A Brother's Duty Read online

Lucy felt like a display at Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Maybe the two headed calf or the bearded lady. She snorted then thought I must be the tattooed lady.

  She didn’t usually work Sundays because Mrs. Samuels thought that the customers would be put off by her ‘style’. Mrs. Samuels looked so uncomfortable when they discussed the shifts after she was first hired that Lucinda wanted to give her a hug and tell her it was all right. She hadn’t gotten any bad vibes from either Mr. or Mrs. Samuels but she knew that it was a small town with the usual prejudices. Smiths Falls was a former factory town with the usual divisions between the middle-class churchgoers and the working-class ‘party hearty’ crowd.

  From Monday to Friday the early breakfast crowd was mostly working stiffs who didn’t care that she was pierced and tattooed as long as they got good food and fast service. They were followed by another set of regulars, retirees who tisked at her piercings but got used to them fairly quickly. The Saturday crowd, the one morning she’d worked it, was a mix of retail workers, tourists and yard sale bargain hunters. But Sunday brunch was mostly middle-class families having a meal with grandma after church.

  There was a brief lull as the clock hit two thirty and Mrs. Samuels motioned to the stool at the end of the lunch counter next to the cash. She slid a piece of lemon meringue pie and a cup of coffee toward Lucy. “Don’t worry, Lucy. It’s decaf. I wouldn’t want to hurt the baby.”

  Lucy doctored her coffee then took a bite of the five inch high slice of pie. “I’m sure I’m not the only one to say this is heavenly, Mrs. Samuels.” Her boss raised an eyebrow and shook her head. She looked about to say something but a customer approached the cash with a bill and credit card.

  Lucy caught the dire look from her boss. Mrs. Samuels told Lucy at least one an hour to call her Jessica but Lucy couldn’t think of her that way. She was large and fifty and friendly but more like a school teacher than someone you were on a first name basis with.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Samuels.”

  “For what, Lucy?” Jessica looked a bit puzzled.

  “For the shift and for giving me the most understanding customers.”

  Jessica patted her on the hand. “Well, you do take some getting used to but you’re the best waitress I’ve had in a long while. So when that lazy Miss Chloe called this morning at eight to say she quit, you were the first one I thought of. And when are you going to call me Jessica?”

  “It may take a while. You remind me too much of my favourite high school teacher and even though she’s said the same thing to me now that I’m almost thirty, I guess the ‘Mrs. Indzeoski’ habit carried through. I was in her very first grade 12 biology class after she graduated teachers’ college. She tries to get me to call her Ellie when I see her at the mall in Ottawa. She’s only five years older than me.”

  “Indzeoski? That sounds like a prairie name.”

  “Her husband’s family is from Eastern Europe via northern Saskatchewan but she still sounds like she got off the plane from Scotland last week. She’s a Macintosh originally, I think.”

  “Well, dear girl, I hope you’ll stick around a while longer. Old Sally Munroe thought you were very nice in spite of everything.”

  “That was the big group at lunch?”

  Jessica began to fold napkins for the next rush. “That’s them. They come in every Sunday. Sally doesn’t get out much since her hip surgery. She lives in a tiny apartment close to here so everyone comes to the diner for lunch on Sunday.”

  “Her daughter didn’t think much of my looks.”

  “No, but she’s a nasty piece of work. Thinks going to church makes her a Christian and better than everyone else. Makes me mad. Being a Christian is about leading people to a better way of living. His way.”

  “Are you a Christian, Mrs. Samuels?”

  Jessica smirked. “Well, some of the Protestant folks ‘round here wouldn’t say so. I go to Saturday evening mass so I can open up on Sundays. My Alec goes to the early service at the Anglican church so he can join us by ten when the rush starts.”

  Lucy rolled her aching shoulders and said, “I haven’t had very much luck with the church or with Christians since the middle of high school. For a group that’s supposed to be about loving your neighbor they haven’t been very helpful to me.” A vision of John’s disapproving face came to mind.

  “Well, Lucy, there’s lots more that claim to be Christian than live it. Some of us can be pretty disapproving of the surface but when push comes to shove good Christians are right there helping out. But sometimes, Lucy, you have to let people help you. It often turns out that letting other people help you means that you’re helping them in return.” Mrs. Samuels looked pointedly at her barely noticeable bulge and gave her hand a pat. “Now, are you up for the supper rush or should I call someone else in?”

  Lucy drained her coffee. “I think I’ll be good until seven.”

  The bell on the door rang as a group of grimy university aged men came in for a late lunch. Lucy recognized the sunburned, mosquito bitten, sweat-stained, endorphin-laced weary elation on their faces and had a flash of nostalgia about her grandfather. Ah, bonding with nature and each other along too many kilometers of portages.

  There were a good number of appreciative looks directed her way along with some gentle flirting as she distributed the menus.

  John gave the lift jack one last spray of WD-40, hoping that it would finally loosen the screw enough to let it turn. He got out his longest sturdy wrench and used a rubber mallet to try to make it move. There was a satisfying screech as it finally turned.

  Bruno gave a couple of loud barks in response to the noise and came bounding nervously toward John to investigate.

  John looked down at the large bony head and said, off-handedly, “It was rusted almost solid, boy.” In a more conciliatory tone, he reached out a hand and said, “Sorry if I hurt your ears.”

  Bruno stretched out his neck to sniff at the offered hand but remained wary.

  John said, “Why don’t you go sit while I jack this up to level.”

  Bruno settled down three meters away to watch the proceedings. Five minutes, eleven rusty shrieks, an almost alarming creak and a skinned knuckle later the corner of the trailer was level again. A half hour with a spade to dig a proper drainage trench away from the concrete blocks under the jack and John was confident that it would be a while before it would sink again. He thought that he might offer to put a snow skirt around the trailer to keep the ground from softening and to provide some extra insulation.

  John looked up at the tarp covering the roof and deduced that it might be covering up a leak. He saw the ancient wooden ladder leaning against the end of the trailer and hoped that Lucinda had not been using it recently, although the fact that it was up rather than stowed away didn’t comfort him.

  Bruno followed him back to his truck to watch him take out his own heavy duty folding ladder. “I’m glad you’re here to make sure I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  John’s lips curled into a fond smile at the animal. He was a good dog and probably wouldn’t let anyone near his pack leader without her permission but he was a softie at heart, like most big dogs. But there had been a couple of tense moments while he’d stood beside his truck waiting for the dog to come to investigate him.

  It had taken almost ten minutes before John was allowed to move toward the trailer without a growl. Since then he’d been followed at a wary distance that was gradually closing.

  He climbed the ladder to see a blue tarp fastened to the top of the porch and draped over the trailer anchored with a dozen rocks. The tarp was starting to get brittle from the ultraviolet but he didn’t think that Lucinda was going to put a big priority on replacing it. He hoped that her absence this afternoon meant that she had a job to go to or a friend to visit.

  He lifted the corner of the tarp and saw why the ladder had been placed there. There was a small gash in the roof, probably from a fallen tree limb. He looked up at the beautiful maple trees, tall poplars and
majestic oak trees that ringed the clearing. A strong wind could easily knock a diseased branch out of the trees onto the roof. He examined the trees more carefully. There were at least a dozen dead branches hanging in the canopy waiting for a high wind to knock them loose. Widowmakers, he thought. I’ll have to come back with the cherry picker to get rid of those.

  If she lets you. A niggling voice in his head reminded him that he was taking charge of things without Lucinda’s permission or knowledge. Rob had always complained when he’d take over a job without asking. And Ernie and Reenie kept bugging him to find someone to marry so he would have something better to do with his spare time than cosmetic handyman jobs at the farm.

  An unwanted vision of Lucy’s metal studded face came to mind and he shook it away. She was so far from what he wanted for a wife it wasn’t funny. But her wary, sad and lonely eyes seemed to have burned an image onto his retinas.

  “So, boy. Do you think your pack leader will let me trim those dead branches away?”

  He wasn’t certain how he was going to react if she came home before he was finished for the day. He still wasn’t certain that he could contain his disgust at her piercings. What he’d seen of her tattoos seemed pretty tame as those things went. He had a couple of guys on his construction crews with some pretty risqué artwork but the metal in her face was just too hard for him to overlook.

  He thought back to Jack’s sermon from that morning. He knew he had a problem with being too judgmental. Rob called him on it often enough and so had Archie at church. Maybe he did have a problem with the log in his own eye. But the sermon had struck him forcefully, like the Holy Spirit was whispering ‘pay attention’ in his ear.

  What was the key quote? Right, 1 Corinthians 6:11. “For such were some of you, but you are now sanctified, you are now justified by the name of the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit.”

  Jack had reminded them of the primary mission of the Church – to go into the world and make disciples. In verses nine and ten Paul had reminded the Corinthians of a long list of behaviours that, if they indulged in them, would bring shame and scorn to believers and to the church. The people of Corinth had indulged in all manner of sinful behaviours: malicious gossip, drunkenness, promiscuity, adultery, theft, fraud, idol worship and open greed. But the members of the congregation there had been converted by Paul to a saving faith in Jesus and they had left those behaviours behind.

  Perhaps he should reflect on the first half of the sermon. The kind of judgment he’d placed on Rob and on Lucinda was the kind of judgment of a believer preparing to correct another believer. He had neither the right nor the obligation to judge the behavior of an unbeliever or at least someone who did not profess Jesus. And he had no right at all to judge a person’s past behaviour if they were a fellow believer now. For such were some of you… Well, maybe he could learn to be less judgmental the next time he saw Lucinda. Maybe.

  He shook his head to clear it. Daydreaming at the top of a ladder was a recipe for a quick trip to the hospital. He took out his measuring tape and smiled as he discovered that two inch aluminum foil tape would be wide enough to seal the hole. Then he could cover it with a layer of duct tape and spray it all with some heavy duty enamel paint to finish it off. He spotted another small crack about four feet further along the seam that was probably a result of the sagging corner. It didn’t look like it was leaking yet but it needed attention.

  He smiled as he descended the ladder. Bruno came trotting over to follow him at a friendly distance until he reached the truck. “You miss her, don’t you pup?”

  Bruno cocked his head to one side, as if asking for something.

  John peered at the shadowed porch and asked, “Are you thirsty?”

  Seeing only a trace of water in the bowl on the porch he got out a pair of water bottles from his cooler. He opened the first and drank half of it while walking to the porch. Bruno sat respectfully while John poured the full bottle and the rest of the other one into the dish. “I don’t think she expected to be away this long there buddy.”

  Bruno drank his fill then came over to John and nudged his hand as if to say thanks.

  “Well, aren’t you an affectionate beast?” John paused in his search for the repair materials to give the big dog a good scratch. “Smudge isn’t going to like it that I’m fraternizing with the enemy.”

  Bruno responded with a blissful sound that was halfway between a groan and a whine. John straightened up after a few seconds and filled a carry tray with cleaner, paper towel, tape and the spray paint.

  Forty minutes later he finished the repairs but left the tarp folded back to let the paint dry. He looked at Bruno. “So, Mr. Dog, what’s next? Will you let me take a look at that rickety porch?”

  Bruno thumped his tail on the ground and got up to solicit more scratches. John obliged while he put everything away and fished out a quarter inch wide bladed screwdriver and a flashlight.

  He got down to look at the porch foundations and began to poke at the wood with the screwdriver. One of the joists had started to rot out near the center where it was resting on an old piece of firewood. Some of the floor planks were starting to rot as well but it was the railings that were in the worst shape. They were supposed to provide cross bracing to the porch roof but everything was starting to list northward. And the bottom step needed replacing. He shrugged. The step and setting the deck blocks properly were the only tricky parts. He had enough leftover lumber from various projects that it wouldn’t cost anything except for two new deck blocks. Then he shook his head as he thought about all of the not quite scrap building stone in his barn. He could make deck blocks easily enough.

  He went back to the truck to get a clipboard and another couple of bottles of water. His stomach made hungry noises. Glancing at his watch he was surprised that it was already supper time. He almost climbed into the truck but thought it would be best to leave a note.

  After writing up his list of repairs for the porch and taking some measurements so he could start a bill of materials, he pondered a blank sheet of paper. How to start? With some trepidation he began.

  Miss Wilkinson:

  I came by today to see if there was something I could do to help out. You weren’t here and I hope that you won’t be too mad but when I came the first time I noticed a few urgent things that needed fixing.

  I raised the corner of the trailer that was low. I didn’t hear anything snap or creak alarmingly other than the jack. I also patched and painted a small hole in the roof near the same corner and took care of another spot that was starting to develop a crack.

  I made note of a few other things that I’d be happy to fix up, but I think I’d rather talk them over with you first because there may be some materials needed. Please call me when you can.

  John MacLeish.

  He added his personal cell phone number then tore the paper off the pad and tucked it under a strap of the lawn chair with one of his business cards.

  Bruno followed him to the truck and looked disappointed that he wasn’t going to get a ride. “Sorry, big guy, you have to wait for Miss Lucinda to get home.”

  Bruno seemed disappointed but trotted over to his shady hollow under the oak tree and let out a long suffering sigh. John headed home with mixed feelings. He felt good about doing Lucinda a favour but he had really been hoping to meet her again despite all the metal in her face.

  If he’d read her eyes right she was lonely and hurting, too. Maybe she’d understand enough to let him talk about Rob. Maybe.

  Chapter 5