Thursday's Storm
Page 13
When Gus drew his last breath on Easter Sunday, 1924, Laura, fourteen at the time, held young Bernadette’s hand while Lize said, yet again, she’d think twice about lugging firewood to the church. What was the point, she yelled, of spending half her time on her knees praying to a god who does nothing but steal her young ones before they get a chance to try to live a decent life? Why should everyone stop what they’re doing when the Angelus rings at noon every day and then again at six o’clock when there’s so much to be done, and it’s not like there are angels sweeping down from above to help make the fish?
“We’re reared t’ larn the catechism an’ have the answers to every blessed question the Church asks, an’ who has answers for me when me youngsters are tortured with the TB, better off dead than alive, tormented just to get the next breath . . . an’ then they dies? Who has answers for me, Jack? ’Tis certainly not you!” she would bawl at him. “An’ ’tis certainly not the church, nor the Lord. We here livin’ on tea an’ raisin buns, with a job to keep ourselves warm an’ alive, an’ me, foolish as a hen, frettin’ over the likes of Fadder Dee, an’ all the other priests they sent our way, ’fraid they be cauld in a church they have nuttin’ to do with, hardly, twice a year. We’ll see now, the next time ya sees me luggin’ wood all the way to The Bottom. ’Tis not good enough! Can’t even have a few prayers answered.”
Jack says how he never said nothing back to Lize, and he tells Pad how she often wonders if she was wrong to raise her hand to Gus when he was suffering and cursing the Lord because of it. She should have thought more about Gus’s suffering than the Lord’s, Jack says. It was hardly the Lord who kept fresh water in the porch barrel, and splits and shavings by the stove on cold, damp mornings throughout the year, he says. And it certainly wasn’t the Lord who went in the woods with Jack for all those years and carried out sticks, big and small, miles to the lane by their house. And it was no one but Gus who played games with his little sisters and chased them around the house and harbour for years and years.
The worst part, Jack says, is the torture she endures from the guilt placed upon her for stooping so low as to question God’s ways, God’s will, God’s everything.
With some of his strongest feelings unearthed, Jack feels a thousand pounds lighter, and something in the summer air stirs him. He stands gazing out the harbour and then down toward the Annie Healy. A little smile comes to his lips.
“What brings all that auld stuff back, I wonders, Pad,” he says, not expecting an answer, and shooing blackflies away from the grey hair under the sides of his cap.
“Uncle Watt talkin’ ’bout people dyin’ on The Rams, I s’pose, Jack, b’y.” Pad tries to bring light back to the day.
“See ya in an hour or so, Pad, b’y.”
“I thought ya said ya weren’t goin.’
Jack doesn’t turn around, and keeps on walking toward home.
Pad smiles and heads across the road to give Jim Spurvey a nip from his flask of ’shine.
Not long after Bernadette gets back home, Jack is back to say he’s going out with the crew.
“Mon’s perishin’ with the cauld, an’ Pad Mullins was hurt fallin’ off the house. John Kelly’s goin’, but he’s liable to be in the bunk the whole time. He’s awful sick.”
Jack can’t let down those who’ve helped him earn a living his lifetime. Lize knows that. Bernadette doesn’t understand. She watches him lift his other shirt from the nail in the wall behind the stove. All of a sudden the mess he brought over her clean floor doesn’t matter much. His week’s rations are prepared in no time.
Stroking his thick black moustache, Jack looks around, making sure he’s not forgetting anything, and heads out the door.
“Run down to H’aly’s an’ put down two sticks of Jumbo for yer father, luh,” Lize says to Bernadette. “Ya knows he can’t live without his baccy.”
Lize throws a handful of raisins into a batch of dough and baking powder, knowing she has plenty of time to make buns for Jack before he leaves.
Left: Jim and Bridget (Bridge) King (Photo courtesy of Bride Ruffalo, granddaughter of Annie Healy crew member Jim King)
Right: Bridge King in old age (Photo courtesy of Bride Ruffalo)
Johanna and Mon McCue. Mon was a crew member too sick to take that last trip and who, as a result, lived. (Photo courtesy of Mary McCue Culletin, granddaughter of Mon McCue)
Children of lost Annie Healy crew members. L-R: Maude Sampson Kelly, Ellen Bruce Whiffen, Jimmy King—born four days after his father was lost—Bernadette Foley Murray, and Beth Maher (Liz Kelly). (Photo courtesy of Shirley Houlihan Duke, granddaughter of Annie Healy crew member Jack Foley)
Left: Annie Healy, age nineteen, 1898 (Photo courtesy of Bob Hyslop, grandson of Anne Healy and Edward Furlong)
Right: Bernadette Foley Murray (Author Photo)
Schooner Pauline King aground (she was one of the schooners to leave Fox Harbour with the Annie Healy) (Photo courtesy of the late Mary Duke McCue, daughter-in-law of Annie Healy crew member Mon McCue)
Left: Annie Healy crew member Charlie Sampson (Photo courtesy of Maude Sampson Kelly, daughter of Charlie and Mary Jane Sampson)
Right: Edward and Anne (Healy) Furlong (Photo courtesy of Wallace Furlong, son of Anne Healy and Edward Furlong)
Children of Edward and Anne Healy Furlong, their spouses, and a grandson visiting Fox Harbour where their grandfather’s (Rickard K. Healy) home once stood (Photo courtesy of Joann Fantina, granddaughter of Anne Healy and Edward Furlong)
The Bottom, Fox Harbour, with Murray’s Island at low tide, from the Crow Hill (Photo courtesy of Shirley Houlihan Duke)
Left: Eliza Whiffen Foley, widow of crew member Jack Foley (Photo courtesy of Maggie Burns Widell, great-granddaughter of Jack and Eliza Foley)
Right: Gus Foley, son of crew member Jack Foley (Photo courtesy of Bernie Houlihan O’Reilly, granddaughter of Jack and Eliza Foley).
Left: Annie Healy crew member Jack Foley (Photo courtesy of Shirley Houlihan Duke)
Right: Midwife Martha “Mart” Mullins and her husband, Mick (Photo courtesy of Mary Murray Hawco and Susan Murray Mandville, granddaughters of Mart Mullins)
Jim and Mike Healy, proprietors of M J Healy Ltd. and owners of the Annie Healy at the time of her loss (Photo courtesy of Wallace Furlong)
The Isaacs, and the body of water between Fox Harbour and Little Placentia (Argentia) known as The Reach, where the Annie Healy left and entered her home port (Author photo)
Fox Harbour, with The Isaacs in the background and the shoal entrance to the community (Photo courtesy of Shirley Houlihan Duke)
Fox Harbour, Placentia Bay, circa 1905, with schooner Annie Healy to the wharf in front of Healy’s large home (Photo courtesy of Maritime History Archive, Job Brothers’s Collection, Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Left: Midwife Martha “Mart” Mullins and Johnny Whiffen, grandson of crew member Pad Bruce (Photo courtesy of Mary Murray Hawco and Susan Murray Mandville)
Right: Annie Healy crew member Pad Bruce (Photo courtesy of Ellen Whiffen Bruce, daughter of Pad Bruce)
Beth Maher (Liz Kelly), daughter of crew member John Kelly, and the author following his play, Thursday’s Storm: The Annie Healy Story, at the Marquise Harvest Theatre, Argentia, 2000 (Photo courtesy of Amy Smith)
Men and boys aboard Healy’s boat, Revels (centre), with Richard K. Healy in the smaller boat, right, and the Annie Healy, left, circa 1909. Annie Healy crew member Jack Foley is looking toward the camera with his son, Gus, standing in front of him. (Photo courtesy of Wallace Furlong)
Fox Harbour, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. Murray’s Island and The Isaacs in silhouette at sunset. (Author Photo)
Left: Annie Healy crew member Jim King (Photo courtesy of the late Anne King, daughter-in-law of Jim King)
Right: Annie Healy crew member John Kelly (Photo courtesy of Beth Maher, daughter of John Kelly)
Jim and Laura (Foley) Houlihan and their first child, Mary, Fox Harbour, 1930 (Photo courtesy of Betty Houlihan Howard, granddaughter of crew member Jack Foley)
Left: Mary Ann Mullins, daughter of Captain John Mullins and sister of crew member Michael Mullins, age nine, 1929, Corner Brook, Newfoundland (Photo courtesy of Eneida and Bill Valenti, grandson of Captain Mullins, and Annmarie Naimo, granddaughter of Captain Mullins)
Right: Annie Healy’s Captain John Mullins (Photo courtesy of Eneida and Bill Valenti, and Annmarie Naimo)
Grave of James Mullins, son of Captain John Mullins and Bridget Murphy, Crawley’s Island (Long Harbour), Placentia Bay, Newfoundland (Photo courtesy of Eneida and Bill Valenti, and Annmarie Naimo)
Left: Bridget Murphy Mullins, widow of Captain John Mullins (Photo courtesy of Eneida and Bill Valenti, and Annmarie Naimo)
Right: Annie Healy crew member Michael Mullins, circa 1925 (Photo courtesy of Eneida and Bill Valenti, and Annmarie Naimo)
Michael Murphy, the last person aboard the schooner Annie Healy the morning she was lost. He was twenty-two at the time, and lived to be ninety-four and a half. (Photo courtesy of Harry Murphy, son of Michael Murphy)
Daily News article, August 29, 1927: four days after the storm (Photo courtesy of Centre for Newfoundland Studies)
This anonymous poem appeared in the Daily News following the storm (Photo courtesy of Centre for Newfoundland Studies)
Daily News article (Photo courtesy of Centre for Newfoundland Studies)
PART II
Chapter eleven
Leaving Home
The Annie Healy is just about ready to set sail. Skipper Bill Murray moves his schooner, the Clare Murray, from the middle of the harbour to allow room for the others to pass freely. The Nellie is the first to leave, passing The Isaacs, heading into open water. The Pauline King and the Lady Jane lay anchored farther out the harbour. Both boats are alive with activity, as men in smaller boats deliver their crews’ provisions.
From rickety, horse-drawn carts men and boys step into the crowd near Healy’s Wharf. They carry sacks and crates of goods and casks of fishing supplies to go aboard the boats. Standing with their hands in their pockets, old men chat away in small groups beneath scores of young legs hanging and swinging from the edges of the high flakes above. Women, in their blue bandanas, scan the surroundings for things and people to talk about. Others murmur prayers for the men about to leave and for their safe return with fish stacked to the hatches of the schooner holds.
Bernadette Foley squeezes her way through adults and youngsters alike with a tin full of buns for her father. He sees her from the deck of the Annie Healy. Although they’re meant to be spared along to provide energy between breakfast and supper at sea, Lize’s tea buns are the best Jack’s ever had and he jokes he’s liable to have them gone before Red Island is at their backs. Bernadette smiles shyly, silently wondering if her father noticed the sadness in her mother’s eyes. She searches for a way to ask him. The look she’s thinking about is the same one her mother always wears every time her father’s about to sail away, even though most of the time he’s around she tells him to get out of her sight and go down to the wharf and see what the men are at. The look on her mother’s face seems more intense this time, since her father spent a week saying he wasn’t going back to sea. Now, all of a sudden, he can’t wait to leave again.
Lize’s forced smile is never wide enough to cover her inner conflict when Jack heads out the door. Even when Lize tells him he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, always changing his mind, Bernadette knows her mother never wants to see her father leave, knowing his back is probably even worse than he lets on and he has no business out baiting hooks and setting and hauling trawls in a damp, cold dory on the open sea.
Bernadette’s thoughts keep returning to her mother’s sad eyes and the child struggles for a way to talk about it. Even if she could find the words, she knows she’d never have the courage to speak them. The most her father ever says to her is, “Do what yer mother tells ya.” That and a pat on the head, the one that comes with the little twinkle in his eyes.
When Jack lays his hand on his daughter’s thin shoulder, his eyes speak of words he’s never known how to utter. He only hugs her when he has a few drinks in. She likes that and wishes he’d drink more often. But those expressions of love are rare, as Mammy says she’s too young to be allowed downstairs when company’s in on Saturday nights, when they have a few nips of St. Pierre rum or homemade moonshine, and there’s no talking or complaints of poor weather for making fish or good weather with no fish at all—just songs, stories, and jigs and reels the young girl hears from her room upstairs.
Jack and Bernadette nod their goodbyes and turn away from each other quickly. She runs back through the crowd toward home.
“Bern’dette!” Jack shouts.
Bernadette stops and leans around several big women in aprons to see her father beckoning her back to the side of the schooner with a toss of his head.
“The weather’s goin’ to be fine. Don’t forget to cut the grass on Gus’s grave. I sharpened the sickle not long ago. Mind yourself. It can cut ya.”
Bernadette presses her lips into a smile, nods her head, and turns for home again.
The Isaacs look on complacently, like old friends of the place, as Liz Kelly and Billy Sampson run up and down both sides of the harbour road, skipping over potholes, and singing to the top of their lungs.
Mickey Bom from up along
Catches fish in Drummer’s Pond
Sadie fries ’em in a pan
And Mickey ates ’em like a man
“If only ’twas rainin’, the fun we’d have,” Liz says, as the lack of water and dirt momentarily dampens their spirits. Neither can help looking back and forth to the water, no matter how much fun they’re trying to have on the road. Nothing could be more majestic to the youngsters than the sight of schooners, their gigantic sails hoisted all the way to the sky. Especially when their daddies are on board. The smaller one, the Annie Healy, looks as big as the rest lying alongside Healy’s Wharf. All schooners have their mainmasts raised to let the sun soak up any lingering moisture. The huge sails will be lowered upon leaving while the motors, jibs, and jumbos will take the boats out the harbour.
Biddy Mullins, Captain John’s stepmother, is in her glee. With each thunderous whomp from the gusts of wind hitting the schooner sails, her old heart jumps. She’s thrilled to be outdoors, and takes a big breath, laughing when her old bones rise off the wooden chair.
“I couldn’t be more contented,” she bawls out across her front garden to a few people she knows heading over around the wharf.
Watt and Michael Mullins lead the crowd on the wharf in an old sea shanty for leaving. Biddy says the Our Father aloud with the swarm of onlookers and well-wishers and, with the sun shining warmly, she knows the Lord, Himself, likely has His neck stuck out over the Crow Hill to keep an eye on all hands.
Biddy’s thoughts of her late husband, Peter, are plentiful and, if she looks hard enough, she imagines it won’t be too hard to see him in the crowd. For scattered moments she’s a little girl again on Sound Island, farther up Placentia Bay where she was born, watching her father leaving on big schooners for the same fishing grounds the Annie Healy is headed for this day. “My, the stories he’d tell when he come home,” she often said of her father. How the world always seemed better when he smiled! And the rare times he found no reason to smile, she, too, felt his hurt. And then, when she got married, the best time of her life! All the times Peter took to the sea and those heavenly feelings when
she’d finally see the schooner’s tall masts coming past The Isaacs and into the harbour again. How they, together, took suffering and good times all in stride. Guilt skirts her happiness as she breathes the crisp salt air full of all things summer in Fox Harbour. She whispers a prayer for Peter, and asks for a little forgiveness to help brush away the guilt for enjoying herself for the first time in years.
Smiling sweetly, she acknowledges her thoughts, accepting it all, one day at a time. And there, now, is John, her stepson, but no less her own boy, all grown up and to the wheel of the Big Annie.
In the eyes of the locals, the old schooner still glows from her fine reputation of long ago.
Biddy imagines old Richard Healy standing on the wharf, his tall frame bent over from hard work and heavy winds, making sure every detail is seen to.
Jim and Mike, old Richard’s sons, are in their fifties now, with Henry not far behind. And half a century on that same wharf that has been repaired hundreds of times only hardens their image. They are tough when it comes to their business, too. They have to be. Good men, they are, like most in Fox Harbour, always counting on one another in the hope tomorrow will be one blessed with less TB and more fish. “If you’ve yer health, what else can ya ask for, besides plenty of fish?” Biddy always says.