Blackstrap Hawco (30 page)

Work. The thought of it drew the leaden density back into her being. She raised her book. Reading in the daytime was beginning to feel more like a luxury than a medicinal necessity. Keeping herself away from her family. Locking herself away behind a door. Why did it feel as though it was something that
had
to be done? Something linked to her very existence? Jacob in front of his TV. Some days, forgetting that he was supposed to fish. Blackstrap out to keep it all together. Poor soul. He knew what mattered.

Emily focused on the words. The exploration party in the Antarctic had eaten one of the Manchurian ponies used for pulling the sleighs. The pony had a name, Penny, and used to be fawned over by the men. It did not matter now. Familiarity. Friendship. There was only one thing they were now prospecting from the snow and ice: hope.

They would all soon die. Each and every one of them. Frozen into
that icy terrain that most believed was best left unexplored. Not her. She would go there in an instant. It was what she woke thinking each morning. A plain of white in her head. A storm closing in. Bracing herself as it blew in grey from the far distance. She would plan it. She would save what little money she could scrape together. Yes, she would get a job if need be. She would tread freely into that blinding white gale to find endurance – instead of crippling fear – in the prospect of loss.

 

Jacob lifted his mug of tea. There was something about that grandfather on
The Waltons
that made him want to be his friend, invite him over for a good feed. The grandfather on
The Waltons
would appreciate a Newfoundland cook-up, a plate piled high with chicken and salt beef and pease pudding and dressing and vegetables with the whole works slathered over with steaming-hot gravy. None of that Swanson TV dinner, although he was growing fond of the whipped potatoes if you put a little extra butter on them; he particularly liked the potato crust on top, and the little apple cobbler wasn't bad either. Not enough of it though to truly satisfy a hungry man.

Another swallow of tea. Jacob glanced at the clock on the wall. What came on after
The Waltons
? He wished that
The Waltons
would just keep running, one show after another. If there was only a way of doing that. He liked that family, liked being with them. He could watch them all day. He would give them a hand, if he could. Work day and night for them. Watch day and night. Working with them. Helping them. They could use a hand every now and then. They were in hard straits, but they always stuck together. That's the way a family was supposed to be.

 

(July, 1975)

Emily had finished scrubbing the kitchen floor and washing the dishes. Now, she clipped one of Blackstrap's plaid shirts to the clothes line. The wheels squeaked as she pulled the bottom line toward her so that the shirt moved out toward the shed. The sun was behind her, warming her hair. As the day progressed, the sun would shift along the side of the house and eventually, toward evening, hang in the sky over the shed where it would set into the trees and spill orange in through the windows at the back of the house.

While clipping a pair of trousers on the line, Emily caught sight of a flash of vivid blue. A blue jay had landed on a nearby spruce. It screeched and hopped around, swaying the boughs. Blue jays always intrigued her because they were a bird she used to think never existed in Newfoundland. The first time she had seen one, last year, she had asked Jacob whether it was native to the island. He had answered by saying that the birds had always been around, as long as he could remember, even when he was a boy down in Bareneed.

Emily wondered why she couldn't remember ever seeing one until then. The bird was large, almost as big as a crow. They were definitely new to the area. Why now? she wondered. Why have they come? She noticed the bird's size and height, as though she might be reading of the bird in one of her books, the way every sort of landscape and living thing was described in detail. Her mind locked on a field of white snow, a bamboo pole with a black flag at the top, the marker for a depot of provisions left out in the expanse of snow by explorers as they made their way into unexplored terrain. Too warm here, where she lived. Too hot.

She reached into her laundry basket and took up a pair of Blackstrap's underwear, pinned them on the line. She wondered if he had a new girlfriend now. There was that young one, Agnes Bishop, who went away, back for a spell of time there a while ago. How long ago was that? A month? A year? Blackstrap was not one to talk about his life. And when Jacob ribbed him about who his latest girlfriend was, Blackstrap said nothing in reply and seemed to stiffen as though protecting himself. He spent practically no time in the house. Emily knew how he felt penned in, always the need to be outside since he was a boy, to be doing something with his hands. Still, what Blackstrap did with his spare time was an utter mystery to her.

 

‘Come 'ere, I tells ya da news,' Jacob called out as Blackstrap entered the house. ‘Dat fisheries minister, Romeo what's his name, LeBlank or something, were in Sin John's. Did ya hear what he was on about?'

‘No.' Blackstrap stood in the living room doorway. He wiped at his mouth with the side of his hand and looked back from where he had come. Then he turned and moved down the hallway and into his room.

‘Da most sensible bit of news I heard frum da federal gover'ment in
years,' Jacob continued, raising his voice. ‘Dey're setting a two-hundred-mile limit fer dose foreign trawlers ta keep dem bastards clear of our cod. Coming inta effect in January. Keep dem dat far away frum us. Two hundred mile. Not nearly far enough. Bloody friggers.'

Jacob kept watching toward the hallway, saw Blackstrap come out of his room with a pair of jeans in his hands. Blackstrap moved into the kitchen so that Jacob had to raise his voice even more:

‘Not far 'nough, I says. Kick dere arses right ta da udder side of da ocean is wha' dey should do. Da Portugee and da Spaniards, dey deserves a good smack in da gob. Jus' cause dey were 'ere a hundred year ago dey figure dey can stick around 'n suck da fish out from under us.'

Blackstrap reappeared in the hallway with a sports bag in hand, the one he used for his ice skates. Distracted, he went back into his bedroom. It looked like he was going skating. But it was summer the last time Jacob noticed.

‘If dere were a shred of decency in da world, someone would blast dose friggin' pirates clear outta da friggin', God-forsaken water.'

Again, Blackstrap came out of his bedroom and stopped, glanced at the door to his mother's bedroom. It was shut.

‘Where ye off ta?'

‘Nowhere.' Blackstrap turned away and left the house, the back door shutting after him. In a moment, his car started and drove away, the sound of the engine fading.

 

(November, 1975)

With Christmas just around the corner, Emily applied for a job at several places. She was hired at the gas station chain in Port de Grave. Each afternoon, Jacob drove her there in silence and let her out. He was dead set against the whole idea of it, but he wouldn't take unemployment insurance like the other fishermen did, like he was entitled to. So many weeks of work, so many weeks of handouts from the federal government. He wouldn't have anything to do with being what he called ‘a government poverty case,' even if it was only for part of the year. Call it whatever program name you liked, Emily knew that Jacob felt it was still an admission of defeat, and the mark of a lesser man made that way by charity. Years ago, there would've been no need for Emily to work, no
need for unemployment insurance. Everyone got by just fine. A hand-to-mouth existence occasionally, but none of the more complicated pressures that existed today. People not having enough money to pay their mortgage or make their car payments. Those things being taken away from people, and rightly so, Jacob insisted. If you couldn't afford it, why buy it? So someone else could own it for you and you lived in it or drove around in it as a second-class citizen, as a boarder. Interest tacked on top of interest until the price doubled or tripled. What sort of fool would get caught up in that swindling racket?

Thank God they owned their own house. A true blessing there. And Jacob's boat was entirely his own, despite the fact that he didn't make as much money from his catch as he used to. He hadn't told Emily as much. He was not one to talk about money, but she knew by the little signs. He no longer boasted about the size of his catch. No longer seemed to have the prosperous energy he once possessed. Even a few years ago, Jacob would have found work doing anything, welding, repairing machinery or driving a plough. But lately, he was more and more forgetful. Emily even worried about him driving his pickup. She had thought of mentioning that he should go to the doctor, but he wouldn't have anything to do with doctors or hospitals. Emily feared that something might be going wrong with his mind. She didn't believe that he would become violent like those people she heard about on TV, but she was concerned about his inability to function. Then again, there were times she feared him. Certain times, at night, when she despaired.

If Blackstrap hadn't gone away, Emily might have felt more secure, might have asked him to have a talk with Jacob, to try to reason with him about seeing a doctor. But Blackstrap had been gone since July. Away. Working in Halifax. She could not talk with Jacob any longer. Away. All of her children away. Jacob talked constantly about TV shows and tragic news from the United States. The way he looked at her when he explained the killings and disasters brought out something in his face that never existed before. He seemed desperate to tell her, even though she had explained to him that she did not want to hear. That sort of news made the grey creep back in like a water stain moving from the outer edge of paper toward the centre to turn the paper into slate.

The envelopes that arrived from Blackstrap contained crisp twenty-
dollar bills. The envelopes were addressed to Mr. Jacob Hawco, Cutland Junction, Newfoundland. The writing appeared to be feminine and Emily wondered who might be addressing the envelopes for Blackstrap. Jacob brought the envelopes home from the post office. Even though they were addressed to him, he handed them over to her, as though he wouldn't have anything to do with the money, as though it belonged to her. She being the woman. Blackstrap in Halifax, after that young Agnes Bishop, chasing her there. The money Emily's fault.

Emily looked out the window of the gas station and saw a car pull up to the pumps. She found it sad watching the cars be filled, the need to keep going, to travel. She wished they still had their horse. Cars scared her. Two young people from Cutland Junction were recently killed on the highway. She barely knew them. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. Teenagers in high school. She had gone to the funeral home and looked at them. It had been a mistake. She had watched the mothers weeping near the open caskets, being comforted by family and friends. She would not go near them. She merely stood and stared and then she left, her head wavering with a giddiness that, rather than filling her with mortal sadness, made her feel relieved.

She had walked home through Cutland Junction, aware of the breath in her nostrils, aware of her eyes seeing the stillness, aware of the way her skin felt the night air…A car had come up behind her and slowed. The window rolled down. It was Isaac Tuttle. Did she need a ride, he asked. No, she had said. I'm fine. Isaac had nodded a few times while keeping his eyes on her face, then slowly rolled up his window and headed off. She had watched the car drive away and was made stony by her recollection of them together. How long ago was that? And what had come of it? A horrible sickness at her centre. She would not allow herself to think of it. It always led to one person. Blackstrap.

 

(January, 1977)

‘Let's do it,' said Gary Gilmore. Famous last words. Stick a cigarette in his mouth.

Gary Gilmore was blindfolded. The firing squad took aim. Gary Gilmore died. The way he fell was perfectly believable. It was a re-enactment for TV. An actor named Gary Gilmore played Gary
Gilmore. The resemblance was remarkable. The image was made unsteady to look like it was taken by someone who wasn't supposed to be there. Secret footage captured by a camera under a coat. But the actor didn't really die. When the camera was shut off, the actor got up and went home. Believe it, anyway. Like it happened. Some of it was real. Some of it was not.

People talked about the real thing. Witnesses who were allowed to watch. Given permission. Assigned seats. It was almost funny, one man said. Jacob didn't know who the man was because Jacob had just switched the channel on, from a laugh track to this. First man executed in the United States since 1967. There were opinions as to why that happened. For. Against. Why murder at all?

Jacob almost laughed. Foolishness. Fools, the whole lot of 'em. ‘Fools,' he said aloud, then switched the channel. Americans. Archie Bunker. The Jews. The Black People. The Spics. That was funny, too. Someone else's problem. But why was it sad sometimes? Why did Archie Bunker look so sad sometimes?

Jacob flicked the channel back. Gilmore deserved it, anyway. Most people seemed to think so. He was meant to die. If only they had shown the real thing. It might have been all the more believable. It might have made Jacob almost care.

 

(March, 1977)

Pictures in newspapers and magazines of Brigitte Bardot. She was glamorous. Gorgeous. Foreign. Blonde hair. Puffy lips. She was not old yet. But she was getting there. Soon, she would be nobody. Brigitte Bardot hugged the baby seal. Her hands were positioned just so. A ring on her finger, a gold bracelet on her wrist. Fingernails painted. Her expression of soft concern was something she recalled from a director who once helped her feel that way. A director who fucked her into feeling that way when she was younger. That was the look she remembered. She summoned. Snap the picture. Know how to manipulate, said the director, naked in a room with a glass of bourbon in his hand. The words in her head. Know how to move the audience. The baby seal was pure pure pure white and had big sad sad sad black eyes. Who would kill such a thing? Who would be so heartless? Not an adolescent. If we were all ungrown. Cuddly and
fluffy. Not a child who just knew that these things were wrong. A child who hated her parents for eating meat. How could you?! Cannibals! The baby seal. Please, save the baby seal. Not a child, really, though. Answer me that. Why did things have to die? Little things. Why?