Blackstrap Hawco (63 page)

There is something else holding him up. Something in his chest that is keeping him suspended. He slides his fingers over the front of his sweater and feels the sharp edge sticking out. Near where his heart should be. A tree limb like the sharp end of a broken bone. He wonders if it is a stick or a rib.

Either one means fear. Without feeling.

It is then that he knows he is dead. Slow, careful fingers on his eyelids, shutting them.

And wakes on the shore, his hands in the freezing-cold water and his numb cheek on a rock. He tries to sniff but it is only a mess of flesh that makes a sticky clotted noise. He struggles to take a deep breath but something is blocking it. A wall that surges up until he coughs out water. He is sinking, has been sinking, twenty or thirty feet down, and is now rising, being pulled toward the surface, pulled and sucked upward by a pressure to all sides of him, pressing in on him, holding him and expelling him at once, wanting and not wanting him.

He breaks the surface and his face is freezing, frozen. Sealed within a chunk of ice.

He is dead.

Up in the tree, stuck.

Christ.

Christ.

Christ.

How seriously is he injured? He bucks ahead and waves his arms, kicks his legs, pulls himself clear of the branches and falls. Landing on his boots, he crouches at once to gain balance while he slides toward the steep incline of cliff, almost tips over. Forty feet beneath where he has been
thrown, the wreckage of his father's boat, his eyes hurting to watch the drop. The white fizzle. He grabs on to a rock, tears two fingernails away from their skin. Clinging on, his other hand goes to his chest, touches there. The sides of his boots dug in. He checks his fingers for blood. No sign of anything in the darkness. He sniffs his fingers. Tries to see what might be on his dark hands. Only darkness. But is there wetness?

Far down below, no one to pull gasping from the frigid sea.

And above, the little girl climbing the bank. Her back to him. One elbow bent. A hand raised to her mouth. Chewing. Crunching. Up and over. Gone away from what she thought, but has failed to happen.

 

Walking up the side of the house, he glances in the kitchen window, straight through the hallway, past the doors to the two bedrooms and the bathroom, to the living room. He sees his father asleep in a chair, facing toward the TV screen.

At the rear of the house, Blackstrap grabs for the back doorknob and twists it to find it dead stiff. Stuck. Jammed. The knob must be broken. He tries harder and feels that it must have been locked, by accident. His eyes on his hand just to be certain.

He waits, wondering what to do. There is no way of getting the icy tremble out of his bones. The knees of his jeans are stained with dirt from his climb up the hill. His hands and fingernails ache with cold. His mind unsteady from the shock of collision and the sight of his dead sister. Have his parents locked him out, already knowing about the smashed boat? He hears a lamb sounding in the distance, from Bishop's barn to the north. The sound travelling in the crisp air. Then the moo of a cow. A small dog barking, wanting to be let in. A car door shutting. An engine starting.

He pulls on the knob, rattles it. Maybe he should knock. Knock on his own door. He's never done that before. A first for him. He raises his fist and knocks. His body trembles and he thinks his lips might be blue, his eyes no longer his.

A few moments later, he hears someone on the other side of the door. The click of the lock coming undone. The door opens and Jacob stands there with a confused look on his face.

‘Yer mudder must've locked it,' Jacob says, turning away with a disappointed shake of his head.

Blackstrap makes no comment. The less he says about his mother, the less he admits to. He enters the kitchen while his father quietly returns to the living room. Blackstrap stands in the kitchen, alone, walls surrounding him. It feels wrong. His life. The emptiness in his body. He moves nearer the stove to be warm. The deadness in him settles down. And suddenly, he is hungry, starving. He makes himself a sandwich of homemade bread, dropping the mustard bottle on the floor and cleaning up the spill.

‘What was dat?' His father from the living room.

‘Nuth'n.' His own voice, the sound of it foreign in his ears.

He uses paper towels and the floor still stinks of mustard. He takes the key off the can of corned beef and fits the metal tab into the key slot, turns the key, peeling back the tin.

He eats his sandwich and pours a tall glass of cold milk, chugs it back while looking at the cluttered table. The smell of beer and cigarettes crowding the air. Every now and then, his bones give off a shiver. He gets a whiff of mustard. His back to the heat of the stove.

When he walks past his parents' door in the hallway, he hears his mother shifting in her bed. Up ahead, in the corner of the living room, the coloured tree lights are on, the presents arranged beneath it. His eyes go to the TV screen.

A man is talking about how the United States has invaded a place called Laos. Something about the Ho Chi Minh Trail. There are people being interviewed who are in tears. American soldiers are dying. Coffins. Bombs dropping. Protesters. Hatred shouting for Peace.

Jacob looks up from the television. ‘Where ya been keep'n yerself?'

‘Jus' around.'

‘See anyone?'

Blackstrap shakes his head.

Jacob looks back at the television. ‘Yer honey called.'

Blackstrap feels as though his knees might buckle. Agnes. The smashed boat. How to tell his father. He keeps it all at bay. Won't let it get to him. Agnes in his head and then his mother and how she always tries her best to like Christmas. But he knows she doesn't. He knows this in his heart. Admit to nothing. His father watching television, trying to keep his eyes open. He looks at the Christmas tree.

‘Who were da mummers after?' Blackstrap asks, licking his lips, his hands still half frozen.

Jacob chuckles, wakens, eyes on the television. ‘N'ver figured it out. Crafty buggers.'

Images flickering in the dark room. A ship has been lost in the Bermuda Triangle. A picture of the ship appears on the TV screen. Right away, Jacob stands and turns up the volume, goes back to his chair. The story has a mysterious sound to it. Other strange things have happened down there. The reporter mentions something about UFOs. When the story is over, Jacob says: ‘Turn dat down, will ya?'

Blackstrap steps in and turns it down.

‘Naw, right down.'

Blackstrap turns the grooved button until the volume is gone, only pulsing light in coloured shades, like the bulbs on the tree.

‘Dat put me ta mind o' yer grandfadder Francis.' Jacob faces his son, smiling in the half-proud way he does before telling a tale. ‘Speaking o' strange t'ings. I got a call frum some feller at da university in Sin John's. Dis feller claims dat a man by da name o' Francis Hawco, same name as yer grandfadder, lived on da sout' coast of da island fer years, livin' off shipwrecks.'

‘Shipwrecks.'

‘Yays. Dis university feller come across dis diary whilst he were diggin up dirt somewhere fer da university.'

‘When'd you hear dat?' Blackstrap is not certain whether he should believe his father. It might just be a story. Something made up. Something invented. Or having to do with the ship he has just wrecked.

‘Christ hallmighty!' Jacob sits up straighter in his seat, presses one hand into the armrest. He shifts his eyes toward the ceiling, trying to think. ‘It went right outta me mind, dat call. Ye were out shrimpin' widt Aubrey Boyd, so it were…when?'

‘That was six months ago.'

‘Wha'? Jaysus Cripes! I fergot da gist of it. Wha' was it?'

‘Francis Hawco.'

‘Yays. Da t'ing is dat dis feller mentioned somet'n queer 'bout dat diary.'

‘What?'

‘In 't dis Francis Hawco says he got a brudder name 'a Ace. So chances are it's da very same Francis as were me fadder.'

‘Did you tell Mudder?' The tremble practically gone out of him now, only in small fits and spurts. His hands almost entirely warm. He tries to hold himself still, hoping his father will not notice.

Jacob squints toward the wall across from him. He frowns and shakes his head. ‘Dun't t'ink so. Anyhoot, dis feller got a ship's diary he said I could 'av a peek at. I wrote 'is number down somewhers.' Jacob looks around the room as though he might be able to cast his eyes upon it. ‘I dun't believe a speck o' it. Dem university fellers're a'ways mak'n t'ings up. Couldn't be me fadder's diary, 'cause he n'ver learned how ta write 'n 'e perished when he were out on da ice.'

‘You should call 'im.'

‘Wha' fer?'

‘Don't ya want ta know about yer father?'

‘Me fadder? 'E froze ta det, perished while swilin'. Dat's wha' Uncle Ace tol' me, 'n dat's da God blessed trute or else Uncle Ace wouldn't breed a word of it. Mus' be anudder Francis Hawco dat university feller is on 'bout. 'N anudder Ace. Dey're a stunned bunch, dem fellers. Dere brains're all muddled up frum being stuffed full 'a too much heducation.'

 

On his way to bed, passing by his parents' room, Blackstrap hears his mother whispering behind her door. The sound of her voice draws to mind the tone of his sister, as she spoke to him on the cliffs of Bareneed. He slows his step, trying to listen. Suddenly, his mother calls out a name that sounds like ‘Alan.' She calls it again, louder. Blackstrap checks back toward the living room. His father sitting there, nodding off, snoring, the silent television flickering across his face.

‘Alan,' his mother calls, her voice a panicky whisper. ‘Junior.'

The bedroom door is open a crack. Blackstrap pushes it clear a bit further, looks in. His mother is sitting upright in bed. Light from the hallway has swiped across part of her white face and over her long, wavy hair that hangs down around her shoulders. In the corner of Blackstrap's eyes, the uneven throb from the TV screen.

‘Alan,' she says. ‘Get it.' She raises her hand and points to the corner of the room. Her wrist seems limp and her hand droops there.

‘What?' Blackstrap quietly asks, coming fully into the room.

‘Get it,' says his mother, pointing to the corner where there is nothing.

‘What?'

‘Get it, get it. In the freezer.' Her voice seems different, clipped short, like she's half drunk, or half asleep, but alert at the same time. Anxious. Her voice sounds like it knows what it wants. It's sure of everything, even if it makes no sense.

Blackstrap's mind scrambled by what he should do. He slowly goes nearer the corner, stands there.

‘In the freezer, put it in the freezer. Get it.'

‘Get what?' He reaches back, into thin air, to let her know there is nothing there.

‘The numbers.'

‘The numbers?'

‘Get the numbers,' she says, louder now, growing angry. ‘Get them in the freezer.' She lowers her arm, sits there with both arms on the bed covers. She is breathing through her nose. She is watching him, her eyes staring straight at him like she's disappointed.

‘I dun know…' he says.

She shakes her head a bit, like shaking it all the way would be too much.

‘Mom?' he says, trying to wake her. She must be dreaming. Sleepwalking sitting still.

‘Awww,' she says, fed up, and lies back down on her side.

Blackstrap waits, but there are no other words.

Soon, his mother is sleeping.

He backs out of the room, trying to be as quiet as possible. Not wanting to wake his mother back to the scene he does not understand. The chill has re-entered his bones. His mind inflicted with new fright.

In the bright bathroom, he spits in the toilet, then pisses and brushes his teeth. The toothbrush snaps in two in his hand, the broken end almost cutting his face as it shoots away, hits the wall then drops to the floor. He picks it up and throws it into the wastebasket. He notices the empty boxes for the bottles of pills his mother buys: 222s with codeine. Three empty boxes. His mother has been taking them for as
long as he can recall. She buys them from the new drugstore in Port de Grave. The one with the doctor's office in it. The pills, his mother says, are for her headaches.

 

Blackstrap lies in the dark. When he thinks of Christmas, he sees Junior and Ruth together, even though it never happened. Junior dead before Ruth's birth. Why all of them around the tree? He tried to look after Ruth the way he knew Junior would. Christmas always brings this back to him. His father done up like Santa Claus. Blackstrap knew the difference, but there was no way of Ruth knowing. Every year for seven years. Done up like Santa Claus. Even on that last year, that seventh one. In the hospital. Jacob in the Santa suit. Ruth's slow blind eyes, barely able to move, but the smile came anyway, slow and full of love when she heard the ‘ho-ho-ho.' No Santa suit after Ruth's death. Years later, he found it in a box out in the shed. A nest for a family of mice. Why a Santa suit for a blind girl anyway?

The boat is gone. He should run away tonight before his father finds out. He wonders at the time. It must be close to midnight. Midnight mass last Christmas. They did not attend service this year. And Blackstrap did not mention it. It was always his mother who made certain she got them to church when it was necessary. The weekly Sunday service that he used to attend as a boy was no more. Blackstrap's father had hauled him off to church a few times, despite his mother's unwillingness to go. He did it almost angrily, as if to spite his mother. ‘We're home frum mass,' he'd call when he came in the door, pulling off his Sunday suit jacket. Blackstrap avoided church if he could. Ever since Junior's funeral he could not stand the place. Too close to God. Too near Him for anybody's good. Too close to hating God.

Last Christmas, they had sat in the pew and Father Connolly had announced that they had a special treat for that night. A youth choir was visiting from St. John's. It had been arranged by Mary Wells who also arranged the annual turkey teas. Candles had been lit in all the stained-glass windows and up on the altar. As was always the case on Christmas Eve, there was standing room only. Men leaning against the wall behind the last row of pews, done up in their suits and coats, chatting quietly, a few low laughs, a whiff of booze here and there as you passed close by.