“Tide’s sneaking up on us,” Jim said, helping me to my feet. “Time to dance you ashore.” It was an old expression of his. Walking on rocks was always like a dance. Jim would lead, I would follow. It was as if his feet agreed to the shape of each stone, negotiated a perfect hold, while mine rebelled at every step. A fresh wind had come up off the sea, and it had the sting of winter to it. Halfway back to shore, the dryer rocks had given way to little slapping waves, and we were ankle deep before we had finished the dance of rocks back to the mainland. We walked home with numb toes and warm hearts. Jim fell asleep that afternoon, the first of many daytime naps that lasted frighteningly long – two hours, three. Sometimes I’d have to wake him for dinner.
The ice came but no snow. The inlet began to freeze over quicker than any year I had ever seen. While the backyard grass remained green but frozen stiff, the pans of ice heaved and hawed in the inlet, a vast glazed expanse, reshuffled each day as the tides pushed renegade islands of ice right up to the foot of the sandy little beach. On some days Jim would forget to stoke the stove, and the house would go cold. If he caught me carrying in logs or splitting softwood at the chopping block, he would feel terribly bad, beg my forgiveness and say he’d never let it happen again. I told him I didn’t mind. I needed the exercise, and besides, this was better than doing like those ladies in the magazines who lifted weights or jogged around city streets to stay healthy. I didn’t mind the work at all.
And there were days when Jim was with me and days when he was only half there. He’d lose his shoes or lose his coat or his boots, or wonder where he had left the money in his wallet. He’d try to tell me about a dream he had but lose himself in the middle of a sentence and only in his most desperate moments come right out and say, “I don’t even know who I am,” or, even more frightening to me, admit, “I don’t know where I am.”
Once or twice I caught him napping outside on his stick furniture, where he had gone to enjoy the view of all that inlet ice at sunset. I had to keep a close eye on him, all right.
I won’t try to tell you these were the best of times, but they were not the worst. I just felt the weight of so much responsibility. At first it didn’t bother me at all, but it soon began to wear me down, until one day, feeling exhausted and drained, and secure in the fact that Jim was napping soundly on the chesterfield near a warm woodstove fire, I lay myself down on the afternoon bed and closed my eyes.
I opened them when a brazen goldish red beam of light from the west window shone straight into my eyes. I had slept to nearly four-thirty. The sun was going down. The house was cold. I shook myself awake and realized I was alone in the room. In the kitchen, the fire had gone out in the stove. The door was open. Jim was nowhere around. Panic shivered in my limbs and a knot of fear twisted into a tourniquet in my gut.
Outside, it was still but cold, bitter cold. I walked quickly to the road and slipped on the ice of a frozen puddle. I fell hard and scraped my shin on a jagged rock. I stood back up, steadied myself, and made it to the road. Not a car, not a soul in sight. I retreated to the backyard and walked slowly across the frozen green lawn. Before me was Jim’s high-back homemade chair. Each step was painful to me but not nearly as painful as something stabbing at my heart.
Somebody was in the chair. I advanced toward the dark, silent silhouette of my husband. The red wash of the December sun made the ice of the inlet go blood red, a screaming colour that invaded me with cold and fear that conspired into something hot and awful.
Jim had positioned himself here to watch the sun go down over the inlet he loved. He had even dressed warmly in the only coat he could probably locate – one of mine, a bulky blue winter affair with a hood. As I kneeled down in front of him, I knew that I was not at all prepared for this. His head was slumped over. I was having a hard time getting air into my lungs, and I could hear my blood pounding in my ears.
Fear had scissored big holes in my ability to reason and clamped shackles onto my arms and legs. I could not bring myself to pull the hood back off my husband’s head and read the sorry news. Instead, I gave up on everything, my belief in myself, my hopes, and my happiness. I put my head upon his knees and wept. No sound could escape from me, but my body quaked with convulsions of despair.
The next thing I knew I felt the lightest pressure of a hand upon my head. I felt a human hand stroking my hair and I looked up. In the dying winter light, I saw the face of my husband and heard the sweet song of my own name, “Mary, Mary, Mary.”
I was unable to find a path back to the world of language as he lifted me towards him and wrapped his arms around me, repeating my name again and again, pulling us both back into the realm of the living.
“I was just sitting here,” he said, “remembering summer. The sun was warm on my face, and I was enjoying it so much. I guess I fell asleep. It felt so much like summer. Remember what it was like?”
“I remember,” I said. “I could never forget.”
“Nothing is ever really lost,” he said, and continued to stroke my hair as if I was a little child, as if he was the one whose strength allowed me to cope with living.
“I know that,” I said, realizing just then that I had come to grips with the eventual loss of my husband. During all our life together he had been building up my own strength, preparing me for the time when the water in the well would be released from the hill, greet the sky, then slip down the cliff of the faltering land and find its way back into the sea. Sooner or later I would be able to accept this absolute fact. But as I led my husband back into the house, I knew that first I would drink deeply from the well and appease the thirst that was in me.
Biographies
Don Aker, a former high school teacher and university instructor, first put pen to paper in 1988 while taking a summer writing course for educators. Participants were encouraged to write along with their students to model strategies for composing, revising, and editing. This transformed his educational practice. He encouraged his grade twelve students to enter their short stories in the Atlantic Writing Competition and he did the same. His work “The Invitation” won first prize and then appeared in a literary magazine. It was selected as one of the thirteen best short stories published in Canada in 1990 and included in the prestigious Journey Prize anthology. Now a full-time author, Don lives and writes near Port George on Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy. He has published numerous stories, essays, and articles as well as twenty books, both fiction and nonfiction, which have earned him multiple awards. His most recent publication is a mystery thriller titled Delusion Road (HarperCollins, 2015), which is set on the Bay of Fundy shoreline.
Chris Benjamin is a freelance journalist and an author of fiction and nonfiction. His latest book is Indian School Road: Legacies of the Shubenacadie Residential School. His previous book, Eco-Innovators: Sustainability in Atlantic Canada, won the 2012 Best Atlantic-Published Book Award and was a finalist for the Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Award. A series of short video documentaries based on the book is available at ecoinnovators.org. His novel, Drive-by Saviours, was longlisted for a ReLit Prize and made the Canada Reads Top Essential Books List. Chris has written for magazines, newspapers, and websites in Canada and the United States. His short stories have appeared in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. He has also published a few poems here and there. He currently lives in Halifax, with the love of his life and their two effervescent children (four including the cat, Moon, and the hamster, Chompers, but they’re a little more laid-back).
Carol Bruneau is the author of two collections of short fiction and four novels. Her first novel, Purple for Sky, won the Dartmouth Book Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and Glass Voices was a Globe and Mail Best Book for 2007. Her novels have also been published in the United States and in Germany. Carol’s most recent novel is These Good Hands (Cormorant Books, 2015). Based in Halifax, she teaches writing for the arts at NSCAD University and has taught creative writing in workshops and courses at various Maritime universit
ies, including Dalhousie, where she served as its first Writer in Residence. The mother of three grown sons, she lives with her journalist husband and a dog named Kit. She is presently at work on two novels and a new collection of short stories.
Silver Donald Cameron’s work includes plays, films, radio and TV scripts, an extensive body of corporate and governmental writing, hundreds of magazine articles, and seventeen books, including two novels. His most recent books are Sailing Away from Winter and A Million Futures: The Remarkable Legacy of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Silver Donald is currently the host and executive producer of TheGreenInterview.com, an innovative environmental website devoted to intense, in-depth conversations with the brilliant thinkers and activists who are leading the way to a green and sustainable future. In 2012, he was appointed a Member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia. He is married to Marjorie Simmins, also an award-winning writer. The couple divide their time between Halifax and D’Escousse, Cape Breton. See more at: http://www.silverdonaldcameron.ca.
Lesley Choyce is the author of eighty-seven books of literary fiction, short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, and young adult novels. He runs Pottersfield Press and has worked as editor with a wide range of Canadian authors including Farley Mowat, Thomas Raddall, Harold Horwood, Neil Peart, Maxine Tynes, and many others. He has edited a number of literary anthologies and hosted several television shows. Lesley is an instructor in the Transition Year Program at Dalhousie and has been teaching English and Creative Writing at Dalhousie and other universities for over thirty years. He has mentored many emerging writers. He has won The Dartmouth Book Award, The Atlantic Poetry Prize, and The Ann Connor Brimer Award. He has been shortlisted for several other awards including the Stephen Leacock Medal and the Governor General’s Literary Award. He surfs year-round in the North Atlantic.
Sheldon Currie, born and raised in Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, is a retired English professor. He has published four novels, two collections of short stories, and numerous critical articles on Canadian and American writers, and three of his plays have been staged. Currie’s story The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum was adapted for the stage by Wendy Lill and played in theatres across Canada and in Tokyo, Japan. It was also adapted for the film Margaret’s Museum starring Helena Bonham Carter. The short story “Lauchie and Liza and Rory” was first published in The Antigonish Review, later in the short story collection The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum and Other Short Stories. Currie adapted the story for the stage, published by Scirocco Drama, and it played in various theatres in Canada and New Zealand. In 2004, it won the Merritt Award for best play by a Nova Scotia writer. In his varied career, he served in the RCAF and as fiction editor for The Antigonish Review.
Bruce Graham is a Nova Scotia writer, poet, and playwright. He is the author of seven books and several short stories. His story in this publication is a condensed version of a novel he is currently working on titled The Life of Alice, the true story of a Nova Scotia woman in the early part of the twentieth century. Three of his books have been transformed to stage plays. Bruce’s writing falls into two broad categories: historical fiction (Diligent River Daughter, Dream of the Dove, and Tapestry of Green) and humour based on characters from his childhood and set in and around his hometown of Parrsboro (Ivor Johnson’s Neighbours, Duddy Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and What a Friend We Have in Gloria – his most recent novel). Bruce enjoyed a long and distinguished career in broadcasting. He now writes and lives with his wife Helen in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.
Harold Horwood was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in November 1923. He was elected to the Newfoundland legislature when the province joined Confederation in 1949 and he was a member of Premier Joey Smallwood’s cabinet until he grew dissatisfied with Smallwood’s leadership. Horwood then became a labour activist and political critic writing for the St. John’s Evening Telegram. His first novel, Tomorrow Will Be Sunday, was published in 1966. He was a founding member of The Writers Union of Canada. In 1981, he was awarded membership in the Order of Canada for his contribution to literature. Harold also moved his family to the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia in 1981 where he lived until his death in 2006. During his life, he wrote over twenty books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. “Music at the Close” is a chapter from his novel Evening Light, published by Pottersfield Press in 1997.
Maureen Hull has published books for children, a novel, poetry, nonfiction, and a collection of short stories. Her work has been anthologized in numerous collections and read on CBC. Born in Cape Breton, she studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Bachelor of Fine Arts) and Dalhousie University (Costume Studies). Before, during, and afterwards, she worked at Neptune Theatre in the costume department. Subsequently, she moved to Pictou Island, in the Northumberland Strait, where she gardened, raised two daughters, and fished lobster with her husband for twenty-three years. Pictou Island is mostly tree-covered, ringed by beaches, has one main dirt (sometimes gravelled) road running along the south side, and a collection of wonderful neighbours. She thinks it is the best place in the world to be a writer. With this rural, fishing, hard-working, musical, slightly eccentric, touchingly generous world providing background, she has created the novel Miranda, from which this short story is taken. These days, she winters in Halifax and spends May to the beginning of December on the island.
William Kowalski is the author of twelve novels, including the international best-seller Eddie’s Bastard and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award-winning The Hundred Hearts. He has also written Somewhere South of Here, The Adventures of Flash Jackson, and The Good Neighbor. His most recent book is also his first mystery, Crypt City. In addition to literary fiction, he writes books for the Rapid Reads series published by Orca. Rapid Reads are for adults who have come to reading late in life or who are working on their English language skills and for anyone who wants a high-interest quick read. Three of these books have been nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s Golden Oak Award. His fiction has been translated into fifteen languages. He is also the author of Writing for First-Time Novelists, a book he gives away for free in electronic form through his website (www.williamkowalski.com). Originally from Pennsylvania, William moved to Canada in 2000 and to Nova Scotia in 2002.
Born near Boston, Massachusetts, Steven Laffoley moved to Nova Scotia in 1982, where he worked as a teacher, a curriculum writer, a university professor, and a school principal. His freelance writing has appeared in numerous print and online magazines, newspapers, and on radio, including The Globe and Mail and the CBC. He is also the author of seven books, including Hunting Halifax: In Search of Mystery, History and Murder (shortlisted for the 2008 Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award and the 2008 Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Award); Death Ship of Halifax Harbour; The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea (shortlisted for the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Nonfiction); Shadowboxing: the rise and fall of George Dixon (winner of the 2013 Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Award); and Pulling No Punches: the Sam Langford Story. The Blue Tattoo, his first novel, was published by Pottersfield Press in 2013.
Born in 1929, Jim Lotz grew up in England and Scotland. After serving in the Royal Air Force, he attended Manchester University for a degree in geography and later worked in Nigeria as a trader. Seeing no prospects in a bleak postwar Britain, Jim moved to Canada in 1954, earning a master’s degree at McGill University. Spending two summers as a weather observer in Quebec on the Ungava Peninsula ignited his love for the Arctic and northern Canada, which he described in The Best Journey In The World: Adventures in Canada’s High Arctic and The Gold of the Yukon: Dawson City and the Klondike after the Great Gold Rush. Community development education was an abiding passion he shared with his students at Saint Paul University and the Coady Institute at St. Francis Xavier University. His occupations were varied and wide-ranging: grouse beater, civil servant, university professor, community development educator, freelance writer, editor, consultant, and association executive.
By 2014, he had published thirty books and hundreds of articles, papers, reports, reviews, and essays. Jim died in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on January 2, 2015, shortly before the publication of his last book, Sharing the Journey.
Lindsay R. Ruck, born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, is a graduate of Carleton University’s School of Journalism in Ottawa. Since graduating in 2008, she has worked in the marketing, communications and publishing fields. After living in Ottawa for twelve years, she returned to Halifax to further her career as a writer and editor. Winds of Change The Life and Legacy of Calvin W. Ruck, her first book, published in 2014, was a finalist for the Dartmouth Book Award. She is currently working on a biography of former Nova Scotia premier Dr. John Savage.
A former commercial and sport fishing journalist on the West Coast, Marjorie Simmins has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of British Columbia and a Certificate in Adult Education from Dalhousie University. She also has a Master of Arts, Research in memoir studies from Mount Saint Vincent University. Based in Halifax, she works as a freelance writer, primarily for magazines, and teaches memoir writing at venues around Nova Scotia. Also a keynote speaker, she is known for her lively and amusing readings. Her areas of expertise include writing and women’s health, memoir writing, dogs, coastal lives, coastal fisheries, and the equestrian world. Her first book, Coastal Lives: A Memoir, was published by Pottersfield Press in 2014. Marjorie is working on a second memoir. She is online at www.marjoriesimmins.ca.
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