Blackstrap Hawco (43 page)

Examining the fragile, screeching form of Rose, whose voice suddenly popped hoarse, her throat so raw that it appeared to glow from within, shining a scarlet pink through her neck, as though a lantern were lit in there, the doctor thought to cut the infant out of Rose at once, wondering if the mother might survive the ordeal, for there was not much left of her, other than her belly and the hole of her gaping mouth. The rest of her body, having shrunk and withered, seemed lost in the rumpled mash of rags, grass and boughs that had been delivered as gifts by the people of Bareneed.

The doctor turned to the sound of blabbering and saw the twisted boy, with head thrown back to stare up at the sky, spring from the doorway. The doctor, relieved now at the lessening pitch of the screech, as though the mere presence of the man of science had muted its intensity, was compelled to follow after the twisted boy.

As he came to a clear view through the doorway, the doctor witnessed the twisted boy pointing upward with two fingers held so close to his face that they appeared fastened to his cheek. The doctor and the bishop, their breaths suddenly frosting in the air, for the temperature had dropped to a skin-burning low, watched to see what might have been causing such excitement in the twisted boy. There was nothing noticeable, for the sky was masked by the wavering drift of birds.

Disregarding the boy's attention as the ravings of a lunatic, the bishop turned away. The doctor was about to do likewise when his eyes caught sight of a fleck of fluff that might have been a piece of feather floating downward. The fleck descended directly above the twisted boy, who now opened his mouth and shut his eyes and hummed unevenly, in rising harmony with the screech, all the while waiting for the fleck to land. And land it did, directly in his opened mouth. With the flake swallowed and melted, the ground around the twisted boy began to
sparkle white, its range of snowy brilliance expanding until the entire valley was covered in frost.

‘Snow,' spoke the doctor, his already harrowed mind vanquished of the possibility of further expression.

Ears pricking up and with an inward gasp, the twisted boy turned and was, at once, saddened, for the blanket of snow that had been cast from the labyrinth of his veinwork had caused the screech to lower its pitch even more.

Soon, it would be gone completely, as the time of passing had arrived and was set to decline in the exact manner that the twisted boy had foreseen, thirteen years ago at the time of his birth.

 

It was the wrong season to attempt such a foolhardy run in an open boat. And the night only made it more of a daredevil's feat. The cold was pure misery to the flesh. Ice froze in Patrick's nostrils then melted with his breath, only to freeze again. Previously, while climbing in the boat, he had made the mistake of laying his hand upon one of the oar cradles and his skin had frozen fast to it. It was only when Ferrol splashed salt water on the bond that his hand would slowly pull free, but not before, in a fit of panic, he had torn part of the skin from his palm. His ears and fingers were burnt and throbbing from the cold. The snow that was now blowing was wet yet spiked with tiny pellets at the centre of each fat flake. If they did not find seclusion soon, he knew that his hands and ears would be tender for days to come, and the skin on those appendages would come loose. He checked his hands to make certain they were not yet tallowy white. They remained a raw pink.

Patrick blinked the melted snow from his eyes and regarded Ferrol, who seemed none the worse for the biting chill of the night. He rowed and watched ahead, then checked the shoreline, which was vaguely evident through the grey.

Patrick thought of turning back, yet that would mean the end of him. He would not let another day pass where he would be slave to a
Sassenach
. If he need perish, so be it. If his family's home need be taken, so be it. They would be settled somewhere, eventually, by family within the village. Not another day would he remain in the keep of the bastard
Englishmen. Better a lifeless chunk of ice adrift on a sea of dire adversity than a dead-eyed living cow.

Shifting on his slat, he became more aware of the panging in his ankle and shoulder, which he had suffered earlier that eve from being slammed about in an overturned carriage. Ferrol had stolen the carriage from a newly built carriage house near the basilica, and driven it with wild abandon out of the city until the snow on the road became a hindrance. Unsatisfied with his impeded progression, he had whipped the horses until they whinnied and laboured ahead over uneven ground, prancing and jumping until the carriage was tossed over. They had then trod off on foot to a nearby cove where Ferrol made off with a boat from a cluster anchored and afloat.

Why Patrick had come along with Ferrol, of all people, was an inexplicable mystery to him. If he chose to flee, why allow himself to be accompanied by the biggest, baldest man known to him? Wouldn't they be looking for Ferrol, as well? Although, did anyone actually know Ferrol's surname? In fact, was Ferrol his name at all? Once, in a public house, talking over a pint, Patrick had asked Ferrol about his family back in Ireland.

‘Naw,' Ferrol had said with a big-lipped frown and a silent stare straight into the limited distance of the wall behind the bar. ‘Naw family.'

‘No wife, no children?'

No reply. A drink from his pint.

‘Who is your family?' Patrick asked. ‘Mudder. Fadder.'

‘I cum from no one.'

Patrick laughed. ‘Every man has a mudder.'

‘No family. I have no family. No
teaghlach
.' And that had been the end of it, for a fiddler had struck up in the corner and they had both turned to watch the old man, seated at a table, whisk his bow across the strings to enliven the place with smiles of kindred recollection and foot-stomping merriment.

The shriek of a fiddle string echoed in Patrick's head, as though it had come to him from out over the grey water.

‘How far?' Patrick called, his face stinging and numb in one cheek, his eyes practically shut against the gnaw of the surging wind, his fingers
aching. He bunched them dully into fists and brought them to his mouth to exhale on them.

Ferrol pulled the woollen cap from his head and handed it to Patrick. ‘Put yer hands in dat.'

‘Yer head'll freeze.'

‘Got nar blood in me head ta freeze. Facking lack o' brain.'

Patrick watched the faint image of the snow gathering to melt on Ferrol's head. The muted glisten of it while the bald man continued broadly rowing, staring across the water. Further out to sea, there was movement of light, and Ferrol stopped rowing and sat utterly still.

They watched as the vessel, veiled behind the downpour of grey snow, drifted by, ignorant to their unlit presence.

In time, the snow abated and the sky cleared. The temperature dropped excessively for Patrick was now trembling uncontrollably to the point of spasm. The cracks he heard resounding in his ears might have been his bones snapping from the insufferable cold. Yet it seemed as if Ferrol heard the sounds as well, as he was searching toward land in the direction from where the snappings shot out toward the water.

‘Just dere,' said Ferrol, nodding toward a patch of land that unlike the land surrounding it, which glowed with snow beneath a moon that permitted sight for miles, was cloaked in shadow.

Checking the sky, Patrick saw what appeared to be a shifting flutter of strangely formed cloud.

As they neared the village, cracks and snappings turned to booms like the report of gunfire. Patrick suspected the quiet town might be at war. Yet there was not a flash of gunpowder nor any sign of smoke other than that which streamed from the occasional chimney.

‘It's da timbers in da houses,' Ferrol said, passing by a lone schooner anchored in the bay, ‘shrinking in da brutal cold. Dere's a'ways moisture in everyt'in, ye know dat?'

Patrick tried shaking his head yet the action was more an erratic jerk that carried on as trembling. He heard the lap of the water against the wharf posts and was brought relief. Soon there would be warmth, if mercy was to be expected of a single person in Bareneed.

When Ferrol climbed the makeshift ladder up onto the wharf, he heard the feathery sweep of a multitude of wings and gazed overhead
to see darkness aswell like a black sea. He then turned to a view of Patrick still huddled in the boat as though his arse were frozen to the slat.

‘Me feet're gone lame,' he barely spoke.

‘Yer look'n a pretty shade o' blue.' A boom behind him. Ferrol spun around, only to laugh at the foolishness of his body's over-zealous reaction. He climbed back down into the boat and hoisted Patrick over his shoulder, took him up the ladder. On land, with an arm over Ferrol's shoulders, Patrick was then led up the valley that was crowded with sleeping or frozen carcasses of varied shapes and sizes. Sighting the peculiar landscape, Patrick assumed he had abided an insufferable extreme and slipped into delirium.

They made their way briskly, with Patrick's feet barely touching the snow-covered ground and Ferrol kicking the occasional frozen rabbit or weasel out of the way as though the practice was familiar to him. Others were snapped underfoot, the sound of little bones cracking making a path of noise toward the clutch of houses. Of the ten houses, only one was recognized by Ferrol as a duplicate of his friend, Cian Shea's, house back in Kilkenny. Instead of clapboard along the front there were shingles and the chimney was to the left of the front door, unlike the others which were to the right.

It was in this house that Rose Cavanagh was laid out on a table that had been scrubbed clean for the surgery.

Doctor Morgan had just set the tip of the scalpel to her belly and was drawing it in a horizontal line when Rose came out of her inhuman reverie, her eyes twisting in different directions and her sucked-thin teeth snapping off while she chewed down on a strip of leather.

Morgan had performed few caesareans before yet was familiar with the procedure from observation at the Poole Institute of Medicine, where he had trained before venturing overseas. He continued with the horizontal incision, and was startled to see – before the line had reached its terminating point – a fist rise out, two sizes larger than that belonging to the average newborn. Another hand reached out, desperately grasping at the air, and then what he thought must have been a foot, but was, in fact, yet another hand. The third.

Astonished, his fingers let drop the scalpel. It clattered on the kitchen
floor, for he could expect nothing less than abnormality and deviation from the circumstance. He checked Mrs. Kearney, the midwife in wait, who blessed herself and ran fretfully from the room.

The physician, recovering himself, reached in and lifted out the baby. It was near twice the size of the average infant, sixteen pounds if it were an ounce, and was jerked back as its hand became stuck on something. The physician searched into the slit to find that the infant's hand was fastened to the hand of another baby. Relieved by the obvious explanation, Morgan gently pried the fingers from where they were entwined around the second infant's hand. ‘Twins,' said the physician with relief, calling out, ‘Twins, Mrs. Kearney.' He smiled at the mother, yet received no reply, for the murmuring screech, which had calmed to a sound resembling a boiling bubble in a pot, had waned from Rose's throat, and she appeared to be dead.

All was silent, save for a riotous pounding on the front door.

 

Emily Hawco is killed by a memory and Jacob Hawco does not know who is born. It is sad how everyone cannot remember and cannot forget.

1981-1986

(March, 1981)

Jacob answered the phone. It was a new beige-coloured one from the telephone company. It was heavy and dinged when the receiver was laid down. A man had come and run wires from the kitchen, up along the ceiling trim and then down along the baseboards. The phone had been hooked up for Jacob so it would reach the table beside his chair, just within reach.

The phone rang all day and Jacob picked it up. ‘Blackstrap? Naw, b'y,' he remorsefully told whoever might be on the other end. ‘He's not 'ere.' A pause as the image from the TV screen blurred over. ‘'E passed on.'

The voice at the other end: ‘Are you saying he died?'

Occasionally, Emily was present in the living room and patiently waited on Jacob's answers, so that she might clarify the misunderstanding, insist that Blackstrap was alive.

‘Yays, were in a mining accident,' Jacob confessed.

‘No,' said Emily, hand out for the phone, to assure whoever might be calling that Blackstrap had survived. The only survivor. The single and sole survivor of the tragic ordeal. He had been rescued. She was certain of it, despite what was being said and reported. A misunderstanding.

‘Who am I speaking with?' the voice would demand of Jacob.

‘Who're ye ta ask?'

‘This is…' And the reporter's name was given along with the name of the radio station, newspaper, magazine or TV station. The names spoken in a way that meant they mattered enough to be given nothing short of the truth.

‘Yays,' Jacob confirmed. ‘It be da sad trute.'

Emily watched as the receiver was hung up. She watched the receiver until it rang again and Jacob picked it up, his eyes on Emily for a second, then on the TV screen.

The television reported the news as fact.

Emily with her hand out for the receiver, but Jacob never giving it over.

‘Blackstrap Hawco, the sole survivor of the
Ocean Ranger
tragedy, has died in a mining accident. At this time, further details are not available. As we receive information, we will pass it on to you. Stay tuned for updates.'

Jacob checked the television screen then turned to see Blackstrap stood in the doorway. Jacob nodded and winked in camaraderie. Then shifted his eyes to see Junior stood by the window looking out like he used to when he was expecting snow. The boy always knew when there would be a storm. He would stand there and wait. ‘It's coming,' he would say, face tilted toward the sky. An image on the TV screen. A boy with his tongue out, catching snowflakes. The arc of falling snow beneath a streetlight, each flake separate and forming a pattern. A memory close enough to feel.

‘It's okay,' said Ruth. ‘It's okay, Daddy.' She sat on Santa's lap and rubbed the stubble on his chin with her little hand, her voice smooth, not the unending screech it had been. And Santa smiled.

The wind howled outside the window, and all at once the sea began tossing the boat around on Channel 3, and sleet pattered in a sheet against the windowpanes. Thrashed about in the sky, ice struck and clung to electric and telephone wires. It struck and clung to the limbs of trees. It covered the snow and everything in a thick coating of ice that snapped branches and wires, and plummeted the world into darkness, then shone metallically the next morning when the sun rose to display nature in its calm brilliance.

‘It's okay, Daddy,' Ruth whispered into Jacob's ear when he woke in his chair, fresh from the darkness with the sunlight on his face. She reached out to a dog on the screen. And the telephone rang. And the pounding on the door. And Jacob never anywhere but in there.

 

(January, 1984)

‘Da subway fare in New York jus' went up ta ninety cents,' Jacob said in a bewildered tone. He was answered by a voice he could not recognize, but knew. He sat up straighter in his chair to rifle through his pocket, to confirm his suspicions. Taking out a handful of change, he stared at it in his palm, poked the coins around with his finger. Always an American
nickel or a penny finding its way to mingle with the Canadian coins. ‘Did ye hear 'bout dat?'

‘No,' said a woman somewhere. He looked at her, confused by the way she had grown so old or not old enough. She was dusting photograph frames with faces in them. She picked them up and dusted them with a feather duster, then set them down again. They each had a place on the sideboard.

‘It were seventy-five cents 'fore,' Jacob said, with a plea in his voice.

‘Yes,' said the woman.

‘We won't stand fer it, will we?'

The woman dusted another frame and held it longer than the others.

‘Dat bastard Smallwood's rob'n us blind.'

‘Not blind enough,' said the woman, her voice a crackle from the speaker beside the screen.

Another woman coming by to turn down the volume.

 

(May, 1984)

The warm rains had melted the snow and thawed the frost. The ground was soft beneath foot. The wind pounded the house. The structure shuddering, but remaining solid, having been constructed by a skilled boat-builder from Port de Grave. The house's slate foundation and wide thick boat-planking made it a structure of endurance, even more stable now that the top storey had been removed.

Emily looked up from the book she was reading. It did not hold her attention. She felt the need to skip ahead, to reach the end, to have it done with. It went on too long, was poorly written, and full of factual and typographical errors. She was seated in the grey chair in the small living room. She cast her glance toward the kitchen and listened to Jacob puttering around out there. On windy nights such as these, Jacob became restless. Emily imagined that he was thinking of the time he was tossed into the brewing black Atlantic many years ago. That had been when they still lived in Bareneed.

It was on a night like this when they carried him into the house. They had come up the grassy pasture that rose from the ragged brown rocks that were more a part of the Atlantic than land. The wind had been raging outside and the men, in their glistening oil slickers, called out
against the elements. They hurried to lift him up the stairs and into bed. Emily had watched the deathly colour of his skin. She had felt the spirit-shiver that whispered it was over. She had imagined Jacob's body laid out in the parlour. The wake she would have to endure. She could not bear the thought of him dead. It shook her terribly, making her cold with fear, as though the mere thought edged her nearer to death itself. Her lips had chilled blue. She had trembled when she bent to him to find that his trembling was much worse than hers.

‘More blankets,' one of the men had called back. All of them stood with the water dripping off their slickers and boots. A puddle fully surrounding them.

Jacob had watched her with scared eyes. That look. It could not be Jacob. Another man unseen.

That had been in 1964. Two years before, Junior, away working in the mines, had been killed. So, it must have been Blackstrap that Abe Stuckless had been shouting at for more blankets. Blackstrap had to be ten or eleven years old then.

Emily heard Jacob moving a cup and saucer from the cupboard, and wondered if he knew what he was doing.

‘Drop 'a tea?' he called.

‘Yes, love one,' Emily replied, thinking,
He shouldn't be at the stove
.

Two days after the madness of the capsized boat, Jacob, pulling through as the warmth gradually re-entered him, had carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed and slowly sat up. It was a painful chore, but Jacob would have no further part in weakness. Not in front of his son. He would show the boy that he was unharmed, that there was nothing for the boy to worry about. His father could not be taken as easily as that.

Emily had watched from the doorway, the father and son unaware of her presence. She had heard Jacob's voice lingering on words as he explained the drama of what had happened and then explained, in a lower tone, the merciful bravery shown by the man who had saved him. His voice was controlled and sorrowful, not fast and bold as was his nature.

Emily had watched her husband carefully studying Blackstrap's face. There was a quietness between them, before Jacob smiled toward a low, thoughtful laugh and kissed Blackstrap on the cheek. The single time
she had ever seen Jacob kiss his son. Blackstrap's eyes had remained fixed on the wooden dory in his hands, the dory that his father had long ago carved for him. A toy cherished by the boy. And Jacob had hugged his son fiercely, as if holding on through the terrifying calamity, holding on as the waves crashed and smothered his ears and the wind thrust to snatch away his breath with thousand-pound bursts of water.

Emily had to stop herself from moving into the room to embrace them. She had remained still, with the warm trails creeping down her cheeks and, in the way that Jacob would have wished for her to do, thanked the Lord for His mercy.

The kettle began to whistle and Emily rose to help Jacob with the tea. She didn't want him to burn himself, as he had done on previous occasions. With tea cup in hand and a biscuit on a plate, he would then return to his shows.

 

June 1, 1984 Weightlifting record of 1,211 kg set by Alexander Gunyashev of the USSR

June 2, 1984 Actress Jill Ireland marries ‘Death Wish', undergoes radical mastectomy

June 3, 1984
Swamp Thing
and
The Cage of Queens
win at 38th Tony Awards

June 4, 1984 ‘Born in the NRA' released by Bruce Springsteen

June 4, 1984 Extinct animal successfully cloned from own DNA

June 5, 1984 Cellular radios introduced commercially in 20 major cities

June 5, 1984 Sikhs' holiest site (Golden Temple) attacked by order of Indira Gandhi

June 8, 1984 Dead at 88, composer Gordon Jacob regrets nothing

June 9, 1984 Disneyland celebrates Donald Duck's 50th birthday

June 9, 1984 Homosexuality decriminalised in the state of New South Wales, Australia

June 10, 1984 Incoming missile shot down in space by US missile for 1st time

June 11, 1984 Illegally obtained evidence may be admitted at trial if proved it would have been discovered legally by more honest means, Supreme Court rules

June 14, 1984 No women allowed to bake decides Southern Baptist convention

June 15, 1984 Roberto Duràn knocked up by Thomas Hearns

June 16, 1984 100th consecutive 400-meter hurdles race won by Edwin Moses in under 24 hours

June 17, 1984 Pierre Trudeau succeeded by John Turner as chancellor of Canada

June 18, 1984 Skokomish Indian Tribe of the Skokomish Indian Reservation in State of Washington files to incorporate

June 19, 1984 US painter, Lee Krasner Pollock, blotted out at 75

June 20, 1984 Actress Estelle Winwood (
Miracle on 34th Street
) lives miraculously, until 99

June 22, 1984 Secretary-General of NATO, Joseph Luns resigns from Mensa

June 24, 1984 Homerun mark of 265 set by Joe Morgan in basement

June 25, 1984 17th Miss Black America, Lydia Garrett, 24, is crowned without incident

June 25, 1984 Philosopher Michel Foucault (
History of Sexuality
) dies of AIDs at Plato's Retreat

June 26, 1984 Shuttle
Discovery
's first amusement park ride aborted at T-4

June 26, 1984 World astonished at marriage of Tiny Tim

June 27, 1984 Set of Bond movie
A View to a Kill
destroyed by villains

June 29, 1984
Conan the Destroyer
reviewed in
New York Times
: ‘…special effects aren't bad…'

June 30, 1984 Cocaine growers in Bolivia fail at recouping coup

June 30, 1984 Great Britain mints last sixpence (circulated since 1551)

July 2, 1984 Composer, Ramiro Cortes, hits career low note at 50

July 3, 1984 Launch of Dolphin rocket off San Clemente Island hits whale

July 3, 1984 Against their will, women forced by Jaycees to be members, Supreme Court insists

July 5, 1984 Supreme Court hints that evidence obtained with defective court warrants can now be used in criminal trials

July 7, 1984 Marriage of Frankie Valli to woman in bikini sparks vivid memories

July 11, 1984 Air bags or seat belts to be used in cars by 1989

July 11, 1984 Bophuthatswana re-elects Lucas Mangope as Four Seasons' top valet

July 12, 1984 Geraldine Ferraro becomes 1st woman VP candidate

July 13, 1984 After 7 shows, Walter Mondale quits Rod Stewart's tour

July 14, 1984 USSR scores 41% in Nuclear Test at Eastern Kazakh/ Semipalitinsk

July 16, 1984 Phil Hickerson & The Spoiler beat Dutch Mantel & Porkchop Cash at Mid-South Coliseum

July 17, 1984 Pierre Mauroy calls it quits as grand pastry chef of France

July 18, 1984 21 McDonald's patrons killed by James Huberty in San Ysidro, CA

July 19, 1984 Lynn Rippelmeyer becomes first female captain to move 747 across Atlantic via telekinesis

July 19, 1984 Youngest heart transplant recipient, Holly Roffey, discovered living in England

July 20, 1984 Javelin record broken by Uwe Hohn of East Germany

July 21, 1984 Robot kills human in US

July 22, 1984 Tour de France won by Victor Hugo

July 23, 1984 First black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, no longer Miss America when nude

July 24, 1984 Denny A. takes Mary B. to first AA meeting

July 25, 1984 Svetlana Savitskaya becomes first woman cosmonaut to waltz in space

July 26, 1984
Psycho
inspiration, mass murderer, Ed ‘Psycho' Gein, dies of mass injuries at 78

July 26, 1984 Pioneer of public opinion polls, George Gallup, considered dead by 74% of Americans

July 27, 1984 British actor, James Mason (
Lolita
) dies of insatiable lust at 75

July 28, 1984 Los Angeles pretends to host 23rd modern Olympic games