Blackstrap Hawco (44 page)

July 29, 1984 No events on this date

July 30, 1984 2.8 million gallons of blood spilled by Alvenus tanker at Cameron, LA

July 30, 1984
Santa Barbara
cannot believe its own premiere on NBC TV

July 31, 1984 One-armed actor Bill Raisch (
Fugitive
) loses other arm and entire body at 79

July 31, 1984
Entertainment Tonight
is so wonderfully, absolutely thrilled with Leeza Gibbons' first appearance

August 2, 1984 Nuclear test tutorial scheduled at Nevada Test Site by US Secretary of Education

August 3, 1984 New York Stock Exchange trades four million baseball cards

August 3, 1984 A new look at death suggested by AMA

August 4, 1984
Purple Rain
by singer formerly and latterly known as Prince, hits #1

August 4, 1984 Republic of Upper Volta legally changes name to Bourkina Fasso

August 5, 1984 Actor Richard Burton bows to thunderous applause of bloody grand cerebral hemorrhage at 58

August 7, 1984 US singer, Esther Phillips' (‘What a Difference a Day Makes') lonely nights are through at 48

August 7, 1984 Yellow Peril takes Olympic gold medal in baseball over Arrogant Yanks

August 8, 1984 Actor Richard Deacon (
Dick Van Dyke Show
) dies stuttering at 62

August 9, 1984 Decathalon record set by Batman in California

August 9, 1984 Bogus Doctor Sexual Assault story aired on BBC

August 10, 1984 Zola Budd's heel becomes obstacle for Mary Decker during 3,000 m Olympic run

August 11, 1984 US publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, dies regretting TV at 91

August 11, 1984 President Reagan jokes he ‘signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in 5 minutes'

August 13, 1984 ‘Arabic-African Disunion' treaty signed by Morocco, Libya & Israel

August 14, 1984 PC DOS version 3.0 released by IBM

August 16, 1984 Auto maker John Z. DeLorean acquitted on cocaine by federal jury

August 17, 1984 Youngest heart transplant, Holly Roffey, dies at 4 weeks

August 18, 1984
Veterinary Times
publishes breakthrough article on persistent orf in rams

August 19, 1984 Ronald Reagan nominated for best supporting actor at Republican convention in Houston

August 22, 1984 Volkswagen makes last Rabbit Pie

August 24, 1984 LPGA record for 9 holes set by Pat Bradley with a score of 8

August 25, 1984 Truman Capote, liar, (
In Cold Blood
) dies at 59

August 25, 1984 Soviet gymnast great, Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin, dies at 62

August 27, 1984
Coronation Street
actor, Bernard Youens, dies king of non-working classes at 69

August 28, 1984 Professors W. Michael Reisman and Oscar Schachter tangle

August 30, 1984 Transient Management Workshop sponsored by Pentagon

August 30, 1984 2-day Sotheby's auction of rock memorabilia begins in London

August 31, 1984 Pinklon Thomas beats crap out of Tim Witherspoon for heavyweight boxing title

 

(September, 1984)

Emily woke in the darkness to the sound of a small cry. Bolting up, she listened, thinking it might have been a dream, but then heard the sound again. The faraway cry of a baby. Immediately, in a fit of action, Emily rose from the bed. What was she to do? Was she fully awake yet? She paused, listening, while she carefully pulled on her housecoat. The sound was Ruth's. Any baby's cry, in a store, on television, in church, in another house, it was Ruth. Sixteen years ago. Any baby's cry, always Ruth's.

The sound again. And the entirety of Ruth's life and death. How Ruth had cried as a baby, how she had come so near dying in infancy. The warnings from the doctors. The specialists who came to examine her. That cry. It was not like the other baby's. She thought Ruth would die from screeching. But, no, Ruth had lived so that Emily might have those five years of memories: her little girl's life.

The cry again, muddled beyond the walls. Not Ruth. How could it be? Emily shut her eyes, listened, felt incredibly sleepy.

Ruth. Her twisted face.

Emily stepped toward the bedroom door, tying her housecoat belt at her waist.

It was not until Ruth was two years old that Emily heard the news on the radio, the truth about the drug. It was the drug Emily had been taking after Junior's death. A drug that the doctor had prescribed for Emily, so that she might forget Junior's death. ‘This will help you cope,'
the doctor had said, handing her the sheet of paper. And she had done exactly as told. She had had the prescription filled in the pharmacy next door to the doctor's office. The pills did help. They tucked her neatly away from herself. And left her removed. She had been able to function, but she was sealed within herself. She had been taking the pills when she was made pregnant with Ruth. And she had kept taking the drugs because they judged the world harmless. The drug that had reduced the pain to less than the wholeness of herself had made Ruth what she was.

The sound. It was no longer there.

Emily had awoken from a dark dream she could not remember. Her bones ached for the disturbance that had blinded her to the dream's significance. She stared back at her bed, at Jacob. Not a movement from him. With lips parted, and quietly drawing breath, she listened. There was no sound. There never had been a sound. Had there?

No. Nothing.

Slowly, she removed her housecoat, and settled back on her pillow. Sighing, she pulled the blankets over her. It took a moment to find warmth again. Eyes shut, she felt fully awake now, and opened her eyes to watch the ceiling. She waited for another sign, her memory filled with the sweetness of Ruth's face. In time, her eyes grew sleepy, her breath deepening. Her arms clutched hold of Ruth. She sank like a perfect stone, weighty and with barely any resistance, down through the buoyant water.

In the morning, Jacob discovered that a grey and white cat, a stray, had made a home of their shed. It came out to meet him, giving him a fright that forced the cat to flinch back, hunker down and hiss. At once, Jacob searched around the slate foundation for a possible point of entry. But he could find no hole where the cat might have squeezed through. No broken windows either.

The cat would go near no one, only meowed halfway between a hiss and a cry when anyone stepped into the shed. Its teeth were longer than those of a domestic cat and so Jacob knew that it was from wild stock. Thoughts of shooting the creature crossed his mind, ridding the grounds of that savage thing that he took as a bad omen, particularly because he saw its sagging belly and knew it was filled with kittens. Just what he needed, a litter of kittens to shove into a bag and fling into the sea.

‘I'll shoot dat bloody vermin,' he warned Emily. ‘If it not be gone by da perishing o' da day.'

Emily's fondness for animals, particularly strays, compelled her to plead with Jacob. She managed to get an extension on the terms. Three days. After three days, Jacob vowed that he would do away with it. Kittens and all, if need be.

‘Dun't let it near yerself,' Jacob told her. ‘It's rife wid disease.'

‘Okay,' Emily agreed, not telling him how the cat had already rubbed up against her when she delivered table scraps of fried egg and bacon from breakfast to the shed. The cat's thick, grey and white fur was stuck up in many places, its vicious-looking eyes slanted up at the ends. Pink discharge hung from the fur on its rear legs, and Emily wondered if that was normal.

‘G'way, ugly beast,' Jacob said threateningly when he went out later in the morning to carry junks of spruce from the shed. The cat came near, circling around his feet so that he had to kick it away. It had lifted off its feet and into the air. Regardless, the cat kept winding among his legs, as if attempting to weave an invisible knot.

‘Wind warn'n on fer t'night,' Jacob said, his tone making the warning seem even more severe. It was the way he spoke lately. Always wanting things to sound worse than they might be. He said this while coming in from the shed to noisily drop an armload of wood into the bin beside the stove. He wiped at his forehead and sat at his chair. His elbows set against the tabletop. He scratched at his grey stumble with his thumb, and watched Emily preparing lunch. Homemade bread with butter and blueberry jam, a piece of dark blackberry cake with the ginger he liked, and a pot of black tea.

Emily shook her head a bit. ‘I don't much like the wind.' She moved to the fridge to take out the milk and saw the postcard from Toronto that Blackstrap had sent. Only their address on there, written in someone else's hand, and their son's name signed in the sloppy way that made Emily smile. He was never one for school, she thought. Just couldn't sit still. And he would not let me teach him. He rejected it at all turns, creating a tension between them that was always present. Her disappointment with that side of him made her sigh in an offhand way. If he had stayed in school, and went to university, he might have
been a doctor or a lawyer. He might have had a better life.

‘Blackstrap should be calling again soon,' she said.

Jacob frowned and ran one hand over the white oilcloth with pale red flowers printed there. He brushed at them as if they were crumbs and thought on his sixty-fifth birthday. He would be getting his Canada pension cheque in a couple of months.

‘Bloody government,' Jacob griped. ‘Useless buggers. Dun't have a clue 'ow ta keep hold of its people. Every'n off on da mainland.'

Emily laid the milk on the table and glanced at her husband before stepping to the stove. ‘Don't start now,' she said. ‘You'll have a stroke one day the way you go on.'

‘All this talk of Hibernia. Oil. Where's da jobs? I'd like to say a thing or two to that Smallwood fella.'

‘It's Peckford, Jacob.'

‘Wha'?'

‘The premier's Peckford now.'

He looked at her, baffled, then dismissed it. ‘Government's one big crew 'a liars that're all stuck on themselves. Half-ass beauty queens 'n actors. I'm poisoned with it. The likes 'a dem. Yes, Pickford. Yer right. Em'ly. Him widt dat big cigar in his puss all da time. Da sight of 'im turns me guts.'

A plate of thickly sliced white bread was laid on the table. Jacob grabbed up a slice. He buttered it in the palm of one big hand, then briskly bit off the corner.

Emily laid out the cups, then the teapot, before sitting across from him.

‘We been screwed by da bloody government since Smallwood's time. He were da biggest crook dat ever lived.'

Emily watched Jacob, exhaustion coming over her. She was living in the years of Ruth again. The cry she had heard in the night had transported her back to that place. ‘He did some good things, too,' she quietly offered, the voice of reason. ‘Established the university.'

Jacob grumbled and tore off another bite of bread.

‘He was an extremely intelligent man.'

‘Aack. Intelligence is fer dose with no mind fer real work.' He stared at the oilcloth, wiped at his mouth with his hand and took another bite of bread.

‘You can call him what you want, but I believe he helped Newfoundland. He was considered a great man by many.' Emily poured his tea then filled her own cup.

‘Wha' da hell's got inta ye, womb'n? He were da greatest con man dat ever set foot on dis sacred soil. A bloody Nazi down in da States first widt dat feller frum Cuba, if ye knows anyt'in 'bout history. Joining Canada, destroying Newfoundland, and then moving everyone away from where dere families were raised up fer generations. Resettlement! Just making sure that there were less money going out ta da communities 'n more going into his own pocket.'

‘I think you're wrong there, Jacob.'

‘Naw way.'

‘Smallwood wasn't a Nazi.'

‘He were a Nazi.' Jacob Hawco chewed fiercely, thinking in silence, watching her. ‘Cripes, b'y, he were.' He finished his bread and made a lot of noise slurping his cup of tea. When he was done, he stood and sulked out of the room without saying another word.

In the back yard, Jacob picked up a few scraps of damp papers that had blown onto his cut grass. He moved to the front of the house to make certain that no litter had spotted the lawn there. The paint on the house was holding up. He studied the barn-red colour and the white trim. Everything immaculate.

Returning to the back of the house, he loaded more wood into the shed. The cat appeared out of nowhere and he kicked it, harder than intended, hurling it across the shed so that it hit the far wall where the birch junks were stacked. He paused with the armload of spruce to make certain the stray was not seriously injured. The cat stayed where it was for a moment, then rushed from the shed, its legs a blur. Jacob was sorry for what he had done, cursing under his breath, ‘Christly no good son of a bitch Smallwood. T'ank God fer Mr. Crosbie. T'ank Jesus he put him outta dere. Ye can say all da bad t'ings ye want 'bout Crosbie, he's still a saint in me own eyes. A bloody saint.'

 

September 1, 1984
Force of Evil
actor, Howland Chamberlain, dies as himself at 73

September 2, 1984 Wang Chung plays Coliseum at Phoenix, AZ

September 3, 1984 28-year-old Chicagoan wins $1.99 in Illinois state lottery

September 4, 1984 $32,074,566 raised by Jerry Lewis in 19th Muscular Dystrophy telethon

September 5, 1984
Discovery 1
lands on Edwards AFB, 21 die

September 6, 1984 Grand Ole Opry singer, Ernest Tubb, drowns in Dolly Parton's cleavage at 70

September 6, 1984 Live remote telecasts from Moscow undertaken by
Today
show

September 7, 1984 Cricketer Don Tallon, (great Queensland & Australian keeper) loses final game

September 8, 1984 Composer René Bernier plays without accompaniment at 79

September 9, 1984 John McEnroe defeats Ivan Lendl

September 10, 1984 Kennedy Space Center begins sale of
Discovery
meal deal