Blackstrap Hawco (28 page)

‘The sealers and fishermen are behind him. I don't want to get caught up in any of that, particularly in a small community. It might turn stormy, sentiments, I mean.'

Emily had edged closer to the crack in the door and peered in. What was Bareneed? she wondered. Moving? Were they moving? Was it back to England? She saw her father's friend winking at her father.

‘Those sealers are like stray dogs,' said Mister Bowering. ‘They're everywhere. You can always get a shipload of them. Anytime. They consider it some sort of perverse rite of passage. Back in New York we have to shanghai men to get them to work under the same conditions, but here. Not a problem. They're Newfoundlanders.' Mister Bowering made a fist and raised it triumphantly in the air. ‘Mongrel Irishmen, hooray!'

Alan Duncan chuckled under his breath.

Emily liked the sound of her father's laughter, not hearing it often enough. Grinning, she thought she might giggle and so backed away from the door. She stared at the wall across from her, her mind now preoccupied with the possible complications of moving. She was just beginning to form friendships here. A move would disrupt everything, unless it was back to England where she might rejoin her old friends, Pratty and Bridget. She was becoming impatient, wanted to leave, to question her father about the move. Plus it was a sunny day outside, despite the nip in the air. She wanted to be out in it, to have another look
at that big horse. She sighed and stared at the framed pictures of ships on the walls, imagined herself as a captain, sailing to the sealing grounds, laying out a nice supper for the sealers, making certain they had warm cozy beds to sleep in. All to displease her father.

Bowering opened the top drawer in his desk and took out a photograph. ‘Have you seen the house you'll be living in?' There was a two-storey white house on the rise of a hill overlooking a clutter of black shacks near the water. He took out another photograph of a store with a sign out front: Bowering Brothers.

‘Remember, Alan, we are not in Newfoundland to buy fish but to sell goods.'

Alan said nothing, yet his face betrayed concern.

‘You suddenly look like you've come down with a conscience. After what went on back in England. What? You think I didn't hear the details? Word travels fast among merchants, hey? Small tight family of friends. Don't worry, I've said nothing. Trust me.'

At the mention of England, Emily listened more closely, moving to peek in the door, immediately catching sight of her father turned in his chair, staring back at her, his face drained of colour as though he had seen a ghost. She flinched against his horrified gaze.

‘Go,' he said quietly, slouched to the side. Then, slowly straightening with his hands on the armrests, he cleared his throat and called weakly, ‘I'm almost through, Emily. Have a look at some of those magazines out there.'

She heard her name from Mister Bowering's lips, ‘Emily. What a pretty name.'

‘Thank you,' Emily muttered saucily and spun away.

‘Is she the one?' Mister Bowering asked.

But her father said nothing in return.

‘So, are you in?'

‘Lord over them all, eh?' said Alan, trying to adopt a stronger demeanour, to not sound as small and low-voiced, not as wounded and frail.

‘Exactly…Look, I'm willing to toss in more of the Conception Bay area. Brigus. Port de Grave, along with Bareneed. A percentage of revenues.'

There was a moment of reflection. ‘Well, that's promising.' Alan laughed outright, on his way to regaining his previous vigour.

‘Yes, it is.'

‘Yes.' Alan nodded. ‘Alright then.'

Mister Bowering guffawed and reached forward to shake Alan's hand. ‘We'll get together in the coming days to sort out the specifics. How things are run out there, etcetera. There are several families heavily in my debt. I'll mention that now, and one such family specifically, the Hawcos. You'll see to that?'

‘Yes, of course.' Alan watched Mister Bowering. ‘Hawcos?'

Mister Bowering remained silent. He took a moment to light a cigar from the ashtray. ‘Ace Hawco, one of the sealers.'

‘The one on the dock?'

Mister Bowering nodded. ‘I believe he was responsible for your little dip, as well.'

‘I heard you sent a constable for him?'

‘No. I felt we'd be better able to deal with him.'

‘I see,' said Alan, his voice tinged with a hint of confusion.

‘There are others, of course,' he put in, waving the comment away with a dismissive gesture used to clear the cigar smoke from before his face. ‘But I'll need certain debts repaid briskly. You might be required to confiscate houses. Can you manage that sort of thing?'

‘Ah…yes, of course.'

‘Splendid. Cigar?'

Bareneed, thought Emily, huffing to herself. She did not like the sounds of it. What sorts of people would be living in a place like that?

A place where the living might exist

Once treated at the infirmary, released home to Bareneed, and deloused with Blackard's Lotion, Uncle Ace sat in the lamplight of a March's early evening.

Catherine, who was mending the sole pair of Jacob's pants, which were worn down the backside, glanced up at her brother-in-law to see
what might be in his mind. Watching him, she often wished for his twin, for Francis, for there were differences between the two, something she never thought possible upon first sighting them in the woods those thirty years ago. A mirror image, she had thought. A trick of the light. Yet, no, they could never be one and the same, their dispositions entirely different.

Uncle Ace watched Catherine as though disbelieving in his own presence in that house. A cup of tea rested near his fingertips. He looked down and seemed to wonder what might be in the cup. An unstable surface. Men so tiny and adrift their calls held no resonance, their raised limbs like thistles, barely evident. Across the steamy ice, they were hauling a structure with the aid of ropes. A house, a dwelling. There was a surface in the mug, yet there was something beneath it. Beneath the sea, beneath the earth, there was a boy digging a tunnel, digging through red rock, digging his way to a deeper death that no one would ever understand.

‘Wise fer ya ta stay clear 'a da seal hunt from here on in.' Catherine took a glimpse of Ace, before dipping her eyes back to her sewing. ‘After dat foolishness ye got on widt. Flinging Mister Bow'ring inta da water. T'anks be ta Jaysus he were saved in da end.' She began to smile but bit down on her lip and tutted crossly, three times, casting off her amusement with a shake of her head. ‘Saints preserve us.'

Uncle Ace regarded the woman who had taken him from the place where he had stepped off the boat. The bodies had been offloaded before him, yet they had followed him here. What was he expected to do with them? One was stood near his chair, staring at him with his frost-blackened fingers extended in fright. The other was flush to the stove, rubbing his hands together.
Christ, dere's no warmth ta be had,
cursed the man, setting his gloved hand directly on the iron of the stove and keeping it there, to no avail.
Da crackling wood gives af frost sparks
. And what of the others? The ones who he remembered yet could not recognize. The ones who now stared out through his eyes?

‘Mister Bow'ring'll be right aboard ye next year,' Catherine said with a nod, drawing the threaded needle high while she moved a peppermint knob around in her mouth, sucking quietly, then shifting it from one
cheek to the other. ‘Ta point ye out. T'is a wonder he never sent da Rangers after ye.'

Uncle Ace turned his head to see a boy glide across the threshold of the room. Not a bit frozen. Not a tinge of marble-green to his face. The boy was living, a lovely, vaguely pink hue.

‘How come we only got da one 'a me here?' Jacob asked outright.

With eyes fixed on Jacob, Catherine bit through the thread, then stabbed the needle in the fancy pin cushion with the face of the King of England embroidered on it that Uncle Ace had brought her from St. John's as a gift last season.

‘Only one made like ye.' Catherine nodded reasonably. ‘'N dun't be so saucy widt yer mout'.'

Uncle Ace cast his eyes into his mug. His body. Not his house.

‘No,' Jacob said, adamantly shaking his head while tossing a bit of something into the ash can. ‘Da Butlers up da hill got fifteen chil'ren. Every'n got lots. How come I got no brudders or sisters?'

Uncle Ace glanced out the window, where a young man stood, stiff as a rail, staring in.
Have ye seen me mudder?
he screeched out, as though the calm of the winter night were deafening.
I promised ta be home 'n 'av no harm come ta me.

Catherine studied her needlework, moved the peppermint knob from one cheek to the other and swallowed the taste. Sighing, she smoothed out the seam on her lap, checking over the job with a gentle survey of her fingertips. Done, she lowered the lamplight a tad.

‘Yer father died before his day,' Catherine said, matter-of-factly, yet with a hint of sad tolerance.

Uncle Ace shifted his eyes from the young man outside the window to the woman. The woman who was warm, too, a pinkness in her cheeks. The truly dead. The warm boy beside her. Younger. Deader. Why were these two warm? he wondered, while all the others were eaten by cold?

‘Ye knows dat,' Catherine continued. ‘He died in 'is health.'

‘But why we got no more chil'ren?'

‘None more like ye were found in da cabbage patch. 'Nuf o' dat now,' she chastised.

Jacob boldly stared at Uncle Ace, interested in the man's eyes, then
shifted his attention to his uncle's shirt where the rips in the front had been stitched over by Catherine's fine handiwork.

‘Wha' happened ta yer chest?' Jacob asked.

‘Jacob,' Catherine warned. ‘Now, I tol' ye 'bout ask'n dat. Off ta bed, g'wan widt ye.'

‘He wun't answer, sure. Ya got ta keep ask'n. When's 'e ever gonna answer?'

Uncle Ace stared down at his chest. Cautiously, he set his fingertips to the centre, pressed them there, tapped, the tinkle of ice, then moved them back, lifted them through the air until they were raised to his face. He studied the deep sheen on his fingertips, then turned them toward the boy, to answer. He wiped his fingertips in his own face, sensing the warmth. That was what kept him alive. Wasn't it? The warmth of his own blood. Or was it the spillage of tears? At once, he rose from his chair, pulled on his coat, took his hammer from the back porch and went out the door.

Catherine sat still, as though something had left her, never to be returned. She felt a shudder in her that struck with such a resounding blow she was forced to shut her eyes for stability's sake.
Sum'n walk'n o'er me grave
, she told herself.

‘Where's he gone off to'? asked Jacob.

Catherine opened her eyes to look at her son then shifted them to the slop bucket in the corner of the room.

‘Where's 'e gone?'

‘Jacob, fer Christ's sake, can ye shut yer gob fer once.'

Soon, there came the sound of hammering.

‘He's build'n sumtin',' said Jacob, moving behind the chair Uncle Ace had been seated in, to stare out the window.

Catherine stood and leaned near the window. From her position, she could see Uncle Ace's shack and his kitchen window. Here was the man, swinging back his hammer, pounding holes in the walls.

‘Wha's he fix'n over dere?' asked Jacob.

Ace continued pounding, then reached into those holes to yank loose the boards and haul them out. Once a large enough hole had been opened up, Uncle Ace stood still, facing it. There came a bellow as his head was thrown back, his mouth held wide. The sound rattled the
windowpane against which Catherine's fingertips were pressed. One long string of gibberish that continued for minutes, slowing toward the end, so that words gradually became evident. What had been flooding from Uncle Ace's mouth in an unbroken, alphabetized torrent were names.

 

In the days that followed, Uncle Ace was joined by men in the community willing to help demolish his shack. The men took care in removing the boards for they had no idea what Ace might use the wood for. From a number of salvaged planks, Uncle Ace built a long, low box that everyone took to be a casket.

With the remaining wood, he commenced putting up what the men standing by came to realize was the shell for a new shack. Almost the same, but different from the one he had taken apart.

When he and the men were done, when the final nail had been driven, Uncle Ace stepped out and took Jacob from the group of dead boys that lingered near, amid the sparse sticks of furniture that had been removed and awaited reshelter, and walked him into the house.

In the kitchen, Ace pointed to a spot in the centre of the floor. With his uncle's coaxing, Jacob moved toward the spot, not knowing what might be wanted of him, and stood positioned in the middle of the room. Through the window, he could see his mother in the kitchen window of his family home. She was watching him, nodding to herself.

Uncle Ace fixed his stare on the boy, then surveyed the clear interior. No one dead in this newly built thing. No one laying claim to it.

Here was a place where the living boy might exist, without fear of harrowing intrusion.

Amanda writes home

Amanda took it as her obligation to write letters to Annie Gull whenever possible, keeping her apprised of their situation as it developed. Even though Amanda was not certain if Annie could read or if she was
even living back in Liverpool, she forwarded the letters to the address Annie had given her on the girl's only visit to Amanda's home. On that visit, Annie had asked for one look at the treasure that Amanda was keeping, and then pledged never to return.

The only proof Amanda had that the letters were reaching their destination was that they were not returned to her.