Deluded Your Sailors (40 page)

Dorinda delivered Johnny's latest report on the progress of the Settlement 250 project. The report stated that ACHE has received several e-mails and letters, as well as many comments on the ACHE website, protesting the mounting of a play based, however loosely, on Port au Mal history. Dorinda noted that Reverend Elias Winslow was in attendance at the meeting to bring the community's concerns directly to ACHE. As noted previously, Settlement 250 is expected to attract many ex-pats and tourists, and advertising material has already gone out, with follow-ups planned.

Cissy commented there has been absolutely no interest in Settlement 250 west of Trinity, and she reminded the Board that the initiative offers nothing to central or western Newfoundland or to Labrador. She asked if there was any talk yet of further settlement celebration initiatives.

Reverend Elias Winslow, on behalf of HARC, presented a list of “grave concerns” about the play. (List is cut and pasted below.)

Quality of historical research.

Subject and themes of play seem to deviate from the ACHE / Settlement 250 mandate.

Portrayal on stage of ancestors of people presently living in the greater Port au Mal area, which is still home to many Jackmans and Simmses, for a start. Does not the survival of surnames point to the need for thoughtful respect?

Finally, the moral life of an actor hired to take part in the play has already inflamed controversy. It is neither libel nor slander to note that profanity and pornographic imagery are staples of both Mr Seabright's written work and many of his performances. In addition, Mr Seabright's connection to known criminals Peter and Richard Seabright raises concerns. Can ACHE assure HARC of the suitability of the content of this play?

Lewis received a cell phone call from Seth Seabright, informing him that Nichole Wright is in Conception Bay North's Von Haldorf Cottage Hospital, waiting to undergo tests for a suspected concussion.

Dorinda asked Evan for the latest update from TCR. Update (Chris Jackman's memo) is cut and pasted below:

While there has been unexpected and vigorous protest from the good people of Port au Mal, including many calls to VOIC Radio's Free Line show, TCR wishes to make clear that our discontinuation of funding for the Settlement 250 play project has nothing to do with these issues. TCR, like all other departments, is under a cabinet-wide fiscal restraint policy, and difficult cuts have to be made. Both playwright and actor will be paid for their services up to this time.

ACTION ITEM: Dorinda Masterson to inform Nichole Wright and Seth Seabright that the Port au Mal Settlement 250 play will not go ahead.

BUSINESS ARISING

Cissy stated that central, the west coast and Labrador feel neglected by TCR. Vigorous discussion.

Dorinda reminded Cissy that Johnny had urged her (Cissy) to submit a report on this matter.

ACTION ITEM: Cissy to prepare a report on her region's concerns. Cissy to add her report to the agenda for the next meeting.

30) ‘I AIN'T GOT A TIME OR A PLACE'
S
EPTEMBER
15, 2009, C
RIMINAL
C
OURT
, S
T
J
OHN
'
S
.

Enough of this.

My name is Nichole Laika Wright. I am here today at the trial of Mr Foxe to read a victim impact statement.

Starting in late 2004, Mr Foxe seemed to turn up more and more often at places I frequented. I avoided him at the time, as he worked for a rival broadcaster. But he began to talk to me, and I expect he figured out I was not in a good state. I suffer from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, which in my case often manifests as high agitation and clinical depression. When Mr Foxe approached me, my illness was impairing my judgement, making me particularly vulnerable.

My relations with Mr Foxe started out as consensual. He asked to photograph me in various states of undress. I complied. I cannot say I consented. I expect you find the difference difficult to understand. It is difficult to explain. Mr Foxe was not the first to take advantage of me in this fashion. When younger, I was made to pose for child pornography. I was groomed to comply with such requests. Believing myself loved, I posed for Mr Foxe.

Mr Foxe tried to use the photos to blackmail me for money.

He presumed that, because of my last name and family connections, I had ready access to large amounts of cash. I tried to explain this was not the case, and I attempted to break off contact. Repeated emails and phone messages and, again, my own impaired judgement, persuaded me to visit Mr Foxe one last time at his house, ostensibly to pick up some belongings. Mr Foxe forced me inside his home, locked the door, and bound and gagged me in S&M paraphernalia.

He sliced off my clothes with a large hunting knife, slowly. The blade was warm by the time he was done. Then he ejaculated over my back. My muscles cramped, and I tried to speak to him. He left me alone a while. Then he returned and took more photos of me.

I thought I'd die. I wanted to die. My eyes got starry with the camera's flash. Eventually he untied me, and, as soon as I could move my arms and legs again, I left Mr Foxe's house in borrowed clothes, specifically, a pair of leggings another woman had left behind and one of Mr Foxe's button-down flannel shirts from LL

Bean. I remember looking at the tag, because I thought that flannel was one of the softest things I'd ever touched. I wore my own shoes.

I quit my job during this time. I broke off contact with my family. I could not sleep. I briefly entered a psychotic phase. While my symptoms are now better controlled, I still suffer from nightmares and hyper-vigilance. These nightmares are a blend of both childhood and adult experiences.

I hope I have communicated effectively, and I thank the court for allowing me the opportunity to speak.

31) FAMILY REUNION
S
EPTEMBER
18-19, 2009, S
T
J
OHN
'
S
.

—You did good the other day, ducky.

—Thank you for being there.

Gabriel shook his head, steam from his tea wafting up his face.

He'd nearly left the courtroom, but, hiding his sweaty fists in his pockets, he'd stayed and listened, Dory's presence beside him an anchor. Nichole had addressed Gabriel in the observers' pew, reading her statement directly to him. Once Nichole had finished, Gabriel quickly got to the men's room and threw up in a sink.

Neither he nor Dory had said a word the whole way home.

When they'd pulled in the driveway, Dory had asked
It was just us
and reporters there, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Gabriel gazed out the window of Mahon's. Across the street, another busker, the fifth he'd seen since parking Dory's rig, sawed away on a fiddle dying for a good polish.—Young fellah's not bad.

—Seth Seabright. Is there nothing he can't do?

—Ducky, he's not buskin on Water Street because he wants to.

Look at the face on him.

—I can't see it for the beard.

—Bit shaggy, no question. Where do you know him from?

As Nichole explained, Seth winced at a wrong note that cut his aching head like a blunt razor pressed too hard. He'd been drinking heavily since the meeting out in Port au Mal –
some fuckin
vision
now at the Orange Lodge
. Recurring dreams of the redheaded John Kelly trying to talk to him did not help. Seth wanted to swat him away.
A character, just a character.
Seth could always see Kelly clearly enough, but he could never quite pick out his words. Seth tried to change the dream's course one night, tried to tell Kelly what a fine role he'd make, and how much Seth wouldn't mind playing him, but Kelly shook his head.

Whenever dream-Kelly faded, Seth's father loomed, as he had in Seth's childhood. After the moratorium, after the family's collection of grocery and hardware stores dried up and blew away like dandelion seed off a mower, Pete Seabright thinned out and even shrank a bit in height, but back when undead Cabot hauled his undead baskets, Pete ruled Flannery Point. Big man, oh yes,

big man up and down the shore, but a gentle giant, heart of gold, wouldn't hurt the proverbial fly. No, the only one he ever touched was his one child, the piece of squalling flesh with no understanding, no respect for a good night's sleep. The child that had forced him to marry a girlfriend he'd despised for a whore.

It got bad in 1980, around when Seth turned five and announced he didn't like boats and wanted a set of paints. His father considered the declaration and the request and then apologized to Seth for being busy with the stores and the fish plant.

He said he'd take Seth out to the old Seabright premises and the woods on weekends.
Show ya man stuff.
After a few weeks of watching his father's cruel games with snared animals, Seth told his teacher he didn't like going in the woods with his father. He also mentioned it to his mother, who detected her own deep sadness in her little boy and distracted him with a long game of make-believe.

Pretending to be someone else, somewhere else – always potent medicine. Seth's teacher, a local girl, had told her mother at dinner about the stuff the kids had said that day, adding in a lower tone what the little Seabright boy said about the animals and the woods.

Her mother repeated it to a clerk at a crowded check-out in a Seabright-owned store the next morning, and by suppertime the whole point knew that young Seth feared his father. Laughing at the story –
Kids, right?
– Pete deflected any suspicion. Seth got the paints but hardly used them.

As Seth grew up he proved himself quite the handy troublemaker, only calming down after his father had taken to the premises or the woods. By twelve, Seth could experiment with fighting back, but the hard truth remained: Pete outweighed him by nearly a hundred pounds of muscle and could easily hang him off a length of fishing net he kept strewn up in the premises' high rafters. Two storeys, originally, those premises, second floor removed. Old net, weighted and tangly. Seth dreaded the net more than the tortured animals, the blows and Pete's hand blocking his nose and mouth.
Toughen ya up. Quiet now, or I'll give ya somethin
to cry about.
Seth could keep the tears back until his father removed whatever saint's pin Seth wore on his jacket, pins put there by his Grandmother Clatney on the Friday nights he'd pretend to fall asleep at her house, on the daybed by the woodstove. She'd pin on St Raphael or,
God help me, that proper little pill, St Tarcisius,
lament about how he kept losing the pins, tuck a blanket round him. Come morning she'd give him breakfast, another fiddle lesson and a hard time about practising, never mind his playing by ear. The sound of one of those saints' pins landing in some dark corner of the premises always paralysed Seth, gutted him. Resignation, then: Pete shoving him up the ladder. Hanging fifteen feet off the ground, wrists galled with line –
Keep still, now, til I finish
– fingers hooked through the meshes, father and ladder disappearing in the darkness beneath. That mostly ended as Seth grew bigger, though he didn't come near Pete's size.
Never be half the man I am
. Seth asked his grandmother for medals instead of pins, those medals on endless chains. She happily obliged, eventually giving him a fine collection of the more obscure saints.

After Seth accidentally set fire to an overflowing garbage can in the boys' bathroom at school playing with a lighter, Pete hit him across the face – out in the premises. Seth flew at him, rage hauling him past sense, vicious and fast like the snake that did not even live on the island of Newfoundland, forcing Pete to defend himself with a split from the woodpile. Or so Pete told it. He'd hauled a stunned Seth up the ladder and, heaving for breath, returned him to the net, only without tying his wrists.
Stay there, now.
Refusing to cry –
no, not one fuckin sound
– Seth lowered himself, hand over hand, to the end of the net, and jumped, landing hard enough to damage his knees. He grabbed not a split but the axe and tore after Pete.