Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady

Author:Wayne Grady
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780385677677
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2013-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

PART III

VIVIAN

Vivian stepped down from the train onto the conductor’s stool and searched the throng for Jack’s brother, Benny, who was supposed to be picking them up at the station. She was sure she would recognize him from Jack’s description: tall and blond, brown eyes with blue flecks in them. Looking into them, she imagined, would be like gazing up at the sky through a canopy of trees. When Jack joined her he looked grim, as though he’d had a fight with the conductor. He took her arm and pulled her through the crowd, almost to the exit. She should have worn lower heels. Near the door, a tall man in splattered work clothes was grinning widely at Jack. So this was Benny. His hair was blond and wavy, just as Jack had described it, but his complexion was like tanned deer hide, like that of someone who’d been working outside all summer. There were large brown freckles on the backs of his hands. Vivian hadn’t seen anyone before who looked quite like Benny, but she couldn’t put her finger on what was different about him. Jack introduced her, and Benny gave her a brief, appraising look, but instead of reaching out to shake her hand he clapped Jack on the back and said, “Well done, little brother.” What was that supposed to mean?

“Where’s the others?” Jack asked.

“Mom’s at home,” said Benny.

He took their two suitcases and led them through the station to the street. He still hadn’t said a word to her. She thought they would get into a taxi or a car, but they turned left and walked along a sidewalk, down a dreary street that smelled of dust and sewer, with shuffling pedestrians going into and out of cheap hotels, diners and pawnshops. Jack and Benny walked ahead, talking. She strode doggedly on, glad, now that she thought about it, to be moving after the long, tense train ride with Jack. This was her first real walk in Canada, a surprising thought given that she was almost two thousand miles into it. She let the distance between her and the men increase. With the wind coming from the south, it was warmer than it would have been back home, but people were walking with their hands in their pockets and their heads down, as though trudging through driving sleet. In St. John’s so warm a day would have had them taking their coats off and smiling up at the sky.

She studied the men ahead of her, her husband and his brother—her brother-in-law, although that title still seemed to belong to Freddie. Benny walked in a loose-jointed lope, so unlike Jack, whose gait was more swagger than stride. Jack’s uniform was out of place here, his widened cuffs even slightly ridiculous. Windsor wasn’t the natural home of sailors. She felt sorry for him, though she knew it was disloyal for a woman to feel sorry for her husband. Benny and Jack hadn’t seen each other for more than

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