Mother Lode Read Online Free PDF Page B

rocking horse back
that Jorie had given her for her fourth birthday, Eliza craved
more.
    When they’d been there about a week, she
said, “Jawie, will you talk French with me?”
    Her question caused him to wince, though he
didn’t remember why. “I don’t know French, Izzy.”
    “Mummy and I do. I could teach you.” She
crawled up on his lap.
    “I’ll read to you.”
    Half way through the story Eliza asked for
the hundredth time, “When’s Mummy coming back?”
    He closed the book. “I don’t know,
Izzy.”
    He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the
truth. Not yet.
     
    He had trouble keeping his mind on his work.
A sealed envelope had been sent up to him; the unsigned note had a
single word— “Murderer!” He asked downstairs who’d delivered it,
but no one knew: “It was just lying there by the mail.”
    Jorie’d made more mistakes in the past two
weeks than he’d made altogether before. His boss called him in.
    “I know this is a hard time for you, lad,
but we can’t have this. Sloppy. Makes the paper look bad.”
    Jorie nodded. He barely heard him.
    “Are you listening to me?”
    “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”
    “You’ll have to watch
your Ps and Qs , if
you want to set type for the Copper
Country Evening News .”
    Wherever he went suspicion
followed. An ill wind of whispers had escalated to full-blown
confrontations. “How come you took your ma way out there that day?
Didn’t you know the storm was coming in?”
    Did he know?
    Two lads he knew from school jumped out from
behind a bush one evening and yelled, “Mother killer!”
    He stopped going anywhere except to work,
and would leave the house no more than necessary. He made a small
pine cupboard for Helena’s dishes. He fashioned a wooden puppet for
Eliza Carving each piece carefully, it gave him some sense of
purpose and kept him busy when he wasn’t at work. She squealed with
delight, and asked him to make another so they could play ‘pretend’
together.
     
    Jorie could put off returning to the house
no longer. He could not risk someone else finding the loathsome
object first.
    This time the house was quiet. Not aired
since the day of the storm, a musty smell pervaded it. The sound of
scurrying mice reached his ears as he entered his room.
    From the back of the closet he pulled out a
box of school composition books. Rifling through the pile, he found
at last the one he was looking for—the journal of his
transgressions and punishment. Presented to him when he was seven,
he’d been required to record his misdemeanors in it for years.
    Jorie took the book downstairs and put
newspaper in the kitchen stove. His hands shook as he lit the
match, making it difficult to light the paper. As the flame finally
rose, he tore the pages from the book, and one by one fed them to
the blaze. A mixture of anger, sadness and remorse coursed through
him as he sat transfixed, watching the flames curl and consume the
record of his childhood shame.

Chapter 4
    Walking to the poker game that night, Earl
carried his memories about the girl he’d known in school. He’d been
crazy for her then, when they’d both lived up in Red Jacket. What a
country bumpkin she must have thought him! He, who’d never been
outside Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and she, a young lady from
Edinburgh, Scotland!
    She was fine looking, but it was her mane of
red hair and her fiery green eyes that made everybody take notice.
Well, that was a long time ago. Earl was always dreaming of making
a touchdown, just to impress Catherine. It was the first year
they’d had football at his school, and everybody was keen on it.
And then yes, on that one day, the forty yard run all the way down
the field with no one even close behind. The whole school was
cheering him on. Nothing could stop him from reaching the goal
post. Nothing did.
    But it hadn’t made a bit of difference.
Catherine McGaurin had been too good for anybody. With a daddy that
took her everywhere—to concerts, even to