Thursday's Storm

by Darrell Duke

  On the way home to Fox Harbour, a gale blew, nearly capsizing the boat on occasion and almost swamping her other times. But the crew managed to get her in, barely scraping past the harbour’s shoals and sunkers. There she was anchored.

  “Leave ’er be till the marnin’,” Jim told the crew, his big arms and long frame reaching down to help swing each man to safety from the dory being battered alongside the shrinking wharf.

  From their big catch, the sharemen of the Queen of Providence, among them Jack Foley and Charlie Sampson, were delighted with the fact they’d be able to spare a bit of sugar, molasses, and salt pork for worse-off families not so fortunate fishing from other schooners. But all hands of the crew, and the community, too, were set in deep despair the next morning. When they looked out their windows, they saw nothing but two masts of the 102-foot-long schooner reaching skyward from beneath the cold, murky water.

  Among the Healys’ losses that year was the death of Mike’s wife, Maggie, at Christmastime. She—like Jim’s wife, Kate—had been smothering with consumption for almost a year. With a busy fall fishery and the sunken schooner to fret over, Mike never had time to have a grave ready in the cemetery. Maggie’s coffin was shoved and shimmied into the frozen ground next to their infant son, Richard, dead just a year himself from the same dreaded disease.

  In the spring of 1913, when young ones’ shoes were put away and spared for the coldest months ahead, the Queen of Providence was refloated and cleaned up. Many quintals of ruined salt fish were removed and discarded.

  Impressed with their efforts to tidy the boat, the Healys renamed the risen schooner Spotless Queen and sold her back to Job Brothers. The Annie Healy was then the merchant family’s only schooner, and their best hope of keeping the store and, in turn, part of the community afloat. The Hope had been lost in a gale years before, the crew having made it safely to shore in a dory. After running her course for almost forty years, the Mary H. was put ashore and left to rot on the rocks in The Sound.

  Still holding on to the 600 postcards she’d received from Edward in the five years since they met again on that cheerful day at T & M Winter, the feelings of loneliness Anne once carried were long gone. Edward had become one of the most popular outside salesmen in the city. He was also a lieutenant of the Catholic Cadet Corps, which was quite appealing to the father of the young woman he loved. In late summer, 1909, Anne and Edward were married.

  Now, twenty-two years later, Anne says it is remarkable how sitting so close to the earth where she first entered this world, in the town she couldn’t wait to leave, can allow such a clear window to her past. It’s the most she’s reflected on her life since Richard died several years ago. And although he’s buried in the city, she has no trouble sensing her daddy’s presence around here today. Here he pounded the dirt beneath her feet and sailed and rowed the water in front of her eyes for so many years to stay alive, to keep his family in want of nothing. She’s grateful, maybe even a little guilty, that she never thought it necessary to tell him while he was alive.

  “Thanks for the lovely stories, Annie, girl,” Mart says, jumping up. “I have t’ visit Bridge King, too. She’ll have her baby soon, ya know.”

  “Oh, it was nice to see you again. Say hello to Bridget and tell her good luck,” Anne says.

  They smile at one another and dust their skirts before heading back down the path and onto the lane to meet the road.

  Chapter four

  The Mullins Family

  Bridget Mullins is sitting to the kitchen table. Her eyes are half shut when Liz Bruce walks in.

  “Hello, Mrs. Bruce,” says Mary Ann, the Mullinses’ youngest child, on her way out the door with a straw broom to beat the dust out of a couple of mats she’s just flung atop the fence.

  “Workin’ hard, child, that’s good. You’ll make a fine wife someday,” Liz says, patting the little girl on the head.

  On the stove a round, cast iron pot shivers, its cover clanking like mad from a fit of dancing hot water inside. The pot looks primal, with strips of plated metal covering holes around the rounded edges of its bottom.

  In the frying pan on the damper closest to the old pot, scruncheons hop and tumble and roll in their scalding, juicy fat. Spattering grease flies in every direction. Tiny plumes of smoke from the grease shoot off quickly from the top of the stove, lending a burnt tang to the air already thick with the smell of cooked salt fish and heated sap from the spruce junks behind the stove.

  A dark fog clings to the flue of the unlit lantern. The picture of the Blessed Virgin tacked into the floral-papered wallboard folds in the damp air. Like the sound of sheets of cold spring rain hitting a tin roof, the sizzle of the frying fat allows the tired women a bit of comfort while the invisible gas of the frying onions stings the eyes out of their heads. Bridget gets up and goes to the stove to put aside two plain fish cakes she’s made for herself. Then she carries the heavy pot out by the door to drain the water off the potatoes.

  “’Tis ’nough t’ kill ya here wit’ the heat, girl,” Liz says with a big heave of her chest, following Bridget outdoors.

  They both agree the breath of fresh air is nice.

  “Don’t be talkin’, Liz, girl,” Bridget says, wiping the sweat from her brow and neck.

  Making their way back into the house, their eyes dry quickly but are soon stinging again with the pungent smell of onions.

  The steam is gone from the lantern’s glass, and Liz notices the Blessed Virgin and Her sorrowful eyes peeking up at the ceiling from behind the curled edges of paper. Liz has never seen Her any other way in this house. Only first thing in the morning, before the cooking begins, and late at night, can Her full face be seen, Her halo and hands covering Her chest.

  “Ya wants a frame for that picture, Bridget, girl. Give Her a good look at the place,” Liz says, laughing. “Hard for Her t’ keep an eye out for ya if She can’t see ya.”

  “’Tis there a long time now like that, Liz, me dear, and we haven’t had any bad luck since we come to Fox Harbour.”

  “I s’pose, girl,” Liz says.

  “Annie H’aly will be here by ’n by,” Bridget says eagerly.

  “Yes, Mrs. Mart said she was with her a while ago, and I saw a couple of Annie’s young ones out playin’ with yours o’er be the flakes. The b’ys were chasin’ the girls with the sculpins,” Liz laughs.

  “The brazen divils,” Bridget says, tut-tutting loudly. “Do ya want a fish cake?”

  “No. Not hungry. Thanks. Just over here now t’ get outta me own kitchen for a spell. Meself and Johnny have berries galore t’ clean.”

  “I know,” Bridget says, setting the heavy black pot back on the Waterloo. She eyes several gallons of her own berries on the floor in buckets of water waiting to be cleaned.

  “We lugged this auld stove from Crawley’s Island,” Bridget says, lifting a damper and sliding the kettle over the open fire for a quick boil—Bridget’s invitation to stay a little longer.

  Liz knows a story is to follow, and she pretty much knows which one. She looks down to the daybed and thinks about sitting again.

  Bridget pours tea into two orange and black Alfred Meakin cups sitting on matching saucers, ignoring Liz’s intentions to get home.

  “The berries aren’t goin’ anyplace, Liz. Here!” Bridget beckons Liz to join her at the table.

  “Lovely cups, Bridget.”

  “I got them off the packman last month,” Bridget says, adding a drop of molasses to her tea and stirring vigorously. “He said that’s real gold ’round the edges.”

  “Imagine,” Liz says, resisting the urge to make a crack about the unlikelihood of the packman selling things made of gold, let alone gold at a bargain.

  The clinking of Bridget’s spoon gets on Liz’s nerves, and she can’t help making a crack.

  “Ya might want t’ use t
hat lovely cup again, Bridget, girl,” Liz laughs.

  “Yes, girl, John says the same t’ing to me. ’Twas almost ten year ago . . .” Bridget begins her story.

  The Waterloo stove weighs a ton, and when it slipped from the grip of men lowering it with ropes from the wharf into Peter Murphy’s skiff, Bridget’s heart nearly broke. The stove landed front legs first, striking the gunwale. Into the water it went, shoving the boat off the length of her ropes. One of the stove’s front legs was the only part that managed to stay out of the water.

  A while later, four men had the stove back on shore, out to the end of the wharf, and in the boat this time. All of it. John was sure the salt water had ruined it, saying the cast iron would one day split.

  “Woulda been a good time t’ have Mick Fowlou ’round,” Liz says.

  “Yes, I often heared Poppy Mullins talk ’bout Mick Fowlou,” Bridget says.

  Mick Fowlou was a legendary name in Fox Harbour; he was a man known for incredible strength. Even stronger than the Healy brothers, who people can see on any given evening dragging a stubborn bull by the horns into their barn.

  Around 1865, before the days of tracks and trains in Newfoundland, Mick Fowlou walked from Fox Harbour to St. John’s, all 120 miles of it, to get whatever he needed to keep his family comfortable during the winter months ahead. Mick bought a new stove and had it shipped home, along with himself, on a local boat. When he got home he realized he had the wrong oven for the stove. The next morning, after learning another man from Fox Harbour was in St. John’s in his boat and heading home in the evening, Mick threw the stove’s oven on his back and walked back to the city, exchanged the oven, and sailed home with the new one.

  “Yes, girl, I’ll never forget the day we left Long Harbour for here,” Bridget bursts back in, eager to get on with her story.

  Bridget was pregnant, feeling miserable, and had to sit so long in an open boat in the middle of a not-so-warm summer.

  “I shivered the whole way,” she says, shaking her head and holding her arms as if it wasn’t a hundred degrees in the kitchen.

  The pain of leaving little Jimmy behind in his cold grave was something she tried hard to quell, but she’d never get over it as long as she lived.

  The northeast wind was more than enough to fill the sail, helping drag the four-oared skiff over the sea, past the many points of land, southward toward Fox Harbour. The chill of the wind slithered around their necks and down their collars, into their bones, which felt as one with the hard boat beneath them. The steady rhythm of the dancing of their legs to keep warm made the child in Bridget’s womb kick like a savage. Along with each rise and fall of the sea, the keel sliced through the lops while the boat bobbed back and forth and side to side, sometimes with sudden jerks. The whitecaps were plentiful and water on the wind splashed their faces now and then.

  “Me nerves were nearly gone, Liz, girl,” Bridget huffs. “I was right ready t’ haul the head clean offa John.”

  Bridget rubbed her swollen belly beneath the heavy patched quilt John put over her before they left. Most of the time was spent gathering the blanket always slipping off her shoulders. Gripping the top of a grapnel in front of her, it felt like the cold of the rusty iron would carve a hole in the palm of her hand. But it was better than having to bend over farther to rest anyplace else.

  “I’ll never forgit the pain shootin’ up me tired arm,” Bridget says.

  She makes a face to try and match the soreness she remembers.

  “And the youngsters, then, wit’ their teeth chatterin’ from beneat’ the tarp.”

  Now and then the young ones would come out and take a few rocks from their pockets. They’d fling them at hovering gulls with slingshots their father made.

  The fluttering sail and the wind in his ears didn’t bother John. He was used to it. His big hand was locked hard around the skull oar as the cold and the salt spray streamed across his plump face.

  He was content, somehow. Glad to be leaving it all behind. There was peace in knowing his son wasn’t suffering anymore. The last four months of Jimmy Mullins’s life were pure torture for John and Bridget. And all the family. The child was five and had meningitis. He was confused more and more each day and sore as a boil all over. Everyone stared at him helplessly until the headaches finally killed him.

  Liz grabs the kettle, shakes her head, and shows her most pitiful face. Knowing there’s a ways to go before Bridget finishes, she tops up their cups once more with tea.

  “’Twasn’t long before that that John taught poor Jimmy how t’ skip rocks on the water from the beach below our house,” Bridget goes on.

  When the time came to leave Crawley’s Island, only a few months had passed since little Jimmy finally gave up. They’d laid him out in his Sunday best in the front room. It wasn’t the first body they’d said the rosary around in that old house. But it would be their last. Enough was enough, and they would go back every couple of years to make sure his headstone was okay, cut the grass, and say a few prayers for little Jimmy’s soul. They were sick of fighting and blaming and, after all, it was no one’s fault.

  “’Twas God’s will, we agreed, and ’tis all it ever would be,” Bridget says firmly, banging her fist on the table. “By the time we left Crawley’s Island, John was after fishin’ and sailin’ for old Richard Healy for years. My God, sure, we were married eighteen years by then. John was still fishin’ from Red Island a couple of years by the time we left Crawley’s Island. After the weddin’, he wanted t’ move back to Fox Harbour. But I wanted to stay there, ya know, close to Long Harbour, where Mom and Dad an’ all me crowd were, see?”

  “Like ya would,” Liz agrees.

  “But after so long, the thought of comin’ here was invitin’. Closer to John’s heart, ya know. Home. And I was happy so long as he was happy, too.”

  In the open boat John savoured the smoke from his pipe. He let it out slowly through his nose, as his thoughts of little Jimmy muffled in the ripples of the boat’s wake. John’s stare was no longer vacant but filled with pleasant thoughts of earlier evenings at home with his family, especially with the new baby, Mary Ann, due that September. He longed for the change. The newness. The past three years of winter with longer days in the woods cutting the right sticks for the house would be worth it all one day.

  “He must’ve spent half of that last year here at the house, till ’twas done.”

  Crawley’s Island was too open to the wind and sea, and no place to stay any longer. The bit of shelter sometimes offered here, below the Crow Hill, is considered a blessing compared to the place they’d left behind.

  “He thought he’d have this place ready in time for poor Jimmy to get his strengt’ back, and the change might bring him around. But the winter was milder than usual. The fish come early. And the house stood unfinished.

  “We’ve been contented here, Liz, girl. Wit’ good people like yerself an’ Pad, it’d be somet’ing awful if we weren’t happy.” Bridget heaves a big sigh and smiles alongside Liz making her way out the door.

  “See ya later on. Thanks for the mug-up.”

  “Don’t mention it, Liz, girl.”

  On her way back from checking the clothes on her line, Bridget stops to watch a group of men going around the turn. It’s up the other side, by Mon McCue’s. John and some of the Annie Healy’s crew are on their way back from John Kelly’s, most likely. Mon is right sick, everyone knows, and he won’t be going to sea tomorrow.

  Bridget is having a little rock in her chair, nodding in and out of sleep, when Michael drops an armload of spruce junks next to the stove and goes back to close the porch door.

  “God, b’y! Ya give me a fright,” Bridget says.

  The aroma of fresh splits meanders through the strong smell of salt fish buried beneath a mound of potatoes, oleo, and a couple of gulps of milk from the goat. />
  “These rabbits will do yer father,” Bridget says, mashing the pot of potatoes.

  “He’s all right so long’s he have his tea an’ bread an’ molasses, Mudder,” Michael laughs.

  “Yes, but he needs more than that, out there for a week,” she says.

  Michael goes back to the porch and splashes water from the barrel over his face and head.

  “We’re goin’ swimmin’ into The Falls by ’n by,” he says. “. . . when we’re done on the flake.”

  “Who’s we?” Liz teases.

  “Meself, and Katie . . . and a few of the b’ys.”

  “A few of the b’ys, me arse,” Bridget mocks.

  “Now, Mudder. I’m sure you an’ Fadder did stuff like that when ye were courtin’.”

  “Yes, now, like we had time for the like of that.” She laughs, stirring the fatback in the pan.

  Bridget often peeked out the window to watch Michael’s girlfriend, Katie, standing shyly at the bottom of the lane, waiting for Michael to finish his chores. Bridget never missed the lightness in her boy’s step, jumping over fences and anything else he could leap over, after walking his girl home.

  “Oh, my. Where do the time go at all?” Bridget wonders aloud. “Poppy will be dead three months next week. Nan seems to be gettin’ her strengt’ back, though. He ran on her hand and foot, didn’t he, Michael? He had her ways down pat, too, I tell ya. When she was able t’ get around, before her legs give out, she was awful picky, ya know. Sure, did ya know she used to spread the capelin in her garden head to tail, hundreds of them, in perfect rows? Precise! ’Twas enough to drive ya. The space between every one of them capelin the same. And none out of place. ’Magine, now! Yer grandfather loved her somet’ing shockin’. ’Tis a sin to say, I s’pose, but she’s able to do a bit for herself now that he’s gone. Love can make you as weak as it can make you strong, Michael. Sometimes people depends on each other too much, never thinking that there’ll come the day when one or the other will be gone. Auld age can be awful sad, so . . .”