Restoring Harmony Part 13

"I thought you said we couldn't get canning supplies," I said to Doug.

"Your friend Spill has connections. I paid him last night, and he arranged it."

"Really? What kind of connections?"

"To the Organization," he said. Doug was digging through a crate looking for something, and I saw him pull out a small, unlabeled bottle and slip it into his back pocket.

"What's the Organization?" I asked, sitting down and unwrapping the brown paper on my package. Inside were yards and yards of powder-blue silk. I couldn't believe it!

"You know," Doug said. "The Organization. It runs things. Like the market at the bottom of the hill. And the gambling and booze trade. Organized crime."

I tore my eyes away from the beautiful silk. "Spill's not involved in all that. He's just a delivery boy."

"Yeah, for the Organization."

"He is not!" I shouted, surprising us both. But even as I said it, I knew I was kidding myself.

21.

August 9th-Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.

-Czech proverb

DOUG AND I WERE ON MY GRANDPARENTS' DECK, inspecting what was left of the woodpile. We were going to need serious amounts of firewood to do all the canning. I'd put the kids down for a nap in my grandparents' bedroom while we brainstormed.

I was actually still mad at Doug for saying Spill worked for the Organization, but he didn't seem to notice. The truth was, I might've been a little angry at myself because I wanted to trust that Spill was as nice as I'd always thought he was, but doubts were running through my mind now.

I thought back to how he had told me business was good but wouldn't tell me what the business was. And how he'd given me ice-cold pop, which was hard to find. And brought us meat, and now the blue silk. And he made me call him by a nickname instead of telling me his real one. Still . . . part of organized crime? That couldn't be true. Could it?

I knew from school that the U.S. government was technically still intact but that they hardly had any money because no one could afford to pay taxes. That weakness was all organized crime had needed to become as big as it had been a hundred years ago when alcohol had been illegal and a guy named Al Capone had run Chicago.

"There's not enough wood here," Doug said, bringing me back to the problem at hand.

"Do you have any money left?" I asked. "Maybe we could get the electricity turned back on."

"No dice. I owe them a small fortune from before they turned it off, and I'm betting your grandparents do too."

I looked over at Grandpa and Grandma, who were sitting in the shade of a gnarled lilac tree, working on speech therapy. He was probably right. Doug had a woodstove in his living room, and even though the surface wasn't that big, I was pretty sure we could cook on it. The problem du jour was we needed something to burn. We stood there leaning against the house looking for the answer in the cloudless sky.

"No furniture left either," Doug said. "Burned most of that last winter."

"Well, we've got furniture, but I doubt that would fly with Grandpa."

"Darn right," Grandpa called across the yard. I'd noticed before that he had excellent hearing.

I suddenly felt so tired. The work here was just like on the farm and didn't bother me much, but I wasn't used to being the problem solver too. At least not for every single issue. It was wearing me out. I slid to the ground, the warmth and strength of the house supporting me. And then I saw the a nswer.

"The fence!" I shouted.

"Talk about obvious!" Doug said. "There's a lot of wood there."

"What?" Grandpa asked. He jumped up, leaving Grandma under the tree and hurrying over to us. "Oh, no you don't. You are not tearing down my fence."

Doug and I ran down the deck stairs to the fence and he thumped on it excitedly. "Oh, come on," Doug said. "The world needs fewer fences."

"No way! Use your own fence."

"I would, but the squatters pretty much stay out of the garden now," Doug said. "If I take down the fence on my side, it will be like rolling out the red carpet. But if we use the one between us, we're still pretty secure. I'll get my crowbar."

"And a sledgehammer."

"Over my dead body!" Grandpa shouted. "This is very expensive cedar fencing! You can't get this stuff anymore."

"You have another one on the other side," I joked. "We may need that eventually too."

"Never!" He placed his scrawny body spread-eagle against the fence, his face set, determined to stop us.

"Grandpa . . . we'll cut around you."

"Just try it! I'll sue you. I'll call the police! You are not taking down this fence."

Maybe in Grandpa's day you could call the police for something insignificant like a fence dispute, but after what I'd seen in Seattle, I knew it was an empty threat. Doug made the first chop on the other side and Grandpa's shoulders sagged. I put my arm around him and led him back to the lilac. I sat on the blanket next to Grandma and she put her hand on my shoulder-a hand that felt exactly like my mother's. I snuggled into her despite the heat.

"Grandpa, come on. Sit down," I said. "We're not trying to ruin your house. We just need to can this food so Doug and the kids can get through the winter."

"What about us?" Grandpa snapped. "Hoping we don't last that long?"

"You'll be with me in Canada."

"Like h.e.l.l we will!"

I pulled him down to the ground so we were facing each other. "You can't stay here. You'll starve."

"What about all this food you're supposedly canning?" he demanded. "Don't we get our share?"

"Well, yes. To sell." I tried my sympathy card. "Plus, my mom really needs you."

Doug's sledgehammer cracked against the planks.

"Molly, I don't know how many times I have to tell you, but we are not going back to Canada with you."

I looked at Grandma, hoping she'd somehow take my side. She was gazing at me, but she didn't say anything. I tried another tactic. "Even if you have the food, what will you do for heat?"

"We'll burn the G.o.dd.a.m.ned fence," he said.

I giggled. He laughed a little too. Even Grandma smiled. But as my laughter died away, tears p.r.i.c.kled in my eyes and my nose had that funny tingling you get right before you sneeze. Or cry. "I can't go back to the island without you." I stared at the blue cloudless sky to keep the tears from coming.

"Your mom will be fine," he said. "And at this rate, the baby will be born before we could get there anyway."

"She's not due until the first week of November," I reminded him. "As long as she doesn't have it early, we could still make it back." The tears were edging out around the corners of my eyes, and I sniffled. I felt Grandpa's bony hand touch mine, sort of patting me rea.s.suringly, and I burst into tears.

"Molly . . . come on, sweetheart," he said, pulling me close. He scooted around so he was next to me, and Grandma leaned into me too. The air was filled with the sounds of splitting wood as Doug pried the first planks away from their posts. "Don't cry. It's okay. . . ."

I squeezed my eyes shut. The thing was, I was tired of crying. It wasn't going to save my mother.

"Look," I said, straightening up and pulling away from them both, anger flooding me. "I'm sorry that you seem to hate Mom so much that you won't even go up there and try and save her life, but she's my mother! If she dies, my brothers and sister and I won't have a mom anymore. That may not be a big deal to you, but it's huge to me!"

"Molly, you have no idea what you're saying-"

"I do!" I shouted. My anger and frustration had finally heated up to the boiling point. "I know you said that Grandma couldn't make the trip, but look at her!" I stood, pointing at Grandma. "She's fine! Well, maybe not fine, but we'll be on a train. And we'll take it easy. Whatever we have to do. I just don't understand how you can let a stupid twenty-year-old argument over medical school come between you and Mom when it's life or death."

Grandpa's expression was unreadable, but he took off his gla.s.ses and rubbed his eyes, and I knew my words had stung him somehow.

"She needs a doctor," I yelled.

Grandpa put his gla.s.ses back on and stood up, looking right at me. "Well, I'm sorry, Molly, but it can't be me."

"It has to be you."

"It can't be. I'm not a doctor anymore."

"Of course you are."

He sighed and looked at Grandma for help, but she turned away from him. The silence hung in the air. "I haven't been a doctor since the twenties," he finally said.

"But you worked at the hospital until last year," I argued. "Mom said you did."

"I was an administrator." His look was sullen.

"But you got that gla.s.s out of my foot."

He shook his head. "Anyone could've done that." "You've been helping Grandma," I said.

"Yes," Grandma said. "Yes."

"You like like being a doctor," I said, "I know you do." being a doctor," I said, "I know you do."

He shook his head, but there was a bit of light in his eyes that I hadn't seen before. Grandma held her hand out to me to be helped up, and when she was standing, she grabbed Grandpa's hand. I could tell she was squeezing it tightly.

"Breeee," she said, looking hard at him. "Breee!"

"Well . . ."

"Yes!" Grandma yelled.

Grandpa sighed and turned to me. "I guess, if you come up with the money. . . . But there has to be enough to get us there without the travel killing us."

"I know."

"And . . . and I'll do what I can for your mother," he said, "but I'm not making any promises about taking over as the island doctor."

I threw my arms around him, and Grandma wrapped hers around us both. "Thank you," I murmured into his shoulder. It was the first step I'd made towards home since I'd left.

22.

August 25th-To know the feeling, / play music at once, with heart / and ears wide open.

-Bob Deck

AUGUST BLAZED ON, AND WHEN THE TWENTY- FIFTH finally arrived, my family was on my mind all day because I'd never spent my birthday away from them before. We'd been so busy-keeping a hot fire going in Doug's woodstove about ten hours a day to sterilize the jars, cook the food, and preserve it-that it had snuck up on me, and when my grandparents didn't remember, I didn't say anything.

Grandma and I had also sliced a lot of vegetables to dry between old window screens in the backyard. Grandpa wanted her to use the knife in her right hand as therapy, but whenever he wasn't around, she used her left. If he came by, she'd quickly switch hands, smirking at me with her lopsided grin. In between all those jobs, I took my turn digging the root cellar too.

When we'd thought it couldn't get any hotter, a fierce, dry wind had come up from the east, roasting us. While everyone else dealt with it by having a nap in the middle of the afternoon, I was too hot to sleep.

I wanted to sew my dress, but I was afraid of leaving sweaty fingerprints on the silk, so I only worked on it at night or early in the morning. Inside the package, there'd been a note from Spill.

Molly, I know these patterns are really old, from the 1980s or something, but Aunt Lili says wedding fashions don't change that much, and they're back in style now. I hope there's enough fabric.Spill And even though I was grateful, the whole connection between the fabric and how he'd probably gotten it made uneasiness flare up inside me every time I held it in my hands. Besides, even though I'd been making doll clothes since I was four or five and my own clothes since I was about ten, there was no way I could finish this dress without a sewing machine. All I could really do was cut it out and pin it together.

I thought about playing Jewels, but was afraid I'd wake everyone up from their naps, so I decided to go for a walk. I was halfway down the stairs from my bedroom when I heard piano music. I stopped, my ears perking up, listening. It was coming from somewhere inside the house.

At the bottom of the stairs, there was a door that I'd noticed before but always a.s.sumed was a coat closet. It was open, and when I peered into it, I saw a wide, thickly carpeted stairway leading down into a bas.e.m.e.nt. How had I never realized we had a bas.e.m.e.nt before?

The music floated up the stairs to meet me as I made my way down into a huge, low-ceilinged room. Cobwebs hung from all the corners, and spiderwebs encased every piece of furniture. Grandpa sat at a grand piano, a candle flickering on top of it, his eyes closed, his fingers dancing on the keys, the music filling his entire body. He was the most peaceful I'd ever seen him.

The music was something cla.s.sical that I didn't recognize, but it seemed familiar too. Maybe my mother or Katie had played it on our upright piano once at home. I didn't want to disturb Grandpa, but the music was drawing me in closer to him like a moth to candlelight.

"Come here," he said, not opening his eyes. I jumped a little, not realizing he'd known I was there.

"I thought you must've sold your piano," I told him.

He continued to play, but his eyes were open now. "Can't get it out of the bas.e.m.e.nt," he said. "The builders put it down here before they finished all the doorways in the house so it's pretty much stuck here."