Crossings Read Online Free PDF Page A

between the hours of eleven-thirty and one-thirty. And not after four in the afternoon. In general, I never saw any of the men, except at a distance. Noddy was the exception. He was allowed to come to the house and drink my instant coffee and eat my pathetic biscuits, which he pronounced ‘Great!’ He treated me with such deference, such courtesy, that I was tempted now and then to do something outrageous. In that context, something outrageous would have been the utterance of ‘damn,’ or, of course, the statement that Mik and I were not married. When I did finally tell Noddy, he was so shocked he couldn’t speak for a minute. I suppose I was a lady in the same way the cook was a slut.
    I was allowed to see the women. They came over in the mornings, across the bridge, and we had tea. They told me their stories.
    â€˜Bent right back he was, bent right back. When they did the autopsy, they said it was spinal meningitis.’ Her five-year-old son.
    â€˜But didn’t you take him into hospital? Didn’t you take him to Vancouver?’
    The woman looked at me, not understanding. It was beyond her, that act of faith. Her child had grown hot, had screamed, had bent slowly backwards like a bow, the crown of his head touching his toes, and she had suffered this to happen. ‘They had to break his bones to put him in the coffin,’ she said. She said it without tears, with a kind of awe, a sort of wonder. It was what life did to you, that was all.
    One woman said, ‘I had a baby, you know, before.’ She waved her hand in the direction of the forest. ‘But he was real good about it. He never said a word. He made me give it up though. Like, I met him when I was in the family way. So you can’t blame him. It was a girl. I never saw it. They take them away, like, if you’re going to give them up. They don’t let you see them. But they told me it was a girl.’ She was quiet for a while, drinking her tea from the terrible old mug. ‘It’s better that way, not to see them. He never throws it up to me.’
    Another woman, big, with a large red face and house dresses starched so thickly she sounded like a nurse, said, ‘Like, on
Love of Life,
is that all written down?’ She was looking at the pages on the table. Not reading them, just looking at them, as though they were artifacts of some strange world.
    I didn’t understand at first.
    â€˜I mean, is it all written down for them, like this, all these words, so they know what to say?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, they have a script.’
    â€˜You mean, they have to learn all those words by heart?’ I could see she didn’t believe me. No one could learn all those words by heart.
    â€˜I mean, I guess I just thought that was the way they were, in real life. You know. Like that Vivian Carlson. I mean, I bet you anything that’s the way she
is,
I’ve seen her type before.’
    And, ‘Like they pay you for writing it up, eh?’
    â€˜Well, if I’m lucky. I mean, I don’t know if …’
    â€˜Like, what’s this show?’
    â€˜It’s called
Festival
. They do different plays. Different stories. It doesn’t carry on.’
    â€˜Oh yeah.’ She nodded. ‘CBC. My husband, he won’t watch the CBC.’
    I didn’t know what to say. ‘Sometimes they have good things on,’ lamely.
    â€˜He says they don’t ever finish. He gets so
mad.
So you just make it up out of your head, like. I guess you get a lot of ideas from books.’
    â€˜Well, you’re not supposed to.’
    â€˜I don’t know how you do it.’
    â€˜Well, it’s not really just out of your head. I mean, that one I did, I really know people like that. I mean, that did actually happen. They did break up, and she did go away with the best friend.’
    â€˜You mean, like, people tell you stories and you just write it up in good grammar?’
    â€˜Well, not