After the Fire Read online

  Though Henrietta and Hart had started out as summer and weekend people just as Millie and her husband had, Hart was the sort of man who wouldn’t buy a place without a good supply of water, without good insulation. Milly’s house had never been intended for winter living. She had to keep the drapes pulled over her single-pane windows looking east over the channel to the mountains on the mainland, and the wind played tag with itself all over the house, which had more cracks than nails in it. It cost a fortune to heat. In summer, when the water table was low, she didn’t flush the toilet more than once a day unless she had company coming. Talk about being put out to pasture!

  The sudden roar of the vacuum cleaner reminded Milly that she should be dressed and out of the bedroom before Red wanted to clean it. Milly hated the sound of that machine. It reminded her of her mother, who had used it as a weapon to get Milly out of bed on a weekend morning. All her life she had hated to go to bed and hated to get up in the morning. Here on the island, people with not a thing to do behaved as if they had a herd of cows waiting for them. Unless there was a fire, people called nine o’clock island midnight and went off home. Even Henrietta, though she didn’t go to bed early, liked her time to read. At least she didn’t mind being phoned anytime before midnight if the silence of Milly’s house got too much for her.

  Milly stood by her closet, trying to decide what to wear. She usually put out her things the night before; but it had been five in the morning before she’d got home. She chose a plaid wool skirt, a dark blue blouse and a red sweater. Unlike most of the women who had retired to the island, Milly hadn’t exchanged her city clothes for men’s trousers and sweat shirts. The only concession she had made was her choice of shoes, not boots of course, but her shoes were sensible.

  As she finished dressing, the phone rang. She had to close the door before she answered it to shut out the noise of the vacuum cleaner.

  “I hope it’s not too early,” Henrietta said.

  “Red woke me an hour ago,” Milly said.

  “Of course, it’s Wednesday,” Henrietta said. “I haven’t managed to get myself to bed yet. I’m just home from Sadie’s. I waited until her sister came on the morning boat. She needed someone with her.”

  “How is she?” Milly asked.

  “She’s not a woman with many resources,” Henrietta said. “Dickie was her life.”

  “Why do these things have to happen?” Milly wailed.

  “I always try to think the young are spared, but it isn’t easy. Sadie isn’t going to be able to manage anything about the funeral. I suggested we might have it here, and I wondered if you would call people about the food.”

  “Of course,” Milly said.

  There was nothing Milly enjoyed more than an excuse to tie up her party line. It suited the other parties as well who seemed to have more interest in listening to Milly’s conversations than in making any of their own. Sometimes that windy open sound of someone else listening annoyed her, but more often she felt obligated to live up to their attention.

  Her daughter Bonnie had said to her one night, “Mother, have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”

  “Well, I’ve nearly forgotten what you look like,” Milly snapped back, her attention newly and unkindly focused.

  Her “late” husband shelled out plane tickets home to their children only after extracting promises that they wouldn’t also visit their mother on his money.

  “Can I get into the bedroom now, Mrs. Forbes?” Red called.

  “Do you have a mother?” Milly demanded as she wrenched open her bedroom door.

  “Only way I know to get into a fix like this,” Red said.

  “Has there ever been such a thing as a grateful child?”

  “Were you?” Red asked quietly.

  “Me? Of course I was.”

  “There you are then,” Red said, disappearing into the bedroom.

  After speaking to Milly, Henrietta Hawkins deliberated for a moment before reaching down to unplug her phone. When Hart was still at home, she routinely had done it to protect his rest, but, since he’d had to be moved into extended care on the mainland, she’d rarely indulged in that protection for herself. She had always thought, “But what if he needs me?” It was by now a futile hope. Hart no longer recognized her except as the woman who brought him ice cream. The only phone call concerning him now would be a hospital official to tell her he was dead. The dead could wait.

  Henrietta had to sleep now, or at least rest, if she was to get over to see Hart tomorrow and also make arrangements to have Dickie’s funeral here on Friday. She would have to leave in the morning before Red arrived.

  She put a pad of paper on the night table by her side of the bed so that she could scribble down the jumble of details she would otherwise worry about forgetting. Red ought to polish Hart’s grandmother’s tea service, a silly thing to hang onto in this day and age when it was only appropriate for weddings and funerals, but Henrietta couldn’t, when they had decided to retire here, give it up, orphan it without knowing what might become of it. Hart Jr. would simply be more lumbered with it than she was. Things!

  Henrietta reached for the pad and wrote, “Red 1. Polish the tea service.”

  Writing the name made her for the first time since the fire actually think of Red and wonder what her own private grief in this matter of Dickie might be. Where had she heard Red’s and Dickie’s names paired recently? Certainly not from Red. That information had surprised Henrietta. Red had shown so little interest in any companions her own age that Henrietta had once asked her if she wasn’t lonely, so much by herself there in that little cabin.

  “Sometimes,” Red had said, “but the only kind of company I could get along with I’d have to make up.”

  Henrietta understood that. Though she often even physically ached for Hart’s presence, she wanted no distracting substitutes, which even he himself would be now, getting in the way of her memory of who he had been before his strokes.

  Then why had Red suddenly exchanged her solitude for the likes of Dickie John? Was it simply a succumbing to her own biology? Henrietta didn’t know how old Red was, but, when she had first arrived on their doorstep, Hart had said, “That child can’t be more than fourteen!”

  Henrietta had struggled with her conscience about Red, wondering what parents or parent might be anguished about her. But once she’d been with them a few weeks, learning the most basic skills with such a hunger for survival, Henrietta had decided that whoever that parent had been had grossly neglected if not actually abused Red. If Henrietta could teach her to look out for herself, that was probably the best thing for Red.

  But now, as Henrietta thought about Red and Dickie, she was aware of how little she had ever talked with Red about … life. Red had certainly never invited discussion. All the questions she asked were practical ones. Henrietta had let herself assume that Red knew more than she needed to about the seamier side of experience. Dickie was, in Henrietta’s view, seamy. Poor, poor Dickie.

  Why did so many beautiful children simply coarsen into adulthood? Was it in their genes? Would Red now, her childhood fallen away from her, harden into cynicism?

  Henrietta hadn’t had a daughter, and part of her pleasure in Red was finally being able to hand on those womanly skills that stay invisible to most men even when they’re done before their eyes. But teaching her to clean and cook and take care of things didn’t go far enough in teaching her how to take care of herself, to have pride of heart, to be hopeful. The young had a right to be hopeful.

  Henrietta turned over and fixed her eyes on the great cedar tree which had grown by now too close to the house so that on a windy night it banged on the bedroom window as if demanding to be let inside. Hart would have had it cut down, and she would have accepted his decision as part of his need to keep her from harm though she knew harm had to come in any case.

  Whoever it was up there who measured the lengths of lives had one blind eye and was all thumbs. No depth perception, none at all.
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  Chapter II

  A BRISK SOUTHEASTERLY WAS blowing as Karen Tasuki parked her car near the ferry toll booth. She was early as she liked to be. There was time to be patient with her cold hands unlocking the door, leisurely in arranging the cash drawer and tickets. It was still dark, and her first customer approached in a blaze of headlights.

  “One thing I’ll say for you,” said Riley, one of her firefighting companions. “You’re here.”

  Even such parsimonious praise was encouraging. For the younger, unmarried men, working for the ferries was too tame a job, but even so they were reluctant to see a woman doing it.

  “Thanks,” Karen said, handing him his ticket and change. “Lane one …”

  “Don’t tell me to have a good day,” Riley said. “It’s going to be a bitch.”

  He drove off to park in lane one before Karen could ask him why or express sympathy. She was used now to these off-hand personal remarks, tossed like empty beer cans out of car windows by young men who seemed to think of any reply as in the nature of a fine. Their lack of ordinary civility often annoyed Karen, but this morning the young men of the island were made of very vulnerable flesh, and she felt protective, concerned.

  The next car was the island’s only taxi, driven by a pale, hardly awake young man. The ancient Miss James was in the back seat, holding out her three dollars for a foot passenger ticket.

  “You don’t need to pay this morning, Miss James,” Karen shouted. “It’s Thursday.”

  “I forgot,” the driver shouted in his turn. “You’re a senior. You don’t have to pay on weekdays.”

  “Of course not,” Miss James said, impatient with herself as she stuffed her money back into her wallet.

  The cab moved down onto the dock to deliver Miss James to the waiting room, built on the east side of the dock just short of the loading ramp, welcome shelter on a windy morning like this one …

  The first light of dawn came like a bucket of dirty water thrown across the southeast edge of the sky.

  Henrietta Hawkins was next in line. She, too, was over sixty-five, but Karen had to collect twelve dollars for her car.

  “This car’s old enough to travel free on weekdays,” Henrietta said as she handed over the bills.

  It was a joking protest she often made, but she never complained frankly of the cost of traveling back and forth a couple of times a week to see a husband who no longer recognized her. She always looked cheerful, partly because she always wore a series of brightly colored scarves which lit her face and set off her handsome head of white hair. Karen wished she could make some acknowledging comment, like sending her regards to Mr. Hawkins, but he had been taken off the island a couple of years before she had arrived.

  “Karen,” Henrietta said, as she accepted her ticket, “the funeral for Dickie is going to be at my house tomorrow. Red will be there getting it ready today, and Milly’s organizing, the food. I was wondering if you could speak to a few of the young men and find out if one of them wants to give a eulogy, or maybe several of them would just like to say a few words. There isn’t to be a service, prayers or anything of that sort. Sadie said Dickie, hated that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll ask them,” Karen said. “I’m working at the pub tonight. Riley’s on this sailing.”

  “Good. I’ll speak to him myself. It’s going to be at noon; so the men can come on their lunch break.”

  “Oh,” Karen said as Henrietta’s car started forward, “Miss James is going in this morning.”

  “Fine. I’ll take her. She’s probably going to her dentist. It’s on my way.”

  The bus service into Vancouver, once adequate, was now intolerable. It had taken Karen some months to learn which drivers of cars going onto the ferry were comfortably willing to accommodate foot passengers. There were some drivers—Dickie had been among them—who made a point of driving so recklessly that they wouldn’t ever be inconvenienced. But young men like Rat and Adam were surprisingly amiable about it, even if they were taken out of their way. Riley was reliably unreliable. This morning nobody would be safe with him.

  Karen couldn’t have believed in summer when she had first been hired that she’d ever like this job, the huge lines of tourist traffic, people too late to pick up their car reservations, whole families of tired kids and frustrated parents left behind with nobody but Karen to blame and nowhere to spend the night. She hadn’t known the islanders from the tourists, which ferocious dogs in the backs of pickup trucks were just bluffing, which might lunge for a patch of uniform and flesh. The troubles of winter—getting up in the dark, the wind blowing, ferries often delayed by rough seas, sometimes even cancelled—were experiences she shared with people she now knew.

  After selling the final several tickets, Karen took her keys to unlock the ramp controls and walked down the short line of cars, smiling. She signaled Riley, first in line, onto the dock and then followed him. The wind was fresh and the heavy sky was now washed with modest pinks.

  In the pass the ferry sounded, and the sea gulls parading on the dock railings rose up in noisy anticipation, for some of them would also choose to ride the ferry across the strait. The pigeons paced and racketed about the ramp, full of fretful cooing. Out on the lightening water rode several varieties of ducks.

  Lights were now on in most of the houses around the bay, and smoke from their chimneys made a layer of grey underneath the layer of cloud. Karen wondered when she had learned to distinguish between island mists and smoke.

  The ferry, brightly lighted, came round the point promptly at eight o’clock. Karen knew that everyone waiting to go aboard would take its being on time as a good omen for their day. She herself felt competent lowering the large ramp onto the ferry deck, raising the barrier, and greeting the ferry hand who came to collect her data. There were no foot passengers coming off and from the adjacent island only a couple of work trucks which would be lined up tonight to go home. Once they disembarked, Karen waved the several departing foot passengers aboard, among them the ancient Miss James who was tall and thin and erect, in a proper town hat and good winter coat.

  “Mrs. Hawkins is going to give you a lift into town,” Karen shouted.

  “Thank you, child,” Miss James replied. She called everyone under forty “child,” everyone over forty “my good man” or “my good woman,” her solution to her failing memory for names.

  When the passengers had crossed the car deck to the stairs that would lead them up into the lounges, Karen switched the light to green and waved the cars aboard, one last time wishing her travelers well.

  The only difficulty about a prompt ferry was that it meant Karen had to kill a little time before she could have morning coffee at the store and then pick up her mail. There was a kettle in the booth, but coffee was an excuse to be with people. When she had first taken the job with its odd hours, she thought what a virtue it would be to have most mornings to herself, but, if she didn’t have a specific chore, the laundry or the cleaning, she hated going back to her beach cottage and its silence. She didn’t even like to watch the birds, as she did when she was out here on the dock with so much else to do.

  Walking back down the dock, Karen wondered if she would ever get used to being alone. She had lived with Peggy for eight years. Would it take her eight more years to get over it? And if she did get over it, would she be so set in her ways that she could never live with anyone else again?

  If Peggy could see her on a morning like this or in the pub at night, she wouldn’t recognize her. For Karen had never had a job in those eight years. Peggy had wanted her to be at home. “I want to be entirely looked after,” Peggy had said. Eventually, for reasons Karen still didn’t really understand, Peggy had felt she was doing the looking after because she paid all the bills. When Karen finally asked, “What is really wrong?” Peggy had answered bluntly, “You’re boring.” It was that accusation Karen couldn’t face in her empty house, for surely that about her hadn’t changed, however busy she had kept herself. In her blank m
isery, she bored herself.

  Often Henrietta stayed in her car for the fifty-minute ride across the strait, sparing herself the long climb up the stairs and the negative social demands of people who wanted to kill time in chatter. How few people could simply watch the sea for a breaking killer whale, the sky for an eagle, the horizon for weather shaping over the mountains. How few people could simply think or read a book. This morning, however, she had to speak to Riley and then find Miss James to offer her a ride.

  She found Riley in the cafeteria, head bowed over a large plate of greasy eggs, bacon, and chips. He had not bothered to shave or comb his hair, and he might as well have had a sign hanging around his neck saying Do Not Disturb.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast, Riley,” Henrietta said, taking a seat across from him.

  He looked at her and sighed.

  “It won’t take long,” Henrietta reassured him. “I wondered if you had anything you’d like to say at Dickie’s funeral tomorrow.”

  “Me?” Riley asked, incredulous.

  “It’s very hard on a community to lose someone as young as Dickie.”

  “I should think most of you old people would be glad to see the last of him,” Riley said with sullen anger.

  “Riley, most of us have known Dickie all his life, saw him lose his father, saw him drop out of school and then gradually pull himself together, building himself that house, getting himself the truck and working hard for it all. He was still a boy to most of us, still figuring out how to live.”

  Again Riley sighed, but Henrietta could read an opening vulnerability in his dark eyes.

  “You were his friend,” she coaxed.

  “I bought him his last drink,” Riley said softly.

  “Oh, Riley, I’m sorry,” Henrietta said, and she put a hand on his arm.

  After a moment, Riley said, “Yeah, well, I guess maybe I could do something. I’m sort of torn up about it, you know?”

  “Of course you are,” Henrietta said, and she stood up. “It will be at noon at my house.”