And Angela’s son, almost twenty-five, thin, dark-haired, bright-blue-eyed Jonathan, was a summer guide at the lodge during fishing season. He brought prizes home for her from the fall hunt. “Look what I got?” he had said and held up a red fox by the tail. “We can make this into the prettiest fox stole in all of Newfoundland.”
Angela had smiled. “No, thanks,” she had said and wiped her rough, weathered, dry hands on an old tea-stained apron. Her wrinkled skin sagged in folds around her greying bobbed hair. She wore nothing fancier than old frayed cotton tops scrunched up to her elbows and black slacks with elasticized waistbands. “I’m just fine the way I am, my love, fine all around,” she’d say to her son when he offered her fine things.
Jonathan was almost finished studying in St. John’s at Memorial University to become a physics and math teacher. He’d excelled at all of the sciences. Nanny Harrington adored him. She’d welcomed them all back into her home without question that fateful July, full of support for her woebegone daughter, grateful they weren’t in jail.
Nanny Harrington’s friends who played bingo and cards with her at the Union Hall had gossiped when she’d returned.
“What a scumbag,” they’d said.
“How could he do this to his children?”
But they’d all helped out over the years, brought food for the kids, presents on Christmas, and watched them when Angela cleaned rooms and dishes at the lodge, all of them shocked by what he’d done. They’d expected it from Pete, but never John McCarthy’s son. They wondered about Wanda and found out that she’d gone to her mother’s in Grand Falls while Peter served out his prison sentence. Wanda had sent a letter to Angela and told her that every month a package came to her mother’s place from Calgary with enough money for the month. Bribe money, Angela thought, because neither of them had told the police with whom they were working. Wanda offered to send Angela some of the money, but Angela didn’t want it. She didn’t write back and tore up the letters as soon as they came. She hadn’t heard from Wanda in almost twenty years.
The older women in the community had sighed and tutted as they rattled on, old crustaceans clacking about the rise and fall of the saltwater tides and all the lives like pebbles beneath it, swirling along, being pulled back and forth, away and home, this way and that, through the harsh and unexpected ebb and flow of time and life.
Angela rose from the oceanside and stretched her rickety body underneath the noonday sun. Her breath would be short after the long walk back home.
When she returned to her mother’s she made a cup of tea. As it steamed before her the old-fashioned wooden grandfather clock ticked and echoed throughout the blue-and-white rowhouse. She opened the curtains and stared at the rusty mine site. Once a hub of activity, it stood quiet, solemn, and fatigued. Its structures resembled the complex interconnections of an excavated ant colony. Its latticework of iron cast shadows on the sandy hill. A black bird soared overhead. The sun burst from behind the clouds. Angela took a sip of hot, milky tea as the steam licked her face. She stared out the open window, one hand on her hip, as the curtain fell in a gentle ripple over her wrist.
Jack was coming up the road toward the row house. Skinnier than ever, skin on his face dry and creased, grizzled with the remnants of a poorly shaved grey beard. His eyes looked mournful and dark. His back was stooped, shoulders bunched up around his ears, the collar of his jean jacket popped up as if it were 1986. His jeans were rolled up above his ankles. He had on the cheapest white sneakers Angela had ever seen.
Every bit the convict, she thought as her heart lurched with love and fear and disbelief.
How would it feel to touch that face again and smell that skin? Hold those hands and have those hands hold her, cup her waist, stroke her nose, and play with her hair?
He’d stay with them until he got on his feet. That was all Angela’s mother Lillian could offer. Angela didn’t know what to do; she didn’t want to override her mother. It was her house, but she didn’t want him to suffer. She’d offer him a job at the lodge, on the sly, when Lillian got used to him in the house. Maybe he could rent a room in someone’s house. Maybe they could rent a small house. Angela choked on that last thought and pushed thoughts of a reconciliation out of her mind, even though that was all she’d been doing for the last twenty years or so, dreaming of his touch, his mouth, and his hair. Wanting to be with him again more than she’d ever thought possible.
She was bitten by anger at that woman who twice took him from her, the first time with her body and the second time with her spite. She’d heard from the wives in Foxville that Bobbi had been the one to tell the miner whose cousin, or brother, or uncle was an RCMP officer, and they’d sent an undercover officer to witness what Jack and Peter were up to.
Angela didn’t want to darken her mind with thoughts of Peter.
She was ashamed of herself for wanting her husband so badly all these years later. After spending the last half of her life keeping to herself, raising her girls and her newborn son, she’d not so much as given another man a second thought. She should have. She should have gotten over him. She should have let him go. She should have told him to find another place to stay. But when the letter came asking for shelter, temporarily of course, she couldn’t say no, and had begged her mother to put him up.
Would they still know each other? She hadn’t seen him in two decades, because who’d had the money to go halfway across the country again? Not Angela or her family. A few photos, a few letters, and more recently a few emails — once Angela had figured out how to use the computer — and now here he was, trudging up the driveway about to knock on her door.
This is what being without him feels like, Angela thought as she opened the door. And it’s all going to change. Again.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council and Sumach Press for the Writers’ Reserve grant. Thanks to David Adams Richards and the Humber School for Writers for guidance through early drafts. Thank you to Randy Chan, David Cooper, Jane Dingle, Karen Stevens, Grace Deutsch, Bobby Harnum, Kirk Johnson, and Paul Markowski for publishing support. Thank you to my editor Allister Thompson for being so wonderful to work with. Thanks to Margaret Bryant and everyone at Dundurn Press for their talent and dedication toward publishing this novel.
Thank you to Draft Reading Series, Brockton Writers Series, and the women of the writing salon.
Thank you to Cynthia, Joe, Karen, and Jo-Anne, Brendan, Ann, Herb, and The Toter for your love, support, and encouragement.
Finally, thank you to the mining families and residents of Buchans, Leaf Rapids, and Marathon for the endless inspiration.
Song lyrics adapted from “Like the Yukon” appear courtesy of Karen Furlong.
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Copyright © Dayle Furlong, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editor: Allister Thompson
Project Editor: Shannon Whibbs
Design: Colleen Wormald
Cover Design: Laura Boyle
Cover Image: © MIMOHE/istockphoto
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Furlong, Dayle, author
Saltwater cowboys / Dayle Furlong.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-2197-5 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-2198-2
(pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4597-2199-9 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8611.U75S24 2015 C813’.6 C2014-904261-2 C2014-904262-0
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Saltwater Cowboys Page 24