The Doryman (13 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

W
ithin a month, Jack's body lay in the dark earth in the shadow of the little church in Beau Bois. Rachel had stood tall and silent at her brother's funeral Mass, refusing to cry. She had cried floods for her daughter Margaret, and she would do it no more; she had learned that no good came of it. By her side was twelve-year-old Jim, equally stoic, and his little brothers and sisters, then Angela and her brood. At their side, Richard was quiet, too, seemingly stunned that the man with whom he'd climbed scaffolds just a few months before now lay flat and shrunken in a pine box. Jack's fiancée, Selena, however, sobbed pitifully, as if her life was over. She clung to her mother like a little girl. Jack's younger sisters, Mary Jane and Annie, cried too. Richard glanced at them across the aisle, numbly thinking that they'd do less of that as the years pass and life shows them what's what.

Although Jack was dead, the men of Little Bay and the Burin Peninsula continued to board their schooners, climb into their bunks, rise before dawn, gobble their breakfasts, and row out to their spots on Mizzen Bank or off Cape St. Mary's. There, while Jack lay in sacred ground, they let out their baited trawls and hauled them in, filling their little boats to the gunwales with fish. Then they rowed back to their schooners and unloaded their catch, counting every last fish, then washing, cutting, and dressing them, tossing their livers into the butts so that their captains could render oil. Jack was dead, but they kept doing these things. It seemed ludicrous to Richard, whose heart was full of a grief that would not lift. They kept on doing these things as if nothing had changed, as if Jack were still alive, as if his jokes and laughter could still be heard through the dripping fog that hung over the Banks. It could not be real. But somehow it was.

Back in Little Bay, Rachel plunged her long thick hands into the earth that surrounded her house. She laid down dried capelin in the hopes that it would help coax bigger turnips and cabbages out of the ground. She sent her sons to the beaches to fetch the shiny little fish when it rolled in the dusks of late June. Then she spread it carefully across the garden, showing her daughters just how it was done.

She got her daughters to make the bread now, as she spent more time in her kitchen garden. This was the only place she felt a lifting of some of the grief that dogged her every step since Jack died. It seemed her family were being picked off: her brother Jimmy, her little twins, her parents, then her daughter Margaret, and now Jack. It made her feel helpless, a feeling she was in no way at home with. Here in the garden she felt something of Elizabeth's presence. In the texture of the soil, she felt her mother's warm hands; in the graininess of plant roots, she recalled her strength. Longing for Jack the way she did, she summoned it now.

She checked on her trees. The plums would be juicy and fruity, she knew. Even the apricots would yield tasty flesh and medicine that might protect them from the awful diseases that kept carrying them off. Again she thought of her mother, wishing she were still here to see her daughter's garden grow, to see her children grow.

One morning, Rachel looked out her kitchen window to see Richard and Angela's boys running about in her garden. Young Jack and Patrick were chasing each other in the rows of cabbages and potatoes she'd been working so hard on. They were her family's winter provisions, she reminded herself, their insurance against the hungry months.

She balled her large hands into a fist and felt anger rising in her chest.

“What is it, Mom?” Rachel's eldest daughter had joined her at the window. “Oh!” she added as she saw her cousins weave in and out of the plants. They seemed to be taking as much care as little boys could, but not as much as was necessary in a vegetable patch.

Rachel heaved a sigh of disgust.

She tore her apron off and rushed toward the door.

“Get out of that!” she shouted at the children from her doorway. By now young Patrick had sliced through a cabbage with his boots. Rachel saw this and began to chase him.

“Get out of here!” she cried. “Go on home! And don't ever do that again!”

Jack and Patrick were afraid now, and they ran away as quickly as they could. Then Rachel stood in the middle of her garden, her hands on her hips, surveying the damage. After a minute her daughter joined her.

“It doesn't look too bad, Mom,” the girl offered.

“I know, I know,” Rachel answered. “That one cabbage is ruined. I think Patrick fell onto it. Maybe I can use it tonight. It wasn't just the cabbage. It's ...”

Rachel didn't continue, and her daughter took her hand. Then the two of them bent over and began straightening out the damage the boys had done.

As they were finishing up, Rachel saw Richard coming by on his way down the hill. She hadn't realized he was ashore. The
Ronald W
must be in.

“Dick!” she called out. When he came over, she blurted out, “Your two youngest tore up my kitchen garden this morning. They were in here running around, tearing up my cabbage. Can't they play somewhere else on this hill?”

Richard was quiet. Rachel had noticed how withdrawn he'd been lately, since Jack died. Then he said, “Rachel, they won't even be on the hill next year.” And he walked away, leaving his sister and her daughter mystified. He was baffled himself. He had heard the words come out of his mouth, but he had no idea what they meant or where they had come from.

Chapter Thirty-three

R
ichard had no intention of going to sea in 1935. This was the year he would start his shore enterprise. He figured if the other local men could make a go of it, so could he. Angela supported his idea and urged him to give it a try. She liked the idea of having him at home more often. She thought it would be good for the boys in particular. They were all at an age when they needed their father around them more now. The two of them knew it was the middle of a Depression, but they banished such thoughts from their minds and tried to cling to optimism.

Young Vince, eleven now, was still in the habit of going everywhere he could with his father. He was with Richard in front of the premises Philly Walsh ran for A.H. Murray when a man called his father over and asked him if he'd like to skipper the
Josephine Walsh
, a fifty-three-ton schooner,
that year. The vessel was brand new, having been built just that year.

“No,” Richard answered. “No, I'm staying ashore this year.” He smiled. It was the first time he hadn't gone fishing since he was nine years old.

A few days later, when they were getting ready for the spring trip, the Farrells asked him if he would captain the
Ronald W
, the schooner he'd fished from with his brother Jack for the past few years. It seemed that he had better choices now than he'd ever had, if he wanted to go to sea. But he didn't, and he told the Farrells no.

When he told Angela this, she was surprised at his determination.

“Are you sure you're doing the right thing?” she asked. “Lots of fellows would want to be skipper. You'd get a better take.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know. I thought about it. I knew I'd get offers like that this year. I had one or two before. But my mind is made up. I want to go into business for myself.”

“All right,” Angela said. “Then do it.”

Richard smiled at her.

“If it doesn't work out, I'll take the Farrells up another year, or somebody else with a better offer,” he said. “But I want to give this a try.”

“I know you do,” Angela said. “Go on then, see what happens.”

That night at the supper table, Richard looked around at the faces of his children as they ate their bread, potatoes, and fish. It had been another long, hard winter. Fish prices were low, very low, the worst in his memory, and the Depression dragged on. He'd had to catch more fish just to get half the money he'd made before hard times hit, and that was impossible to do in 1934 when catches on the South Coast were low.

Lucy and Monnie were in service in St. John's now, Angela having secured good placements for them. The remaining children were pale, with dark circles framing their eyes. On his right was Bride, who suffered badly from asthma. She was going to spend the spring and summer in Oderin helping her grandmother Manning and uncles. Young Lizzie, the face and eyes of his own mother, would likely join her there next summer when she was a little older. She was soft and sensitive, and he felt a special protectiveness towards her. On the other side of the table sat Vince, energetic, always ready for the next adventure, and young Jack, who would be a great student if Richard could somehow give him the chance to stay at his learning. Then little Patrick, not even six years old yet, and all skin and bones.
He'll probably be tall and skinny
, Richard thought.
The lad could sure use a little meat on him
. Richard recalled that the only hunger he ever experienced as a child was a result of seasickness, not lack of food.

Things had never been this precarious in Newfoundland before the Depression. The island had lost its independence and was being ruled from Britain again, and not for the better, from what Richard could see. Now he wondered what would become of their little country.

They said little as they ate; they all seemed to be concentrating on their food. The last few weeks had been particularly hard. They had run out of vegetables; all that was left now was some potatoes. Angela had been forced to send the children to school on lassie bread, which they'd also had for dinner and their mug-up at night. It was the same with every house in the harbour. People were still dying from tuberculosis, but they hardly talked about this now. As February turned into March, food seemed to become more and more important to them, to the point of obsession.

True to his word, Richard stayed ashore through the spring and much of the summer, trying to make a go of his premises. He attracted customers, some of the local skippers, but it was slow going. He was indeed the best salter in the bay, but word had to get out that he was in business. Besides, most captains already had arrangements made with other salters, or the wives of the dorymen would cure their catch. Another problem was that the weather was poor for drying fish; there were many damp days in 1935, and few that were optimal for making fish.

One day in early August, Richard was on the Marystown waterfront when Captain Paddy Walsh approached him. Captain Paddy was an old friend of Richard's family, respected by everyone in Little Bay, and a skilled skipper. In turn, he had the highest regard for Richard's talents at sea. Once or twice over the years, Richard had fished with him. The Captain again gave his sympathies for Jack's death the year before. Like Richard, the unexpectedness of it had stayed with him.

“Dick, I've been meaning to speak to you about something,” the Captain said after a minute of respectful silence had passed. “I need some help with something, something important, and you're just the man I'd go to.”

Richard nodded, growing slightly concerned.

“It's James, my oldest,” Captain Paddy continued. “It's his first time out. He'll be skippering the
Mary Bernice
.”

Richard nodded. He knew the ship well. She was a western boat, weighing no more than thirty tons, a small schooner with only two dories. She had been built only a few years before. Richard thought she was solidly built, ready for any seas, not like the aging
Ronald W
that he'd sailed in for the last time.

“She's a good little ship,” Richard told the Captain. “He'll do well in her.” He couldn't fathom what was bothering Paddy.

“He will, Dick, he will,” the Captain agreed. “But he's young, only twenty-three. It's his first time out. It's August, and you know what that means.”

He did. They all did. The memory of the 1927 gale was still raw in their minds and hearts.

“His mother worries about him,” the Captain added.

And she's not alone in that
, Richard thought.

“I'd really like for you to go with him,” Captain Paddy finally said. “To act as his first mate, but to train him in, really.”

Richard started to shake his head.

“We ... she wouldn't worry then, not with you there,” Paddy added.

“Captain Paddy, I've got plans to stay ashore the rest of this summer,” Richard said. “I've been making fish, and I'll be making more – ”

“I know, Dick,” Paddy interrupted. “But it's just one trip, his first, that's all. It's only a few weeks, less, I'd say.”

Richard hesitated. He realized he'd get offers like this all the time and that he'd have to learn to stand firm.

“I'm very sorry, sir,” he said finally. “But I got a customer now, and I'm bound to get more. I've got to stay here and mind my premises. I can't help you.”

Captain Paddy looked downcast, even hurt, and this was not lost on Richard, whose shoulders began to slump a little.

“Would you even think about it?” the older man asked.

“All right, I'll think about it,” Richard replied. “But there's more men around than me willing to go to the Banks. It's one of them you should be talking to. Don't let Mrs. Lillian get her heart set on it.”

Captain Paddy tipped his hat at Richard and smiled as he walked away. Already his worries about his son's first trip as skipper were easing. His wife Lillian would feel the same way.