The next morning, her eyes heavy and swollen from crying, she made her way down to the post office. She called to William shuffling to where a crowd had gathered. Instead of answering he went to lean against the building as if his body was too heavy to hold him up. He listened to Ned Porter’s words to those around him.
“A sealer sove from the ice floes will live through a sealing tragedy a thousand times,” he said. “He’ll wake from dreams believin’ he’s on the ice fighting for his life, his hands clenched as if frozen. He’ll remember other fellars lost on ice pans and how he was near enough to try to save a sealer fallen into the sea jammed between ice pans. He’ll wonder if he wasn’t a coward for not offerin’ a gaff, afraid the drownin’ man would drag him in and both of them sink. His family will wake to his cries and try to settle his mind and stop his shiverin’ by wrapping him in extra quilts.”
No one answered the skipper, his eyes glazed by his own awful memory.
The land line to Cape Race that had been knocked out during the storm was restored and a rumour that the Southern Cross had sheltered at Trepassey in St. Mary’s Bay was dismissed by the American Telegraph Company. There were fears that the barque had foundered in heavy swells and steep waves in the vicinity of Freels Rock, two miles off shore.
Days-old news that the Southern Cross was on her way home had lost its optimism. Awareness that something had gone amiss came like a thick fog creeping in over the land until the air was weighed down heavy enough on the inhabitants to bend their bodies into a slouch, their eyes dark with worry. Fear crept over the whole bay from Carbonear to St. John’s and into one community where it found the mother of a young boy, his mother’s sole supporter, a lad who by chance or destiny had acquired a berth on the Southern Cross. Long past midnight she, like other women, sat in her rocking chair running the rockers back and forth over hard floorboards, praying fervently.
A week passed and still there was no sign of the Southern Cross. Residents in shock from what they had already witnessed at the St. John’s waterfront spent long periods there almost perishing from the wind’s barbarous bite as they gazed out to sea, squinting under the sun’s cold glance. After a time all of them, their lips stiff and blue, went home to sit by their windows looking for a speck on the horizon. Hope like a filament of light often rose as a ship was seen crossing the ocean. The ships went on their way, their captains unaware of the expectation their sighting had aroused.
After a second prolonged search for the Southern Cross, the Kyle returned to port on the twelfth of April.
Without success.
41
In Foxtrap, time wore away and yet it seemed suspended, a portent like a black moon showing no light. An outward calmness settled over the place as men worked in their lofts and sheds and women tended their homes. Still, uncertainty spread like a plague, sickening the hearts and minds of relatives waiting for a confirmation that their men were living or gone.
All through the long nights, echoes of disturbing news that the Southern Cross had not found safe shelter kept Maggie awake, hope washing away, drifting back like flotsam. Hours stretched as long as days and days lingered like weeks. She pushed at fear present like a black intruder and went to see William who reasoned that if the storm had driven the barque out to sea it would take days for her to make land.
Maggie glanced out the window and saw Caroline carrying a crock of stew in her apron. Lavinia came behind her mother, her face pale, her eyes dark. Caroline nodded toward Maggie and laid the stew on the stove. Lavinia dropped a steaming loaf of bread on the table.
“You’ve got to eat, me man, and you, too, Maggie,” Caroline said. She stirred the stew and gave William a critical eye. “Do you find it cold?”
“Not altogether,” he said, his voice logy.
“A sweater would do you just the same.” She got up and took his sweater from a nail on the back of a door and laid it on his bent shoulders.
Lavinia touched her uncle’s back. “It’s a terrible loss, all those men on the Newfoundland perished, but Jamie is coming home.” She lifted her head stubbornly. “There’s no one says he’s not.”
Caroline drew her lips into a hard line. She said nothing. Then, seeing her daughter twisting the tail of her pinafore in her hands, her eyes wet, she put her arm around her. “We can’t borrow tomorrow’s trouble. Wait and see. There’ll be news soon.”
Maggie left the house without waiting for a dish of stew. More than ever she and William remained prisoners of hope.
That night she curled in bed beside Melanie and wrapped her arms around the tender body. She woke the next morning to hear voices from the kitchen. She jumped out of bed and slipped down to the stovepipe opening in the floor and listened. She heard a neighbour’s grave words: “The Southern Cross would have been in port by now if she hadn’t met with trouble. She headed right into the mouth of the storm and was likely swallowed.”
“Don’t tell Maggie right away.” Her aunt’s voice came strained and hoarse.
Maggie’s heart galloped, her ears buzzing. What were they saying? She dressed and crept along the landing and down the stairs holding to the bannister. Her stockinged feet hooked in the clips holding the flower-patterned canvas in place and she almost tripped. She pushed open the door to the pantry just as the neighbour closed the door to the porch behind her. Her aunt was already reaching for a pot and rolled oats.
The porch door opened and Maggie turned startled. It was only her Uncle Aubrey coming inside.
Liddie frowned. “Don’t be jumping like a scalded cat. You’ll be gettin’ news soon enough. I’ll be thinkin’ it’s not good news, so don’t rush it.”
Maggie’s lips quivered. “Even if there’s some bad news there got to be good tidings with it. The Newfoundland brought good news with the bad. If the ship foundered and lost some men a passing ship may have rescued Jamie and other sealers.”
“The Christian thing is to pray for the needs of others above our own; there’s the tragedy of the Newfoundland to think on,” Aubrey said.
After breakfast her aunt urged her, “Occupy your mind with work. Scrub the clothes and hang it to dry. Put the sunshine to good use. The day won’t wait.”
Liddie brought water already heated and poured it into the grey wooden tub in the porch. Maggie took down the washboard and settled the wood-framed glass board against the inside like a ladder. She spun soap into bubbles and kneaded a petticoat in sudsy waves, bringing it up over the washboard, water cascading like a waterfall turning dull, rope-patterned glass into diamond ropes. She washed the children’s belongings, driving her reddened knuckles over the washboard with such intensity that she rinded them out. She rinsed the clothes and pinned them outdoors on the clothesline. She came inside and hung the washboard on the porch wall. Work had not settled her mind. Sorrow was coming. It was already pressing in around her heart.
She caught a glimpse of people hurrying past the window. Trembling she grabbed her coat and raced down the road still wearing her apron. A crowd had already gathered by the post office.
There was talk of several sightings of wreckage from the Southern Cross. Jack Kearsey, a seaman who worked on a small boat doing depth soundings in Placentia Bay, had told how he had been using a heaving line with a ten-pound weight to measure depth. It had a wax core at the bottom to collect material from the ocean floor for observation. He brought up a piece of white fur with fat attached. He wondered if his heaving line had dropped into the sunken Southern Cross.
Captain Gate Winsor of the Bloodhound reported that on his return from the icefields he had sighted wreckage on the Saturday morning after the Southern Cross went missing. When his ship was ninety miles southeast of Cape Broyle he had seen a large mass of floating debris at the edge of an ice floe. There were deck sheathing, pound boards, flagpoles, prizes, pieces of timber, a seaman’s chest, a cap, and a bottle tightly corked bobbing i
n the water. Other debris had been spotted by cutters Fiona and the Kyle. No one could be sure any of it was from the Southern Cross.
Still, the Southern Cross had not been declared lost and people outside the post office waited for the door to open, waited for good news. The listing for ship arrivals placed on the door hadn’t changed and didn’t once the postmistress unlocked the door. She went back inside the mailroom and people pushed their way in as close to the closed wicket as possible, ears cocked to the mysterious movements and shifting sounds inside. They waited, talking out their fears.
“If the sealers’s gone I hope the bodies don’t wash ashore here,” a nervous-looking man said. “That would be a terrible thing.”
“Unlikely to happen—too far away,” said an old farmer emptying and refilling the bowl of his pipe. He lit it and papped on the stem. It was a warm comforting smell to anyone standing beside him in the damp weather until he muttered, “All’s not well, not handy to it. No news is bad news.”
42
People now weak in sorrow and bearing faint optimism felt compelled to go to a service on Easter Sunday. Moth-holed Sunday suits were pulled from wooden chests and pressed. William wore a black suit over a starched white shirt and tie. The suit looked as if it had been hanging on a nail for some time. The pook was still in the back as if God had grabbed him like a cat grabs her kittens and planked him down in the church.
William’s father had not paid for a pew. William took a place anyway, hoping for tolerance from whoever had paid for it, maybe someone gone under the sod. He needed to be sitting in the same place as other people suffering the same loss of hope, all wondering what God was going to do about it. They were hoping for His mercy and a miracle.
* * * * *
Reverend Petten stood, his arms outstretched, palms open, and intoned: “These two things shall come to you in a moment, in one day; the loss of children and widowhood shall come upon you in full measure.” He carried on. “Isaiah wrote, in the forty-fifth chapter, verse seven, ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things.’ We don’t dismiss nature when we are caught in her destruction. Neither should we dismiss God, the source of all life, when we are caught in what we see as the evil of death. We are born with the promise of life and no guarantee of its length. The old graveyard with its many headstones bears the testament to the certainty of death. Unfortunately, headstones to the many people lost at sea from one calamity or another are invisible to us. We suffer a phantom loss when we can’t view the bodies but—” The minister’s finger pointed upwards. “—the day shall come when God will move His mighty hand over the ocean. The temperamental sea will churn like a cauldron of boiling water and rumble like an earthquake. It shall give up its dead—every man, woman, and child, red and yellow, black and white bodies brought to life and spit out of the great mouth of the sea, a surge of humanity on every beach around the island—on every beach around the world.”
“We’ve had no confirmation that the sealers are lost,” William muttered to Joe as they scuffed their way back home. “No one told us anything. Until they do I’ll wait for Jamie.”
Mary Jane had gone. He couldn’t lose Jamie—and Maggie. Maggie’s name rushed through his head like a whirlwind. Her quick laugh let out like a stream rippling over rocks had stirred the life Mary Jane’s death had frozen. Her face had settled into a contented pose as she sat on the floor and leaned against Jamie. The girl was good to have around. If Jamie were gone she wouldn’t come near. He’d lose her, too.
For days after Jamie was presumed dead the world fell down around Maggie like a smothering cloud. Sometimes she sat staring, lost in hope and expectation that any minute Jamie and the other sealers would break over the crest of the hill and hurry along the path singing their jollies. All along the shore in welcoming homes there’d be dancing and singing boisterous enough to threaten the floorboards.
She went to see William and found him sitting in the dim evening light. She reached in across the table and turned the knob on the Aladdin lamp to brighten the room. She took in William’s heavy look and said, wanting it to be true, “Jamie will come home.”
He placed a hand over hers, just the barest of touch. He quickly withdrew it. A woman’s hand beneath his was not something he’d have to cherish ever again. “Caroline brought a pot of cooked dinner,” he said. “If you’re up to sharing it I’d thank yer.”
She nodded, unable to get words past the lump in her throat. She ladled the food on their plates and bowed her head in Grace. They ate in silence. When they were finished and she had washed the dishes she stood up to leave. “Parson Petten would tell us we should pray,” she said.
William’s look was dark. “That good fellow can tie his advice to the underside of a cow’s tail.”
Caroline, coming in the door, overheard him. “You can’t be saying that. Indeed not. Whatever happened is an act of God.”
“Sure,” he muttered. “The Almighty looked down and saw the ship and her proud happy sealers eager for the dollars they had earned to feed their families and He acted.”
Caroline patted William’s shoulder and he grunted. A splinter was caught in his heart too deep to ever pull out.
43
The news was made official in newspapers on April 14. Joe brought a newspaper home to Caroline. She stared at the black headlines:
The Southern Cross is Lost
And underneath an article stated that the Southern Cross vanished in the vicinity of Freels Rock.
“You have to tell William,” Caroline urged.
“I can’t,” he said trying to control his emotion. He pushed the newspaper under the mattress of the daybed and spoke as if he was dreaming. “She was last sighted near St. Shotts. That’s the place where settlers used to put lanterns on cows’ horns to misguide them and lure ships on the rocks, a trait brought from the Old Country.” He reared up in anger. “By gad I hope they didn’t interfere with the Southern Cross.”
Caroline put her finger to his lips. “Hush yourself. You can’t be makin’ accusations. All the roamin’ beams of lighthouses along the coast couldn’t get through the white death envelopin’ that ship.”
News spread like a black plague. People rushed to the post office, their panicky voices seeking confirmation for what they had heard. William stood among them, his head down.
“Is she found?” a young fellow who had wanted to go on the vessel asked.
“No, me lad,” an old sealer said, swallowing hard.
The young fellow jerked a shoulder up as if to ward off bad tidings and left mumbling, “A night in ashes, this is.”
The wicket of the post office finally grated open and the postmistress lifted a bundle of letters tied with a string, the borders of the white envelopes in black edging. The truth of that terrible moment ran through the people standing near the counter. They let out a gasp and moved back. The restless movement of the crowd and their chatter came to a halt.
“Let anyone through who’s got a sealer on the SS Southern Cross and anyone who had one on the SS Newfoundland,” the postmistress called in a solemn voice. Her hands shook as she slid the string off the bundle and the letters settled on the counter. Her voice cracked as she began calling names. No one moved and the letters were passed hand to hand to a reluctant relative, passed like a raised axe to descend with a swift blow to split their hearts. The weekly mail was seen as a means of connecting in a letter with a relative or friend in Canada, Boston, or elsewhere. These letters would disconnect families from hope.
Peggy Green had two sons on the Southern Cross. When she opened her letter and read news of her sons gone forever she ran out the door of the post office and up over the path stumbling from side to side. She flung herself on the ground crying and pounding the hard earth.
“Hurry! She’ll break her wrists,” someone yelled.
Her brother ran and hauled her up. She fell back down on her knees, her knuckles blood-crusted.
“Adam’s name’s not on the letter with his father’s,” another mother cried. “He has to be alive.” Hope was dashed like a wave against a rock when a voice asked, “Then where would he be all this time?”
“I was dying to get the news of the ship’s whereabouts,” a wife sobbed. “Now it’s come to kill me.”
William’s name was called. He felt the blood drain from his veins and fear clot in his throat. His face drawn and grey, he teetered back on his heels as if a north wind had come up and driven into him with a terrible force. Then he straightened up and reached to take the black-bordered letter passed over the crowd to him.
Finally, after the postmistress, her face solemn, had distributed all the mail, she closed the wicket. It was as if a blind had been pulled over a window in a building where death had occurred. The people standing outside holding black-bordered letters knew that letters carrying the same news were arriving in St. John’s and in communities beyond the Avalon. Church bells began to toll and a black flag was run up the public pole, a chilling sight. No lamplight showed in any window to break the night in ashes.
William did not open his letter. Along the lane curtains were pushed aside, eyes wide behind them watching as William slewed around and staggered home. He sat all night by the fire holding the envelope in his fist as if news not acknowledged would go away. The fire threw its last spark and the embers died. He did not feel the cold air seeping into his bones as he waited for daylight, his eyes open in the darkness. He finally curled around himself on the settle pulling a blanket over his shivering body. He had learned that life was both beautiful and terrible, beautiful when a child is born, terrible when he dies before his father. An image of Jamie as a bright-eyed smiling baby flashed before him. It was quickly replaced by an image of him packed among other sealers below deck in the black pit of night caught in the turbulence of the Southern Cross battled by a raging storm. Jamie and the other sealers would have prayed or let out a rhyme of oaths as they heard the crack of boards and fell against each other facing the smothering load of seal pelts.
Ghost of the Southern Cross Page 20