She only waited for him.
“I was born in Renews,” he said. “But we lived over in Burin. In Lord’s Cove. We lost everything in ’29, in the tidal wave, stage and the skiff. The house.”
“I heard of it.”
“Mother had an uncle living on his own in Calvert and we shifted over to stay with him. But we had nothing much to bring with us and we had a hard winter of it. Father and Mother’s uncle walked into St. John’s in March for a berth on one of the sealing vessels heading out to the ice.” He looked away again.
“You lost him,” she said.
“He was out with a crew in slobby ice. Blowing hard and snow coming up. They were making their way back to the vessel to get in out of it, all in single file. Everyone with their heads down and running to stay afloat on the pans. Father was at the end of the line when they started back. But when they got aboard the ship.” He made a helpless little motion with his hand. “We never did get him. His body. I thought I might help spare your crowd some of that.”
“Are you going to go overseas, Wish? Like you said?”
He took her hand. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. Finally he said, “I told Hiram I was quitting him.”
She watched him as if she expected something more to follow, but he sat quiet.
“They’re expecting me home,” she told him.
Before she left him she pushed the shawl off one shoulder and slipped the hand she was holding inside her blouse, beneath the white shift to her naked breast. She watched him as he touched her there, the skin soft as down and the nipple against his fingers like a knot of wood.
She removed his hand and set it against him like some creature she was being careful not to wake. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Same time.”
“All right.”
He watched her go, cradling his hand in his lap. He called out, “You’re some beautiful, Mercedes,” and she looked back, her expression almost angry, he thought. “You don’t mind me saying.”
“You’ve said it before,” she said. “To other girls.”
“I never really meant it though. Not like I means it now.”
“Then I don’t mind you saying.”
Clive’s skiff came back into the Cove around ten o’clock that morning, and Wish made his way down to the stage to meet them. Clive and his two boys were plunging the long tines of their fish-forks into the black-backed roil around their legs, heaving the cod up onto the lungers.
“You had a good trip,” Wish said.
“The fish was maggoty out there this morning.”
“You’ll want a hand getting through them before dinner.”
“An extra hand wouldn’t go astray.”
Wish was set up cut-throat, passing the blade under the gills and down the length of the white belly. He sent the opened bodies along the table to Eli, who took off the heads, scalloped tongues from the mouths, separated livers from the offal and pushed them into a tub. Clive splitting at the end of the table, his knife flicking the spine clear, not an ounce of flesh on the bone. Their movements practised and casual, so effortless it looked as simple as buttering toast. David washed and stacked the fish meat at the end of the line, reaching elbow deep into a puncheon of sea water to scrub it clean. He was born with one hand smaller than the other, the fingers folded in on themselves like the claws of a bird’s foot.
Wish said, “He don’t mind I took his spot?”
Clive glanced toward the boy. “He hates all this. Rather be up at the school or home reading a book.”
Wish slipped his fingers into the gills of another cod, lifted it to the table. The knife through the seamless skin envelope making a sound like a piece of fabric ripped cleanly. He’d always hated making the fish himself. It was part of what he felt he was escaping in St. John’s. But he found the unremitting activity a blessing this morning. There was little talk, just the cold, ugly work of heading and gutting and time ticking him closer to seeing Mercedes at the Spell Rock the following morning. The thought of her like a kettle kept warm at the back of the stove.
They sat together on the water side of the Spell Rock, to be out of view of women hanging their washing or looking out their windows at the harbour. Mercedes between his legs and leaning back into him.
“Do you still miss them?”
He shrugged against the weight of her. “Sometimes. Yes.”
“Where do you feel it?”
He laughed into her hair. “Don’t be talking so much bloody foolishness.”
She reached around, touched an index finger to his shoulder. “There?”
“No.”
She touched his earlobe. His nose, his hip, the fly of his trousers.
“No,” he said.
She laid her hand flat against his breastbone.
“There.”
He held her eye to avoid looking down, afraid he would see her hand buried up to the wrist in his chest.
The first night he slept in his aunt Lilly’s house she’d stopped in the door of her little room to look back at him on the daybed. “There will come a day,” she said, “when everything that’s happened to you will seem purposeful.” The light of the lamp threw dark shadows on her face and she looked vaguely sinister. “If you keep your heart open to it,” she said, “the time will come. I promise.”
He felt himself on the verge of something that unlikely now, something that potent.
Mercedes said, “I’ll never not miss him, will I.”
He pulled her into his chest, wrapped both his arms around her.
“Don’t let go of me,” she said.
He held on to her without saying a word, which felt like promise enough.
He spent the rest of the day down on Clive’s stage and went back to Mrs. Gillard’s for his supper. Stepped out for a walk just as it was coming on to dark. He and Mercedes had kissed before she left him that morning and he let his hands drift over her, knowing she would have let him touch her anywhere he chose. And it was touching her he had in his head as he walked down behind Mercedes’ house to sit beyond the riddle fence. She wasn’t expecting him and he had no plan other than hoping to steal a word with her if she made a trip to the outhouse before bed, to bury his face in her neck, to let his hands wander.
He’d distrusted that urge their first morning at the Spell Rock but it felt pure and proper now, almost chaste. It was her father gone missing and wanting to offer solace that altered his sense of it. Recognizing the girl’s grief in himself made him believe in his ability to love her, made the physical attraction between them seem true.
Someone came through the back kitchen door and walked toward him. Outline of a long skirt, a woman’s gait. Too tall to be Agnes, so it was Mercedes or her mother stepping up into the outhouse, closing the door. When the woman came outside again he stood up and crossed himself. “Mercedes,” he whispered.
The woman froze.
“It’s Wish.”
She spun on him, furious with relief. “Don’t you ever,” Mercedes said.
“I was only wanting to say goodnight.”
She rushed back to the outhouse, clapped the door shut, and he didn’t know what to make of that until he heard her peeing again from the fright. He jumped the riddle fence and was waiting when she came out the door. They walked awkwardly to the side-wall holding each other and kissing and he leaned her against the rough lumber. He could feel her heart against his chest. He lifted the skirt of her dress in handfuls until he was underneath it, fingers touching bare skin, the fine bristle of her pubic hair, and it came into his mind then to kneel in front of her.
It was something he’d only heard spoken of drunkenly or as a lewd joke and it was always meant to demean a man’s reputation, as if only a fool would put himself in such a position. And it was true he felt ridiculous, dropping to his knees, holding her skirt high with his hands. It was an act of surrender, a kind of penance he thought the girl was owed. She had her fingers in his hair and was trying to pull his head away, but he kissed
her there. Her cunt. Salt and the tang of urine and folds of skin as smooth as. He didn’t know as smooth as what. He felt foolish and willing, and he saw it as a measure of proof, the willingness. He slid both hands under the cheeks of her ass and kissed her until she came down on top of him. Lay pinned beneath her in the long grass, so out of breath with certainty that he was dizzy.
He woke with the taste of her still in his mouth. Skipped his tea and breakfast, wanting to hold on to it as long as he could. Walked down to the Spell Rock and waited, but no fishing boats went out of the Cove and Mercedes didn’t come to meet him.
A bully boat he didn’t recognize came into the harbour mid-morning and tied up at Earle’s wharf. Two men stepped off and they reached back to help a third up onto the dock. The minister over from Fogo for the funeral.
Willard Slade’s youngest boy was buried in the graveyard in the meadow above the church that afternoon. Wish didn’t attend the service but he stood outside the fence as the mourners filed into the cemetery and watched while they prayed over the coffin. The minister read from the 23rd Psalm, Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. He thought briefly how Mercedes found something of that same comfort in his company, though he couldn’t avoid thinking of his cock in connection with rod and staff, and he wound up having to push the entire thing from his mind to keep the stupid grin from his face.
The coffin was let down into the earth, four men with ropes dropping the boy hand over hand, just the opposite of how he’d been salvaged from the ocean. After the interment the entire community passed by Wish again. Willard and Mrs. Slade and their other children in various states of undone. Mercedes wiping her face with a handkerchief and holding his gaze until she was past him, Agnes staring hard too, as if there was a riddle to him she might be able to figure just by looking. Their mother stone faced on Hardy’s arm, both of them refusing to acknowledge Wish.
Clive was one of the last out the gate and he stopped to talk, his eyes bloodshot and his mouth working hard. “Miserable old racket,” he said.
The minister came by them and nodded hello to Clive. He had one walleye that seemed directed toward Wish as he passed and its peculiarly wandering attention struck the younger man as malevolent.
Clive said, “How are things with the little miss?”
Wish was watching after the minister as he walked toward the church. “Things are fine with the little miss. The old miss, now. That’s a different quintal of fish.”
Clive smiled. “She’s as hard as a box of nails, that one. Hardly heard a civil word out of her mouth in all the years she’s been in the Cove.”
“She’s not from here?”
“Aubrey hooked up with her down on the Labrador one summer. She was working with a crew in Domino Run, cooking and cleaning, helping to make the fish. Not more than fifteen then and some says already in the family way when she got here with Aubrey. Not what you’d expect of the old bugger. But you know what men are like.”
Wish studied his feet to hide the flush coming into his face.
“Don’t even know for sure where she’s from,” Clive went on. “Somewhere in Conception Bay, I hear. She left all her people behind to come to the Cove with Aubrey and never shed a tear as far as I can tell. Although you can’t ever say what goes on behind closed doors.”
“She don’t think much of me or mine.”
“Being from the opposite side of the house, you mean?”
“She said as much.”
They both looked back at the gravesite, where two men were spading dirt into the hole. “Bloody old foolishness in the end. Don’t matter to that one who’s throwing the dirt down into his face, now, does it?”
Wish wasn’t sure that argument held where marriage was concerned. But he didn’t want to insult Clive by disagreeing.
“A mother won’t think much of any man sniffing around the daughter, I guarantee you that. It’s in her nature. But you be civil and keep the girl happy. Helen will settle.”
“I got me doubts about that.”
Clive grinned at him. “Would be no sport to it at all if you had no doubts.”
He was waiting for her at the Spell Rock three days later when he saw Clive’s trap skiff coming around the headland on its way back into the Cove. The engine’s raw racket travelling over open water and echoing back off the hills above the Cove. They’d been out barely long enough to get to their cod traps and she was riding too high in the water to have a load of fish aboard. Clive was sitting in tight against the tiller and both his sons were sitting aft as well, as close to the stern-board as they could get. Wish headed for the wharf at a run. Mercedes was on her way to meet him when they crossed paths.
“Where’s Agnes?”
“I made her wait behind on the path.”
“Take Agnes and go on up to the house,” he said. “Send your mother down.”
“What is it?”
He went down to the stage where Clive’s trap skiff was drifting in, the engine cut. As the boat came abreast he saw the bundle of canvas in the bow. Wish took the lines thrown to him from the skiff and fastened her to the pilings. Clive facing away from him, gathering up gloves and a jacket and his hat, then looking up to Wish standing above him on the wharf.
“What a fucking mess we got there,” he said.
Wish and Clive and the two boys carted the body up to the church hall, each holding a corner of the canvas shroud. David holding the bottom lip of his full, feminine mouth between his teeth. Clive told Wish the body had drifted into the leader of their cod trap and they’d found it there as soon as they tried to haul up the door.
By the time they reached the church, Mercedes and her mother were coming down the path toward them. Clive said, “Get him inside before they gets here.”
They shuffled awkwardly through the door and set their load in the middle of the floor, for some reason wanting to keep it as far from the walls as possible. They threw open the windows and then hurried back outside, away from the ballooning stench. Clive caught Helen and wrapped his arms around her to keep her from going inside.
“Now, Helen,” he said. “There’s nothing for you to see in there.”
“Is it Aubrey?” She was looking over one of Clive’s shoulders and then the other, as if trying to glimpse someone in a crowd. “Is it him?”
“Couldn’t be anyone else, Helen.”
“He was wearing his yellow garnsey and red vamps. He couldn’t ever keep his feet warm, you know how he was, Clive, wore his vamps winter and summer.”
“There weren’t a stitch left on him, maid,” he whispered. “He been out there a week. And hauled around something fierce it looks like.”
“He had his initials engraved,” she said. “On the inside of his wedding band.”
Clive shook his head. “The left arm,” he said. “The whole thing.”
“Blue eyes?”
Wish stood holding Mercedes a little off to the side. Sea lice would have taken the eyes, he knew. But neither he nor Clive had the heart to say it. Mercedes had buried her face in his chest and was wailing.
Clive said, “Get the child back up to the house, Wish. For the love of Christ Jesus.”
He sat Mercedes in her rocker and stood back as Agnes knelt in front of her and the two sisters held each other and wept. Then he did the only thing he could think to do. He put the kettle on the stove. He took down mugs and sugar and hunted about for tea. When he found everything he needed he stood by the door, waiting for the water to boil. The old woman started calling out from the parlour and he went down the hall to look in on her. She was lying in the exact same posture as before, shouting through the wall. He took her hand as he sat on the edge of her bed.
“I thought you might be Aubrey home,” she said.
“No, missus.” He had no idea how much she knew of what was happening.
“Is he dead and gone, then?”
“I’m sorry to say he is.”
“And gone to hell,” the old woman said. “To judge by the company
he kept.” She looked toward the window and said, “What is that noise?”
There wasn’t a sound that he could hear. “What noise?”
She glared at him, as if an unpleasant odour was emanating from his body. “Where do you belong to?”
“St. John’s.”
“You’re not from town. Where’s home?”
“I should go see to the kettle.”
She held his hand fiercely. “You’re a Catholic.”
He had to stop himself from laughing, caught off guard by the force of her disgust, by the bizarre fluke of being named for what he was. She was trying to sit up and he thought she’d go for his throat if she could find the strength. He shushed her back down into the bed. “Don’t be so foolish. Catholic,” he said. “Sure a Catholic wouldn’t be caught dead in this house, would they? They’d be struck down before they got in the door.”
She was out of breath and had lost her train of thought altogether, the fury evaporating as quickly as it had overtaken her, and she reached up to pat his face. “You’re a good boy,” she said. “You’re Jenny Reid’s boy, are you?”
“Can I bring you a cup of tea?”
By the time he came back into the kitchen, Helen had returned with several other women. She was at the windows, closing the curtains.
He said, “I’m sorry for your troubles, Mrs. Parsons.”
For a moment it seemed she might begin crying but she reined herself in.
“The missus was calling,” he said, “so I looked in on her.”
“I hope she was civil to you.”
As civil as I’ve come to expect of the women of the house, he thought. But he only said, “She wanted a cup of tea.” And then he added, “If there’s anything I can do.”
She carried on at the blinds, ignoring him.
Mercedes was still in the rocker, her face red and bloated with crying. He said, “I’ll be on my way, I guess.”
She looked to her mother. “Can’t he stay awhile?”
“We got to get the house ready for your father, Sade.”
Wish said, “I’ll see you again before long.”
And Helen stepped away from the door to let him pass.
The Wreckage Page 7