Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Lizzie didn't remember who told her that rubbing the right boot of the Jeremiah Jones wood carving on Willow Street would bring good luck. It didn't matter. This was P-Day, and she could use all the help she could get.

P-Day - short for Project Day -   was a tense time in the Grade 5 class at Willow Street School. It was the day each student selected the subject of their YEAR LONG research projects. Students had to choose one topic in October (on P-Day) and work on it until May. The students with the best projects got special awards during a year-end  assembly that was attended by parents and members of the local school board. It was a big deal.

But seven months for one project seemed like a long time. A woman could have a baby in nine months, thought Lizzie. What was Mr. Thompson doing?

Lizzie wasn't the only one who wondered. Some parents thought a seven month research project for children aged 10 and 11 years old was a little extreme. Several times in the last decade parents had gone to the principal to complain, but Mr. Thompson stood his ground. He said it taught children how to manage their time and how to stick with a project to the end. Too often, he argued, he had to teach history and social studies on a hit-and-run basis. At the end of the day, one project requiring in-depth work would not kill them.

And so, P-Day became a fixture at the school - along with pre-project selection jitters, and post-selection depression, for those one or two students who inevitably got stuck with topic subjects they hated.

Lizzie didn't want that to happen to her, so a  week before P-Day, on the same day she'd had her odd little church time warp experience, she spent time surfing the net and texting friends about potential subjects. Mr. Thompson had announced the focus for the projects was to be Canadian heroes.

 She made a long list of candidates, but two days later, many of the names had to be dropped when Mr. Thompson announced the project could not focus on athletes. The Olympics was coming up and there would be plenty of opportunity then to write about fan favorites. Entertainment personalities were out too.

The groans and howls of protests from the boys lasted for the balance of the week. While many of  them had to start again from scratch, Lizzie still had a few names left on the list she kept tucked in the back of her purple binder. Names still on the list included, Daurene Lewis the former mayor of Annapolis Royal and the first black female mayor in North America, poet and playwright George Elliot Clarke, activist and journalist Dr. Carrie Best, and her first choice, Portia White.

There was never any question in her mind that she would be doing a project on a black hero. Instinctively she knew it was an opportunity to showcase African-Canadian history. With the exception of Black History Month in February, the contributions blacks made to Canada went largely unmentioned at the school. This was an opportunity to fix that.

She wanted to do Portia White because she was a famous opera singer from Truro. There was a wood carving of her on the lawn of Zion and a plaque near the church door with all kinds of details on it.

How hard could a project on her be? Maybe I can even sing part of the project to get extra marks.

Like the other students in Grade 5 she was still uneasy on P-Day. She dawdled a little longer than usual at breakfast, and it was a few minutes later than normal when she shouted goodbye to her father and started off along the sidewalk to school.

It was a cool, clear day with the leaves just starting to surrender their summer green for the reds and yellows of fall. Lizzie was about halfway to school when the smell of peppermint stopped her in her tracks. She looked up and down the street to find the source of the pleasing aroma, but there was nothing but a big yellow school bus pulling onto the street a block away.

 The street was deserted, except for her and the three-metre carving of soldier Jerry Jones.

"Do you know anything about this Jerry?" she asked laughing.

She passed the wood carving every day. It was one of 32 created from the trunks of dead elm trees to honour famous people in the town's past. Truro had once been known for its stately elms. Now it was becoming known for its wood carvings.

The carving of Jones had something to do with the black man's actions during a war. Lizzie had never read the plaque screwed to the base offering up details. She just knew that someone had said rubbing his boot brought luck.

 "Okay Jerry, here's a rub for luck," she said. She'd already forgotten about the peppermint smell that had stopped her in the first place.

As she reached out to run her fingers along the wood, one of the straps on her backpack came undone. She grabbed at it, but it was too late. The sack tumbled from her back, the top popping open as it hit the damp ground. Scribblers, pens, paper, two flower shaped erasers, a friendship bracelet and some glittery lip gloss her father didn't know she wore, all spilled out.

"Crap," she huffed bending down to clean up the mess.

Everything but her purple binder was back in the sack when a playful wind snuck up the sidewalk, blew open the cover and plucked out her P-Day list. The last time she saw it, it was looping over a fence at the far end of a parking lot behind an apartment building.

"Great. A lot of help you were," she scolded the carving, arranging the balance of the recovered items in the now soggy sack. "I thought you were supposed to bring luck ...."

She took a step back to continue the scolding, and froze in her tracks. As she looked up at the sculpted face of the man they called the Gentle Giant, an eyelid fluttered. The statue winked at her.

 A shiver ran down the back of her neck making the small hairs there stand on end. The shiver continued down her spine, and then made a quick left turn at her stomach. She suddenly felt dizzy.

"How the...what was...Did I see?"

Half-formed questions raced through Lizzie's mind. What had just happened? The sidewalk and the entire neighbourhood seemed to drift away. For a moment there was just Lizzie and the carving.

She didn't know how long she had been standing there when she heard Shanice calling to her from the intersection a block closer to the school.

Her friend was waiving at her and pointing at her watch. She was obviously late. Lizzie didn't want to leave, but she didn't want to get on Mr. Thompson's bad side either. With a final glance at the carving, she turned and ran toward Shanice, the smell of peppermint once again filling the air.