But later in the night Jim Frarey gave a concluding groan and roused himself to deliver a sleepy scolding. “Louisa, Louisa, why didn’t you tell me that was the way it was?”
“I told you everything,” said Louisa in a faint and drifting voice.
“I got a wrong impression, then,” he said. “I never intended for this to make a difference to you.”
She said that it hadn’t. Now without him pinning her down and steadying her, she felt herself whirling around in an irresistible way, as if the mattress had turned into a child’s top and was carrying her off. She tried to explain that the traces of blood on the sheets could be credited to her period, but her words came out with a luxurious nonchalance and could not be fitted together.
ACCIDENTS
WHEN ARTHUR CAME home from the factory a little before noon he shouted, “Stay out of my way till I wash! There’s been an accident over at the works!” Nobody answered. Mrs. Feare, the housekeeper, was talking on the kitchen telephone so loudly that she could not hear him, and his daughter was of course at school. He washed, and stuffed everything he had been wearing into the hamper, and scrubbed up the bathroom, like a murderer. He started out clean, with even his hair slicked and patted, to drive to the man’s house. He had had to ask where it was. He thought it was up Vinegar Hill but they said no, that was the father — the young fellow and his wife live on the other side of town, past where the Apple Evaporator used to be, before the war.
He found the two brick cottages side by side, and picked the left-hand one, as he’d been told. It wouldn’t have been hard to pick which house, anyway. News had come before him. The door to the house was open, and children too young to be in school yet hung about in the yard. A small girl sat on a kiddie car, not going anywhere, just blocking his path. He stepped around her. As he did so an older girl spoke to him in a formal way — a warning.
“Her dad’s dead. Hers!”
A woman came out of the front room carrying an armload of curtains, which she gave to another woman standing in the hall. The woman who received the curtains was gray-haired, with a pleading face. She had no upper teeth. She probably took her plate out, for comfort, at home. The woman who passed the curtains to her was stout but young, with fresh skin.
“You tell her not to get up on that stepladder,” the gray-haired woman said to Arthur. “She’s going to break her neck taking down curtains. She thinks we need to get everything washed. Are you the undertaker? Oh, no, excuse me! You’re Mr. Doud. Grace, come out here! Grace! It’s Mr. Doud!”
“Don’t trouble her,” Arthur said.
“She thinks she’s going to get the curtains all down and washed and up again by tomorrow, because he’s going to have to go in the front room. She’s my daughter. I can’t tell her anything.”
“She’ll quiet down presently,” said a sombre but comfortable-looking man in a clerical collar, coming through from the back of the house. Their minister. But not from one of the churches Arthur knew. Baptist? Pentecostal? Plymouth Brethren? He was drinking tea.Some other woman came and briskly removed the curtains.
“We got the machine filled and going,” she said. “A day like this, they’ll dry like nobody’s business. Just keep the kids out of here.”
The minister had to stand aside and lift his teacup high, to avoid her and her bundle. He said, “Aren’t any of you ladies going to offer Mr. Doud a cup of tea?”
Arthur said, “No, no, don’t trouble.”
“The funeral expenses,” he said to the gray-haired woman. “If you could let her know–”
“Lillian wet her pants!” said a triumphant child at the door. “Mrs. Agnew! Lillian peed her pants!”
“Yes. Yes,” said the minister. “They will be very grateful.”
“The plot and the stone, everything,” Arthur said. “You’ll make sure they understand that. Whatever they want on the stone.”
The gray-haired woman had gone out into the yard. She came back with a squalling child in her arms. “Poor lamb,” she said. “They told her she wasn’t supposed to come in the house so where could she go? What could she do but have an accident!”
The young woman came out of the front room dragging a rug.
“I want this put on the line and beat,” she said.
“Grace, here is Mr. Doud come to offer his condolences,” the minister said.
“And to ask if there is anything I can do,” said Arthur.
The gray-haired woman started upstairs with the wet child in her arms and a couple of others following.
Grace spotted them.
“Oh, no, you don’t! You get back outside!”
“My mom’s in here.”
“Yes and your mom’s good and busy, she don’t need to be bothered with you. She’s here helping me out. Don’t you know Lillian’s dad’s dead?”
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Arthur said, meaning to clear out.
Grace stared at him with her mouth open. Sounds of the washing machine filled the house.
“Yes, there is,” she said. “You wait here.”
“She’s overwhelmed,” the minister said. “It’s not that she means to be rude.”
Grace came back with a load of books.
“These here,” she said. “He had them out of the Library. I don’t want to have to pay fines on them. He went every Saturday night so I guess they are due back tomorrow. I don’t want to get in trouble about them.”
“I’ll look after them,” Arthur said. “I’d be glad to.”
“I just don’t want to get in any trouble about them.”
“Mr. Doud was saying about taking care of the funeral,” the minister said to her, gently admonishing. “Everything including the stone. Whatever you want on the stone.”
“Oh, I don’t want anything fancy,” Grace said.
On Friday morning last there occurred in the sawmill operation of Douds Factory a particularly ghastly and tragic accident. Mr. Jack Agnew, in reaching under the main shaft, had the misfortune to have his sleeve caught by a setscrew in an adjoining flunge, so that his arm and shoulder were drawn under the shaft. His head in consequence was brought in contact with the circular saw, that saw being about one foot in diameter. In an instant the unfortunate young man’s head was separated from his body, being severed at an angle below the left ear and through the neck. His death is believed to have been instantaneous. He never spoke or uttered a cry so it was not by any sound of his but by the spurt and shower of his blood that his fellow-workers were horribly alerted to the disaster.
This account was reprinted in the paper a week later for those who might have missed it or who wished to have an extra copy to send to friends or relations out of town (particularly to people who used to live in Carstairs and did not anymore). The misspelling of flange was corrected. There was a note apologizing for the mistake. There was also a description of a very large funeral, attended even by people from neighboring towns and as far away as Walley. They came by car and train, and some by horse and buggy. They had not known Jack Agnew when he was alive, but, as the paper said, they wished to pay tribute to the sensational and tragic manner of his death. All the stores in Carstairs were closed for two hours that afternoon. The hotel did not close its doors but that was because all the visitors needed somewhere to eat and drink.
The survivors were a wife, Grace, and a four-year-old daughter, Lillian. The victim had fought bravely in the Great War and had only been wounded once, not seriously. Many had commented on this irony.