The Doryman (12 page)

PART 3

Chapter Twenty-Nine

H
e often laughed to himself at the irony of it. But other times it made him rueful. He had never wanted to go to sea. But what else were you going to do? But now he was getting offers from skippers all over the place. He was known as a hard worker, very responsible, diligent, and a top-quality salter. Salting was a real art, everyone knew, and not everyone could do it right.

Captain Hollett in Burin wanted Richard to come fishing with him. A skipper in Spaniard's Bay, all the way over in Conception Bay, made him an offer. Captains in Fortune Bay, Petite Forte, and St. Lawrence wanted him to join their crews. Once, he took the Warehams of Harbour Buffett up on their offer.

Being in demand didn't make him rich, though. Far from it. It made him less poor, he often joked with Angela. That was as much as a Banks fisherman could hope for in this country in this day and age. It was the Depression, too, and Newfoundland was as hard hit as anywhere else. The price of fish was low, and fishermen had to work harder to make the same money they'd made before the Crash of 1929.

He'd always wanted to live in the city. He associated the city, its busyness and great variety, with learning, something he also hankered after. But he could never see a way to it. How could a Banks fishermen, a doryman, set himself and his wife and seven children up in St. John's, after all? The older girls, Lucy and Monnie, would be in service in St. John's in a couple of years. Maybe they'd marry city men and their children would be city people, educated people with books all around them. But somehow he doubted it. Fate had played too big a role in his life.

He was forty-six now and the rest of the children were half-reared. Only Patrick was too young for school; he was only five.

Well, if he couldn't ever realize his dream of living in the city, he could perhaps achieve his ambition of having a shore job. His encounter with Peter Moulton in Burin after his first spring trip had put this idea into his head long ago. But that had been a bitter experience, he recalled. It wasn't possible then, not in that time, not with Old Steve breathing down his neck until the day the Lord finally carried him off.

But it might be now. He was his own man now. Even better, he had a wife who trusted him and supported his decisions. Whenever he'd changed schooners, even when he'd stopped fishing on the
Tancook
with her brothers to go with the Warehams, she'd thought it was the right thing to do. Angela was never afraid of change. She took life as it came, and her easy way had allowed him to relax somewhat over the years. Even during the hungry month of March in the Depression years, when they had to scrape the bottom of the flour barrel, he no longer paced the floor and bit his fingernails until they hurt.

When she said, “What's done is done,” he nodded. Somehow they always got through even the worst of times.

Life as a Banks fisherman, a doryman, was a hard one and it would not have been his first choice. But over the years, he had even grown to like “pieces of it”; he often served as cook and delighted in making fish and brewis and tasty chowders for the men, and he took pride in being such a good salter, something he rightfully regarded as a craft. Frequently he was first mate, and many captains relied on his skills in taking soundings and reading the signs of the weather. Richard took pleasure in all this.

But the monotony, the constant hauling, and the sheer impossibility of ever getting ahead all made him weary. And his chest still tightened with the dread of the sea swell he had first felt when the ferryman took him to St. Pierre Bank thirty years before. His head still swished with the threat of sickness, which he always kept at bay, somehow, since it had been battered out of him a lifetime ago. He detested the salt air, the drizzle, the fog, the ice columns, and rain pellets that tortured the men as they hauled trawl. He detested the water pups that formed on his wrists and the pains that crept up his back, pains he had to ignore if his family were to eat that winter. At times, his innards twisted with the fear of snow squalls and August gales.

Worse, he hated the feeling that real life lay elsewhere. The life beyond his reach was of land, grass, paths, houses, wives, children, his harmonica, the church. He felt like a visitor to this real life, someone who was destined to spend most of his time in a watery purgatory. He had only occasional, fleeting leaves to the world. In a way, he felt like someone who was only alive part-time, when he was on land. He didn't tell anyone these things, not even Angela. He didn't have to, for she understood him.

Chapter Thirty

I
n 1933 and '34, Richard fished with Jim Joe Farrell, his neighbour in Little Bay. Jim Joe captained the
Ronald W
, a forty-ton schooner that was old and that Richard never quite trusted. His brother Jack had joined him on the
Ronald W
, and they'd fished foggy Cape St. Mary's and the St. Pierre Bank, where the dark spirit of their father seemed to overhang everything. That year the fishing had been poor; catches were low, and to make matters worse, prices had dropped even further. All over the world, the pain of the Great Depression was continuing to make itself felt.

Much taller than Richard and darkly handsome, Jack was in his mid-thirties but had not yet married. One romance had faltered because of his intended's disapproving mother, who had regarded Jack as too handsome for his own good. Now, however, Jack was engaged again to a girl from Spanish Room. He was building a little house on the bottom of the hill on the south side of Little Bay, just below Rachel's and Richard's homes.

The brothers were stowing the
Ronald W's
gear for the winter, hauling the mainsail to Farrell's stores, when Richard confided in Jack.

“I've got a mind not to go to sea next year,” he said somewhat tentatively.

“What are you going to do instead?” Jack answered, laughing. “Become a gentleman farmer? A squire or something?”

Richard frowned. “I've got an idea. It just might work.”

Jack let go of the sail. His brother had adopted that real serious way he had. He nodded to let Richard know he was listening.

“Well,” Richard began slowly. “Look at John Power's place over there.” He pitched his head in the direction of Power's premises, where the flakes jutted out into the harbour. “And Paddy Hanrahan's, and Leonard Hanrahan's.”

Jack considered what his brother was saying. The three men Richard had mentioned had gone into business for themselves. Schooner captains brought their catches to them, where they washed and dried them, then had their women employees make them. Afterwards, the captains returned to collect it. John, Paddy, and Leonard worked for themselves, no one else. They were able to stay onshore year-round. Both of these things appealed immensely to Richard, as he explained to his brother.

Another alternative was to manage a premises for one of the larger fish companies. In Little Bay, Philly Walsh did just this for A.H. Murray.

“Maybe I can start out that way,” Richard said.

“You're the best salter in the bay,” Jack said firmly. “There's no disagreement on that. You could learn the women and young men how to salt right.” Then he paused. “So why should you work for anyone else? You should go right into business for yourself.”

“That might be hard to do right off the bat, though,” Richard said. “I might need some money. Where in hell does a man get his hands on some money around here?”

Jack bit his lip and said nothing. His brother had a point about that. He was torn. These were hard times, very hard times. But he knew Richard was sick of the water and hated fishing. There had to be a way for this thing to work.

*

“Here it is,” Jack announced, as he burst into Richard and Angela's kitchen a few days later. “I've got the answer.”

“The answer to what?” Angela said. “You figured out how to stop winter from coming?”

He flashed a grin at his petite sister-in-law and jumped out of his boots, rushing over to Richard at the table having a mid-morning mug-up.

“What is it, Jack b'y?” Richard asked expectantly, laying his cup down.

“Here. ‘Men wanted at Corner Brook building site',” he read from a newspaper clipping. “They're still hiring over there, even though they got the mill built. They're putting up houses.”

“Where did you get that?” Richard asked, taking the scrap of paper and turning it over. He seemed more interested in the news stories on the other side than in the ad itself. He began to read aloud, “The Italian government – ”

“Never mind that, Dick,” Jack said impatiently. “Here's a way we can get some money.”

A look of realization crossed Richard's face, and he nodded, at first slowly, and then more excitedly.

“Yes, b'y, that's what we'll do,” he said.

“You're just home, and now you're off again,” Angela said.

“Can I go, Dad?” young Vince asked. He had wandered into the kitchen after hearing the commotion.

“No, son,” Richard told the ten-year-old. “When you're a bit older, you and me will work together. We'll go working onshore somewhere.”

Angela smiled. She knew how Richard's father had beaten the seasickness out of him. She knew he would slowly and gently introduce his own sons to the world of work.

“Well, I suppose I better get the two of you ready,” she said, referring to Richard and Jack. “You'll have to get on one of the coastal boats. I suppose they got somewhere over there for the men to stay. And I hope they got decent food.”

“Corner Brook is being all built up, Angela,” Richard said. “There's a mill there now. It's a big town. There's bound to be everything there.”

“There's men going to Corner Brook from all over the island,” Jack said. “There's plenty of work there.”

“Maybe it'll rival St. John's one day for industry and such,” Richard said.

A thought crossed his mind. Maybe, if it was a nice place and there was work there, he could move his family there. He glanced at Angela. Would she leave the bay? Yes, he thought, she would. He looked back at the table.

She sat down beside him. She glanced at him. Maybe they'd go live there, she thought, if it'd get him off the water. He could see what it was like there. There must be lots of families moving there if their men were going to work in the mill.

Richard brought his thoughts back to the money he and Jack would earn at the Corner Brook construction sites.

Angela spent the next couple of days darning their socks and woollen gloves and packing their clothes. Then she made piles of saltbeef sandwiches that would sustain them on their long journey along the South Coast of the island.

As the coastal boat carried them across Fortune Bay, then past Hermitage, the mouth of Bay d'Espoir, Grey River, LaPoile, and Isle aux Morts, Richard dared to hope that maybe he had left the Banks fishery behind as well.

Chapter Thirty-one

T
hrough the winter and spring of 1934, Richard and Jack and hundreds of other men from around Newfoundland laboured in the cold to expand the new town of Corner Brook. The company owned the townsite, as it was called, and it was responsible for building all the houses and roads there. This gave Richard a bad feeling. It was another variation of the merchant controlling everything, he thought.
At least we have our own house back home
, he thought, and no one could take Angela's kitchen garden away from her. If they wanted to, the company could kick people out of their homes here, at least in theory.

The town was growing so fast that construction of the townsite hadn't been able to keep pace. The homes there couldn't accommodate everyone who came. Plus, many Newfoundlanders with Richard's mindset didn't want to live there; they preferred to build their own houses outside the townsite. As a result, little homes sprung up haphazardly on the hills that surrounded Corner Brook and made it so picturesque. There was raw sewage in the pathways, though, and disease spread quickly: flu, fevers, tuberculosis, even typhoid. Richard decided that he would not take his family here. Maybe one day in the future, when the problems that inevitably resulted in a new town were sorted out. But that would be a long way off. Jack told him he was cracked for even thinking of moving here.

“You got your money now,” he told his brother on the way home. “That's what we came for, not to become refugees.”

“Jack, she's not much now,” Richard said. “But mark my words, one day Corner Brook will be really something, a beautiful place. I can see it in the making now.”

They had missed the spring trip with Jim Joe and the
Ronald W
but they didn't mind, for they had money in their pockets, a rare thing in their lives, and in the middle of the Depression, too. It was another thing with Jim Joe, but he would live with their decision. He was glad to get Dick Hanrahan, master salter, for the rest of the year. He considered himself lucky. He knew other captains, some of them on bigger vessels, had gone after Dick and made him offers. He was glad they were both from Little Bay; he had a feeling that Dick was loyal to men from his own community.

He was glad to have Jack, too. Jack's height seemed to give him extra strength and speed, which served him well on the Banks. He was able to row, pitch fish, and lift heavy sails with ease. The other men enjoyed his companionship, his energy, and his humour. Jim Joe knew that every bit of brightness counted out there in the dampness and fog that was their ever-present companion.

But their first trip to the Cape – and, Richard hoped, the beginning of his last year fishing – had not gone as expected. Jack was uncharacteristically slow emerging from his bunk, and then moving about the deck. In Dory Number 1, which he shared with Richard, he was listless and quiet. He got worse each day, so much so that Richard ceased counting fish the way their father had taught him, and instead obsessed with his brother's health.

When the
Ronald W
sailed into Little Bay loaded down, Jim Joe and Richard bundled Jack into Dory Number 1 and rowed him to the bottom of the hill. Then they carried him up to Rachel's house, where they knew she could doctor him. He was so tired, and his skin had a yellowish cast when they brought him in.

“It's TB,” Rachel said after only a quick look at him. “He's got TB. Probably got it in Corner Brook.” She looked down at him on her daybed, remembering her daughter Margaret, lost to the disease not long before. She glanced at Jim, Margaret's twin, standing next to his uncle and Jim Joe. His face was sombre. What could she do for Jack when she could do nothing for her own child?

Down below the hill, the other dories were reaching the beaches of Little Bay, where the dorymen would dump fish and the women would spread it in the sun to dry. Richard and Jim Joe walked solemnly back to the dory and then rowed out to the schooner and began loading her with fish. All Richard could think of was Jack. He didn't give a damn about all this hard work and slimy fish. He was sick to death of it. He wanted Jack to be part of the enterprise he planned. Jack, a young man who was going to be married next winter, had already built his house and was making furniture whenever he got a chance. Tuberculosis. Every bloody thing that could just had to go wrong.

He felt like a cork bobbing about on the sea, being pushed this way and that by a swell that just wouldn't stop. All around him were other corks: Jack, Angela, Rachel, his children.