The Place Page 9

  Several large desks lined both walls. Clerks, all of them men, all well-dressed in black with stiff-collared white shirts and black ties, sat behind them. They were talking in hushed voices to as many clients, who sat on the edges of huge chairs in front of each desk. Two of the clients were women. At the end of the cavernous room was the largest desk of all. What looked like the portrait of a king peered down from the wall above the desk. Jack didn’t recognize the king in the painting. He had never seen a king before. Behind this desk sat a man wearing a red shawl that looked like dyed sheep’s wool. A snow-white mane of hair tumbled well below his narrow shoulders. There were no chairs in front of the desk. Jack, whose eyes were staring in consternation around the room, met the glare of one of the clerks seated behind a spotless desk to his right. Without speaking, he motioned Jack toward him with a long, thin finger. Jack crossed the room toward the clerk and twisted his hat in his hands as he sat in one of the chairs.

  “Well?” hissed the clerk.

  “Well what, sir?” Jack whispered back.

  “Why the hell are you here, man? I don’t have all day.”

  “I’ve come to stand afore the head magistrate and swear on God’s Bible, sir.”

  “Stand? Swear? What the bloody hell are you talking about, man?”

  “Why, I was sent ’ere to be a sworn fish culler, sir.”

  “A sworn . . . who sent you, man?”

  “Why, the chandler, sir.”

  “What bloody chandler and from which bloody bay?” The clerk was so angry he was sweating. Jack told him the chandler’s name and from which bay he had sailed.

  “I’ve a letter from ’im, sir. Fer the magistrate.”

  “Give me the letter.”

  Jack pulled the letter from his pocket and handed it over to him.

  “Sorry, sir, I didn’t know you were the magistrate.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Then why did ’e take me—”

  “Silence, man,” the irate clerk hissed through clenched teeth.

  Jack said no more. The clerk slashed the letter open with a dagger-like knife and looked it over. Dropping the letter on the desk, he pulled open a bottom drawer and drew from it a single sheet of paper. Without speaking or looking at Jack, he walked the length of the room on soft leather shoes and stood in front of the huge wooden desk. Jack couldn’t be sure, but he figured none of the rich-looking desks in the room were constructed from Newfoundland trees. The man with the red shawl and wig didn’t look up. After a lengthy pause, the clerk cleared his throat so low Jack barely heard him. The wig looked up, and the clerk handed him the sheaf of paper. The wig signed it without reading and handed it back to the clerk, who returned to his desk. The wig bent his head again.

  “Can you sign your name?” the clerk asked, giving Jack a doubtful look.

  “That I can, sir.” He rose to his feet, bent over the desk, and signed the proffered paper where the clerk indicated with his finger.

  “I t’ought I was to swear on God’s own book.”

  From another drawer the clerk, frustrated, pulled a large Bible that looked like it had been riddled with shot. “Place your hand on the Bible as you sign your name.” He sighed in apparent disgust. Jack did as he was told.

  “Wot about standin’ afore the magistrate and swearin’?”

  “Hush!” The clerk appeared mortified to hear Jack speak these words aloud and looked toward the huge desk. The wig was still bowed. “I stood in front of the magistrate in your stead, and you just signed the oath.” He stamped the document Jack had signed and handed it to him. “You can leave now, sir. And don’t slam the bloody door on your exit as you did on your entry.”

  Jack walked back across the room, and before closing the door quietly, he wanted to tell the contrary clerk that he had not slammed the door. It had swung closed on its own. He looked back and wondered if all magistrates were bald, wore ugly wigs, and draped great shawls over their shoulders. The door thudded shut behind him.

  12

  On the sail homeward, the Plunging Star ran into a gale of wind and had to stay for the night in one of the small harbours where she off-loaded freight from St. John’s. Jack lounged on the taffrail and didn’t take part in the work. Everyone in the place had either come to the wharf or watched the men from the hill above. One of the watchers sitting on the grassy knoll above the schooner was a young girl with exceptional looks. She looked prettier than the young girl in the logging camp. Once, he caught her staring at him. Jack felt ill at ease with his act of adultery last winter, and as the young woman on the bank brought the full memory of that regrettable one-night escapade, he went below and did not return.

  When he opened the door to their house, Emiline toddled over to his outspread arms. Jack had constructed the house with his own hand from trees lugged out of the forest on his own shoulders. Jack and Sophie were proud of their home overlooking the cove. Sophie had washed and combed Emiline’s hair. When Jack gave the child his home-from-the-sea hug, he pressed his nose into her red tresses, loving the fresh smell of it. He and Sophie kissed warmly, their daughter still in Jack’s arms between them. For a second, Jack had a rush of fear as he remembered the blonde girl in the logging camp. Brushing the terrible feeling aside, he pulled from his duffle bag a set of radiant green hair combs for Emiline and a pair of see-through stockings for Sophie. It was the first pair of stockings Sophie had ever owned. And when Jack pulled from his bag a pair of white garters to hold them up, she blushed as red as her daughter’s hair. And that night, blushing all the more, with a kerosene lamp silhouetting her willowy body, she wore them to bed.

  Two weeks after that, the excited chandler summoned Jack to his office. He had obtained a contract with a merchant in St. John’s to supply a large quantity of salt-bulk fish to a company in Spain. This was fish that had been kept in salt for weeks or even months before it was washed and dried. But the merchant in Spain wanted the fish shipped in salt and not dried. However, he did want the fish culled for quality. After being pulled out of their bed of salt for culling, the fish were to be stacked and salted back into wooden barrels and loaded aboard a large square-rigger waiting in St. John’s for shipment overseas. The chandler would be paid by the barrel weight, barrel included.

  It was a lucrative order. A quintal weighed a hundred pounds. Every fish merchant around Newfoundland considered a quintal of fish to be 112 pounds. The twelve extra were to compensate the buyer for losses incurred during the drying process. Fish shipped in salt and not dried was extra profit for the chandler, who told Jack to lay the salt on good for weight. Jack told him that fish packed in salt in a barrel would be in a liquid brine and would turn to a pickled state long before they reached Spain, and over time they would likely turn “rusty.” But the chandler informed him that was what the dumb Spaniards wanted. To hell with the rusty fish. Jack told the chandler that pickled cod was one of his favourites, too, but this fell on deaf ears.

  Jack lived aboard the Plunging Star for most of that summer, sailing north and south as the crew purchased salt-bulk fish by the quintal and salted them back into forty-five-gallon wooden barrels weighing an average of 450 pounds each. In early autumn they sailed south again to St. John’s and watched as 200 barrels were hoisted out of the Star’s packed hold and winched aboard a ship bound for Spain.

  The trip back to home port took nearly three weeks more on account of headwinds. Along the way the schooner called into many places and loaded salt and sun-cured fish, the latter all culled by Jack’s hand. And for the most part the fishermen considered Jack the culler to be fair with his culling. Well, mostly fair. A fisherman would never get his due. And Jack carefully recorded each crew’s catch and watched as they made their marks beside their names on his ledger. Jack’s pencil was black, but he knew all too well the chandler would use a pen with red ink.

  The Plunging Star, well-burthen, came in under the land of her home
port with dark riding her taffrail, and the men who stood on deck cast staggering shadows beneath swinging storm-lantern light. Her weather lanterns, hauled aloft in her gant lines, gave only dimples of light and needed cleaning. Her forefoot settled when the sails were downed and her weigh left her.

  Jack was still standing at the taffrail as the schooner slid as smooth as cod oil into her berth at the chandler’s wharf below his house. He was thinking how good it was going to be to hold his pretty young daughter. He was lovelorn for his wife, too, and trembled at the thought of seeing her again in her new stockings. Then he noticed there was no lamp glowing from his kitchen window. Nothing but cold black windows, with no light shining through, stared ominously down from his house.

  Jack was perplexed, even more so when, before all the lines were thrown and the Plunging Star was still settling into her holding bits, Sophie’s mother appeared out of the gloom and walked onto the wharf. Jack had never seen Sophie’s mother on the wharf before. She certainly hadn’t come to welcome him home. They didn’t get along well.

  Jack shouldered his sea bag, crossed the gangway, and stood in front of Sophie’s mother, who had walked out as far as she dared on the wharf. Her eyes were swollen red as if she had been crying. She was crying now. Her hands kept wringing at the hem of her long, drab coat.

  “Wot is it?” Jack demanded in a stern voice. He always talked sternly to Sophie’s mother. The woman was in total despair. She sobbed and cried and kept looking up over the hill at Jack’s black windows.

  “Well? Wot is it, woman?” Jack’s voice grew louder.

  The woman shivered and appeared so weak Jack thought she would founder. Then, still looking up at her daughter’s window as if hoping to see lamplight, she cried in a voice that was low yet pierced Jack’s astonished mind forever: “My daughter, Sophie, and yours, precious little Emiline, are both dead! Dead and buried!”

  And with that, Jack’s mother-in-law collapsed on the wharf before him.

  13

  Becky

  “You have a bonny-looking boy,” Aunt Jane, the midwife, told me.

  She was holding a bundle of screams, his face cowled and swaddled with blankets in her arms. I saw my boy’s face for the first time, then. Red as a boiled beet, he was. His wide-open mouth exposed toothless gums and exuded cries. Bubbling tears chased down his flushed cheeks, his eyes barred tight. His two hands were knuckled into tiny fists, and he kicked in protest.

  “Bare yer breast, my love. So’s he can feed,” Aunt Jane said gently, seeing as how I didn’t have the sense to do so.

  I pulled back the blanket, which was damp with the sweat of my ordeal, and exposed my swollen left breast. Aunt Jane tenderly placed the child down in the crook of my shoulder and directed his screaming mouth toward my sore nipple. It was the first mouth ever to suck at my nipple. Toby fondled them during his brief forays at lovemaking, but he never once mouthed them.

  The baby fastened his lips, and it gave me a jolt of surprise. The boy’s mouth was warm and soothing. The feeling was one of intense relief in my swollen breast. He stopped crying.

  Gunfire erupted outside. I saw the stabs of flame flicker against the windowpanes. The boys were firing off their muskets to announce the new year of 1900. Aunt Jane stood watching by the window. “Waste of powder and shot,” she said to herself. The guns stopped as quickly as they had begun.

  The door creaked open, and Toby entered. His face beamed as he crossed the floor to see his son. The path of light from the lamp was disturbed briefly when he crossed it, then his shadow fell upon the child at my breast. Ashamed to let him see my nakedness under the glow of the lamp, I pulled the blanket over, hiding the peacefully nursing child.

  “Show me my b’y,” he ordered, bending over the better to see. I caught the faint smell of moonshine on his breath. The new century had been drunk in, too.

  Noticing his shadow upon the child’s form, he moved aside to let in some lamplight. I covered my breast with the inner blanket and pulled the child’s blanket aside. Even damp from birth sweat, his hair still looked flaming red. The smile left Toby’s face and was replaced by a scowl that thrust daggers into my eyes. God had not answered my simple prayer. My molester’s hair colour had been manifested in his child. I was mortified.

  Toby left the room, his shadow a fleeting thing across the path of lamplight. The door slammed behind him, and the silence in the room was pronounced. I was now confronted by a harsh reality. Just then, I missed my mother’s presence. She, who had flitted back and forth from kitchen to my room all day, had not entered the room since the birthing. I knew why, then. She had helped Aunt Jane with the birth. Both of them had seen the colour of my child’s hair and knew what Toby would be thinking. As if reading my mind and seeing my distress, Aunt Jane came to me.

  “’Twas the hard birt’in’, my love. I’ve seen it all afore. No call fer alarm or misjudgments.” She looked toward the door through which Toby had stormed. “The colour of the b’y’s hair will surely change.”

  Aunt Jane was right. In a short time the boy’s hair did turn. It turned as bright as the colour of fir boughs burning. And the hate that would plague our family and consume my life began.

  I had my son christened Jacob. Toby didn’t care what I called him. Aunt Jane was not only midwife—she was healer and the closest person to a doctor in the Place. She was also church lay reader and was authorized to christen babies. The circuit minister came but rarely. His visits depended on schooners, wind, and whim. We from the outports knew all too well the importance of having a child christened as soon as possible. The cemetery bore mute witness to it.

  So, on a Sunday morning three days after Jacob’s birth, I lugged him through calf-high snow to Aunt Jane’s house out on the windswept point. She lived alone. The dog chained near her door heard my feet crunch through the January snow long before he saw me and began his mournful howling. He ran the length of his chain as I neared, his tail wagging wildly, hoping I would free him. Jacob was crying as I stepped through Aunt Jane’s porch door without knocking, stamped my boots, and entered her warm kitchen.

  “Feedin’ time, is it?” She smiled knowingly.

  “It is forever feeding time with this one. Starvin’ all the time, he is.”

  “They all are, my love. Be thankful he is hungry for your milk, and what’s more, be grateful the chil’ is keeping it down. The baby girl across the tickle can’t keep her milk down. Pourin’ out of the poor chil’ from both ends. We even tried another mother’s milk. Nothing works. Poor chil’. Baptized her yesterday, I did. One week old. I doubt she’ll see the end of another week. Susie, they named her.”

  My God, I thought, I can’t tell Aunt Jane I wouldn’t mind if my son died. It wasn’t that, though. I didn’t wish he were dead. I just wish he weren’t here with me.

  Aunt Jane interrupted my disturbing thoughts. “Come along to the table, my love. They’re rowing a punt across the tickle fer me in an hour or so. Not that I know what to do fer the poor chil’. Still, I’ll be shovin’ across the tickle when they comes. I’m permitted to perform the other ceremony, too. God forbid.”

  “The other ceremony?”

  “Interment, my love!” She poured well water, brown and rich in iron, from a jug with blue birds flying all over it, into a large earthen bowl painted with bluebirds nesting. A large open Bible rested beside the bowl. She took Jacob from my breast and stepped to the table. I buttoned my clothes and stood beside her. “Toby?” Aunt Jane looked to the door.

  “Not coming.”

  “They never do. Keen on the gittin’s and never the fittin’s, I always say about ’em.” The dog started barking again. Aunt Jane went to the window with Jacob in her arms. “The b’ys are rowing across the tickle already,” she said. “Poor little Susie must have taken a turn fer the worse. We must hurry.”

  Aunt Jane stepped briskly back to the table and said without reading, �
�May happiness be yours all the years in front of you. May happiness be your portion always. May love be your constant friend. May God’s grace and blessing be upon your shoulder all the days of your life. I christen thee . . .” She looked at me.

  “Jacob,” I said.

  With her cupped hand she sprinkled water over Jacob’s head. He frowned and screwed up his face but didn’t cry. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I christen thee Jacob.”

  The door opened, and a man with a ruddy face and dressed in a heavy coat entered with snow-covered boots. “’Tis Susie again, Aunt Jane. Drained of her colour, she is, and breathin’ no more’n a sparrow. There’s slob makin’ in the tickle. Ye must come along quick, like.”

  “Amen,” said Aunt Jane, and she handed me my son, who started crying.

  “Probably needs feedin’,” said the man.

  “Close the door when you leaves, Becky my love,” Aunt Jane said, already pulling on her coat and hauling a scarf over her head. She left with the man.

  When I was leaving Aunt Jane’s steps, the chained dog ran toward me again, pleading with his eyes to be released. The chain was secured to a wide belt fastened around his neck. The dog stood still while I unbuckled the belt, and then he bolted. “You are free,” I shouted after him, “at least for a while! I will never be free.”

  Little Susie died while Aunt Jane was still crossing the tickle.

  Jake could walk before he was a year old. He didn’t speak until he was two. When he did try to speak, his tongue was a stammer of confusion, even for baby talk. He had a wondrous appetite, though, and would try anything I fed him. Except squid fried with pork scruncheons, which he spat out. I don’t know when I started to hate him. Not sure if it was even hatred I felt at first for the child that had been brought into my life. I just knew I couldn’t get past the revulsion I felt for his true father with every look at his red hair. The boy was the spitting image of the man. And because he resembled the man who had defiled me, I slowly grew to hate him, too.