“MILLIE DOESN’T MIND if I come in, she never does. If she minded people coming in her house, she’d lock the door, wouldn’t she? But she doesn’t. She hasn’t locked the door in years. Everyone knows everyone out here, we’ve grown up together, for God’s sake. Right on top of each other, really.”
Helen Goodyear was like a tour guide, explaining every single step.
“And you a police officer, it’s not like you’re here to rob anything.”
Helen was a small woman, stooped, with an ordered pile of white hair. All of the knuckles on both hands were fat and angry red with arthritis, her face creased and brown from the sun. She was wearing a summer dress, blue, but the hem had come unstitched and she hadn’t noticed, so that the skirt ended in an uneven fringe of ravelled cloth.
Helen stopped on the porch, turning as if the motion provided some essential piece of punctuation to what she was going to say next. “I tell you, I know what I saw. But I don’t know if anyone else saw anything. You’ll have to ask for yourself.”
Behind the house, there was a big shrub rose, the white buds tipped with pink, falling over itself with the weight of the flowers that had already bloomed, the tips of some of the branches rubbing against the side of the house. Thrown over everything, the sound of the ocean, the swells running up the bay and falling on the stones, hauling the loose rocks back into the water with a clatter.
Helen stood in front of a two-storey house that had once been white, with rough-sided clapboard now showing through in patches. The peaked roof with its black shingles dipped along in the middle of the roofline in a gentle, hipped curve. Millie’s house was prominent among the handful of houses in the bottom of the valley between the river and the road, the highest of the six in elevation, but the lawn was ragged and uncut, high with browning timothy grass, a spruce tree heavy in the front yard and the ground beneath it carpeted with cast-off needles and scattered wet spruce cones.
Millie’s house was like all of them, turned so that it was facing away from the wind off the water. Each at its own subtle angle, backing or shouldering into the wind, not squared off like new houses on a suburban side street. The houses all standing as if they were performers in a play, caught fixed in time at one particular point in their blocking, each part of a lengthy and familiar conversation, lines practised and delivered over and over again. That was easiest to see from above: as the road curled in from Placentia, the houses suddenly appeared, laid out and clearly visible, so that finding them was like a discovery made while landing a small plane on a narrow asphalt runway.
“Millie’s in here all the time, she’s the best here for making bread, so I try to time coming over when there’s bread baking, you can’t beat that.” Helen was talking so that her words were thrown back over her shoulder as she walked down the narrow hall.
She walked into the empty kitchen, put her hand on the cold enamelled stove that hunkered down next to the back wall, and then walked to the window, peering out through the small square panes of glass. The paint was peeling on the mullions between the panes, white once but freckled now with small black blemishes of mildew.
“She’s not here, and I don’t see her in the garden either, but she can’t have gone far. Used to be it was like she was attached to her kitchen with string, she was that easy to find. For the last few months, though, she’s never been here when I needed her. Maybe she’s found a man.” Helen laughed behind her hand at her own joke, her eyes flitting back and forth, looking for someone else to join in. “Found a man? She’s the same age as me, officer.”
Helen in front of the window, checking her reflection in the glass, tucking away loose strands of hair behind one ear. An old mirror, with the silver backing coming away in the corners.
“You can see all of the houses from here, we’re always right on top of each other, everyone minding each other’s business. You get used to it.” She pointed outside, her index finger bent. Her hand was shaking slightly. “That’s Wakeham’s over there, he’s a nasty old man, spits all the time, and a mouth on him like a sewer. Never anything good to say about anyone. And then, next to that, the two Hodges, Davey in the yellow house and Mike and his wife in the red one. My house you know, and the Slips are in that pale green one. They used to have two cars, in that narrow little driveway—can you imagine? And whoever was going out first took whatever car was closest to the road. Keys on a hook in the kitchen right inside the door, I could have taken one for a spin if I wanted to, and I don’t even drive.” She laughed, paused. “Not that I would, officer.
“Never see a car down there now. Must have taken them a little to get used to that. You can talk to all of them, if they’re around. I don’t know what they’ll be able to tell you that I can’t.”
The house quiet, hot-air still, the rooms almost soaking up sound. There was only the faint ticking of the house shifting in the heat, individual boards giving a slight creak or an occasional snap as they settled, eased. No steady tread of someone walking upstairs—no sounds from outside. No shouts—no dogs barking.
The curtains hanging limp in the windows, exhausted.
“It’s never really been a town. It seems too small to be a place that could have its own name. But it’s been St. Peter’s for so many years now, so I guess the highway signs are going to say that no matter how small it gets.”
Helen opened the front door, revealing a rectangle of outdoors, the warmth of the summer morning flowing in through the gap like smoke.
The valley was cut up into rough squares with rail fences, the river fast and tea brown but low. The Slips’ house with one broken window obvious on the second floor, a slight attempt at a repair with quarter-inch plywood. Down below, a lilac in the front yard, all of its blooms gone away, the branches heavy with green seed pods, the flutes of the blooms bleached and brown and scattered on the ground like intricately formed wet confetti. The small harbour a creation of time and the river’s erosion. The belly of the valley full of dark soil and gravels pulled down from the higher ground over thousands of years.
Out over Placentia Bay, big clouds were scudding left to right, heavy enough to be thunderheads, waiting for just the right time to roll in like an army advancing and soak the land. Helen closed Millie’s front door behind herself, looking around almost immediately, as if expecting Millie to change her mind and make an appearance after all.
“I’d take you down to see the Slips, because they’re just as close to the water, almost next to the wharf, and their fishing shed is right next to the road there as well. But I don’t think they’re home. I don’t see them much at all anymore, and without the cars, it’s hard to know when they’re there.” Her voice suddenly quiet. “I’m not sure if they’d even come to the door. I think I may have done something to make them angry with me. It’s not so very hard to do. If there’s one thing they’ve always been good at, it’s holding a grudge.”
In the fresh air, the smell of the spruce trees on both sides of the river was stronger, as if the heat was pulling perfume out of the blue-green needles. The lupines were already dropping their flowers and setting seeds, the flowers that remained running up the side of the hill opposite like purple flames of a slow-travelling brush fire. There was one dry gravel road running straight down between the houses towards the bay and, springing from it like branches, narrow green paths that gave the impression of a community of sheep or other livestock, rather than people.
Helen was walking quickly once she reached the road, her feet kicking up dust and small stones, her voice echoing off the flat, square faces of the houses. “Before it was St. Peter’s, it was just called The Green, and it was that for years and years. Even in a dry year when there’s no rain for weeks and the hills go all brown, the valley stays green, see? The river gets low, but it never stops draining—and there are peat bogs up there for miles, just a big sponge sending water down to The Green all summer long. There’s pasture here when everything else up and down the coast is dead and dry. But you know how it is: eventually a priest got posted down here on the shore who thought that saints’ names were better. When it comes to religion, people are always willing to do what they’re told.”
Helen turning, stopping in her tracks, a small pale cloud of dust lifting up from her last few steps and blowing away on the light wind. “There have been people here for 180 years, you know. There used to be more people, sure, but 180 years? That’s something. Fishing the whole time, when there were fish. Same families, same work.”
At the last house before the beach, there were starlings nesting at the joint where the roof met the walls, tufts of sticks and straw visible around a hole in the clapboard facing. Occasionally, a sharp yellow beak and a black, glassy inspecting eye peered out, and then were pulled back out of sight almost immediately, like a curious neighbour pulling back a curtain. At one end the shingles were torn completely away, showing the boards of the roof, worn grey like the ribs of some large dead animal.
“My Patrick fished his whole life from here, out on the water almost every day all summer long, but for me it was a lot quieter. I’d wait for the boat to come back in, and when they were bigger, the boys went with him, until they moved away. Hard, steady work, and no money in it either. When there was fish, there was no price for it. When there was a price, there wasn’t any fish. But you’re not here to hear about that, I know. And we’re almost there anyway.”
The road curved slightly and ended at a concrete-deck wharf with yellow-painted four-by-fours all around the lip. There were tire marks on the rough concrete, from either a car pulling away fast or some sudden-braking game of ocean Truth or Dare. Helen stopped and pointed, her lips tightly pursed. “They came down right here, down to the wharf, just last Saturday. There’s no boats here anymore, not full time, but that doesn’t stop the government from coming down and fixing the wharf every year anyway.
“Kids come down here in the evening all the time in the summer, driving down from Placentia or St. Bride’s, and you don’t want to know the kinds of things they do in their cars. I mean, I’m sure you know, but you probably don’t want to be seeing it right there in public any more than I do. One moment there’s two people in the front seat, and then there’s only one, and it’s not hard for anyone to figure out the kinds of things that are going on.”
A hard, quick frown crossed her face, disapproval cast in flesh. “And I pick up more bottles—liquor bottles, beer bottles, and cans too. Not out of the ordinary to have someone out there five nights or so out of the week when the weather’s good, and sometimes you hear their music all over the valley—and believe me, it wouldn’t be worth your while to go down and ask them to keep it down. Ask Millie about that if you get the chance—they’ll say things you can’t even imagine.”
She stopped again. “Right here. That Saturday, they drove right out onto the wharf, the two of them, and he left the headlights on when he got out. It was eleven, but there was still a bit of light, no moon. And couples, you know, they fight sometimes, and they were just kids, really. They were arguing out at the end there, and until I got pretty close, I could really only see their legs in the lights. And she turned her back on him and he just put his hands in the small of her back and gave her a shove—just like this, just a little shove, but at the same time you could tell he meant to do it—and she kind of tripped over the edge and went in the water. And she came up angry, like it was a really bad joke or something, shrieking at him.”
Helen stood beside the shed just before the wharf, showing how she had held herself flat against the side of the building and peered out around the corner, only a fraction of her face showing. In front of the shed, torn piles of net and a long rectangular pile of lobster pots, drying, dead sea urchins still clinging to the wooded frames and smelling like rot and iodine.
Helen looked down at the lobster traps. “He’s not from here. He’s from down the shore, but he works from this wharf for the lobster season. Used to be Patrick’s fishing grounds before he died.” She looked back towards the wharf. “Saturday, I wasn’t far away, just here by the shed. Behind the shed so they couldn’t see me, not that they were looking or anything, and it was dark anyway, and he bent over at first when she got on the ladder and climbed back up, like he was trying to help her out of the water, but then he just stood up straight and he kicked her. Kicked her right in the face, and she landed on her back, down in the water again, and it was like she was all loose. It was clear she was hurt.”
Wind came down off the high ground then and wound close around Helen like an exhaled breath, bringing with it the smell of the ground juniper and the blueberries, the waxy richness of the rhodora. All around, things were moving, plants nodding, the new candles on the fir trees still fresh enough to flex up and down in the wind. On the horizon, the clouds continued their march, darkening.
“Then he got in the car and backed straight off the wharf, swung it around here where the road’s wide and headed back for the highway,” Helen said, and she was shaking her head while she said it. “I don’t think he saw me, but the headlights caught in my eyes, and I couldn’t see a thing then, couldn’t tell you what kind of car it was or anything, not that I know that much about cars. And he was up the road and gone, just gone, tires spitting rocks back behind the car, and I couldn’t even guess to tell you where he went after that, except that he turned towards St. Bride’s, not Placentia.
“And I remember that as soon as the car was gone, I had the strangest feeling that I had gone deaf, as if after the noise of the tires squealing off the wharf I’d never be able to hear again. But then I realized that I could hear the waves. You forget about the waves—you hear them so much that you forget they’re even there. But that’s all I heard. I thought she might be shouting or something, but she wasn’t. I know he hit her hard, the kind of thing when you almost feel it yourself, like your body knows what it would feel like.
“I went down to the end of the wharf and called out, but there was no sign of her, not a word or a shout or anything, and with the car gone, the water was as black as ink. I even went down along the beach, down there, because she would have drifted that way. There’s a current right across the face of the wharf, and you have to watch it coming in and aim your bow as if you’re trying to hit the right-hand side square on.”
Helen pulled her shoulders back and shivered, as if the wind had turned cold and was coming in off the water. “I said to Millie we should call the RCMP right away, but she didn’t say a word. I don’t agree with that, but she has her own point of view. Always has. And we don’t count on police much down here. We settle most things ourselves. Mike Slip and my husband disagreed about the bottom corner of our land, and things were bad for a few years, until they settled it themselves. But this is different.”
Then back inside, the blue house this time, Helen’s own house. “I’ve spent my entire married life in this house,” she said, spreading her arms out as she said it. “My entire life. Patrick died here in the front room, and by the end I was exhausted from trying to help him breathe. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what you do: I would hear him rattling away down here, the cancer deep in his chest and him struggling, and it was like I timed every single one of my own breaths to be in line with his, as if I could help pull air into him. And he passed right here on the couch. It was summer then too, and the first thing that I heard was the birds, those little juncos out there, peeping. The only reason I could hear them was because I couldn’t hear him anymore. He’s in a grave up by Great Barrisway, his whole family up in there, and I suppose that’s where they’ll put me too, when my time comes.”
The living room was small and close, a black cast iron stove squatting in the centre of the room, cold. “There was a time when that was the only heat, that and the oil stove in the kitchen, before we got the electric. I still have the oil stove—I just don’t think the other stoves cook things as well. I haven’t anything to offer on such short notice. I was hoping Millie would have some bread, you go over and she can’t help but share, and I take advantage of that, I know I do.”
Helen sitting down then on the couch, the small living room dark and smelling of damp. “He brought this couch in from the truck on his own back. He was strong like that, strong and stubborn too. You couldn’t tell him anything. When we were first married, I thought I would change him, smooth him out a bit around the edges. But it always ran right off him like he wasn’t paying attention at all. I had my own ideas, but a place can drag you down. ‘Your own little world,’ that’s what Patrick used to say to me. ‘You’re just living in your own little world.’ Millie isn’t any better. Once, she said, ‘You’ve got your head up there in a cloud, and I ain’t saying a cloud of what.’ And I suppose I did, making up in my own head the way things were supposed to be—that Patrick was a good man in a rough skin, heading out there every day. But it’s important to keep that idea—it keeps you safe.” She stared. “You’ve got to keep a piece of yourself there, you know. A shiny, safe little bit. Like a place you can go away into in your head.”
Helen looked out through the curtains as if something moving on the other side of the glass had caught her attention. But nothing changed, the outdoors as still as a picture—each stalk of grass, each frond, suddenly still.
“That’s something they don’t teach you in any school. The trick is that you don’t let go of that last little bit. That wary bit. You keep just a little piece of your guard up, if you’re smart, just keep that little bit back inside you, and it will keep you safe.
“They don’t do it now, you know, they’re down on the wharf with their boyfriends and they don’t stop to think that you always have to have a little part of yourself outside looking in. Just in case. You split something off to just keep watching. I’ve always been good at that.
“I remember I said something to Patrick once, it wasn’t important, I can hardly think of what it was now, but he was moving logs in the stove, the little door open and the orange flames licking all around, and he had the poker in his hand, the short iron one, and the watching part of me saw his hand, just the way his fingers were around the handle, and all at once I knew. I knew because I was sensible enough to be watching, and really, I only had to take a couple of steps away—just enough space so he would think for a moment and change his mind before he actually got all the way over to me. You don’t give all of yourself ever, that’s for books, because you have to be ready. Have to know when to get out of reach, far enough away from the world that no one can touch you.”
Helen’s eyes were black then in the dark of the living room, her body perched on the edge of the couch like a bird about to take flight, her hands in her lap and busy with each other. The living room was cooler than outdoors, the air slightly thick with an unmoving humidity.
“You get better and better at it as you get older—put the walls up, and don’t let anybody shift them.
“I thought I would find her the next day down by the rocks at the far end of the beach, but I didn’t. That’s where she should have been, unless the tide was strong and she got swept out around the point on that first night. I know I thought about finding her there where the beach goes away all to gravel, her hair spread out all around her head like a fan. I would have called you right away then.”
Helen gave a brief, harsh snort. “Millie asked me if maybe I was making it all up in my head, she says I jump to conclusions sometimes, and beside, she hadn’t heard anything. She claims a mouse couldn’t come down the road without waking her up, she sleeps so lightly. But half the time when there are kids on the wharf she says she doesn’t hear anything, and she’s up above it all, anyway. Made me doubt myself enough to make me go down on the wharf to look at the tire tracks. I even got right down on my hands and knees and smelled them, just to see if they were fresh, but I couldn’t tell.
“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to a phone and call you, but I don’t think it would have made any difference. Millie probably wouldn’t have called—I know she didn’t want me to. She’s a stupid woman, really, although I do love her dearly. She won’t put things together even when they’re right there in front of her face. She leaves things out to suit herself, and she just runs away when there’s something she doesn’t want to talk about. She says I live in my own world? It’s nothing she doesn’t do, but ten times worse.”
Helen got back up from the couch, smoothing her dress down over her knees, looking around the room. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to have one last look around the beach. I’ll certainly walk down there with you, show you the top end where the current comes in close to shore. The place she should have wound up, all things considered.”
Helen was quiet for a moment, then headed for the door. “Did you know my husband, officer? You look like my husband. He was from Great Barrisway. He was a handsome man, like you.”
Helen looked around, blinking in the bright sunlight as she stepped off the porch and down the three sagging steps to the path. A pair of crows were calling back and forth across the valley, their ragged croaks hanging in the air.
“I don’t know where Millie is—I don’t have any idea where that woman might have got to. I suppose she’ll talk to you. Maybe she won’t. I don’t think that she could have gone that far—she has to be around here somewhere.”
She reached the beach, the great heaped stones of the barrisway, tons of rock brought in by the winter waves and thrown up in a long drift from one end of the cove to the other. Helen moved slowly, carefully, her feet slipping sideways on the round beach stones, heading for where the stones were smaller and the beach was flatter.
The black from the car tires, sharp-edged like ink on the concrete. The two black crows, high up in the valley, watching the woman as she walked. Helen completely alone.