Ghost of the Southern Cross

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  Joe turned in anger. “Hold your tongue and don’t be talking trouble. It’s enough to see what is when it is.”

  “As sure as daylight he’ll be home,” Johnny said in a trembling voice from his place by the fire.

  “As sure as night he won’t,” Caroline answered, her look grim. “This is an omen.”

  The next day, all day, Caroline waited, unable to dismiss the fear that Jamie was dead. In a rush of anger she sputtered, “I don’t know why men have to go to sea usin’ up energy they could have saved for the land. Widows and children are left crying over men dyin’ without reason.”

  Joe looked at her, his face drawn. “Stop your blathering and wait to see what will be.”

  Johnny’s sightless eyes closed, lashes trembling as he recalled his time on a rocking pan of ice. Heavy, suffocating despair came back black as any night. He bowed his head in silent prayer. He had wished many times that he could have his time back before he went on the ice. Now he wished that Jamie had his time back.

  Maggie sat by the window in her aunt’s kitchen and fell asleep. She dreamed she was running on light feet to Jamie coming up the path. His look lingered on her bosom, the buttons on her silk Sunday dress straining against the buttonholes. He turned away and laughed as if embarrassed that his mother might notice. She woke murmuring, “Mary Jane is gone.” She got up and went up to bed.

  The next morning her bare feet hit the cold wooden floor as a rush of apprehension assailed her. She parted the white lace curtains and looked through the window. She let out a laugh. April the second had come and the storm was over. The day had opened crystal clear, the blue light of the sky like the clear eyes of a child after a tantrum. The land lay mute under dazzling snow played on by golden sunlight; the ocean’s fury was gone. Two crows on a fence picked at each other’s feathers. Their beaks dipped into caps of snow on posts and then touched each other. Snow kisses. She turned to a small mirror on the wall. Her soft green eyes were bright and brown-flecked in sunlight as she smiled at her image. Thick, light hair capped her head and flowed down her shoulders. She pulled it back in the tortoiseshell combs Jamie had given her for Christmas and gathered it in two looped braids. Her mouth formed the words: Jamie will soon be home!

  William woke smelling sea air and tasting salt on his lips. He wondered where he had been in dreams he could not remember. He dressed and hurried over to Joe’s. The men sat silently around Joe’s wireless radio hoping for news of the Southern Cross. All they heard was a crackling noise.

  “Dang useless!” Joe grumbled. “I shouldn’t have let the Water Street merchant talk me into buyin’ it.”

  Caroline took in William’s white face. She couldn’t tell him about the omen. “Hold on to hope,” was all she could say as he left to go back to his house.

  William dropped on a chair by his table and cut through a loaf of bread Caroline had given him. He was slathering a slice with butter and partridgeberry jam when Maggie hurried inside and sat down. He didn’t look up until after he had poured milky tea into his saucer to soak his bread.

  Maggie met his droopy eyes, relief showing in hers. “It’s a nice day for the men to come home. They should get in today.”

  William pushed back his chair. He hurried outside and came back with an armful of junks for the stove. They slid from his arms into the woodbox with a bang. He stirred the fire and threw in a log. He looked at Maggie, light from the fire grate flickering over her face. “’Tis time someone told us something,” he said gruffly.

  She nodded. “Indeed it is if they’ve heard. After the voyage Jamie will need a long rest.” She stood up. “I’m on my way to the Quilting Bee. I’ll need to be makin’ quilts for our home.”

  Maggie stopped by the post office on her way down the shore to the Quilting Bee at Etta Whalen’s house. She heard people who had gathered by the post office say there was no news about the Southern Cross. There were sketches about the SS Newfoundland, rumours of sealers dying on the ice. She hurried on, not wanting to listen, not wanting to know anything about another ship until she had news of Jamie.

  She dropped her coat on a hook in Etta’s porch and went inside to the back room where the coals in a Ruby stove glowed. She nodded at the other women and took her place. They all turned to the sound of footsteps slow and dragging coming down the stairs and a pause when the landing was reached. Evangeline Snow, Etta’s mother, came out to where the Quilting Bee women sat around a large oak table fitting pieces of material for a quilt. She had a lost look. “Dear, dear, I’d like for someone to take me home. There’s bad news on the go.”

  There was a sharp gasp in the room among the women quietly stitching pieces. Maggie tightened her lips.

  “You are home, Mother.” Etta’s voice was soft and cajoling. “You need to go back up to your room.”

  “I’m home?” She looked around bewildered. “I had a dream that there was a sealing ship out on the ocean that wasn’t comin’ home.” She put her hand to her mouth as if to hold in something she wasn’t meant to say. She turned back and went out and up the stairs calling, “Blue of sky; blue of sea, soon, my love, come back to me; black sea seething ’neath black sky, never thought my love would die.”

  Maggie listened to her pacing the floor of her room.

  Etta shook her head. “It’s sad to be living with your mind half gone—worse than losing a leg.”

  She cautioned the ladies as they resumed their sewing that it was best not to mention sealing around her mother. “Ever since she lost my father in the 1898 sealing voyage she dreams that he’s on an ice pan driftin’ away from his ship. She hears him callin’ and cryin’. At night this time every year she kicks all the clothes off the bed as if she’s tryin’ to get to him. Then she lies in bed shiverin’ like someone freezing.”

  Julia Porter’s voice wavered. “There’s been lives lost on the Newfoundland, I heard. I know my Luke is not among them. He can’t be.” Her voice ended in a low tremor. “I’d know it if he was.”

  Melinda Butler’s hand stopped in mid-air. “My man’s on the Southern Cross and he’s coming home.”

  “And mine!” Maggie’s words leaped out before she could stop them. She gave Julia a guilty look. “I’m sure Luke’s fine.”

  * * * * *

  The next day was clear and sunny. Maggie walked to the post office hoping to get a letter from Elizabeth in Hibb’s Cove. Instead there was one from Olivia in Boston telling her she was coming home. A few months before, Maggie had opened the door to see Olivia standing on the porch bridge. She was in muffs and a long, shabby green coat, its large astrakhan collar turned up around her quivering chin.

  Maggie had looked at her in alarm and asked, “Where is it you’re off to?”

  “I’ve come to say goodbye,” she said in a tremulous voice. “I’m goin’ to the Boston States to Great-Aunt Lila’s. She’s not fully recovered from the effects of bein’ in the water after Titanic sank.”

  Maggie was puzzled. “I thought you’d be marryin’ Zachary.”

  She hesitated. “I was—I is.” She passed her a piece of paper. “Here’s me address. Write once in a while and tell me how Zachary’s doing.”

  “You can write him yourself, sure.”

  Olivia shook her head, her voice muffled. “I can’t.” Looking distressed she hurried away.

  Maggie had met Zachary on the road a few days after Olivia left. His toe pushed against a rock as he told her, “Maggie’s gone and left me.” He kicked the rock hard and added, “I don’t know why.”

  Maggie wrote Elizabeth with the news:

  You remember Olivia? You would, for sure. Who wouldn’t! A china doll among us plain Janes. She took off to Boston, leaving Zachary waiting to marry her. He’s gone to the seal hunt on the same ship as Jamie. You remember other children we played with on the beach. Laura, poor thing, slipped and fell outside her
grandmother’s house. She hit her head and died. Lily, her little girl, is missing (someone must know where she is). Emily Penny, the bold one. Well, she went off to St. John’s and got herself work with a rich family. I’m not sure if she knows that her two brothers went on the Southern Cross. If not it’s best this way, her not having to worry. Other men along the shore went on the Newfoundland. Your baby must be a treasure. After Jamie and I gets married we’ll be over to see you. Write when you gets a little spare time.

  Your future sister-in-law,

  Maggie

  Maggie left the post office and carried on to Etta Whalen’s house to help finish a quilt the women were making for a poor family who had infant twin daughters and hardly a stitch of coverings for their beds. They were cutting good parts from worn clothes to make a second quilt when Maggie arrived.

  “I hear Olivia’s comin’ home from the Boston States,” Bessie Rideout said as she pulled a dark thread through two pieces she was sewing together.

  “Home! Is she, then?” exclaimed Amy Moss, a plain-faced girl. She looked disappointed, as if she’d hoped there’d be a chance for her with Zachary if Olivia wasn’t around. She lifted her square to the brin bag backing and asked, “Is it to stay?”

  Minnie Marshall lifted her head from her sewing needle. “Or not! Who knows! She’ll come back too highbrow for Zachary, a farmer.”

  Amy shrugged. “The high and mighty thinks themselves a cut above the rest: the penny looking down on the halfpenny.”

  Shy Jessie Young lifted her head, her long, thin nose sticking into the air. “Beautiful women miss out in other ways. God made us all equal, so if she’s got one favourable trait she’s missing another.”

  Amy nodded, looking relieved.

  Minnie said, “The young ones go off to Boston, put on airs, and come home speakin’ in broad Boston tones for a day or two. Then they settle back to their usual speech.” She drew herself up straight, her needle in the air, and said in a hoity-toity voice, “Is it Boston, Boreston, or Bosston?”

  “There’s as many sounds to one word as there’s voices and any number of ways to say it,” Jessie offered. “Still, some people think of themselves higher than the rest of us just because they’ve seen a smidgen of the world.”

  Minnie bit off her thread and went on, “I thought Olivia wanted Zachary. That’s what everyone believed until she went away leavin’ him to wonder why. I said to meself when I heard she’d gone away, ‘There’s sleek shanks and a long carriage on that one. The maid’s too comely for her own good; maybe something untoward happened to her.’”

  Amy’s eyes narrowed. “All Olivia wants is a man with a hearty jingle in his pocket. She went off and left Zachary and he pining for her—wouldn’t glance at anyone else. She likely got herself disgraced in Boston and she’s back to break Zachary’s heart and bring shame to her poor mam and pap. Dandelion fluff is all she is. When Zachary gets home from the Southern Cross he should put his mind on someone else.”

  A heaviness settled around the table. Everyone’s thoughts turned to the sealing ship now overdue.

  On Maggie’s way home lines skipped through her mind like rope through the air. He’s comin’ back; he’s not comin’ back.

  36

  Olivia returned from Boston wearing a pair of high-buttoned boots with a silk rose on each instep. She held a floppy black hat beside the long skirt of her fashionable red suit as she stepped off the train, her blue eyes defiant as they met the uneasy looks of women standing around. She donned the hat over fine hair long and braided like white sheaves.

  One farmer remarked, “As good as a sail that contraption is. I wouldn’t mind boardin’ that wonder-wench’s boat.”

  His neighbour nodded. “I’d say she’s a one for red shoes and no knickers.”

  Months before, Johanna, Olivia’s mother, had found her retching in the chamber pot. She had given her a hard look. “You’ll not be wanted here in the condition you’re in. You might consider havin’ the father marry you.”

  “He’s already married.”

  “Then you’re worse than I thought any daughter of mine could be. Here I was thinkin’ you’d been considerin’ the Butler boy.”

  Johanna turned quickly as Jabe, Olivia’s stepfather, passing through the hall, stopped in the doorway of the bedroom and glared at Olivia. “Do I have to shoot the Butler boy in that slack backside of his to get him to marry me daughter?”

  Olivia lied. “I don’t know him that well.”

  “He knows you, then.”

  “Not as good as you,” she said.

  One quick step and he was in the room. He slapped her face. “You whore.”

  She answered him then, right in front of her mother: “If I’m a whore, I’m yours!”

  His face hardened and, without looking her way, he left the room and went outdoors.

  She got another slap in the face, this time from her mother. “You’re not a very good daughter.”

  “You’re not a very good mother.”

  “I do what I can. You shouldn’t look so pleasin’ to a man.”

  Olivia’s big eyes, blue as the underside of an ice floe, clouded. “I wish I didn’t.”

  “You could have told me about him,” her mother said, her face white and strained.

  Olivia looked at her without wavering. Only the month before she was making jam from freshly picked partridgeberries. The berries and sugar began to boil and when she stirred the liquid and bent to taste it the juice splattered on her arm and on a side of her neck. Her stepfather came into the kitchen and slid his tongue along her arm and licked the juice. She pulled clear. Her mother, standing in the doorway, saw and turned away. Months before, Olivia had seen her mother’s face at the window watching as she ran from the barn, her blouse torn, a button hanging.

  Now she answered boldly, “If I had come to you you would have shown me the door.”

  “I’ll show you the door right now. Out!”

  “I’m having your husband’s child with no will of mine. I was forced.”

  “Liar!” The icy accusation stung her ears.

  She turned back and in a quiet voice asked, “Do you believe in God?”

  “More than you ever could,” her mother said.

  “Then you tell Him I’m a liar and see what He’ll write in His judgment book about you bearin’ false witness and about you keepin’ silent. Gina knew what Jabe was like.”

  She left the room without waiting for a reply and ran out of the house slamming the door.

  Johanna hesitated. Then she followed her daughter, calling, “I can’t weigh him with blame. I did far worse.”

  Olivia looked back, her voice heavy. “What do you think could be worse?”

  Johanna caught up with Olivia and grabbed her sleeve. “I didn’t want you. I tried to keep you from bein’ born, an intruder—”

  Olivia pulled away. “I was an intruder?”

  “Not to God you weren’t. He meant for you to be.”

  Olivia kept on running out to the barn. Inside she curled up in a ball on the damp clay floor. She had never forgotten what she had overheard when she was a child. Her mother had been kicked out of her home for getting in child. The father had vanished and she had nowhere to go. Jabe, an older man, had married her.

  When she was little Olivia had taken black thread from a reel of cotton and strung it through the eye of a silver needle. Then she had pushed the needle under the skin in her hand, making black stitches all the way across. When she went too deep her hand bled. She did this often during the summer after she had overheard her mother, more so after her stepfather bothered her. Then she would rub her finger over her palm with its broken skin without looking at it and sit there as if she were reading disturbing words in braille: My mother doesn’t want me; my stepfather does.

  �
�I know what to do,” her mother said coming into the barn. “You’ll go away to Boston. I’ll write your father’s Aunt Lila. She’ll know what to do about this.”

  Maggie had felt that something was wrong when Olivia abandoned her mother and stepfather’s comfortable home and left for Boston. Now she was home and keeping to herself. They were both living with the worry of their men surviving the sea hunt. She knew she should go visit her. She wasn’t sure why she hesitated.

  * * * * *

  37

  “The Ides of March came and went,” William said as he sat boxing the compass listlessly, going to each of the thirty-two points as if one of them would point him to Jamie’s whereabouts.

  Maggie looked up from stitching a square of material from one of Mary Jane’s dresses to a flour bag backing for her wedding quilt. She smiled. “One day you’ll be saying Jamie went and came back and we were foolish for worrying.”

  William’s face relaxed. He lifted his head. “I know, me maid. Worry buries the living before they’re dead.”

  Winter should have lost its hold with the sun crossing the line. Instead the world was soft and newly white, brown skeletal branches white-veined against a clouded sky. The snow-capped land held its inhabitants in a comforting stillness. The bright sun casting its dazzling light almost penetrated the dark place within those prisoners of hope.

  A wild wind soon raked the land raw, dark earth showing through the sprinkling of snow. Maggie laid aside her stitching, dressed in her coat and boots, and went outside. The land lay cold and unyielding under her feet as she ran down the road looking to find the least bit of news. The train had come and there would be mail from St. John’s, perhaps a newspaper report.

  St. John’s prepared for the return of sealers who had left in merry expectation. Snow banked the roads and hills—a frosty, deathly presence for families standing silently, wind lashing their drawn faces. They squinted and lines deepened around their eyes and corners of the lips as they waited for a sign, a speck in the distance, that the vessel carrying their loved ones would be the first to arrive. Some families were unsure which ship their men had gone on, they having secured a berth at the last minute.