“I’ve had ten youngsters and kept my modesty. Not once did their father see the stretch of me,” she boasted one day as she sat knitting her husband’s drawers to be lined with cotton she’d cut from flour bags.
A pity then, Maggie had thought. Jamie might want to see the length of me, and— She blushed with the thoughts of what she and Jamie could do to each other.
She looked up thinking that God could be reading her thoughts. You can strike me dead now if you don’t want me imagining us together. She closed her eyes and smiled. God believed in love. Wasn’t He the one who made it?—and good!
Even a woman like Aunt Liddie, her body gone doughy, had to think about love sometimes.
Daylight stretched longer now. Through the window Maggie eyed a tree’s vein-like branches cutting into the cold orange blush of white sky. Another night closed in over the heavy, darkening skin of water. Fewer days and nights to wait for Jamie. She counted them away.
Twenty days went by and there was talk that the Southern Cross would soon be sailing home. Maggie passed several men sitting on a rock wall leaning against the shed of retired skipper Jed Porter.
“Likely the Southern Cross is on course,” Jed said. “The weather’s been civil so far.”
“I hope it stays that way,” a farmer said looking up into a sky of furled clouds.
It will, Maggie thought. Jamie can’t be kept out, delayed by bad weather.
Maggie stood out on her aunt’s porch step, her arms folded around her body to keep warm as she eyed the clear sky. Stars twinkled like ornaments on a velvet black curtain and she thought of the Southern Cross constellation: a silver diagonal cross formed from a group of stars for which the sealing ship was named. Jamie had told her about it, saying, “Only people who live in the southern hemisphere can see the Cross.”
On Sunday, March 29, a cold, starry night, Maggie looked through the window and saw a thin slice of moon lying on its back. She shuddered.
“Lovesick, she is, you know,” Liddie said to Aubrey. “Her fellar gone on the Southern Cross and she with such a wild imagination that he’ll bring home a pocket of money.”
Maggie went up to bed and closed her eyes to shut out everything but thoughts of Jamie. “I’m a mind traveller; it’s the cheapest way to travel,” Jamie had mused as he and Maggie sat against a wall of smooth stones beside William’s gate last summer. “I close my eyes and imagine whatever I want. I like to imagine Boston, where Avery, me cousin, went last year. He’s helping build buildings high enough to scrape the clouds. Maybe Avery and Olivia will run into each other,” he said.
Maggie had frowned. Olivia had left Zachary to go to Boston and Jamie was leaving her to go on the ice. Zachary didn’t know if Olivia was coming home. Maggie was sure Jamie was.
She drifted into sleep imagining Jamie’s arms around her. Long before morning she woke, darkness wrapping her like a cold blanket. She slipped out of bed and blindly reached for her water jug. She held it as she made her way carefully down the stairs for a drink. She stayed by the kitchen window until the black fog of night petered out. Morning brought a strange calm under a blushing sky. A tiny stir creased the bay water. A brooding, heavy silence filled the air outside. It seeped inside until the room felt heavy and smothering.
That night the moon, a silver, unfettered vessel, sailed through straggly clouds. Maggie couldn’t help noticing the dusty, golden ring haunting it.
William was awakened out of a deep sleep to the sound of footsteps, then nothing. Jamie is wantin’ to be home in a warm bed, he thought. He lay for a while and then pushed back the bed covers. Through the window he looked toward a bright red sun and a leaden sky bearing down on it. Gulls were flying in from the sea and drifting high above the land like charred bits of paper. His eyes narrowed at the sight of the reddening sky. Nasty weather was on its way. He hoped the Southern Cross would stay out of its path. “When a halo is around the moon look for rain or snow quite soon,” he said quietly, remembering an old saying. If the wind pitched northeast he knew there’d be trouble.
He hurried downstairs and tapped the barometer. The needle was falling. Screaming gales, fog, and pellets of ice above wild seas were all part of a sealer’s lot while hunting seals, but when a vessel was on its way home with a load of seals William knew it made for a harrowing journey.
When Jamie was a boy he had asked him questions as if he had all the answers. Now he felt small and vulnerable as he asked a question hooked in his heart: “Is my only son safe?”
“A storm is brewing,” a fisherman said as several men gathered in store lofts to knit new nets and mend old ones.
“Ah,” sighed Ned Porter as he sat hooking a needle under a strand of twine, “the potter spun this island in anger. He left it jagged with cliffs and rugged shorelines and at the mercy of a sea with as fierce a mouth as any lion and an appetite as strong.”
“We’ve got the softer part of it here on the Southern Shore,” someone answered.
William met Maggie on the road to Eli’s shop to pick up a bag of white beans for her aunt. He touched her shoulder. “Come down, me maid, and stay with me. See if I’ll eat yer.”
She shook her head no and pulled away.
Undeterred he said, “There’s no need for you to be off lookin’ after a tribe of youngsters belongin’ to someone other than yourself. Sure, ’tis no hard labour I’ll put you to. You can do the wash and cook a scattered meal. A feed of brewis will stay me when there’s not much else.”
Maggie went on by, her mind on the bad weather coming. She bought the beans and by the time she reached her aunt’s place the air was damp and heavy under a swollen sky. She spoke aloud, her voice strained, “The ship is comin’ home, Jamie. I know you’re comin’ home to me.” A deep, shivering pain shook her body. She whispered, “A kind sea, please God, a kind sea.”
33
There was no way to warn Captain Clarke that a storm was on its way. Families cringed in fear that the Southern Cross would plough into the heart of the gale. A full day passed without a report that the vessel had been sighted.
Maggie hurried down the road to where a crowd had assembled outside the post office located in the back of Porter House. Their feet made restless scuffing as they waited for their weekly mail. Maggie scanned the posting on the outside of the door giving the arrival time for all the sealing vessels. There was no news.
Abe Petten, beside her, said, “Old Hattie’s inside making clickin’ sounds on a gadget that’ll bring all the news. When she’s finished she’ll post it on the door. I hope it’s not all bad.”
A man behind banged him on the back. “Away with yer and feel your head. That captain and his ship knows each other full well. There’s worry for naught.”
The post office door was finally opened and then the wicket. Maggie pushed close. Men and women gripping their children’s hands stood outside waiting. The calm weather had not eased the storm brewing in their hearts, dread suspended above their heads like a sword.
William scuffed along the path to the site of a dozen men gathered around. People pushed to get close as the postmistress read a cable: “At 7:00 p.m., Sunday March 29, a wireless message from Channel–Port aux Basques, on the southwest corner of Newfoundland, informed St. John’s that on Saturday, the twenty-eighth, about 6:30 p.m., the Southern Cross was spotted passing about seven miles out. She was down in the head with all flags flying, a signal that the barque was going home with a bumper crop estimated between 17,000-25,000 pelts.”
William’s mind settled at the news that the Southern Cross was finally on her way home. Families cheered the captain on with their prayers knowing he was racing to be the first in St. John’s harbour, a distinction every captain dreamed of claiming. She had her load of pelts and flippers and she should be in port Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.
The strain of waiting eased.
All along the Avalon, Butlers, Battens, Busseys, Pettens, Taylors, Stanleys, Bishops, Kennedys, and Porters waited, spirits lifted now that the Southern Cross was on her way home.
“There’ll be some fiddlin’ and whistlin’ now,” someone said.
Families’ hearts grew light and expectant. Floors were scrubbed and pots shined and filled with stews and soups from food garnered from their sparse cellars. The men went about sawing and laying in wood with renewed energy. Having been anchored with fear for what seemed like a lifetime, families now waited with welcoming hearts. Still, their minds weren’t far from the men on their way home; there were uneasy glances at the sky and furrowed brows for signs of a weather moon.
The storm erupted on the last day of March, swells swallowing each other over and over, while the sea opened its mouth with sprays of white spit. People standing outside their homes and looking out to sea felt the sting of snow pellets against their skin. Then heavy, wet snow pelted down. The spring snow had a name.
“Sheilagh’s brush,” a farmer said as he settled his horse in his stable.
“I’d say it’s not,” his son answered. “It’s Sheilagh’s fleece-lined white drawers hanging low and heavy.”
They laughed, forgetting for a moment the vessel on her way home.
Caroline sat inside her house, her lips pressed in a grim line. Room windows were darkened with snow. The shades already drawn. She shocked herself with the thought.
A day later, the first day of April, the storm had worsened. Maggie pulled on her grey woollen coat to go see if William had any news.
“Stay put, me maid,” Liddie urged. “There’s a living screecher out there this mornin’.”
When she saw Maggie determined to go she shrugged. “If that’s what it takes to settle your mind, go, though it won’t be an easy tramp.”
Grateful for her aunt’s understanding, she drew a blue knitted cap over her head and tucked her long light hair into her neck under a thick, varicoloured scarf. She pulled on a pair of double-knitted blue cuffs. Her aunt wrapped hot biscuits in cloth and tucked them in her pocket.
She thanked her and hurried out the door and down the road through driving snow. The wild wind swung like an iced rope in the hands of a madman. A ribbon of silver skin from a birch tree sailed through the air and hit her face. Barbed ice crystals shot up her nose sharp enough to bring tears.
After a long struggle she reached William’s house, her stiff fingers clumsy in lifting the latch on the porch door. The door swung at her like a beast pushing her backwards. She lost her balance and fell while the wind banged the door against its hinges. She dragged herself to her feet, grabbed the latch, and pulled the door back. She got inside and stood shivering in the porch. It was no day for anyone to be out, no day for a ship to be on the ocean.
William seemed to have shrunk inside his shabby clothes. Maggie looked at him sitting by the stove, his face drawn and heavy, his mouth down. Pouches, red and sore-looking, had formed under his eyes. He drew in a heavy breath. “Jamie is unchancy, that he is, to be out in this weather.”
Maggie said nothing as she shed her ice-encased coat, cap, scarf, and cuffs by the stove. Then she took a chair and sat by the fire listening to the screech of wind around the house, its sharp whistling against the windows. The silence between her and William became so heavy that she jumped up. “I’ll make you a fine cup of tea,” she said. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her biscuits. She laid them on the table and set the kettle to boil.
When the tea was ready William lumbered to his seat and lifted his cup in shaky white hands. He took a sip and put it down. Then he dipped his biscuits and ate them. He didn’t speak. His mind was crowded reliving stories of men caught on the ice and frozen as solid as statues, others surviving by wrapping themselves in sealskins and lighting fires with blubber. He thought of the many sealers that had disappeared in icy waters never to be heard of again. He hoped that the Southern Cross had left waters too rough for the wooden ship to handle and had found shelter in one of the bays along the coast.
Maggie gathered her belongings where they hung beside the stove, dressed in them half-dried, and went out the door wanting to be away from William sitting silently, brooding.
There was no gentleness anywhere. Wind shrieked and trees swayed in its grip while snow smoked the air. Maggie trudged along like a blind woman feeling her way home, wind and snow like steel needling her skin. She was relieved to get to the house and hurry inside.
Liddie looked up from knitting a sock, worry creasing her brow. She said nothing as her niece hung up her wet clothes beside the fire and went up to her room. The warmth of the wood stove rose to fill the small space with coziness.
Maggie pulled back heavy quilts and slid into bed hauling the quilts back over her shoulders. The stove heat had not reached under her sheets and she shivered until her body heat warmed her. She drifted into sleep and woke with a jerk. She lifted herself on an elbow and stared through the small window. Wind and sleet smacked the thin pane, beat against the house in twists and turns. Her heart lurched. Jamie was out on a vast ocean in contrary weather. “Be safe, Jamie,” she whispered. She remembered Jamie’s mother saying, “Worry is a thief not to be let in.”
That was easier said than done. She could not lock a door or shutter a window against it.
* * * * *
34
Sealers hurrying up the makeshift ladder to the Southern Cross on the last day of the hunt had noticed, in the distance, whitecoats taking to the water, a sure sign of stormy weather. Still, it was fine and fair when the ship left the Magdalen Islands for St. John’s with its prized load of seal sculps and barrels of seal flippers.
On the last day of March the Southern Cross headed into the path of the storm. Wind screeched through the rigging, ice pellets like claws tearing into the steamer. The men, their clothing stiff as canvas, lay abunk on bloody pelts heavy with thick layers of fat. They smiled wearily pushing away memories of twelve-hour days lifting the gaff over and over to kill seals, the back-breaking work of helping load pelts on board the deck and in the hold of the ship. A sweet, heavy feeling blanketed them as their bodies relaxed. They drifted into sleep.
Jamie dreamed he was placing his mother’s gold wedding ring on Maggie’s finger. He was jarred awake by a lurch of the ship. He sank back trying to sleep but he kept reliving his first time as a sealer: buckling on a sheathed knife, razor sharp . . . grabbing a tow line and gaff . . . pulling seals over ice . . . eating his aunt’s buns, hard bread, and oatmeal on the ice, and a few raisins Noah had given him. Voices and scenes gathered and scattered as Jamie slipped in and out of sleep . . . the turn of pelts he’d dragged across the ice, his blood warm with thoughts of Maggie . . . John Stanley calling him a young greenhorn, and teaching him how to lace up six seal pelts to a tow.
“Cut your holes in the edge of the sculp, me man. Pass it right through back and front like this,” John Clarke from Brigus called, holding up a pelt. “Then tie a knot. Make a turn of rope to grasp in your left hand. Here, watch. Pass the long end over your right shoulder and take it in your right hand. . . .”
A blue gulf of water was rising . . . Jamie was losing his balance . . . unwittingly flinging pelts into the water. James Lynch from Harbour Grace grabbed him, pulled him to safety, both of them wobbling on a small pan, the tow of six pelts gone. But he’d worked hard and made up for the loss.
* * * * *
It would be a stormy voyage home. Already clouds of wet snow had drifted into the nooks and crannies of the ship and along the deck of the crowded Southern Cross lurching in contrary winds.
Jamie heard the faint sound of a whistle and
then his ship’s answering siren. He dozed and when he surfaced it was to a sharp shift. His heart quickened at the memory of his sweetheart brushing her long, thick hair. He had spent twenty days away from her, twenty days with thoughts of them together. He imagined her arms around his neck, the sweet scent of her perfume. Coins would soon jingle in his pocket like wedding bells.
Screeches and moans mingled. Jamie’s breath was caught in his throat, his face under a heavy, suffocating weight as bloody, oily sealskins broke through the decking. Trapped sealers slid and tumbled against each other under creaking and breaking boards. Water rushed over the ship like demons running into every crack, into every open mouth, into every nostril. Maggie’s name rose gargled in Jamie’s throat. The icy ocean pressed inside him and he, unable to resist breathing, felt the burst of pain in his lungs as he was hurled into the darkness of a deep, icy grave.
35
William’s apple tree branches clawed the air like skeletal fingers spelling a message of misadventure. Ghostly hands of wind urged them on. William looked out the bay at the drifts of snow disappearing into water. Winter was muscling spring out of its way. A chill snaked its way down his spine. “Mary Jane,” he said, “I’m glad you’re gone from the world, away from the torment of Jamie in this storm.”
Caroline and Joe were at home sitting by the table, the lamplight flittering from wind breathing around the windowsills. They turned startled at a loud bang, as if something had been flung against the outside of the house, making a scraping sound down the side before landing on the ground with a thud.
Caroline let out a cry, her hand going to her mouth. Joe grabbed the lamp and ran to open the door. He stared into the dark night. There was nothing there. He closed the door and for a while nothing was said. Then there came Caroline’s whisper: “It’s an omen. Poor Jamie promised to return the box and he’s done it in the only way he could.”
Ghost of the Southern Cross Page 17