Downhill Chance by Donna Morrissey Page A

you thinks?” sniped Georgie. “Well, I can tell you a thing or two about Sammy Jones; he was nobody stupid, and he was no frigging coward, either—”
    “Perhaps it’s you who thinks he’s a coward,” cut in Clair, ignoring the warning look Phoebe was darting her way, “else what’re ye all the time talking about it for?”
    “Oh, come on, let’s play—girls against the guys,” cajoled Phoebe.
    But Clair was already walking off, her back stiffening as Georgie went into a rant about how “it’s like the old man says now; ’twas men going off leaving their own behind to be fended for was the cowards, not men like Sammy Jones who stayed on his own land, ripping apart bears that threatened him and his family.”
    Dark looks followed Clair the rest of the week at school; or at least, she imagined, for she never took time to check herself, or talk with Joanie and Phoebe much, to find out. Enough to keep her mind on her school work and to help her mother with the cooking and cleaning at home, than listening to the likes of Georgie Blanchard going off half-cocked like his father. And besides, Phoebe was forever making eyes at Georgie these days, and the sight of Clair was quick to darken his face and bring a snide retort, making it more and more awkward for Clair to be hanging around the back of the school with Phoebe during recess or after school.
    Home felt equally as uncomfortable, what with her mother’s chatter turned silent, and her face never smiling as she moped from room to room, upstairs and down, fidgeting with a cleaning rag or, most likely, lying across the divan with a bad head and hushing both Clair and Missy over the slightest sound. The days rolled into weeks, and the weeks into months, breakfast, dinner and supper, school, homework and bedtime. It all came and it all went, day after day, month after month. Dull, grey, colourless months. Except for Missy. Chattering, twirling and preening she pranced around the kitchen, mopping, sweeping and dusting—like the winter’s lamb that, born out of season and brought inside to be warmed by the stove, reminds everyone with its babyish bleating and the sweetening smell of last summer’s hay lining its bed, that somewhere outside, spring, like the cocooned butterfly, awaits the warming sun’s rays to release its bloom. But, Sare, mired by the dead flower stalks outside her window, was not to be wooed by thoughts of spring. And Clair, pulled by a side of herself too newly formed yet to know, scoffed at this target of her blinder self.
    “For the love of it, Missy, you don’t throw stuff on the floor,” she scolded, picking up the broom Missy had flung to one side as she skidded into the kitchen.
    “I never throwed it—I lodged it near the wall and it fell,” protested Missy. “You want me to open some bully for supper, Mommy?” Sare was standing at the sink, slicing a loaf of bread for supper.
    “If that’s what you wants,” replied Sare. “Do you want bully, Clair?”
    “Yes, we wants bully,” said Missy. Diving for the bottom cupboard, she came up with a can of bully beef. “Here, help me get it started,” she demanded, prying the key off the lid, and scaling back the label.
    “Get Clair to start it for you.”
    “No, I wants you to start it.”
    “Give me the can, Missy,” said Clair, but Missy held the can away from her grasp. “I wants Mommy.”
    “I’m just going to start it for you—”
    “No!”
    “For goodness’ sakes, pass it here,” exclaimed Sare, dropping the knife and taking the can from Missy. “And no more fighting, please .”
    “Is your head bad, Mommy?” asked Missy as her mother squinted, trying to fit the key onto the little metal tip sticking up from the side of the can.
    “Mercy,” she muttered impatiently as the key slipped through her fingers. Snatching the key off the floor, Clair took the can from her mother’s hands. “Here, let me do it.”
    “You’re bad, Clair,” shouted Missy. “I