Grey dog, p.1
Grey Dog, page 1
Grey Dog
Elliott Gish
Contents
Dedication
August 17, 1901
August 18, 1901
August 25, 1901
August 26, 1901
August 28, 1901
September 2, 1901
September 10, 1901
September 13, 1901
September 16, 1901
September 18, 1901
September 22, 1901
September 26, 1901
September 29, 1901
October 8, 1901
October 14, 1901
October 17, 1901
October 20, 1901
October 31, 1901
November 6, 1901
November 12, 1901
November 17, 1901
November 22, 1901
November 28, 1901
December 6, 1901
December 7, 1901
December 10, 1901
December 14, 1901
December 18, 1901
December 20, 1901
December 29, 1901
January 1, 1902
January 5, 1902
January 13, 1902
January 17, 1902
January 23, 1902
January 26, 1902
February 6, 1902
February 11, 1902
February 14, 1902
February 16, 1902
February 20, 1902
February 22, 1902
February 28, 1902
March 3, 1902
March 5, 1902
March 13, 1902
March 14, 1902
March 21, 1902
March 23, 1902
March 27, 1902
April 4, 1902
April 7, 1902
April 10, 1902
April 11, 1902
April 14, 1902
April 19, 1902
April 23, 1902
April 30, 1902
May 2, 1902
May 4, 1902
May 9, 1902
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
Dedication
For Cael
August 17, 1901
The train shudders so horribly that this page will probably be impossible to decipher later. With every bend and bump in the track, my hand skates and jumps over this black book, creating blots and slashes in the paper. To my future self, should she try to read what I have written here: my apologies and Godspeed.
How old was I the last time I kept a diary? Thirteen, I think, or fourteen. A girl with her hair in braids, fresh and unbroken as new snow. I can scarcely recall now what I wrote about then, although it all felt terribly important at the time. Perhaps in a year or two I will reread this passage and encounter the same feeling that arises when I recall those youthful diary entries — a mixture of fondness and impatience, with a dash of incredulity that a creature so young and ignorant could call herself unhappy.
For I am unhappy. I am unhappy to be in my current position, stuffed in a hot and dirty train carriage next to an old woman who sleeps with her mouth wide open. (She snores as well, but I can scarcely hear her over the noise of the rails.) I do not travel well at the best of times, and the prospect of arriving in a new place, a place where I know no one and am familiar with nothing, means that I cannot even look forward to the end of my journey. Every teaching post I have ever taken has begun this way: an uncomfortable voyage, awkward greetings, a long, hard period of “settling in.” This should be no different. But it is, it is! And I know why.
I found this book only a day or two ago, at the bottom of the wardrobe that my sister, Florrie, and I shared as girls. It was part of the haphazard bundle of her belongings that her husband had returned to my father’s house, sandwiched carelessly between a sewing basket and a folded flannel petticoat. I picked the book up out of idle curiosity, thinking it might be one of the “nature logs” she and I kept together through childhood; but when I opened it, I found it blank, save for an exquisite border of flowering vines in blue ink on the first page, each bloom and thorn rendered in minute detail. A cardinal perched in the upper right corner, drawn so beautifully that it seemed about to take flight and escape the boundaries of the page. I recognized the artwork as my sister’s even before I saw the dedication below in her outsized scrawl, so unlike my own cramped, minute hand.
To Aidy, for when you are in the woods.
Love always, F
I had to close the book then, for fear of smudging the ink. Into my satchel it went, hidden beneath a layer of fresh white handkerchiefs.
Father gave me only a smattering of details about my new post. I know that the town is called Lowry Bridge; that, properly speaking, it is not a town at all, but a village twenty miles away from the terminus in Portsmouth; that they are desperate for a teacher, and therefore not inclined to ask inconvenient questions about that teacher’s past once she arrives, particularly if her father is superintendent of the district school board. This last he did not say to me, but he did not say it at tremendous volume.
“Write to us, Aidy,” he said at the station this afternoon, his eyes blank, like those of a shark. The pet name made a liar of him. “Aidy” was what Florrie had always called me in moments of tenderness, and my father does not suffer from so vulgar an affliction as tender feeling. “We want to know how you are keeping.”
This, too, was a lie. I said nothing, only chewed at the edge of my lip in a way that made him frown and reach out to grasp my hand within his big one, squeezing it hard until my bones rubbed painfully together. I stopped then.
After this interminable train ride, I shall meet a Mr. Grier at the Portsmouth station, the man in whose house I shall board. He is an acquaintance of my father’s, although the circumstances under which they once met are unknown to me. He has a wife, presumably — my father would never allow me to board with him otherwise — but I do not know her name, nor anything else about the pair of them. Are they old or young? Is their marriage happy or miserable? Do they have children, and if so, do they love them?
This train churns the contents of my stomach into a sickly froth, but that churning is nothing to the knot that forms in it when I imagine the moment when the churning stops and my feet meet solid ground.
I shall send my parents news of the countryside, my classroom, the daily minutiae of a spinster’s life in the middle of nowhere. Cheerful, dishonest letters, quite free of emotion and depth. Since Florrie’s leave-taking, there is no one with whom I may share my real feelings, no place in my life for candour and misery, save between the covers of this black book. My truth shall remain trapped on its pages, while my happy little lies travel the world.
August 18, 1901
It was nearly two o’clock before I finally arrived in Portsmouth, bedraggled, dusty, and stiff as a corpse from hours spent upright in a train seat. After disembarking — and nearly losing my hat in the process — I scanned the platform for Mr. Grier, repeating to myself my father’s brief sketch of him.
“A small fellow — rather stout — not much hair left, but what’s there is red.”
And indeed, there was a gentleman matching that description standing by the station door, a searching look on his ruddy face as he peered through the dispersing crowd. I met him with a smile, one that felt as limp and dispirited as I doubtlessly looked.
“Miss Byrd?” he called hopefully, starting forwards. Small he certainly was, his stoutness running to outright plumpness, with a thin fringe of ginger hair combed unconvincingly over his crown. He wore a shabby grey suit and moved so uncomfortably in it that I knew it to be his Sunday best. “Miss Ada Elizabeth Byrd?”
It was gratifying to hear my proper name on someone’s lips again. After spending the past five months in hiding in my father’s house, Aidy has come to sound more like an epithet than a pet name to me.
“Mr. Grier, I hope,” I said, and reached out to shake his hand. (He looked a bit startled at that; perhaps ladies do not shake hands here?) “I am so pleased to make your acquaintance. My father has spoken most highly of you.”
Highly was, perhaps, a bit of a stretch, but Mr. Grier’s face flushed with pleasure. It was an uneven flush, the crimson mottled and broken like the flesh of an uncooked sausage.
Those were the last words we exchanged for some time, for Mr. Grier concerned himself chiefly with heaving my belongings into the buggy he had left tied at the front of the station, a venerable thing with a patched cover, pulled by a team of disinterested grey mares. It was not until we were both settled and on our way down the road that he spoke again.
“Well now, Miss Byrd,” he all but shouted over the clatter of the wheels, “I must say we’re all surely glad you’ve come.”
There was nothing I could say to that that would not have been either a lie, insulting, or painfully banal, so I smiled vaguely in response. Taking that as an invitation to continue, Mr. Grier went on:
“I suppose your father told you about the bother we’ve had — trying to keep teachers and all? It’s three we’ve lost in the last four years, one right after the other. The first two were young, right out of the teacher’s college. They left to get married. Well, that’s to be expected. Just wanted a year’s salary to pay for their wedding doo-dabs, I suppose. But the last was an older lady, nice and steady. We thought we’d have hold of her for a least a few years.” He shook his head, fiddling a little with the reins.
“Was she taken ill?” I ventured when he didn’t offer anything further.
He shook his head again, looking gloomy. “No. Her mother. She got word that the poor woman had come down with pneumonia, and nothing would do for a nurse but her own daughter. Left in the night, right in the middle of the spring term, and the little ones were without a teacher again. When your father wrote and said that you were seeking a new post, I thought, That’s providence, sheer providence! The Lord provides, Miss Byrd.”
I don’t remember what I said to that — perhaps nothing at all. Whatever it was, it was not enough to inspire Mr. Grier to further conversation, and we continued in silence for a discomfiting length of time. I was an exotic stranger to this man, a woman from (comparatively) far away, whose eyes had seen places and people that his had not. Why, then, was he not asking me questions? Was he of that breed of country men who have no interests beyond their own fields and barns? Or — and this was a dreadful thought indeed — had my father told him what had transpired at my former post, and had that knowledge discomfited him so that he felt he could not speak freely?
I tried to divert myself by admiring the scenery, but found myself with little to admire. The chief feature of the journey from Portsmouth to Lowry Bridge was the thickness of the spruces that lined the sides of the road, clustered so dark and close that, for a fanciful moment, I imagined them pressing in on us, swallowing the road and leaving the land untouched and whole again. Our own dust was behind us, and ahead more road and more trees, forever and ever, ad infinitum.
Presently Mr. Grier cleared his throat and said:
“I do hope, Miss Byrd, that you won’t find Lowry Bridge too quiet. I understand that your last placement was in a bit of a fast town.”
I managed not to laugh at that. Willoughby could, I suppose, be considered a fast town by someone from such a place as Lowry Bridge.
“Not at all, Mr. Grier,” I said, as gravely as I could manage. “I was raised in a small town myself. They suit me very well.”
He looked mightily relieved at that.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” he said, “very glad indeed. I know some people don’t hold with little places these days — nothing will do for them but to run off to a city as soon as they cut themselves free of their mother’s apron strings. But we’re a good town, for all we ain’t big.”
Aren’t, not ain’t, I nearly corrected him, before biting my tongue and saying nothing.
“We’re small, but we have a town hall now,” Mr. Grier went on. He seemed to gather steam as he continued, speaking more and more rapidly. “We have a church — Presbyterian, with a good, sober minister. His wife teaches the Sunday school. There’s prayer meeting once a week for ladies. Even dances. I play at them from time to time, fiddling — jigs and reels and such.” He looked at me sidelong, as though worried he had offended me, and added, “Not that you need come, of course, if you don’t care to. I know a lot of people don’t hold with dancing, but we have young people in town, and it’s good for their spirits, my wife says.”
“I’ve been known to dance a step or two.” This was broadly true, although I have not done so for some time, and I have never done so well. “What about the children, Mr. Grier? What are they like?”
“Like?” that good man repeated, as though unsure what I meant.
“How many of them are there? Do they read well? What sort of games do they like?”
He looked a little blank. “The usual ones, I suppose,” he replied, rather vaguely. “Hopscotch and jumping rope and such. My wife and I don’t have children, you see, so I can’t say that I know much about what they get up to.”
He sounded wistful. I wondered if he and his wife had wanted children, if they were saddened by the lack of them, or if they were perfectly content as a pair. There has always been something markedly odd to me about childless couples. They seem too complete within themselves, twin chicks growing in a single egg. Marriages, I think, can work too well in uniting two people as one.
Thus sayeth the spinster, nearing thirty with neither marriage nor children under her belt.
The road wound on through trees and open farmland, brassy fields of wheat and barley nodding gently in the breeze. Occasionally a house or barn would pop up in the distance, lonely sentries standing in a haze of green and gold. I was keenly aware of every window we passed, imagining eyes behind the glass. Small towns are veritable factories of gossip, churning out thick black clouds of judgment that pall the landscape for miles around. How long before that cloud would hang over me?
“Tell me about Lowry Bridge,” I said, more to distract my own nattering brain than because I was genuinely interested. Mr. Grier was more than happy to oblige. As we rode onwards, the road sloping gently down toward banks of the river, he told me more about the town than I could ever have hoped to learn. Founded nearly two hundred years ago by a healthy mix of Germans, Scots, and Englishmen; originally two settlements, each with its own name, both of which I now forget; named for the brothers who built the bridge that spanned the river, connecting the two original communities. The one on the northeast bank apparently has the reputation of being the rougher of the two. The southwest side of the river is where civilization dwells.
“And where is the school?” I asked him.
“Northeast,” Mr. Grier admitted, rather sheepishly. “Land goes cheaper over there, on account of the trees being so thick on that side. Nobody wants to clear it. It ain’t a bad part of town, you understand. The church is over that side, and the manse. It’s just that some of the folks over there ain’t quite like us. Coarse, like. They’re poorer, so I suppose that explains it.”
Looking at Mr. Grier’s patched buggy and worn suit, I suspected that this was one of those small-town distinctions that are utterly incomprehensible to outsiders but taken as a matter of course by citizens. It was a neat line to draw in the sand, I had to admit. How easy it must be to know which folks are respectable and which are not, if you only need look at what side of a bridge they live on! (Mr. Grier himself, he hastened to assure me, lives on the southwest side of the bridge — that is, the good side.)
As we took a sudden bend in the road, the thick clusters of trees suddenly cleared a bit, and Mr. Grier interrupted himself to nod his head to the left.
“See there,” he said, “that’s Slade River.”
And there it was, laid out amidst the trees and fields like a broad, flat ribbon. Having seen a map of the town, I know that Lowry Bridge spans a bend in the river; it flows from the north, then wends east, then turns south again, giving it an almost angular appearance, like the edge of a staircase. Beyond it rose a gentle curve of land, golden fields darkened here by stands of pines and there by little whitewashed houses. I could not make out the shape of the river in that moment, only the shining band of it sparkling in the afternoon light. A kingfisher skimmed across its surface, a brilliant azure flash against the murky greens and muddy browns of the water.
“Oh! How beautiful!” I exclaimed. My enthusiasm rang a little false in my ear, and perhaps in Mr. Grier’s too, for he gave me a sidelong look that was very nearly askance. But I meant it.
“Well, now, I suppose it is,” he said, almost grudgingly, but I detected a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. It is impossible, I think, not to feel a little proud when one’s home is found beautiful.
The road dipped farther down, the trees gathering closer again to its sides. Their shade was welcome after such a long time in the sun, and yet I found myself shivering a little in the sudden gloom.
“Cold, are you?” Mr. Grier asked, as though it were a perfectly natural thing for a woman to shiver in the middle of August. “Never mind. We’ll be home soon, and Mrs. Grier will get a bit of supper in you.”
The notion appealed to me. I had packed a little lunch to eat on the train, but it had not been much, and I was suddenly ravenous.
