During the coldest days of winter, the so-called “dog days,” the ice became amazingly solid. It was a combination of drift ice from the region of the eastern Arctic and “made” ice which resulted from the freezing of the local channel. In extremely cold winters if the ice was smooth, it was possible to move freely from the island to the mainland and back again. One could walk, or skate, or fashion an iceboat which would skim and veer with cutting dangerous speed across the stinging surface. People would venture out on the ice with cars and trucks, and on one or two weekends there would be horse races to the delight of all. The sharpshod horses would pull light sleighs or even summer sulkies as they sped around yet another track staked out by temporary spruce. At the conclusion of their races, their owners would hurry to cover them with blankets as the perspiration on their coats began to turn to frost. They seemed almost, for a few brief moments, to be horses who had prematurely aged before the eyes of those who watched them, their coats of black and brown turning to a fragile white. White horses frozen on a field of ice and snow.
My parents welcomed the winter ice because it allowed them to do many practical things that were more difficult to accomplish in the summer. They could truck their supplies over the ice without the difficulty of first hauling everything to the wharf and then trying to load it on the boat which swayed below and then, after transporting it across to the island, having to hoist it up out of the boat to the wharf’s cap and then again having to transport it up the cliff to the promontory where the lighthouse stood. They took coal and wood across in the winter, and walked and traded animals, leading them by their halters across the treacherous and temporary bridge.
Also in the winter their social life improved, as unexpected visitors crossed to see them, bringing rum and beer and fiddles and accordions. All of them staying up all night, singing songs and dancing and playing cards and telling stories, while out on the ice the seals moaned and cried and the ice itself thundered and snapped and sometimes groaned, forced by the pressures of the tides and currents, running unabated and unseen beneath the cold white surface. Sometimes the men would go outside to urinate and when they would return the others would ask, “De chuala?” “What did you hear?” “Nothing,” they would say. “Cha chuala sion.” “Nothing, only the sound of the ice.”
On March 28 there was a lot for my family to do. My older brothers were going to visit their cousins in the country – those who still lived in the old Calum Ruadh houses neighbouring the spot which my grandparents had left when they became people of the town. If they could get a ride they were going to spend the weekend there. Even if they could not get a ride, they were planning to walk, saying that ten miles on the inland sheltered roads would not be as cold as a mile and a half straight across the ice. My parents were planning to cash my father’s cheque, which they hoped my grandparents had picked up at the post office, and my brother Colin was looking forward to his new parka, which my mother had shrewdly ordered from the Eaton’s sale catalogue when such heavy winter garments were reduced by the coming promise of spring. He had been hoping for it since before Christmas. My sister and I were looking forward to the visit with our grandparents, who always made a great to-do about us and always told us how smart we were to make such a great journey from such a far and distant place. And the dog knew where she was going too, picking her way across the ice carefully and sometimes stopping to gnaw off the balls of snow and ice which formed between the delicate pads of her hardened paws.
Everything went well and the sun shone brightly as we journeyed forth together, walking first upon the ice so we could later walk upon the land.
In the late afternoon, the sun still shone, and there was no wind but it began to get very cold, the kind of deceptive cold that can fool those who confuse the shining of the winter sun with warmth. Relatives visiting my grandparents’ house said that my brothers had arrived at their destination and would not be coming back until, perhaps, the next day.
My parents distributed their purchases into haversacks, which were always at my grandparent’s house, and which they used for carrying supplies upon their backs. Because my parents’ backs would be burdened and because my brothers were not there, it was decided that my sister and I would “spend the night” and that our brothers would take us back to the island when they returned. It was suggested that Colin also might stay, but he was insistent that he go, so that he might test the long-anticipated warmth of the new parka. When they left, the sun was still shining, although it had begun to decline, and they took two storm lanterns which might serve as lights or signs and signals for the last part of the trip. My mother carried one and Colin the other, while my father grasped the ice pole in his hand. When they set out, they first had to walk about a mile along the shore until they reached the appropriate place to “get on” the ice and then they started across, following the route of the spruce trees which my father had set out.
Everyone could see their three dark forms and the smaller one of the dog outlined upon the whiteness over which they travelled. By the time they were halfway across, it was dusk and out there on the ice they lit their lanterns, and that too was seen from the shore. And then they continued on their way. Then the lanterns seemed to waver and almost to dance wildly, and one described an arc in what was now the darkness and then was still. Grandpa watched for almost a minute to be sure of what he was seeing and then he shouted to my grandmother, “There is something wrong out on the ice. There is only one light and it is not moving.”
My grandmother came quickly to the window. “Perhaps they stopped,” she said. “Perhaps they’re resting. Perhaps they had to adjust their packs. Perhaps they had to relieve themselves.”
“But there is only one light,” said Grandpa, “and it is not moving at all.”
“Perhaps that’s it,” said Grandma hopefully. “The other light blew out and they’re trying to get it started.”
My sister and I were playing on the kitchen floor with Grandma’s cutlery. We were playing “store,” taking turns buying the spoons and knives and forks from each other with a supply of pennies from a jar Grandma kept in her lower cupboard for emergencies.
“The light is still not moving,” said Grandpa and he began hurriedly to pull on his winter clothes and boots, even as the phone began ringing. “The light is not moving. The light is not moving,” the voices said. “They’re in trouble out on the ice.”
And then the voices spoke in the hurriedness of exchange: “Take a rope.” “Take some ice poles.” “Take a blanket that we can use as a stretcher.” “Take brandy.” “We will meet you at the corner. Don’t start across without us.”
“I have just bought all his spoons and knives,” said my sister proudly from the kitchen floor, “and I still have all these pennies left.”
“Good for you,” said Grandma. “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
When they were partway to the shore, their lights picked up the dog’s eyes, and she ran to Grandpa when he called to her in Gaelic, and she leaped up to his chest and his outstretched arms and licked his face even as he threw his mitts from his hands so he could bury them deep within the fur upon her back.
“She was coming to get us,” he said. “They’ve gone under.”
“Not under,” someone said. “Perhaps down but not under.”
“I think under,” said Grandpa. “She was under, anyway. She’s soaked to the spine. She’s smart and she’s a good swimmer and she’s got a heavy, layered coat. If she just went down, she’d be down and up in a second but she’s too wet for that. She must have gone down, and then the current carried her under the ice and she had to swim back to the hole to get herself back out.”
They went out on the ice in single file, the string of their moving lights seeming almost like a kind of Christmas decoration; each light moving to the rhythm of the man who walked and carried it in his hand. They followed the tracks and walked towards the light which remained permanent in the ice. As they neared it, they realized it was sit
ting on the ice, sitting upright by itself and not held by any hand. The tracks continued until they came to the open water, and then there were no more.
Years later, my sister and I were in Grade XI and the teacher was talking to the class about Wordsworth and, as an example, was reading to us from the poem entitled “Lucy Gray.” When she came to the latter lines, both my sister and I started simultaneously and looked towards each other, as if in the old, but new to us, we had stumbled upon the familiar experience:
“They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none!”
“And further there were none!” But on March 28 we were tiring of our game of store and putting the cutlery away as our grandmother prepared to ready us for bed while glancing anxiously through the window.
Out on the ice the dog began to whine when they came near the open water, and the first men in the line lay on their stomachs, each holding the feet of the man before him, so that they might form a type of human chain with their weight distributed more evenly than if they remained standing. But it was of no use, for other than the light there was nothing, and the ice seemed solid right up to the edge of the dark and sloshing void.
There was nothing for the men to do but wonder. Beyond the crater, the rows of spruce trees marched on in ordered single file in much the same way that they led up to the spot of their interruption. It was thought that perhaps only one tree had gone down and under. The section of the ice that had gone was not large, but as my grandfather said, “It was more than big enough for us.”
The tide was going out when they vanished, leaving nothing but a lantern – perhaps tossed on to the ice by a sinking hand and miraculously landing upright and continuing to glow, or perhaps, set down after its arc, wildly but carefully by a hand which sought to reach another. The men performed a sort of vigil out on the ice, keeping the hole broken open with their ice poles and waiting for the tide to run its course. And in the early hours of the morning when the tide was in its change, my brother Colin surfaced in one of those half-expected uncertainties known only to those who watch the sea. The white fur hood of his parka broke the surface and the half-frozen men who were crouched like patient Inuit around the hole shouted to one another, and reached for him with their poles. They thought that he had not been a great distance under, or that his clothes had snagged beneath the ice; and they thought that, perhaps, since he was not bearing a backpack, he had not been so heavily burdened and, perhaps, the new material in his parka possessed flotation qualities that had buoyed him to the top. His eyes were open and the drawstrings of his hood were still neatly tied and tucked beside his throat in the familiar manner that my mother always used.
My parents were not found that day, or the next, or in the days or months that followed.
In the morning my sister and I were having our porridge, mapping little rivers on its surface for the milk to follow and sprinkling it too liberally with brown sugar, and still for the most part unaware of what had happened. My grandmother hugged my sister fiercely to her and my grandfather ruffled my hair, “Poor ‘ille bhig ruaidh,” he said. “Things will never, ever again be the same for you.”
The wake for my brother Colin was held at the home of my grandparents, two days and two nights with the funeral on the third day. Clann Chalum Ruaidh came from great distances as well as from nearby, and it seemed the house would burst. The women sent in vast quantities of food; roasts fully cooked and surrounded by vegetables, and accompanied by containers of gravy; mounds of biscuits and homemade bread; and plates heaped high with pastries. And there were more than enough men to dig the grave in the frozen snow-covered cemetery, passing the pick from one to the other and watching the sparks fly up from the frozen earth.
When the mourners entered the house they went immediately to the casket to say their prayers, and then they would turn to offer their condolences. Many of them looked instinctively for my parents, because it was to the parents that one turned when a child was lost. And then they would remember, and compose themselves and look for the other closest next of kin. They would go towards my grandparents or my uncles and aunts or my stricken older brothers, embracing the women and shaking hands with the men and saying, “Sorry for your troubles. Sorry for your troubles.” Throughout much of the wake many of them, in spite of themselves, kept looking towards the door as if expecting to see my parents coming in; coming home; called home by “a death in the family.” But they never did come at all.
Throughout the days and nights of the wake, clann Chalum Ruaidh slept on chairs, and in the hallways, and sometimes on the floor in bedrooms where the beds were already full. And most of them took shifts, sitting up all night beside the small corpse of my brother Colin so he would not be alone. He lay in perfect stillness throughout it all, but with that type of perfection that still seems somehow to be in waiting. As if waiting for my mother to check his necktie or to make sure his fingernails were clean. As if she were to say, “You will be the centre of attention. Everyone will be looking at you.”
Throughout the days and nights there was much conversation as to how and why it had all happened. Everyone agreed that my father was “a good man on the ice” and it was true that they had crossed over the same route earlier in the day. It was true, also, that the currents and tides were running freely and had perhaps eaten away more of the underside of the ice than anyone had realized. And it was, after all, the end of March and the sun had been shining, although it did not seem to have been that strong. It all remained, somehow, most inconclusive.
It was generally decided that it was an “act of God,” as the insurance companies might term it, although clann Chalum Ruaidh referred to it as “God’s will” and trusted in His Mercy. Some others who had read or misread the Book of Job saw it as an example of God’s justice and His punishment, and cast about for reasons. Perhaps since my parents had taken the job on the island they had not gone to church as often as they should have? Perhaps they had engaged in pre-marital sex in the time before their marriage? Who was to know? Who was to find reasons?
Others told stories of forerunners; of how they had seen “lights” out on the ice “at the exact spot” years before, and of how such harbingers could now be seen as prophecies fulfilled.
Throughout the wake, my other grandfather made only irregular appearances because he was not a man for communal mourning. And later he volunteered to cross the ice and “look after the island” until a permanent replacement could be found. He took his violin with him and once or twice in the still evenings and when the wind blew towards the land it was possible to hear the laments he apparently thought he was playing only to himself. He played better than most people realized he could, and the music was even more haunting to those who understood its source. He played “The Cobh’s Lament” and “Glencoe” and “Patrick MacCrimmon’s Lament for the Children.”
“We have suffered a great loss, but we have other children and we have each other,” said Grandma. “Nobody knows the depths of that man’s sorrow.”
In the time after the wake, the older Calum Ruadh men who often sat around my grandparents’ kitchen would sometimes offer my sister and me handfuls of coins because they could not think of anything else to do. Sometimes they would refer to us as the “lucky” children and sometimes as the “unlucky” children. “M’eudail on the little girl,” they would say or, “Poor ‘ille bhig ruaidh, you have a long road ahead of you.”
They say that beneath the ice there is always a layer of air between it and the actual water. And that if you are swept under, the thing to do is to try to turn on your back until you can almost press your mouth and nostrils against the underside of the ice which will, at least, allow you to breathe. And then you must keep your eyes open so that you can see the hole that you came through, and try to work yourself back towards it. If you close your eyes in the freezing salt, you may become disoriented, and theref
ore doomed, because you do not have much time. And if the currents are running strongly, they may take you under such a distance, and so quickly, that your most rapid reaction may prove, in the end, to be too slow.
I have often thought of my parents as upside down beneath the ice. Almost the way you see potato bugs on the underside of the leaf. Their hands and knees pushing upwards in something resembling a macabre fetal position, trying to press their mouths against the underside of the top which kept them down. Trying to breathe in order that they might somehow stay alive.
In the weeks that followed their loss, the sun shone brightly and the currents were strong, and the ice turned black beneath its own whiteness, as if eaten by a hidden cancer which only now began to make itself visible. And within a few days what had been a white and seeming certain expanse became but a view of bobbing cakes and swirling chunks, turning and reflecting in the light and grey-blue water.
Twice, before the breakup, the dog left my grandparents’ house and crossed to the island looking for her people, and twice my uncles crossed to bring her back. The second time Grandpa tied her with a chain to the doorstep, but she whined, or “whinged,” as they said, so visibly and so mournfully that the next morning Grandpa let her go. “Because she was breaking my heart,” he said.
No Great Mischief Page 5