by Steve Vernon
And all the while, Randy’s daddy and his pet Devil kept working at the coal.
Bad News
Later that year, Randy heard the news. One winter morning the after-damp gas in his daddy’s mine had built up to the point that a spark from a pick caused one of the biggest underground explosions that part of the country had ever known. It buried sixty-three men and boys. One of them was Randy’s daddy.
So Randy came home on the first train, wearing a black bandana wrapped around his arm. He helped his momma hang drapings over every mirror in the house and turn the clock to the wall. The town laid out sixty-three coffins, and the preacher said his words, and Randy’s momma was halfway through singing “Amazing Grace” when up walked Randy’s daddy. He had his head bowed and his hat pulled down low on his forehead, looking like a man ashamed of everything he’d ever done.
“It was me,” Randy’s daddy told them. “I’m the cause for all this dying.”
“What happened?” Randy asked.
“Well, sir, we finally got there. We dug our way clear down to Tartarus, and while Old Nick was looking around and getting an eyeload of his own stomping grounds, I leaned over and whispered something to him that I probably ought not to have.”
“What’d you say to him that made him so angry?” Randy asked.
“I told him that Hell was such a pretty spot I was planning on bringing down a trainload of Cape Breton boys to plow the fire pits under and maybe grow us a whole mess of potatoes, turnips, and greens.”
Randy waited for it.
“Well, I guess the thought of having to deal with that many more of me was enough to make old Nick flip his wig,” Randy’s daddy went on. “He stomped his cloven hooves and brought the whole kit and caboodle of the mine down upon our heads. Only the fact that I’d beaten him kept him from burying me under. But the old canker sore was still spiteful enough to make me walk all the way back home.”
Randy looked up at his daddy standing there beside his own empty coffin, laughing for the joy and crying for the dead. And then Randy reached up and hugged his daddy about as hard as a man could ever hug. Momma did too, after she’d hit him a lick or so for giving her such an awful fright.
Three years later, the black lung took Randy’s daddy down. But he died beneath a roof that was bought and paid for, and he didn’t owe a single thin dime to the company store.
The early Mi’kmaq originally referred to the area that is now called Port Hood as “Kek-weom-kek,” a name that roughly translates to “sand bar,” for its sandy low-lying beaches. Early French sailors began referring to the quiet little port area as “Justaucorps,” or “up-to-one’s-waistcoat,” due to the port’s lack of wharf. Port Hood is home to some of the warmest coastal waters in Eastern Canada. And it is on the edge of these waters where, according to legend, this next chilling story took place.
Ring Rock
The old storytellers of Port Hood say that there is a large rock with a cold iron ring sunk into its side—aptly named Ring Rock—that sits nestled down close to the shoreline at the lower end of the harbour. A short distance from Ring Rock lived a family who had been blessed and cursed by the birth of two sisters, Audrey and Mabel, born eleven months apart. Audrey was the older of the two and she was as beautiful as you could imagine, with flowing blond locks and sparkling blue eyes. Mabel wasn’t all that hard to look at either, but in her eyes the bedroom mirror told a totally different story.
It was the custom of this family that the children should marry by rank of birth—the oldest first and the youngest last. This rule had been all right for the girls’ two older brothers, who were born twins and had married and moved away just as easily as that. But Mabel didn’t care for waiting.
“My sister is so beautiful, with her long golden hair,” Mabel would say. “She has her pick of the fellows and I may die an old maid if I wait for her to marry.”
After a winter fever carried their mother off one lonely cold February evening, both girls decided to stay at home to take care of their father. And the girls seemed to be the best of friends. Wherever Audrey went, Mabel was sure to follow. They would do their chores together. They would walk hand in hand down at the shoreline. They would sit upon the Ring Rock and braid each other’s hair, setting seashells, bright stones, and wildflowers amongst each other’s long lovely locks.
People would never have guessed the fury that was buried in Mabel’s heart. She always wore a sweet little smile, and she only allowed it to slip a little when she thought no one was watching her.
Shortly before Audrey’s twenty-first birthday, a young man named Danny Collins came to town. He opened a small general store and on his first morning of business—Audrey’s birthday—the first person to set foot in his store was none other than Audrey herself. Mabel, of course, followed closely behind her sister, but she might as well have been a candle following close behind the midday sun. Danny Collins took one look at Audrey and it was as if a giant wave had rolled into the general store and slapped him smack between the eyes.
They call it love.
A Marriage Proposal
Before the summer was out, Danny Collins had come calling to Audrey’s house and asked her father if he might marry her.
“I’m not certain why you’re asking me,” Audrey’s father replied. “Seeing as it’s Audrey you are hoping to marry.”
So Danny Collins got down upon one bent knee and offered Audrey the finest wedding ring that Port Hood had ever seen. Audrey said yes and her father just smiled. All the while Mabel was watching from the shadows.
Two months later, and one month before the wedding was to take place, Mabel saw her chance. She asked Audrey to come and sit with her at Ring Rock.
“You’ll soon be married to a handsome young man,” Mabel said as they approached the rock. “This may be the last time we ever braid each other’s hair again.”
Audrey laughed at that notion. “I’m getting married, it’s true,” she said. “But I hardly think that will make me any less of a sister to you.”
“You might be right,” Mabel replied. “But nevertheless, sit down on the rock and let me braid your hair one last time.”
And then Mabel braided Audrey’s long, lovely blond hair, twisting it tightly to the rusty iron band that was embedded into Ring Rock.
At first, Audrey thought it was a harmless joke. Then, when Mabel took no step towards releasing her, Audrey grew frightened. “The tide is coming in,” she said. “If you don’t unbraid my hair I will drown.”
“Yes,” Mabel spoke at last. “You will drown and Danny Collins will weep in sorrow and I will kiss his tears away one by one. And sooner or later he will kiss me back and by this time next year I will be his bride and you will be nothing but a memory.”
Audrey screamed as realization sank in, but the pounding waves and the cry of the gulls masked any trace of her panic and fear. No one in town could hear her cries and Mabel only laughed as the tide crept closer.
And then Audrey grew as silent as a stone and began to hum to herself, and said something in the softest of whispers.
“What was that you said?” Mabel asked.
Audrey whispered again.
Mabel leaned close enough so that Audrey could whisper in her ear.
“All that you say is true, my sister,” Audrey said. “But by the time the tide in your womb has turned, you will see seaweed and the mark of the fish.” And then Audrey opened her mouth and let out an angry hiss like the sound of the wind whipping over the waves.
Mabel stepped back. She forced a laugh to try and prove that she wasn’t frightened. Then she stood and watched as the tide crept up and rolled over her sister. When Audrey had stopped kicking and the bubbles had come up and out from her throat Mabel untied her sister’s braid, pulled the corpse free from the iron ring, and pushed it down into the depths of the sea.
Then she went hom
e and told her father that her sister had drowned.
The Mark of the Fish
A great storm rose up that night and it was nine days and nine nights before what the water had left of Audrey floated ashore. Her skin was puffy and softened by the sea. A great shroud of seaweed had tangled in her hair, a tiny crab had picked his way through, and the sea worms had already begun to work into her flesh.
And everything happened as Mabel had foreseen.
Danny Collins wept and she comforted him. In his grief he reached out for her arms as a drowning man might reach out for a freely extended hand. By the time the next summer rolled around they were married. Soon after that came the birth of their first child.
The midwife who helped deliver the child swore that the baby had been born from her mother’s womb in a rush of ice cold sea water, tangled in a caul of fresh seaweed. “It had fins for feet and flippers for hands,” she swore.
Whether the midwife’s story was true or not is something that we will never know because that very night Mabel picked up the tiny body of her stillborn child and carried it down to the water. And when she got to the water she kept on walking.
The only trace that was ever found of Mabel was the beautiful gold wedding band that she left tied to Ring Rock by a carefully braided strand of long golden hair.
There are an awful lot of fishing superstitions in Nova Scotia. Local fishermen will tell you that you should never turn your boat against the sun or counter-clockwise. They also believe that a piece of silver should always be placed beneath the mast of a sailing ship before she is launched, a deck hatch should never be turned completely outside down, black suitcases are considered bad luck, and whistling will bring a storm (as will throwing a penny overboard).
And some even say that the sight of seaweed on the floor and softly blowing curtains will chill a man or maid to their very soul.
Curtains, for Certain
There is a story that they tell in the Digby area of the Fundy shoreline about a young girl named Jenny, a fisherman’s daughter back in the days of the tall schooners. Jenny was a hard-working girl who made a living cleaning the fish that the men brought to shore. She knew the ways of the water and could tell the tide and the time with nothing more than a quick glance.
Which was all it took for her to fall head over heels in love with Big Jim Dobson. She stole one brief look at the young man while he was working on his father’s boat and she knew that she and he were going to be as one.
Mind you, Jenny was nothing more than sixteen years old at the time and Jim was all of eighteen, but things happened at a different pace back in those days. Jenny married Jim that summer and the two of them moved into a small house on the seaward side of the hill, overlooking the harbour.
For a time everything was wonderful. Every morning Jenny would see Jim smiling. Every night she went to sleep listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat and the soft talking whoosh-ha-ha of the waves washing against the shoreline. Life was happy.
Then, two weeks into what looked to be a happily-ever-after marriage, the first bit of trouble set in.
“You mustn’t go to sea today,” Jenny told Jim.
“And why is that?” he asked.
“I saw the curtains moving last night,” she said. “And there was nary a wind stirring outside.”
Now every fisherman’s wife in this harbour town knew that if a woman saw the curtains stirring on a windless evening that it meant there’d be a bad wind blowing the next day—a wind that might blow a loved one away. The sight of stirring curtains was what the old people would call a “forerunner,” a sure and certain sign of death to come.
“Those bedroom windows are double-paned sheet glass,” Jim told her. “And I caulked them myself. There is no way in the sea nor sky nor land that a smidgen of breeze could creep into this bedroom.”
“Jimmy, I saw them moving,” Jenny said. “It was like somebody had shackled a ghost to that curtain rod.”
Jim only laughed at his young wife’s fears. “Look at that sky out there,” he said to her. “The air is so calm that the hay in the meadow is growing stiff from a lack of bending. There is no sign of a storm nor a bit of bad wind in the lea of a calm morning as this.”
“And yet those curtains moved.”
“It’s calm, I tell you.”
“It is calmest before a storm,” Jenny warned him. “You’re a fisherman, Jim. You ought to know that.”
But there were fish to be caught and money to be made and a mountain of new bills that weren’t going to pay themselves. So Big Jim Dobson hauled on his gumboots and clumped down to the harbour to set sail.
And Jenny stayed home to wait.
All that day the curtains continued to blow. Jenny sat and watched them. The birds outside sang sweetly. Her friends passed and called for her to join them in the outdoor sunshine. But Jenny preferred to sit there and keep her vigil, staring at those curtains.
Morning wore into afternoon and poured itself towards the evening and Jenny still kept on watching. As she watched those curtains blowing, in her mind’s eye she saw the sails on Jim’s schooner billowing and snapping in a high Atlantic windstorm.
The curtain rods creaked. In her mind’s eye she heard the masts of a sailing ship sway. The main and fore gaff swung hard. Hawser snapped and timber groaned.
And then all at once the curtains fell to the ground like a crumpled ghost.
Jenny reached for the curtain but hesitated, her fingertips not more than an inch away from the fabric, which seemed to pucker and writhe upon the floorboards of her bedroom like a clot of jellyfish.
She reached closer.
She could smell the sea wind blowing in through the window.
Closer.
She could hear the seagulls crying in the breeze.
Closer.
She could see the shape of Jim’s face, outlined in the fallen curtains. She could see him kicking against the current. She could see him trying to escape the cold and hungry Atlantic waves. She could see him opening his mouth wide into one last soul-chilling scream.
A seagull screeched just beyond the window.
Jenny sank to her knees and touched the bedroom curtains. She gasped as she found them to be sopping wet.
She wept a little while, feeling the tears spill down her cheeks, splashing on the already sodden curtains. Then she picked the curtains up, folding them carefully over her arms. She was not surprised to see the tangled clumps of fresh kelp curled beneath the fallen cotton curtains.
Later that evening they brought her Jim home to the harbour. There had been a storm and a spar had snapped and fallen upon her husband while he was bent and working. He had fallen into the sea and drowned. Only grim luck had led them to find him when they brought in a net full of fresh-caught fish and Jim’s cold dead body was tangled in its weave.
Jenny was waiting on the wharf when the boat returned. The curtains, now neatly folded, hung over her arms. At least she would have a shroud to wrap him in.
Some of the very best stories are found very close to home. This next story was told to me by my wife, whose family passed it down to her. I have gussied and ghosted it up a bit to make it fit this collection a little snugger and hopefully have got most of the details right.
This story takes place in Cape Breton, one of the richest breeding grounds for pure tale-telling talent. I wasn’t able to figure out for sure exactly where in Cape Breton this tale took place, so I have taken the liberty of setting it in Cleveland, a small community sixteen kilometres northeast of Port Hawkesbury. I apologize in advance to any in-laws who are offended by free and frequent fudging of the facts.
Meet Aunt Minnie
It seems that Aunt Minnie was a widow, more than a handful of decades old. She lived alone in a small cottage with Mr. Coal Shadow, a sleek black cat with a bad habit of tangling Aunt Minnie’s knitting.
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Now, as anyone can tell you, a black cat is the worst of luck to anybody except its owner. And Mr. Coal Shadow was the very best of luck for old Aunt Minnie. He purred on her lap, kneaded her quilt with his paws every night, and never let her walk alone (that is, if she was headed in any direction that might eventually lead towards the kitchen). He glared at strangers and he managed the mouse population and he kept careful count of the birds that flew and frolicked in Aunt Minnie’s rowan tree.
“Mr. Coal Shadow is my constant companion and very best friend,” Aunt Minnie always said. “He sticks to me closer than my own shadow.”
“How old is that cat, Aunt Minnie?” her friends and relations would ask.
“Mr. Coal Shadow is nearly as many years as I have fingers and toes,” she would answer.
“You ought to be thinking about putting the old cat down,” someone would invariably tell her.
“Mr. Coal Shadow will live just as long as I do and maybe just a little bit more,” Aunt Minnie would answer with a sly little wink.
Then one cold winter morning Aunt Minnie walked to the kitchen and Mr. Coal Shadow did not follow beneath her feet.
“Are you sleeping, Mr. Coal Shadow?” Aunt Minnie asked.
Only Mr. Coal Shadow wasn’t sleeping. The old cat was lying stretched out in Aunt Minnie’s favourite rocking chair. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t stirring.
The poor old cat had died.
“Well,” Aunt Minnie said. “There is only one thing to do for this cat.”
And so, in the heart of a very cold Cape Breton winter, Aunt Minnie went out to the back shed and got her best gardening shovel. She carried Mr. Coal Shadow to the foot of his favourite bird-watching tree, the big old rowan—which some folks call witch elm and some folks call mountain ash—and she began to dig a hole.
It was awfully hard work. The ground was frozen as hard as a tax collector’s heart. Roots tangled around the shovel blade and gave her grief.
