by Paul Almond
“Oh yes, oh yes.” Martha came forward and held out her two hands, just wide enough for Catherine to wind onto them the new ball of wool she had spun. But even this, for some reason, was wearing her out. And she still had the washing.
As they passed through the summer kitchen, Catherine paused at her wonderful new iron stove — the gleaming black box on which she now cooked their meals. So much easier than the open fire, for sure, but it had taken getting used to. She hoped they’d include a woodshed in the new barn. With some more barking to keep the place warm, this summer kitchen could serve as a winter kitchen too. Another room. What a joy!
Once outside, Catherine realized how pleased she was at the return of the sun. Martha handed up the clean, damp clothes from the basket and Catherine began to pin them on the line, when she had to sit. “I think...” she said to Martha, “I’ll just rest awhile. Take that tub, put it upside-down, and you can stand on it and hang up the rest of the clothes all by yourself.”
“Oh goody,” cried Martha and did just as she was told.
The three men came round the end of the old barn, so higgledy-piggledy with its outhouses and attachments, a shelter built on for the sheep, somewhere else for the extra hay, and a chicken lean-to.
James came forward. “You all right, Catherine?”
“Quite all right, James, thank you,” she said cheerily. “I’m just taking a little sit down.” Then she sat up tall. “You know, James, my mother is getting too old to do much more knitting.”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” he replied, thinking she must be in her nineties, though no one took much notice of birthdays hereabouts. Birth dates were marked in the family Bible, and then forgotten.
“So perhaps,” Catherine went on, “we could do with fewer sheep...”
“Get rid of them? Good idea, Momma!” Jim glanced at his father. “Those blasted sheep, always gettin’ through any fence a man could build. We’ve got all the scarves and mittens we’ll ever need, and so have the grandchildren.”
“And enough blankets, James,” Catherine added.
“Come on, Poppa? Whaddya think?”
James frowned. Catherine knew sheep had been a part of his life for years. James nodded slightly. “Let’s sleep on it.”
He would end up agreeing, of course. The end of an era, in a way. If only another one would begin with Jim getting a wife.
Chapter Twenty: 1857
“I see, I see,” cried his grandchild, Martha Young. “The three stars for his belt, and three there, for his sword.”
“Good, Martha,” James replied to Will and Ann’s eldest. “Now can everyone else see that?”
A chorus agreed. Late this autumn evening a year later, James was giving a class in the constellations outside the new one-room schoolhouse. Lanterns had been set up by the door. “All right now, for something more complicated, Orion’s shoulders. They’re called Betelgeuse and Bellatrix.” As they crowded round, he pointed. “See up there, where his shoulders should be, those two bright stars?”
One after another, they voiced their agreement.
Before he went on, he noticed at the corner of the schoolhouse, the new teacher, watching. In the dark of the moon, James could not see his pasty face but recognized the gaunt frame. Oh-oh, trouble. He had never liked the young man, but he was the only one with a diploma to apply from Montreal. Earlier in the week James had approached him about teaching the stars to the students, but the pimply schoolmaster had objected. However, James was chairman of the trustees, so the twenty-two year old had to swallow it.
“And now, everyone, you’re in for a surprise. Did you know that stars have different colours?”
A couple of the older boys scoffed. “Prove it to us,” challenged his grandchild, Charlie Bisson. James’s grandchildren outnumbered the others because his own children made sure to send their offspring after supper. The Smiths were there, too, with Sarah Nelson’s children, Sam Allen’s, and several others.
“Prove it? Look above Orion’s belt, his left shoulder up there? That’s called Betelgeuse. Now go the same distance down to his right knee, see that bright star? Named Rigel.” Most of them nodded.
He felt the teacher’s eyes boring into him. Pity the young man didn’t want to learn. James’s time in the Navy had taught him a good deal. Even the fishermen here who used stars didn’t know their names.
“All right now, look back and forth. Notice a different colour in each star? What is the top colour?”
Several of the older boys, including Charles Bisson, called out, “Red, orange, pink.”
“All right and what colour is the bottom one?”
They began to call, “Blue.”
“There now, you see? Different colours!”
Out of the general surprise came a question from Charles again: “Why?”
“None of us know that yet. But just be aware there are different colours, and one day, you might get the answer.”
He then went on to point out some of the easier constellations, such as Taurus, with the Hyades sprinkled around. He had picked a good star night, with no moon.
As he was explaining, his mind went back over the night he’d stared up into the heavens when his first child, Mariah, had been born. He always found such consolation in the age-old patterns, with their myths every naval officer knew. Imagine, four decades later, that little baby Mariah had children of her own, already grown up and learning about the stars themselves. How the years roll by!
“Now let’s all have a little cup of hot soup before I show one more constellation, and then, it’s home to bed!”
Jane handed out the soup that her mother Mariah had made, hot and watery. Margie, Will Skene’s daughter, handed the old man a cup, casting her eyes down. James didn’t notice and sat to relax, marvelling in this new building, finally finished this October. Twenty-seven students on a good day when they all came. Well, now he could retire from the trustees at Christmas. Better focus on the barn, which had to be perfect for Jim who was doing most of the work. It might inspire him to get married...
He glanced up to see the teacher still watching. He refilled his cup of soup and walked over. “Like some soup, Henry?”
Henry shook his head. “Sir, this is no time or place for lessons. The students have enough to do. I find it hard enough to get the Scriptures into them, without you diverting them every night.”
“Not every night, Henry, once or twice in autumn, and maybe once or twice in spring, when the skies change.” James wanted to bash the little whippersnapper, but reminded himself to behave.
“You may be chairman here, sir, but I’m complaining to the superintendent of schools.” With that, Henry strode off.
James looked after him. Should have bashed the skinny fella after all — might have knocked some sense into him. Then Margie Skene shouted, “Mr. Alford, Mr. Alford, look!”
“It’s on fire,” another voice yelled.
James turned to the bay, and froze. There, just beyond the cliffs, he could see a schooner, three-masted no doubt, and on fire. What appeared to be sailors were climbing the burning rigging, others were running back and forth with pails, trying to douse the flames. No hope, James could see: it was still afloat, but going to sink for sure.
“Quickly,” he roared, “down to the brook, oldest fellas first, maybe we can row out. How many rowboats we got down there?”
“Two this morning,” a voice piped up, probably a Vautier, who used the brook beach as a landing.
“First ones down, jump in and row. I’ll go in the second lot.”
The children tore off, and James grabbed his staff and followed. What on earth had happened? It looked just like one of the privateers the Bellerophon had been chasing. He remembered all too well that once, when a ship had not heeded their flag signal to surrender, the Captain had issued the order to fire. Only a few shots, but they’d set the ship afire. Since it was only a privateer, the Navy crew felt badly. Lowering boats, they had rowed quickly across the i
ntervening waves, but by the time they reached it, the schooner had sunk with all hands perishing.
He reached the Brook Hill and started down. The children raced on ahead. He saw them stop and bunch up where the road veered near the cliff. “Go on, go on,” he cried.
“It’s not there!” they called back.
James crossed to the road’s edge and looked out over the bay.
Nothing.
But no boat would sink in that short a time! What was going on?
They gathered round, all talking at once. “I heard tell of that before,” young Billy Skene said. “My dad, he told us about it. Him and two fellows was coming home one night from down Port Daniel way, and he seen the same thing, maybe the year afore I was born.”
“My momma too,” another one called out. “She told me she seen it three year ago. She was so scared she didn’t tell no one, made us all promise. Same thing, ship on fire, three masts, sailors runnin’, then she up an’ disappears.”
“Must be the ghost ship,” an older boy called. “We seen the ghost ship!”
They turned and scattered home, all talking excitedly about what they had seen.
Well, the story would be all over Shegouac tomorrow, James knew. He trudged down to the new bridge with some of the children. Could it have been a vision? But they all saw it. He reached the opposite side of the Brook Hill, climbing it slowly, while the others ran on ahead.
Well, better not wake Catherine. In the morning they’d speak of burning ships and constellations. So he passed the house, deciding his addled mind needed time to sort it all out: this visitation, if that’s what it was, his search for faith, and his son, Jim, still without a wife. The oxcart track ran diagonally up the side hill; he climbed it in silence. Not as easy as before. Would there ever come a time when he couldn’t climb it at all? No sir, he’d stride up till he dropped. Three-quarters of the way, he saw Mariah’s children scramble in their back door, agog with their sighting and all their grandfather had explained about the constellations. No going to bed for a good while yet, he guessed.
Panting hard, he reached the top, and looked up. The whole northern sky had come alive with the dancing shifting bands of the Northern Lights, made more vivid with no moon.
So long since he’d seen them — what a treat! The past summers he’d taken to going to bed with the sun and getting up when it rose. There they were, delicate, shifting curtains, all the happy spirits, dancing especially for him. He leaned back on his cedar rail fence, marvelling.
Right now, seeing these heavenly arrays, he asked himself: how could God not exist? Who else created such a celestial spectacle? He studied the purples, pale mauves, and then vermilion, with streaks of white flashing, the mythic heroes up to their hijinks that his old tutor at Raby Castle had spoken about. The man loved Greek myths and had explained a lot of them to young James.
He didn’t feel the cold, though wind swept the frozen fields, rattling the barren branches on the crest.
As he stood, transfixed, in the distance, he heard a woman’s voice.
From the heart of the gracefully waving colours, he heard, “I am here.” The voice of Little Birch! “I am here, James.”
She had told him: “I will always be here for you in the dancing lights.” Yes, he remembered, oh so very long ago, her lithe sapling form, her strength as she held him in lovemaking, so powerful, the grasp of nature itself, of an original inhabitant, nurtured by the bay, by forests, salmon in streams and caribou on their interior highlands, all that first year. How could he ever forget his Magwés?
His eyes misted up. Damned old man: bent frame, wrinkled cheeks, worn-out heart. What a fool, crying at everything and anything: his daughter’s wedding, the birth of his latest grandchild — old idiot, with far too much reason to rejoice. Just as the sky above gathered in its clouds, so his old mind gathered in to itself the milking of his cattle, scything his wheat, stooking sheaves, shovelling pathways through deep snow, seeding his barley over rolling acres, those walks on springtime fields and autumn trails, so many and such wonderful seasons, ever more quickly passing by for him and for his aging wife.
Indeed, how very lucky to have spent so much time at her side. If only he could make up words to say that, he thought, as he hauled out his big handkerchief to smear his face dry.
“So tell me, Magwés,” he cried, “is He up there with you? The Great Creator, is he there? Can you tell me, once and for all?”
James forced his mind to fall silent, and to listen. The wind picked up, he could hear it soughing in the nearby pine; patiently he waited, waited for the words he needed to hear.
But after an endless time, still bathed in the magic of the heavenly curtains, drifting, wafting, caressing the black sky, no word came back.
Chapter Twenty-One: Winter 1858
“I’d love to go for a ride,” Angel Dowd had said. “I didn’t think you had such things as sleigh rides here on the Coast.” Jim’s parents had invited the new schoolteacher over for a bite of supper. The trustees had happily managed to replace that surly youth from the previous year.
“We don’t usually,” said his father. “But you know, Jim bought himself a new stallion. Very fast. I reckon he’d like an excuse to take him out on a sleigh ride.”
Jim glanced at his father: were they setting him up? The pressure to get married. Would she really like settling down to wash clothes, clean house, bottle jams and preserves, work from dawn till dusk? Well, he’d find out.
He’d bought the stallion with part of the sheep money from the summer before, and trained Lively himself, with help from the Rosses who’d had horses all their lives. He’d pastured him back in a pasture in the Hollow he’d cleared the year before going to Montreal. Lively loved it there, although Jim’s father had warned of possible bears. But none had turned up — he’d like to see the bear fast enough to catch Lively! And cougars, which he had heard about, even the one that attacked his father at his cabin by the brook. Well, they stayed further back nowadays, only rarely spotted in the fields the last ten or twenty years. Summer evenings he’d get Lively used to a halter and bridle, hitching him in the sulky, and even, sometimes, using him to haul cartloads of seaweed, or sand, though the oxen were much better at this. So now, he’d just have some fun. “I’d sure be awful glad if you’d like to come.”
“Thank you kindly,” Angel had replied with a smile. Jim had had the curious sensation she had been angling for just such an invitation. And so here they now were, together, bundled under the “buffalo,” setting off on a crisp night’s adventure.
Strange feeling, no doubt, snuggled up against a girl after such a long time. Jim was pretty pleased at his luck, though Angel was by no means greatly attractive. She had broad square features, large glasses that covered her grey eyes, and a petite, though athletic, frame. So she might be all right for hard work, if she had a mind for it. He’d picked her up back at the Nelsons’ where she boarded, and now they were heading down Skenes’ hill toward the main road. The full moon lit up the whole white, pristine countryside as if it were day. In front of the Skenes’ house, Jim saw some youths in a snowball fight.
As the sleigh swished by, Margie Skene looked up to see him and froze into inactivity. A snowball caught her on the side of her head and sent a shrapnel of snow showering across her shoulders. What a look of alarm!
Jim wondered why. Of course, not often in Shegouac did one see couples on a sleigh ride.
“Who was that?” Angel asked.
“Oh, just a bunch of neighbours having fun.”
“No, I mean the girl. She looked at us. What was wrong?”
“Her? Oh, that was Margie Skene. A fine girl. You’re not teaching her?”
“No, she’s too old for school. Old enough, I should think, to be looking for a man.”
“Oh no, she’s just a kid.” Jim hauled on the reins to turn Lively left onto the main road, a packed track built up to snow level by many sleighs and marked by poles near areas of drifting. As they tr
otted briskly along, some farmhouse windows showed a low orange glow from their lamps still lit. But many of them were dark, the families having gone to bed with the sun.
Angel nestled against him. It was cold, not the bitter frost that bit your cheeks and hurt your eyes, but just enough to make one slide further down under the buffalo. “You like our ‘buffalo’? That’s what we call these here sheepskin blankets. When we butchered a couple of sheep last year I saved these.”
“Mmm.” She moved her head in its woollen tuque closer to his. “And I like the name of your horse, too. Lively.”
Jim found his arm moving around her shoulders. She snuggled even tighter. “Ever been for a sleigh ride before?”
“Oh yes, lots,” Angel said. “We would gallop over Montreal mountain, in parties with the officers. They called us muffins.” She giggled. “Such fun. I was studying for my teaching diploma.”
A muffin girl, oh yes, Jim remembered those military men in that pub. But what were they — surely, not whores? “Would you always go out with the same fella?”
“Did I have a boyfriend, is that what you mean? No, silly, I had no boyfriend. We all did it for fun. Several officers did want to get married, but that always ended in disaster. Myself, I knew better than to accept any proposal from an Army man. Besides, I have my own life. I don’t want to be a wife. At least not yet.”
“Good for you.” Well, that put paid to Ol’ Momma’s and Poppa’s idea.
Lively trotted along like a prince among horses, as full of life as his name implied, his hooves kicking up a bright flurry of loose snow. The runners made a lovely crisp sound as they coasted over bumps and ruts. Nothing like it! Jim felt light-headed with the pleasure of a lively horse, a girl in his arms, a full moon, a black night above, white glistening snow below, everything aglow with a magical light.
“So do you miss the big city?” Jim asked, by way of getting her to talk, though he soon found there was no problem there.
“A bit, yes. Always something going on. Last year I worked with the Abolitionists — they help slaves come up from the southern states. Lots in Canada West, but some in Montreal, too.”