Blackstrap Hawco (39 page)

 

Blackstrap opens the bottle of beer while he stands at the kitchen window. He watches a shaggy orange, black and white cat stroll along the edge of the treeline. A stray. Its head big. Its fur thick. A tom. He can hear the low hum of an engine nearing. An all-terrain vehicle. No doubt Paddy Murphy on his way. Paddy could smell a bottle of beer before the cap was even popped.

The stray veers off the path and returns to the woods. Blackstrap leans nearer to see to the right. Where the railroad track has been taken up. A red ATV comes into view. Lurching ahead and navigating a sharp turn off the gravel bed. Going over on one back wheel and then tipping all the way. Paddy leaping sideways and landing in the lower boughs of a spruce tree. Paddy gets up right away. Like nothing has ever happened. Goes to the ATV, rights it and climbs on. His helmet seeming bigger than his skinny body.

Blackstrap had bought him the ATV. It was a mess when he got it from Ira Coombs. Blackstrap had worked on it. Finding new tires and putting a new engine in it. He had also bought Paddy a helmet and made him wear it. After Paddy's first accident that got him twelve stitches across his forehead.

The movement of black high in a tree. Blackstrap's attention caught by it. He thinks a crow might be settling there. Or lifting off. A lone crow. One for sorrow, he remembers. Looks to see a black garbage bag
tattered and snagged in the higher branches. Stirred only by a bit of breeze.

The ATV bucks to a stop in front of the shed and Paddy gets off. He tugs at the helmet strap but can't get it loose. He pulls up on the helmet but it won't come off. Blackstrap takes a sip of beer. Snorts in amusement. Almost spits the beer out in the sink.

Paddy finally manages to get the strap loose. Hauls off the helmet and carefully lays it on the seat of the ATV. But he misses and the helmet hits the ground. Wobbles a few feet before settling. Paddy heads toward the back door. Bangs on it. Comes in. All the same action. His body making noise. In the porch, he bends and unlaces his boots. Out of breath and exasperated by the time he's done.

Blackstrap pulls another beer from the fridge. Pops it open. He hands it to Paddy who takes it and gives a small shy grin. Showing off his missing front tooth. Before sucking back the bottle.

‘Thirsty,' says Blackstrap.

‘Cripes, it's some hot out,' says Paddy. His thin bangs plastered to his forehead.

Blackstrap looks at the window. It's almost winter. The air cold. Crisp. He sits at the kitchen table. ‘What's all the news?'

Paddy stays standing. Not the sort to ever sit. He folds his arms and leans against the counter. Crosses his thin legs. Unfolds his thin arms.

‘Billy Fowler's on a job in Mackinsons and needs a door.'

‘How much you tell him?'

‘Ten bucks.'

‘Good.'

Paddy winks. Drinks back the beer. Knows he's done good. Proud to be of assistance. The bottle emptied now. A satisfied sound through an opened mouth.

‘He needs a staircase, too. You got one, right?'

‘I got that staircase from a hundred-year-old house on Shearstown Line. Byron Pelley's.'

‘Behind the shed.' Paddy nods. Tosses his thumb toward the kitchen window. Just to show that he knows. Folds his arms again.

‘Let's load it up. Take a few for the road.'

Paddy goes to the fridge. Squeezes two beer bottles into his front jeans pockets. Takes two more in his hands.

Outside, Blackstrap opens the shed. He flicks on the light switch. Moves in alongside the stacked junks of wood and salvaged windows. Toward the doors in the back.

‘He want steel or panelled?'

‘Steel,' says Paddy. Stood in the open doorway. He lays down the bottles on the concrete floor. Bends to tie up his laces.

Blackstrap checks one of the old window casings. Thought he saw a crack. But it was only the reflection of a web overhead. ‘Billy need any windows?'

‘Never said.'

Blackstrap lifts the door and carries it out.

‘Dat a new welder?' Paddy moves out of his way. Eyes on the welding machine just inside the door.

‘Got it from Kelly's Shop closed down in Carbonear.' Blackstrap walks to the pickup and puts the door aboard. ‘Kelly's gone off ta Alberta. Gimme a hand with that staircase.'

Paddy loads the beer bottles onto the passenger seat. Then trails unsteadily after Blackstrap. ‘Moose,' he says. Stopping dead. Pointing at the ground.

Blackstrap comes back. Watches where Paddy is pointing. ‘A calf by the looks of it.' His eyes trace over the hoof prints. Track them off toward the woods.

Paddy checks that way, too. Then looks at Blackstrap's face. Wondering what might be done about it.

‘No time for that now,' he says. Thinking of the moose steaks in the deep freeze. In the basement. Enough for a while yet. Nothing to do with all that extra meat.

Paddy nods. Follows after Blackstrap to the back of the shed.

The staircase there on the ground. Grass growing up over it. ‘You tell him how much?'

Paddy shakes his head. Frowns.

‘Hundred-year-old stairs.'

‘Twenty bucks,' says Paddy. Shrugging. Hands in his jeans pockets.

‘Sounds 'bout right. Let's load 'er up.'

They bend and lift the staircase. It's damp underneath. Where it was set against the grass for a year or more. Not so heavy for two men to handle.

In the pickup, Blackstrap watches the road ahead.

‘They locked Isaac Tuttle in the mental,' says Paddy. Pops open one of the beer bottles. On the seat between them. Drinks from it right away.

Blackstrap says nothing. Waiting.

Paddy sniffs. Swallows another drink. The bottle half empty. He looks at the level through the brown glass. Then he pops open another. Hands it to Blackstrap who pries it down between his legs.

‘The Waterford. Went fuh'k'n nuts.'

Blackstrap lifts the bottle. Takes a drink. His mind on the highway leading into St. John's. Planning the fastest route. Once done with the door and staircase.

 

The call comes in and is forwarded to Constable Pope's desk. Brenda Sparkes from community relations at the Health Science Complex in St. John's.

‘We have a Karen Hawco here,' she says. ‘Not in emergency, but admitted for surgery. Residence listed as St. John's though.'

‘Why is she there?'

‘Elective surgery. Can't say much more.'

‘Thank you.' He hangs up. In the hospital for surgery. The case should be closed, but he thinks of Blackstrap Hawco. The lack of care he showed for his wife. He considers putting a call into the St. John's Constabulary. To have the woman's identity checked. How would he justify it? There is not enough evidence to proceed any further with the investigation.

He looks at his watch. St. John's is less than an hour away. His shift over in fifty minutes. He considers requesting authorization to travel to St. John's. He might suggest that the woman is in a state of dis-orientation. He knows her. He might help ease the conflict. Instead, he tells the commanding officer that they have found Karen Hawco. She is having routine surgery.

The file is considered closed.

When his shift ends, he changes in the detachment locker room and
exits by the back door. Climbs into his car. One hundred and twenty kilometers all the way in. He barely notices the landscape. A flash of mossy barrens and boulders and density of evergreens. Karen Hawco's face forefront in his thoughts.

He is on Kenmount Road in St. John's before he realizes. He takes an exit onto the Parkway and heads for the Health Sciences Complex. He pulls into a visitor space and feeds the meter. Enters the building. Asks at the booth for Karen Hawco's room number. He is given the number without question: 314 west block, fifth floor. He takes the elevator up with another civilian visitor and follows the big blue signs.

Finding the desired corridor and approaching the doorway, he sees a man leaving 314. The man is of medium height and carries a large shoulder bag. Brown hair. He resembles Karen Hawco around the eyes and lips. He does not watch the man as he passes. The doorway is left open a crack. Pope pauses, struck by a sense of dislocation. One place to another in a flash. A wave of unreality that recedes at his will.

He gently knocks on the door. No answer comes. He leans in.

The woman is in the bed. Her eyes shut. Her face a sickly pallor. The colour of post-op. Greenish-yellow.

He steps in further.

The woman makes a muffled noise. Then another. She is just coming to. Waking up. She opens her eyes and stares flatly at the man. A man she does not know. Then a look of slow wonder on her pale face.

‘Karen Hawco?'

Her soft voice barely heard. Maybe a ‘yes.'

‘You remember me?'

 

Cash in his pocket. The staircase and door dropped off. Blackstrap fills the tank of the pickup. Paddy back there with Billy to lend a hand. Working for smokes and beer. And maybe, if lucky, a bit of whiskey later in the day. A kitchen table with a bottle between them. Smokes and conversation until the wee hours.

The nozzle clicks off. Blackstrap goes inside to settle up. Rayna, the girl behind the counter, pays him no extra attention. She's grown up over all those years. He knew her when she was a baby. What she didn't
know. She might be his. He never asked for sure. Her mother, Pamela Goobie.

He pockets his change. Takes a look at Rayna. Memorizes her face. Not a hint of him in her. Then gives her a nod.

A man just like any other man paying for his gas.

Outside, going down the step. He notices that it's uneven. He backs away from it. A shoddy job, that stair and railings. A bit of rot down along the trim board. The clapboard not overlapping. The water trapping there. Being drawn in to rot the sill. He tries to think of who built the structure. Someone working for Isaac Tuttle. He remembers that it was Fred Peddle. A man who'd slap anything together just to get the job done. Money-grubber. Not a stain of pride in him.

Blackstrap gives up on the idea and climbs into his pickup. Starts it. Shifts to drive. Heads out for the highway. St. John's. The Waterford. Isaac Tuttle. The fucker.

 

With a current population of approximately 150,000, St. John's, the capital city of the province of Newfoundland, was only a small but thriving port town when it burnt to the ground twice in the 1800s. Shortly after Patrick's arrival, he became one of the many hundreds of Irish workers employed to rebuild the town. While Patrick was busy with his often highly introspective exploits, Rose Cavanagh's pregnancy took on a magical quality, as documented in the infamously outlandish journal entries of Bishop Flax.

1886

Where Patrick Lambly arrives in a charred St. John's and witnesses a drop from the gallows

The sky in the distance, toward where Patrick suspected the harbour might be, was polluted with a lingering mass of greys and blacks. The clouded disturbance plumed from land and hung in a broad area, surrounded by an expanse of otherwise blue sky.
For it was newly daylight and pristine,
thought Patrick,
unfortunate and unbecoming with smudge,
understanding – despite his vaguely inebriated state – that only one thing might be capable of causing such a pestilent expulsion.
Smear, not smudge
, his mind corrected, bargaining with himself for a more fitting word.

Perhaps the exact word might be: Fire. Yet who really cared for these exact measures of things? Far better for a poet to be ambiguous and at war with common intention.

Since first sighting land, a curious crowd had gathered on the deck of the four-master. From miles off, traces of smoke could be detected on the breeze. As pessimistic, foreboding comments were passed from one passenger to the other, the mood that overcame the gathering was pervasively grim, for what else could be felt when faced with the sight of their supposed place of landing burnt to the ground?

 

Lament and woe and the thrilling flutter of tragedy in the breast, for – at last – life had delivered what had been secretly expected.

 

Ask Mary Snow, thought Patrick, who stood off by herself. Ask her of her feelings about arriving at this unspoiled place of promise. With her eyes downcast since her abusive ordeal with two British soldiers, her mind appeared ruthlessly torn to expose the gape she stared into. She lingered near enough to no one. No matter how much kind attention was extended by the ladies on board, Mary Snow shirked away.

There she stood now, off toward the foremast, the silent one among the drone of gossip and speculation, a shawl wrapped tightly around her head and shoulders. Rarely did she make such a showing of herself. With the craft nearing land now, she fidgeted, seeming greatly agitated, and cast her eyes round, no doubt searching for Ferrol, who was otherwise occupied.

As the four-master neared the narrows, a giant chain – comprised of links as broad as a man's chest – became evident. The vessel, swinging its sails around, barely slowed to a pace sufficient to endure the chain pressing against its bow and not having it rip entirely through the wood. The chain was strung across the air and at a height to wreak enough havoc upon a ship's hull as to send it to the bottom of the sea.

Casting a look in one direction, and coughing at the wafting stench of smoke, Patrick saw, through the hazy grey that soon thickened and drifted to clear like fog, the chain running off to the north where it was attached to an alcove in the cliff that rose, in an etched, jagged incline, five hundred feet above them. The opposite end of the chain ran to the south and was fastened to the south-side craggy cliff that rose to less of a height. Beyond the chain, and the narrow, protective opening allowed by the gap in these cliffs, the masts of wooden ships and steamers could be seen cloaked in smoke where they were anchored to the docks in the calm belly of the harbour. Sighting those boats, Patrick was brought to mind of the
Venus
, the vessel they had originally departed Ireland on, further north on an uncharted point, where it was set afloat by Ferrol, with dead Americans on the deck and blood spilled aplenty. It was only Ferrol, having risen from his incidental state of unconsciousness to obliterate the American lot, who was permitted to enfold Mary Snow in his arms and comfort her.

Beside Patrick, Mary Snow, having drifted nearer, coughed and wept
silently at the sight of the plain of sooty black. It would all be amusing if it were not so blatantly pathetic. Patrick thought to touch Mary Snow in reassurance, yet feared an outburst and an attack upon his being. Where buildings and houses once stood, there were now charred sticks poking up like huge decimated tombstones, chewed into pitch by some monstrous gargoyle, the ground saturated in smutty, black spew.

The giant chain remained fastened before them. Gradually, as the vessel, unable to be reversed promptly, pressed against the chain, the links drew groans from the wood and snapped a board or two above the waterline, thus provoking a round of yells and gasps from the on-deck passengers, before the vessel eased away in a lagging liquid bob and reverse lure.

As far as Patrick was concerned, the chain could remain in place. There were other, more lively places where they might land. No doubt there were villages, as in Ireland, up and down the coast. Why not try another port with a bit of unburnt colour? No doubt there might be other masters just as willing to enslave in those districts. Yet Ferrol, miraculously recovered from the gunshot wounds that barely penetrated his flesh and were picked out of his thick hide by the fingernails of two spinsters, and no less the worse for the devastation he had enacted upon the American sailors from the
American Pride
, pushed up from the rear to investigate. First, he studied Mary Snow's face and offered a few grumbles of consolation, then checked the sea to offer a ‘fack this' and ‘fack that' before climbing onto the rope banister and making a leap for the barrier chain which he snatched hold of in both his hands. Wildly swaying back and forth from the momentum of his propelled advance, he hung with one hand, as though in playful jest with himself, and waited a few moments until he was adequately stabilized and well-humoured. There was little movement or talk on board as all watched Ferrol progress, hand over hand, toward the cliff. The passengers appeared to be struck with awe, yet were also filled with fear of the place to which they might soon be entering. Ferrol, growing smaller and smaller, followed the chain to the flat of land where the final link was secured and fell onto the rocks.

In time, the chain dropped with a snaky splash,

 

a fuse lit by water

trailing along the width of the sea.

 

The passengers and crew stood in wait, wondering what unexpected feat might occur next. Absurdly, as the circumstance seemed quite dire, jokes were passed back and forth and backs were slapped by the ignoramuses of the lot. Dim-witted men still drooling in admiration of Ferrol made calls into the space that separated the heroic from the lot. After Ferrol's bare-fisted slaughter of the Americans as they boarded the
Venus
, a scene that would be spoken of daily and for decades on various continents, the specifics altered and made into greater impossibility, with Ferrol alternately named as a god or a demon, the passengers and crew had invested their complete faith in him and allowed him to undertake the captaining of the four-master,
American Pride
, despite his minimal knowledge related to such affairs. The crew had given him the required information and he had caught on at once, nodding in a clipped fashion and chortling at the easiness of the understanding, anxious to get on with the duties associated with his new station. A mere two days later he would take not another word of advice, adamant about tackling any imminent challenge under his own steam.

Occasionally, a drift of smoke filled the air, harshly invading the lungs. Coughs sprang from the passengers who were forced to cover their mouths and shield their burning eyes, while others, including Mary Snow, retired to the lavish berths that had been afforded the Americans on that beautifully stolen ship, now ransacked, with any removable item or object of value that might be unscrewed or pried from its foundation shoved away into the ship trunks or bags of the Irish passengers to be used in barter upon shore.

Patrick watched ahead at the smouldering remains, cursing himself for leaving Limerick while filling his mind with punishing images of his wife and children clutching hold of each other in the sourly oppressive stillness of their dark hovel. The thought of them increased his thirst, as did the invasive smoke, and he removed the flask from his hip pocket, a silver vessel carved with an unrecognizable insignia lifted from one of the bodies of the bastard American sailors, and drank until it was half drained. There was a vast store of rum barrels still on board, despite the
continuous merriment they had drained from them, night after night at sea, out on that gorgeously drunken night water and under those gorgeously drunken stars that mesmerized the mind with heavenly clarity. Over the past week, there had been endless celebrations and toasts to their good fortune, while the stories of Ferrol's courageous rage were retold from every angle as seen through every set of eyes, and luck was not only expected but said to be predestined to visit each passenger upon reaching their new home port.

With the rum fresh in Patrick's throat and belly, cleansing away trepidation, he assured himself that, yes, this city would be fine. What more harm could possibly come of it? And, yes, he would send money back to his family in due time, once he sold the items he had salvaged from their lovely American ship. And once the money was depleted from the selling, he would send money from his employment, if, in fact, the master to whom he had been indentured was still drawing breath in the charred city. If not that master, then another one who might be more than a negligible pile of ash.

More rum, he thought, draining the remainder in his silver flask, becoming even more of a free spirit.

As the speculative mutterings of misunderstood direction became more prevalent, there came sight of a dull splashing that progressed toward the vessel and there was Ferrol swimming with great strokes back to the boat, where he soon climbed up over the side, and with a grunt of consternation and without a nod to anyone, trod – in his sopping clothes and with glistening head – up to the captain's bridge where he ordered the sails swung around.

In time, they edged through the narrows, between the towers of ancient wind-and-sea-chiselled rock and into the thickening grey hollow that was the mouth of the harbour.

All was in ruin, save for two stone towers up on the rise of what might have been a basilica, the single building seemingly unharmed by the devastating blaze that had blackened everything to ash.

The noise of coughing rose as the tears streamed down the faces of all on board, stung by the soot, as they docked at the foot of the charred city of St. John's,

 

a hideously sullen mystery,

looming larger and blacker,

and as far removed from the immaculate,

wrapped in its enchanting affliction as it were.

 

Rose Cavanagh began to show in October and planned ahead. The baby taken by the fairies, an infant of fair skin and fair hair, had been replaced by a black-haired girl with brown eyes and teeth that grew in black and rotted before the growth was due. Three months later, when Rose's pregnancy began to make itself evident, the changeling screeched for three days, shredding the air with its noise in a more vigorous fashion when in Rose's arms, as though wanting less and less to do with its counterfeit mother. At night, the screeching could be heard throughout Bareneed, rising and ebbing up and down the coastline as though carried on the back of a great desecrating bird. It robbed the residents of their sleep and clutched the village in the grips of ill ease. It frightened birds from their nests, where eggs were left abandoned, and spurred animals to flee the nearby woods, where traps and snares were discovered bare each day.

It was rumoured that the wail of the baby had set a curse over the settlement, the older and more grizzled of the men and women, professing in their ancient language, no longer understood by the youth who had been born on the rock of Newfoundland, that the baby must be tended to with the appropriate remedies. She was to be wrapped in cloth, the entirety of its body, from head to toe, and dipped in vinegar, sprinkled in sugar and baked in the oven for not long enough to scorch it too fiercely. No, they laughed among themselves, it were but a joke, that remedy. A good fit of laughter was had with faces etched in lines and chins curved by time and eyes made sappy by death and love and injury and acceptance and the waning of all of this lost again and again, settling on what other but acceptance. Only to laugh. Yet in austere reality, as the younger people were worried for their survival, it was decided that – for the sake of self-preservation – the infant must be smothered in its sleep, catch the dying screech in a pillowcase, tie it at one end and let it float to the moon where the face might swallow it, for not only was the screech driving life away from the area, its harrowing,
dispiriting call was certain to infest the baby that Rose was presently carrying and any other baby that was living in the womb of any woman who heard or felt the infant's piercing lament. As luck would have it, while the residents were secretly speculating on the best means of putting the infant to death, by fire, water or stone, the baby perished on the eve of the third day of its outburst, with Rose feeling nothing for the loss, other than confusion and, as was steadily becoming one of her fundamental attributes, guilt.

Yet this was not enough. Dementedly suspecting that the fairy infant had been the offspring of the daughter, Elizabeth, as opposed to the mother, Rose, the villagers lured Elizabeth away and dealt with her in the woods where she was roped to a tree and left to the hands of her kin, the fairies. In time, as suspected, the girl screeched in the same manner as the perished infant, the voice of them one and the same, sprung from their misbegotten bloodline. On returning to release the girl from her bindings and offer burial, it was discovered that she had vanished, transported off by the fairies. Sighting her removal, the hearts of the villagers were lightened as they were now secure in their belief that all would return to normal.