Second Place

The Grocery Trip
by Mary Janice Daley, Toronto

The wind came up off the river in great gusts. It crossed the wide expanse of frozen field and pushed merciless at the two boys who stood side by side. For the most part they stood and faced it, clenching their fist so tight that their fingers dug into their palms and their knuckles pressed white against their skin. The only times they turned their backs was when the wind occasionally decided to gather fistful of ice pellets from the field and hurdle it at them. They would turn quickly then, hunkering down low into the itchy collars of their gray wool coats, hiding chins and cheeks from the onslaught. It had been close to two hours since their two older brothers and the dog, Skip, left to get groceries and Francis and Matthew had spent a great deal of time standing in front of the house, waiting on their return. The edges of their protruding and unprotected ears had gone through several changes of colour during this time period and were now outlined in rich cherry red.

Finding further ways to taunt the boys, the wind discovered a loose board on the back shed and began lifting and dropping it, creating a loud and persistent banging noise that the boys could barely hear themselves over. But at times the wind would pause to give the harassed boys a break. It would slow just enough so that the boys could relax a little and talk above it.

"It’s freezing." Francis muffled into his collar.

Mat answered with a slow nod as he unclenched his bare fist and bent to pick up a storm sent branch. He began to beat it against the hard crust of snow that lined the walkway.

"What’s keeping them do you figure?" He asked, as his face got momentary lost behind the steam from his words.

Francis shrugged and turned back into the slightly calmer air to scan the field for any sign of Skip or his brothers. "Probably stopped at Hill’s Market first and we know Mr. Hill isn’t going to give us anything more." Francis finally answered. His face still half buried in the collar of his coat.

Mat continued to beat on the crust as the wind once again began to bang board against board at the rear of the house. It took Mat a set of eight solid whacks until course cracks began to develop and spread out across the shiny smoothness. The crust was solid but not as solid as some days when the sun baked it so hard on the field that even jumping on it couldn’t put a foot through to the feathery snow beneath. When the wind began to wane again, Mat dropped his stick and looked down towards the river. The shore and the ice were beset by quiet that stretched for miles. This incredible silence caused Francis to think about March, which was only one day away and stalking them like the true lion it was. Both boys shivered.

"I hope they get sugar." Mat finally spoke, biting his cold sore in the process. He couldn’t feel the bite through the numbness of his big bottom lip but he knew he broke the scab again because he tasted blood.

"In your dreams maybe, but we might get some more molasses." Francis said with authority as he kept his eyes focused on the field. Memories of his last taste of this thick syrup made his stomach growl.

The distant sun, which had failed to cut through the greyness during the entire course of the day, began to settle itself away giving the large tract of snow-covered field and the few houses that ran along its perimeter a silvery veil. For the first time that day the sky finally allowed strings of salmon coloured sunlight to meet the boys at their level, giving them a sense of false warmth which settled momentarily on their eyelids and freckles and which made their blue eyes, bluer still.

It was nearing four-thirty. Francis sighed and stamped his boots trying to jolt his squished toes to some sort of half feeling. "I guess we go in. It’s too cold to just stand around and wait."

Mat nodded but they didn’t move except to turn and look over their shoulders at the grey house. If they went in now, they would miss out on telling their mom how the sled was coming. In fact Francis was already prepared to push Mat down if need be, so that he could be the first in the house with the news.

Their mom, Margaret, was in the kitchen at the east end of the house, trying to keep busy but it was hard to think straight above the worry. Her daughter was in the family room keeping an eye on the baby and younger ones. Margaret kept to the kitchen and to her fretting for she was fearful her boys would be denied at the shops.

During the morning, Margaret had sat at the table and wrote four notes, one to each shop owner, three of whom had their stores spaced a stone’s throw away from one another on Water St. The fourth store was located on Cunard St. In her pretty scripted notes she had requested just enough groceries to make it through March. Anything they could put on the bill would be much appreciated and would be paid back in full come summer when her husband went back to work on the boats.

After writing the notes she reread them and sighed loudly wondering if the shop owners would think she was taking them for fools. She had sent the boys off a week before on the same errand and they had been refused at all the shops except for one where they received potatoes and a bit of molasses that was certainly scraped from the bottom of the barrel but wonderful just the same. Perhaps, she prayed, the boys would have better luck this time. It was never easy for her to write these notes knowing she had already stretched her credit to the breaking point at all fours stores and that the last time they received any sort of payment from her was before Christmas. However, she was now down to a few frozen potatoes and half a jar of bacon fat to feed her family of twelve. She really had no other choice but to ask again.

Winters here were as hard as the ice that kept the ships from the river and keeping her family fed during these months was a test of optimism that she was sure she was failing at. After rereading the notes she had a moment of indecisiveness that almost caused her to rip up the pleading letters and feed them to the cast iron stove but it was a recent memory of her kids during Christmas time which made her hold onto them.

Her younger sons had written their letters to Santa on small sheets of yellow paper and then tossed these notes into the stove hoping the wind would take their wishes up the flute and northward to the Pole. The children had spent most of that December evening writing note after note to Santa because they were having great difficulties getting them up the flute. At first they kept tossing the paper too low at the stove, managing only to feed the hungry flames. If they tossed them too hard the notes got stuck to the inside pipe or if not hard enough the wind would just sweep down and blow the notes back out at the child. But this didn’t deter them. They just kept writing more notes until finally, once they had developed some skill at tossing, many of the letters found their way up the flute. Each child cheered loudly when ever a sibling managed to get his up and out and towards the North Pole. However, the next day when the children went out to play the snow covered yard around the house was littered with little yellow notes. This only stopped the children in their tracks for the briefest of moments, then they turned on their heels and went back indoors to write more letters. It was this memory that rekindled her optimism.

They were down to one small meal a day. She was sending her children to school in the mornings hungry, watching them through the window as they disappeared across the field. And when they came back through the cold field at lunch hour and asked her if there might be a little something, she felt shy in their presence as she shook her head no. Without complaining or saying a word the children would simply turn and go out to the yard to play until it was time to return to school. She saved what ever she had for the supper meal because she believed going to bed hungry, crawling beneath cold sheets with only the darkness to feed on was much harder than facing the bustle of a new day hungry.

The world was in the midst of a depression but this wasn’t the whole reason they found themselves in this predicament every winter. The Miramichi had her port and for three seasons a year the ships sailed up the coast, into the bay and along the river to the Chatham docks. During these seasons there was ample work to be found for a man with a strong back who was willing to unload or load these steel hull crafts. The prosperous wooden ship building days may have been gone from the river but ships still came and employment could be had. Her husband worked on the boats during the warmer months and although he was a good man in many ways, it happened to be his nature to never aim his sights on the day following the next, which lead him to be generous when he had some coin and always ill prepared for the only season truly needing preparing for. He never planted a garden in the springtime and when the smelts were running plentiful in the winter he would go often to the river and fish but by the time he re-crossed the river with his bounty, he had giving most of his catch away leaving only the flatfish for his ten sons and one daughter. Margaret couldn’t understand how he so easily forgot the hunger of March by the first warm day in May. But he always did. By the time the sun had placed the first trace of colour on his skin, winter slipped from his mind and he never thought of looking back at it, to examine it, to find out what could have been done differently so that next March wouldn’t be so harsh. It was just his nature not too.

A bit of wind made it down the chimney, whistling and causing the dying flame to glow red behind the black door of the stove. She stopped for a moment to listen to the banging of the boards on the shed and wondered again what was keeping the boys.

She had giving the four notes to Shawn in the early afternoon as he and Tim harnessed Skip, their half collie dog. Skip’s thick mane of white and black fur made him as wide as he was tall. He was excited, barking into the crisp air, as Tim placed the small harness on him and secured it to the sled. Margaret had stood for a while outside on the front porch watching the three of them as they raced across the field towards the shops on Water. The boys trying to keep up with the fast moving dog as he pulled an empty sled across the polished crust.

Tim and Shawn where the two she always sent. It was Shawn’s job to go into each store, hand the right note to the right shop owner and do the pleading, while Tim remained outside the store with the dog. It was difficult for Shawn to go into the shops because he knew it didn’t matter if his pleads were rejected or accepted, either way he always got an ear full from the shop owner about their huge bill, which now stood near five dollars, that was already months past due. At each store he got the same grimace and the same scolding which always went something like, "this is the absolute last time I will fill this order and I don’t care if Margaret sends her oldest or youngest, thinnest or coldest, there is absolutely no way she will get so much as a cup of flour if some sort of payment doesn’t accompany the next order. Do you hear me young Lad!"

Shawn was good at taking these verbal charges. He would bow his head, listen and nod. And he learned quickly on not to let his eyes wander at any of the items in the store. Once he did. Once he stood too long admiring the belts on a display rack until Mr. Hill yelled, "Don’t you dare be wanting one of those? There is no room for that on your bill." This embarrassed Shawn but he didn’t have the voice to say that he was only looking.

Shawn also never got the notes mixed up. Tim on the other hand had an incident during the past winter where he handed Mr. Martin’s note over to Mr. Hill.

"What’s this?" Hill had growled. Reading the note and then looking sternly over the top of his glasses at Tim before continuing, "You telling me, I ain’t the only shop owner you have a credit problem with?"

Being twelve and feeling older, Tim answered too quickly, "Do you really think we would keep trying you, if we still had credit elsewhere?"

This immediately cut them off from Hill’s for four months until mid summer, when they were able to pay off a good portion of their bill. Hill may have indeed been the grumpiest of the shop owners but he always managed, before this, to provide them with something.

So now, Tim stayed with the dog and Shawn did the negotiating. It hadn’t been going well the last few weeks though and they had been returning home each time with a lighter sled. Francis and Matthew, who stood waiting each week to see how the sled was coming, would cross their fingers when ever they spotted their brothers and the dog break the horizon at the far end of the field. They would cross their fingers and pray that the sled would come slow. Skip wasn’t a dog who liked to walk when he could run, so if the sled was light he came across the field at a gallop, gliding swiftly over the top of the snow with Tim and Shawn racing behind. It took no time at all for this panting, smiling dog to reach the house if it had an empty sled. Therefore it always gave the boys a sinking feeling to see the dog coming at a run and the dog was running a lot this winter.

Mat threw his stick high in the air and watched it spiral for a few seconds until it landed with a clatter across the hard snow.

"Maybe it is a good sign they’re late?" Mat’s teeth chattered a little with the words.

"We won’t be able to see them at all if they don’t come soon." Francis said as he went to retrieve the falling branch that Mat threw. The wind was pushing a little harder now giving his cheeks the same texture as the outer snow; smooth, raw and hard. He couldn’t feel his nose and a pang of something tightened his stomach. Excitement and hungry sometimes felt the same to him and when he waited for the sled he never knew quite which one he was dealing with.

"I SEE IT!" Mat roared and stretched his arm out, pointing his finger at the pink horizon. The flesh around his wrist, which was now visible, wore a bracelet of callous redness. They all sported these red bracelets on each wrist and over the tops of each ankle where the snow and ice consistently found this vulnerable and never properly covered skin. They would wear these bracelets of winter long after the spring thaw and only have them truly fade away at the beginning of summer.

"Where? How’s he coming?" Francis asked as he ran to stand next to his brother, looking in the direction his brother was pointing. And sure enough the sled and the older boys could be seen, so small in the distance.

"How’s he coming?" Francis asked again with excitement this time feeling like excitement.

There was a moment of silence. They could hear a distant bark on the chill as they waited.

"Coming slow." Mat laughed. "Coming really slow. Look at how slow they’re moving. Gotta have a 98 lb bag of flour on that sled for him to be coming so slow."

"And Molasses!" Francis yelled.

"And bacon, and bologna and maybe even cod." Mat roared louder.

The boys jumped and waved and hooted and Skip’s distant bark answered and the sled came over the field moving slowly.