by Darrell Duke
“Noooo!” she cries aloud. “Not John. Not my son. Oh, John! No!” She opens the outside door and collapses.
Uncle Mick catches her and holds her against the wall, easing her heavy body to the floor. When she comes to, her shrieks of agony grow even louder. Her voice belts past the driving rain, echoing off every house and hill in the town. She doesn’t notice when Uncle Mick puts her beads back into her hands.
Young Maurice Whiffen drops the stick from his shoulders holding two pails of water he’s drawn for his father, and takes off for home with the fright at the sight of the old woman falling around in the doorway.
The Kelly children shuffle and stumble beside their screaming mother on the kitchen floor. They fall all over her, clutching at her head and waist and legs.
Grief-filled bawls soon occupy the air around the little town as the bad news is delivered to every home. Some of the widows stumble mindlessly outdoors, falling to their knees at the water’s edge, grabbing wet rocks and sand. They shout the names of the lost souls, begging them to please come home. Their children, laden with grief, anchor themselves to the wet earth and bawl for daddies they’ll see no more.
Chapter eighteen
Friday, August 26, 1927
From the Crow Hill
People are up early, continuing the cleanup and putting the town back together. Wracking bars and hammers draw bent nails from the wood of collapsed stores and animal pens. Mauls pound the tops of new fence posts cut to replace old ones ruined by yesterday’s storm. Axe blades grinding on sharpening stones will be used to chop the hundreds of trees needed to repair or replace wharves and flakes knocked down and hauled away by the sea. The level of activity is not a whole lot more than some summer days, but this morning no one is whistling or singing or laughing.
Tired old men, driven from their homes by loneliness or busy wives, sit quietly on rocks by the roadside whittling sticks, carving toy boats for their grandsons and ragged birch brooms for their granddaughters.
The morning sun works hard to dry up the rain’s mess. Clumps of unruly grasses along the side of the road and next to paths start to rise again. Rose bushes bloom shiny leaves of lively green while the few September mists not cracked off sprout triumphantly.
Gloom clouds the minds of many as they kick pebbles on the paths and skip rocks across the harbour. The late afternoon sky, white with light at the earth’s rim, blends heaven-like with the soft glow of baby blue above. The Isaacs and their craggy silhouettes face the fearless sea swells of deep green while armies of whitecaps patiently advance upon the beached meadow connecting the two great rocks. Harmless ripples are sent around the coast and in to Fox Harbour, rinsing kelp and sand from the feet of young boys and girls playing by the water.
In the evening, after the rosary, people gather in homes. They talk about the same things they’ve talked about every day, year after year, generation after generation: the heat of the sun staying in the house if the windows were shut early enough to keep out the coolness of the creeping dusk; the smell of fall already in the air, with the cold of last winter hardly left their bones; the water of the sea, just as cold now as it was in April month; how no wood stove stays cool for long these days; and how their backs won’t last another year in the woods. The clothes they took in off the line were just as damp as when they went out—a nuisance, weighing down the line strung above the kitchen stove, then smelling of salt pork, cabbage, onions, and smoke until washed again.
Stumbling like a wounded animal, Michael Mullins’s girlfriend, Katie, drags herself to the top of the Crow Hill. Her surroundings are blurred by her tears. She lugs her feet over rocks, lands in puddles of water too big to cross, and scuffs each next long step to the place she feels she needs to be.
From a sloped rock face at the top of the high hill, The Isaacs look helpless out there, all alone, sitting in the middle of it all—the place where her parents took her every fine Sunday of her life, in their dory, where they’d all sit amongst the rocks of the beach, the grass of the meadow, and at times in the shade of the trees of the woods. Hordes of families did the same. It was where youngsters, like Michael and her, ran freely over the uneven land and through the refreshing edge of the sea. And always a meal of smoked capelin, and fresh bread, and molasses. She and Michael always talked about that, but Michael could describe it best: the smell of capelin, molasses, and freshly fried toutons; those mouth-watering scents teasing scavengers of the sky spying boisterously on youngsters exploring the thick evergreen woods; where parents, too tired before their time, rested on rocks painted with dried bird droppings, rotting coral, and fungi of orange and white. Water in blackened kettles was always on the boil over fires made with alders and driftwood; started with a few handfuls of Old Man’s Beard, for a drop of tea boiled from loose leaves.
Katie ponders life. More like how their lives are hardly their own. What kind of a place is this, anyway? When young women her age are on their way to the States to make real money, where they will never have to look sideways at a fish again, if they don’t want to; where women don’t have to live their lives looking out the window for their men to come home from sea. She pounds her fist against the rock beneath her. She could go to the States. If she could convince Michael, that is. She’d hardly leave without him, though.
Katie’s thoughts leave the States and wander back to Michael and his way with words, and childhood Sundays at The Isaacs: women on their sides near steaming pots of tea, on the sharp blades of grass kept neat and tidy by someone’s goats. The women relaxed, with no fish to turn over, except the ones in the blackened frying pan lying on the rocks, over the fire. The usual signs of stress on their faces erased by the soft breezes and the little change of pace they deserved and sometimes granted themselves once a week. Squinting babies in white bonnets babbling happily to themselves when they weren’t being whisked around by everyone else’s youngster. The men couldn’t stay away from the water if they tried; standing, dressed in their best suits of clothes, they smoke from their pipes, talking about the weather and fishing and ships.
The lifelike quality once possessed by The Isaacs is gone. They’re nothing but two useless lumps of rock, unable to reach out to Michael, and his father, and God knows how many more men.
Katie’s anger attempts to ward off her grief as she scans the sea for a trace of the Annie Healy. The people milling around Healy’s Wharf below look like crawling ants. She grinds her teeth, and the tears come again when she sees the Healy brothers tying Tojori to the wharf for another night.
Her eyes dart back and forth to paths in the woods below, and to all the places from where you might be able to make your way up here. What she wouldn’t give to see Michael walking to get her, to hear him say he’s okay. She’s haunted by the empty space next to her on the big rock face of the hill. She cups her hands, the left caressing the right throbbing with pain from pounding the rock. Her head falls to the right, and as she leans into the air, she imagines she’s in Michael’s embrace: his big arm around her neck to draw her into the warm curve of his body; the breath from his nose moving behind her ear, and along the top and side of her head. The fresh smell of Sunlight soap, from the bar her mother keeps on the kitchen shelf, fills her lungs. There, Katie sits on a chair, washing her long locks in the big oval galvanized pail filled with water from the brook, warmed by the fire in the stove, the whole while dreaming of being alone with Michael where their breathing is the only sound they hear. She waits for his hand to cross her leg, for his fingers to slide between hers. The chill sends a freezing pain all the way to her elbows. She reaches back and slides her fingers along the rocks, hoping to feel the quilt he always carried when they came up here. She wishes he were here to drape it over her bare legs, below her dress. When he knew she was cozy and warm, he also knew she was all his and he could share his dreams, the ones he’d never let past his lips in the small town 300 feet below.
Mich
ael would sit here, staring out into the big world, dreaming of Ireland, of living there, where fellows like him, he said, could earn an honest living singing. And although it’s close to England, the Protestants wouldn’t even mind, he imagined, and there’d be no end to the songs. Because everyone loves music. And he’d send for her and they’d be married. In their spare time they’d look through old church records to find out where they’re really from and who their relatives were all over the Isle. He could even go to a good school if he wanted. And he wanted that, too. He said she and Mary Ann were the only ones who knew his secret. And she believed him.
The damp breeze chills the nape of Katie’s neck as her head rests in her hands. Her ringlets send chills down her back. Her blue cotton dress is stuck to her.
She wishes this was just one of those times when she’d be here waiting for Michael, knowing he’d show up as soon as he could. She’d like to scream his name but is afraid someone will hear.
She looks out over The Isaacs again, scanning the bay, with her hand over her eyebrows to block the orange glare of the setting sun. Sometimes the clouds give her arm a break, and her brown eyes are drawn down to the flat mass of Argentia and the white lines of smoke rising from houses, where it is always twice as cold as it is here in Fox Harbour.
Another rush of tears lands on her bare forearm. She looks down. She’s full of goosebumps, but needs the cold to keep her awake. She’ll never sleep again. Not until she’s back in Michael’s arms; not until she feels that gentleness that erased the boredom of Fox Harbour; not until Michael’s arms cradle her in unspoken love. Her safest haven. Her fingers fumble over the goosebumps as she glares past the rocks and trees, the wind and cold, her despairing existence, into Michael’s eyes where she’s always sure to feel protected.
It’s the day before he left—that day last week in to The Falls, the steep rocks and the refreshing smell of alders alongside the river running all the way to The Sound. The sticky sap of the spruce trees clings to their hands as they haul themselves back up the path through the woods, to the top of the waterfall. The rush from jumping back in and the great relief when everyone else leaves, except for a couple of youngsters spying from the woods. What odds about them, Michael says. On their last jump, she holds his hand. Underwater, his smile blows her away. He hardly has time to take a breath when she throws her arms up over his shoulders and wraps herself around him. He treads water for them both as the cold of his shoulder stings her lips. She wishes for the nerve to say I love you, but it never comes. The closeness is good enough. Each time he smiles at her, a chill runs up and down her body. They sit on a flat rock, about two feet below the falls, and he kisses her softly. He’s so sweet. Then, he talks of Ireland. What else? And sings his favourite song. Katie almost feels jealous at his passion for this girl peddling cockles and mussels, and a bit relieved when she died of a fever so long ago. And with all the talk of the pretty girls in Dublin, sure, how can she wait for him to send for her when the day arrives?
All the while he sings, Michael caresses Katie’s arms until she’s warm again. The sunlight dries her hair. She drinks up his rugged beauty. His big smile and green eyes not unlike the colour of the sea this miserable evening.
A blanket of black quickly covers the land and sea. She closes her eyes again and prays like mad for another glimpse into that dream, a dream that was real only nine or ten days ago. Will she ever have it back? How she wishes the tears hitting her arm are drops of water from her hair that day and Michael is here to rub the cold from her body. How she longs for more of those new feelings that arose each day they were together, and on days when time was not their own.
With clarity she recalls that night last fall under Healy’s flakes when she first heard him sing. The boys were after getting into their first batch of moonshine and Katie did her best to ignore the wisecracks and grabs and sauce of the boys ready to drag her off into the shade of night. Michael said nothing, only cleared his throat. No one expected to hear what came out of him, and all the foolishness stopped. The wild fire in his eyes told her he was nowhere near Fox Harbour. Katie was the only one really listening, and he knew it. After much talking and dancing at three or four kitchen parties throughout the winter, they were considered an item. Someone told Katie how Michael calmly offered to beat the heads off the boys, all the one time, if necessary, if they so much as looked her way again. That meant he really liked her, because he always walked away from fights.
A crow’s caw steals Katie from her happy thoughts. Every time she closes her eyes to get back to Michael, all she sees is him smiling, underwater. The scary dream he kept having before even knowing he was leaving. How could that have been?
If people didn’t talk so much, she’d gladly jump off this hill. She can’t bear to think of Michael without a smile, let alone drifting alone in Placentia Bay. Michael always talked about how the bay was legendary for stealing the lives of men and the contentment of wives and children. He didn’t want to be one of those men. Lost. Girls don’t pay much mind to that stuff. But how can he be one of those who may never come home again? As big as the bay is, Katie knows, it’s also very small with the way people talk and know one another. If Michael made it to shore somewhere, word would have reached here by now. Has the fire in his eyes died with him? If it is true angels go to heaven, and if heaven is what you think of as the best place to be, then surely Michael is strolling the streets and lanes of Dublin city, singing the beautiful Irish ballads, with people handing him shillings galore for another one just like the other one. If she could ever get there, would she run into him, somehow?
When they sat here on the Crow Hill, there were the games of which island is which in the bay, and who owns that schooner coming ’round The Isaacs. But all she ever really noticed was Michael. Her quick glances to the sea, just like her swift answers, were only to please him. She really loved him. Loves him. Oh, if only she’d told him. Her mother always said only some married people said the like of that to each other. For the first couple of years, anyway. But the young crowd isn’t that old-fashioned. She could have told him. It’s not like she would do anything other than give him a nice, long good-night kiss. Anything beyond that, they knew, had to wait till marriage.
God knows what time it is, and Katie gives jumping over the hill another full measure of consideration. She’d rather die than have to walk back down. What if she just lies on the ground where she stands? Surely Michael will soon wake her and carry her in his arms. He’ll be wet, but she won’t mind that. She’ll marry him, if he asks. Indeed she will.
Tomorrow she’ll be back, rain or shine, and play the game of “name that schooner” until the Annie Healy sails in the harbour, battered and bruised. Then she will vanish from the hill faster than she ever did in her life, until she has hold of Michael, says how much she loves him, and walks him to his mother’s house. He’ll warm up by the stove, and she’ll make him tea and butter his bread, like she’s always done.
But in her heart Katie knows there’ll be no Annie Healy. No Ireland. And no more Michael. Afraid of what news she might have missed, still hoping she’s wrong, she takes off back to the path. She screams her way through the woods, away from that mountain of memories. Helping herself over the first pile of rocks to the path, she grabs hold of a tree. She shoots a quick glance back when her fingers latch into sticky grooves. Michael and Katie, she reads through great sobs, nearly dying from the weight in her chest. The fresh whiteness of the tree inside each carefully carved letter gives off a glow in the growing twilight. A little bit of hope, maybe? It’s just like him to do something like this and not tell her, until she noticed it herself. But they’d been here since and why hadn’t she noticed it? It’s no surprise. She could look at trees anytime.
From the heart Michael has carved around their names, Katie blows away a stream of black ants. She lets her head fall into the tree and her tears to the soft, uneven ground where the tree’s root
s make it difficult to stand and rest. Gripping the tree a foot or so below the inscription, she scratches her fingers through more stickiness. She swings around the front of the tree slowly to see what else he might have carved. When her eyes clear from a wipe of the back of her hand, she sees Mary Ann in block letters. Of course, Katie laughs to herself, his littlest sweetheart had been with him.
Chapter nineteen
Friday, August 26, 1927
More News—Better Off Buried—Letters
Uncle Mick Duke fumbles through the pages of the Evening Telegram with his big fingers. Scores of family and friends squeeze into the kitchen of John and Ellen Kelly to hear him dish out the news. Those who can’t fit inside stand outdoors on a wood-horse and crates with their heads stuck in through in the windows.
One article tells of a ten-foot wall of water that swept up the Humber River, on Newfoundland’s west coast. Boats are damaged and much of the railway around Seal Head is destroyed.
“At Humbermout’,” Uncle Mick reads, “a man was swept from the boom an’ killed.”
“But what about the Annie Healy?” someone asks.
There’s nothing to tell them, only that wreckage litters Placentia Bay, as told in the endless reports from fishermen out in search of survivors.
. . . picking up rails, bulwarks and hatches, woodwork . . . pieces of dories . . . trawl kegs . . .
Another article tells how the storm began a week ago off the south coast of Africa and then made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Bahamas. After scraping the edges of the US eastern seaboard, the storm struck Nova Scotia on August 24. It wasted little time raging across the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Newfoundland. With all communication lines down, no forecast could be made to warn men to stay off the water. No local boats had wireless radios on board. Out of a cloudless sky, ninety-mile-an-hour winds swooped across the water and the land. By the time it struck Placentia Bay Thursday morning, the storm was at its worst.