by Gary Collins
“Wot ya figure she’ll ’ave, Tobe? A boy or girl?”
“Oh, a boy fer sure! Me mind’s already made up to that fact. Maybe even a twin o’ boys. Both of ’em the spit of their ol’ man.”
“Only the Man Above knows about that, b’y. ‘Male and female created He them.’ Though I always say any boy can git a boy. It takes a man to git a girl.” And the Skipper, who was the father of four girls and no boy, walked down the path to the harbour, and the others, their laughter suddenly stilled, followed him.
7
What the girls jokingly called my love bun showed before I was three months gone. My slim frame showed the life in my belly early. By now it was midsummer, and the cod fishing was in full operation. The fairly lucrative time of catching fish in the huge cod traps tied to the points of land was over. Now it was the daily early morning row to sea. The simple, gunnel-chafing method of handlining for the elusive codfish was done by the men, while the “making” of the fish, readying it for market, was done by us women.
Twenty-one days minimum, buried in the coarse, pebbly salt in the board pounds in the windowless stage was the general rule for heavy salted codfish, and much longer if the weather wasn’t right. Then, if the men determined the salt had “struck” through the fish, the women’s task, the real work of making fish for market, began. We removed the fish from their bed of salt and washed them with cloths in tubs of sea water drawn up over the stagehead, before carrying them on two-woman hand-carts to the flakes, where they were spread head to tail for drying.
Fish that was laid on the flake after sunrise had to be lugged back to the stage before sundown brought the dew. There were days too hot for proper drying, as determined by the head lady in our crew. Fearing sunburnt fish, she ordered us to cover them with boughs. My stomach swelled with the season. Fishing was lean, the work not hard for me, and the flakes barely bent with the weight of fish, until the choice fish-curing days of early autumn came.
The liners, we called it, that expanse of time following the sun “over the line.” It was a time when for days on end the brisk, dry, and cool southwest wind blew out of the wooded bays, and cod on our now well-bent flakes dried well. The sudden abundance of cod for drying was not caught by our own men, but was caught somewhere else and brought to us by the fish merchant, to whom we were beholden.
Our late bounty of fish began one day with the appearance of the Plunging Star at the harbour entrance. She was laden deep, her plimsol line under water with the weight of salt bulk cod, which had been caught farther north and brought to our island for drying. I still paled at the sight of the Plunging Star, fearing the Culler would return. I watched from hiding while the schooner was docking, sure I would see the figure of the Culler lounging at her taffrail, and I long gone with his child. I was relieved to see there was no one there. All aboard worked at her docking and subsequent off-loading of hundreds of quintals of salt cod to be dried by the women of our island.
Before the off-loading, Toby stepped aboard the Star and disappeared down the forecastle scuttle with the skipper. When he emerged a few moments later to help with the off-loading, he had made his mark—Toby couldn’t write his own name—upon the ledger. By doing so he had indebted himself, and me, to the fish merchant. He had also agreed upon the price for the drying of fish to be carried to the flakes by me and the other women. I was never told the price to be paid for the work. Toby simply said it would be applied against our new account. It was the way of things, what they called the truck system, fish for barter, trade or steal. I didn’t question it.
Now the real back-breaking work of making fish began. Despite the gruelling daily work, I enjoyed it more than summer drying. There was little fear of the fish burning in the sun, and unlike the dog days of summer, when the fish flies buzzing around the green cod made more noise than a hornets nest, the white flesh cured to a golden brown. We rested on Sundays. No matter how fair that day, no one was allowed “on flake.”
“Feelin’ the kick of life yet, Becky my love?” came from one of the women bent over the flake beside me with a yaffle of fish in her arms. The day was warm with a fair wind hissing over the white cod, which had all been laid face up.
I emptied my arms of fish and stood up as straight as I could before answering. My back was aching something fierce. I hated the now prominent bulge in my belly. Though the child growing daily within my womb would have a father, I was cursed with an ominous dread at every kick.
“Oh, I feel it, all right! Hard enough to feel like the kick of death, it is to me.”
“I know what you mean, my love. Probably a girl. Girls usually kick hardest. I should know.” The other woman smiled knowingly at me. She was the wife of the quiet Skipper I had overheard on the path, who had sired four daughters and no son. “It was on this very flake when the pains of me last one come,” she continued. “I was trying to straighten my back, the way you are now, when I felt the first stab of pain. Knew what it was right away. Aunt Jane, the midwife, twice my age and still bending o’er the flakes just two flakes over, heard my cry and walked toward me, knowing that cry above all others, she did. Funny how I remember clearly how she didn’t run to me. She just walked my way, not alarmed at all. If she had come running, maybe I would have panicked. Me water broke before I reached my door. ‘Don’t mind that, my love,’ says Aunt Jane. ‘Birth water has dripped on this path before, and upon the drying flakes as well, fer that matter.’ She helped me along to home, all bent over, like, with the pain.”
The woman dropped the last fish from her yaffle right where she wanted it to go. She left for another load, and I followed behind. “Winter child fer you, I expect.”
“Yes, around the New Year, I’m thinking.” I half feared she was doing the calculations of our marriage.
“Your water won’t be breakin’ on the flakes, then, that’s fer sure.” She smiled at me then, as if that by itself would be a blessing. I smiled back at this gentle woman. Oh Lord yes, no matter how small, I could do with blessings.
The nights were long a month later. The shortening days were barely long enough to dry a bit of fish to make for our own winter diet. The Plunging Star came back with more basic supplies to carry our island over the winter. I was still wary of the Culler appearing on her deck, but he wasn’t aboard. The fishermen helped the schooner’s crew carry aboard the fish caught on the island, as they always did. It was weighed on board but not culled. They were told this would be done on the merchant’s premises and the weight credited to each fisherman. There was no argument. The men signed after their fish was weighed and watched it disappear down the cavernous hold of the schooner.
Then they carried the merchant’s fish aboard, which we had slaved over. The fish weighed hundreds of pound lighter now that the water had been dried out of it. The fishermen were credited with the dry price. The fish hadn’t been weighed when carried ashore green. When all the fish had been secured aboard and the scant cargo off-loaded, the Plunging Star hauled sails aloft and sailed away. It was the last schooner, the last contact with the world outside our little island, we would see for longer than five months. I never knew what price was paid for the fish we had made. Nor did I, or any woman in the Place, get one cent for all that work.
That evening stands out in my mind. I watched as the Plunging Star cleared our harbour. I followed her from the cliff as she sailed down the tickle with sails bent and closed with Mineral Point, heading for the open sea. It was only after she rounded the point, giving the breakers beneath the cliff a wide berth, and had slipped back around the point with only the tips of her spars visible above it, that I felt it. I had never had such a feeling before. I had never felt isolated before. For the first time in my life I wondered to what different worlds the Plunging Star could take me. I suddenly felt as though I were imprisoned in a place from which I would never be released.
Not even the festivities of Bonfire Night could calm this feeling of despair and t
he longing to be somewhere other than our island. I had never even considered leaving the Place before. Until now I had always been contented with my little spot of the earth. The flake boughs were gathered into a common pile, and just as dark descended, they were set alight. The flames feasted on the tender dry boughs, sending blazing scarves of orange upward. Wood was added, and flankers raced skyward on the updraft. Children raced around with gleeful voices, trying to catch the falling sparks and yelling when they did. Everyone in the Place sat on rocks or stood around the blazing fire. Lovers held hands.
A yellow moon rose up over the lip of the sea and released its silvery light upon us. It was a night of beauty, yet I felt nothing. Toby sat beside me, holding me with his arm to confirm I was his possession. Potatoes and dried capelin were roasted on the dying embers, and the rich odour filled the air. A large kettle, already blackened from a hundred fires, was gingerly removed from the coals, and tea was poured. Looking skyward, the Skipper pointed out the reclining lady in her chair among the bright stars. I stared and could see nothing. All I could see were the streaks of flame the colour of my violator’s hair. I prayed, then. I pleaded with Almighty God that his git didn’t carry the colour of his hair.
During the middle of the Christmas month, I was experiencing pains in my lower back and abdomen. Pains all over my body, it seemed. My mother assured me it was all normal and part of Thou shalt bear them in pain. I had never heard that before, either. Toby brewed a foul-smelling concoction of yeast, molasses, and water. He kept it behind the stove, and wrapped it in heavy quilts at night after the stove was lit out, to keep his “small beer” from freezing. He and a few friends gathered around the kitchen and drank most of it on the eve of Christmas. My father played a few jigs. The men danced a bit, shaking the scrawny tree hung in the corner with its few woollen decorations. The floor shook as the men’s heavy boots stamped on it.
Toby got sick and threw his guts up outside in the porch. He got sick all over the floor by the water barrel and the woodpile stacked there. I had to clean it up. He still smelled of vomit and stale beer when I struggled my overweight body into bed to the sound of his snoring. Back in late October, I had finally convinced Toby that sex was dangerous for the baby. It took a couple of nights of my whimpering in apparent pain before he gave up his nightly mauling of me.
During the dark, cold hours of the last day of December, long before I heard the clang of the kitchen stove being lit, I was sitting on the edge of the bed in excruciating pain. The lamp on the stand near the bed burned low, casting my grotesque shadow upon the wall. The room was freezing. Every frenzied breath I drew hung in the frigid air. The weight of my belly was tearing every muscle from my back. My swollen belly was as tight as a net keg, and when I tried to stand, my legs were so weak they wouldn’t support my weight.
I fell back on the bed crying aloud. It took several more cries and a dig in his ribs to rouse Toby. Even then he didn’t want to get up, allowing it was another false alarm. I’d had two of them in the past few nights. He was turning up the lamp wick when I retched and doubled over in severe pain again, and he could see this was different. I gasped and cried and was in so much pain I could barely speak.
“Get my mom,” I whimpered through clenched teeth. I wasn’t cold now, and I was dripping with sweat. I heard him bang on the door to my parents’ bedroom across the hall, yell to my mother, and clomp down the stairs. He took the lamp with him, leaving me in darkness.
All that interminable day and into that night of misery, unable to leave my bed, I suffered a hell of pain I never thought possible, like a severe toothache reaching across my lower back. My stomach would put a seasick priest to shame, yet I never once threw up.
Aunt Jane came and stayed. She drank copious cups of hot, sweet tea. She was as calm as if she were treating a splitting-knife cut on a fisherman’s finger. Her presence and reassurance calmed my head, too. She had “seen it all afore,” she assured me. It was all perfectly normal, especially during a first birth. But the sharp pains coursing through my young body couldn’t be eased with words. Water poured from my loins without me having the feeling to pass water, and no baby came with it.
“Don’t worry, my love, I’ve seen young ones hold on to their chil’ days after their water-gush.” My God, days of unbearable pain!
Evening came. The lamps were trimmed and lit before suppertime. Rising up through the scuttle in the floorboards of my room, the smell of food from the kitchen below increased my nausea. Aunt Jane went down for supper and came back with yet another cup of tea. “’Twon’t be long now,” she said, cooling my forehead with a cold wet cloth. I didn’t believe her.
The brown well water from the cloth ran down my neck. I could feel it pooling in the hollow of my shoulders. My agony increased, and I thought I would die. The pain worsened and I wished I would die. And since he had left me in the small hours of the morning, I had not seen Toby. Nor did I wish to see him. My mother was right, I had been defiled. I hated all men.
Water poured unchecked from between my legs and soaked my bed just after 11:00 p.m. I was shivering all over. But death eluded me. There came an unbelievable pressure between my legs, and Aunt Jane cried, “Bear down, my love, bear down!” And I, who had never “bore down” before, screamed like a banshee entering hell. Instinctively I bore down and pushed from my body, the issue of my rape upon No Denial Rock, a male child, already kicking and screaming, with hair the colour of fir boughs burning. He would be named Jacob and come to be called Jake by everyone in the Place.
8
The Catholic
When Michael Kelly emerged from the officer’s dugout into the hellish battle above Suvla Bay, made all the more pronounced now after his brief sojourn beneath the muffling earth, the first man he saw was his young friend Jake with the red hair. He was standing with his head below the trench’s edge, rifle in hand, when Michael went up to him. The rush and roar of battle raged around them.
Jake spied the red band still in Michael’s hand and knew it for what it was.
“A runner, Mike? You?”
“Too old for it, you figure?”
“Old? Naw, Mike b’y, you’re still as slick as a tansy through kelp. Going to wear that target, are ya?”
“Goes with the job, I guess. They found out I knew the compass and could read a map pretty good. I told them I had a good memory, too, when they asked. They asked me would I take the job. It wasn’t an order. I volunteered. The runner’s badge is part of the uniform.”
“All three of the runners who died wore ’em, too. Prime targets, runners are, on both sides. I shot a Turk runner last night. As I search for the badge of the Turk runner, so they look for ours. Don’t wear the badge, Mike.”
Jake was the deadliest sniper in his regiment, a real crack shot. He had been ordered to seek out the Turkish runners above all others. Jake was good at finding them in his peep-sight. His mates called him the Crackie. He was also the only redhead in the regiment. Michael looked at Jake’s red hair now. It fell below his tin hat and had grown well beyond regulation cut. Jake needed a haircut. They all did. Long hair was a breeding ground for lice, a common plague of the trench soldier.
“It was given to me by the major himself. He told me I was now a lance corporal. A few pounds more per month, I expect. Supposed to be in charge of a few soldiers, too, I think. He never told me that. He just said I was to run with orders at their bidding. Nothing more. I am to sleep in the officer’s dugout. I have to wear the badge, too.”
“Smear it with mud when you’re in the field, then.”
“Well, now, that would be easy enough.” Michael grinned.
They both knew he wouldn’t do it. Michael had accepted, willingly, the most hazardous position in the trenches. A good runner, knowledgeable with map and compass and with a good memory, was a general in the field. In his head was information that could change the course of battle. In his head were messages that
could save or take lives. Runners were the direct link of communication from commander to soldier. A dead runner was a failed order, the line broken.
“The major asked me if I was Catholic. I wonder why?” Michael said, changing the subject.
“Well, you do know everyone in our patrol calls you the Catholic. Behind your back, anyway.”
“Yes, I do know. I’m at a loss as to why, though. Nearly half of our brigade is Catholic.”
“I’m pretty sure it has little to do with your religion,” Jake told him. “You are considered smart and educated in our regiment. The answer to all questions. A philosopher. You know what I mean? When they say ‘Ask the Catholic, he always knows,’ they don’t mean any Catholic. They mean you. You are respected, not for your religion but for your knowledge.”
“So, we both wear an invisible tag.” Michael was smiling. “They call you the Crackie behind your back, for the obvious reason. You are a crack shot with the rifle. It is a fitting nickname, while mine is not. No matter. I don’t mind. I guess there is no accounting for nicknames.”
Jake lifted his head cautiously above the parapet and scanned the stretch of land between the British and Turkish trenches. The wind brought to his nostrils the putrid stench of decaying flesh. Dead soldiers were often left to rot in no man’s land by both sides.