As the old folks would say Read online

  My pretty neighbour? Oh, she fell in love with a Mountie who drove a big fancy Chrysler. The last I heard they had gotten married and moved up to Canada.

  They say the air is much fresher up there.

  THE LAW OF THE OCEAN

  The law of the ocean is ruthless

  It crushes the creature at will

  It knows neither age nor high station

  Its hunger for death’s never still

  From Cape Race, Cape Anguille to Cape Chidley

  Their names are carved into stone

  On great ships they went down in great numbers

  Yet they could—and they did—die alone

  Were they known, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert

  Great men of history, of fame?

  Or were they buried on some lonely coastline

  Without even a cross for their name?

  Were their ships crushed and strewn o’er the coastline?

  (The fate of the sad Florizel)

  Were they granted some brief glimpse of heaven

  While facing their storm-ridden hell?

  Did they die in some great sealing disaster

  Their faces frozen in tears?

  While the storm howled and shrieked in its fury

  Cut down in the prime of their years

  Or was it some man-made disaster

  That came with death from afar?

  With torpedoes and great conflagration

  The Caribou, all those ships lost in war

  Were they children, playing on ice pans

  Secure and safe by the beach?

  Till they slipped, and the power sucking under

  Dragged them to death beyond reach

  I study a map by my window

  Names of schooners (by the hundreds) in blocks

  The Cora, the Ruby, the Rosie . . .

  Storm-ravaged on Newfoundland’s rocks

  Were the names a wife or a daughter

  Left home to await their return?

  The Myrtle, the Nellie, Vanessa . . .

  Left home forever to mourn

  Forever to mourn and walk sadly

  To a church to kneel and to pray

  For a loved one whose grave is the ocean

  Where he lies for heaven to say

  To walk with a face etched in sorrow

  Dress in black as they did in past days

  Or sit in a chair by the window

  In memory to dream . . . and to gaze . . .

  I too turn my head back in sorrow

  At numbers that darken my mind

  And I turn from the pages of history

  To leave the darkness behind

  But the darkness remains in the present

  From an ocean we can’t seem to shun

  Its yearning for sorrow unfinished

  The Ranger, Flight Four Ninety-one . . .

  Draggers and crab boats and trawlers

  Does it matter the size or the kind?

  When they’re lost? The Myers III, the Sea Gypsy

  There are always loved ones left behind

  We’re a people surrounded by ocean

  An ocean we can’t seem to spurn

  It gives of its bounty unending

  But demands its own price in return

  The pages of history are crowded

  With the names of those who’ve been lost

  But we will go on till it’s ended

  No matter the trial or the cost

  We’ll follow the way of the ocean

  As we’ve done since our hist’ry began

  Rememb’ring all those gone before us

  Every brave woman and man

  FEATHERS IN THE SOUP

  Aunt Maude Finnegan’s rooster was dead.

  Dead as a doornail. Killed on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in July, would you believe. Killed by “that blood-uv-a-bitch of a Tommy Shannigan, going mad around the corner” as Aunt Maude would describe the event later. And the said “blood-uv-a-bitch” didn’t apologize or say he was sorry or utter one word of condolence to Aunt Maude on her grievous loss or give her one red cent in the bargain.

  Certainly, killing a rooster at that point wasn’t Tommy’s biggest problem. A new police force was now present in the outports of Newfoundland, and they didn’t look kindly on people like Tommy Shannigan going mad around corners in big cars, causing havoc on outport roads. In fact, the Mounties had a very unforgiving approach toward this kind of Newfoundland behaviour since their arrival in the province, and were determined to make the roads safe for other sensible drivers, as few in number as they were.

  And what a rooster!

  The very pride of Merry Harbour. Big and red and majestic, with an ancestry that went back to those fierce cockfighting days of yesteryear, unchallenged in the barnyard as the undisputed lord of thirteen hens, strutting back and forth among his mini harem like a newly elected politician who has just bought his wife an expensive fur coat.

  And now he was dead.

  Not that his killing was the most tragic event that could have happened in the small outport of Merry Harbour. Over the years, other equally tragic events had occurred that merited the attention of the residents, even dwarfed the death of the rooster by comparison.

  There was the time Mrs. Malarky left her good curtains on the line to air when she was spring cleaning and a huge bull moose that up to now everybody had thought quite friendly showed up to chew the lace off the edges. Then there was the time Jack Hennessey and the lads put Jake Murphy’s pig in the back of the Muckler’s brand new car while he was in Mahaney’s store and the Muckler drove around Merry Harbour for two hours wondering why the new engine was burning oil. And of course everybody remembers the time the squids rolled ashore behind the point and got trapped at low tide and were so terribly transformed by the hottest August we ever had . . .

  But, sir, for sheer fun and entertainment, none of them could touch the killing of the rooster on that beautiful summer afternoon.

  Tommy Shannigan killed him, that “young blood-uv-a-bitch,” out tearing around the roads in a big De Soto on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when he should have been in church praying instead of flying low frightening people to death.

  And well you may ask, “Pray tell, why is the killing of a big, red outport rooster of such importance in the chronicles of Newfoundland history when set beside other momentous events like French invasions and the depredations of people like Peter Easton and terrible fish prices and that sort of thing?” Well, Aunt Maude, the aforesaid owner of the rooster, was robbed of her Christmas dinner, six months hence, that’s the importance. Her only rooster, the rooster she was saving for Christmas, plucked out of existence, out of her pot, so to speak, never to brighten her Christmas table.

  And how can a rooster assume such importance? Well, when you’re a widow in the days before Confederation subsisting on twelve-fifty a quarter, you needed all the help you could get, and, for widows, things didn’t change much after Confederation. So Aunt Maude had her little garden and her few hens to eke out her existence as best she could, in a time when money was as scarce as the teeth of the hens she reared.

  The big, red rooster was her pride and glory. She had always guarded him like a hawk—the local lads were always stealing hens for soup—(and being promoted to high positions in the RCMP later on for their accomplishments)—but today she had imprudently left her yard gate open. This gave an unwilling black hen the chance to escape the unwanted advances of a very willing and flirtatious rooster; and gave the rooster the chance of flirting with death first-hand instead of with the unwilling black hen.

  And that’s when Tommy Shannigan entered the story. “Flying low” around the corner,
going as fast as he could to get absolutely nowhere in jig time, he had to swerve to avoid the two big maples on one side of the road, lost control of the vehicle—if he had any up to this point—and hit J. J. Mahaney’s shop on the other side.

  And not only hit the shop! He went right through the shop. The most prestigious shop in Merry Harbour—the biggest, reddest shop in Cobbler’s Bay—and he went right through the corner, in through one big picture window and out through the other, spewing glass in every direction.

  And it didn’t stop there. The car, I mean. Assuming that it had complete control of the situation, as it had had for some time, and undeterred by what it considered as nothing more than a minor setback to its errant escapade, it barrelled across the gravel parking space like one of those modern-day rockets, hell-bent on destroying everything in its path.

  J. J. Mahaney’s solitary green and white gas tank, which, ruefully, happened to be directly in its path, was set flying, landing somewhere among the white rose bushes in the south side of the garden. Three lengths of new, white paling fence were totally eliminated, and Mrs. Mahaney’s superbly cultivated patch of tame strawberries, which the lads of the parish had not yet had the good fortune to rob, received its first unwelcome visitor.

  Then, after spinning wildly for a few seconds, driving strawberries like a top spinning, it emerged from the garden through the same passage it had created in the fence on its way through, somewhat slowed by its encounter with the deep, soft clay of the strawberry patch. As if in sorrow for the wanton destruction it had caused, it re-entered the gravel parking area with its momentum substantially reduced, terminating its turbulent adventure by parking timidly in the middle of the road, unremorseful about the damage and chaos it had wrought—its young driver still gripping the steering wheel at arm’s length, rigid with fright from the experience.

  The big, red rooster got killed on the way back, not on the way toward the strawberry patch, as some later argued. Like many a male the world over, he died in amorous pursuit of a female of his species, in this case a little black hen. The latter had sprinted some distance ahead of her pursuer and thereby avoided injury herself, but the big, red rooster, in his haste to catch up, collided with the corner of the bumper of Tommy’s big De Soto on its return trip through the fence. Given the advantages of modern technology, the collision was immensely in favour of the De Soto, and the big, red rooster was sent flying through the air, and, for the first time, not of his own accord.

  He landed in an upright position in front of the broken gas pump, where he stood for some time totally motionless, obviously dazed by the blow and seemingly perplexed at this sudden and horrific turn of events in his life. Then, after wobbling to and fro for another short time, possibly overwhelmed by the accompanying fear of imminent and unexpected death, he dropped on his back and gave up his spirit in much the same way as one of those poorer actors in a second-rate movie death scene. There he lay in his waking position, the concrete base of the gas pump providing him with a ready-made tombstone, the red feathers which were shed from his body on impact, and up to now had been floating rather aimlessly in the wind, settling gently around his sorrowful corpse, like roses at a Mafia funeral.

  The little black hen, meanwhile, having obviously severed any emotional ties which might have existed with the rooster up to this point, and totally unperturbed by the violent events of the afternoon which had unfolded around her, was pecking abstractedly in the strawberry patch, the soul of content in the middle of all the near-ripe strawberries.

  The plot, or the broth, whichever you prefer, now began to thicken.

  The villain, Tommy Shannigan, emerged from the car slowly, a look of shock upon his young face as he surveyed the devastation effected by his wild escapade. The car was a brand new De Soto that he had purchased just a week before with money he had saved from two stints on an American base in Greenland, and he had cared for it like you would a baby. Now it stood scratched, dented, bruised, and covered with dirt, testimony to the errant behaviour of its remorseful owner, who stood resting on the open car door, letting the full weight of his transgression settle over him.

  One could never condone his actions, of course, and there were many in the gathering crowd who were quick to condemn, but to be fair, it could be argued that he had done no more than succumb to the twin vices of youth and bad judgment, which seems to be the general problem with young people the world over, of whatever era, especially where big, fast, shiny new cars are concerned.

  From this perspective, he had succumbed to the temptation of his time, which in this case consisted of getting as much speed as possible out of a big eight-cylinder engine in a heavy car on a narrow, winding gravel road with very little experience as a driver, and he was now paying the price. He hadn’t had the benefit of driver training programs which are so much in vogue today—what preparation he had consisted of three practice runs in his uncles’s land rover—and had been given his licence after only two supervised runs on Blackduck Hill without stalling the standard transmission and rolling back.

  The rooster, of course, being dead, hadn’t moved in all this time, but was still the centre of attention for the gathering crowd, which had appeared from nowhere and constituted a relatively large number, when you consider the size of the outport. It was Sunday afternoon, and anybody who was anybody—certainly everybody who was within hearing distance of the racket—had rushed to the scene, having abandoned knitting needles and playing cards and hay prongs in favour of hurrying to the accident scene, so as not to miss out on any of the anticipated excitement. They arranged themselves in standing-room-only fashion in concentric rings around the scene, jostling and craning to obtain the most advantageous point from which to view—and enjoy—the upcoming proceedings.

  With the crowd and Tommy settled into their respective roles, what remained to complete the cast for the continuing scenes would be the entrance of the RCMP, who were sure to respond to every accident on the corner on Sundays, and the arrival of Aunt Maude, who, being the owner of the dead bird, could be deemed the most tragic character in the play, assuming the lead role, if you will, and who should have elicited the most sympathy.

  Neither were long in coming.

  Within moments a police car screamed to a halt, siren wailing as if warning of yet another impending French invasion, and disgorged a lone police officer, his youthful appearance bespeaking his inexperience in the field, having been sent to Newfoundland on his first posting under the assumption that he wouldn’t have a whole lot of crime to deal with, anyway. There were very few cars outside the city in those years, mainly because there were very few roads outside the city, and there wasn’t a lot of stealing and stuff like that because most people in those days really didn’t have much worth taking, anyway.

  He was not at all prepared for his first real foray into Newfoundland outport culture, a culture which had experienced enough seriousness in hardship and hard times and tuberculosis and such that another Sunday accident on Kayten’s Corner was nothing more than a harmless opportunity for a little conversation and a much-needed bit of fun.

  Neither was he prepared for a confrontation with a Newfoundland widow who had lived through two world wars and a terrible depression, buried two husbands, and who, for seventy-two years, had survived—almost entirely through her own wit and ingenuity—the sicknesses, troubles, and general hardship that has gone a long way to make up the romantic Newfoundland past.

  Aunt Maude didn’t arrive on the scene as much as she descended on it, something like a hurricane blast of wind in an October gale, cowing and flattening everything in its path, like the “roaring savage,” as the old folks would say. She was tall and raw-boned, straight as a whip in spite of her seventy-two years, and could turn hay or hoe out potatoes with the best of them, men or women, in her younger days. Even at her advanced age, she still brought in her own wood and tended her garden, and pretty well looked after hersel
f.

  So what suddenly emerged centre stage onto the accident scene was no syrupy-sweet ’50s movie heroine ready to faint at a lover’s sigh, but an enraged Newfoundland widow whose sole purpose in life at the moment was to wreak vengeance on whoever robbed her of her forthcoming Christmas dinner.

  For such, as I have said, was the rooster’s hallowed destiny.

  The big, red rooster was her prime accomplishment over the past year or so. She had fattened him with care and patience, and was secretly looking forward to next Christmas Day when she could bake him and garnish him and proudly serve him to the three other ladies who came to visit her and who formed, with her, what you would call today a social club.

  Consistent with the practical turn of the people of her day, she had no particular or personal attachment to the fowl, as women have today for, say, corgis or French poodles. However, she had been fattening him up to display as Christmas Day dinner, and the fact that she could still salvage the remains for immediate consumption did not in any way counter the despair she would experience at the thought of her rooster’s absence from the table on that festive date.

  Neither would it replace the compliments which her three visiting friends would heap on her for raising such a clever bird, ample reward in a culture craving little materially, but, like human beings the world over, needing all the credit they could get for whatever small achievements they could attain in the harried obscurity of their daily lives.

  Enraged that she would be denied the pleasure of witnessing her rooster in the pot on Christmas Day, she doubtless concluded that his killer would do just as well on that particular Sunday afternoon.

  The neighbour who brought her the news had caught her in the act of scouring her iron skillet, which up to now had been utilized in peaceful fashion to cook the weekly allocation of fresh meat and gravy purchased the day before from the Protestant meat man, and she had absent-mindedly carried it with her in her haste to reach the scene of the accident.