The Place Read online

  The schooner hove to under lowered sail at the western end of the tickle. A punt shoved away from the shore with two men rowing hard for the vessel. The schooner was too far away to know her by name. But a man climbed down a rope ladder that had been tossed over the starboard side and sat on the midship thwart of the punt with his back to its bow. The mailbag was thrown down, and the punt pulled away. The schooner made sail for leaving again. Redjack would not be sailing with her.

  Shouts of Git the blankets on ’er, aloft the fore an’ main, sweat ’er, b’ys, sweat ’er, and bit tight the sheets came clear on the evening air. The punt rounded Harbour Rock, which was halfway out of the water on a slack tide. The passenger in the punt was unrecognizable.

  “’Tis not Jake,” Eliza said despondently. “The new minister, I ’lows.”

  My heart ached for her and for me. The punt disappeared from view as it came in under the land. Fearing what the mailbag would tell her, Eliza lagged back, and I stayed by her side. Redjack stayed behind us, still leaning on the edge of the flake, looking every bit as arrogant as he had when I had seen him lean on the taffrail of the Plunging Star so long ago.

  The heavy mailbag came up over the side of Jake’s wharf and landed on the lungers. A duffle bag followed, thrown by unseen hands. For a while, nothing else happened. Then, suddenly, something else flew up over the stagehead. It looked like a long crunnick, and it fell clattering upon the wharf’s lungers. It was a crutch. We all watched in silence. Then, fingers, hands, and arms appeared, followed by a man’s head . . . with hair the colour of fir boughs burning. The figure scrambled over the wharf. Crouching, he grabbed the crutch, placed it under his left shoulder, and stood facing the crowd. Jake had come home from the war!

  Eliza gasped beside me. On the wharf below us, Jake had eyes for none but her. With Little Jake gurgling in her arms, the Maid started for the path, but Redjack was behind her in the blink of an eye. Placing his hands upon Eliza’s shoulders, he shouted, “Well, if it isn’t the Crackie come home from the war! A cripple!”

  I saw Jake look up. It must have been disturbing for him to see a man with red hair place his hands upon the Maid, who was carrying a child with the same hair colour in her arms! Jake staggered against the splitting table. The crutch fell from his hands upon the lungers.

  Eliza wheeled around as if she had been scalded, and her voice cut the air. “Get yer bloody hands off me! And if you ever lay a hand on me again I’ll claw yer eyes out!” Redjack recoiled from her and slunk back to the flake.

  The Maid went flying down the path toward her man, clutching Little Jake as she went. And Jake, who saw her coming, stood straight and tall. When they embraced, his crutch was still on the lungers. My eyes welled up. Even from here I could see the boy who went away to war had not returned. Standing on the wharf, with his first love and first child enfolded in his arms, was a man to be reckoned with. Or not to be reckoned with. I wondered if the man, Jake, could ever forgive the sins the mother had meted out upon the boy.

  You’ll never be put back and not kissed, Little Jake, I was thinking.

  It seemed like everyone in the Place had come to welcome Jake home from the war. Children ran and adults walked down the path to his wharf. I stayed rooted to the spot on new grass beside the path and waited. For what, I didn’t know. I only knew I had missed seeing my boy go away but would not miss his return. Jake’s shoulders were slapped, his hand was shaken, and shouts of welcome rang out over the harbour so loud the gulls abandoned Harbour Rock for more peaceful places.

  Eliza handed Jake the crutch. The crowd on the wharf parted, and Jake, his crutch under one arm and Little Jake cradled in the other, made his way over the wharf and up the path where I waited with so much uncertainty. What could I say to him? He was looking up the hill as he moved. Redjack, I thought. But when I turned to look, the flake was empty. The Culler had fled. My son was looking up the path at me! I silently prayed for Jake’s courage again.

  Eliza’s face was beaming. All the strain in her eyes had vanished. Her love had come home, and the acknowledgement of their love was evident in the baby cradled in Jake’s arm. So proud was Eliza to see her man, she couldn’t contain herself to walk behind him on the narrow path but stepped lightly on the grass beside him.

  Oh my! How handsome Jake had become. How manly his step, even laboured from wounds. How broad his shoulders, and how thick and so full of life was his hair.

  “Eliza tells me you have come to welcome me home,” Jake said to me when he stopped on the path next to me.

  “I . . . yes . . . I—oh! You are not stuttering, Jake!”

  “I guess war takes the stammer out of a man,” was his reply. Little Jake had his fingers entwined in his father’s hair. Eliza had her hand upon Jake’s, above the crutch.

  He was limping past me when I said, “I’ve baked fresh bread.”

  “Leave a loaf in the porch,” he said. And they limped together toward the twine loft, where blue smoke rising from a black funnel gave him a warm welcome home to the Place.

  38

  I had never seen a fight in my life. I had witnessed my share of rows. Toby and I had them daily. But I had never seen men come to blows before that day on Jake’s wharf when he and Redjack fought. It was a thrust and parry between father and son. I witnessed it all from the hill above the wharf. The people had gathered once more. Though I knew it would happen—knew that Jake would not tolerate such an intrusion in his life, father or no—I hated this day. What Redjack had done to me was godawful and wrong, and after our row on the wharf, I believed I was not the only woman he had violated.

  The only good thing to come from it was my son, Jake, and it had taken me far too long to discover that. Too long for reconciliation, maybe. Somehow, and I didn’t know why, I knew this confrontation between Jake and his father would lead to one between Jake and me. I feared it. I feared that on the very brink of finding love again, I would lose it forever.

  They looked like two titans preparing for mortal combat, one with his fists balled, the other holding a staff. The father, short and tough, and the son, just a bit taller and looking powerful, more resolute. Both men snarled at each other like red-haired lions. I could only hear snatches of their argument.

  A light, warm summer wind scudded across the harbour, dappling the calm water. It was a good day on clothes, I was thinking. The gulls, attracted by the commotion, swooped above the wharf. One gull’s droppings hit the water, and it was followed by a swirl from something beneath the surface. Probably a conner, I thought. Conners didn’t wait for food to come drifting down. Too greedy for that, they were the first to swim up to investigate.

  Redjack said something I couldn’t hear. “I never had a father!” Jake yelled back at him. Nor mother, I was thinking. The truth hurt.

  The Culler made the first move. He shook the lungers as he charged Jake, looking as if he meant to bull him over by sheer strength. Even from where I was standing, it was clear Redjack was in a blind panic. Jake, his crutch in hand, merely let him come. Eliza yelled, pleading with Jake not to use the makeshift weapon, and he flung the crutch aside.

  Those who were close enough to hear it said the sound of the cartilage letting go in Redjack’s nose was like the sound a straining rope makes when a sharp knife is drawn across it. Jake hit Redjack’s bloodied face again and was drawing back to repeat the blow when I yelled out to him.

  “No, Jake! This must end! ’Tis done! Please let it be done, my son!”

  Jake looked up the hill at me. Crying, I was. He had never heard me call him “my son” before. He released Redjack, and the Culler collapsed upon the lungers. During the scuffle, something from Redjack’s shirt pocket had fallen onto the wharf. It was a lock of red hair. I knew right then it wasn’t his own, but that of his daughter, who had been murdered by her mother. Despite his pain and humiliation, Redjack grabbed the lock of hair and put it back in his pocket. I pitied him, th
en.

  Jake yelled at him to leave and never return. And as the son had crawled up over the wharf, so did the father crawl down. The punt rocked from side to side as the Culler sought refuge under its canvas cuddy.

  I stayed where I was and watched Jake limp up the hill after beating his father. Eliza walked behind him with Little Jake in her arms. Jake’s face didn’t look triumphant. I would have thought less of him if it had. Rather, I read in his face something akin to a tired fisherman—one who closes his stage door upon the summer’s harvest and knows it is not enough, would never be enough, and wonders what it was all for.

  The languid twilight came, and the day’s breeze had long gone up the bays to wherever day breezes go. The ocean was stark calm and black as night. It was bread-baking day for me, but because of recent events, I was late getting to it. I pulled it from the oven, and while waiting for it to cool a bit, I went to the back pantry, where from under a shelf I dug out some hard butter with a small wooden spade from the butter tub. Back in the kitchen, I smeared dollops of it upon the warm loaves. The butter melted right away and dripped down over the loaves like gravy over duff. I reflected on the day and all that had happened.

  Now I was not as angry as I used to be. There had been enlightenments, for sure. Oh, Redjack had earned his comeuppance, there was no doubt about that. Word was that Redjack cowered when Jake confronted him about the rights of property and commanded him to quote proof of law. Everyone could see then that he was lying about it.

  Told him, too, Jake did, that he knew he had survived the Newfoundland sealing disaster by stealing clothes and food from the bodies of his brothers on the ice. The crowd gasped at that, and if Jake hadn’t driven him away, they would have. It was when Jake told him that he had heard rumours that the Culler had raped other women that Redjack had attacked him. It was obvious to all that it wasn’t at all about remorse for what he had done, but that he had been found out.

  I took Jake’s loaf of bread to the shelf hard by the door in the porch. I heard strange, irregular footsteps on the path outside, and for a moment I was afraid. Redjack had come stumbling up the path to my door, I thought.

  Nevertheless, I swung the door wide open, ready to face my fears. It was Jake, and his crutch was responsible for the odd sound. It would take time to get used to the sound of it. The sun had gone to its westing on this beautiful summer evening. Jake was holding Little Jake in his arm, and Eliza was standing on the grass by his side.

  “Good news, Becky!” was Eliza’s greeting when she saw me. I suddenly wondered what name she would call me after they married. “We have decided on the official name for Little Jake.” She looked at Jake, then back at me, as if she wasn’t sure.

  “What will it be?” I asked.

  “Templar,” said Jake.

  “Templar?” My tone must have shown my confusion.

  “Yes, Templar!” cried Eliza. “Isn’t it exciting? So different and unique! It means someone who is good and kind and faithful. Defender of the weak. The Catholic gave Jake the idea.”

  Again I voiced my ignorance. “The Catholic?”

  “It’s a long story,” Jake said quietly. I loved his flawless voice!

  “It will take time to hear all of them,” I said, and he looked into my eyes. Ashamed, I looked away.

  Eliza, God love her, caught the tension between us and said with her infectious smile, “We are on the way to the lookout above the tickle.”

  They turned to leave, and then Jake stopped. For the longest time, no one spoke. I saw his shoulders tense, as if he were struggling with something. The crutch trembled in his hand. Eliza looked up at him, and tears came to her eyes. I sensed it had to do with me. But I was utterly astonished when Jake turned and offered Little Jake to me.

  In a voice thick with emotion, he said, “’Tis time to remove the stile between us.” He placed the boy in my arms. “We’ll be stopping for Templar on the way back. And for a loaf of bread.” He smiled at me. And my son and Eliza walked up the path, arm in arm.

  Oh my God! The feel of the child in my arms. The warmth of him. The life, the innocence. The cradling of a child in my arms. The innate bond of woman and child. The blessed opportunity to start all over.

  Redjack was wrong. It wasn’t he who would get revenge for what Sophie had done. In the end she had gotten her revenge. For Redjack would have to live with the pain of her deeds and know he was the cause of them for the span of his years. Ultimately, that was Sophie’s true revenge.

  Ironically, in a way I was glad the Culler had come to the Place. I had faced my nemesis. I had finally seen through my hatred and had found love and compassion. Wherever Redjack was, it was my fervent hope he would find Jake’s strength to get him through.

  And turning away with Templar, comforter of troubled thoughts, I closed the door, which would forever offer me peaceful sanctuary within the Place.

  Acknowledgements

  To my lifelong mate and best friend, my wife, Rose. My first editor and critic, who always peruses my first scribblings of every manuscript and usually says, ever so softly, “It’s good, but . . .” It is the but of her creative mind that keeps my work in the sheltered cove of literal acceptance. I love you still.

  Graham Blair, gifted designer, who has crafted the covers of many of my books, thank you.

  My publishers—my friends and Templars of my work—Flanker Press, for trusting me and for keeping me on the shelves, thank you.

  My hard-working editor of fourteen books—I can’t believe it!—Jerry Cranford, who lets me win some of our editing-related arguments . . . thanks, Jerry.

  Ed Oldford, who unknowingly was instrumental in helping me decide to write this prequel to The Crackie, you have my thanks.

  John Lush, who has related volumes to me in a few sentences, thank you.

  And to those who make my continued writing enjoyable—my faithful readers—without whom my first book would have been my last . . . my sincerest thanks.

  About the Author

  Gary Collins was born in Hare Bay, Bonavista North. He spent fifty years in the logging and sawmilling business with his father, Theophilus, and son, Clint. Gary was once Newfoundland’s youngest fisheries guardian. He managed log drives down spring rivers for years, spent seven seasons driving tractor-trailers over ice roads and the Beaufort Sea of Canada’s Western Arctic, and has been involved in the crab, lobster, and cod commercial fisheries. In 2016, he joined the Canadian Rangers.

  Gary has written fourteen books, including the children’s illustrated book What Colour is the Ocean?, which he co-wrote with his granddaughter, Maggie Rose Parsons. That book won an Atlantic Book Award: The Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration. His book Mattie Mitchell: Newfoundland’s Greatest Frontiersman has been adapted for film. Gary’s first novel, The Last Beothuk, won the inaugural NL Reads literary competition, administered by the CBC, and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

  Gary Collins is Newfoundland and Labrador’s favourite storyteller, and today he is known all over the province as the Story Man. He lives in Hare Bay with his wife, the former Rose Gill. They have three children and seven grandchildren.