Fit Month for Dying (3 page)

As soon as the kitchen has been put to rights, Paddy and Danny, each hugging his case of beer, and Greg and I go upstairs to begin the deathwatch. When the four of us begin to settle ourselves on the floor beside Hubert's bed, we realize that the cramped space is far too small, especially with having to accommodate the beer. With little fanfare we break camp and move into the hall just outside Hubert's door. I take pillows from the other bedrooms so we can squat on them and keep the linoleum floor from freezing our kidneys.

Upstairs the storm sounds even worse than it did when we were in the kitchen. It seems to have gathered strength. Rain pelts hard on the flat, tarred roof, and the house sways with each raging surge of wind that rams against the clapboards. Although we all wear heavy sweaters, the damp coldness immediately penetrates our flesh. It even seeps up through the duck feather pillows. We shuffle ourselves around in an effort to block out the cold.

A naked forty-watt bulb hangs by a long cord from the hall ceiling, and in this dim, yellow light, Greg tries to read material for an upcoming court case. Danny and Paddy smoke cigarettes and drink beer until the air around us is fog-coloured and the wall that separates the hall from Hubert's bedroom is lined bumper to bumper with empty bottles. As fast as one cigarette burns down another is lit, and as fast as one bottle of beer is emptied, another is uncapped. The two of them take turns sharing their Black Horse, two bottles out of this case, two bottles out of that one. Knowing that neither Greg nor I smoke or drink beer, they never bother offering to share with us. In between their smoking and drinking they swap jokes, their voices growing louder and louder as the beer disappears. Over their raised voices, I keep an ear cocked towards Hubert's bedroom, vigilant for some sound that will send me scurrying to hold the lighted candle in his hand.

The strangling, watery noises escape from Hubert's throat as loud as ever, so loud the raging wind can't muffle them, sending shivers through all of us Even Danny's raised voice as he tells Paddy still another raucous joke can't drown them out. When Hubert emits a particularly harsh rattle, Danny shouts, “Paddy, me son! Did I ever tell you about the time I was in St. John's, walking down Duckworth Street with Mick O'Brien?” He doesn't wait for Paddy's reply in case he says he has already heard this story, which will force him to dig around for another one.

“Well sir,” he begins, “it was winter, and the wet snow was as slippery as chicken shit on damp grass. Mick had just bought a flask of cheap red wine with his last couple of dollars, and the minute he came out of the liquor store he fell down on the ground, right on his arse pocket, right where he had stuffed the flask.” He pats the back of his hip to demonstrate. “Well sir, in seconds that snow around him turned blood red, and when Mick saw the red snow he didn't know whether he had smashed the flask to pieces or cut his arse wide open, so he grabbed up a fistful of the soaking red snow and licked it. After a few licks, a big smile spread over his face, and he said, as relieved as all hell, ‘Thanks be to God. 'Tis just blood.'”

Paddy laughs uproariously and then launches into his own Mick O'Brien story.

“Don't you fellows know that hearing is the last faculty to go?” Greg chastises them. “How would you like to be lying in that bed dying and the rest of us out here laughing and joking?”

In their eagerness to apologize, their words tumble over each other.

“Sorry!”

“Sorry!”

“'Tis the beer,” Paddy whispers, holding up an empty bottle. “The last thing we want to do is hurt Mr. Hube.”

“Or wake up Mom,” Danny adds. “She's grogged, not dead. If she gets up she'll scalp the both of us. It won't matter to her, Paddy my boy, that you're not her son.”

Paddy nods. Philomena has been his neighbour for more than twenty years. Danny and Paddy fall silent. The silence magnifies the rattle coming from Hubert's throat so unmercifully that, after only a few minutes, Danny, who has been hugging his arms around himself and rocking back and forth on his haunches as if this will deaden the sounds, can't stand it a moment longer. He reaches out and plucks at Greg's arm.

“Talk to us, Greg,” he pleads. “Put those damn papers away and say something. Tell us court stories. Crooked lawyer stories. Come on! Anything as long as it'll smother that noise. I can't stand to listen to that poor devil strangling himself to death.”

Greg looks up from his reading. “At least he's not suffering now. He's beyond that. Not like last night.” He returns to his work, not offering to take part in their conversation.

Danny scoots his empty beer bottle across the linoleum floor as
if it were a bowling ball. As he intended, it hits Paddy in the leg, jerking him out of a doze.

“For the love of God, Paddy my son,” Danny charges, “look alive! We're not here to death-watch you. Dance a jig! Screech! Sing! Sing ‘Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor.' I'll join in.” He begins to sing softly.

Jack was every inch a sailor,

Four and twenty years a whaler.

He breaks off, beckons with both hands. “Come on! Come on! Up! Up! Do something. I'm about to jump out of my skin.”

Not waiting for Paddy to shake himself alert, he turns his attention to me. I am squeezed in between Greg and Paddy, my knees bunched up to my chin, my arms tightly circling my knees, my nerves as threadbare as Danny's own.

“For God's sake, Greg,” he says, “take a look at Tess. She's all scrunched up like a cat in a passion and breathing jerkier than Dad.”

Then, as if he can't keep the tension in his body boxed in any longer, he jumps up and begins singing again, just above a whisper.

'Twas on the Labrador, me boys, 'twas on the Labrador.

'Twas on the Labrador, me boys, 'twas on the Labrador.

He scuffs around the floor, doing a makeshift step-dance.

“Shut up, Danny!” Greg orders. “Sit down! No more singing! No more dancing! No more loud talking!”

“Then
you
throw those damn papers down and
you
do something to keep us from getting the heebie jeebies,” Danny shoots back. “Come on, for the love of God, Greg, talk to us. You seem to know something about that custom of putting the candle in a dying person's hand. I never heard of it before. Tell me it's not some sort of Ouija board that she's got all ready and waiting in there. I took a look when I first came up. Starched white cloth on the table. Fancy glass candle holder. Like getting ready for a séance.”

“I don't know much more about it than you do.” Greg, annoyed by being pestered, rests his papers on his knee. “An old Druid custom, I think. And the Irish kept it up. Like she said, something about lighting your way to heaven. But it's been done away with for ages now. At least for the most part, it's been done away with. Some people may still keep it up.”

“Then why? Why is she doing it?”

“She doesn't believe it's been done away with, that's why.” Greg remains edgy. “People mostly die in hospitals now. So she doesn't know the custom's dying out. And it's been years since she sat at a deathbed.” Greg picks his papers back up. “Just go along with her about the candle. It might help her. And it can't hurt him.”

Without answering, Danny rummages around in the carton of Black Horse for two more bottles. Clutching both of them with one hand, he uncaps one for Paddy and the other for himself. “A bunch of horseshit. That's what it is,” he pronounces. He takes a mouthful of beer, swallows it and looks at Paddy, who is beginning to doze off again.

“Some hope of lighting your way to heaven, eh, Paddy?” he says, reaching over with his free hand to tweak Paddy's grey-socked foot. “Eh, Paddy? Might work out in California. But not in Newfoundland. Not on this bloody rock. That damn candle will gutter out just from the wind that's whistling around the window casings in Dad's room. Like I said downstairs, what you need here is a smudge pot. Like they use on the highways. Won't even go out in a hurricane.”

He tweaks Paddy's foot again, this time more roughly.

“Listen to me, Paddy! Don't you dare fall asleep! Listen to me! When I'm dying I want you to get me a smudge pot. Two if you can get hold of them. I could use an extra bit of light to find wherever the hell it is I'll be going.”

He laughs at his own nonsense. “Yes siree, imagine that! Old Danny Boy all lit up, and not on Black Horse. And on his way to paradise, no less.” He holds his bottle over his head like a beacon. “I hope there's a brewery up there. Lots of Black Horse. I'm not going otherwise, I'll say ‘Let me stay on this damn rock. That's hell enough.'”

“Shh, Danny!” Greg warns as Danny's voice rises. “How many times do I have to tell you, you'll wake Mom, even if she has a couple of those pills into her. She'll be up and tearing strips off all of us.”

Once more we all fall into silence, so much silence in fact that I become conscious of my own breathing. With every gust of wind the house gives a little, making the ceiling light swing back and forth on its long cord. In this slanted, naked light the rows of water lilies race up and down the wallpaper, forming grotesque shapes. To distract myself and to calm my nerves, I concentrate on these shapes. But the concentrating only unravels my nerves. In each contorted, gruesome configuration I can see the face of Death. In fact, Death is so present, it is as if there are now five of us in the hall waiting for Hubert's last breath. I know Danny, too, feels this eerie presence because he fidgets constantly, pulling the pillow out from underneath him, hauling the sleeves of his sweater down around his hands, glancing towards Hubert's room. Finally, he declares in a voice starting to get thick and fuzzy from the beer. “I don't give a shag, Greg, if we wake up everyone in the Cove, we've got to do something or before this night's over we'll all end up in the Mental. If we keep listening to that poor devil in there choking to death, we'll end up as crazy as old Madeline Fitzpatrick. We'll be hearing voices coming out of the piss pots.”

Madeline Fitzpatrick's delusions twig a memory in the dozing Paddy. He shakes himself awake. “Or like Mrs. O'Dearin.”

He turns to me. “Remember her, Tess? Used to swear that the buzz coming from the transformers on the telephone poles was the Germans spying on us on account of the American base here. And just before the war started, when that Zeppelin flew over the Cove, she said, ‘My God, what a queer world 'tis. The Germans are flying in aeroplanes and the Newfoundlanders are flying in rags.'” He shrugs. “At least they said she said that.”

Danny nudges my foot with his. “Come on, Tess. Give out with the dirt in the House. You must have lots of stuff to tell, mixing with those politicians every day of your life. All those members. I still can't believe you're an MHA. Honest to God I can't. The first woman Member of the House of Assembly in Newfoundland. Imagine that! I'm always bragging about you in the camp. About my sister-in-law with all that political pull.”

“And did you tell them that I was barely elected when our party got thrown out? Did you tell them that I'm an opposition MHA? That the Liberal Party is in shambles? That I've no more power than a beer bum on George Street?”

“Not true,” Paddy says defensively, instantly wide awake now that he has gotten a sniff of politics. “You should hear her whenever she gets a chance to speak. She lambastes those buggers. Saw her the other day on the TV. She was speaking on the floor of the House. Stuck it right to the Premier. Nailed him on the spot. Asked him what he was going to do about those animal rights groups, ‘those ignorant people from away,' she called them. Said they were savaging the reputation of the Newfoundland people by saying we enjoys clubbing seals.”

He stops talking long enough to take a swallow of beer.

“Yes, b'y,” he continues, bringing Danny up to date. “They've been calling us barbarians and thugs and God knows what all. Crucifying us. That's what they're doing. Maybe you read about it out in British Columbia. They say we're not doing the seal hunt fer the money. We're doing it because we enjoys it.” He gives a small, sardonic laugh. “As if anyone with a shaggin' dollar to his name would want to be out on an ice pan up to his armpits in blood and guts.”

He points with his beer bottle towards me. “But she put it right to the Premier, she did. Told him those do-gooders were out for their own glory, not for the welfare of the seals. And she told him that it's on account of them the seal fishery is banned and the people are out of work. And she told him the multiplying seals are eatin' up all the codfish — now, b'y, that's inshore codfish we're talkin' about. And then she got on him about the Norwegians over-fishing the northern cod and anything else they can scoop up while they're at it. Said if we don't establish a two-hundred-mile off-shore limit to stop them dredging the bottom, within ten years we won't have anything with a fin on it left in the Newfoundland and Labrador waters.”

He takes another swallow of beer and then looks across at me. “I loved how you said that, girl. ‘Nothing with a fin on it will be left in our waters.'”

He turns back to Danny. “And sure, b'y, that's the God's honest truth. They try to make us believe them seals ent eatin' up the fish. But my God Almighty, what do they think they're eatin'? Those shaggin' things lives thirty or forty miles out to sea, so they sure as hell ent eatin' turnips. They're not likely to be havin' a feed of salt beef and cabbage.