Donovan's Station (6 page)

What ructions we kicked up—Richard grabbing for the salmon which was trapped in the shallow water by the logs, me grabbing for Richard, the slippery stones underfoot making every step a menace. Somehow, he managed to push the salmon up onto the beach so that I could see it really was only an ordinary fish, though the knife-like fins made it seem like some sort of glorious sea-monster, almost as exotic as a mermaid. Planting his feet securely into the shingle, Richard prevented the creature from regaining the water, but it was so slick and wet that it was impossible to get a grip on it and even with my help he was unable to move it much further up the beach. Turning to me in despair, and by this time panting with effort, he shouted “Take off your dress, Kezzy. Take it off, now.”

Fortunately, it being so early in the year, I was wearing a petticoat
or Richard would have had me stripped to my skin, so determined was he to keep that salmon. The apron came off, and then the dress, and in a very short time we had our catch slung into the skirts of my homespun shift. By the time we got the fish to the top of the hill over Petty Harbour we were both dropping with fatigue, but fortunately Father had come in search of us and relieved us of our burden. Mother was not pleased to see me arrive home half-naked, nor was she delighted to see my only dress tied around the salmon by my apron strings, but Richards pride and pleasure was such that once she had extracted a promise that we would never do such a thing again, she gave herself up to the excitement of the moment.

The salmon must have weighed ten pounds at least, and although we normally had our main meal in the middle of the day and made do with a cold lunch in the evening, Mother cooked the tail in a piece of muslin and served it up to us with a creamed mustard sauce and boiled potatoes. Richard didn't manage to get more than a few mouthfuls down his throat before falling asleep over his plate, but Father ate every mouthful of his own as well as Richard's leftovers, and before going to sleep that night he salted down the remainder, which we ate on special occasions throughout the winter. Mother made me wash the dress and apron myself, and since it rained the next day I was forced to wear one of her work dresses, which was so worn it had recently been consigned to the matting bag in the rafters. It was, however, a small price to pay for the intense pleasure Richard derived from his first major catch.

Lizzie used to ask me, when she was small, if I'd had a best friend when I was a girl and would give me her hard, skeptical look when I answered that perhaps my brother was my best friend. Lizzie hardly even looks at her brother, and acts as if time spent with him is a peculiar form of torture. My childhood wasn't like hers. I hardly ever played structured games, nor did many of the children in the Harbour. I used to watch my
own girls play hopscotch and jackstones as if they were savages from across the water in Africa, so foreign were these things to me.

Lizzie was right, of course—Richard and I weren't friends, but we were one another's closest companions, not counting Mother and Father. Perhaps it was because we all worked so hard that there was little time for friendships, or perhaps it was because we were solitary by nature, but neither of us sought out the company of other children, and they rarely sought ours. Mother didn't encourage visiting, for we often had a difficult enough time feeding and clothing ourselves without having half-starved and ragged children from around the Harbour hanging in the doorway making hungry eyes at our few possessions.

Since we lived on the Southside but attended school and church on the Northside, we didn't mix much with the neighbours, except perhaps when there was an illness or death to be dealt with. At such times, Richard might be sent with an armload of wood or I might be told to mind a small child for a few hours, but like everyone we had limited resources and barely enough energy to keep body and soul together given the short season for fishing and gardening. Mother used to say that it was just as well our summers weren't longer as we would wear our bodies out well before their time. Winter came almost as a relief, for once the snow was down there was little to do but stay warm and seek relief from the boredom of long, dark days by fashioning the few small comforts we could create for ourselves.

In summer, there were not enough hours in the day to do all that had to be done. Aside from the endless task of making the fish, there was the garden to be seen to. We always struggled to find time for chinching the house, mending the roof and the hundred other chores that could only be done in reasonably good weather. It was my responsibility to gather the hop-buds before they blew, to pinch the young leaves of the Indian tea
and dry them over the stove, haul seaweed and gurry to the garden, gather moss and country hay, mind the goats, keep the water bucket full, and much more. Once the garden was done, I had to pick partridgebernes and bounceberries, help slaughter the goats… Oh, the list is endless. The hours together when my own girls played with dolls or pretended to mind a shop were not something I had ever experienced.

I do recall occasional times of idleness, but they were rare. Father had acquired a dog soon after he came to this country, a big, sweet-natured water dog he called Egypt, and I believe Egypt was my playmate for some time. I remember my mother telling me that when I first learned to walk, I would make my way down with her to the flakes by holding onto Egypt's ears and staggering along the rough path from the house. He used to fish for guffies next to the wharf—I'd be sitting on a rock watching him take one after another of the ugly creatures and drop them into a pile at my mother's feet. I don't recall he ever ate them, but I expect they went into the garden with the caplin and the gurry.

The shoreline at Petty Harbour is so steep, and frontage so scarce, that every square inch is needed for the fish. The broad flakes are in some places eight and ten feet high over the water, and I occasionally used to go under them with Egypt. I rarely dared go there without him, for this was the domain of the many wolfish dogs that infested the Harbour—dogs that had no proper owners or were abused by the men who laid claim to their labour.

I have to this day a mortal fear of most dogs, for once I saw a pack of these brutes tear the scalp off a small boy. He was perhaps four years old, and what I was doing there under the flakes I can no longer recall, except that I was poking at a pile of maggots with a stick and looked up just as he took a misstep and fell. The moment he was down, the dogs were on top him. I never knew the boy to speak to him but I often saw him in
later years, his head topped with a few comical tufts of hair and covered in a patchwork quilt of scars where his mother had pulled the skin back from his face and neck and stitched a cover for his bare skull. She claimed to have cured him by putting sluts on the wounds—nine female puppies, one slit open each day and applied fresh to his scalp nine days in a row.

Richard must have been with my father the day I saw the child scalped, for unlike me he was a fine natural sailor and enjoyed being on the water. Once Richard was old enough to take his place in the skiff, Egypt came to work with me in the garden, pulling stones, hauling waste for fertilizer, applying his patience and muscle to a myriad of dreary chores. In winter he hauled wood and water, and in summer it was seaweed and gurry, and in all seasons he protected us from the wild dogs that ran in packs around the Harbour. When he got old and rheumatic, he still struggled to do the work of a whole army of dogs and it broke my heart to see him lurching stiff-legged after Richard or Father when they went on the water. I suppose I looked at Egypt the way Kate looks at me now.

One day Father lifted Egypt into the boat, and I saw his nose and his tail tilt up in delight as the boat moved out the Harbour, but Father came back without him. He told us that Egypt had seen a puffin and had leapt from the boat and swum away, but Richard told me that the small killick was gone too, and we knew what had happened. When winter came, Father bought a pony from a man who had no hay to feed it.

Paddy wasn't fond of dogs—his incessant gatching and teasing earned him more than one nip at his heels from the crackies and water dogs in the town, and if he'd drink taken he was likely to strike a preliminary defensive blow with the toe of his boot. I have never been able to stomach the violent ways so many men have with their animals. I've seen the boys baiting fish hooks to catch gulls, and then after they've pulled half their guts out through their mouths they cut the legs off the poor creatures
and leave them to die slowly. A boy who will do that is bound to turn into a man who will abuse his wife and children.

I have never owned a dog since I had Egypt, though I have worked with any number of ponies and horses and have yet to own one that could do half the work of Egypt in his prime. I was glad Father had drowned Egypt, for other men were not so kind and would kill an old dog with a blow from an axe, and do it badly. Then they'd take the skin and leave the carcass to the crows and gulls, which seems poor reward for all their hard work—a few shovels full of dirt to cover them seems little enough to ask. If we can't give an animal a good life, the least we can offer is a quick and humane death. I've never seen any point in drawing out any creature's suffering.

Mauzy day. Too early for cap/in but: took the train over to Topsail Beach with Dermot just to look. I was tired when we left but he coaxed me into it and I felt quite exhilarated by the time we returned home. I guess it is all the fresh air. Met Monsignor Roche on the way, and addressed him as Father in error, which earned me a poke from Dermot who does it on purpose all the time, just to annoy him. Me is so young it's easy to forget. Mumma seems a little better.

Kate came in smelling of the sea. She had been down to Topsail and helped Mrs. Atkins turn the fish on the flakes. Kate hasn't much colour usually, but today with her hair blown about and the flush on her cheeks, she looked very pretty. I always think of Kate as belonging in the dairy, just as I have always belonged in the kitchen, but she surprised me today by saying she enjoyed making the fish. She must have been telling the truth, for it can't have been the company of that galoot Dermot that made her look so lively. I wouldn't have thought an afternoon spent breaking your back was anything to speak fondly of.

I never liked making fish and I was glad not to have to do it. It would seem to be impossible to grow up in Petty Harbour and not be engaged in the fishery but I was the rare exception, and as I have never loved the sea or anything related to her I am
not sorry. My education in the fishery began the summer after the smallpox epidemic and came to a premature end the following year. My mother, frightened by how helpless I had been before the Bishop arrived, and perhaps impressed by how well I worked under his tuition, determined that my infancy was at an end and my initiation into this vale of tears should begin as soon as possible. Such a determination sounds harsher than it was—at that time, children who could barely walk or feed themselves were expected to help make fish, and my childhood had been unusually prolonged in that no demands had ever been made of me in that direction.

As I was only six, and greener than most children that age, I had little to do but watch that first season. My mother would call me when she went to the flakes and would explain what she was doing and why. The fish had to be stacked, spread, covered, uncovered, turned and gathered in endless combination, all with a view to drying it out without burning it with too much sun or salt or wind. Mother would direct my attention skyward a dozen times a day and point out cloud formations. Then she would direct my eyes to the branch of a tree or bush and have me determine the wind direction. From indications such as these, we had to decide whether we could spread the fish on the flakes, or whether they should be turned, covered or gathered in to be transferred to the sheds on hand barrows.

The weather was an obsession with all of those engaged in catching or making fish. Are the cows lying down? Is the soot falling in the chimney? Do the hills seem too close? Are the birds feeding or perching? One of the first Bible verses I learned to read entirely by myself was Matthew 16: 2 and 3.

Our Lord said to the Pharisees, “When it is evening, ye say it will be fair weather for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering. Oh ye
hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky but can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

Mother had a keen nose, and if she could smell the earth closet, which was below the house over a small ditch, she was alert for rain and we were on tenterhooks. Even my own behavior was taken into account. One morning, Richard and I were loud and rackety, inclined to giggles over our breakfast, and she got very uneasy and a little sharp with us. She walked down to the flakes with Father, to study the sky before he took his boat out for the second trip of the day, and everything looked like fair weather so he went about his work, but just before she came into the house, the cow up in the field flicked its tail three times and took a kick at a rabbit or something. Then, as she stepped through the door, Richard upset a pan of milk warming on the stove. She didn't even stop to clean the milk up—left it to burn and ran with all her might down to the wharf again to call Father back in off the water. An hour later, it was blowing a gale and a bait skiff went down with all hands drowned.

The labour of spreading, turning and gathering the fish was endless, and there were few short cuts. If only a shower was expected, it was sometimes judged appropriate merely to turn the fish skin side up, but if any amount of rain at all was due, the fish had to be gathered in piles and covered with rinds or old sailcloth or anything to keep them dry. Serious weather required that the fish be put under proper cover and for this Mother had to have help, usually a boy or old man belonging to one of the bigger families, hired on through the summer in exchange for board alone.