Our Homesick Songs Page 2

  With which to fly,

  he sang,

  and sang, and sang, until the sun was up and the nets were down and the golden morning warmth cut through the mist and wind and let him sleep.

  •  •  •

  And, because Running Bay’s prevailing winds had a bit of tilt to them, a bit of westward swagger, his voice was pulled across the water and away from Little Running, where his mother and Widow Callaghan and Mrs. Dwyer would have known it to be his, and, instead, landed in the stranger front rooms and bedrooms of Big Running, coaxing the wood fire at the MacDowells’, unnerving the cats picking fish guts on the shore and catching the ear of thirteen-year-old Martha Murphy, who sat up in bed, was still awake, tying and untying knots in a length of rope twine while her sisters slept around her. Oh, she whispered under her breath. Mermaids.

  One month earlier, both of Martha’s parents drowned. Or so everyone said. When a body, or two, go out with the boats and don’t come back again after a storm, people say they drowned, even though there are, really, any number of ways they could have lost life. Certainly there are lots of situations where a body, or bodies, end up breathing water instead of air; hurried, panicked lungs sucking it in, spitting it out, sucking it in, spitting it out, until the water makes the body heavy and there’s no power left for spitting. But also, a body can, for example, be tossed up in a big wind and smashed back down again, broken on the wood of her own boat, or maybe something even harder, like a bucket or a mast or an anchor. Or a gust can bring to life something otherwise dead, like a pole or a tool, and it can fly into a skull, crashing and shattering, and that’s that. Or a boat can get pounded into bits by the waves and a body can die of thirst or hunger or loneliness while clutching a bit of floating debris, floating further and further and further out for days and days and days. There are any number of ways a body, or bodies, can die at sea, so people just say drowned to simplify things. Martha Murphy was thirteen years old and had three sisters, two older, one younger, when both her parents drowned.

  She was wearing itchy black tights that, as she had grown an inch already this month, were too small for her and pulled down with every step. Over these she wore a black dress that had been her sister’s up until that morning, when she had gone to put on her own and found it indecently short.

  Wear mine, said Meredith, her sister, throwing it over her bed onto Martha’s. But don’t give it back. You’ll probably stretch it weird.

  What will you wear? said Martha. You don’t have another black one.

  I’ll wear Minnie’s. It pretty much fits already.

  What will she wear?

  Mom’s.

  Oh.

  And you can give yours to Molly.

  What if Minnie doesn’t want to wear Mom’s?

  She’ll be fine.

  What? said Minnie, coming into their shared room. She was still in her nightgown. It had to pass through three more of them and already had holes along the bottom.

  You’ll be fine, said Meredith.

  So Martha wore her sister’s black dress, now hers, and her too-small black tights, with her yellow rain jacket over both and her almost-black hair in a braid that bumped awkwardly over the jacket’s hood. She walked in line with her sisters, first Minnie, then Meredith, then her, then Molly, down Big Running Main Street to the church that looked like the wind should have got it down years ago, where her grandparents were waiting, along with the rest of the town, to start her parents’ funeral. Since there were no bodies there were no caskets, either, and when the time came for throwing earth, they all took turns throwing handfuls into an empty hole.

  •  •  •

  That evening, after the wake, Martha’s grandparents from her now-dead mother’s side gathered all the Murphy sisters into their front room: Minnie, Meredith and Martha side by side on the small sofa, and Molly on the floor leaning against their legs, her feet tucked away so as not to touch the wood stove and burn. Outside it was raining and raining and raining.

  Leaving them there, their grandparents went upstairs; Martha could tell by where the wood was creaking overhead that they were in her parents’ bedroom. They were walking back and forth, speaking softly to each other. Downstairs, Martha listened, Molly sniffled rhythmically every five seconds or so, Minnie smoothed her littlest sister’s hair in even strokes and Meredith stared straight ahead, into the fire.

  After half an hour, their grandfather called for Minnie to come up. She went and stayed for about ten minutes, then came back down and told Meredith to go up. Then Martha, then Molly. Downstairs, they didn’t talk. They just listened and sniffled and stroked and stared. Then, after it was all done and their grandparents had left to catch an overnight boat back to St. John’s, Molly said,

  I got a fiddle.

  But you already have a fiddle, said Martha.

  I got a better one, and a bow with hairs. And rosin.

  I got a splitting knife, said Meredith.

  I got a quilt, said Minnie.

  I got twine, said Martha. A needle, a card and twine.

  They took a few minutes to look at each other’s things, then quieted the fire, went upstairs to their room, took off their black clothes and went to bed, Martha sharing with Molly, Meredith and Minnie not sharing, but with their beds pulled up close to one another. Martha could hear them whispering.

  . . . but you don’t actually believe in them.

  I don’t know. Maybe I do. Maybe tonight I do.

  What are they saying? whispered Molly into Martha’s back. Warm breath.

  Mermaids, said Martha.

  Oh, said Molly. Do you?

  Of course. Yes I do, of course.

  Because everyone did. Everyone believed, everyone knew, that mermaids were the sea-dead, singing their love back to you. If it wasn’t too loud with rain or waves, you could hear them in the wind, most nights.

  (1992)

  A month went by and Finn’s mother came home and his father left.

  A few days later, the word went around that Jack Penney, the baker, had gone too, gone west to be a big machinery mechanic, and that, before he did, he used up every ingredient he had making dozens and dozens of pies and tarts and muffins and breads and buns and had left them all out in his shop with a note on the door that said:

  Please Help Yourselves.

  Pretty much everyone on the island came to the bakery after that. It was like a party; people came from miles away, mostly on foot, boats or trucks, but some even on horses. There were more voices and people in the same space than Finn could ever remember. Martha carried home two dark loaves, one big and one small, a partridgeberry tart and a bag of crescent rolls; Cora carried six oat-and-cranberry cookies, three white baguettes and a box of cinnamon buns; and Finn carried a blueberry pie, six dinner buns and one of each of the four kinds of cookies. After everyone had gone, they left the bakery door open so animals and birds could come in and finish the leftovers.

  •  •  •

  Cora spent most of her time in their neighbors’ empty house, reading travel books from the library boat or making up slow songs on her violin. Finn wasn’t allowed in, but he liked to sit on the front step and listen. Usually Cora left the sitting-room window open a little bit so he could talk to her through it. Sometimes he brought his accordion too, if it wasn’t raining, in case she wanted to play together, but she never played songs he knew.

  What are you reading about today? Finn hooked his fingers over the windowsill’s lip; there was just enough space for them.

  Mexico, said Cora. She pressed the book up to the glass so Finn could see.

  Happy Backpacker Guides Presents:

  MEXICO!

  1967 EDITION

  There were some laughing people in old-fashioned clothes dancing on a sand beach on the cover.

  They sometimes eat chocolate on chicken there, she said.

  Wow, said Finn.

  Yep, said Cora. It’s way better than here.

  Is it?

>   Yep. I hate it here, said Cora.

  You do?

  Yep.

  Not everything. Not all of it, said Finn. You like the empty houses.

  I like them better than ours. That doesn’t mean I really like them.

  You like rock jumping. And copying pans. And summer swimming, and—

  I only like doing those things with people, said Cora. With friends.

  But I— said Finn, then stopped. Anyway, he said, they’ll be back.

  They won’t.

  They will.

  I bet you they won’t.

  I bet they will.

  They put five dollars on it, even though neither of them had five dollars.

  How long till they’re back? asked Cora.

  A year, said Finn.

  Hm, said Cora.

  They shook hands through the open window, then Cora went back to the neighbors’ sofa and opened her book.

  Want to play “The Fish of the Sea”? asked Finn.

  Not right now.

  OK.

  Finn sat on the step, watching the road to see if anyone would come by. He decided he’d stay there until after ten blue cars had passed. But only one did, and it was white.

  Well, I guess I’m going to look for caribou.

  OK. She didn’t look up from her book. She had her fingers holding several places in the pages.

  You want to come?

  No thanks.

  •  •  •

  Finn wore rubber boots so he could walk right through the bogs, but he still had to be careful not to get sucked down or stuck. There was a cairn about two miles out that he was aiming for. He had constructed it the last time he was there, carefully balanced on a raised plateau of red rock, and he wanted to see if it was still intact. The southern half of the island had trees, clumps of dark, skinny tamaracks and firs, but the northern half, where they lived, was too windy, so it was just rocks and lichen and bog and more rocks. If Finn stood up beside his cairn he could see out for miles. Miles and miles of bumpy orange and gray. And sometimes caribou, too, in heavy brown clusters, or less often just one at a time. As long as he didn’t get too close, they would pay him no attention, just carry on eating or, if it was autumn, calling or, most often, just standing. They could stand perfectly still for minutes and minutes, like cairns. Finn would watch them while picking and piling rocks, counting out their stillness in seconds under his breath.

  On his way back he watched the ground for any early cranberries, anything to add to one more family dinner of just-starting-to-get-stale bread and soup. Cora joined him halfway and they walked home together.

  They’ll be back, said Finn.

  They won’t.

  They will.

  •  •  •

  Their time was mostly their own now. The Canadian Maritimes Distance Communities Homeschool work they had to do was easy; they’d do their week’s worth on Sunday between lunch and supper and then Finn and Cora were free to do what they wanted for the rest of the week, so long as they did some music practice and didn’t drown. This meant that Cora would go to the neighbors, where she’d started to keep the blinds closed so Finn couldn’t look in. I’m making you a surprise, she said, that’s why. Even so, Finn stopped to check each time he passed, just in case she’d left them open that day.

  After checking, Finn would go south to build cairns with the caribou, or north to the shore, where he’d take his shoes and socks off and practice standing in the freezing water for as long as he could, or row himself east, across to accordion lessons with Mrs. Callaghan.

  Martha would work nets. Nobody needed them for fish anymore, but sometimes she’d sell one as something to throw over garbage to keep it from blowing away on collection day.

  •  •  •

  Two weeks and one day before Aidan came home and Martha left again, it was Finn’s eleventh birthday. Martha made bunting and hung it over his bed in the night while he was sleeping and Cora played “Happy Birthday” on her fiddle as an alarm clock. Because they were all sick of bread and sweet things, they had birthday crab cakes, with one of their emergency power-outage candles stuck in Finn’s. Did you make a wish? asked his father over the phone, which they had hooked onto a bowl on the table with the cable stretching between them.

  Cora gave Finn a small rectangular package wrapped in last month’s Island Happenings and Shipping Forecast, on which she had drawn a picture of him with his accordion and a dog.

  We don’t have a dog, said Finn.

  I know, but it looked lonely without it.

  The dog was the black-and-white collie-type. It was very well drawn.

  It’s great, said Finn.

  Thanks, said Cora. Open it.

  Finn was careful not to tear the picture as he unwrapped. Inside was a slim book with a plasticky cover: A Collection of Local Jigs, Reels and Airs Based on the Flora and Fauna of the Region. It was dark red.

  Wow, thanks, said Finn.

  I thought maybe we could learn some together, said Cora.

  Yeah? said Finn.

  He flipped it open to a random page. “The Northern Long-Eared Bat Reel.”

  Sure, said Cora.

  That’s really lovely, said Martha. Did you steal it from the library boat?

  Yeah.

  Still, it’s really lovely.

  Don’t forget, there’s one more gift, said Aidan-on-the-phone.

  Yes, yes, I’ll go get it, said Martha.

  She came back with something awkwardly long covered in the quilt from their bed. She handed it to Finn.

  Does he have it? asked phone-Aidan.

  Almost, said Martha.

  Finn struggled a little, then managed to pull the quilt off to one side. Underneath was a fishing rod. Old-fashioned.

  Wow, he said.

  It was mine! said phone-Aidan. My first one!

  Happy birthday, said Martha.

  Do you like it? asked Aidan.

  I love it, said Finn.

  Really?

  Really.

  •  •  •

  The next day Cora went back to the neighbors’, and Finn, in his rubber boots and fish sweater, dragged their old dory down to the water with the new-old fishing rod rolling back and forth in it. Cora’s picture of him, the accordion and the dog, was in his corduroy trousers’ front right pocket. He waded through the shallows, pushing the boat out, and then, when the water was almost at the tops of his boots, he crawled up and in, rocking it a bit, but managing not to tip. He pushed off and paddled into the deeper middle water. Then he hooked and strung and weighted and baited the rod and then, with the leaded pull of water’s soft gravity, let the hook sink down and down. And then Finn waited.

  Even though nobody had seen a fish off their shore all year. Although nobody had caught a fish since the year he turned nine. Finn sat, and waited. There were no other boats out. Nothing but wind and water for miles.

  •  •  •

  He went out every morning, as the days grew rainier and the daylight pulled back and the mists and fogs rose up around him. Every day. Sometimes he would bring A Collection of Local Jigs, Reels and Airs Based on the Flora and Fauna of the Region to read and sometimes he wouldn’t. The plastic library cover made it more rainproof than most books. Sometimes he brought his accordion and tried to sight-read with one hand while holding the pole in the other. Sometimes he would take a break to go to Mrs. Callaghan’s and get her help playing one of the new songs.

  Have you played this one with Cora yet? she would ask.

  And Finn would say, No, not yet.

  •  •  •

  It was almost the end of September and, as he always did, Finn stopped by their neighbors’ window on his way home from no-fish fishing to check on Cora through the cracks in the blinds for thirty-three seconds, but this time, he only got to eleven when Cora looked up and said, Finn?

  Yeah?

  You should come in, I want to show you something.

 
OK.

  Finn waited for Cora to go unlock the front door, but she didn’t. Instead, she ducked under the blinds so she was between them and the pane, and pulled the window the rest of the way open. This way, she said. Then she ducked back down under the blinds and away.

  Finn left his fishing rod leaning against the house and crawled up and over the sill, the unsanded wooden frame scratching along his chest and legs through his clothes. He dropped down the other side and ducked under the blinds into what should have looked like the Ryans’ front room. But it didn’t. Not anymore.

  Well? said Cora. What do you think?

  Everything was bright yellow and pink and blue and green and red. The walls were covered in cutout skulls, all sizes and colors, all grinning. Some of them had flowers for eyes. There were big pieces of green card cut and pasted together into cactus shapes all up the sides of the sofa and fireplace. There were bright balls and animals and skeletons hanging down off the ceiling, and a giant, fierce-looking paper eagle clutching a terrified-looking paper snake over the top of the front door. The door itself had a bunch of bright red and orange and yellow pepper shapes and green lime-slice shapes on it.

  Wow, said Finn.

  It’s Mexico, said Cora.

  It’s amazing, said Finn. And it’s really hot.

  I turned the radiators all the way up. For Mexico.

  Oh yeah, of course. Wow. Finn unzipped his sweater. Where’d you get all the colored paper?

  Kids’ books from the library.

  Oh, smart.

  Thanks. You wanna hit the piñata? We can use the fire-poker, and one of the kitchen towels for a blindfold.

  Sure. Just let me take off my sweater . . . it’s really, really hot.

  The average daytime temperature in Cancún in September is twenty-eight degrees Celsius.

  Wow. So this is what it’s like.

  This is just what it’s like.

  They took turns hitting at a blue donkey piñata until Cora finally got it, on her third turn. She smashed it open at the belly and a cascade of cutout words and photos from the Mexico! book cascaded out all over them.

  •  •  •

  The next day the blinds were closed again, so Finn went back to no-fish fishing.