“That’s Helmet,” Jackson Sawton said. “Odd jobber around here. He’s going to run you up to the cabin. Not far. He’s got a spanking new machine.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure how I felt about it, but not sure of much at the moment.
“That’s Hel-met,” Jackson clarified, perhaps seeing my trepidation. “Not German like that. Helmet. It’s a nickname. Everyone calls him Helmet, guess he’s always driving one thing or another and is always wearing a helmet.”
“Of course. That makes sense.”
“Hunters reported it back in the fall,” Jackson said, drawing a handkerchief out of a back pocket and wiping his fingers with it. “The cabin, I mean. The occupants. Regular little tribe moved in. I went up to see them, but they said they had permission. We have a Mountie named Evans who rode out to see them, too, but he didn’t evict them. They made a case for belonging.”
“How do they live?”
“Oh,” he said, sitting for a minute in one of the chairs. He waved to another chair for me to sit. Helmet kept his distance. “Oh, they do okay. Hunt, I suppose. And they had a bunch of supplies brought in. Two or three times, actually. Course, if you know what you’re doing, it’s a nice little cabin. You can hole up there in the winter and not need a thing. They just go pogey.”
“What’s pogey?”
“It’s what we call relief. A government check. A lot of the fishermen over to PEI and Nova Scotia, they go pogey off-season. It’s a way of life, isn’t that right, Helmet?”
Helmet nodded.
“Keeps money flowing. Primes the pump. As I say, Helmet will run you up. You couldn’t have a better guide. He lives on his machine most of the winter. It’s heated and everything else. It’s a dandy.”
“How far is it?”
“What? Twelve miles, Helmet?”
Helmet held his hand out in front of him and shook it softly as if putting a spell on us. More or less, he meant. Approximately.
They had a snowsuit for me to wear, borrowed from a woman slightly larger than I was. Snow boots and my own helmet. I looked ridiculous when I was finished, but I felt warmer. I stood beside the wood stove while Helmet went outside to warm up his machine.
“He’s a good boy,” Jackson said to me in a low voice. “No worries about that boy, I give you my word. Real quiet, though.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
He nodded. Maybe, I thought, a woman heading off into the woods with a man she didn’t know should worry. Maybe so.
Helmet buzzed his horn.
“That’s the signal he’s ready to go. He’ll have you out and back in no time. You’ll like the ride. And the setting where the cabin is, well, it’s some kind of pretty.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“My advice is to just check in. Don’t be too definite. You’re the owner of the property, so you can have them out if you want them out. You get Mountie Evans to take care of that, although it’s hard to evict people in winter in Canada.”
Helmet buzzed again.
I felt like an astronaut in a space suit. I put on the helmet and then swung up behind Helmet. With another sort of man, it might have felt slightly intimate to reach around him and hold his waist, but Helmet seemed almost part of the machine. I might have been a backpack filled with canned beans for all he cared.
I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect the beauty that waited for me. We took a trail that ran parallel to the last of the road, then veered off to the left and entered true forest. I tried to keep track of directions—did we go west or north?—but I quickly gave that up. It was too much. Instead, I looked over Helmet’s shoulder and watched the trail spin below us. The machine’s seat was heated, and my body felt warm and pleasant. Helmet drove with authority; he did not gun the engine to show off, but he also kept the machine moving briskly along the trails. We saw no one. The sun came out from the behind the clouds from time to time, but mostly the day remained silver and cold, one of the shortest days of the year.
We came across a small rise overlooking a lake, and Helmet stopped and pointed. I saw the cabin immediately. A stalk of smoke bloomed from the chimney. A wide porch, covered with snow and an enormous stack of wood, circled the building. It was not a log cabin, but something made of brown wood and a black roof. Someone had already lighted the evening lamps. It was a postcard cabin. The lake below it ran for hundreds of meters in either direction.
Helmet nodded. I nodded back. He gave the machine gas and we glided down the hillside and onto the lake. The ice stretched and yawned beneath us, but he didn’t hesitate. He brought the machine expertly up and off the lake and stopped near the shoreline, a short walk remaining up to the cabin.
“I’ll only be a minute,” I said. “I’ll keep it short.”
He nodded. He turned off the engine. The silence that took the place of the engine sound could not have been deeper.
* * *
I removed my helmet and felt the cold press on my ears and throat. It was the farthest point north, I realized, that I had ever visited. Jack London knew this kind of cold, I couldn’t help remembering. The English professor in me tied the experience to a book.
My boots made high, squeaking sounds as I crossed the short dooryard to the cabin. The metal roof had guided the snow straight off the downward eave and into a large pile, like a breastwork, that circled the house below the porch. Someone had cut a notch into it as a path to the porch. A pair of withered pumpkins stood on either side of the notch, tiny lampposts that had decayed and folded down in the snow. Two red candles remained embedded in the white frost.
I called out, Halloooo, then knocked on the door. I couldn’t know the protocol of knocking on a remote cabin door in Canada, although I assumed they had heard the snowmobile arriving.
No one answered. I knocked louder.
“Come in,” a voice called.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside. Five children sat around a table in the center of the cabin. They were Syrians, or refugees. I knew that at a glance. They were the brothers and sisters, the cousins and relatives of the children I had given water to in Sicily. They had been coloring large sheets of paper while drinking hot chocolate. Kerosene lamps illuminated the interior. A bright wood stove burned in the corner. It was warm and beautiful inside. The children’s eyes were soft and curious, a shade or two nearer to fear caused by my arrival than children should be.
“We were passing by,” I said, feeling my way, aware that by standing in the doorway I was letting the heat out. “We thought we’d look in.”
The children did not say anything. Occasionally they glanced at one another to get a reading. My entrance had turned them into conspirators.
“What are your names?” I asked, closing the door softly. “May I sit down for a moment?”
The children moved to the side, shoving together like the shuttle of a loom, although a chair stood positioned at the head of the table where I could sit. The children seemed timid as deer. Two of them had severed arms, one chopped above the right elbow, the other missing his entire left arm; a girl, the smallest, had a horrible burn across her chin and neck. They were drinking hot chocolate, that was all. It was a long winter night. The oldest—a girl of about ten—pushed away from the table at the other end and nodded her head in greeting. As the oldest, she accepted her responsibility.
“I am Sana,” she said.
I smiled. I felt my body beginning to cave down. There was a connection here to Ozzie, but I couldn’t identify it. I couldn’t name it. I put my hand on the back of a chair and sat for a moment. I looked around. I couldn’t make anything clear in my head. I couldn’t take anything in. Something about the picture, the setting, struck me as familiar.
“I can only stay a moment,” I said, hardly able to speak. “I am with a boy named Helmet. He’s waiting outside.”
It was a stupid, blathering comment, but it was all I could think to say. Sana nodded. She had no idea what I was doing there, what I wanted, but
she kept her eyes steadily on me. She had a kind, beautiful face. The other children watched me. They had stopped coloring.
“Who owns this cabin, Sana?” I whispered.
“We do,” she said.
“You don’t stay here alone, though, do you?”
She shook her head. She did not plan to tell me a thing if she could help it.
“Who stays with you?”
“Our friend,” she said. “Elma. She’s older.”
I had made them profoundly uncomfortable. They had answered enough questions, I was sure, to last them five lifetimes. A wind blew against the cabin and the wood stove flickered brighter. I sensed if I made a sudden movement to snatch at any of them, they would have run off like water. I had never been in the presence of children so obviously wounded.
“Who is Elma?” I asked carefully. “Is she here now?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t say yes or no. She would not volunteer unnecessary information, I realized. These children had learned the safety in silence.
“She couldn’t have gone far,” I said gently. “Elma, I mean. It’s too cold, and I didn’t see any tracks outside. She didn’t go across the lake, I don’t think. We would have run into her. Where are you from?”
That caused them to look at each other rapidly. We stood at an impasse. She wanted me gone. She wanted her safety. She did not trust strangers easily. Why would she trust a stranger with her business? Before anyone answered, a woman stepped out from what I took to be a bedroom at the rear of the cabin. She was a heavy woman, about sixty, who wore a red plaid shirt loosened around her belt line. Her hair was gray; she wore it in a bun at the back of her skull. I noticed a bright, silver crucifix around her neck.
She appeared harsh and disgruntled, but when I looked closer, I realized she had been sleeping. Her eyes were red and misty, as if she were slightly ill or suffering from allergies. Despite that, she studied me closely. Then she smiled. She had a wonderful smile, an Irish smile. It changed everything it touched.
“You’re Kate, aren’t you?” she asked, nodding at the correctness of her surmise. “You’re his Kate. You’re exactly as he described you.”
I nodded in return. But I hardly knew what I had just agreed to.
She walked forward and almost picked me up from the chair. She folded me in her arms. Over her shoulder, I saw the children watching us. They looked stunned, but they had also begun to smile. When I began to stiffen and tried to pull away, she only hugged me tighter.
“I knew some day you would show up here. Ozzie said as much. He predicted it. Oh, you’re welcome as anything, Kate. Welcome as the springtime flowers in dear old Donegal, am I right? Isn’t that the song? This is Ozzie’s doing. We miss him so, of course. This was his plan, you know? He likely imagined it a different way, but he knew he wanted us to meet, I suspect.”
She let me go. She had begun to stare at me with the sort of attention one has when one is in on a secret that the other must guess to understand. I tried to put the pieces together, but they didn’t fit easily. Who in the world was this woman? And how did these children factor in? I couldn’t take it all in.
“Help me understand,” I said, putting my hands out as if calming a pillow into place. “I don’t … Who are you? To Ozzie, I mean? Who are these children?”
“Oh, yes, you must be tops and tails. Yes, of course you are. My name is Elma McCoin, Kate. I’m with Catholic Charities from Ireland. I’m a sister, a nun. These are children that Ozzie collected from the camps and boats. They’re orphans. He got them to us and we brought them here. It’s a step along the way for them. It’s a long story, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
I sat and put my hands over my face. I couldn’t think, couldn’t process everything that had happened. Elma turned to Sana and asked her to put on the tea kettle. She spoke to one of the boys and asked him to go out and invite Helmet inside. Elma scooted the children down the bench and sat and took my hand.
“The Lord is good,” she said. “Children, remember this day. Today you are seeing a miracle. Kate is here and she is the wife of our benefactor, Ozzie Ferriter. We pray for him every night, Kate. He’s first in our prayers. The children owe their lives to him.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, then broke.
I began to weep into my hands. It was far too much to absorb. As I cried, I heard the door open and Helmet came in, led by one of the boys.
“You’re in time for dinner if you wish to eat with us,” Elma said, and placed her hand on my shoulder. “We eat simple food, but it’s ample. Young man, you’re welcome, too. We have lentil soup and bread. We’re warming it now.”
Then she bent close to my ear and whispered.
“I’m sure you have many questions, Kate. Spend the night, why don’t you, and see what Ozzie has made possible in this world. These are his children, when everything is said and done. He has their lives in his palm. We thought we had lost him, but you see he is returned to us through you. Nothing is lost to God.”
39
I accepted the lentil soup and I accepted the invitation to stay the night. Helmet refused, but told me he would pick me up at noon the next day. After dinner, by lantern light, Elma read to the children in English. I noted that she did not preach to them or force them to say grace. They were Muslim children, I gathered, and although she spoke of God often, she had the wisdom and respect to refrain from proselytizing for Jesus. She read them The Wind in the Willows, the same book Donald and his wife, Lucy, had given to their daughter on her seventeenth birthday years ago in Dublin. Elma was an excellent reader, as many Irish are, and she held the children mesmerized with her voice. They clustered around her as she sat in the lone easy chair by the wood stove. I sat on the outside circle, not quite sure of my place. Besides, I could not recover from the cabin being my first real link to Ozzie’s experience in Italy. It did not seem real, and therefore, nothing in that small cabin felt solid.
By eight thirty, the children were in their pajamas. I helped where I could, but the children were not ready to accept me fully and I did not push it. They were darling; they clearly loved and depended on Elma. They slept in bunk beds in two back rooms. It was fiercely cold away from the wood stove, but they had enormous down comforters on their beds, and they climbed in and burrowed down until only the tops of their heads remained visible.
“Good night, my little sled dogs,” Elma said as she made the rounds and kissed them good night. “Sleep deep in the blankets.”
“Good night, Elma,” they called. “Good night.”
Before we returned to the sitting room, Sana spoke to me.
“Are you really his wife?” she asked at the last moment.
She asked that with her eyes fixed on me.
“I am by law. But we have not seen each other for some years, I’m sorry to say.”
She seemed to have no opinion about that. She squirmed deeper in the covers until only her eyes remained.
I put my hand softly on her hair and brushed it back. She did not pull away.
“Would you care for a drop of good Irish whiskey?” Elma asked when I returned to the wood stove. “I don’t usually indulge, but this is a special occasion. And besides, my social life here revolves around the children. It’s nice to have an adult to speak with.”
“I’d love a small one.”
She poured us two glasses. One of the children made a sound of slight distress, and she stopped mid-pour and went to check on him. She returned in a moment.
“Our resident bed wetter,” she whispered. “He always worries before he falls asleep. Abdul Ghafaar, Servant of the Forgiver. Poor lamb.”
“I am surprised he is the only one,” I whispered back.
“Oh, there are others. Just not as consistent as Abdul. He’s the little lad with the severed arm.”
She handed me a glass of whiskey. I touched her glass with mine. Before she sat, she put more wood on the fire. The cabin was warm and tidy. I admired the way she handled the childre
n. There was no question of her love and caring for them. When she resumed her seat, I told her so.
“Well, thank you. They are dear children caught in troubles not of their own making. Each has a story. Horrible, horrible stories. You’ll forgive me if I don’t go into detail about them. Their injuries are their own. Someday they may want to tell of their experiences, but we in our religious order believe as much as possible that their ordeals are not for our fund-raising or lurid interest. Does that make sense, Kate? It’s a line we draw. A sister I know calls it poverty porn. You know, the child with the swollen belly on the telly? That kind of thing.”
“I understand.”
“Sorry to be dogmatic.”
“I’d like to hear more about the children. And about Ozzie.”
She sipped her whiskey. I did, too. It burned all the way down to my toes.
“It’s a long story, Kate, but in the end, he found a way to remove some of the children from the worst of it. Some of the children are held for ransom and exploited that way. Some are held and raped. Very few make it through in one piece, physically or emotionally. I’m sure you know the broad outlines. It’s on the news.”
I nodded. I sat up straighter.
“He used his boat to linger around the edges of what occurred on the sea. I don’t know all of it, but one day he showed up with two children in tow. We took them in, pending authorization … all of that official nonsense. He showed up two days later with four more. Our Reverend Mother had a long talk with him and told him she could not take any additional children without approval from the government. But which government? That was the question. About a week later, Ozzie showed up with a half dozen more.”
“Didn’t anyone miss the children?”
“Certainly. But not all. Many of them had no parents, or the parents were being held, or remained back in their mother country. These children are messages in a bottle, that’s all. The parents send them off because there is no hope for them where they are. The situation … oh, what’s the sense of trying to frame it into a sensible explanation? It’s an immense human tragedy. That’s the long and short of it. Ozzie cut through that, and the Reverend Mother assisted him up to a point. He made enemies, but he was a capable seaman and military man. We didn’t ask too many questions on our side of the equation.”
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