Sometimes his hand went to his chest as if he felt a twinge. His face would turn pale and she’d ask him the cause. He’d shake his head as if to throw off her concern and go on out the door. She never thought for a minute his life was in danger.
Cyril, their oldest son, was eleven when his father went in the woods one day to cut wood for the kitchen stove. She nodded goodbye as she lifted a skein of wool away from her stomach hardening with her ninth child.
She glanced up at the calender on the wall—the last of January and not a speck of snow on the ground. She watched Ben harness the horse and hitch the cart, watched him take the reins and look back at the window as if he was hoping to see her there. She was standing back beside the stove seeing him, he not seeing her. Later she wished she had stood on the doorstep waving goodbye. The children were about tugging on her apron and her mind was soon on them.
The horse and cart came out alone. Searchers found Ben dead in the woods at forty-one.
The sight of Ben frozen reminded her of photographs she’d seen of dead sealers from the Newfoundland. Grief came, swift as an axe, splitting her heart. A heart not even mended was now broken a second time.
A neighbour laid his hand on her shoulder. “It’s such a shockin’ thing. He had only one junk of wood left to lift to the cart when some malady took him and he fell. We have to cut off his boots. They’re frozen on his feet.”
“Don’t hurt him.” Her voice lurched up from a tight throat, her tongue stiff and clumsy.
She hadn’t really known Ben. She had not travelled his naked body with her eyes and her hands. Now she wouldn’t let the neighbours take charge of his body for the washing and laying out. She washed him all over and then her lips wandered down over his body, past his private place, seeing it for the first time. It was so much smaller than she had thought from the feel of it. She went on down to the balls of his ankles. She drew back, her lips cold—tasting death. No matter what she did she could not bring his life back. She could not reach the distance it had travelled away from her. She hurried to find him clean clothes. She dragged them over his stiff body, her eyes heavy with shock.
At least she had Ben’s body. Jamie had disappeared into the sea. Where? Only God knew and He didn’t see fit to tell. Now her husband lay dead in her sight and would lie underground out of her sight and she wasn’t sure which was worse. To look on the face of death, feel the helplessness. . . . Her eyelashes fluttered against her white face.
William once told her, “It’s best to leave the ocean alone. The land is safer and more gentle. It’ll wear your muscles but it won’t kill you.”
Ben had worked the land and his family had lived off it. He had spent just a little time on the sea. Still, death was near all along hovering as much over the land as the sea.
Maggie sat by the stove, a soft light shifting with the crackling flames in the grate. After the fire died she dragged herself up the stairs, past the sleeping children, and lay in bed listening to winter winds at her bedroom window, their shrill voices like mean-spirited creatures taunting her.
At the wake Bessie Rideout whispered, “You poor woman. You haven’t had much luck with men. It should ease your heart to know Ben’ll be cradled in the earth, not like Jamie tossed about by the sea.”
Maggie pulled away keeping her face passive.
“You had him for a good while,” Jessie Young said.
“Long enough to give me a lifetime of work with eight children and another comin’,” she retorted.
Reverend Petten’s words came like an empty platitude. “Sorrow is kith and kin to all of us. We’ll not make it to the end without encountering it.” He looked at Maggie under a black veil. “Swallow death’s bitterness, my dear woman. Let God sustain you and your children bring sweetness to your future.”
Her look was distant. “Jamie was my future, then Ben . . . my children . . . a burden.” Her voice drifted into a heavy silence.
The minister looked away. Then he laid his hand on her shoulder. “Our future belongs to God.”
Her words strained against his. “Then why does He allow us to hope and plan for a future knowin’ what He does?”
The minister shook his head. “If I could answer that I’d be as wise as God. We can’t say He’s cruel and dismiss Him because He’s not according to our perception. Nature exists and it is both cruel and kind, a reflection of God’s mercy and His wrath. Look around you.” He spread his hands. “See God’s blessings.”
Maggie’s children lined a seat. Precious children. She gave them a faint smile and they smiled back. Though Ben’s heart could not carry him through a long life he’d journey on in their children.
She stood at the grave trying to keep her balance as the children pressed against her gripping her hands. She listened to the thumps of heavy clay plonking down on the coffin and felt absolutely nothing. She was like a brook frozen in the dead of winter, everything beneath moving along.
Job’s comforters were around her. “It’s not natural, you not showin’ emotion. Sure, Maisie down the road put her fist through a window when her man was killed in the mines.”
After the burial she sat by her window and listened to the rhythm of logs thumping the ground as neighbours unloaded the wood Ben had cut. She imagined it was Ben packing wood against the shed. He would finish his work and come into the house smelling of new wood, its aromatic clean scent mingling with sweat.
One neighbour told her that woodsmen had reported hearing the sounds of chopping at the place Ben died. A token!
The neighbours went on their way and there was silence. It seemed that the house had been sawed open wide to let in northern winds. With Jamie she had lived in a promise; with Ben she had lived the reality. Just as she had mourned what she had missed with Jamie she now mourned what she had lost with Ben. He had given her something Jamie hadn’t: children to be both a blessing and a burden.
She stayed by the window, the finality of his death cutting through her, hope and expectation gone.
She did not write to Elizabeth with her news. She had no will to seek comfort in a visit. At first Elizabeth had been a reminder of someone she had loved. Now she was a reminder of someone she had lost. The distance between them had widened.
Josiah was born three months after his father died. Labour was long and difficult and Maggie’s cries bitter with each push. She gave birth to a child she wasn’t sure she could keep. She wrapped her arms around the baby. He cried as if discomforted by her strong grip. The hardness in her softened and she slackened her hold. I promise to be gentle.
It was the second year after Ben died and in the dead of winter that Maggie made a dreaded decision. There was only a little flour, some potatoes, and the gun with only one shot. She got used to feeling hungry. The children were thin. Men in the community helped out as much as they could, but there were many families to keep and little to do it with. Young and old dropped from influenza. It and lack of nourishment made a deadly combination. To have a little weight on the bones was to be in wealth. A rat had gotten into her potatoes stowed in the cellar. She spied it by the outhouse one day. It skittered inside and scurried down the toilet. She ran after it, her teeth clenched. “If one of us is goin’ to eat it’ll be me; you won’t be comin’ after any more of my food.” She aimed the gun down the hole and fired. She lifted the gun in triumph.
She’d just gotten back to the house when she saw Neil Butler from the next lane pass her window. She heard the farmer’s step outside her door. He called, “Maggie, you in there? What’s the young fellar doin’? Is he old enough to prong dry manure?”
Maggie hurried out. “Cyril is big enough.”
The boy spent three days working for a dollar a day. Then he spent his time searching along the roads for pieces of coal lost from a full wagon and bringing it home to keep the fire going.
Maggie sold eggs, sewe
d clothes for other people, and took in their wash but it wasn’t enough. The children needed more than they were getting.
An old saying plodded through Maggie’s mind: March will search. April will try. May will tell who’ll live or die.
Harris took with a cold on his chest that she nursed with ointment Clara Jones, a neighbour, had given her. “I can tell he’s very sick,” Clara said.
For one moment she felt a spark of optimism. If he died there’d be one less child to worry about going hungry. Then she realized what she’d thought. Forgive me, God! Forgive me. I know what I need to do to save the children.
Late spring she pushed away her misgivings and did something she never thought she’d be desperate enough to do.
“Keep the woodbox full and the stove afire,” she told Cyril. “Wilhelmina, you do the drudgery around the house. I’ll be back later today or early on the morrow.”
She shook her head when Wilhelmina demanded to know where she was going. The girl could tell by her mother’s stony look that it was best not to press for answers.
She scrubbed the children and gave them clean underclothes. She dressed Laura in a plain blue dress and Gladys in a similar one she’d sewn from one of Wilhelmina’s best dresses. Harris wore a shirt and suit of clothes Maggie had made over from Ben’s shirt and suit. All the time she was dressing the children they kept asking, “Mamma, where’s we off to?”
“A jaunt to St. John’s,” she said in as light a tone as she could muster.
They knew by the tightness of her face that there was something more. She comforted herself. They’ll be fed and when I’m able I’ll get them back. Her own voice sounded through her head: It’s not like leavin’ jewellery at a pawn shop. I’ll get them back but what will they be like? What will have happened to them?
She pulled a grey hat down on her head and pushed a long, pearl-headed pin through it under her hair. She tied a light scarf around her throat and pulled on summer gloves. Right now I want them alive. I can’t ask for more.
It was a dusty day with the sun bright and warm. Maggie drew the children outside, thinking, When you go to bed, hunger gnawin’ at your belly like a rat and you wake up with worry gnawin’ at you because you have little food to feed your children, it’s not a good day no matter how sunny it is.
Neil Butler brought his draft horse hitched to a buggy. The children climbed up and settled on the back seat. Maggie sat on the bench beside the driver. Neil jerked the reins and the horse started up the bumpy road with a gallop. The children turned in unison to look back at their home. They didn’t cry but they dropped their heads and leaned into each other.
Neil hardly spoke on the way. He passed cows and sheep and wild horses here and there along the road. The buggy rattled over potholes, its wheels grating over rocks. The driver pulled up in front of the Church of England orphanage and slackened the horse’s reins. The horse came to a halt and Neil jumped down. He tied the reins to a hitching post. Each of the children clutched their bag of meagre possessions in silence as they looked around the strange place full of people going along the many roads branching from each other. A noisy place.
Maggie pushed a lump past her throat and looked into the children’s upturned faces. Their glum look tore her heart. “You’ll be staying in an orphanage until I find the means to bring you home.”
Gladys cried, “Pappa went to heaven and left us. Now you’re gonna leave us in St. John’s.”
Laura let her bag fall. She fingered the shrivelled skin of an apple her mother had put in her pocket, her lips quivering, her eyes watering.
“Be brave!” Maggie said pulling the children to her. The youngest child dragged on her hand as they got closer to the orphanage. They started up the wide wooden steps to the double doors of a large grey building. Maggie lifted the brass knocker and let it down hard. The children began to sob. Maggie took her handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped their faces keeping her own face as steady as she could. There came the sound of heavy steps and a small side door that Maggie hadn’t noticed was pulled open. Its hinges let out a squawk.
She looked up at the tall administrator standing in front of her. miss babcock was written on a nameplate pinned to her collar.
“I hate to take charity,” Maggie said.
“It won’t be charity,” the woman replied, her long, thin face tightening as she faced the children. “At Job Memorial House your daughters will work for their keep—and hard. The boy will be transferred to Shannon Munn Memorial Home.”
Maggie and the children followed Miss Babcock inside.
The woman walked toward a large desk. She sat down and pushed an admittance paper across the top for Maggie to fill out.
Maggie unfastened her hands from the children’s and hurried toward the desk. She stooped and filled out the paper signing away her children. She passed the sheet back to the woman and then she took a piece of paper from her pocket. She held it out to Miss Babcock. “I’ve included a note on the children’s habits, dislikes, and other things.”
The woman took it with a scant look and without commenting looked past Maggie to Harris.
She nodded at him and he moved in front of his mother.
“And what is your appellation?” she asked in a lofty tone that made him cringe.
“Uh? I don’t know,” he answered. He turned to his mother.
Maggie looked past him to the woman behind the desk. “If you wants his name it’s Harris.”
The woman regarded her for a moment. Then she turned back to the boy. “You’ve lost your appendage, have you, boy?”
“What is that?” he asked, his eyes widening.
“That noisy part of you that is attached to a bigger part of you, your tongue, it is.”
Laura spoke up. “His tongue is sometimes more important than any other part of him. He can be a chatterbox.”
“Well, he’ll soon lose some of his tongue. There’s a home for wayward boys down the street.”
Harris stared at her as if he was wondering what it would be like to lose part of his tongue. He turned back and grabbed Maggie around the waist. When she bent down and whispered that the woman meant he wouldn’t be allowed to talk as much his face relaxed.
After scanning the admittance paper the woman pushed back her chair and stood up, her dull, grey eyes narrowing at the sight of the boy holding on to his mother. Maggie gently lifted his hands away.
“You’ll stay here for a little while,” she told the children. “Be good.”
They nodded solemnly.
Miss Babcock dismissed Maggie with a nod, her voice brisk. “That will be all.” She turned to the children. “Come along so we can see to your ablution.”
The children looked up with a puzzled expression, then back to their mother, but her back was already turned and her hand was on the door handle. They didn’t see her turn back, tears falling silently.
She left the orphanage and made her way down the steps. The horse, waiting impatiently, let out a snort, its rider barely looking at her as she climbed up to the ragged seat of the buggy. She had wanted to chide the administrator for using words the children couldn’t understand but she feared the children would suffer the backlash.
I gave them up to save their lives, she told herself on the way back home. I was sent away from home and I lived. Now my children will live the best they can until I get them back.
* * * * *
Sometimes when the ache for her children overwhelmed Maggie she would bring them to her mind in things they said. She’d smile remembering her children’s questions. Gladys was the most inquisitive. “Mamma, why do sunbeams make rainbows?” And when the moon was a quarter: “Mamma, where did the rest of the moon go?”
“You’ve got more questions than I can find answers for,” she’d say some nights as she tucked her in.
She wondered if there would be anyone to take Gladys’s questions. Would anyone show the children the affection they needed growing up without their mother? Her heart lurched. She’d given her children to a woman whose heart was cold as a winter moon.
“You need a husband,” a man called as he made his way up the path, thumbs hooked in his trousers. “I’m Nicholas Conway from Manuels and I heard you’re lookin’.”
Maggie stared at his ruddy, round face, a spray of freckles down his nose.
The man went on. “Say yes to bein’ me wife and I’ll give you and your children a good home. I’ve likely got a longer life than you seeing I’m a good bit younger.”
She ached to answer yes. She’d get her children back. Her hands went to her sides.
“No!” she said, her voice like a nail puncturing any hope he was holding.
“No!” He looked at her as if he thought a woman in need would jump at his offer. He could tell that her answer was final by the stubborn set of her mouth. He turned away before she did and lumbered down the path like a man too stunned to know where he was going.
She couldn’t tell him why she wouldn’t marry a man who had the means to keep her and her children comfortable. But when the women at the Quilting Bee begin discussing the young fisherman, a fatherless widower who had come calling with what they believed was a sensible offer, she felt provoked. She pushed her chair back, grinding it against the pine floor, and stood up saying, “What if I married the man, had another child, and died in childbirth? My young children would be without their mother. What if I married the man and he died while I was having his child? I’d be left with another child. My life is as it is. I’ll not court trouble.”
The women shook their heads. Jessie Young sliered at her and said, in a singsong voice, “Don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. Don’t kiss a fellar till a fellar kisses you.”
Maggie didn’t answer.
After she married Ben she hadn’t felt settled. It was as if there was a shadow on the sun, a black cloud in a blue sky and some amorphous presence readying itself to creep up behind her. And it had! It sneaked in when there was no one around to save Ben. A man could die on land not far from his home as swiftly as he could die at sea away from his family.
Ghost of the Southern Cross Page 32