Lily Fairchild. Don Gutteridge
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radicals, or Clear Grits as they styled themselves, so loved the buzz of their own perorations that they made their passes at her in verbal terms only- innuendo, double entendre, a sotto voce vulgarism when desire overwhelmed – though she had little doubt that, were their sundry propositions to be accepted, they might have flashed the genuine metal. However, they soon discovered that this waif from the sticks was unconscionably swift at rejoinder and not as accustomed to acquiescence as a real lady might be.
“That orphling brat of Templeton’s got a wicked tongue in her head,” one guest told a consoling judge later. “She needs to be taken in hand.” But of course they had already tried that.
Not once was she accosted by any of the Orangemen. They were either uninterested in anything but the eradication of popery or were put off by the gold cross she wore on these occasions.
Lily’s rebuffs and inventive parries did not escape the notice of Alice Templeton. “You’re learning fast and well,” she said with undisguised admiration.
“Are they all like that?”
“Most of them, I’m afraid. It’s the climate.”
Lily laughed but then said soberly, “Why do we put up with it?”
Mrs. Templeton sighed deeply. “There’s an awful lot we have to put with,” she said.
Not me, Lily thought.
3
When Mrs. Templeton heard that Lily had never seen the Lake, she was shocked, and set about to remedy the situation. Lily politely refused her offer of a cruise on the Michiganor one of the other steamers now plying the water routes on a regular basis.
“You mean you wish to walk down there and just look at it?” she said, swivelling on the piano bench to face Lily.
“Yes, that’s all.”
“But, pet, why didn’t you do so when you lived at Bridie’s? The sand beach is no more than half-a-mile through the pinery back of your place.”
“Auntie was strict about that,” Lily said defensively. “She was always worried about the fishermen. Besides, she never liked me just traipsin’ off on my own. Could you blame her?”
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Templeton, closing the sheet music. “Goodness knows a number of the town girls have been accosted by the riff raff down there cutting brush for the railway. Fishermen, I hear tell, are even worse.” Her tone was less-than-serious.
“May I go, then?”
“Of course. Follow Front Street until it turns into the trail the Slocum people sometimes use to get down to the fishery. Just before it comes out at the swamp below the beach, veer right – you’ll see an Indian trail that’ll take you over the dunes to Canatara beach. Of course, you could also walk up the coast past the fisherman’s shanties, but I wouldn’t advise it.”
“I’ll go right now, if I may?”
“Well, all right. But I wastuning up here to start your dancing lessons,” she said. “We mustn’t wait too long. Never know when a big fancy-ball might be upcoming.”
Though it had been seven years since she had walked through thick brush, Lily felt at home on the fishery trail with the pines flaring overhead, the undergrowth spare, and shadowed, with shafts of brilliant light where the sun fitfully penetrated. This trail was worn and clear. Ten minutes or so into it, she heard the shouts of the men with their nets along the river bank sweeping for pickerel. Just ahead the woods brightened, so Lily, her instincts sharp, peered to the right and spotted the crossed-blaze – perhaps ten years or more in age – that signaled a Pottawatomie trail. She moved from mark to mark towards the sound of waves breaking in the near distance. Scanning the trunks at eye-level, she found herself abruptly in the full glare of early afternoon sun. The roaring of the waves was much louder, but when she looked ahead expecting to see the Lake, she saw only a series of sand-dunes about twelve feet in height.
Lily took off her shoes and stockings, dashed barefoot through the hot sand, fell scampering up the nearest dune, got up, her palms burning, her legs scything, until she stood on top and caught her first glimpse of the Freshwater Sea of the Hurons. What she saw initially was an uninterrupted blue stretching to the north and west so far that it became indistinguishable from the sky. The sun’s light and the heat were lost in a greater immensity: the vast, tense energy of water on the move – homeward. When Lily was able to pull her gaze from the vanishing point directly to the north-west, she saw and heard at last the reach of the wavelets on the shore. Their sound was the intermittent, quiescent breath of a hibernating bear. Below the brassy surface that lay so placidly before her, Lily could feel the pulse of a cobalt heart whose energies charged the secret and vital parts of the earth’s anatomy. There was here the sign of some pilgrimage whose spirit she shared.
Then, a girl again, she dashed across the crystalline beach and splashed and paddled and strutted and planted her footprints in the permeable sands. It was Indian summer: the air was warm and thin as new wine, the water icy, the sand purging. She did not want to leave.
When she did, she mounted the highest dune north from the trail and looked back towards the town-site. The houses of Port Sarnia were not yet visible. But she could see – where the Lake poured into the chasm of the St. Clair only half-a-mile across – the shanties where Slocum’s people kept their nets and cleaned their catch. Between the edge of the pinery and the River lay a quarter-mile of swamps full of disheveled cattails and yellowing milkweed. Could they ever build a railroad over that? To the far south-west Lily saw also the palisades of Fort Gratiot, the Stars and Stripes saluting self-importantly above it. Overhead, herring gulls whirled and rehearsed their mating dance.
Looking to retrace her route by the blazed trail, Lily noticed that to the north the sand-dunes were thicker, reaching far back into a low brush of runt alders and hawthorn. Something drew her that way, away from the marked trail. The dunes gradually subsided, giving way to a small, rolling field dotted with dwarf trees. The pinery enclosed it on three sides. Though there was nothing visible to the unpractised eye, Lily sensed immediately that she was in a burial ground. The Lake breeze did not penetrate this far but Lily felt the eddies and parabolas of moving, sentient beings occupying space. She stepped carefully ahead. The grave plots were barely discernible; obscured by knot-grass and hoarhound and sand-burs. Yet Lily could see that the ground had sunk almost imperceptibly, marking the modest dimensions of each site.
After a while, Lily spotted a new grave, its sand piled two inches above ground to accommodate the later natural sinking. Clusters of grass had been replanted to root and flourish and to camouflage in the coming spring. Winter would soon provide its own disguise.
You are here at last, Southener, Lily thought. You came under cover of dark and they laid you to rest among the other nameless wanderers and refugees, the outcasts and pariahs and survivors, the renegades and the prophets like you. I haven’t forgotten the jasper heart. Already it has brought me more luck that I ever hoped for. And I won’t forget your request. Somehow I’ll find the sacred place in these woods and return the magic to it. I’ll come here every time I can, and honour your grave. Surely here, with swamps and dunes all around, you’ll be safe.
She thought then of her mother’s headstone, alone in an unfrequented corner of some stranger’s field, the script of her name chipped out so crudely no one would recall whose soul sought refuge below it. I must go back there. I will.
“Lily, pet, you’re back at last,” an excited Mrs. Templeton greeted her.
“I hope you weren’t worried,” Lily said, embarrassed by the state of her attire.
“Heavens no, I just couldn’t wait to tell you. It’s all been settled. The new railway station will be ready in a week and the first train is coming in on the nineteenth. There’ll be a dinner and a ball.”
“Are we invited?” Lily said.
“Invited? We’re hosting it!