by Darrell Duke
“C’mon, Mammy, let Lizzie come wit’ us. We’ll mind her.”
The hurt was made stronger when Liz and Mammy entered their kitchen stuffed with tall, silent men ready to take to the woods for the night in search of the boys. Liz’s tears merged with Mammy’s as the pair fell into each other’s embrace alongside the wood stove.
The smell of alcohol was sharp and strong in the heat of the small room, as each man downed several swallows of moonshine to fend off the cold, uncertain hours ahead. Daddy made sure every man had enough shot for his gun to last the better part of the night.
“We should’ve went wit’ Ben an’ Mike, Mammy,” Liz sobbed.
Her hot tears plopped to the floor, mixing with the melting, dripping snow from her cap and mitts hung on the drooping line above the stove. Other drops of water danced and sizzled audibly on the stovetop, melting snow from Liz’s sodden coat. She was too distracted to take it off. Mammy was too preoccupied to notice. A brew of melting snow and relentless tears trickled into the dirt-filled cracks of the uneven floorboards.
“I wants t’ go find ’em, Daddy,” Liz cried.
Daddy didn’t have to speak for Liz to know she was too small to leave Mammy’s side.
With oil lamps, and torches made from sticks and rags soaked in kerosene, men and older boys from the harbour took to the woods. The scene was like an ancient ritual march, without the chanting, without even a word. Prayers were said in silence and all ears listened vigilantly for any sign of Ben and Mike. Two wood sleds with heavy quilts were towed along in case the boys had frostbite or were hurt and unable to walk. Some carried axes, others bucksaws, to clear windfalls from the paths. Each man had a flask of moonshine or rum. A speckled trail of black spit ran alongside the men’s tracks from the strong plugs of Jumbo and Beaver carefully savoured in the corners of their blackened mouths. Others nursed pipes, while a few smoked cigarettes. Tobacco smoke whipped around and over the road behind them, mixing with the coal- and woodsmoke sucked from chimneys by the rising wintry wind.
Having to use precious oil to light the way was an awful expense, and what an arse-trimming the boys would get once they were brought home, Daddy said, breaking the stillness of the journey. Gunshot blasts, along with the boys’ names called out, echoed all through the hills of Fox Harbour and around The Sound. This continued until daylight. The noises stirred only the attention of resting gulls, nervous hare, and crows that never seemed to sleep at all. Other than Daddy’s words, sounds occupying the air consisted only of wood and iron sleigh runners on snow, boots scuffing, mouths spitting, and a growing chorus of huffs and puffs. The trudging through heavy snow began to take its toll.
At different times of the decaying night and budding morning, men were heard coming under Healy’s flakes, in front of where the Sampsons lived. Liz hadn’t stirred from Mammy’s arms in the front kitchen window since the men left last night. The kettle boiled steadily, and Mammy passed around cups of tea to the women who came and went all night. The mark from the little girl’s nose and forehead stayed on the windowpane full of condensation.
Mammy paid little mind to the fretful company and their theories of where the boys might be. The snow had stopped about six hours ago, around ten o’clock. Only a couple of torches remained lit, as the moon’s reflection on the snow and harbour ice was plenty to guide the tired men home. Their collective laboured breath created a thick fog that hovered over their slouched backs. The air turned more bitter with each step taken.
In a mad tear to greet her brothers, Liz slipped on the hooked mat in front of the porch door. She grabbed hold of the bucksaw’s handle where it hung on the wall alongside the woodbox. Dangling by one arm, she reached for the latch of the door and pushed it open. She was like something wild. Would she scold her brothers or would she be happy, saying how she can’t wait to go galleying tomorrow? Daddy must be awfully vexed, as no talking could be heard. They must have each gotten a good clout and there’d be no more galleying for the rest of the winter, Liz fretted. Perhaps she wouldn’t get to go at all. And like Mammy said to the women earlier, it would be more Ben’s fault than Mike’s because Ben was older and he should have better sense.
But Daddy was the only one coming in the lane past Healy’s. The heavy quilts he carried in his arms looked no different than when he had left—no signs of tired or sleeping boys beneath—and she could see no smaller legs scuffing behind as Daddy trudged through the slush. A trail of smoke from his pipe lingered behind him. At the best of times he was quiet. Now he was quieter than ever, not even humming. That couldn’t be good.
“Where are the b’ys, Daddy?” Liz asked.
“Get in the house before ya catches yer death!” he snapped. “What are ya doin’ up at this hour?”
Daddy was rarely any other way than cheerful, and it hurt her to hear him this way.
Liz had slept in Mammy’s arms in the rocking chair since just after midnight. With an emptiness she’d never known, she made her way to her room. The steps of the stairs creaked under her woolly socks. Guided by the light of the tall, white Lent candle in Mammy’s hand, Liz crawled into her bed. Except for down at the foot where Mammy placed a hot beach rock wrapped in brin from the oven, the bedclothes were icy. Mammy flicked the usual douse of holy water in the sign of the Cross over the bed, but Liz still couldn’t relax. She thought only of Ben and Mike. In the middle of Mammy’s prayers, Liz drifted off to sleep.
She dreamt of Ben and Mike and their excitement as they left with the sleigh Daddy had built in secret in the shed last fall. The brothers roared at each other for an extra turn while Liz dodged a hard snowball on the bumpy harbour ice. She was taller, older, somehow. She slipped, clambering over the fresh frost newly formed on the black rocks at the harbour’s edge. It was across the road from Mr. Jack Foley’s. “Wait, b’ys! I’ll go galleyin’ wit’ ye now! Wait! Wait!” Her shouts turned to frantic shrieks. The ice beneath her boots trembled for a second before giving way, and she slipped. Backward and downward she went. Her double-knit red and white mitts allowed no grip on the glittery rocks. She twisted her body, and screamed to her friends on the harbour for help. They didn’t so much as look her way. The boys’ shouting and the laughter and the squawks from her frolicking friends became muffled as she slid beneath the broken ice. The freezing, salty hands of the sea had her. Then she woke.
Afraid and shivering in a cold sweat, Liz was relieved to be in her damp, chilly bed and not in the icy water of the harbour. It was still dark, and she wanted to get up and go down to the kitchen, where it was warm. She could hear Mammy rocking next to the stove, the clinking of her rosary beads, and the crying whispers of her prayers. The storm door opened and closed when Daddy finished his tea. The door never opened once he was in for the night, unless it was really cold and someone took pity on the cat. The poor old cat. How did anyone ever know she was out by the door when she was too cold to bawl? Mammy would look out the window, after troubling herself getting up from her rocking chair, and barely see the cat for frost. The cat would have the look on her face like she knew she had no business in the house but that she’d likely freeze to death if someone didn’t let her in soon. Mammy would move the folded quilt lying across the bottom of the porch door with her feet, which were always cold, and lift the latch on the storm door. “Come in, ya poor devil,” Mammy would say. The cat would head straight for the side of the stove and lay on the floor, panting and purring before closing her eyes for a little snooze. Mammy wouldn’t be comfortable in her chair when the cat would be up bawling, too hot and heading back to the door, yowling to be let out again. “And that’s the last blessed time you’re getting in the house this night, s’posin’ ya freezes to death,” Mammy would say. But she always got up to let her in, and out, and in. Every time.
Mammy probably wouldn’t say much if Liz went downstairs. She might enjoy the company but would warn of the long day tomorrow, which was already he
re. And what if Daddy came home and Liz was up when she was supposed to be in bed? But what if the boys were with him? Mammy would make them tea to warm them, and they’d share their dark Christmas cake because they were so hungry. And they wouldn’t fight, too tired from the ordeal.
Instead, Liz stayed in bed, wishing her window was on the side of the house facing the road. With each crash as an icicle fell from the eaves, she bolted across the little room, stood on a chair, and tried raising the window. But it was frozen shut. Perhaps the noise she heard wasn’t icicles at all. Maybe it was the boys, sneaking around the house making sure everyone was in bed, asleep, before they came in because they heard Daddy talking about the arse-trimming they’d get for wasting lamp oil. She slept no more until later that night.
The days and nights repeated themselves, as visitors, conver-sation, and flour and molasses became scarce. For the first time ever, there was silence in Sampson’s kitchen at Christmastime. Night after night, people, sometimes crowds, sat around surmising, humming, praying, whispering, smoking, and drinking. The rattling of prayer beads and the drone of the rosary could be heard around the harbour through the downstairs windows kept opened when the heat from the stove was too much. Bright dresses and colourful woollen sweaters were replaced by garments of black dyed in preparation of the worst, which most already considered at hand but wouldn’t mention.
The rest of December and most of January in Fox Harbour were filled with worry, anger, desolation, and utter hopelessness, as each day bared nothing of the boys’ whereabouts. Each trip in over the hills in spring to haul out wood on the last bit of snow carried with it expectations of at least a hint at what might have happened. Talk grew. Optimism faded. New schooners, like the Annie Healy, were carved from deep in the woods to bring in what could only be a better century than the last.
When the days got longer, the ice eventually left the harbour. Men in schooners, skiffs, and dories plowed the waters in search of Ben and Mike. The windswept shorelines around the harbour and in The Sound were scanned in the rain and on sunny days, which were scarce.
Desperation grew with each new blade of goose grass visible at low tide in springtime. The arrival of each new dandelion behind Sampson’s house was accompanied by a wild depression poorly disguised in the compulsory nods and smiles. Everything seemed as black as the clothes on their backs. And the dreary, bony fingers of light creeping past the closed, dusty window blinds of every room did little to lift anyone’s spirit.
Where the strength came from to carry on, no one knew. Mammy said that until the day she died. People’s gestures of sympathy became old and meaningless. Nothing mattered. The boys weren’t coming home. God’s will. Sooner or later, it seemed all words had been said, and, for the first time in Fox Harbour, finding something else to talk about was a problem.
Chapter seven
The Kellys
Roaring flames from the wind’s vacuum send crackling flankers against the glass door of the Parlor Stove in John and Ellen Kelly’s front room. The stovepipe rattles. Creosote dust hovers where the shaking pipe meets the chimney. Some flankers fly under the chrome-plated footrest and begin to burn into the sail canvas covering most of the floorboards. The edges of the dory-green canvas curl in places, exposing the unpainted spruce planks beneath. Eager hands and a little birch broom sweep up the sparks and smidgens of ash left behind.
Another heavy gust of wind draws air quickly up the chimney, rolling the damper key of the stovepipe shut. A large puff of smoke is sent through the vent and other seams of the stove where the asbestos rope lining is rotted and worn.
Gran Kelly coughs from the smoke between lines of the rosary. Her voice is soft. Relaxing in her son’s comfy chair is all she sometimes needs to get a good rest.
Uncle Mick Duke, Gran’s brother, stands in the doorway of the front room chawing on frankum and talking about the weather. Murmurs of prayers find their way to his own lips.
“’Tis goin’ t’ be fine for a spell, ’cardin’ t’ the paper,” Uncle Mick says of the weather forecast.
Uncle Mick is one of the best readers in Fox Harbour, and he has no trouble filling a kitchen with listeners when he’s lucky enough to get hold of a newspaper.
Like most families in Fox Harbour, John and Ellen Kelly have a house full of young ones, and the barrel from relatives in the States often provides enough used clothes to keep the children out of their bare skin and warm most of the year.
When the wind gusts pass, the clothes on Ellen’s line hang toward the ground again.
A Coaker engine resumes its distinctive knocking, echoing through the sparsely wooded hills of the harbour. Two men in an open boat let go their ropes and slowly head out around The Point and down the harbour.
Another boat’s motor replaces the racket of the one just left, sputtering plumes of black smoke before shutting down. A tall man stands, reaching his long arms upward, to tie the boat on as she brings up sideways to a small wharf. A stout woman sitting firmly in the front of the boat holds a patched quilt over her shoulders to ward off wind that’s never warm to old bones on the water. Even in August month. Her back to the shore withholds her identity from curious wives, daughters, and sons in gardens and house windows above the dirt road.
John coughs and barks incessantly as he opens the front door of the stove. Although the common cold seems to have the best of him, he’s determined to go out on the Annie Healy today and, in a day or so, be fit to fish.
Ellen reiterates her serious concerns over his not going anywhere in his state. She doesn’t think too much of Captain Mullins and the crowd, either, barging over here today like a bunch of savages, tormenting John to go.
“The next thing ya know, you’ll be in The San wit’ the TB,” she says, gathering things he’ll need for the trip.
Gran Kelly complains of her legs.
“I’m nairly killed from standin’ an’ beatin’ out mats all marnin’.”
She continues rocking and knitting in the low chair. She hums a lovely tune between complaints of the heat, but says she’d rather be too hot than cold any day. She nods off now and then from the warmth. Both her feet jump when one of her needles slips from her hand and falls to the floor.
Two of the Kelly children, Marg and Liz, are sitting up on their knees in front of the stove. They’re entranced by the wonderful orange glow coming from the nest of driftwood they collected from the beach near King’s Meadow earlier this morning. They stuff alder branches into the fire for devilment and wait to hear what Gran will say.
“Get outta dat, the two o’ ye, ’fraid ye burn the house down,” Gran says with a scowl.
The stove’s front door is left open, and the smell of driftwood burning is heavenly.
The girls, having spent most of the morning since daylight in the garden with their mother and father digging potatoes, also enjoy the fire’s warmth.
The base of the fire falls in and more flankers fly onto the floor. The moment John bends down to close the door of the stove, the girls take off like a shot out into the kitchen.
John sits on the chair painted dory yellow next to the stove. He says a prayer for his little brother, James, whose picture hangs on the wall near where Gran sits. Uncle Mick, godfather to James, makes the sign of the Cross over his breast.
“’Tis too bad,” the old man says.
Gran Kelly lets out a cry and John pulls his chair closer to his mother, holding her hand.
“He t’ought he was doin’ the right t’ing,” Uncle Mick says.
“He shoulda listened to his poor auld mother,” Gran cries.
“Ah, who could blame ’im,” John says. “He had sense enough to get away from the fish, an’ had a few dollars in his pocket. Got to see a bit of the world, unlike any of us. Who could blame ’im?”
When John’s brother, James, was sixteen, he took the ferry from Jerseys
ide to Halifax, lied about his age, and enlisted in the army. He’d made the mistake of telling a couple of people in Fox Harbour about his exciting plans. When Gran found out, she had the telegraph operator at Argentia wire the authorities in Halifax, who immediately dismissed James and sent him home. The day he turned seventeen, he took off for Halifax again and signed up to go to war. Sometime later, Gran received a telegram saying her son had been killed in action, his body unaccounted for, somewhere in France.
The fire in the kitchen’s Waterloo is down to a dull roar. The remaining heat from the cast iron has made away with the damp morning air.
John goes in and out through the porch door, gathering necessities for his sea box: molasses and buttered bread, his tin quart kettle with the copper bottom, his share of splits for the Annie’s small stove, pork fat, potatoes, a small piece of pickled beef, a second pair of knitted drawers, and an extra suit of clothes besides his Sunday best for Mass in St. Bride’s.
Now that the wind has passed, Ellen slides the heavy frying pan full of cabbage hash back over a damper.
“Be good, the two of ye,” she says in a loud whisper. “’Fraid ye wake Mr. Watt.”
Ignoring their mother, the girls give old Watt a few pokes in the ribs and run around down the hallway, into the front room to hide. Their worn, wooden clogs that came in the barrel do nothing to hush their getaway.
“Take them off yeer feet, and save ’em for the fall,” Ellen said.
Sneaking back into the kitchen, they take Marg’s red silk scarf and dangle it in front of Watt’s flaring nostrils.
Ellen goes on sweeping the floor, doing her best to get in and around Watt’s big boots hove over the side of the daybed. Lying on his back, he snores at the top of his lungs.
The size of him, Ellen thinks, noticing how he seems to go halfway up the wall on account of the low ceiling.
“’Tis a wonder he don’t go through the bed, floor an’ all,” she says under her breath.