Blackstrap Hawco (45 page)

September 12, 1984 Badly injured in a car crash, singer Barbara Mandrell appears speechless

September 13, 1984 Shimon Peres and Likud co-form Israeli government

September 14, 1984 Bette Midler and Dan Aykroyd lip synch as hosts at first MTV awards

September 15, 1984 Henry Charles Albert David Thomas Edward Peter Frederick Jake, son of Princess Diana, becomes third in British succession

September 16, 1984
Miami Vice
accused of high ratings, white suit sales persist

September 17, 1984 Brian Mulroney sworn in as Canada's 18th Matriarch, accepts bonnet from John Turner

September 18, 1984 1st solo balloon crossing of Atlantic completed by Joe ‘Madman' Kittinger

September 19, 1984 Agreement to transfer Hong Kong to China by 1997 signed by law firm Britain & Britain

September 20, 1984 NBC TV premieres Jell-o commercial
The Cosby Show

September 20, 1984 23 killed in suicide car bomb attack on US Embassy in Beirut

September 21, 1984 Pope John Paul II visits Canada

September 22, 1984 Marriage of Brussels Princess Astrid to Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand of Austria

September 23, 1984
Hill St. Blues
,
Cheers
and John Ritter refuse Emmy Awards

September 24, 1984 ‘No More Lonely Nights' released by Paul McCartney

September 25, 1984 Competition between Xenopus satellite I sequences and Pol III genes for stable transcription complex formation spirals out of control

September 25, 1984 Diplomatic relations resumed between Egypt & Jordan

September 26, 1984 Sanctions against South Africa vetoed by President ‘Home Boy' Reagan

September 28, 1984 Sally Shaffer files an application with the Board of Review to institute further appeal

September 29, 1984 Cars park ‘Drive' at #3 on Billboard charts

September 29, 1984 Betty Ford Clinic welcomes Elizabeth Taylor's addiction without shame

October 1, 1984 After two-year break, Gary Trudeau's
Doonesbury
comic strip resumes high-brow exclusivity

October 2, 1984 First FBI agent, Richard Miller, dejectedly charged with espionage

October 4, 1984 US government shut down by budget problems

October 6, 1984 LPGA Hitachi Ladies British Golf Open won by Yoko Ono

October 6, 1984 US palaeontologist George S. Simpson fully sinks himself into job at 82

October 7, 1984 Striking umps return from God knows where

October 8, 1984 Iron Maiden plays the first of four sold out shows at Hammersmith Odeon

October 11, 1984 Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan first US woman to walk across space

October 11, 1984 Geraldine Ferraro (D) & George Bush (R) debate affordable health and organic products

October 12, 1984 Hotel where Margaret Thatcher stays bombed by INLA

October 13, 1984 $6 million won by thoroughbred John Henry in lottery

October 14, 1984 LPGA Smirnoff Ladies' Irish Golf Open won by Superstar Billy Graham

October 15, 1984 Central Intelligence Agency's Information Act tested on animals

October 16, 1984 Black Tibetan Buddhist Desmond Tutu wins Nobel Peace Prize

October 18, 1984
Discovery
moves to bad neighbourhood in Vandenberg

October 18, 1984 October declared National Head Injury Awareness Month by Press Secretary of the United States

October 19, 1984 Jerzy Popiełuszko, Polish priest, kidnapped and murdered

October 19, 1984 Accidental self-shooting of Jon-Erik Hexum on set of
Cover Up
deemed anti-Hollywood

October 20, 1984 Valley Parkway All Purpose Trails completed in Cleveland Metroparks All Purpose Dump

October 21, 1984 François Truffaut, director, dies of mind-boggling brilliance

October 23, 1984 Ethiopian famine caught live on NBC

October 23, 1984 Lunch vehicle moves to launch pad

October 24, 1984 Colombo crime family sees 11 members arrested, coiffed and released

October 25, 1984 Discovery of Hepatitis virus signals end of liver

October 25, 1984 Chancellor Rainer Barzel resigns due to flagrant dishonesty in West Germany

October 26, 1984 Baboon heart transplanted into ‘Baby Fae'

October 26, 1984
Leave it to Beaver
actress, Sue Randall, dies at 49

October 29, 1984 New York Marathon won by Orlando Pizzolato (2:14:53) and Greta Weitz (2:29:30)

October 30, 1984
Tiger Fangs
actress, June Duprez, dies at 66

October 31, 1984 Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, assassinated by 2 of her own deeply confused bodyguards

 

(November, 1984)

The wind pounded the house so violently that no one could sleep. Emily tried to read in bed, but the book shook in her hands each time the wind gathered itself and struck the house. Winds were gusting up to 120 kilometers an hour. She had heard it on the CBC news. Finally, she laid the book down on the side table and stared at the moulding high on the wall across from her. Jacob was out in the kitchen, mad with her because of an argument they had had about Blackstrap being the way he
was, having to go away. Jacob said it was her fault that Blackstrap left. ‘Why?' she had asked, but Jacob could not explain. His eyes had searched around the floor, seeking an answer. ‘So high 'n mighty,' he had finally said. ‘Merchant's daughter 'n a bloody Protestant ta boot.' He had then blamed her for all of their children being gone. Why did he think this? It was cruel. It made no sense. Regardless, she feared that it all
was
her fault and felt herself wilting with guilt and mortification. When Junior was small and she was pregnant with Blackstrap, she had imagined all of her children living in Bareneed, each with their own house. She had imagined a large family with daughters and sons gathered at Christmas and at birthdays. And twenty or thirty grandchildren, so that if one was lost there would be plenty of others to fill the space. Her family in one place. Not in the earth or on the mainland. She was deeply sorry for her part in it, but she also felt her blood rising at the thought of Jacob's accusations and stubbornness – which had grown worse over the years. He would argue about anything and, most times, his argument would be based on twisted half-truths.

To calm herself, she shut her eyes and let her thoughts drift north, to the Arctic. Her decade-old plan of engaging her own dog team and going off alone into the white wilderness, where she would live in a canvas tent with only the barest of necessities, had been scaled back as she aged. Not far from her sixty-eighth birthday, she had decided to make the journey with a travel group. The bulk of the money she had saved was still hidden away under her mattress. She had seen an advertisement in
Reader's Digest
for an Arctic excursion. She had written away to the address and booked her passage. She would have to travel without Jacob. He would be dead set against it, and she could not bear the burden of him on such a voyage.

Thinking of leaving on her own hurried her heartbeat. She opened her eyes and saw the shut bedroom door. The window above the bed cast shadows of tree limbs there. Always movement, however faint, even in darkness. A trail against an expanse. The trip was scheduled to take place in two months, in the new year. In the Arctic, she would fit with the place of white removal that she had read so much about. The clarity of wide-open coldness, the purity of that. She imagined herself moving off from the others until absolutely alone, lying down in the snow and
staying put, not to die but to somehow live. It had been sixty years since she'd travelled, when she sailed across the Atlantic from Liverpool with her parents. All of the time since then, kept busy with her family and sorrow, then kept to herself.

She reached to shut off her lamp. The click to utter darkness and the living shadows more pronounced on the bedroom door. Settling on her side, her mind was helplessly alert. The secretive thought of leaving filled her with both fear and anticipation, her heartbeat increasing even more, until the beat was intruded upon by a tiny sound, a faint, high-pitched calling. That baby sound again, she thought. She sat up, switching on the light and listening. She recalled the cries that Ruth made at night, how birds would often crash into the window of her room, seemingly drawn by the sound. The tiny bodies on the dark night ground outside the house. There would be crackling in the bushes as animals too appeared more frequently. Mice, shrews and rats were a source of grief then. She had forgotten about that. It had been peculiar at first, but then had been explained away, simply become part of their life.

Hearing the cry repeated, Emily convinced herself that it was only the cat, out in the rain and wind. She recalled Resurrection, the cat that Ruth had always played with, that had always been in the house. The cat that Ruth would let in, despite the protests from Jacob. And where Jacob had found it after Ruth's death. Frozen by the back door, snow and ice stuck to it. It had been hanging where it had got caught up in an old fishing net laid out over the back railing. A hideous signal.

Rising from the bed, Emily slipped her feet into her pink slippers and quickly fitted her arms into the sleeves of her white housecoat.

Jacob watched her as she came into the kitchen, his gaze then fixed unforgivingly on the tea cup he held in his hands.

Emily wondered if he was mad at her or whether his anger had shifted to another recollection, another target, as it frequently did. The immigrants who were flooding into Canada, the people in Quebec who wanted to separate, the…Anger so easy for him now. Anger and spite fit to occupy the space left by his own receding existence.

‘The cat,' she said.

‘Don't worry 'bout it,' he scolded, giving her a hard, injurious look. ‘Is dead. I dealt widt it.'

‘Why don't you go out and let her in the shed? She must be locked out.'

Jacob laughed. ‘I wouldn't put a dog out in dis, let alone gw'out in it meself. She's snarl'd up in dat net. 'N I'm not one ta do da untangl'n. 'N I'm not putting a dead cat in da shed ta rot in da spring. Dat wicked smell come'n out ta meet ye. Da ground's too hard fer bury'n.'

With futility, Emily watched him, talking into his tea cup, and was reminded of Uncle Ace. The man who had disappeared. The body never found, and here he was now, sitting there, that man no different from the other. Only the gift of speech.

‘I'll go then,' Emily said, stood closer to the table, unmoving, seeing if her declaration might spur him to action.

Jacob gave no word. He watched through the corner of his eyes as Emily moved toward the back porch door, out into the porch, and began opening the outer door.

‘Jaysus Christ, I took care of it, I said. Dere's no point ta worrying 'bout a dead cat. Even if she were full o' kittens. Dey died wid 'er. Hung dere like dat.' He rose with a furious curse and moved for Emily, seeing her reaching for the storm door, her body jerking forward as the wind snatched hold of the barrier and slapped it open. Emily flying from the house, out, hurled into the air by the thrust of the wind, her steady grip fixed on the handle, then letting go.

Jacob raced ahead as the door slammed back on him, striking the side of his head. It hurt not a bit. He slapped the door back open, stepped down the three concrete steps and was inclined back by the wind, held still, held up in a slow lean forward, suspended away from the woman on the ground. She was something to him. A body. He strained a look around for the police. Not there. No one with cameras to take a picture of the victim. He struggled with his footing, leaning more and pushing forward as if bending the force with his entire body.

Released, he knelt close to where the woman had landed on her side against a slate flagstone, her eyes open, staring along the grassy line of the earth as the cat sprang up behind Jacob, meowing and rubbing against his hip, circling and arcing its body, rubbing forcefully for such a little thing, purring and sounding its hellish infant cry. He shoved it aside and watched the woman's face. The woman who stayed in bed all
the time. The woman who read books. He knew her. Emily Hawco. He would like to get to know her, if he could.

The cat came nearer and he took it by the throat. Strangled its cry in the howl of the wind as it savagely bit and clawed at his hand. Allowing the injury for a pointless count of moments, he then smashed its skull against a rock.

And the babies came out of her and the babies came out of her and the babies came out of her, each one from a different father.

 

November 2, 1984 Margie V. Barfield, US murderer, first woman electrocuted in 22 years

November 3, 1984 Anti-Sikh riot in India eradicates 3,000 in just three short days

November 4, 1984
Waltons
actress, Merie Earle, dies of lethal wisdom at 95

November 6, 1984 Mondale (D) humiliated by President Reagan (R) reelection

November 8, 1984 Special Meeting of Mankato City Council, 4:00 pm, quorum present

November 9, 1984 88 shots in Islander game regarded as outlandish, Isles 45, Rangers 43

November 11, 1984 Father of Martin Luther King and US vicar, MLK Sr, dies at 84

November 13, 1984 Little David Levy finds his 1st comet

November 14, 1984 H. Bruce Stewart's Applied Math lecture:
The Geometry of Chaos
spell-binds globe

November 15, 1984 Baboon's heart gives out, ‘Baby Fae' dies at 3 weeks

November 16, 1984 The dead John Lennon releases ‘Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him'

November 19, 1984 334 die when liquid gas tank explodes in Mexico City

November 20, 1984 50 billionth hamburger flipped by McDonald's

November 22, 1984 Smithsonian Institute receives sweater from
Mr Rogers' Neighborhood

November 25, 1984 Uruguay presidential election won by Julio Iglesias

November 26, 1984 Guy LaFleur retires after 518 goals & 14 years with Montreaux Canadians

 

The wake was held in the parlour. The room that no one ever entered. Kept clean and perfectly in order only for death.