August Gale

by Walsh, Barbara

  But the luxuries mattered little when Paddy was at sea. Fine furnishings were all but invisible to Lillian then. The only things that drew her attention were the windows and the water below. A few days into her husband’s journey, Lillian would set herself by the glass panes, watching, waiting for his return. The longer he was gone, the more she sat, stricken with worry. It seemed she had spent the last twenty-five years of her life looking out one window or another, praying for Paddy’s safe journey. Like the other fishermen’s wives, she fretted from the moment her husband left until the moment his boat breezed back into the harbor. The relief of seeing his sails on the horizon never failed to make her shudder, the pent-up worry releasing itself like a fever.

  Flushed with the warmth of the room, Lillian pushed the parlor window open. A summer breeze carried the smell of fish drying along the shore. For as far as Lillian could see, fish flakes lined the beach. Rows of split and washed cod were laid out on the wooden platforms, waiting to be sold or shipped overseas. On the beach sand, women washed their husbands’ catches in cold saltwater tubs. Their hands were surely numb and raw by now, Lillian thought. A baby wailed from its makeshift cradle, a bucket set near its mother’s side. The infant’s cry stirred sympathy from Lillian. Thanks be the Lord, she and her three daughters had never dipped their hands in a fish barrel. Nor did they have to contend with menial household chores. With two maids, Lillian and her girls did little cooking, cleaning, or gardening.

  She knew her well-to-do status irked some of the other fishermen’s wives, who barely had a moment’s rest to themselves. She could only imagine their conversations, the words they whispered behind her back. “Did ye see the foxtail fur on her coat? And the fine shoes on her feet? She walks around like the Queen of Marystown, she does.”

  Lillian understood their jealousies. Most of the women worked from dawn to dusk, scrubbing the cod clean and laying it on the spruce boughs that topped the fish flakes. When they weren’t hauling fish to and from the flakes, they were raking hay, planting, and tending gardens. Lord, they worked themselves to the bone, and it still wasn’t enough to properly feed and clothe their children.

  The silhouette of her daughter-in-law, Lucy, caught Lillian’s eye as the young woman walked slowly along the footpath that hugged the bay. Lucy stopped suddenly, took a deep breath and rubbed her broad belly. The baby was due any day now; there was no changing that fact, Lillian thought. What’s done is done. They had been lucky enough that Father McGettigan had married her son James and Lucy in the church. Lucy could barely hide her pregnancy beneath the white gown Lillian had stitched together herself.

  Lillian eyed her daughter-in-law’s long face; James was not yet at sea, and Lucy looked forlorn already. Aye, there’s plenty years of worry ahead, me girl, Lillian thought. If she had a penny saved for every minute she spent staring at the sea waiting for Paddy to return, she’d be a rich woman indeed. Now, like most of the women in Marystown, Lucy would likely give birth while her husband was away. Surely, Paddy was only present for a few of the nine children she’d birthed. As Lucy slowly made her way toward the Mary Bernice, Lillian shook off a chill. She had heard Father McGettigan chastise women who had gotten pregnant before marriage: “You will have to atone for your sins!” McGettigan bellowed from the pulpit. “Dear Lord, forgive them,” Lillian whispered, praying for her son and his new wife. “Forgive them.”

  The laughter of her two younger boys interrupted Lillian’s thoughts. What in the divil are they up to now? From the window, she could see Frankie and Jerome wrestling in the meadow. The boys wore the new knickers she had made for their trip. Surely, they’d be tattered before they left town. She had stitched the boys a new set of clothes telling Paddy, “If ye will be going into port anywhere, I want the boys and yourself to wear your Sunday best.” Of course, there was another occasion for which the boys and Paddy might need their fine clothes on such a journey, but Lillian pushed those dark thoughts from her mind.

  She allowed herself a smile as she watched Frankie and Jerome chase one another in the meadow. The two of ’em never stopped moving. Thin as spirits they were. It was no use trying to fatten them up; they devoured enough biscuits and beef to feed a grown man. In a few day’s time, they’d be eating schooner grub, and it was likely that poor little Frankie would not be swallowing much a’tall as the boat rocked on the swells. Lillian had hoped he would beg off this trip, but the boy would not disappoint his father, nor did he want the taunts from the local lads, who learned of his seasickness on last summer’s journey. “Sissy,” they had jeered. “Ye mustn’t be Paddy’s son after all. Poor little sick lass.”

  The thought of her boy ill and without his mother’s hand to wipe his brow made her own stomach twinge. She knew Jerome would look after his younger brother, but Jerome himself was just a boy of fourteen. “C’mon,” he cried to Frankie from the field outside, “let’s go see Da. Race you!” Lillian followed their shirttails as they disappeared down the hill. It was just a short journey they were off to, Lillian told herself, a week away before the boys returned to their schooling. “Just a quick trip o’er Cape St. Mary’s and Cape Race,” Paddy had told her. “Nothin’ to worry about.”

  At least it ’twas just a quick trip. Sure now, it could be worse with her boys dropping out of school to fish in the dories before they turned twelve. Paddy himself and most of the men and boys in Marystown had done the same. “No sense in schooling,” the dorymen told their sons. “It’s the sea where ye do yur learning. It’s the sea that teaches and feeds us.”

  It’s also the sea that takes ye, Lillian thought as she turned back to the window. Frankie and Jerome hollered from the wharf below, “Can we climb the rigging, Da?” Beyond the plum and lilac trees in the front garden, Lillian could see the masts of Mary Bernice and Annie Anita. The boats looked so small, Lillian thought. In these desperate times, she understood Paddy was lucky to have a vessel to sail, but they were a pitiful sight compared to the grand schooners he had owned in the past. Mary Bernice was a fifteen-ton boat and not much longer than fifty-five feet; on her deck, she’d carry two double dories, James, and his crew of four men. Paddy’s vessel, Annie Anita, was forty tons and a seventy-five footer. She’d carry three dories, along with Paddy, his two young sons, and six men.

  Lillian could not help but compare the schooners to the vessels Paddy had captained in the past: Lillian, Swan, A. Davis, and Golden Glow. Many of them were sixty-ton boats, capable of carrying six dories and fourteen men; they were schooners that could weather storms, rough seas, and trips to the Grand Banks, Greenland, Portugal, and Spain. How she loved the sight of Paddy returning in the A. Davis, his hand proudly on the helm and the wind at his back as he headed for his wharf, where he would drop the mainsail in a salute to his wife.

  It just about tore him in two to lose that vessel, the last of his grand schooners. A few years past, the merchant’s men had come with their legal papers while Paddy was in St. John’s trying to settle his debt for the schooner. The creditors had knocked on her door and gruffly told her, “We’re taking the A. Davis.” They were not long gone when the steamer carrying Paddy back home glided into the bay. From the bow of the ship, Paddy glimpsed the A. Davis with its sails stretched tight against the wind. His fists flailing in the air, Paddy shouted curses as his schooner breezed toward the sea. If he could have caught the men before they slipped away, he would have killed them. That much Lillian knew.

  Now he was left with these two schooners, one of them named after their daughter Mary Bernice, who had died of pneumonia. Lillian understood Paddy’s sentiment, wanting to honor the memory of their lost child. Skippers often named boats after their kin; but sure now, ’twas it not poor luck in naming a schooner after a baby who lay in the cold ground? Could that not bring ill fortune upon those who sailed her? Misfortune had also fallen upon the vessel’s previous crew. Before Paddy bought shares in Mary Bernice, she was caught in the 1927 gale; one of her crew had been washed overboard and drowned. She’s already
lost a man, Lillian thought. What if the Mary Bernice is cursed?

  Paddy hushed his wife when she spoke of her misgivings. He had no use for premonitions, but Lillian looked for them in her dreams, in the sky, and in the noises after dark. In the small village of Marystown and its neighboring outports, Lillian was not alone in her beliefs. The superstitions and folklore had traveled across the Atlantic with the Irish immigrants who had made their homes in Newfoundland. The elder women knew the cures that could rid you of headaches and warts, infected sores, and boils. When the May snows fell, they collected and bottled the flakes to rub on tired and sore eyes; potions of kerosene and molasses were blended to soothe a ragged cough. From the graves of pious souls, they gathered pebbles to ease achy teeth; in the woods, they plucked juniper and dogberries for upset stomachs; and from the shores, they picked seashells and seaweed, the makings of a poultice for festering wounds.

  They believed in the old ways, and the Marystown Irish heeded the omens and superstitions that had passed from one generation to the next. A fisherman’s wife dared not conjure bad luck by calling her husband back once he departed out the door on his journey; she did not wave good-bye for fear a wave would sweep her man to his watery grave. And while their husbands fished the sea, wives took care not to overturn a bread or cake pan, lest they overturn or upset their man’s dory or vessel. And never did a whistle pass their lips, for the sound would surely summon a storm at sea. ’Twas understood by all that “a whistling woman and a crowing hen, bring the devil out of his den.”

  Lillian and the ladies of Marystown guarded against a great many misfortunes, and they kept careful watch for omens of death. A picture or calendar falling off the wall, a moaning dog or a banshee wind, a broken clock that suddenly counted the hour portended a sudden passing of family or friend. Women and children quickly crossed themselves when a single crow flew overhead, warding off the blackbird’s bad luck. Few of the young would venture out after dark or into the woods without a bit of bread in their pockets for the fairies or spirits that might cross their path. And how many wives had tokens, dreams of their husbands drowning at sea before they were lost? More than Lillian wanted to count. Her dreams were most vivid when Paddy was at sea. She dreamt of dark shapes, roiling waves, and horses galloping wildly, horses that heralded oncoming storms. When Paddy had shipwrecked Golden Glow on his way back from Prince Edward Island, hadn’t her dreams haunted her? She heard cries among ragged waves, faceless men screaming.

  The storm had blown in suddenly as Golden Glow sailed from Prince Edward Island past Codroy on Newfoundland’s northwest coast. The winds and waves rammed the schooner onto the rocks, and Paddy and his crew scrambled into their dories, rowing safely to shore. Even Paddy’s loyal sea dog floated in on the captain’s sea chest. Days later, Paddy returned to Marystown unharmed with another yarn to share, one more story for the old and young lads on the wharves. There was only laughter in his voice as he bragged about boarding the train that took him and his men from the west to east coast of Newfoundland. As Paddy prepared to step onto the train, the conductor eyed the large black dog by his side. “Sorry, Skipper. No dogs allowed on the train.”

  “He survived the damn shipwreck like the rest of us,” Paddy hollered. “He’s coming on board.” Paddy pushed past the conductor, the dog at his heels.

  Paddy did not share the other details with Lil, the ferocious wind that toppled the boat like a toy, or how quickly the schooner sank beneath the water, the sea rushing through the gaping hole in her side. No, he never shared those stories with her; she was left to imagine them on her own, and she had no trouble coming up with those visions. No trouble a’tall. She had counted him dead many times, dreamt of the telegram, edged in black, that would bear the news of his loss. How many years could he continue? Lillian wondered. He was nearly fifty now, surely it was time to give up the sea as his two brothers who had left Newfoundland had done. Lillian thought of them now, Ambrose and Leo, both of them living in New York. Ambrose had never taken to the fishing. Maybe he was the smartest of them all for it, Lillian thought. Leo had sworn off the sea in 1922 after he and his brother Ernest nearly perished on a journey to Naples to sell a cargo of salted cod. They had left in the middle of September on The Ria, promising they’d be home in plenty of time for Christmas. With no word from the schooner, Christmas came and went. Lillian remembered how her younger sister Catherine, Leo’s wife, was certain the vessel was lost with all hands. Six months and twenty days passed as the three-masted schooner fought its way through gales and pack ice before returning to Marystown.

  Catherine nearly fainted at the sight of Leo. She had already begun mourning his death. When her senses returned, she had words for her husband, “Please God, I can do this no more.”

  Leo, his face still gaunt and strained from the journey, nodded.

  Lillian had hoped the haunted look in his brother’s eyes would make some sort of impression on Paddy. But it did nothing of the kind. Paddy had been sailing straight through since Leo’s desperate trip thirteen years ago. Stubborn old man, Lillian muttered. A whistling teakettle roused her from her thoughts. From the kitchen, the maid’s voice inquired, “Would ye be wanting a cup of tea now, Miss Lil?” Hearing no response, Alice Brinton made her way to the parlor where she found Lillian sitting by the window. The maid took in Lillian’s pale fingers, delicate and thin, wrapped around the arm of her chair, gripped as if she were holding on for dear life. Such a small slip of a woman, Alice thought, but she knew Lillian was as strong as the iron anchors that moored the boats in the bay below. No, she never cried or carried on inside or out of her home; she kept her feelings hidden deep beneath her dark eyes. Never did she raise her voice or utter a bad word. Proper as royalty she was. But she would have to be strong and proper now would she not? Being married to Paddy and all. One of them had to present some manners and civility to the children. Still, aside from Paddy’s bluster and fondness for the drink, Alice knew Miss Lillian loved the captain like the day was long. Always wanting to be by his side, she was.

  The young maid eyed the clock on the mantlel. Nearly an hour had passed while Miss Lil had been gazing out the window. Lost already she is. A bit early to start fretting over this journey, Alice thought. But can’t say that I blame the woman. ’Tis nothing for a fisherman’s wife but worry and waiting. Sure, the men were gone away more than they were home. Alice understood Lillian’s concern. Her own husband, John, would soon be gone, too. He often crewed for Paddy, his mother’s half brother. Alice’s husband considered himself fortunate to work for his Uncle Paddy, a skipper who knew the fishing grounds as well as the meadow behind his home. But despite Paddy’s keen skills, Alice would fret herself, a mother with three children of her own, and a new baby born last month. Not long after her husband John hugged her good-bye, her own dreams would soon begin, dreams of dark clouds and upturned dories.

  CHAPTER 6

  VICTORY SHIPS AND A SAN FRANCISCO TEMPEST—MY PARENTS’ KITCHEN, APRIL 2003

  The refrigerator hums, and the burst of electrical juice is jarring in the still and quiet kitchen. It is nearly one in the morning as my father and I sit alone at the table. I do not remember how or why the conversation began, but for the past three hours, my father has talked about his childhood and his feelings about Ambrose.

  Over the past few months, he and his half sisters have been e-mailing back and forth, sharing information about themselves and their lives. Whether it is our research into the August Gale or the messages he writes to Ambrose’s daughters, my father’s past seems more present now. On this Easter weekend, I listen to his words closely, knowing that he has not shared these emotions since he was a young boy. When he talks, his brown eyes are focused on something I cannot see. He speaks in a fluid stream of memories, as if he himself needed to hear these words aloud. It is the San Francisco trip that prompts my father’s voice to rise in anger; what happened there he cannot forgive or forget.

  “After he left us in Red Hook, it was bad, but I
cannot understand why he called us out to California. How the hell did he think that was going to work? I can never forgive him for that. Jesus,” he says, his head shaking with the memory. “What my mother went through.”

  What about what you went through? I want to ask, but I do not.

  A journalist for twenty-five years, I had written many stories about tragedies. I had talked to families who had lost children or loved ones to murders, suicides, and car accidents. I was adept at absorbing their sorrow, their emotions, and conveying them through the written word. Now I was gathering details about my own father’s childhood pain, and the thought of asking my dad about Ambrose left me queasy, anxious. There is no distance here; there are no strangers in this story. The interviewing skills that I have honed over the last few decades do not work on this night. Here in my parents’ kitchen, I am not a journalist; I am a daughter, overwhelmed by my father’s memories, struck silent with my own sadness over his past.

  These feelings of grief and concern for my father are new to me. When I think of him, I conjure images of him happy, spontaneously singing Frank Sinatra songs, crooning lines from one his favorite lyrics, “I’ve got you under my skin . . . New York, New York, these little town blues . . .” In my mind, he is steady, strong, the source of support and encouragement for my five sisters and mother. Years ago, after I graduated with a degree in photojournalism, I announced that I was traveling alone to Ireland to find work. My father did not question why; perhaps he knew I was running from failed confidence and my professor’s belief that I would be better off pursuing photography instead of writing. Rather than find a reporting job in Ireland, I worked as a photographer for a weekly paper on the west coast in Galway. I photographed Gaelic football, fishermen sitting on ancient stone quays, tinkers begging for money, small Irish girls dressed like child brides on their First Communions. Taking pictures was easier than writing. There were no deadlines to miss. I was gone a year before returning home and falling into a comfortable job: working for a small weekly paper in the town where I had grown up. I wrote stories and took pictures. It was a role I felt secure in; there were no daily deadlines. When an editor from a nearby city newspaper called wanting to hire me, my gut told me to say no. There would be more pressure, more chances to fail. My father understood my fears. “You can do it,” he told me. “Take the job.”