Wicked Woods (11 page)

Margaret waited for her moment, like a still hunter waiting in a stand of trees for a shot at its prey. One night John Dunbar came home roaring drunk and not knowing any better. Margaret seized her chance.

“Where's my money?” he called out. “I'm off to the tavern.”

“Your money is where you said you put it,” Margaret said. “Blown away to the four winds on this and that and half of nearly everything else.”

So old John teetered out to his hiding spot to sneak out a wee bit more of his hard-earned gold to buy himself a wee bit more rum. That was all the chance that Margaret Dunbar needed. She followed him out to the back of the house and watched as he rooted up the money. She didn't even need to stay quiet or sneak around one bit. He was that drunk already that he didn't even notice she was there.

Then, once he'd gone roaring on back towards the town pub, Margaret Dunbar dug up his gold and hid it away herself in a small iron box that she buried just up from the beach under a stone that she marked. Always a practical woman, she'd keep the money hidden there for household emergencies.

For a day and a week John Dunbar carried on, blissfully unaware that his stash of gold coins had been discretely pilfered. By and by, as the tide slipped in and out, he drank up another thirst, and the gold coin he'd been leaning on melted away in the barkeep's hands. John Dunbar went out to his hiding place and found out the truth. The money was gone.

“Where did you hide it?” he howled, knowing right away where the money had got to.

“Hide what?” Margaret Dunbar asked. “Whatever are you talk–ing about?”

Now Margaret Dunbar was counting on the fact that John would be too proud to admit that he'd been outfoxed by a woman. Because he hadn't told her of the gold, if he forced the issue, he would be accepting that she'd outsmarted him.

A reasonable man would have let the argument lay right there where he'd dropped it, but John Dunbar had built up a pretty serious thirst for rum. And never should it be said that master carpenter John Dunbar lived anywhere handy to the realm of reason.

They argued from noon until nightfall, and when the full moon was spying blindly down from the heavens above, John Dunlap picked up his broad axe and struck his wife squarely between her eyes.

Only he didn't stop there. Fear and anger took hold of his very being and the old devil cut his wife up into pieces and sunk the remaining chunks in the pickle barrel, in the root cellar directly underneath his house.

“Salt my money away, will you?” he said, as he dropped what was left of her into the barrel. “I'll show you salt, I will.”

Old John kept his secret snugged deep within his guilty old soul for a full week and a half before mentioning his wife to anyone.

“She's left town,” he would say. “She got tired of my drinking ways, I guess.”

And then he'd smile.

“Oh, she's in a terrible pickle now, I'll wager.”

And then he'd snigger, low and nasty, and would say no more. This went on for a couple of weeks, and then one night the rum got the best of him. Hunkered down over drink and cards the truth finally leaked out from his own lips like a trickle of brine leaking out of a pickle barrel.

Now John Dunlap was the one in a pickle. Quicker than you can say gherkin, they took him to the St. Andrews courthouse, and tried and convicted the carpenter, sentencing him to be hanged on the very gallows that he'd built.

A day before his execution he escaped. He fled to the town of Bayside, eleven kilometres from St. Andrews. Why did he stay so close by? Remember, eleven kilometres seemed considerably farther back in the days of horses and wagons. He found employ–ment there as a woodcutter, but was recognized right off and returned in chains to St. Andrews.

Only they didn't hold him for very long. He escaped a sec–ond time and fled to Boston. Legend has it that a resident of St.

Andrews by the name of William Bentley was passing a house in Boston when he was struck on the head by a falling shingle. He looked up only to recognize John Dunbar, working with a crew patching the roof. Dunbar was taken back to St. Andrews and hanged. The third time was the charm, I reckon.

Treasure hunters still search the Mill Cove area hoping to find the missing Dunlap gold that was hidden by Margaret. Unless someone isn't telling, that gold remains undiscovered. To this day, certain older citizens of Mill Cove swear they've heard the screams of Margaret Dunbar, low and hollow as if calling from a long way off, like perhaps from the bottom of a pickle barrel.

15
T
HE
L
AKE
U
TOPIA
S
EA
M
ONSTER

LAKE UTOPIA

Lake Utopia is located in eastern Charlotte County, about one kilome–tre northeast of the town of St. George. It is a popular tourist spot, known for its fishing and sporting opportunities.

The lake is approximately seven kilo–metres long and three kilometres broad at its widest point. It is connected to the Magaguadavic River, thanks to the second deepest natural canal in the known world.

Magaguadavic (pronounced mack-uh-day-vick) is a Maliseet word mean–ing “river of eels.” The name may owe as much to the twisting shape of the river as it does to the abundance of eels in its waters. Over one hundred named tributaries and more than fifty-five lakes depend on the flow of the Magaguadavic River. That leaves room for an awful lot of tales— some of those tales are attached to a certain sea serpent called Old Ned.

The name Utopia is a joking reference to a land grant bestowed upon one Captain Peter Clinch in 1784. By chance or design, the grant included a fair amount of land located directly beneath the lake. Displaying an uncommonly philosophical sense of humour, Captain Clinch named the lake after Thomas More's book Utopia, a play on the Greek term ou-topos, meaning “no place.” Local legend has it that the lake is inhabited by a gigantic sea monster, known as Old Ned, who breaks through the late winter ice of the frozen lake and snaps up unsuspecting victims.

The serpent is reputed to be at least twelve metres long, with a head the same size as a good-sized plough horse's head and a mouth full of sabre-like teeth. It was first reported by a band of wintering lumberjacks who watched in terror as the creature twisted and rose from out of the cold winter waters.

Of course the local Mi'kmaq and Maliseet knew of this crea–ture long before any settlers arrived. It took the white men decades to wise up to the existence of something that large, living that close to civilization, perhaps because the beast never bothered paying taxes.

Upon hearing of the beast's existence, the local hearties set out to catch the creature using gigantic makeshift fishing lures con–structed out of floating logs wrapped with dangling chains that held heavy iron hooks baited with chunks of salt fish and pickled pork. They dragged the unsavoury mess behind their boats, hop–ing to lure the lake monster up towards the surface.

The foolhardy fishermen met with absolutely no success. A fur–ther attempt to snare the creature in a tangle of massive fishing nets, thirty metres long and six metres wide, met with similar results.

Whatever was out there wasn't going to be caught that easily.

Since then, there have been numerous sightings of the Lake Utopia Sea Monster, generally during the late winter and early spring when the ice is too rotten for skating or ice fishing. It is believed the creature swims up from the sea through the large natural canal. Some folks reckon that the beast lies dormant out there in the lake over the winter and it is only the heat of the oncoming spring that awakens it.

Learned authorities have theorized that there might be several possible explanations for these reported sea monster sightings.

Some experts blame the whole thing on great huddles of eels that clump together perhaps for warmth or as some sort of weird mat–ing ritual. These great clumps of lake eels, called eel-balls, are a common phenomenon, and Lake Utopia is certainly eel country. The eel-balls have been sighted in other regions in clumps almost two metres in diameter, moving through the water in a roiling twisting motion created by the flipping eel tails that dangle on the outside of the ball. Some scientists figure that such a sighting could be easily mistaken for a sea serpent.

Other experts believe that the sea monster may be nothing more than a giant sturgeon, a long-snouted, armour-plated fish that can grow up to four-and-a-half metres in length and weigh in at over ninety kilograms. Such fish were common in the St. John River long ago, before overfishing dropped their numbers down into near-extinction. Part of the problem was the sturgeon's docile nature. They could be roped and herded and tethered to posts. These giant fish had absolutely no killer instinct or survival mechanism within their great scaly forms. This makes the stur–geon an unlikely impersonator of a sea serpent.

Another theory points to the possibility that the sea monster is just a submerged primeval tree root thrust up from the depths by the heaving of the late winter ice. Such an occurrence is common in the Lake Utopia region. Logs and shipwrecks and old canoes are frequently and unexpectedly thrown up from the bottom of the lake. Still, some of the locals figure the churning of Old Ned the Lake Monster down on the bottom causes the upheaval.

Other experts explain the phenomenon away with talk of giant sea turtles or families of otter swimming in line. I'm not wise enough to argue against such specialists, but I can tell you this: there is a great deal of difference between the monster folks have encountered and described, and a fish, eel, turtle, or otter.

The legends live on to this very day. Locals will happily tell you of grandmother Edna Mckillop of St. George, who in 1951 saw the waters of Lake Utopia begin to boil and splash as a huge head poked up through the surface, followed by a body that looked like a great moving black rock. She swore its jaws were streaked with a reddish substance that could have been a tangle of bottom weeds —or maybe even blood.

Even as late as 1982, there were sightings of the creature. That was the year a worker in a Lake Utopia paper mill, Sherman Hatt, spotted a creature that he said resembled “a submarine coming out of the water with spray on both sides. It was about ten feet long and put me in mind of the back of a whale.”

Sherman reported that the creature surfaced, displaying a head as large as a good-sized washtub before sinking down into the murky lake waters. Perhaps the discrepancy between this description of the monster's head and the one that compared it to a horse can be explained by a case of winter eye strain, or pos–sibly the great beast has spawned himself a baby or two. In which case one has to wonder where on earth the mate of the creature has got to?

If you ask me, fishermen in the Lake Utopia area would be well-advised to carry along a jumbo-sized fishing rod, a very large fishing net, a year's supply of flour, and one heck of a frying pan. An oar ought to serve you just fine for a spatula, if you're not of the fussy sort.

Hmmm. I imagine that sea monster ought to taste some sweet, after sizzling in the pan with a barrel of herbed butter, a bushel or two of potatoes, and maybe a bucket of sliced lemons on the side.

I only hope somebody remembers to bring marshmallows.

16
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HE
B
LOODY
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TUMP OF
B
ONNY
R
IVER

BONNY RIVER

Down in the southwest corner of New Brunswick, about ten kilometres north of St. George, lies a tiny village by the name of Bonny River. Not a lot happens here, but the landscape is absolutely spectacular. The entire region is one gigantic glacial wash, a carved out hol–low where retreating ice sheets dropped trillions of tons of granite as they boo–gied in slow motion across the face of the province somewhere around about the tail end of the last ice age.

In the early 1800s, a young girl by the name of Mary Well lived on one side of the Magaguadavic River. On the other side of the river was a small settlement of hunting shacks. Two of these shacks were owned by a couple of good friends named Ben and Isaac. Now Ben and Isaac were long-time buddies who grew up hunt–ing and fishing on the side of the Magaguadavic River. Time and again the two of them had saved each other from terrible mis–fortune. When they were thirteen, Ben dragged Isaac out of the river. Of course, Ben had been the fellow who pushed Isaac into the river in the first place, but what else are friends for?