As the old folks would say Page 10

  So the thought of visiting the forge was pushed from her mind, as was the thought of borrowing Missy Brown’s slapper in the next room—Missy probably couldn’t find her slapper, anyway, because she never used it. She was one of those young, silly teachers who thought learning should be enjoyable. And Mrs. Maginity didn’t have the legs anymore for traipsing through the woods looking for birch limbs.

  And so, in some sense, the search for the slapper ended that day. Though she mulled over the loss of the slapper in the weeks that followed, she couldn’t think of any new way to approach her problem, and the disappearance of the slapper became another one of those mysteries for which the outport of Tickles is famous.

  Life, inside and outside the classroom, went on, as it tends to do. The warm days of May slowly merged into the warmer days of June, the children bent over their desks scribbling and studying as they had always done, until the final exams put an end to the school year, and the demands and excitement of summer holidays put a temporary end to any thought of the slapper.

  However, if the actual search for the slapper was over, discussion about its disappearance was not, especially among the adults of the community, who, as a general rule, are more prone to become concerned about such weighty matters than the children. It was the topic of conversation around the card tables in the parish hall and on the church steps after Mass on Sunday mornings and on the public wharf in the evenings after supper, with first one and then the other offering explanation and counter-explanation as to the slapper’s strange and mysterious disappearance.

  Tom Wilson swore he smelled leather burning when they had the big bonfire on the beach in June, but of course it was impossible at that point to ascertain whether the source of the smell emanating from the fire was the slapper or not. Jonathan Kelly was sure he saw a slapper floating out the harbour in a southerly wind, and a boat was launched, but the “slapper” turned out to be a strip of hide from a poached moose that had strayed into Jim Finnegan’s garden. Aunt Jane Wilkins was convinced it was the fairies, but, as I have said, where the fairies always—and dutifully—returned things to their respective owners, after allowing the appropriate time for cursing and swearing and dancing on the stagehead, that explanation was held by fewer and fewer people as time went on.

  No, the slapper was never found.

  Despite its absence, however, when the CHE results came out in August, everybody had passed, even big, stund Eddie McClaren—after his third year in grade nine. The students soon found themselves into a new school year, and except for the grade elevens moving on and new grade nines coming in, not much changed in Mrs. Maginity’s room.

  Except that there seemed to be a strange aura of peace in the classroom, as if the slapper weren’t needed. The younger children, of course, never really needed such external motivation, and the bigger ones were so busy diagramming sentences and reading Julius Caesar for the fifth time that they had all the motivation they could handle.

  The aura of tranquility seemed to settle particularly around the gigantic frame of Eddie McClaren, who, in Mrs. Maginity’s mind, was the stundest person in the room, and should never have been allowed to pass grade nine in the first place, even after his third year.

  No, the slapper was never found.

  And, naturally, there were those who blamed St. Anthony for not coming to Mrs. Maginity’s rescue. If so, it was certainly one of the few times St. Anthony failed to respond to a request. But then maybe Mrs. Maginity forgot to ask him, where she was so distraught, or maybe St. Anthony was given twenty or thirty on each hand as a boy in school and was still wincing himself, or being the only spiritual Lost and Found of the day, and stormed by prayers like he was from both sides of the Atlantic, it is possible that he was simply overworked.

  No, the slapper was never found, and, as time went on, it became less and less a topic of discussion in the outport, becoming overshadowed, in the days that passed, by another mystery which couldn’t be solved either—where big, stund Eddie McClaren, being poor and all, got the nice new soles on his shoes, or “taps,” as they called them in those days.

  People thought first that the McClarens must have gotten a “barrel” from the ’States, that one of Eddie’s better-off cousins in Boston or New York must have sent him a cast-off pair, but closer examination by the more observant in the outport, however, determined that they were not “new” shoes, relatively speaking.

  Any fool at all could see that the leather of the upper part of the shoe was black and faded and worn to destitution, while the sole was made of a very find brown leather—a really fancy exquisite leather—not at all like the leather in Dick Cronin’s forge. And anyway, when the station master in Flowery heard about it, he was very clear that “No barrel had come from the ’States or from anywhere else for that matter,” which put that theory to rest once and for all.

  It was strange, too, how the newly soled shoes seemed to blend with the aura of the classroom when Eddie McClaren returned to school in the fall to begin grade ten, which he did for four more years. And it was stranger how the newly soled shoes never squeaked in the presence of Mrs. Maginity, where the leather was so stiff and all. Eddie’s shoes did squeak when he was walking up the church aisle on Sunday mornings and when he was walking across the floor of the parish hall when there were dances. In fact, every other place that Eddie walked the soles of his shoes squeaked, but no, never around Mrs. Maginity, as if they were in awe of her presence.

  From that day till this, not a shred of evidence was uncovered as to the whereabouts of the slapper. Carrie Ransom went on to become a clerk at Woolworth’s. Mrs. Maginity retired when they brought in the new maths. It broke her heart to have to take the old arithmetic book off the desk, and Dick Cronin’s forge became a modern-day heritage site, complete with all those bits of discarded harness and the many horse droppings of earlier years.

  And big, stund Eddie McClaren?

  Well, after he left school, he had a stint down on one of those northern American bases—Crystal I or Crystal II, I forget which—where he stayed three or four years and saved every cent. When he came home he had a bundle. He must have had, because he bought up a whole bunch of those old run-down houses in St. John’s and fixed them up and rented them, and now they say he’s rolling in money.

  He bought a nice house for himself, too, one of those fancy ones there on Waterford Bridge Road. The last time I visited him he was sitting in a little room he called his “den,” sipping brandy and eating expensive chocolates like they were going out of style. I happened to notice the old shoes with the fancy leather soles, set on a little table by the old-fashioned Victoria stove.

  As I stared at the shoes, I found myself saying:

  “They never did find Mrs. Maginity’s slapper, did they?”

  He didn’t reply for a while. He was gazing at the shoes himself. They probably reminded him of the days when he didn’t have very much. When he turned to look at me, for the first time I detected a hint, but only a hint, of mischief in his voice.

  “Yes, it’s a mystery, en’t it?”

  Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Carrie Ransom and Eddie McClaren got married? Eddie still doesn’t wash as often as Carrie likes, but where he’s rich and all . . .

  MEN OF STEEL

  There’s a race of men, mighty men, who walk the beams on high

  And strive with fearless heart and foot to touch the endless sky

  They carry iron in their grip, these iron men of steel

  One wonders what they think up there, one wonders what they feel

  A hundred years ago they left their homes around the bay

  For cities of magnificence, for all those places termed “away”

  They left behind each fishing boat, each gaff and fishing reel

  And put aside ship’s rigging to climb girders made of steel

  New York, Boston, Phi
ladelphia, the names resound with charm

  But that exciting way of living carried danger, hidden harm

  For harm could come, and come it did, and these iron men could cry

  A thoughtless step, a fateful slip, they watch him fall and die

  So many tales are told of those who died each in his way

  A faulty crane, a collapsed wall, or being simply tired that day

  They walk the walk, they say the prayers, they comfort those bereaved

  Then set their will to climb again, as if they’ve never grieved

  Yes, go back up again they will, to even greater height

  You’d think that they’d be beaten now, trembling with fright

  But no, and why, and how they do, it’s impossible to say

  They’ll pause and shrug and tell you that there is no better way

  No better way than span a bridge or a towering building raise

  To watch a hundred storeys grow, that in itself is praise

  Another built, another done, and they can leave again

  And that solid hundred storeys marks the place where they have been

  But when those hundred storeys that they helped build with pride

  Are rent and torn by a terror hand, toppling downward side by side

  They watch with sadness, grief, and anger as with their memories they trace

  Every bolt and beam and splice plate that they helped put in place

  Far out on the ocean floor, above the ocean sands

  A tribute to these men of steel, a massive oil rig stands

  Or mighty dams hold back the force of rivers crushing flow

  Erected by the skill of men whose names we’ll never know

  They’ve left their mark on every shore, every city, every town

  These iron men, these men of steel, these men of such renown

  Yes, since they first set out to climb, a century has spanned

  And they’ve built the whole world over, these iron men from Newfoundland

  ME AND SAM

  Sam had mackerel!

  Eight beautiful fat mackerel, with “symmetrical sides and paired organs,” just like the student described them to Mr. Agassiz in the literature book that we used in the ’50s.

  Not being in the mood for the niceties of science while standing on a desolate, windswept harbour wharf at five o’clock in the morning, I could have used more unprintable descriptive words. I was standing beside Sam, my stomach heaving and surging in unison with the waves that rolled past, shivering to death in damp, cold, miserable, Newfoundland fog.

  I should have been in bed sensibly snoring under cozy flannelette blankets like everybody else in the harbour. Instead I was heading out fishing on the most dismal morning you could ever imagine to throw out a fishing line along the Newfoundland coast.

  And what a morning!

  You couldn’t see a headland with the drizzle and fog that drenched the far side of the harbour, totally obliterating the hills and coves with its grey, sodden, impenetrable cover.

  The icy dampness clung to the oil clothes and cut right through to the skin, making me twitch and shiver inside the uncountable layers of thermal underwear and shirts and socks and sweaters that were supposed to keep me warm.

  Strong southerly winds whipped sheets of spray across the harbour over waves that made my stomach queasy. And I wasn’t even in the boat yet! Even the little green punt rocking at its moorings seemed to sigh at the unnatural presence of the two grown men standing on the wharf in the early morning darkness in such miserable weather, laden down with fishing gear.

  * * * *

  Not that I disliked fishing.

  On the contrary! I loved fishing. Fishing has always been for me the quintessential Newfoundland pastime. I would look forward with poetic anticipation to those beautiful Saturday mornings in September when the little green punt would plow happily over the friendly waves, surrounded by all kinds of boats and fishermen.

  It was a true outport excursion, with bantering and friendly conversation, and fishermen shouting boisterous remarks across the quiet, spacious ocean.

  You could inhale the sweet salt air, enjoy the dazzling reflection of the early morning autumn sun on the surface of the gently rocking water. You could take along a drink of hot, sugared brandy, have a mug-up with raisin buns on the after-thwart, and shout jokes across to your friends and neighbours who were always catching more fish than you.

  It isn’t true what they say about me. I could fish alongside the best of them—when it was calm. Fishing on a beautiful Saturday morning in the midst of a comradely crowd has romance, camaraderie, the aura of good fortune.

  But Monday morning! After a late-night dance the night before in the parish hall! In wind and drizzle and fog! The only boat on the water! Waves up to your . . . !

  * * * *

  Now you may ask, and rightly so, why I hadn’t been sensible and gone to bed early the night before, knowing I was going to have, as my stepfather used to say, an early rise.

  I reply that I had given the thought careful consideration before going to the dance and had decided that I would leave the dance early and get the necessary sleep, and, in that respect, I was displaying exquisite good sense.

  Unfortunately, exquisite good sense, as a general rule, is usually not found in the heads of very young men. A man only acquires exquisite good sense at a later age in life; after he has put untold years of living and hardship and experience behind him; after he has been buffeted incessantly by fate and fortune and acquired that sterling character which only maturity and long life can bring.

  Usually twenty minutes after he’s dead.

  Besides, the band was playing one lancers after another, there were all those pretty Conception Bay girls to dance with, and I had to wait until the dance was over to get the last dance with Matilda Brown to walk her home.

  The logic became increasingly clear as the night progressed. It’s Sunday night, right! The forecast calls for bad weather on Monday, right! And nobody goes out fishing Monday mornings anyway, right!

  So I staggered home at two o’clock, totally exhausted, just two hours before I was supposed to get up and head for the grounds.

  Sensible, right!

  * * * *

  So here we were, Monday morning, five o’clock, bracing ourselves against drizzle-laden gusts of wind on a darkened wharf—me, Sam, and the mackerel.

  The mackerel rested solemnly and protectively in a pail between us, their sad eyes bespeaking total lack of awareness of the almost sacred intent to which they would soon be put; one of the last few chances for Sam to stock up on that rare Newfoundland winter delicacy—fish that he would catch and salt and dry cure himself.

  Nice, white, bleached, sun-dried cod; salted, washed, and cured to perfection on a flake of spruce boughs, like my stepfather, God rest his soul, used to do. Well-watered and boiled, with a dab of butter and a slice of raisin bread—“like angels dancin’ over the tip of yer tongue . . .”

  For Sam, the mackerel were the road to this delicacy, the passport to plenty, the means to harvest the finny gold of the ocean, the incomparable last chance for winter fish.

  To me, at five o’clock in the morning, my eyes burning with lack of sleep, they were eight dead fish that could be turned to better use as fertilizer in some abandoned turnip drill.

  * * * *

  Sam had mackerel, because there was no other bait to get. Not that this slur diminishes the value of the mackerel one little bit. Mackerel is the best kind of bait. Ask any thinking fisherman—or any thinking codfish, for that matter.

  In the hierarchy of baits it ranks a supreme third, after the pre-eminent squid and the succulent clam.

  Everybody knows that squid is the absolutely best bait, the crème de la
crème of baits, the pièce de résistance of culinary attraction in those murky depths of the watery underworld.

  No codfish, thinking or unthinking, can resist the tempting allure of a juicy cut of squid, arranged attractively on the hidden barb of a fish hook wafting gently toward the bottom, its black ink trailing seductively back to the surface.

  (They’re even better stir-fried in a Japanese recipe, but I’m shivering on a wharf at five o’clock in the morning, and if I think too long about warm oriental food I’m going to leave the wharf and go back home and you won’t hear the rest of the story.)

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t a squid to be had in the harbour that year, or anywhere else in Conception Bay for that matter, the very home of the squid. In fact, there hadn’t been any sign of squid for years.

  You couldn’t even go to the cold storage for last year’s squid.

  There were no freshwater clams, either.

  * * * *

  We had just had the worst rain in living memory, the rivers and marshes resembled the flooding around the Ark, and those nice, quiet, shallow bends in the river where you’d pick your clams were now raging torrents of wickedly surging water.

  But we did have mackerel, the third in line of supreme baits, as I have said, and which are equally capable of hoodwinking unsuspecting codfish. They rank below the unchallenged squid and the sneaky clam, but well above herring and capelin, which are unattractive in their dead state, anyway—even to the human eye—and have a tendency to detach from the hook during the descent to the bottom, leaving the codfish staring blankly at a bare hook.

  Codfish can be fooled by clams and mackerel, but there’s no way they’ll go for a bare hook, since codfish are not as stupid as they look, blankly or otherwise.

  Sam said we were lucky to have the mackerel. With the year getting on and still not a fish in salt, they could mean a winter’s fish for him. I was going to reply that freezing to death and dying of sheer misery on a heaving wharf was not my idea of being lucky, but what could I say?