

A second shoe flew by, hit the wall and slid  down to join the limp corset.

You may tell your grandmother, Aunt Vi muttered just before throwing a tattered umbrella in the general direction of the window, that I'm busy and lunch will have to wait.  It certainly wasn't my idea to do a jumble sale and a person might ought to have to think twice before she commits another person to......Mercy me, my wedding shawl!

She was - more or less triumphantly - holding up what looked to be a shawl, pale blue as best I could tell in the less than adequate light, with laced edges and trimming.  It looked to be delicate, mysterious, and old.  She carried it to the window and examined it closely, running her hands lightly over the material, gently and lovingly as if it were a kitten, holding it to her cheek with her eyes closed.  I watched the lines of her face relax and soften - a trick of the light, what else could it be - but when she turned, I'd have sworn her face was younger, her hair darker, her eyes faraway.  She smiled at me.

Tell her I'll be there directly, she said absently and I had an idea she'd forgotten I was there.  I left her standing there by the half light in the window, looking - if I'd known the word - melancholy.

Aunt Vi's kitchen smelled of chowder and fresh bread and Nana had set a basket of daisies on the small round table.  It was bright and cheerful and my grandmother was in her element, puttering about and looking pleased with herself.

Set another place, she told me briskly, Clara's still tending the cemetery but Pearl's coming by and .....where is your Aunt Vi?  Didn't you tell her I said lunch was ready?

She found something, I said uncertainly, she said she'd be down directly.

Found something? Nana asked, Found what?

Some old shawl, I said unsuspectingly and my grandmother froze in her tracks.  The bowl of strawberries she'd been rinsing off in the kitchen sink dropped out of her hands with a clatter and she turned to me, her face suddenly a little pale.

A shawl? she repeated, A blue shawl?  With lace?

I nodded.

Oh, Nana's voice was distant, Oh, I see. Oh, dear.  She looked suddenly tired, I thought, tired and more than a little worried.  Then Aunt Pearl arrived in a flurry, calling to me to help her with her packages, and in all the commotion what with Nana fluttering and Pearl chattering thoughtlessly on about how stingy people were being about the jumble sale, I clean forgot about the blue shawl.  Aunt Vi came down from the attic just as Nana was about to go up - no sign of a shawl and no indication of anything out of the ordinary - except that my usually particular-about-table-manners grandmother said not a word.  Even Aunt Pearl seemed surprised by the lack of a scolding and then I noticed she and Nana exchange a "grownups only" kind of look.  I didn't think Aunt Vi had seen it and I had the good sense to hold my tongue, knowing that whatever we were tap dancing around would surface in its own good time.  

Later as we sorted, labeled, organized and wrapped the jumble sale donations in Vi's sunny living room, Nana and Aunt Pearl huddled together on the faded antique loveseat.

She found the shawl, my grandmother said in a hushed tone, Up in the attic.

Lord save us, Pearl replied with a quick glance my way, Alice, that was forty years ago!  Is she alright?

I don't know, Nana admitted, but it's worrisome.

Ayuh, Pearl nodded, 'course she's stronger now, older and wiser but still.....Her voice trailed off and I saw Nana shrug and shake her head.

The idea that my Aunt Vi could have a past and possibly a dark one was foreign.  Despite sixty some odd years of life, she was an innocent - good hearted, sweet natured, naturally kind to be sure - but naive, trusting, easily hurt.  She wasn't a deep thinker, rarely looking beneath the surface of things or people, content to drift and go where life took her.  She was fragile, sunshine-y, easily taken in and taken advantage of, free of intrigue and mystery, childless.  I loved her dearly for her sweetness and endearing foolishness.

The blue shawl, I said to my grandmother, why does it make her sad?

Nana sighed. 

She's old enough, Aunt Pearl shrugged.

My grandmother considered, knitting her brows in concentration - a phrase I'd never understood until that moment - then took time to pour herself a glass of iced tea and light a Kent 100.

It wasn't a pretty story.  A young, trusting girl with no idea of how things worked in the real world ( Mother was always so overprotective, Aunt Pearl interjected) meets a smooth talking young man from the mainland (We all knew he was a no account scoundrel, Pearl muttered, All of us except Vi).  

Things was different then, Nana continued, a girl who got herself in the family way was a scandal and the village talked of nothing else....

Pearl leaned forward, More gossip than Carter's has pills! she said a little breathlessly, Why, there was talk about tar and feathering!

Pearl!  Nana snapped, Who is telling this?

There was talk of tar and feathering, my grandmother agreed, but your Aunt Vi has a stubborn streak a mile wide and she wanted to marry the boy.  And he wanted to marry her, so he said.  The blue shawl was his wedding gift to her, gave it to her the night before they was to be married.

Aunt Pearl wasn't to be contained.

Ayuh, she interrupted, and she was wearing it standing at the altar the very next day when she heard tell he'd left on the first ferry.

They took the baby, a'course, Nana said sadly, give it up for adoption to a family in Halifax or Yarmouth, I  disremember which.

And that's why your Aunt Vi has always been a little scattered, Pearl told me, losing the boy and then the baby derailed her mind some.  Don't reckon she ever made it all the way back.

It was a dreadful story and I could hardly reconcile it to my flighty, free spirited Aunt Vi.  I climbed the attic stairs again when the sun was low in the sky and the light diminished and found her sitting in the shadows, a lonely silhouette wearing a blue shawl.  She'd been crying and not knowing what to say to comfort her, I sat down beside her and leaned my head on her shoulder.  The softness of the shawl was like cashmere, cool and still slightly scented with peppermint oil.  We sat that way until it was dark up in the attic, until the sad memories went back to sleep.

Maple Syrup Days

Although each summer they put on their best unexpected company smiles and Sunday manners, my maternal and fraternal families were not the best of friends.  But for their children, they shared no real common interests, lifestyles or backgrounds.  Mother’s side was citified, not wealthy but certainly comfortable, and as an only child she’d been raised on privilege and become accustomed to getting what she wanted.   She grew up in a proper Boston suburb and No was as foreign a word as Share to her.  She never heard the first and rarely did the second.

Daddy came from the near poverty of ten children and a widowed mother living a ragged life on a tumbledown farm in Nova Scotia.   They were not just countries but worlds apart - yet somehow this young, spoiled American woman and the handsome, hard- working young Canadian came together and married - each with their own expectations in tow and their differences overlooked.   They were both in their early thirties by then and the war was over.

“Easy enough to be past your prime and adrift,”  Nana Alice told me, “Easy enough to think that opposites attract and love really does conquer all.”

Nana Ruby said nothing at all.

While Nana Ruby and her eldest, a confirmed bachelor and stay-at-home son, still lived on the farm in the tiny village of Graywood, just beyond Annapolis Royal, outside the  Annapolis Valley, we were summer transients, arriving just past Memorial Day and leaving just before Labor Day.  We were not, precisely anyway, what the locals called From Away as my great grandmother had been born in the small and isolated fishing village and the cheerful red and white house overlooking the ocean had passed to Nana Alice. 

 “Just enough Canadian blood to get by, “ my grandmother used to tell me, “Not as good as some folks who live in The Valley but near enough.”

It was her long standing habit to invite friends and family to come and stay for a week or two over the course of the summer - the house was old but well equipped for company with its five bedrooms and a sunporch that could always sleep an extra kid or three and often a few dogs  - and Nana Alice kept a blackboard calendar in the massive kitchen to track arrivals and departures.  More often than not, my brothers and I were shipped off to The Valley if she overbooked but she always tried to make these visits coincide with my daddy’s two weeks of vacation.  He would arrive and stay on the island for a few days then we would drive to the farm.   Nana Alice was a stickler for keeping to her agenda and the system rarely went wrong except for when my Uncle Edge and his snooty wife arrived - as was their habit - early or late and always without prior notice.

We were coming back from the general store one bright, beautiful morning when we saw the long, low slung white Cadillac parked at the foot of the gravel drive.

“Oh, no,” Nana said darkly, “Say it isn’t so.”   All our heads turned to see what the trouble was and she gave a long and weary sigh.

“Lord have mercy,” she muttered under her breath, “With a full house already, where in damnation am I supposed to put them!”  She turned the old Lincoln into the drive and by the time we reached the house had put on her happy face.

“Edgecomb!” she practically trilled, “And Helen!  And a week early, imagine that!”

There were hugs all ‘round, the boys were summoned to carry suitcases, my mother dutifully put the tea kettle on.  Nana discreetly left the back door open to hide the blackboard - someone had added a crudely drawn frowny face to the little square that marked my uncle and aunt’s arrival and she visibly winced at the bright pink-chalked caricature - then my brothers and I were whisked away to our rooms to pack for a last minute visit to The Valley.

“No, no, of course it’s no trouble, not a bit of it,” she was assuring the newcomers, “We’ll just ship…well,  naturally I mean to say….send the children to Ruby’s a few days early.  Don’t give it a second thought, Helen, dear, there’s always room for a few more!”

And, as my daddy liked to say, quicker’n spit, we were on our way, neatly and hastily packed into the back seat of the old Continental with my mother at the wheel.    Nana Alice was left to make the new arrangements and my uncle and aunt remained blissfully unaware of the chaos they’d caused.

  

Nana Ruby welcomed us with open arms and oatmeal cookies.  The old farmhouse, as gray and wizened as its last two inhabitants, smelled of home cooking and lavender and shimmered in the afternoon sun. Nana and my mother exchanged a careful, cautious hug - two old enemies accepting a truce for the sake of the children – but each harboring a low opinion of the other as people from different worlds will.  My Uncle Byron, country to the core in his muddy workboots and faded overalls, in need of a shave and reeking of cows but open hearted and as kind a man as I’d ever known, stopped his wood chopping to give us and my mother a genuine embrace. 

 “Reckon you’ll stay the night, will you, Jan?”  he asked her.

“If you’ll have me,” my mother said with a tentative glance at Nana Ruby, “Though I think I could still make the last ferry.”

“No need,” my grandmother said shortly, “Supper’s on the stove.  You can sleep in Ivy’s room.”

“Then it’s settled,” Uncle Byron grinned, “Now who wants to see the new horse?”

There was always enough room in Nana Alice’s kitchen for a flock of women but here on the farm,  there was far less room and Nana Ruby didn’t take kindly to an extra pair of hands.   She was a tiny woman, nowhere near as ample as Nana Alice and not inclined to nonsense.   Even at a young age, I had some misgivings about leaving the two women alone.

“She raised ten children all alone,” my daddy had once told me gently, “It hardened her some.”

 It was a glorious week.   There were cows to be milked, chickens and pigs to be fed, gardens to be tended and a new litter of barn kittens to care for.  Evenings were spent by the pot bellied stove where Nana Ruby would quietly read her Bible and Uncle Byron would play his battered old accordion.

It wasn’t the idle, lazy maple syrup days of the island but it was still family, still home -and as the poet wrote, the only place they have to take you in.

Southern Exposure

The grocery store was busy and brightly lit and the young man clinging to more than pushing the slow moving cart was causing a stir.  You couldn’t help it.  The first thing you noticed was the dirt.

It wasn’t a light dusting or a little smear on the cheek.   It wasn’t something he hadn’t had time to wash off.  No, this was old dirt, grown up dirt, the kind a person had lived in so long that it was closer to a second skin.  This was filth with random traces of blood, sunken deep into the creases of his face, packed so hard and deep into the wrinkles that it smoothed out the lines around his mouth.  His hands were blackened with it, the elongated, ragged nails crusted over and embedded with it.  His clothes were stiffened with it.  When he walked, he flaked, leaving a cheese grater-ish trail of clods and clots of mud mixed with what looked like half-digested, dead grass.   You could hear the raspy swish of denim against denim and the slapping of the soles of ancient Keds.   A single strand of frayed shoelace dangled from the top of one discolored shoe, the other was held together by a pair of thick rubber bands.  He smelled of excrement and tobacco and sour milk.  He made me think of dead coal miners.

“It’s no crime to get dirty,” I could hear my daddy telling me, “But it’s a sin to stay that way.”

We’d been walking across Boston Common on a late spring afternoon with the swan boats full of tourists and the tulips and daffodils in full bloom when we passed the old man on the bench, singing to himself and drinking steadily from a bottle in a paper sack.  He smiled with decaying, yellow teeth and stretched out a grimy hand.

“Can you spare a dime for a cuppa coffee, mister?”  the words came out sleepy and slurred, the air suddenly smelled like a landfill, raunchy with whiskey and the smell of spoiled food.   My daddy frowned and shook his head, steered me gently but firmly away.

“Is he sick?” I wanted to know, “He smells like he’s sick.”

“He’s just a bum,” my daddy said roughly and in a tone of voice I couldn’t remember ever having heard before, “Just a dirty old drunk, living off welfare, probably hasn’t worked a day in his life and isn’t likely to.  He’d drink up anything you gave him.”  He glanced over his shoulder as if the old man might be following us.  “You stay away from the likes of that, you hear?  Damn deadbeats.”

We passed more of these shabby, sad men - funny, I thought, how we’d made this walk through the Public Garden so many times and I’d never noticed them - they were huddled on benches, crookedly propped up against trees, curled up in shadowy, grassy corners.   Some were in tattered winter coats and helmet-like old caps.  Some were wrapped in ratty, cast off blankets.  Some had no shoes.  All were grizzled and unshaven with wild, bleary eyes and second hand everything.  They slept or staggered through the manicured flower beds,  clutching their paper sacks of cheap whiskey with a death grip, some staring down the tourists and shoppers with dismal, despairing, dirty faces and others trying to be invisible.  They smelled of whiskey and rot and madness.  They scared me.

“Bums,” my daddy muttered disgustedly, “Giving the Common a bad name.”  He slipped his hand into mine and maneuvered himself between me and them.  “They die off some in the winter, just flat out freeze to death some of them.”  He shook his head and smiled at me.  “I expect they’re better off.”

I didn’t question this philosophy, didn’t know about alcoholism or homelessness or mental illness or Salvation Army shelters filled to capacity when the snow came.  My daddy was a gentle man, a kind man, a soft-spoken and understanding man without an ounce of cruelty in his nature.  If he said they were bums, they were bums, I decided.  If he could turn his back on them, then so could I.  But here in the grocery store, some fifty odd years later in the present day, the memory seemed less clear cut and considerably less right.  I’d lived some since that spring afternoon, learned a thing or three about poverty and hard times and more than I’d ever wanted to know about addiction.  Throwing away the dirty people wasn’t an answer.

I watched as some of the regulars, offended by the sight of the bum and appalled by the smell, carefully bypassed him, their faces registering a curious mix of shock and indignation.  Others were curious but covert, pushing their carts past him but keeping to a discreet  look-but-don’t-touch distance.  I watched him fill his cart with canned goods and ready to eat meals for one, a loaf of day old bread, a plastic jar of peanut butter, six sad bottles of Yellowtail and a single chocolate bar.   Limping and shuffling, he made his slow and deliberate way to the cash registers, the flurry of waiting shoppers parting like The Red Sea and opening a wide, solitary path.

“$42.18”, the cashier said doubtfully, and then though it was wildly improbable but she was required to ask, “Do you have a courtesy card?”

The bum, reaching deep into his side pocket and pulling out a crumpled mass of greasy, stained bills, gave her an uncomprehending look and tried to hand her a fistful of bills.  She reacted with a grimace, pure reflex, I wanted to think, and unconsciously took a step back.

A woman, a frequent shopper whose face I recognized but whose name I didn’t know, stepped forward.

“He can use mine,” she said briskly and rattled off a telephone number to the cashier.

The clerk collected herself and a little shamefacedly punched in the number.

“$38.36” she told the bum and did her best to look pleasant.

The woman shopper gently took the bills from his hand, counted out $40 and handed it to the cashier. When she handed him his change, he replaced the bills in his torn pocket but dropped the silver - all  eighty-two cents of it - coin by coin, into the little plastic Help the Homeless - Give To The United Way donation jar.  A number of jaws, mine included, dropped at this but the woman shopper who had stepped up to help, just smiled.  The bum picked up his plastic bags and stumbled awkwardly toward the side door, leaning just a little left and not having said a single word.   When the automatic doors slid open, he disappeared across the parking lot in the afternoon haze, headed toward the shelter and shade of the nearby bus stop.

I wondered all the way home what my daddy would’ve thought.