Aunt Bea

“I suppose that in all the world there could never be another Aunt Bea.”

New to Halifax and half-lonesome, waiting to ship out for the latest fight, that being World War II, I’d begun visiting hospitals and prisons, telling myself I was bringing cheer when really I was looking for some myself. And what do I see?

Frost bloomed across the hospital windowpane in fern-like patterns, thick and white, hiding the city outside. A battered radiator hissed in the corner, fighting a losing battle against the Halifax winter. Yet here, in this cold, was a treasure: a long-lost cousin, speaking out of turn yet hungry for company.

His name was Andrew Davenport. He sat up in his hospital bed, mouthing things from the past as if the present weighed too heavily on him.

While I waited for Andrew to notice me, I traced my name on the windowpane, just to have one small space in this godforsaken city where I might belong. But Andrew wasn’t the sort to leave a visitor feeling unwelcome. He spied what I’d written and, recognizing me at last, another world seemed to open, one where souls like his would linger to spend a month of Sundays telling stories.

So he started, and there was no stoppin’ him, neither now nor in the next life. And for myself, a twinkle in the eye was the best way to say “thank you” for a story well told, and even better if it was lived in for real, by God.

I pulled up a spindle chair that sat forgotten next to another patient, and Andrew's sharp eyes caught sight of what I brought him almost immediately.

“Give me that cigarette and light it, see?” Andrew coughed, his breath pluming in the cold air. “How many fags does a long-lost cousin owe me?”

“Too many,” I said, smiling, though I frowned soon after, seeing the state he was in.

No point giving up smoking now. Soon the nurses would come round, stiff in their starched whites, winged caps perched like communion wafers. They smelled of carbolic soap and boiled wool, their hair drawn up in buns. They’d smile and chide, smile and chide, except the head nurse, who made everyone frown. She complained of long hours, and those who “looked a sight” got the worst chores. You’d never see a doctor. Never in a million years.

“What’re you waitin’ for? Light it!” Andrew coughed again. “And light one for yourself. I never had a full pack of smokes to myself in my whole life.”

I lit one, then lit his off mine. When I handed it to him, I nearly burned my hand, trying to place the filter neatly between his curled lips. I expected it to fall every time he opened his mouth, but it stuck there like I was, hanging and waiting for history to speak.

“Aunt Bea?” I offered, helpful-like.

Andrew shivered, pulling the thin blanket to his chin. He stared at the frosted window as if he could see the past moving behind the rime.

“I kept a secret locked away,” he whispered, voice cracking. “Frozen in me like a block of winter ice. But the cold’s gettin’ in now, ain’t it? Best let it thaw while I’ve breath.”

He took a drag. The cherry glowed like a signal fire.

“It was after the Halifax Explosion that I knew she was special,” he began. “Not just my aunt. A wiser woman than ever walked God’s green earth. I still remember her apple pie. Crust flaked like old shingles, butter scarce but rolled thin with a wine bottle she kept under the sink. Not too sweet, neither—wartime sugar was dear—but cinnamon-spiced and warm as heaven itself. With a fine smell to boot. She had this house above the store her husband ran. Ran it into the ground, he did. But that wasn’t his fault. The explosion did him in.”

“Explosion?” I asked.

Andrew’s eyes widened as if I’d conjured a ghost. “Yes! The explosion! Are you daft? Worst the world had ever seen. After them two ships smashed up, one fellow said he saw the bottom of Halifax Harbour. Ships full of explosives they were. Happened just before Christmas, 1917. Halifax wiped clean as a whistle—glass dust glitterin’ on the snow like cursed sugar, the air thick with wet plaster and burnt wool. One of the ship’s anchors blew two mile away! Aunt Bea was flung down the stairs, her face near put through a window. Didn’t know up from down for days. Her husband saw half their street lose its roofs and chimneys.”

“Where were you?” I asked.

Andrew looked annoyed, mind wandering far from the room. Typical me, never knowing when to shut it.

“Sorry,” I said quickly.

“Never mind. I was fresh out of school, the eighth grade. No sense wasting money on education I’d never use. Haulin’ ice for the Schwartzes I was, though plenty of folks just pitched their food in snowbanks, it was so cold. No sense fillin’ the icebox when the Lord provided free refrigeratin’. Mind the dogs, though. Neighbours wouldn’t steal, but the dogs would eat anything not boxed up.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I didn’t want to rile him, but I had to know. “No—I meant where were you during the explosion?”

“Oh, that.” He snorted. “I’ll be jiggered if I wasn’t safe while everyone else screamed bloody murder. I was loading a horse-drawn sleigh at the ice house. Built solid, that ice house—dark and cool. I was tucked away like God’s own charm. But why keep askin’ questions? Let me tell the story!”

He took a drag, letting the ashes fall where they may, then settled back. Two tall ones would’ve helped, but sneaking smokes was all I could offer. Andrew cleared his throat.

“Aunt Bea came from a rich family. The Schwartzes—distillery folk. Taverns all over had dibs on their spirits. Sailors in and out of Halifax Harbour’d drink ’em dry. Only trouble was Aunt Bea failed to marry. A spinster at twenty-eight, she ended up with a no-count travelling salesman who thought he could run a grocery store with her trust money.”

He eyed the smoke curling toward the ceiling.

“That meant Aunt Bea was no longer welcome in the circles she grew up in. Oh, they were polite enough—Christmas, maybe Thanksgiving. They’d invite her and her husband just to look down their noses, parade their young’uns and whisper, ‘This is what happens if you don’t marry well.’”

“She’d come home upset,” Andrew said softly. “She’d visit me at the ice house, buyin’ ice she didn’t need. We’d talk. I didn’t know a thing about how grown women felt, being wet behind the ears.”

We shared a grin. I waited, but Andrew went quiet, warmed by the memory of Aunt Bea. Finally, he sighed as if the story's end would come too soon. Then he began again.

“One day she come in, looking a sight. She told me to follow her to the back, where the oldest ice lay. She grabbed the iron tongs,” he whispered, his eyes wide. “She said, ‘Andrew, someone must have what can’t be gotten.’ And then she…”

But Andrew began coughing, a terrible, rattling sound. Which caused hard shoes to start clicking down the hall…

I sat straight. Took a drag off my smoke to think. “She was treating you like her own son,” I said. “Imagine that.”

Andrew’s hand trembled so that more ash fell over his pillow. His eyes filled. “The very same? She had no son...or daughter,” he explained. It was half a cry and a whisper, strangled amidst still more wracking coughs.

Such hard sounds from any hallway must always find their place. A young nurse burst into the ward, swooping down to snatch the cigarette from Andrew's mouth.

“Mr. Davenport! Mind you aren’t discharged immediately!”

Andrew blinked his tears away, propped himself on his elbows, and tried to get out of bed! “I’ve a mind to die at home. Care to see to it?” he cried, with his last ounce of strength.

After that, the young nurse left to get the head nurse. Still, we laughed through our tears, though his coughing was fierce as ever. It hurt to leave him. The head nurse, stern as a wooden crucifix, came marching, and that was that.

I slept little when I returned to my billet. Andrew felt too near the Almighty, and I felt too near to losing him. The walls pressed close around me as a coffin. The next day, I learned he’d died that very night.

It was a brisk evening when I set out to find Andrew's wake. The wind cut through me, chilling my insides. My mouth hung open, spewing frost like a lost dog whining. I wandered street to street, hardly knowing what I was about, stumbling around on my army leave down streets where fellow soldiers mocked me, asking if I had seen a ghost.

"Come share a drink," they would say. "Where you off to?"

I didn't have the heart to tell them. For the snow fell in pellets, whipping sideways; footsteps filled in as fast as they were made. I stumbled into St. Patrick’s only to find the body moved. Then I made the rounds—for an unfinished story is no story at all. When I found the wake, it was as merry as any I’d seen—whiskey bottles passing hand to hand, a fiddle tuned sharp against the damp, boots stomping soot from the hearth across the plank floor.

“Who here knows of Aunt Bea?” I called out once courage found me, courtesy of a pint.

The crowd stilled. The fiddle bow froze midair. Eyes turned toward me.

“Aunt Bea?” asked a young man by the hearth. “To speak of Aunt Bea is to speak of the explosion that wrecked everything,” he said. “Who are you to know such things?”

“I’m Andrew’s cousin,” I said, “come to raise a glass.”

"Well, I am Andrew's only brother," he replied. "Paul. Pleased to meet you."

Faces softened as we shook hands. But the firelight threw long shadows, and a mood fell over the room as old grievances found life.

“The Nova Scotia government gave us no money to rebuild,” an old man spat.

“And the blizzard!” an even older woman added, her shawl glowing in the firelight. “Don’t forget the blizzard. Right after the boom. Worst most had ever seen.”

“Aye,” said a thick-bearded fellow. “People nailed blankets to blown-out windows. And Aunt Bea? She burned all her coal. Every lump. Heated her house and the neighbours’ too.”

“Her husband gave food from his ruined store to anyone who asked,” Paul added. “They lost their house, never rebuilt.”

Tears blurred my sight. "And Aunt Bea?”

A murmur passed through the room. Paul lowered his voice.

“When the Schwartz family began buying land that couldn’t be built on again, Aunt Bea was disgusted. Her husband was pestering her about the money in the trust account, too. He wanted to rebuild. So Aunt Bea took Andrew to the ice house.”

He leaned closer; the room leaned with him.

"I promised Andrew never to speak of this. But here lies a secret. Aunt Bea wanted nothing to do with anyone who could be a cut above any of us! So she played possum, mindful of how hated the Schwartz family was at the time. She took the iron tongs to lift a block of lake ice that hadn’t melted a drop in three days. And there—shimmering underneath—was an oilskin packet frozen at the bottom. Not food. Not drink. Her entire savings were hidden even from her husband. Her share of the Schwartz family fortune. Cold as sin but given with the warmest heart God ever made. The note in the packet read: ‘By my life do well and good, Andrew.’”

"So it was that Andrew left to seek his fortune in Montreal. Though sad to say, he never knew comfort nor felt at ease there. When he took sick, he returned to be with us."

I blinked, dumbstruck. The crowd let out their breath, one and another turning to see each other. It was clear they had never heard this story either.

Paul looked about, taking in the crowd's reaction, and for a moment it seemed he, too, might be overwhelmed. A tear rolled down his cheek.

"Aunt Bea was one of us!" he shouted finally when he could stand it no longer.

“But why give away what little she had?” I foolishly blurted. “Surely she had cares of her own.”

The room went quiet as a grave. Even the fire seemed to hush. Paul looked me over. Then he smiled.

“Join us,” he said. “Then you’ll know Aunt Bea.”

The fiddler struck his bow hard. A reel burst forth, bright and loud. A cheer rose. The room felt small and dear and warm as I raised my glass to Andrew and Aunt Bea.

In that room, warmed by whiskey and grief, I understood at last: this was the Halifax I had come searching for. And so when war had me, and hope ran thin, still Aunt Bea's deeds kept this daft world less overwhelming than might be if she never stirred. Never shed light or breathed. My God, how near are saints in thy sight!