Found Drowned Page 2

  “No,” Ann told her, “it’s about time we all went home. You’re certainly not staying behind. School starts soon and you have to be home for that.”

  Rachel was at the stove fetching the teapot. When her eyes met Mary’s, she shrugged her shoulders.

  “You can come again for a visit next year, Mary,” said Aunt Beatrice.

  “Me too, me too.” Little Helen was jumping up and down.

  “Yes, you too, sweetheart. You’ll be a big girl of five by then,” her aunt said.

  “We’ll see,” said Ann. “Mary is needed a lot around the house.”

  “Travel, even just within one’s own province, is the best education one can possibly get,” replied Beatrice.

  Patrick looked at his watch.

  “Well, you two, sit down for breakfast now. We have to be at the station at eleven. I’m going out to see how the haying is coming along. I’ll be back at half past ten to fetch you.”

  He got up, grabbed his hat, and left. Rachel rushed Mary’s and Little Helen’s pancakes to the kitchen table.

  By eleven o’clock they were all standing on the platform of the train station. Patrick had paid for their train tickets from River Philip to West Merigomish return and for a buggy to take them to River Philip from Rockley return. This trip was the first time that Mary had been on a train. She found it exciting to watch the houses and trees and people as the train hurried along the track. She felt all grown up holding her ticket in her hand.

  Aunt Beatrice hugged her tightly.

  “Good luck, sweetie. Don’t forget to write and let me know how your trip went. And here’s another going-away present for you.”

  Her aunt passed her a brown paper–wrapped parcel. Mary could tell right away it was a book.

  “Is it The Woman in White?” Mary whispered, and held it to her chest.

  “Your very own copy,” Aunt Beatrice whispered back, “plus another one I think you’ll like.”

  Everyone except Patrick and Harry was crying when the Harneys boarded the train and took their seats. Watching out the window, however, Mary was sure she saw the big man run his right sleeve across his eyes. Everyone waved as the train pulled away from the station. Mary stood and looked out the window until Aunt Beatrice’s walking suit was just a tiny pink dot, then she turned and dropped herself down onto the hard leather seat.

  Ann sighed. “We’ll be in Pugwash by suppertime.”

  Mary unwrapped her books. There was The Woman in White, marked at the place where Beatrice had stopped reading. The other book, The Moonstone, was written by the same author. Mary settled down to read. From time to time she looked out the window at the passing countryside. At noon they had the cold meats, fresh, soft rolls, and lemonade from the lunch basket that Susan had packed for them.

  Later in the afternoon Mary fell asleep to the sound of her mother singing softly to the children. She awoke with a start when the conductor came striding down the aisle.

  “River Philip next stop, all passengers for River Philip, next stop,” he said. The train’s whistle blew. Mary put her hands over her ears and looked out the window; they were coming into the station, passing the shacks scattered along the side of the tracks. A woman in front of one of the rundown buildings was bringing her wash in while rain started to spatter on the window.

  “Good thing we have a ride waiting for us,” Ann said. “Mary, wake up Little Helen and put her coat on, we’ll be getting off soon.”

  The tiny River Philip train station was located at the edge of the village. By the time they walked out of the building, it was raining hard. Mary put her books inside her coat so they wouldn’t get wet. People were running to escape the deluge. Some carried umbrellas, others held newspapers over their heads.

  “Mary, stay under the awning or you’ll get soaked,” Ann warned. She scanned up and down the street.

  “We can’t stay out here for too long in the wet. We’ll have to go back into the station to wait if he’s late.”

  “There he is, Mumma, there’s Mr. LeFurgey.”

  Mary waved at the large surrey coming down Main Street.

  “Thank God,” Ann said, shifting Harry from one hip to another. “Wait here, girls, he sees us. Let him stop and get the bags before you walk out. I don’t want you to get run over by those horses.”

  “Mumma always thinks something bad is going to happen,” Mary whispered to Little Helen and gripped her hand tightly. The child looked up with a frown and nodded.

  “Whoa there,” Fred LeFurgey told his horses, and the surrey came to a stop in front of the platform.

  “Hello, Ann, hope you and the kids had a good trip. It was sunny here until about a half-hour ago and then it all clouded over.”

  “Yes, thank you, Fred,” Ann replied. “It’s good to be back safe and sound.”

  Fred jumped from the front seat and landed, with a thud, on the ground before Ann. He swept his cap off his head and bowed low in front of her. His handsome, grinning face was deeply tanned.

  Besides running the farm with his parents, Fred had a delivery and cab service, taking people and packages from one place to another between Springhill and Pugwash. Once he was hired to go clear to Amherst. He was proud of his four-seat surrey and kept its red leather top and tan seats in immaculate condition. The iron-rimmed wheels and hand-operated brake were well oiled. Springs to reduce bumps ran the length of the vehicle’s undercarriage.

  In the past, when she had met him on the road, smiling and waving, or in Bailey’s store, that time before Christmas, when he bought her a whole bag of ribbon candy, Mary pretended that Fred LeFurgey was her father, driving her to school every day in his fancy rig, the envy of all his LeFurgey nieces who regularly looked down their considerable noses at her. Seeing him up close now made her blush at the thought. Her mother’s cheeks seemed to be a little pinker than usual too.

  “Just let me get your bags and we’ll be off.”

  His boots thudded across the wooden platform as he walked over to the luggage cart.

  “Which ones are yours, Ann?”

  “Those three on the top.”

  “Light as a feather,” Fred said, grabbing the bags and lifting them off the cart. He walked over and placed them on the floor of the surrey.

  “Up you go now, missy,” he said, swinging Mary into the surrey’s back seat. “The young people I carry like to sit in the very back.” He winked.

  “And you too,” he added, lifting Little Helen.

  “You’re strong,” she cooed.

  Fred laughed and turned to Ann. Without speaking, he took Harry from her arms and handed her up into the front seat, then deposited the toddler into her lap. There were two empty seats separating him, Ann, and Harry from the girls. He settled in beside Ann, lifted the reins, and made a clicking noise with his tongue.

  The main road to Rockley was lined with weathered farm houses, barns, and outbuildings. It was haying season and the fields were dotted with mounds of hay waiting to be taken in for the winter. The road ran parallel to the River Philip with fishing sheds of different sizes and in various states of repair scattered along the water’s edge, only their roofs visible from the main road. Each shack, with a colourful punt tied up outside, contained ropes, wires, and nets used to trap trout, salmon, and gaspereau. Many of the sheds and punts were decades old and had been passed down through generations. Will Harney, Mary’s father, had taken over the shed belonging to his uncle, John Dempsey. It was located just at the elbow of the river’s widest bend, almost directly across the road from the lane leading to the Dempsey house where Mary and her family lived.

  The rain was falling straight down but just a bit of drizzle touched Mary’s cheeks. She liked the click, click of the water on the leather roof. She and Little Helen snuggled together under the blanket she’d found on the back seat. She felt warm and safe while watching the houses
and fields go by and listening for snatches of words from the front seat that came to her on the wind.

  He has such a nice voice, Mary thought.

  This ride was a real treat since Ann and the girls usually had to walk wherever they went or take the old wagon which smelled of manure and mouldy hay.

  Too soon for Mary, they reached the signpost for Rockley and she could see the red chimney and brown roof of their house. As the surrey got closer, she began to feel funny in the pit of her stomach. One time her mother had told her it was because butterflies were fluttering around inside. Mary’s palms under the blanket started to sweat. She did not want to go into that house.

  We’ll have a life together, he said.

  Bell’s Point

  Cape Traverse, Prince Edward Island

  September 12, 1877

  Gilbert Bell was about to leave the barnyard and make his way back to the upper field when he saw Sarah McPherson coming down the lane towards the house. She had walked the mile that separated her home from the Bells, across Gilbert’s fields, picking cranberries as she came, to present to his wife, Catherine. As Sarah stopped to catch her breath, some of the fruit fell from the full pail and rolled around on the ground. She was not a small woman and the day was warm and sunny.

  “Clothesline broke agin,” she said, shaking her head. “If it had been fixed right the first time ’round that wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Well, that was a devil of a storm we had last night, Sarah. You’re lucky you’ve got any line left. Lucky it didn’t blow clear into Charlottetown.”

  “True enough.” She nodded. “The windows shook in their frames something terrible all night. It’s a wonder we got any glass left in them at all. Neill told me to tell you that he’ll meet you back up there as soon he’s finished with my line.”

  “Thanks, Sarah.” He grinned. “And just to let you know, I’ll only charge you half price for those berries since you picked them yourself.”

  “Ha,” she said, waddling to the porch door.

  Gilbert couldn’t remember the last time it poured rain as it had last night. It started all at once, right after supper, and lasted until dawn. Catherine didn’t even have to call Jimmy, their youngest son, in from playing. He’d run through the kitchen door, his eyes big, exclaiming that the wind was blowing so hard it kept pushing him back as he tried to make it to the house. It almost took the porch door off the hinges before he got it shut.

  Branches blew apples off the trees in the orchard. Gilbert had sent Eddie and Avard, his nineteen-year-old twins, out early that morning to collect the dead wood and assess the damage. They said that all kinds of apples had been swept away in the storm. That was not good for the winter store. It was going to take the boys the rest of the day to clean up the mess back there and to collect the downed apples. At least the horses could eat them.

  Sam Thompson, the blacksmith, had arrived after breakfast with the new horseshoes Gilbert had ordered, and said that a lot of fishing boats had either broken loose from the Cape Traverse wharf or, while still tied, smashed up against it. The storm had also damaged some of the old fencing that Gilbert and Neill shared in the upper field and they had been repairing it throughout the morning.

  Gilbert stopped short and shook his head in frustration. He had forgotten the maul he needed this afternoon for pounding the stakes firmly into the ground. The one Neill had brought along to do the job just wasn’t sturdy enough. He retraced his steps back down the hill and into the tool shed. Gilbert was a tall man and had to stoop to get inside the door. Stepping out again with the maul over his shoulder, he heard shouting. Jimmy, with his friend Tom McPherson, Neill’s and Sarah’s youngest, were heading down the lane, likely on their way to Bell’s Point to look around. A storm always churned up stuff in the water and washed it up on the beach. Stuff interesting to seven-year-old boys. Jimmy already had five wooden boxes neatly arranged under his bed and filled with shells, rocks, pieces of glass, and rope that he had scavenged.

  He’ll outgrow that soon enough, just like the twins did, Gilbert thought to himself. No harm in it, I guess, just something to make his mother yell when she has to keep fishing things out of his pockets before she can wash his overalls.

  About all Jimmy ever found was trash that had been thrown into the Northumberland Strait from along the western shore of PE Island, or from Cape Tormentine in New Brunswick, or even further north.

  “Quickest way to get rid of what you don’t want,” Gilbert mused aloud.

  Most of it was worthless, but every once in a while someone would walk into Muttart’s store trying to sell something or other that had washed up on the beach. Mainly, though, it was just kids who went looking for so-called treasure.

  When Gilbert got back to the upper field where his land adjoined that of the McPhersons, Neill was already there.

  “Took me no time to fix the old woman’s line,” his friend said, grinning. “She’ll be disappointed, give her one less thing to go on about tonight.”

  The men were at the north boundary line that separated the two properties. Gilbert’s great-grandfather Sherman Bell had started to clear the land shortly after arriving from upstate New York in the late 1700s. He died shortly afterwards, however, from blood poisoning, brought on from stabbing himself in the foot with a pitchfork while making a point during an argument. His wife had always said his temper would get the best of him. Forty acres of the original hundred-acre-plot had been sold off to Neill’s great-grandfather and the two families had been friends ever since.

  Gilbert and Neill worked together for about an hour, speaking only to give each other directions. The fence had been repaired in the spring but was getting old and fragile, and last night’s wind had damaged it. Gilbert hoped to make do for another year before replacing it. Before pig butchering commenced, he wanted the fence fixed or he’d have a worse mess on his hands come spring.

  The only sounds that registered for the men, besides the scrape of the shovel on rock and the thud of the post into the ground, was the humming of bees as they floated from flower to flower in the fields. At about three o’clock they stopped for a rest. Neill rubbed the sweat from his large face and receding blond hairline with a spotted blue handkerchief.

  “Hot work. I thought that the storm would have cleared the air, but it’s still pretty muggy,” he said.

  Gilbert turned to look down the pasture. The Holsteins were gathered for shade under the one large tree left in the field. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  Neill leaned his shovel against a post and took makings out of his back pocket. “Want one?” he asked Gilbert.

  “No, not right now, thanks.” Gilbert stooped to pick up the water jug.

  Neill was taking the first drag off his cigarette when a shout reached them from below. The men turned to see their sons running towards them, both yelling something that the distance held back from them.

  “Now what?” Gilbert frowned.

  They waited in silence as the boys ran up to them.

  Jimmy flew into his father’s legs head first. “Dadda, Dadda, come quick.”

  “Jesus, what’s goin’ on?” Gilbert asked, holding the boy out at arm’s length.

  Jimmy was trying to catch his breath as Tom yelled at his father, “You should see, you should see!”

  He bent over, gulping for air with his hands on his knees.

  “Take it easy, Tom,” Neill warned.

  Jimmy finally got his breath. “Dadda, come quick, there’s a girl on the beach.” He pulled on Gilbert’s arm.

  “She’s deader than a doornail,” Tom blurted out between gulps of air.

  “Dadda, come quick, we’ve got to help her,” Jimmy cried. “The seagulls will get her.”

  “All right, the two of you calm down and tell me what’s going on,” Gilbert said, passing the water bottle to Jimmy. “Have a drink first.”

&
nbsp; “This isn’t another one of your stories?” Neill asked Tom.

  “No, Pa, I swear…I swear it’s true,” Tom said, getting his wind back. “There’s a girl on the beach, she’s dead and all tangled up in the seaweed. We didn’t touch her.”

  Tom spun around and looked at Jimmy.

  “We didn’t touch her,” he repeated. “And we ran to get you and Mr. Bell right away.”

  “You better be telling the truth.” Neill glared at Tom. “Don’t be taking us away from what we’re doin’ here.”

  “It’s not a lie, Mr. McPherson,” Jimmy piped up. “She’s really there.”

  “We’d better go down and have a look,” Neill said, stamping out his smoke with his boot.

  “All right then, you boys run ahead and find the twins. Tell them to hitch up Ned to the express wagon and to bring some of those old horse blankets out of the barn. Neill and I will be along right after you. You wait right there with them and we’ll all go down to the beach at the same time.”

  The youngsters took off on the run. Neill and Gilbert gathered up their tools and water jugs and started after them.

  “Do you suppose they’re telling the truth?” Neill asked.

  “They’d better be or I’ll tan both their hides,” Gilbert said. “But something’s got them spooked, that’s for sure. Everything washes up on the beach sooner or later. Remember me and Frankie found that man down there when we was kids? He had all his clothes still on, just missing a boot. And they never did find out who he was.”

  Soon they were in the field just above Gilbert’s house and could see Avard leading Ned, the chestnut horse, out into the barnyard. Catherine and Eddie, holding the bridle, were standing beside the blue express wagon and Jimmy and Tom were running in circles around it.

  “Those two are straining at the bit,” Neill observed, “worse than old Ned.”

  “Eddie, you and Av run ahead and see what all the fuss is about, I’ll finish the harnessing,” Gilbert yelled when he got closer to the yard. “Go down to the point and wait for us there.”