Blackstrap Hawco (15 page)

And where was the voice of Ruth? Where was she? Why was it that Emily could not hear her daughter, see her daughter? What had been left of her? What was Ruth's voice? The voice she never had. The words she never learned. A language of deformation and disorder. That was all. Screeches, shrieks and bellows. Louder and quieter. Louder and quieter, until Emily understood each one, each inflection, but never that they were leading to death, speaking of death.

Her fault. The pills. The pills she had taken to help deal with the pain of Junior's death. She turned away from the guilt that stormed her, inclined her head as though to evade it. Her eyes on the toilet. The shut lid. The water beneath. The pills poisoned Ruth in her womb. Poisoned and reshaped her. Leaked disfigurement into the embryo's veins. Altered the perfect baby. Twisted the perfect baby. A twisted child. But what of her soul? Wasn't that exactly as it should have been?

The shut lid of the toilet. The water beneath it. Why had she felt the need to drown Ruth? When bath time should have been a playful time. Why was the urge so powerful? Why did she need to fight it? Was it instinct? A sick child. Kill the sick child. Emily felt a spell of weakness and touched the wall, then sat on the shut toilet lid. She watched her feet, imagined her toes missing. The need to cut them off because they
had been rendered useless by the cold, by nature. She heard the clanging of a hammer. Blackstrap back under the vehicle.

Standing, she had a drink of water from a small paper cup. She continued avoiding her reflection, knowing that she looked a fright. A pill was what she needed. Codeine. Just to help her through this wavering state of being. To steady herself inside. To generate a balance that was almost bearable.

The hallway seemed darker when she left the bathroom, the flicker from the television brighter. She caught sight of someone swimming. Up and down above and below the water's surface. The sound from the television: ‘Despite the tragedy that has threatened to cancel this event, or, perhaps, in defiance of this tragedy, US swimmer Mark Spitz has become the first athlete in the history of these games to win seven Olympic gold medals.'

A win and then a cut to gunfire. A body she knew nothing about. Dead on the screen. Guns at a sporting event. The reporter's voice, proud, it seemed: ‘And yet the summer Olympics have resumed in Munich, Germany, even after the massacre.'

Emily went into her bedroom and shut the door, pressed it shut with both hands to make certain. Then she climbed into bed and lifted the journal from the night table. She opened it to where she had left off:

 

A shipwreck last night off Goat Head. I was nudged awake by the booming noise of it running aground. There was little that could be discerned through the fog. Yet the voices carried, echoing forlornly through the grey. Scraps of worried words high in the sky and seeming to crowd me, issuing from all directions. I rowed out in the fog, to see what might be salvaged of the crew. But there was not a sign of a single living person when I neared the wreckage. I counted two bodies afloat, having no idea that I was upon them until they struck the bow of my boat. Others might reach me by morning, wash up on shore. To date, I have buried twenty-three men and one woman. There is a graveyard stretching far behind my tilt. A field of wooden crosses where the dead rise – one by one – to speak with me. Having risen from their burial ground, they enter my shelter to recite their tales. So much to learn by simply listening. By accepting them for what they have to say. In this
manner, they are never dead. The more I listen, the more substantial they become, until, at last, they are, through me, living again. Having achieved this feat, they then offer gratitude and wander off, content to be what they have made of themselves. No one knowing the better.

Yet the one woman who I have buried refuses to speak her story. She lingers at my table and mutely watches me. Her choked heart will not permit her to relate her testimony of woe. It would seem her preference is to remain dead to the world. How might I convince her to speak herself alive?

 

The journal rested on the seat between Emily and Blackstrap. They were heading east from Cutland Junction to St. John's, an hour's run, to visit the Avalon Mall.

Emily watched out her window, the spruce trees flashing by for miles. Forests of evergreens and then barrens dotted by huge boulders. She remembered what she had read about the ice age. A book on Newfoundland. Millions of years ago the continents had divided. A part of Newfoundland had taken shape from one ancient continent. Another section of the island from another ancient continent. The people who once occupied this island. The Maritime Archaic Indians. The Paleoeskimos. The Dorsets. The Real Indians. The Beothuk. It was all she could do to focus, to hold on to these facts that kept her from tumbling. History. Why was it that she had settled here? What made her discover such contentment and familiarity in this oppressive landscape?

She looked at Blackstrap. He watched through the windshield. Why was she afraid of him? What was it? His loneliness? The loneliness she created in him. What did he need? Nothing. Like one of those massive boulders on the barrens. No one capable of ever moving him, single-handedly.

The trees pressed nearer the highway. Clots of evergreens lined both sides, then receded to open up wide, deep stretches of desolate barrens with boulders spotted here and there. Groups of small ponds dotted the landscape and then disappeared as the evergreens re-formed, rising in low hills in the distance as the land ascended and fell, always lumpy and ceaselessly bleak. She imagined the earth covered in white. A group of lost men in ancient ice-crusted garbs, pushing on through a blinding blizzard, toward her.

Watching the land sweep by, she felt sorrowfully not a part of it, as though she were a ghost mourning her own translucence. How to become a part of the land. Only to survive it or have it destroy her. She recalled the woman in Francis Hawco's journal. The dead woman. The ghost who never spoke herself alive. Sometimes it was better to not speak oneself alive. It was best to remain dead. The dead could not be damaged. The dead became their own selves and no one else's. To pass the story on meant to keep oneself alive, to engender the darkness. Regardless, Emily continued rereading the journal, hoping that the woman might speak on the third or fourth reading, might tell Francis Hawco what it was that had led to her death. To know the cause might draw an antidote to mind, for there was always hope for a cure from misery, if one could only divine the root.

Not one word from her, so that, in her wondering state, Emily believed that she might have been able to furnish the woman's words. She imagined that the woman spoke, but not until the absolute end, the decisive entry, seemingly not by the hand of Francis Hawco, but penned by a feminine hand that had survived him. Emily's hand writing the closing sentence in the journal, finally, from the shipwrecked woman:

‘Why is every thing made for the living?'

‘Why is every object and moment the exclusive currency of the living?'

‘Why are the living assumed to be the essential and substantial ones?'

‘Why do the living never truly see the dead for what they are?'

 

Blackstrap walked down the wide corridor of the Avalon Mall with his mother at his side. There were bunches of children and teenagers around, making themselves known, joking with each other or trying to look dangerous. School finished for the summer. Alice Cooper's ‘School's Out' sounded in Blackstrap's head. It was on the radio when they parked in the lot. Alice. A woman's name for a man. He'd seen Alice Cooper on television. Done up with make-up and dressed in flashy woman's clothing. A queer sight to behold. But if Alice Cooper wanted to make a spectacle of himself then that was his business. Nothing to do with Blackstrap. He still liked the music. Men in woman's clothing. It called to mind the time Junior dressed Blackstrap up as a little girl. Blackstrap must have been five or six and Junior fifteen. They both were
dressed up and standing in front of the mirror. That reflection. One short boy, one tall boy. The memory gave him a sickly feeling in his gut that came up from his testicles, as though his testicles had been tapped. Emily had thought it funny, her two sons in her clothes, but Jacob had grumbled and considered it no laughing matter. His mother laughing. His mother playing with them. His mother out in the yard hanging laundry. His mother out in the vegetable garden pulling weeds. Junior would be twenty-nine. Every now and then, Blackstrap found himself figuring Junior's age and wondering what his older brother might be doing now. Where he would be living. What they might do together. The three of them, Blackstrap, Junior and their father. The three of them together in a boat or in the woods.

Blackstrap understood why his father stayed away from St. John's. On Blackstrap's way in Kenmount Road, their pickup truck was almost struck twice by cars pulling out of the car dealerships that lined both sides of the road. The noses of the cars edging out into traffic, edging further out, so they could almost be clipped. The mall parking lot was even worse than the roads. Cars trying to find a place to park, racing to swerve into an open space. It was like a feeding frenzy. And the inside corridors of the mall were like the roads, too. Everyone moving in directions that were confusing. Everyone trying to find a place.

Up ahead, a woman with long sandy-blonde hair was looking down at a pair of boots on display. Agnes. His heart sped. Agnes deciding it was the wrong thing to do, to be away. She had decided to return where she belonged. Agnes turned fully around and Blackstrap saw more of her face. It was not Agnes. The woman looked nothing like her. Agnes was gone. Entirely gone. On the mainland, in university, as good as dead.

Coming back to himself, Blackstrap noticed that his mother was not by his side. He stopped and glanced toward the main doors, saw her paused there, looking at a map in a large case. Her wavy black hair was cut shoulder-length. She was wearing a grey, black and white long coat with a white fake-fur collar. He went back to her.

‘The bookstore,' she said, trailing her finger down over the front of the glass and reading the names of the stores in a flat voice.

Blackstrap looked around, trying to appear not interested.

‘I don't know,' his mother whispered. ‘Classics, I think. Yes. Classics Bookstore.' She said the number 24. Then studied the map.

Blackstrap stepped up to the map displayed inside the case.

‘You are here,' said his mother, putting one finger on a red ‘X.' ‘Eighteen. Twenty-one. Twenty-four.' She set a finger from her other hand on the box with the number 24 in it.

Blackstrap measured the distance between his mother's fingers, the angle sloping from one to the other. He stared up the wide corridor.

‘Here,' he said, tilting his head in what he knew was the right direction. He stepped away and his mother followed after him. While he slowed for her to catch up, he thought of taking her arm, helping her, but she was not old like that. Not old like some of the women he saw in the mall. The people here were making him feel angry. He did not know any of them and they were ignoring him. They didn't even notice each other. Ignore everyone, like they were the only ones who existed.

The tiled flooring began to slant upward. They passed a jewellery store with lots of glass cases, a clothes store with plenty of racks, and found Classics Bookstore across from Fred's Records that had music playing from inside. He glanced in and saw two young guys behind the cash register laughing at something. He knew the name of the place because he'd heard ads on the radio and been in there before to buy a few albums.

Blackstrap led his mother into the small bookstore across the way. She stood in front of one of the display shelves, regarding the books. Not knowing what to do. There were a large number of books beneath a poster of a man in a suit with a red rose in his lapel. The man had his hair slicked back and was holding a cat. Venetian blinds shut behind him. He looked dangerous. Blackstrap checked the cover. There were strings hanging down and attached to the big black letters that made up the name of the book. It was like someone was trying to turn the words into a puppet. He shifted his step a little, looked at another big display of books. Blood-red letters on black.

A tall, young woman behind the cash register was watching him. He noticed this when he turned. His mother cautiously wandered through an aisle of books.

‘Can I help you?' said the woman from the counter.

Blackstrap said nothing in return, thinking.

The woman smiled then nodded at the books with the blood-red letters. ‘Have you read
The Exorcist
?'

He shook his head. ‘My mother's looking for a book,' he said, using the voice that he felt might best suit the woman.

‘What sort of book?' The young woman came out from behind the counter, closed the little door that clicked shut.

Blackstrap shrugged. He checked to see where his mother was, then quickly followed after her, went right up to her side.

‘What sort of book you want?' he asked.

His mother straightened her head from the tilt it was on from trying to read the names of the books in a row.

‘What?'

‘Wha' sort of book?' He glanced at the woman who was coming toward them. Blackstrap stepped back, out of the way, hands in the pockets of his jeans, to let the woman get near his mother.

‘Can I help you?' she asked.

‘I don't know,' his mother said, in a way that made him feel like she had just woken up to find herself there. ‘I'm looking for journals, I guess.'

‘Blank?'

‘No, written in, from ships.'

‘Maybe our war section.'

‘War? No, not war. No, actually. Books about shipwrecks. Maybe.'

‘Local?'

‘Pardon me?'

‘Of local interest?'

His mother stared at the woman, her face not recognizing what was being asked.