Newfoundland Stories (18 page)

“We'll have our road by next Wednesday.” He offered no elaboration or rationale to support his statement, but just about everyone there took it for granted that next Wednesday the new road would indeed arrive. It also marked the end of the gathering, as shortly thereafter people began to drift away from the post office to return from whence they had come.

The days that followed were no different. The new road was the top thing on everybody's mind. Whenever people met, on the pathways or in the store or on the wharf, it was always the first thing to be mentioned. “How close are they now, do you think?” “Have you been up to see it yet?” “Howard says he's going in to St. John's the first chance to get a pickup truck.”

And then the dream became a reality. They “busted through.” To no one's surprise, except probably Mary's, it happened early Wednesday morning, just as Uncle Mose had prophesied. By ten o'clock, everyone in the cove was up there to observe the miracle in its final stages. Two large bulldozers pushed brush and trees aside as if they were matchsticks, piling whatever was in their paths in great heaps along both sides of the new road that they were forging out of the wilderness, while a fleet of six or seven dump trucks worked feverishly to keep up, dropping their loads of crushed stone and gravel, and then leaving, only to return minutes later with more of the same. And finally, an enormous yellow grader swept back and forth over the final section of road, spreading it all out and making it smooth and level.

It was done, but then, just as people were beginning to leave, a fanfare of horns and a great cloud of dust heralded the arrival of a large black car, the first ever to enter the cove. It was a delegation sent by the government to dedicate the completion of the new road with an “official opening.” A man in a bowler hat and a dark grey suit and tie, using a bullhorn to introduce himself as the member for their district, separated himself from the others and immediately launched into a long speech, the gist of which, when you sifted through all the rhetoric and oratory, was that the people of the cove owed their new road and all the benefits that would ensue to none other than himself and his government. It was he and his party, he said, and they alone, who had brought the cove into the twentieth century, and suggested in no uncertain terms that in the upcoming election people should vote accordingly. After he was finished, he and the other men from the delegation mingled with the crowd, shook hands with the people, clapped a few backs, and distributed candy to the children. Then, with more honking of its horn, the car and its entourage turned around and sped back up the arm in another cloud of dust as quickly as it had come.

That night, as they knitted and sewed in the comfortable warmth of the kitchen, Mary and her mother recounted the events of the day. “Wonderful,” Maude murmured absently as she tried to pick up a few stitches she had dropped in the dim lamplight. Mary wasn't quite so sure the new road would be all that beneficial to her and her mother. The chances of them getting a car with their financial means, she thought, and with no one to drive it in any case, were slim. They'd undoubtedly have to fork over good money to someone every time they needed passage somewhere, no doubt about it. Still, she admitted, that was certainly a lot better than having to take a boat everywhere they wanted to go.

Maude and Mary were still discussing the new road as they washed up after breakfast early the following morning when Aunt Sue, their nearest neighbour, tapped on their door, popped her head through, and breathlessly asked, “Have you heard the news? There's been an accident.”

“An accident?” Maude dropped her dishcloth into the sink. “What kind of accident?” she asked in a small frightened voice. “Did someone drown?”

“Well, it's Hayward Penny and Eli Martin. They were in a car accident up on the new road last night. They're dead – both of them.”

It took some seconds for Aunt Sue's words to register. Maude plopped down into the rocking chair, clasped her big arms around her bosom, and rocked back and forth as she tried to fathom what she had just been told. Mary fled from the kitchen into her bedroom where she threw herself on the bed and buried her head in the big feather pillow, fending off the awful news.

Word of the accident spread rapidly through the cove. Little knots of people appeared everywhere. People went to the store to buy things they didn't really need just to make contact with each other. Fishermen lingered at each other's stageheads, delaying going out to their nets as long as possible. School was suspended. The normal work of the cove came to a standstill. The cove was in mourning. And in shock.

The two days leading up to the funeral were difficult. Mary, like many others in the cove, was having a hard time coming to grips with the deaths of Hayward and Eli. Even though she had never had a particularly close relationship with either of the two young men, her grief for them was genuine. They had been her school chums and playmates.

Death was not new to her. Only the past winter, just a few short months before, Eileen Baker's eighteen-month-old daughter, who Mary sometimes looked after, had succumbed to the diphtheria epidemic that had swept through most of Trinity Bay. And not long before that, her Aunt Ellen, who she liked a lot, had passed away in her sleep. Indeed, when she was twelve, Mary had lost her own father when his schooner sank with all hands on board while shipping a load of fish to St. John's. Somehow these deaths had seemed normal, even her father's, although she still missed him a lot. She, like other people in the hundreds of small isolated communities that dot Newfoundland's coastline, reliant on the sea for their existence, accepted the inevitability of drownings and premature death by accident or disease. She knew it was only a fortunate minority who managed to live out their full four-score-and-ten to die of a ripe old age in their own beds. It was the natural order of things. People mourned the passing of their loved ones, comforted each other, accepted the inevitable, remembered them, and got on with their own lives.

To Mary and others, the deaths of Hayward and Eli were different. This tragedy was not a normal occurrence. It was as if two young lives had been wasted.

And then, as the hours passed, the questions arose, and the stories and rumours started to circulate. Where did they get the car? Who owned it? Did they steal it? How did they know how to drive when they'd probably been in a car only a few times in their entire lives? Who was driving? Nobody knew for certain because both bodies had been found some distance from the vehicle. Harry Penney had gone up to see the wreckage and told everyone, “They must have been flying, the car was that far from the road. It must have turned over a dozen times. It was bent and twisted so bad you couldn't even tell what kind of car it was.” They found out afterward that it was a Chev, because a few days later Harry, when he went up again, found the Chevrolet insignia plate on the ground. It had been flung loose by the impact of the crash. He hung it over his stagehead door where it stayed for years until it eventually rusted out and fell off.

Someone brought up the notion that they might have been drinking. Shortly after that, somebody else said that someone they knew saw two young men that could have been Hayward and Eli coming out of the tavern in Goobies that evening, barely able to stand up. So it was soon accepted by more than a few that liquor was indeed at the heart of the accident. Most of the questions, however, were never definitively answered. Most people in the cove eventually came to their own conclusions and somehow managed to put the matter to rest in their own minds.

This time, the real minister, given the nature of the tragedy, came down to conduct the funeral service even though it wasn't the end of the month. People squeezed into the pews, filling them to their utmost capacity. Those who arrived a bit late had to stand back in the vestibule or outside in the churchyard. The bells pealed mournfully while they all waited for the burial service to begin. The bodies, in plain unopened coffins, had been carried in and placed at the front of the church before the crowd arrived. Miriam Harvey, who had laid the corpses out, said it was a good thing they weren't shown: “The poor things were smashed up so bad you couldn't even recognize them.” A rumour circulated for a while that Eli had been decapitated, but Miriam, one of the few people who had actually seen the bodies, said that was not the case.

For Mary, the service in the church was surreal. Even as she plodded along with the rest of the congregation from the church to the cemetery where the final prayers, hymns, and interment would take place, she was strangely detached from it all, as if watching it from a great distance, feeling the emotional undercurrents of the crowd – absorbing the whole thing to the extent that she would remember it in minute detail for the rest of her life.

Finally it was over, and Mary was shaken back to reality by her mother tugging at her sleeve. “Come on, my dear, let's go home.” They walked together in silence, each preoccupied by the events of the past few days, still trying to make some sense of it all. Life would go on, of course, but somehow the cove would never be the same again. In some indefinable way it had been damaged beyond repair.

“Hello, Maude and Mary.” The tiny voice of a frail old woman broke their reverie.

“My God, Aunt Ida. I didn't even notice you,” Maude exclaimed.

“And you've been so sick. How are you feeling now, my dear?”

“Much better. I guess it was just old age catching up with me,” the old woman offered. “This whole business is some sad, isn't it? Two strapping young men gone, just like that.”

“Yes, maid, it's unbelievable. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? And to think of their poor parents. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes,” Maude replied.

“Nor me. They'll never get over it. Oh well, there's Harve waiting for me, so I best get along now. I'll see you in church next Sunday.”

“Yes, Aunt Ida,” Maude said. “I'll be there.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “I saw you up at the official opening the other day but I never got a chance to speak with you. What do you think of it all?”

“The new road? My dear, tis wonderful. A real blessing. Sure, it's opened up a whole new world for us, hasn't it. Things will never be the same again, will they?”

No, thought Mary, the image of Hayward and Eli being lowered into the ground still vivid in her mind. They certainly won't.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

During the 1950s and 1960s, the construction of new roads and highways linked previously isolated or semi-isolated communities to each other and to larger urban growth centres. This, along with the introduction of electricity, telephone, and other services, had a profound impact on small settlements all over Newfoundland. These advances greatly improved the lives of the residents in many ways, particularly with respect to accessing goods and services, using modern conveniences, communications, and mobility, and provided a new-found opportunity to be part of the larger world outside.

Still, as is often the case during periods of rapid progress, some things were lost – intangible perhaps, but, nevertheless, important and significant in terms of the culture of a people who had long survived self-sufficiently. The spirit of communal unity and sharing that had sustained these small communities over hundreds of years began to erode as their residents shifted into a new and more modern lifestyle. This is the setting for the fictional story “The New Road,” a story loosely based on an event that occurred in my home community in the mid-1950s.

W
HAT
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APPENED
AT
D
EVIL'S
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OVE?

L
abour Day, 1990. The afternoon sun sparkled on the blue waters of Devil's Cove and the warm southerly breeze blowing in off the water gently swept in through the open car window. Now that she was alone, Laura could hear the gentle waves as they lapped softly against the rocky beach below, creating soothing murmurs that instilled within her a deep sense of peace and solitude as she waited for her husband, John, and her grandson, Daniel. They had left a few minutes earlier to go beachcombing in Skiff Cove, a slightly larger inlet on the other side of the small ridge separating it from Devil's Cove. That was where they often gathered beach rocks, shells, bird feathers, and other such interesting things. A few gulls, no longer as plentiful as they had been when there were fishing stages around, screeched somewhere overhead, their discordant shrieking somehow complementing the harmony of the moment.

Laura lazily watched her husband and Daniel reach the crest of the knoll and disappear as they began their descent down to the more rugged Skiff Cove beach. She was a little bit worried about Daniel because she knew the pathway down was very steep and strewn with loose rubble. Trying to banish such worrisome thoughts, she pushed the car seat back as far as it would go and adjusted its incline as low as possible. She was determined that a rare moment like this should not be wasted. Reckoning that they would be gone at least half an hour, Laura intended to take full advantage of the opportunity for a few well-earned minutes of relaxation. She decided that she wouldn't even open the latest bestseller she'd brought along with her.

Lulled to sleep by the lapping waters of Devil's Cove, she was awakened by a dog barking nearby, and then she heard voices. Sleepily, she looked and saw a woman and two young children, a boy and a girl about five or six years old, more than likely twins, wending their way through the tall grassy expanse which everyone always called Ned's Meadow, although nobody seemed to know who Ned had actually been.