Blackstrap Hawco (48 page)

Faithfully yours,
Amanda Duncan

 

There was a celebration in the Coffin house that night. Jacob was present, but his mother refused to attend, claiming that Zack had made an error, how could a mere fisherman know more than a merchant. There had been some mistake, she warned. ‘Mark me words,' she had said spitefully. ‘No good'll come frum it. Yer fadder tried ta take on da merchant back in '23 'n dey left 'im on da ice ta perish. Speak'n up on'y gets ye an eternity o' silence.'

The party lasted long into the night.

From her window, Emily witnessed the lanterns burning in the Coffin house, the only throb of light illuminating that small spot in the valley. And further up from the valley, in her father's store, which was nearer their own house, the light burning there, as well, her father not having come home for supper.

Occasionally, throughout the night, Emily could hear the music rising to her, lifted toward her mansion on the slightest breeze. She sat by her window in her wingback chair and read her book, her concentration impinged upon by a hoot or holler or a sharp stroke of fiddle note that escaped when the back door to the Coffin house was opened and shut. So much merriment issuing from that isolated dot of light and the blackness surrounding it. The headland at the edge of the valley and at the cusp of the sea, looming toward the sky, blacker than the sky, as though it were a piece of black felt sheared out and set there. And
beyond the headland, the vastness of water, which shimmered a fainter black, a streak of moonlight trailed across its surface, running from the horizon toward land and connected in a straight line with Zack Coffin's house. Lantern light in the windows. Shadows moving about, and shadows stood steadily or stumbling around in the Coffin yard. Emily smiled at this touch of serendipity. It made her sleepy and, for reasons unknown to her, filled her thoughts with images of Jacob Hawco. The look he had given her earlier that day. The dark foreboding thrill of it. Bad girl, she told herself, smiling with secret feeling, naughty girl. And her eyes dipped back to those neat rows of words.

That night, she dreamt that she was dressed in a colourful gown, and at her feet were shades of black and grey. The shades moved and she thought she might be on the sea, stood atop the flutter of water, being stirred by fish, yet as the disturbances increased and began to rise, she saw that the shades of grey and black were men, ascending from the water, carrying nets and knives, yet utterly harmless as they trod past her, as though they were spirits or she were a ghost, either of them meaningless to the other. When she woke in the early morning, still in her chair, and gazed out her window, she saw a ruckus at her father's store. A group of men were gathered outside. She heard the smashing of glass as a rusty barrel was lifted and tossed through one of the front windows. The noise appeared to provoke the men, for their actions became more demanding, leaning toward ferocity.

Emily's mother, Amanda, burst into the room. ‘Have you seen your father?'

Emily shook her head, watching her mother turn at once. She followed after her, down the hallway and descending the staircase.

‘He never came home last night. Stay here,' said Amanda, as she opened the door and left, heading along the path toward the front gate. She unhinged the latch and briskly advanced down the lane.

Molly Gilbert, the servant girl, was standing behind Emily as she turned from shutting the door. There was a look of fret on her face. ‘Wha's da matter?' asked Molly.

‘Something at the shop.'

Molly cast her eyes in that direction, as though she were able to peer through walls.

‘Dey figured it out,' said the servant girl with a worried expression.

‘Figured what out?'

‘Da light in yer fadder's store.'

‘What?'

Molly paused, her mouth held slightly agape. Then she said, ‘It weren't burning all night fer nut'n.'

‘What? Tell me what you know, Molly. Please.'

The servant girl fitted her hands into the pockets of her apron and watched her shoes.

‘Molly?'

‘Dey says 'e were at da books, miss.'

 

Jacob Hawco, Zack Coffin and the five others – all awake since the previous morning and fortified by an extended evening's consumption of spirits – loudly fled the scene and headed for the wharf. They stopped inside the flake house to partake in the morning ritual of a ladle full of festering cod liver oil from the wooden barrel where the livers were tossed upon gutting. Once each man had had his share and wiped the smear of oil from their chins and whiskers, they leapt aboard their dories and headed out into the bay. There was much merriment and knee-slapping and vile cajoling aimed toward the shoreline.

They steered in the direction of Boghopper Bight, passing the flakes where the salted cod was split and laid out to dry. A few boys were there turning the cod over; a dog was kicked away from chewing on a flattened cod tail.

The men, while out on the water in a fit of rowdy foolery, soon went to work without thinking, setting their lines and jigging cod a safe distance from shore. Throughout the day, they passed several bottles of rum back and forth. When the rum had been depleted, one of four jugs of moonshine – previously hidden in one of the craft for just such an occasion – was revealed to a boisterous round of cheers. The cluster of boats sat prettily in the bay while the late summer sun deepened, toughening the fishermen's skins and casting the flesh in a tinge of mortal majesty.

The men remained on the water until dusk, filling their boats with such an abundance of cod fish that they were buried deep to all sides.
And the cod, not nearly dead, but slowly dying in the unbreathable air, flicked in slippery spasm around them. The laughter derived from being waist-deep in the silvery flopping was life-giving.

While the men tried not to think of it or have its mention spoil their spell of liberation, each one knew in his mind that the ranger would be called in. But if they stayed away long enough, all would most certainly be well. Without doubt, in time, all would be forgotten and forgiven. Deciding to make their whereabouts unknown for a stretch, they headed for a camp on Long Squat Island. Tilts were built there for a stopover journey along the way from Bareneed to Dog Island, where the salmon ran in the spring.

During the night, the men emptied the remaining jugs of wickedly potent moonshine and swapped stories, cursing the merchants and the authorities who would soon show themselves in Bareneed. A few men, drunkenly mistaking talk for a call to action, stood at once and made threatening, staggering gestures toward the others, who were inadvertently taken for enemies. Fights seemed destined to break out, as families pledged to destroy other families in the name of some ancient misdeed that was loosened from their murky bloodlines and now, in the thin of things, flowed more swiftly to the bubbling surface.

Jacob Hawco watched it all in silence, thinking of Emily Duncan and what she might feel about the renegade attack upon her father's store. Did she care for her father or what happened to the business? The Duncans never seemed to be a close-knit family, not like the others in Bareneed. There was a chance that Emily might even admire him for doing what he did. Was she thinking of him in her comfortable house, worried for how he had gone missing?

There was shouting down toward the water, as shadows fell against one another. Someone tumbled sideways and another tipped away and fell to the rocks. Those still capable of laughter found it lowly jiggling in their chests, prompting another sloppy pull at the jug and unintelligible shouts toward the water.

‘'E's right lovesick,' said a voice. It was Zack Coffin, stood above Jacob, his face half shadowed by the glow of the fire, his body swayed by the flicker.

Looking up, Jacob drew on a bottle of moonshine. He even found
himself chuckling, which was entirely out of accord with his usual disposition.

Zack spoke toward the gathered shadows crouched before the fire. ‘Dat Duncan young'n give'n 'im da eye when we were in da store.'

There came head-nodding laughter from the shadows beyond the rich orange shades of firelight. Glimmers of faces, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, practically unrecognizable, wavered in the night. A mouth hawked a gob of sputum onto the fire and the sizzle came louder than expected.

In denial, Jacob shook his head. He pulled a knife from his boot and showed it to Zack.

‘No injuns here, brudder,' said Zack, staggering back into the greater wash of light and then into the concealing dimness. Gone.

The shimmer of the blade created wonder. Jacob put it away, slowly gathering through the numbing dawdle of alcohol that he had once had a knife in his hand.

Soon, in what might have been minutes or hours, there came further sounds of commotion and cursing, and the smacking of flesh against flesh. Then a splash in the black water. Comments were passed back and forth in a mishmash of inebriated accents. A body rose from its place near the fire. An arm braced against the beach rocks that rolled and clicked, shifting to dump the body on its side.

Jacob took another pull from the jug and watched toward the distance, thinking that the far-off speck of light he saw might be from the bedroom of Emily Hawco. But, no, he soon felt that he was on his back, and what he mistook for Emily's vigil light was nothing more than a star as viewed between the edges of clouds.

In the morning, when Jacob awoke, he found that he was covered in stench. Rising from the boughs where he had been sleeping, having no idea how he had managed to move himself to that spot of rest, he felt weights, one by one, drop off of him, as though chunks of flesh were giving way. Highly unsettled by the sensation, he searched the ground to see cod fish dead along the mossy growth at the edge of the beach. Along the rocks and dirt and grass there were fish in various forms of mutilation. Some were headless and gutted, others skinned with the patterns of their bones along their exteriors as though turned inside out.
The beach was slathered with fish innards. The buzz and swirling lift of flies added disquiet to the spectacle. Along the treeline, there came a few dull thumps as fish fell from the higher boughs, stirred by a rising breeze that felt as fresh as mint on Jacob's face.

A few of the men were already awake and stood perplexed among this baffling slaughter. Bereft of language, they watched Jacob step into their midst, then stared toward open water, only now noticing a large bulk on the shoreline near their boats.

A body level with the waterline, its clothes and hair sapping wet.

Jacob trod nearer and crouched, knowing by the soggy stillness that things were not right. He turned the body over. Zack Coffin, dead drunk, his face white.

No, Jacob said in his mind, rattled by an inner shiver. Not dead drunk, but dead. He looked to the other men who stared breathlessly, eyes on the body then shifting to other disbelieving eyes.

Seagulls cried above the beach and the men stared up to see a flock wishing to settle on the scene and feed off the carnage.

Zack Coffin. Murdered or drowned, no one could rightly decide.

In time, as all were roused, the men turned from disbelief to argument over the doing, accusing one another of what might have been rightly withheld in their minds.

All of it useless, this talk, Jacob had pointed out and, with the help of another, loaded the body aboard Jacob's boat.

In a procession of wretched-souled silence, the men steered their dories back toward Bareneed where the headland loomed above the settled living, evident even from the distance of ocean miles.

 

‘There's a'ways tragedy sprung frum such t'ings.' Catherine Hawco was working in the garden, bent over in the midday sun, weeding the beets. She divined movement overhead and peered toward the sky, squinting to see a pattern of birds plummeted from the pale blue, down toward the shore, seemingly disappearing in the ocean. ‘Da ranger were by 'bout dat foolishness up on da hill. Ye'll be paying fer dat window. Mark me words.'

Jacob watched his mother, his head filled up with the death of Zack Coffin. A death no one on shore yet knew of. They had buried him at
sea and sunk his boat, bashing a hole through the bottom with the rock anchor. That body, with stones in its pockets and its boots filling up with the weight of the sea, disappeared under the surface. Forever watching that sinking sight, Jacob could not speak of it. And never would. The tragedy brought to mind his Uncle Ace, what Uncle Ace had faced to silence him those ten years ago, for Jacob felt that he, too, might refuse to utter another word. In that deadened state, he sensed himself at communion with his uncle. Where was he now? Jacob wondered. Always off somewhere. Wandering the land, he would be gone for days. He might be on the trapline. He might simply be huddled in a spruce lean-to somewhere. He might be dead like Zack Coffin.

‘Yer fadder were a twin 'n I were warned, when I were but a liddle girl, 'bout da misfortune dat would come from union widt 'im. I t'ought nut'n of it. A young maid like I were. Dere's nut'n wort' believing in den. Only headfirst inta all da mistakes ye'll ever make. It were only misery dat were heaped upon us. First it were yer fadder, Francis, 'n now Uncle Ace gone off widout a word as he be wont ta do.'

It was the first Jacob had heard of Uncle Ace being his father's twin.

‘I shuddn't even be tellin' ye such t'ings. No good ta jinx us, but widt dem both gone da harm be taken away. Men're a bloody nuisance, is what.'

‘A twin,' said Jacob, staring up the valley toward the Duncan house, his eyes first catching on Zack Coffin's house. Had word reached that household yet? There was not a sign of life in the garden or in either of the windows.

Catherine paused and stood with a groan, pushing her hand against her back. She picked a piece of grass from the front of her bleached-white apron and stared at it, her eyes brightening. ‘Well, Blessed Virgin, a four-leaf clover.' She winked and grinned at Jacob. ‘I'll press dat in da bible fer safe keep'n.'