Mattie Mitchell (21 page)

On April 30, Mattie strode into the Anglo-Newfoundland
Development Company's camp on the banks of the Mary March
River three miles northwest of Millertown. He and his group had
walked 400 hard miles in twenty-six days and accomplished what
many considered impossible to do in the dead of winter.

Behind him, with their flaring nostrils catching the scent of
the four stags corralled nearby, the reindeer from Lapland waited
until Mattie Mitchell stood aside, and then pranced the last few
yards to the fence, where they poked their curious noses between
the round, unpeeled pickets. Mattie had delivered to Millertown
thirty-eight does and ten stags, all of them a bit leaner than when
they had left St. Anthony.

Two of the animals had wandered off somewhere around the
Parson's Pond area and enjoyed the local caribou's hospitality so
much they never returned. It was reported that following autumn
that a hunter from the area had in his sights a caribou that didn't
look quite like any of the others he had killed. He killed it anyway.

Mattie Mitchell had carried out an incredible feat. He had led
the expedition through what was, without doubt, the worst terrain
in the country. He had achieved a feat as great as Daniel Boone,
who had led another party through the Cumberland Gap of these
same southern Appalachian mountains, only in Kentucky, forever
changing the population of the great plains of America.

Unfortunately, the great reindeer drive was all in vain for the
pulp and paper company. The deer didn't work out as suitable
beasts of burden and were eventually sent back to Dr. Grenfell's
Mission in St. Anthony. This time the reindeer didn't have to
walk back over the peninsula but were shipped back in luxury—
at no cost to the good doctor.

MATTIE WAS NOW A
GISIGU
—
AN OLD MAN
.

One evening when he was returning home, his acute hearing
detected a faint rustling sound coming from the alder beds near
the gravel road ahead of him. He stopped and listened, but the
evening had grown silent. A rabbit rustling through the falling
autumn leaves, he figured, and he moved on. The sound came
again and from the same place. Again he stopped and listened,
but again no sound came. Curious now, he stepped forward. The
noise repeated as before. Something was close to the ground and
moved only when he did, as if hoping his walking would disguise
its own movement. Mattie crept toward the brush where the
sound had come from, leaned down, pulled some of the branches
apart, and looked inside.

At first he saw nothing. Then the faint sound came again,
very close, and at that instant he saw the owl. It was a little saw-whet no more then eight inches long. It was entangled among the
thick alders, and when it saw Mattie it stood absolutely still and
stared at him, its bright yellow-orange eyes with their huge black
centres staring without blinking. The ground was covered with
the hapless owl's feathers. Mattie could see it was injured but
wondered why it hadn't just walked away. Then he saw the wire
snare around its leg. The owl had been following along a rabbit
lead and had become snared. With its frantic efforts to break the
wire, it had damaged its wing against the tangled trees.

Pushing the trees aside to allow him room, Mattie bent down.
With a soft crooning sound in his ancient language, he approached
the bird, which now cowered close to the ground with its big,
limpid eyes fixed on the Indian. He pulled the snare stick, which
had been driven into the soil, free with one hand and held the
shivering bird to the ground with the other. Mattie twisted the
wire loose from the snare stick and reached to free it from the leg
of the bird. He felt the blood-matted feathers. In its struggles to
free itself, the owl had embedded the thin wire into its flesh all
the way to the leg bone.

The bird was in terrible pain, but while Mattie gently removed
the bloody wire, it made no sound and didn't move a feather.
When the bird was free from its fetter it tried to stand, but fell
back to the ground again. It looked up at Mattie pitifully. The
owl could neither walk or fly. Mattie picked up the bird, which
weighed a mere six or seven ounces, cradled it in the crook of his
arm, and carried it home.

He coated the torn leg all around with the sticky myrrh from
a spruce tree. He pounded the thin inner white bark from a young
aspen tree into a pulp and, stirring more of the spruce gum into
the paste, he encased the wounded leg in the natural bandage.
The fragile wing was more difficult to treat. Fortunately for the
owl, the wing bone wasn't broken, only battered and severely
bruised. More than half of the wing's long, white-tipped outer
flight feathers were bent and useless.

Early the next morning, Mattie walked down to the landwash
and brought back several small, greenish kelp bladders. He
popped each one of them, saving the glistening drop of salt water
they contained, then ground the kelp petals into a medicinal paste
as he had done with the aspen bark. He smeared the medicine
over as much of the bruised wing as he could. And while Mattie
administered his gentle healing, the bird neither moved or uttered
sound.

Hoping the bird would not flap the wing too much, he placed
it inside a small, uncovered pen. The owl didn't try to fly out of
the pen until many days later, when its wing had healed under
Mattie's frequent doctoring. During that time Mattie caught
meadow voles and mice and sometimes frogs for the bird, which
ate whatever Mattie brought it.

Early one morning, when Mattie went outside, the bird was
gone. Mattie was very pleased. His healing had worked. Then
he looked up and saw, perched in a nearby tree, the owl staring
down at him. He left his garden and went walking along the
road. Hearing the flutter of wings behind him, he turned and saw
the owl following him, flying from tree to tree and sometimes
landing on rooftops and fences along the roadside. Its wingspan
made it look much bigger in flight.

The bird soon became known as Mattie's owl—or that tall
Indian's owl, depending on who you talked to. Everyone was
amazed to see it follow him whenever he moved from his house,
day or night. One of the Mi'kmaq words for owl is
gu'gu'gwes
.
Mattie called the bird Gu'gu, but only among his own people. To
others in the community he did not use the Mi'kmaq word for the
bird, but called it “little nightbird.”

The owl would follow no one else, not even when they tried
to get it to do so. From the first morning when Mattie had seen
the owl perched in the low branches of the tree, he had stopped
bringing it food. But still, each morning when Mattie stepped
from his door, Gu'gu was waiting in the same tree. When Mattie
left the yard, the bird always followed.

The day came when Mattie was not able to rise from his bed.
He was dying and he knew it. Even his indomitable will was
finally defeated by the state of near-death. From Marie Mitchell
Sparkes's journal:

My Grandfather had been ailing for a while, but on this
particular day, he asked my father to go and bring him the
priest so that he could receive the last rites of the church. And
as he had been a devoutful Catholic, it was his last wish to
have a priest present in his final hours. Back in those days the
nearest priest lived in the Scared Heart parish in Curling which
was a few miles south of Corner Brook. And since there were
very few cars around the area, the more frequent type of travel
then was by boat. So my father got in his Dory and rowed
the few miles to Curling and returned with the priest, who
administered the Last Rites to my grandfather.

Later that night pop sat in the room by his father's bed with
the holy candles lit and slowly flickering, sending their light
around the room.

My grandfather was awake and fully aware that it was his
time to leave his earthly existence, he looked at my father and
said “Johnny, I am going to sleep now” and with a sigh he
closed his eyes for one final time.

And when Mattie Mitchell's body was carried from his home
in the glorious autumn of 1921, Gu'gu, Mattie's “little nightbird,”
followed the slow procession as it made its way to the hill where
Newfoundland's greatest frontiersman would forever rest. It was
Indian summer, the time of year when hunters are mysteriously
lured afield. And the Mitchell family laid their hunter down.

The gentle man who had contributed so much to the
exploration and development of his beloved island home was
buried on a hill in the west coast city of Corner Brook. Below
him, the bay that he loved so much was calm and reverential in
the still evening air. The mountain valleys were deep in shadow.
But the lofty mountaintops were tinged with the soft reds and
purples that only come in the autumn time.

And as the cool night came down out of the hills, a new yellow
moon appeared and, as it had on that long-ago night on the beach
with the American adventurer, had the old one in its arms.

The mound of dark new earth looked even darker in the
shadows. And from somewhere very near, a lone owl sounded
its
skiew
of requiem and flew silently away before the day came,
and never returned.

BRIAN SPARKES HAD AN UNEXPECTED
and unexplained
encounter with his great-grandfather, one that shocked and
affected him for a long time afterward.

Brian grew up listening to tales of his famous grandfather.
Like his mother, Marie, he never tired of hearing them. She
passed down most of these stories to him. He always secretly
wished he could have met Mattie. He always wondered what he
would say to him if given the chance. Brian never figured that
one day he would tell his great-grandfather to leave and never
return!

It was the autumn of 2005 and Brian Sparkes was forty years
old. It was his favourite time of the year. The treed streets of
the city of Corner Brook where he lived were resplendent with
brilliant fall colours and the entire Humber Valley was dressed in
autumn splendour. The days were short and the nights were cold
and filled with glittering stars. Brian went to work as he always
did. He was an appliance repairman and good at his work. It was
just another day. But this night would be anything but ordinary.

When he went to bed that night, he was asleep as soon as
his head touched the pillow. That was the strangest thing, and
the only thing he remembered the next day. He remembered he
hadn't been sleepy at all. He had decided he would read for a
while, though he wasn't much of a reader. Brian was reaching
for a book when he suddenly changed his mind and turned out
his reading light. He had no memory of falling asleep. That time
between consciousness and slumber wasn't there. He had no idea
how he knew, but he
did
know he was dreaming. Even in his
dreaming state he knew he was dreaming.

He was staring down at the tall body of Mattie Mitchell, who
was in a coffin of clear glass. His great-grandfather's face looked
just like the photos his family had of him. His clothing did not.
Mattie was wearing a grey uniform with stripes. Brian could not
figure out the style. It didn't look like the uniform of a soldier.
Mattie had never been a soldier. He wore no hat. His long hair
was as black as a rainy night sky. On his feet he wore the long,
leather, laced-up leggings evident in some of his pictures. The
boots nearly came up to his knees. The coffin's lid was closed,
but Mattie's eyes were not.

No matter how Brian turned, the eyes of his great-grandfather
followed him. For several minutes Brian stood above the glass
coffin, unable to escape the stare of the corpse that lay within.

Without closing his eyes or speaking one word, Mattie, with
the glass coffin, suddenly floated out of sight, down a magnificent
green river that flowed through a valley of golden colours. Brian
cried and cried for his great-grandfather to come back. But the
glass coffin, glistening with light, disappeared around a bend in
the river. The valley turned green, the water turned black, and
Brian awakened bathed in sweat and tears.

Brian told no one about his dream. The images he had seen in
the night were so powerful they stayed with him all day.

Then it happened again. That night was a repeat performance
of the night before. It was exact in every detail: Mattie in his
glass coffin, his wide-open eyes, the green river, the golden
valley—Brian crying like a child for his grandfather to return.
This happened for several more nights.

The strangest thing of all was that Brian did not want to
dream about Mattie after the first night. He wanted the dreams to
go away. Yet in his dreams he always cried for Mattie to return
when the glass coffin sailed down the green river.

Brian was afraid of the nights. He hated the thought of going
to bed. He even tried staying away from his room as long as
he could, hoping a late hour would give him a much-needed
dreamless sleep. Nothing helped. The dreams kept coming, but
still he told no one.

He was driving home one evening and for some reason had
driven a different way. He was passing the cemetery road when
an idea came to him. He would visit his great-grandfather's
gravesite and ask him to stay away from his nights. Walking
along the grassy pathway to the place where Mattie Mitchell
rested, he wondered what he was doing here. After all, who had
such weird, recurring dreams, and who in his right mind would
come to where the dead lay, with such a strange request?

The evening was late. The sun was down below the hills,
and everything was quiet and still. When Brian reached Mattie's
gravestone, he bent down and noticed the fresh flowers his mother
had placed there. Brian looked all around to see if anyone was
near. He wondered if he should talk to Mattie aloud or simply
think his thoughts.

He decided to speak aloud. When he began to talk to his
great-grandfather, a wonderful peace stole over him and he didn't
feel strange at all. He suddenly realized he was crying. For some
reason it felt just fine to talk to the old hunter. Brian simply asked
Mattie—he didn't say great-grandfather—to please stay out of
his dreams.

“I am proud to be a part of your bloodline. I love you, Mattie.”

Still sobbing, Brian straightened up from the grave and
turned away. Just before he reached his car, he heard a sound
behind him. Brian was sure it was the cry of an owl. He looked
back and thought he saw a small shadow flit over Mattie's grave.
He waited for a few more minutes, but he neither heard or saw
anything more.

That night, Brian Sparkes slept in peace. The next day, he
remembered the date. The day he had asked his great-grandfather
to stay out of his dreams had been the eighty-fourth anniversary
of Mattie Mitchell's death.

And the image of Brian's great-grandfather came to him no
more.