The Big Why (13 page)

Deep down I’m a survivalist. Nothing matches sailing out of Brigus in a sealer, Kent. That’s the height of spirit. An explorer, he’s going to achieve something. Soldier too. But a sealer is going to decide if his wife and babies will have molasses with their fish. Deep down, Kent, we’re all for survival — even you.

Tom and Stan delivered a cartload of freshly sawed pickets and posts. The pickets varied in length. I asked about this. Tom said, Who owns the fence — the house or the hill.

The house, of course.

So the fence should stay level with the house, not the ground.

We measured the slope and made an allowance, and the railing along the fence stayed horizontal. It was true, the fence was part of the house now, instead of belonging to the hill.

But I differed with Tom on the arrangement of pickets, railings, and posts. I thought it looked smarter to have the pickets all flush on the inside, and to give the railing to the world.

You sir, Tom said, are always looking for beauty in things.

And why not?

Well what is a fence for?

To demarcate property.

Tom paused, and said deliberately, A fence is to keep things out.

I would agree with that.

Then why offer a railing to an intruder? Why make it easy for him to boost himself over your fence?

And so we built the fence with railings and posts inside.

Each day in late March the weather grew milder, the harbour a quilt of white acres stitched with blue. I woke up naked and stood at my door naked. The physical weight of sunlight shooting down the barrel of the harbour. The brooks were full, their shells of ice melting hollow. Blades of grass shot up through the snow. I reached up and smoothed the wooden breast of my figurehead. I scratched my balls, letting the sun hit me in the thighs and belly. I like walking around naked. I like seeing, in the hall mirror, my cock and balls hanging like fruit. I posed in a tennis volley stance. I dreamed of my tennis court. Maybe by April, I thought. I thought that, even though Tom reckoned on clearing Jim Hearn’s land in June.

I walked, barefoot and naked, to the brook for a pitcher of water. My cock hauled itself up with the cold. A bumblebee flower pushed itself out of the snow and it was hard to believe men were swiling on ice pans just thirty miles north of here. The Pomeroys were letting their horses out. One was pissing near my load of coal. I was convinced that the old Norse story of finding grapes here was true.

I dressed and walked into town. Outside Chafe’s, Mose Harris read the newspaper. He was in his shirt sleeves.

Nice isnt it, he said, when you can go out in your figure.

Pardon?

No need for a coat.

Yes, it’s a relief. What’s new?

The wireless messages, Mose said.

From the sealing fleet.

With so many of the men gone, Brigus was imbued with an absent potential. That it could continue without the men, yes, but only on the promise of their return. A sudden immense profit would then occur. The cove ticked over without them. The word
potential
seemed to fit the agitated state of the community. It was like a kettle boiled dry.

As Tom and I worked on the cottage Bud Chafe and Tony Loveys visited me. One brought a bottle of cow’s milk and bread, the other had goats’ skins for the floors. The rector came by and told me of his service on Sundays, and was I handy with pianos. They’d all heard I slept on boards, in a green tent, so Marten Edwards brought, on his head, a feather bed and a pillow wrapped up in a spare sail.

Nice hat, I said.

My Sunday best, for you and your wife.

You got a humour.

To match your own.

We pulled it up the stairs to the bedroom. They were happy to see a man receive a real bed.

Marten Edwards: We heard you slept in a tent, but we didnt believe it.

I should put it away, I said. It’s warm weather now.

None of them was sure of that.

Marten Edwards: You been walking in your softs?

He noticed I was barefoot. I’ve been known, I said.

I’ll get a move on, he said, fixing your boots. For the weather won’t hold.

I’ll miss the tent, I said. Sleeping in it reminds me of my father.

This was my old bed, Marten Edwards said. He’s new. But when the wife died I couldnt sleep in him no more. Nothing wrong with him. Just memories.

I was glad for Marten’s bed, if only for Kathleen.

But the weather. A southerly wind pushed the pans of ice out the bay, and it opened blue and calm. On a bright Sunday, the brook trickling madly, on my way to the Church of England, the church of my childhood, I passed Mrs Pomeroy.

I said, Lovely day.

She said, We’ll pay for it.

What did that mean.

I walked over the bridge to the inner harbour and met up with Tom Dobie and Bob Bartlett on the Stand, past the United Church. They had no bell then, just the flag of St George raised up. The old men knocking their pipes empty against the step rail. I said to Tom, The rector called on me.

Tom Dobie: To claim you.

Yes, I guess he wants my number. With all the young men gone sealing it’s a dull church.

Bartlett: But youre an atheist.

I like the story of Christ, the images. My wife is Christian.

And the architecture appealed to me. I love being inside churches. This one had a high ceiling supported by carved timbers, and stout pillars connecting Gothic arches. It resembled the framework of a ship’s hull. As if we sat underneath an overturned boat. The church had recently been electrified, and there were oil lamps refitted with bulbs along the choir archway and over the organ console, bulbs with milk glass reflectors hung on long cords down the aisles. The English Bevington pipe organ was a beauty and forty years old.

On the walk home I exclaimed how profound the weather was, so beautifully clear. I had received a letter from New York, complaining of the snow.

That’s a bad moon, said Bob Bartlett, and we all looked up. We’re in for dirty weather.

I questioned him on this.

I never knew it to fail, Bartlett said.

On the last day of March big blossoms of snow fell softly. I met Bob Bartlett in Chafe’s. The old woman is plucking her goose today, he said. On the walk home the blossoms turned heavy and the snow fell faster. Wind twisted the snow sideways. Through the afternoon a storm invaded the bottom of the bay. I brought in a load of coal and got the heat belting. The wind piled up weather into the Head. It covered, in a rude minute, the bright fields of Brigus with snow. It bleached the barrens and dumped wet hail and wind up through the valley, a swipe of a giant white, brainless paw. Three feet of snow on the field I thought could be a tennis court. The evergreens by the brook were full of complaining sparrows. Through the night I listened to the house creak and buffet, the foundation groan. In the morning there was a calm and I could not hear a thing. Even the fire was out. It was colder without the tent. From the bedroom window I melted a patch of frost off one of the panes: the world was white and newborn. I was freezing. But at the top of the stairs I could tell something was wrong. The light reflecting up the stairs was different. It was a whiter light, as if an animal waited for me down there. I made my way down. Here was frost on the rug, the tabletop white, even the fireplace painted with snow. A drift four feet high at the open front door. A chunk of Greenland had pushed into the room. I put in a fire, but the chimney was clogged. I dressed and used a bucket for a shovel to make my way out to the doorway. I swept up the snow with a broom. A wind was picking up, a new storm. The sill and hinges frosted shut. I had to chop through the ice with an axe to get the door shut. A ragged flurry, the wind stronger. And so I abandoned my house for the Bartletts’.

I had to use the rock face to guide me into town.

On the path I met Marten Edwards, all hunched up with a package under his coat.

Can I ask, he said, what youre doing out.

I could ask the same question.

Thought I’d deliver them afore the weather got desperate.

He had my boots wrapped in paper tied in string.

Well, youre a diligent man.

It be my own sake I’m thinking of. He laughed. My repu-tation.

We moved into the rock face, let the slabs of rock take the brunt of it.

I explained the drafts in my stove. Why I was abandoning the house.

Oh yes, that be a cranky house you got there. At least you got a useful bed.

I might return to the tent tonight.

I understand. You got to get some coal. Get some heat into her.

We were standing next to the heap of coal. It was under three feet of snow. That, I said, is my coal.

Yes, we noticed you didnt settle that away properly.

We stood sheltered in the cleft of the rock face. Marten Edwards had my winter boots pressed to his chest for protection. We waited to see if there’d be a lull. We waited as though it were the storm’s turn to speak. Then Marten Edwards took, deliberately, from his pocket a bent knife and cut the twine wrapping the boots.

I cut them down to the sole, he said, and replaced the heart and bottom. Then I put the uppers back on them. Theyre what you call fox boots.

He handed them to me and I put them on. I shoved my shoes in my pocket. The boots were smart.

He closed up his knife. I dented the knife in a fall four years ago, he said. Over the rock by Bartlett’s wharf. When my wife died, it was a fall of grief. Landed on the knife. What made me turn to cobbling and smithing.

He rubbed the dent with his thumb.

What youre not a cobbler.

Fisherman. But nothing to cobbling. If you can open a fish you can close a shoe.

Marten, I am sorry about your wife.

I should marry again I’m sure.

It’ll come, I said.

Marten assured me the wind would not abate, and so we buttoned up and steered towards town. We took turns in the front. The devil’s blanket, he said.

Snow drove horizontally and slapped the windows white. It insulated the houses from sound. I made my way blind to the Bartletts’, and they had tea and supper. I split some fresh boughs for the cow to sleep on. I could not believe the weather. I wouldnt take Bartlett up on spending the night in his bed. I’ll be fine on the couch.

You won’t be able to stay keeled on the settle.

I could have the maid’s bedroom or the first-floor room. At first I thought he meant I could sleep with the maid. He said, I sent Emily home to Marten Edwards.

I laughed and Bartlett asked, What is it. And me: I’m just admiring your rose-coloured home-knit drawers.

You’ll be begging for a pair.

I slept in Emily’s bed. I slept naked, to have the sheets against me. I thought of her against me and dreamed of her. I settled down to enjoy this episode in her warm bed. If I’m ever in bed with a man, she said to me. On top of him. And lift myself up, press up with my arms and look down on him, it is then that we both get self-conscious.

I pushed her head into the floor. I twisted her head. I opened her legs, and through her open, familiar legs there’s Kathleen, leaning against the doorsill of the kitchen. I move into Emily with my wife in the doorway, her arms crossed. There is a demon head in Kathleen’s hair and the wire trap of my hand over Emily’s mouth.

Morning. I am in a foreign room. My leg is twisted through the rungs of the footboard. Alone in a cold room, in Bartlett’s house. I am glad to be alone. Glad that Kathleen is not around. So I dont have to hide anything.

I admitted, at breakfast, to pins and needles in my leg. When Emily arrived I could not look at her. I noticed her shape move around the room.

Sleeping in that bed, Bartlett said, I knew you’d get dunch. I hope you dont mind, Emily. We put him in your bed.

It’s a very good bed, she said.

We walked over to the telegraph office, where half of Brigus had gathered for news. Marten Edwards was there. It felt awkward to have slept in his daughter’s bed. To have had that dream that ended with his daughter.

Some storm, I said. I guess I said it cavalierly, for no one spoke.

Bartlett: All storms are ocean storms, Kent. And they are terrible.

Wouldnt they love, Marten Edwards said, an arm of land to tuck their schooner into.

I had forgotten that people were out on that. In ships. In that storm. I had forgotten that things happened beyond the skirt of vision laid before me.

That’s what they got, boy. They got to St Mary’s. For sure.

The telegrapher was excited. I got Dot and Dash, he said, right here. The
Southern Cross
has passed St Pierre and Miquelon.

Cheers.

She’s rounding Cape Race the last they heard.

The
Southern Cross
, full of men from Conception Bay. The master George Clarke from down the road and the second hand was Jas Kelly of Frogmarsh and there were a hundred seventy-one others from all along the coast. All safe.