Jack relaxed underwater for a few seconds. All he could hear was the waterfall hitting the rocks and the blood in his skull.
I could stay underwater forever, he thought. The minute the skip cage dropped him underground, he always panicked, worried he’d never see the sun again, but not here, not in the water. His was a family that loved swimming, especially in the ocean. They loved to pile in the car and drive to places like Corner Brook or Baie Verte, or the summer they drove even as far as Bonavista Bay. They’d spend the day at the ocean eating nothing but brown bags full of salty chips and chunks of battered cod. Peter and Wanda would follow behind them in their car. One time Peter goaded Jack into a drag race on the highway. Angela had put a stop to it before it even got started, raised a fist and stuck it out the window; Peter slunk back into his lane and slowed down.
This was before Susie was born, when Wanda, barely twenty-one, fed Maggie from her bottle, changed her diaper, cuddled and held her while Jack, Angela, and Katie cavorted in the waves. She must have been three, Jack thought, when I would slather ocean foam over my face and we’d play barbershop. He’d run his finger over his face in a straight line and ask her if she was next to have a shave. It made her laugh so much, Jack thought and smiled.
He came up and flopped from side to side like a fish. He treaded water and squinted under the glare of the sun.
I’ll miss this place the most. He couldn’t count how many times they’d come out here. The time when Angela was pregnant with Katie, she’d sat on a rock, belly swollen out over her black bikini, the reddish swell of a fireball-shaped clump of stretch marks already seizing the skin underneath her belly button. She’d wanted to do nothing except eat tinned peaches. Her long black hair stuck to her back and shoulders as she sweated happily in the sun.
Jack got out of the water and stretched out on his back on a grassy bank. He dragged his knuckles through the thin black soil. His gut gnarled with grief.
I can’t believe this is it. I haven’t had a stretch of time to myself like this in a long time. What will I do with myself besides fill out my forms for the dole and look for work? I haven’t worked anywhere else, been there since I left high school, about eighteen when I started. Married two years later. I am afraid to go. I don’t want to go, he thought.
He slept for an hour or so, waking to see that the sun had moved halfway across the sky, his skin white from cold.
Angela will kill me if she knew I was swimming so late in the fall, he thought. He got dressed quickly, stood for a minute at the base of the falls, then turned around and quickly got on the path. He wiped water from his eyes and forced himself to walk forward. He didn’t look back once he’d rounded the bend.
Angela and Jack whispered good night to the babysitter, hired for the evening so they could attend Peter and Wanda’s going away party, and trudged up hill to the doctor’s place. His grand house was hidden from Main Street by a clump of birch trees — peeling white bark scabbed with black moss. Remnants of Mrs. Nelson’s garden welcomed visitors at the front walkway. Lilacs and roses, once abundant, flopped from side to side, grieving for the gentle touch of their keeper’s hands. The wilting flowers made the grandeur of the bright and charming interior a splendid surprise. Dr. Nelson’s housekeepers, a roster of intern nurses from St. John’s, kept clean the oak floors, ornate spiral banister, five bedrooms, sitting room, dining room, and a modern kitchen with dangling copper pots suspended above a marble island.
Sheila shepherded them inside. In the dining room the musicians were draped over the furniture like fruit at a banquet. Snerp, an acne-prone skinny bag of bones, the custodian in the men’s dry — responsible for mopping the floors and changing the garbage — held an ivory, silver, and charcoal-grey dented squeezebox on his lap. His long, curly hair flowed like bunches of grapes. Mooney’s round face, cheeks flushed apple red, was ablaze with joy as he plucked away on the mandolin. The neck of Gulliford’s guitar was held by a strap with a banana-yellow muff that rested across his shoulder, his chest concave as his fingers strummed softly. Doctor Nelson stood and stomped, a cracked and scratched fiddle — as old as he was — tucked underneath his jowly chin, skin flapping as he raked the bow across the taut strings.
Sheila and Angela whistled and clapped. Peter clumsily whirled Wanda around the room, and Wanda blushed, conscious of her weight. She smoothed her skirt and hoped to hide the folds of fat that had grown comfortable across her hips. Peter wheeled her into a corner and she broke free, almost tipping over on a loose beer bottle.
Gulliford’s wife started to chant, “Sing us a song,” and goaded the crowd into the same. Wanda cleared her throat, stepped forward gingerly, and began to hum the first few notes of “Tell My Ma.”
“When I get home, the boys won’t leave the girls alone,” Sheila and Angela sang, drunk and slurring and well off-key.
Jack hung about the fringes of the party, sallow-faced and morose, limbs stiff. I’ll need to get good and drunk to relax, he thought. He accepted another bottle of beer that came his way from the tray of drinks passed around by one of the nursing interns, cajoled into service by the charms of Nelson.
After the song ended, Dr. Nelson shouted, “My dear friends from Brighton, thank you for helping me give our good friends Peter and Wanda a warm sendoff. As always, Wanda sang beautifully — some things never change — and was a well-behaved drunk. Let’s just hope that never changes. It’s been a pleasure having you all here tonight. This may be some of the last few times we all have together” — his voice quivered — “but I must say, I’ve loved getting to know each and every one of you over the years in my capacity as doctor and member of this community. I know, we are on the brink of change” — he looked around the room tenderly — “but I know that wherever you go, you will stick together.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Gulliford’s wife shouted. They all raised their glasses of rum.
Together, Jack thought. How would he keep it together with so many friends gone? How would he keep it together with no work and no idea of where they were headed? He’d be lost without Peter, he knew that much. No one to joke with, no one to drink with, no one to spur him on. He took another proffered beer and shot of rum. And a few more. He’d have to hide behind the swish of alcohol tonight. Let it flush over his flesh, turn his tight mind into mush.
At the end of the evening, good and drunk, Jack chased Angela down the street toward home. He teased and grabbed her waist and buried his face in her neck.
“Stop it, savage,” she said and broke free, scurrying down the street toward home, past the yellow, blue, green, and white clapboards, all lights extinguished, every window black except for the sky salted with stars, in a town that looked merciful, homely, and safe, except for the mine site, which looked morose, complex, and industrious, a cruel father forced to make painful, solitary decisions, choked of all emotion.
She ran to the end of Pebble Drive and headed toward home on the gravel laneway. She made it to the back porch. Jack growled and nuzzled her neck then pulled the elastic that held her long black hair loose with his teeth. She struggled to get away, broke his grip with her hands, went inside, and slammed the door in his face.
The next morning the sun rose gently over Grandmother McCarthy’s house as she sat in the kitchen nook peeling potatoes. Her crinkled, pale white hands, speckled with light brown age spots, expertly carved the earthy brown potatoes. Her powder blue housedress, seams in loopy threads, spread out underneath her. Her dyed-black hair curled around her small ears. Her soft, pink mouth hung gently open.
Her husband stood by the window watching for his grandchildren. Two lines of flesh between unruly grey eyebrows formed a tent-like triangle above his square nose. Waves of crinkled flesh fanned out from the corners of his eyes. His overbite displayed front teeth marbled with barb wire-grey ribbons of rot. His bulbous, bald, shiny head dominated his features. Wild pockets of brittle black and white hair poked out of ears and sat clamped over cheeks like zebra mussel shells.
The children rushed in, followed by Jack and Angela.
“Nanny and Poppy!” they yelled in unison.
“Well, hello, my loves! Want tea and a Purity biscuit?”
Angela served while Grandmother McCarthy finished the potatoes. Mr. McCarthy’s loud voice crackled throughout the kitchen.
“Well, good morning, son. Angela,” he said and nodded in her direction.
“John,” she answered politely.
“How are you today?” he asked and slapped Jack on the back.
“There’s something I want to tell you. Girls, go play in the yard, please.”
“Watch my flowers!” John said.
His beautiful garden, packed with plump roses, lazy lilacs, and charming crocuses, always placed first in the local garden contest. He spent hours and hours in it, and it was a tranquil space that the children loved to run around in and play make-believe. Inevitably they would get rowdy and knock over a lilac stem or two, trampling a few of his prized flowers like little rabbits.
“Mom, Dad,” Jack said and settled into a chipped wooden chair, “I lost my job. I’ve got two weeks.”
Grandmother McCarthy nodded slowly.
John’s chest sank.
Angela placed the tea and biscuits on the table.
John poured a cupful for everyone and drained his tea out into his saucer. He wondered what his son would do. He knew the boy wasn’t that strong. Jack buckled under pressure. Thank God he has Angela, he thought. He let his tea cool before he picked it up to slurped it slowly.
“I’ll try to find work here,” Jack said.
“No, you won’t!” Angela said and glared at him.
John stopped drinking his tea and placed his saucer on the table. He looked at his son and daughter-in-law evenly.
“John, Marg,” Angela pleaded, looking from one to the other, “tell him there’s nothing here for us, close by or in town. Tell him we have no choice but to go to the mainland.”
“You’ll have to go. Angela is right.”
“But,” Marg gasped, “the girls.”
“He’ll have to do it for the girls. You don’t want your grandchildren to suffer, now do you?”
Angela smiled gently. “I know it will be hard, but we must go, there’s no future for us here. You’ll find work. Pete Fifield found a job.”
“Where?” Marg McCarthy asked.
“In Foxville, Alberta, a gold-mining town in the north,” Jack said and pulled the address on the scrap piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans.
“How long have you had this?” Angela hissed and snatched it from him.
“Only for a day or two,” he said tightly.
“I don’t care. That’s one or two days of your severance gone.”
“Now dear, it’s alright,” Marg said. Then she sighed and added, “I’ll go get the girls. Angela, you sit. John take out the roast, Jackie, set the table for us all, your brother Bill is coming too, with Rose and the boys, so bring out the extra table.”
Jack poured Angela another cup of tea, and she wiped the tears from her eyes.
After a silent, tense supper, Jack and Angela carried their drowsy children down the hill toward their front door. They took off the girls’ patent leather shoes, blue raglan jackets, white tights, and cotton floral dresses and pulled Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas over each of their heads.
When the children were asleep, Jack and Angela sat in the kitchen in silence.
“I’m off to bed, my love,” Jack said wearily.
“I’m going to read for a bit,” she said and picked at the lint on her cords, avoiding his eyes.
As soon as Jack turned out the light in the bedroom, Angela tiptoed into the bathroom, slipped her hand into the back pocket of Jack’s jeans, and pulled out the mining company’s address. Back at the kitchen table, she wrote a long letter, outlined her husband’s work history, and signed it with his name.
Chapter Three
On a rimy Thursday morning, Angela stood on the front steps in her mint-green housecoat. The frayed ends of the coat fluttered in the cool air. Brittle leaves whipped around her ankles. The grinding wind, sharpened and split by rock, had pushed late autumn’s warmth away, sucked the warmth from the town, and left tension and irritability in her bones.
She waved Jack off as he headed to the unemployment centre to comb the job boards. She came back inside and closed the door. She looked over her shoulder, crept to the bedroom, and opened the closet door. She riffled through bras and white socks in the top dresser drawer, socks full of holes, with dark grey stains on the bottom — she shook her head at the state of them — and reached for her Chinese lacquered keepsake box hidden behind the pile of underwear.
Inside the box was an unopened letter. It had come the day before with the evening mail. Lloyd Pinsent had handed her the stack with the Noraldo Mining Company letterhead on top.
“Some lot of these letters around here in the past few weeks, Mrs. McCarthy. Daresay we’ll all be up there in one way or another,” he’d said. She’d answered distractedly, fingers trembling as she held the letter.
Mr. McCarthy … your qualifications sound ideal for Noraldo … we’d like to interview you … a recruiter will be in St. John’s on October 15th, the letter said. Angela clutched it to her chest and smiled.
After breakfast, they walked Katherine to school. Angela waved across the lane at Wanda and Peter. They were busy packing towels, blankets, clothing, and furniture, and discarding knick-knacks, dishes, books, and newspapers. They were flustered yet worked happily. They were sure of themselves, gestures and features strong, not weak and slack like Jack’s, or frozen and worried like Angela’s. Our time is coming, Angela thought, and smiled smugly.
She looked at her two daughters trudging up the little hill toward the school. They all had beautiful hair, gleaming white teeth, soft clean skin, and cheeks scrubbed clean, shining like waxy apples. A surge of love tore through her chest. She’d do anything for them. So would Jack, she thought. Of course he would do what she wanted — he always did.
At school, Katherine reached up to give her mom a hug. Lily cried when her sister disappeared inside the heavy, solid door.
“We’re going to Nanny Harrington’s house, Lily,” Angela said soothingly. Lily smiled at the prospect of seeing Nanny. Maggie walked a few paces behind, timid and uncertain. Angela knew Maggie worried about visiting her mother. Her mother was less than kind to Maggie; she considered the child spoiled. When they reached her doorstep, Lillian Harrington opened the door. She was a smiling, rosy-cheeked, robust woman in a lilac floral housedress, her short, curly strawberry-blonde hair poking out of a frayed red kerchief. She invited her daughter and two grandchildren inside with a wave of her fleshy arm. Her hands and apron were dusty with dried flour. She’d spent the morning baking bread and making Yorkshire puddings for a roast beef supper.
“Hello,” she said and pried Lily from Angela’s arms. She held her tightly and coddled the child’s cheeks with her dusty fingers.
Maggie wandered into the pantry adjacent to the kitchen and noiselessly searched for chocolate pudding. Nanny’s pantry smelled like caramelized icing sugar. The clean chrome shelves were fully stocked with tins of fruit and dry cake mixes. She sat on an overturned silver mixing bowl on the serrated linoleum, chrome blender and eggbeater on the shelf above, and had tea with imaginary friends.
Lily sat on the kitchen floor and played with the crusty old calico cat. It barely raised a paw to scratch or a meow in protest when she tugged on its tail.
An old black stove in the corner, a relic from the forties, grumbling and moody, dominated the room. Above it on the wall was a solid wood block in the shape of Newfoundland, with various small spoons with enamel pictures of provincial flags, coins, or small animals on the tip of the arm, resting in special nooks. The rooster clock on the yellowing white wall ticked noisily.
Lillian Harrington eyed her daughter silently, her hands resting primly on her upper abdomen. “You’
re after eating six of those cookies,” she sneered.
“Mom, I’m —” Angela said, her mouth full of chocolate.
“Pregnant. I could tell weeks ago. You swell up some quick, especially around the mouth and neck, you always do.”
Angela swallowed her cookie and wiped the crumbs from her swollen lips.
Lillian sighed deeply and shook her head. “I don’t know how you are going to do it. Jack won’t be working after the next few days, and UIC won’t feed the current lot, let alone another mouth.”
Here she goes again, badmouthing Jack, Angela thought. When Angela and Jack had started dating in their teens, her mother would warn her about the McCarthy family. “Little foxes spoil the vine, she’d say,” quoting scripture — her weapon of choice for the self-righteous way she had of proving herself right — as she stood in the kitchen baking. “It’s the little things he’ll do that will let you down,” she’d say and loudly tap the flour bowl with her wooden spoon. “He’s a follower, he’ll never think for himself. He’ll allow others to get him into trouble, and then what will you do? No, my dear,” she’d say, putting her hands on her hips, “you can’t count on Jack McCarthy.”
Angela would tilt her head to the side, stare at her mother with one eye closed, and try not to laugh. What did her mother know anyway? She’d been holding a grudge against the McCarthys for years. Jack’s father John had been calling her “Lily-white-arse” ever since she was ten.
Lillian’s father, Aloysius White, had given the boy a trimming for cursing at his daughter, and when they grew up John McCarthy would nickel-and-dime Lillian on plumbing jobs and use spoiled, rusted pipes in her house instead of new ones.
“A letter came yesterday from a mining company up in northern Alberta.”
Saltwater Cowboys Page 4