The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel

by P. S. Duffy

  “Your grandfather? What’s he know about loyalty? Were it up to him, why—”

  “The boy has spoken,” Putnam cut in, measuring out each word with a look that shut Davy up. “Boy’s father is over there, don’t forget.” He turned to Simon, “Any word, Simon?” Simon shook his head. “No word is a good word,” Putnam said.

  Simon looked resolutely toward the bow. Fire Mr. Heist? He was the best teacher they’d ever had. Everyone said so.

  Charlotte remained a muffled heap under the sail, and Simon sullen, so Putnam decided it was time for a story. Eyeing the clouds banking on the horizon, he asked Charlotte if she’d ever heard how a true blue-wind storm had come in on the Banks and blown Simon’s grandfather off them forever. “A finer schooner fisherman you’d never find,” he said. “A hard man, ran his boy hard, ran us hard, but knew where the fish was, like he had the ear of God.”

  Charlotte asked what a blue-wind storm was. Simon was torn between wanting to impress her and worrying that the story might make her more afraid than she sadly appeared to be. He had so hoped she’d be good on the boat.

  “There we was on the Zebulon Keddy. Things had been right calm,” Putnam began in his storytelling voice. “Then strange things happened. The temperature shifted of a sudden. Warmed up, but with pockets of cold with dead air in them. Everyone knew what that meant.” He waited until Charlotte asked “What?” to be sure he had a good audience.

  “Gale coming, she’s gonna blow,” Putnam said with grave foreboding. “Blue-wind storm. Duncan, Simon Peter’s grandfather, got his boys back in right quick and got the dories stowed. The boat was hove-to, to ride it out. Wind came up like a bat out of hell. Murder and lights she blew, like we knew she would, and churned up the seas to match.” Another dramatic pause.

  Charlotte obliged him. “Then what?” Her entire head was now out of the sail.

  “Wind veered! That’s what. Come up even stronger. Sea went black. Foam roaring off the crests and waves a-roarin’ down over us. Other fellers were hove-to, but some tried to run her out. Even under bare poles, the seas were throwing green water over the bow, over the sides, over the stern! Fellers thought they might drown where they stood. When the seas calmed some and the wind lightened a bit, we could see the Alice Miner, a schooner from Gloucester. Them boys were running home, loaded to the gills with fish, they was. Nearly a full set flying. Greed driving their dash to get in ahead of the fleet.” He looked at her darkly.

  “Ohhh, a race!” Charlotte whispered, eyes bright.

  “A race? Not hardly, unless first-place trophy was best price for the catch. We’re talking Banks fishermen! Not fancy yacht racing!” He turned to Simon. “Where’d you get this girl, Simon Peter?”

  “She’s from England,” Simon said.

  “Ahhh . . . alright now. So the Alice Miner was overpowered, too much sail up. They were trying to haul them down when her masts snapped in two, one after the other. Her sails dragged in the seas and the seas were foaming at the mouth and pulling her sideways, then onto her side, and before they could cut the rigging, she was a goin’ over.” He looked from Charlotte to Simon. “But before she did, Duncan MacGrath steered smartly up to her under just enough sail to keep headway, steady in the wind without going into irons.”

  “Irons! What’s that mean?” Charlotte sat up straighter.

  Simon said, “You lose headway, which means you lose steerage, which means you can just be rolled over by a heavy sea.”

  “Very nice, Simon.” Putnam lifted his cap, revealing a flash of his narrow bald head. “I’ve come near the end. Do I go on?”

  “Yes!” Charlotte said.

  Simon put in that Putnam’s father had been a collector in Newfoundland. Of course, then he had to explain that a collector was someone who went from village to village and was fed and put up for nights at a time, his job being to gather up stories and tell them.

  “No finer teller of tales in all of Newfoundland,” Putnam said, allowing the interruption.

  “Putnam here, not near as good as his father,” Davy put in.

  Putnam noted that he didn’t have time to do this one justice, being as close as they were to Big Tancook, so he was giving the short version and was just as pleased to leave it there if he should suffer further disruption. He waited for encouragement, which he got from all three of them.

  “So, let’s see . . . we fellers see the Alice Miner is foundering bad. Duncan, expert helmsman as he was, pulls us up just close enough to throw out lifelines. Men in the water by then and men sliding off the deck, and us boys get the whole crew off except one—boy about your age, Simon Peter. The boy was tangled in the lines. The Miner was on her side by then, and t’wouldn’t be long. We make out the boy—see him carried high and dropped low in the troughs. Bobbing up and disappearing. Then finally he pops snug up next to the hull as the Miner starts to roll. But he couldn’t free himself from the rigging, and they couldn’t pull him in. Duncan couldn’t rest with that. ‘Unlash that dory!’ he shouts. ‘I’m going over to him.’ A bunch of boys try to drive some reason into him, but he gives them no heed. Over the dory goes and Duncan down in it, and that’s all the time it took for the Alice Miner to slip under the waves and drag that boy to the bottom. Fellers say on a cold, blue-wind night, when there’s a frosty moan about, you can still see his hand rising up from below.”

  “Seen him myself of a time or two. Fellers say he’s still trying to grab ahold of Duncan,” Davy said. “Last time I heard it, Duncan was over the side and in the water swimming after the boy! Makes a much better story for my money.”

  “Who told it that way?” Putnam asked hotly.

  “None other than Dolf Chandler.”

  “Well, he wan’t there, was he? Nor Wallace. Dolf got that story from the bottom of a bottle, is what. Duncan had ripped off his sou’wester and was about to jump in, but I’m telling you, that boy went down afore he made it. Duncan would have been sucked in the undertow if he’d a swum over. But he sees that boy go down and come back and sailed the Zebulon Keddy straight for home. Never went out again.”

  “Never again?” Charlotte whispered.

  “Never again,” Putnam said grimly, looking straight over the bow. “Not to the Banks, anyway. Sold the boat, had Reuben Heisler build him the Lauralee for coastal trade. Named the boat for his wife, in her grave two years, and the baby by the same name. Blamed himself, is what Ida Corkum says, for his wife’s death. That boy was the final straw. Never went to the Banks again.”

  “Afraid that boy’s arm would drag him under,” Davy added with a shake of his head.

  “Rightly so,” Putnam said. “Chased him right off the water.”

  “So that’s why he didn’t let your dad . . .” Charlotte looked over at Simon.

  “No he wasn’t!” Simon said. “He wasn’t afraid!” Up to now he’d only considered the heroic part of the story—saving the crew, all but one. “He came back to take care of Dad.”

  “You’re full of complaints,” Davy said. “That boy is why he come back and why he stayed away. A story is a story. Is what it is.”

  Putnam nodded solemnly as they eased the sheets and headed toward the Tancook harbor. Then he looked down at Charlotte. “How you feeling now, m’dear? I see some color back onto your cheeks. I believe you can come up without getting washed overboard. Take a seat next to me. Wind’s behind us, now. See? Makes a gentler ride. Help her up, Simon.”

  Simon clasped her hands and leaned back, surprised at the supple strength of her grasp. Davy steadied her at the waist. “You’re a hefty one, you are. Good ballast, eh Putnam?” Davy winked. Charlotte sat just forward of Putnam, surprisingly reinvigorated. Putnam patted her knee and pointed. “See now? Big Tancook dead ahead.”

  “Why’s it called Big Tancook?” she asked.

  “Because it isn’t Little Tancook. That’s why. There’s Little Tancook over to port. And there be our rowboats tied to that stake. Simon, grab that boat hook and catch that line when I come around.
We’ll tie them onto the stern.”

  Simon hooked the line and knelt to untie the boats from the stake. Davy fended them off as Simon, with a bit of a swagger, walked the line back toward the stern just before he tripped on a cleat. It was Charlotte who caught the line that fell from his hand. And Charlotte who inched her way aft, balancing with newfound ease, to hand the line to Davy, who secured it to a ring on the stern.

  “Well, now, m’dear,” said Putnam when the boats were lined up smartly behind them and the sails filled again, “you’re to come out with us any time. Teach the boy here how to stay upright.”

  Simon laughed. Charlotte climbed up on the rail next to him. “I’ll get her some oilskins,” he said, “and some fishing boots!”

  “That’s right. Never know when the weather’s going to turn foul,” Davy said.

  “Davy, you don’t know a good day from a bad one. Never have,” Putnam said.

  For Simon, it was fair weather all the way home, with Charlotte’s thigh pressing against his, strands of her hair licking his face in the wind.

  LATE THAT NIGHT, he let those strands of hair brush his face again, felt the smooth skin and padded tips of her fingers, the springy feel of her hands in his, her thigh pressed against his own, imagined dimpled knees. These were not the kind of thoughts to lull him to sleep. He got up and went down to the kitchen. There he found his mother in his father’s thick socks with his old plaid wool shirt over her nightgown. She had her arms stretched out along the length of the sink and was staring out the window. She didn’t move when he entered. Her chin was lifted. A portrait of solitude in the moonlight.

  He coughed so as not to startle her. “You okay, Ma?” he asked.

  She pushed away from the sink and slowly turned to him. “I think so. I have something to tell you. It’s taken me a long time . . . but I know now that Ebbin is dead. I can feel it.”

  Simon slowly sat down.

  “Dad came up to the house this morning, my dad. Gave me this.” She reached into the shirt pocket and pulled out a leather cord at the end of which dangled a round disc. “Ebbin’s tag,” she whispered. “They keep the other one for burial. Even if there is no body.” Her hands shook as she lit the candle. Simon stared at the tag nearly glowing in the candlelight. “Go on,” she said. “You can touch it.” He picked it up and ran his thumb across it. Here was the visible proof he, too, had been missing. He felt his mouth go dry and thought of crows flying.

  She pulled his father’s shirt around her. The kettle was going. She took down two mugs and very deliberately sliced pats of butter and put them and some sugar and some kind of spice in each mug, and then added some rum and a good deal of hot water and a little cream on top. “Why not?” she said.

  Simon took a sip. Apple rum pie without the apples, and a whole lot better. The tips of his fingers tingled. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Why not?”

  His mother stared into her mug. “Ebbin and I always felt we came from somewhere else.” When she didn’t go further, he said, “Well you did. Alberta is someplace else.” He took another sip and wiped the cream off his mouth with his sleeve.

  “And . . . we were both named for our mother, Ellen Langston. I look like her, which always made my father sad, and that made me sad, growing up. He was sorry for it, but he said to look at me sometimes was to see her on her little horse, her hair flying. Maybe that’s why I like riding Rooster all over. But anyway, it meant he never saw me, not really.” With her elbows on the table, she slowly stroked her temples. “When he gave me the tag, you know what my father said?” She looked up abruptly. “He said, ‘You’re alive, Hettie Ellen. We both need to bury the dead.’ ”

  Simon nodded, his heart on tiptoe.

  “He was right. It’s not right to give up life. Ebbin made his choice. I’m making mine. There are things I need to do.” She glanced away. “This hideous war thinks it can take everything. I’m not going to let it.”

  “You’re going to become a pacifist?” Simon whispered.

  “What? No. I’m going to take care of things right here. Grandpa’s letting things slide.”

  “His business, you mean.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are we going broke? Ida said . . . should I quit school? I can work. I can go . . .”

  She dismissed this with a vague wave. “Settle down. Of course we’re not going broke. But I’ll tell you something.” She picked up the jar of strawberry jam beside the sugar bowl. “Do you know why Ida calls this ‘live jam’? Because it’s not preserved. Because even in that simple task, I fail. I only just figured out why. Because I don’t like putting up jam. Nor carrots, nor peas. I don’t like serving tea, nor gossiping over it. I don’t like blacking the stove—”

  “Okay, okay. But you can’t just . . . run things.”

  “Why not? Why shouldn’t I? I’ve kept the books.” She swept her hair up behind her ears and let it fall. “I’ve been Ellen Langston’s daughter, Ebbin Hant’s sister, Angus MacGrath’s wife,” she said. “Now I’m going to be me, Hettie Ellen MacGrath. H. E. MacGrath. That’s how I’ve been signing the correspondence I write for your grandfather. I get good responses to my letters. And to my bills.”

  “You’re going to work? Like a man?”

  “Your grandfather loans us Ida. Lets us live in this house. Your father never seemed to care—out there on the Lauralee. But I did. And besides, maybe I’d have liked to have been out sailing on her.”

  “But you get seasick.”

  “That’s true,” she said, amused at herself. “The point is that I see what’s going out and coming in, and mostly it’s been going out with poor return, and I’m going to fix it.”

  “But how?”

  “I’m not sure yet. We need a plan. That’s what I’ve been thinking tonight. Things are changing. Branching out—investing. That sort of thing. There’s more than boats and cod—”

  “You mean war buccaneering,” Simon said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Buccaneering?” She tilted her head. “Oh. Profiteering. No, no. I can’t explain it all. I just see it.”

  Simon leaned toward her. “I can help. Let me go out on the Banks this summer. I’ll give all the money to you. It’s what I want more than anything. Let me go, please.”

  She took his hand. “Simon, Simon. I know you want to be out on the water, and maybe one day you will. I would myself if I were you. If I didn’t get seasick. But right now, I need you here.”

  He looked at his hand in hers. “Do you?”

  “I do,” she said. But she wasn’t really speaking to him. She was staring at Ebbin’s tag. She lifted it gently and put it in her pocket, then got up and set her mug in the sink. Standing, Simon took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Then he closed his eyes and gulped down the rest of his buttered rum.

  EIGHTEEN

  April 17th, 1917

  No. 18 Canadian General Hospital

  Saint-Junien, France

  Above him the ceiling, dim and white, high and arched, seemed an overcast sky, but globes of light spread out into separate suns, attached, he saw, to an iron chandelier. Was it swaying? He closed his eyes and immediately snapped them open. He concentrated on colors—blue and white next to him. A white curtain? No, an apron—stiff, starched, and bibbed over a blue dress. And a white muslin headdress above, crisply folded below the ears, framing the face. The face was speaking.

  “Welcome back, Lieutenant,” it said. A clean face, startling and disturbing in its beauty. “You’ve come round. Good.” Blue and white. Bluebirds, they called them, the Canadian military nurses. The voice and the face vanished, replaced by a row of cots to his left. Above, a gallery and banister. More cots up there, and mattresses lined up on the floor. He heard whimpering and crying out, orders given, and hushed responses. Sunlight streamed through arched windows behind the gallery down to the lower level. It dappled his blanket. What country was he in? Where were his men?

  The nurse, whose name was Lydia Lovell, told h
im he was in a Canadian military hospital in Saint-Junien, between Calais and Étaples, just across the Channel from England. His chest wound was septic and nothing could be done about his shoulder until the infection cleared. “I’ll just see to that wound now,” she said.

  “Where’s Conlon?” he demanded.

  She stuck a thermometer in his mouth and pulled back the sheet and wool blanket and unbuttoned his pajama top. His right arm was not in the sleeve. It was propped on a pillow, in padded bandages except for the fingers. His shoulder was taped up with gauze dressings. As she worked at the bandage, the nurse said: “I don’t know where this Conlon of yours is. You called out his name any number of times over the last day and a half. His and others. I’ll see if he’s among the wounded if you give me his full name and rank.”

  She was an idiot. That much was clear. Beautiful, but an idiot. Conlon hadn’t been wounded. He’d squatted next to the stretcher at the camp and given Angus water. Angus remembered how thick his tongue had felt, remembered asking about Publicover and Ebbin. Ebbin! Had he said Ebbin’s name?

  He ripped the thermometer out of his mouth. “I’ve got to find Conlon.”

  “Be still!” She thrust the thermometer in again and told him to close his mouth. He clamped his lips over it. She checked his pulse and finally withdrew the thermometer.

  “How soon can I get back to the Front?” Angus asked.

  “Back to the Front? I hardly think so. Let me finish this dressing now.”

  “No. Yes! Go ahead. But then I’ll need my clothes—I’m an officer. I need to get back to my unit.”

  “Lieutenant, you do not outrank me, you’ll notice. And as to going back to the Front, I’m afraid you wouldn’t make it to the end of your bed.” She dropped a putrid dressing into a metal bowl.

  Pain flamed through him. He started to shake. The nurse dropped her scissors on the cart and pressed one hand on his forehead and the other under his neck. Her hands were cool and firm. She didn’t move her eyes from his. “You will find him and your men when you’re ready.” Minutes seemed to pass. His trembling subsided and he sank into a leaden fatigue.