Dollybird by Anne Lazurko Page A

“Oh Lord.” She held Casey too close and he squirmed to get away.
    â€œI tried to make it in Halifax, but there was no work. We was practically starving and Taffy pregnant and then...” My voice broke and I hated myself, because part of me enjoyed the telling and the sympathy it brought. Part of me wanted there to be a clean white scar where the wound was. See it the way these people saw it. But when I ducked my head to fake tears, all I could think of was the part I wasn’t telling where it was my fault.
    â€œDon’t you worry...?”
    â€œDillan.”
    â€œDillan. This little fellow can stay with us while you work the harvest.”
    â€œI’ll make out okay.” My hands unclenched and shoulders relaxed even as I protested. Someone else to worry over Casey, to figure out what he needed, to be responsible.
    â€œNonsense. Look, we’re Mr. and Mrs. George Miller. You come have supper with us, ask about us in town if you like, see if we’re trustworthy enough.” She glanced at her husband and laughed out loud. “The boy will be fine.”
    I liked her. She was straight-on, looked at you when she spoke, and her eyes were kind. “Yes, I believe he will be. I’ll make it up to you, Mrs. Miller. I promise.”
    When we got to their farm, I washed up and helped Casey do the same. Mrs. Miller’s fried potatoes and salt pork were like honey on my tongue. She bounced around her small kitchen, talking of her garden, her husband’s crops, laughing with Casey as she tickled his naked belly and washed him clean of the livery and the train and the past. The boy and I slept like we were dead, wrapped in a feather tick on a bed of straw in the barn. And in the morning, Mr. Miller squeezed my shoulder and pointed me toward town.
    â€œThe crews are assembling at the end of Main Street,” he said.
    I reached for Casey, struggling in Mrs. Miller’s arms. “Gotta say goodbye.”
    Strange feelings tugged at my belly when I hugged him – relief he’d be cared for, scared witless for him at the same time. Relief too, at being alone in the world again, the strange combination of freedom and fear you get on entering a pub where no one knows you or anything about you, the sense you will have to make it on your own legs. I’d used Taffy’s story to my advantage. Casey too. But now I’d have no excuses.
    â€œGo now.” Mrs. Miller looked at me sorrowfully, took my hands and squeezed them. Her hands were like my mother’s hands, hard with life, gentle with love. “Go and work out your grief. Then you’ll be ready to raise this young thing properly.”
    I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t grief keeping me poor and hopeless. The grief was easy compared to the guilt. I handed Casey to her and walked away slow, looked back and waved. Casey wouldn’t understand this leaving. How could he? I turned back at least twice, and finally started to run, faster and faster until the wind drowned out Casey’s cries, until my lungs were bursting with the great gulps of blue sky burning them.

CHAPTER 7
    i i i

    I reached Main Street, Ibsen, and slowed up. Main Street, it turned out, was the only street and made up the whole of the business district. A few shops, a livery, hardware. Small spurs of homes sprang from this hub. That was it. Back home people lived in town, close to town, on embankments, hills, rocks and valleys. But this flat little place spread across two streets and then just stopped to make way for prairie. In Arichat a person had to make an effort to spy on his neighbour. There’d be no need of spying here. Just look down the street and you’d know everybody’s business. The whole place was cracked dry and hard.
    At the end of Main Street, a ragtag bunch of men had assembled. Men like me. Most owned nothing but the shirts on their backs and the boots on their feet. Some wore strange hats that must have