Spit Delaney's Island by Jack Hodgins Page B

no mood for new disappointments.
    Ordinarily Charlene would have stood up to anyone and defended Mrs.
Starbuck, would have said her behaviour back at the well just showed she
was upset about something and didn’t realize what she was doing. Charlene liked to see the best in everything if she could. And anyway, she
guessed Mrs. Starbuck had earned the benefit of a thousand doubts. But
after yesterday, when she discovered not quite by accident what that woman had kept locked up in her attic for who knows how long, she didn’t
feel quite so sure.
    Because she knew now; the secret was out: and oh, how she wanted to
tell someone about it! Her father; anyone. Back there she had been aching
to walk right up to Mrs. Starbuck and say “I knew. I saw him!” Maybe
then she might have been given some kind of explanation.
    She did not want to believe it. Not any more than she wanted to believe
what her eyes had let her see Mrs. Starbuck do to that poor calf. Because
after all, Mrs. Starbuck had lived next door and been the only grown-up
woman in her life, her closest friend, for two years now. And besides,
hadn’t her father taught her to think of people, all people no matter what
they did, as made in the image of God? For nearly twenty-four hours she
had been trying her hardest to insist that Mrs. Starbuck, despite all the evidence that seemed to be piling up against her, was still the same perfect
woman she’d known all along, totally incapable of such ugly behaviour.
But it wasn’t working; she’d been betrayed.
    When she was concentrating like this, thinking hard, her blue eyes
looked as if they were rocketing through the air, ninety miles an hour,
drilling two straight holes through space to another world. It was what her
father called her furious face, put on like a mask whenever she didn’t want
to look at him.
    And yet she saw. Though her eyes and her mind were on that fake-brick
triangle beyond the fence-line alders, she saw him approach. He was not
a big man, not heavy and tall like some, but he walked as if he were unaware of this fact, put each foot in turn out too far in front—as if he had
all the leg in the world to use—then had to withdraw it and set it downcloser than he wanted. As a result, he came across that orchard in quick
jerky movements like a machine. He reached up and yanked the peak of
his cap down almost to his eyes and ran his free hand over his beard.
    To show he was angry.
    â€œI thought I knew that woman,” he said, when he’d reached the step in
front of her, “but I guess you never really know anybody else.”
    And disappointed too, just as disappointed as she was, though he still
didn’t know the half of it.
    She could remember only one time when he had got mad—furious
mad—and that was when her mother had gone off to live in the Queen
Charlotte Islands with a used-car salesman. Charlene was only five years
old then, so a good nine years had gone zipping by with no more than just
the odd hint of that old fury. It took a lot to get him worked up.
    Her mother had been pretty: small with black black hair and blue eyes
snapping. A turned-up little nose that belonged on a girl, not a woman.
And Charlene (how she hated that name! She wanted to be a Miranda or
Lorene at least) was probably not going to be the littlest bit pretty, though
maybe people who were content with large blue eyes wouldn’t notice. Her
hair, bleached almost white already by this year’s sun, floated in soft fine
curls around her head.
    â€œNothing but temper,” Mr. Porter grumbled. “Just plain bad temper,
like a kid throwing a tantrum and bang there goes a yearling bull.”
    â€œNot temper. That was something else, I don’t know what.”
    Another yank on the front of that cap, and he started up the steps.
“Spoilt-rotten temper. I saw a man once, beat his son almost to death for
throwing a tantrum about something or