The Sister's Tale by Beth Powning (e reader for manga .txt) 📕

—

“He’s to be hanged,” Ellen said, after Josephine left the house. “Oh, I wish Mr. Dougan was here.”

Flora mixed egg, sugar and cinnamon with the rice. She plucked handfuls of the sticky mixture from the bowl with floury hands, making croquettes to store in the ice box for Christmas day.

Maud was stirring the cranberry sauce, watching it thicken. “Who?” she said. “Who is to be hanged?”

“That axe murderer, Mr. Crowley. He’s to be hanged tomorrow.”

Alongside her Irish poems, Ellen posted with hatpins the most salacious of the newspaper articles about the trial. She unpinned one and waved it at them, then read it aloud; triumphantly, Flora thought.

“Unless the hand of Providence intervenes between John Crowley and the gallows, he will undergo sentence of death tomorrow, for one of the most heinous crimes on record in New Brunswick. By the judge’s request, the hanging will not be made public. Well, now, we can all sleep safe in our beds.”

Maud stared at her. “That’s horrible.”

“Don’t you be feeling sorry for the man,” Ellen snapped. “Remember what he did. This is the coroner’s testimony: I lifted the woman’s skirts up to examine her. I saw that there were bruises on the inside of both thighs and scratches on the right groin. The bruises appeared to be from a man’s hand and the scratches from a man’s fingernails. Then he goes on about the blows of the axe. The whole forehead was broken in.”

She pressed the paper back on the wall, pushing the hatpin deeper than necessary, as if she wished a permanent testimony.

“Good riddance to him,” Ellen whispered.

TEN A Wooden Wheelbarrow

MAUD AND JOSEPHINE WRAPPED themselves in ankle-length wool-blanket coats with scarlet stripes on sleeves and hems. They pulled caps onto their heads, tied woven sashes around their waists. Maud’s skates hung over her shoulder and she held out a pair for her mother.

“I want you to skate too, Mother. Please. There’s a boy that’s been ogling me.”

Josephine took the skates.

Flora, rummaging in the front hall closet, dug out an old toque, a worn canvas coat that had once been George’s, and a pair of fleece-lined rubber boots. She sat on the bench, pulling heavy socks over her black stockings.

“It will be lovely in the rink,” Flora said. She heard her own accent, how words were changing in her mouth, less fluid, more like solid, sharp-edged blocks. She exchanged looks with Maud. They had talked of how they must contrive to get Josephine out into the cold air, to talk and laugh with other people.

Maud and Josephine stepped into the snow-refracted light. Jasper Tuck, at the door, returned their greeting and came into the house. He stared at Flora. Boldly, she thought, looking away. She was tugging rubber handles at the top of the boots.

“Wondering what you was doing this morning.”

“You need help with the miniature house?”

“I was going to ask you to play a game of checkers with me. In the parlour.”

She dropped elbows onto knees, boy-like. “It is Saturday afternoon, Mr. Tuck. I took my half day this morning. I am going out to clean the chicken pen.”

“Well, then. I guess I’m goin’ to have to help you.”

“I don’t need no…any help. Thank you, though.”

Going to the barn, her breath came in clouds, the skin of her face papery.

Checkers!

He could not be sweet on her. He was too old. He must be lonely.

This morning she had awakened from her recurrent dream, tears on her cheeks—Don’t go, Flora, don’t go!—Enid’s hands torn from hers, a carriage grown to vast proportions rumbling over cobblestones. She sat up violently, arms around knees, head buried, striving to balance the dream’s essence—betrayal, rage—with determination.

She is somewhere in Nova Scotia, Flora thought, pushing a wooden wheelbarrow into the empty stall where the chickens lived in the winter.

My sister, at this very moment, working like me, in the same freezing air.

The hens burst out in a flurry of scaly legs, feathers and dust. She set the tines of a pitchfork into the bedding, releasing hot, ammonia steam. She pried and lifted, cleaning away the manure and dumping it into the wheelbarrow until the floorboards were visible.

Jasper Tuck came into the barn from his workroom. She pulled the toque from her sweating scalp, panting; her hair slid from its pins, unfurled onto her shoulders.

He took the handles of the wheelbarrow, pushed it out the door and down the shovelled path to the manure pile. He tipped the handles as if it were no weight and returned it to the barn.

He reached for the pitchfork but she snatched it close.

“No. I can do it.”

He looked down at her. A veil tore between them.

“You come get me for the next load, then. That’s too heavy for a girl.”

Her heart speeded. She was not accustomed to kindness, could not sort it out from cruelty or expedience. She thought of how the wheelbarrow’s iron wheel sank into the snow when she cleaned the cow’s stall, loaded with less.

—

Harland went down on one knee, balanced on skate point, tightening Josephine’s laces. She saw silvery hairs poking from beneath his astrakhan hat and remembered how, at this same rink, sixteen years old, she had skated arm in arm with a friend, having spurned his advances.

“I never could get them tight enough,” she said.

She stood, took his arm and made a few trotting steps; then bent her right knee as he bent his. The cornet band, seated on a raised platform, played waltzes and polkas: “Beautiful Dreamer,” “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” “Funiculì Funiculà.” Beneath the music, scraping blades made a sound like hundreds of miniature saws, while light shafts slanted down from windows set around the high pyramid roof. Smell of wool, of cold. Her heart began a healthy pounding—one of his arms snugged hers close, the other beat time at his side, his legs were transformed, supple and smooth, sweeping them around the rink. Permelia, circling in the crush, skated arm in