Deafening by Frances Itani Read Free Book Online

black wheat smouldered for days inside the ruins of the elevator.
    The rain began at nine-thirty Monday night, a downpour as violent as the fire itself. Lightning and thunder added to the chaos and increased the misery of the families who sought shelter. Water soaked furniture and clothing that were heaped in the streets and in passageways between buildings and outside burning homes. If the gale-force winds had changed direction, the rest of the town would have burned, too. But as it turned out, the citizens managed to confine the fire to the eastern section of town.
    There was no loss of human life; that was the miracle. As for the animals, horses were led away as fast as men could remove them. Later in the week the Tribune reported that a bantam hen and five chicks escaped the inferno and were found in Deseronto Junction, north of the town, where they were recognized and claimed by their owner. The editor fancied the story, but Mamo, who had seen other things, had not noticed any bantam hen or chicks.
    Perhaps it was a blessing that so many people had left town to celebrate the holiday. At eight in the morning, the Citizens’ Band played a rousing march as it paraded to the railway station to accompany a trainload of passengers on a thirty-mile excursion to the “Limestone City” of Kingston. Others took the hour-and-a-half steamer trip south across the Bay of Quinte, down the body of water called Long Reach and into Picton’s harbour to celebrate in Prince Edward County.
    Grania’s father was one of those who had left. But he had gone north with horse and wagon to the Ninth Concession in Tyendinaga Township, to visit his father’s farm. He’d taken Bernard withhim, and two-year-old Tress, and some store-bought groceries for his father and his father’s sister Martha. Bompa Jack was a widower and Martha a widow, and she had returned to the pioneer farm to live with her brother. Mamo and Agnes had stayed behind in Deseronto because of Agnes’ condition. And heat and flame had levelled almost everything east of Fourth and south of Dundas, that furnace day in May.
    Agnes, awkward at the end of her pregnancy, had moved methodically from window to window, closing shutters, tamping wet towels on the floor to block spaces beneath the doors. As soon as she took to her bed, her labour began. Dr. Clark and his wife, Mildred, could not be found in all the need and confusion, and there was no time to send for anyone else, so it was Mamo herself who delivered Agnes’ third baby. Mamo was no midwife but she’d been at birthings often enough, including seven of her own in Ireland, with four survivals, and she had listened and she had watched, and she knew what to do. Even so, she was concerned because, the last time, after Tress’s birth, Agnes had suffered a dangerous loss of blood.
    Agnes was no longer able to see her, Mamo knew that. Not while she was lying in bed in the state of her own fear, perspiring and ranting, terrified of her own blood gushing forth, terrified of being unable to stop the flow. At the same time she knew she had to push forth the life that was about to begin outside herself. Her labour was mercifully short. But her skin became pale and colourless, and Mamo was shocked by the contrast when the red-faced infant, held upside down, wailed its short and sharp new breaths. The baby settled and breathed quietly, and her skin pinkened to a more natural colour. Mamo cut the cord and tied it with a clean white strip of bandage. She wrapped the smooth-skinned baby with the tiny feet and pale lashes and the thickness of red hair—as thick as the hair of a six-month-old child and as red as her own when she’d been a young woman—and it was then that she felt the child move towards her. Felt the strength of this miniature being move towards her like a wedge of falling timber aimed at her heart. Agnes, exhausted, layon the bed coughing, her lungs irritated by the smoke that hovered over the town. The baby’s