The Big Why

by Michael Winter

  Nice isnt it, he said, when you can go out in your figure.

  Pardon?

  No need for a coat.

  Yes, it’s a relief. What’s new?

  The wireless messages, Mose said.

  From the sealing fleet.

  With so many of the men gone, Brigus was imbued with an absent potential. That it could continue without the men, yes, but only on the promise of their return. A sudden immense profit would then occur. The cove ticked over without them. The word potential seemed to fit the agitated state of the community. It was like a kettle boiled dry.

  As Tom and I worked on the cottage Bud Chafe and Tony Loveys visited me. One brought a bottle of cow’s milk and bread, the other had goats’ skins for the floors. The rector came by and told me of his service on Sundays, and was I handy with pianos. They’d all heard I slept on boards, in a green tent, so Marten Edwards brought, on his head, a feather bed and a pillow wrapped up in a spare sail.

  Nice hat, I said.

  My Sunday best, for you and your wife.

  You got a humour.

  To match your own.

  We pulled it up the stairs to the bedroom. They were happy to see a man receive a real bed.

  Marten Edwards: We heard you slept in a tent, but we didnt believe it.

  I should put it away, I said. It’s warm weather now.

  None of them was sure of that.

  Marten Edwards: You been walking in your softs?

  He noticed I was barefoot. I’ve been known, I said.

  I’ll get a move on, he said, fixing your boots. For the weather won’t hold.

  I’ll miss the tent, I said. Sleeping in it reminds me of my father.

  This was my old bed, Marten Edwards said. He’s new. But when the wife died I couldnt sleep in him no more. Nothing wrong with him. Just memories.

  I was glad for Marten’s bed, if only for Kathleen.

  But the weather. A southerly wind pushed the pans of ice out the bay, and it opened blue and calm. On a bright Sunday, the brook trickling madly, on my way to the Church of England, the church of my childhood, I passed Mrs Pomeroy.

  I said, Lovely day.

  She said, We’ll pay for it.

  What did that mean.

  I walked over the bridge to the inner harbour and met up with Tom Dobie and Bob Bartlett on the Stand, past the United Church. They had no bell then, just the flag of St George raised up. The old men knocking their pipes empty against the step rail. I said to Tom, The rector called on me.

  Tom Dobie: To claim you.

  Yes, I guess he wants my number. With all the young men gone sealing it’s a dull church.

  Bartlett: But youre an atheist.

  I like the story of Christ, the images. My wife is Christian.

  And the architecture appealed to me. I love being inside churches. This one had a high ceiling supported by carved timbers, and stout pillars connecting Gothic arches. It resembled the framework of a ship’s hull. As if we sat underneath an overturned boat. The church had recently been electrified, and there were oil lamps refitted with bulbs along the choir archway and over the organ console, bulbs with milk glass reflectors hung on long cords down the aisles. The English Bevington pipe organ was a beauty and forty years old.

  On the walk home I exclaimed how profound the weather was, so beautifully clear. I had received a letter from New York, complaining of the snow.

  That’s a bad moon, said Bob Bartlett, and we all looked up. We’re in for dirty weather.

  I questioned him on this.

  I never knew it to fail, Bartlett said.

  50

  On the last day of March big blossoms of snow fell softly. I met Bob Bartlett in Chafe’s. The old woman is plucking her goose today, he said. On the walk home the blossoms turned heavy and the snow fell faster. Wind twisted the snow sideways. Through the afternoon a storm invaded the bottom of the bay. I brought in a load of coal and got the heat belting. The wind piled up weather into the Head. It covered, in a rude minute, the bright fields of Brigus with snow. It bleached the barrens and dumped wet hail and wind up through the valley, a swipe of a giant white, brainless paw. Three feet of snow on the field I thought could be a tennis court. The evergreens by the brook were full of complaining sparrows. Through the night I listened to the house creak and buffet, the foundation groan. In the morning there was a calm and I could not hear a thing. Even the fire was out. It was colder without the tent. From the bedroom window I melted a patch of frost off one of the panes: the world was white and newborn. I was freezing. But at the top of the stairs I could tell something was wrong. The light reflecting up the stairs was different. It was a whiter light, as if an animal waited for me down there. I made my way down. Here was frost on the rug, the tabletop white, even the fireplace painted with snow. A drift four feet high at the open front door. A chunk of Greenland had pushed into the room. I put in a fire, but the chimney was clogged. I dressed and used a bucket for a shovel to make my way out to the doorway. I swept up the snow with a broom. A wind was picking up, a new storm. The sill and hinges frosted shut. I had to chop through the ice with an axe to get the door shut. A ragged flurry, the wind stronger. And so I abandoned my house for the Bartletts’.

  I had to use the rock face to guide me into town.

  On the path I met Marten Edwards, all hunched up with a package under his coat.

  Can I ask, he said, what youre doing out.

  I could ask the same question.

  Thought I’d deliver them afore the weather got desperate.

  He had my boots wrapped in paper tied in string.

  Well, youre a diligent man.

  It be my own sake I’m thinking of. He laughed. My repu-tation.

  We moved into the rock face, let the slabs of rock take the brunt of it.

  I explained the drafts in my stove. Why I was abandoning the house.

  Oh yes, that be a cranky house you got there. At least you got a useful bed.

  I might return to the tent tonight.

  I understand. You got to get some coal. Get some heat into her.

  We were standing next to the heap of coal. It was under three feet of snow. That, I said, is my coal.

  Yes, we noticed you didnt settle that away properly.

  We stood sheltered in the cleft of the rock face. Marten Edwards had my winter boots pressed to his chest for protection. We waited to see if there’d be a lull. We waited as though it were the storm’s turn to speak. Then Marten Edwards took, deliberately, from his pocket a bent knife and cut the twine wrapping the boots.

  I cut them down to the sole, he said, and replaced the heart and bottom. Then I put the uppers back on them. Theyre what you call fox boots.

  He handed them to me and I put them on. I shoved my shoes in my pocket. The boots were smart.

  He closed up his knife. I dented the knife in a fall four years ago, he said. Over the rock by Bartlett’s wharf. When my wife died, it was a fall of grief. Landed on the knife. What made me turn to cobbling and smithing.

  He rubbed the dent with his thumb.

  What youre not a cobbler.

  Fisherman. But nothing to cobbling. If you can open a fish you can close a shoe.

  Marten, I am sorry about your wife.

  I should marry again I’m sure.

  It’ll come, I said.

  Marten assured me the wind would not abate, and so we buttoned up and steered towards town. We took turns in the front. The devil’s blanket, he said.

  51

  Snow drove horizontally and slapped the windows white. It insulated the houses from sound. I made my way blind to the Bartletts’, and they had tea and supper. I split some fresh boughs for the cow to sleep on. I could not believe the weather. I wouldnt take Bartlett up on spending the night in his bed. I’ll be fine on the couch.

  You won’t be able to stay keeled on the settle.

  I could have the maid’s bedroom or the first-floor room. At first I thought he meant I could sleep with the maid. He
said, I sent Emily home to Marten Edwards.

  I laughed and Bartlett asked, What is it. And me: I’m just admiring your rose-coloured home-knit drawers.

  You’ll be begging for a pair.

  I slept in Emily’s bed. I slept naked, to have the sheets against me. I thought of her against me and dreamed of her. I settled down to enjoy this episode in her warm bed. If I’m ever in bed with a man, she said to me. On top of him. And lift myself up, press up with my arms and look down on him, it is then that we both get self-conscious.

  I pushed her head into the floor. I twisted her head. I opened her legs, and through her open, familiar legs there’s Kathleen, leaning against the doorsill of the kitchen. I move into Emily with my wife in the doorway, her arms crossed. There is a demon head in Kathleen’s hair and the wire trap of my hand over Emily’s mouth.

  Morning. I am in a foreign room. My leg is twisted through the rungs of the footboard. Alone in a cold room, in Bartlett’s house. I am glad to be alone. Glad that Kathleen is not around. So I dont have to hide anything.

  I admitted, at breakfast, to pins and needles in my leg. When Emily arrived I could not look at her. I noticed her shape move around the room.

  Sleeping in that bed, Bartlett said, I knew you’d get dunch. I hope you dont mind, Emily. We put him in your bed.

  It’s a very good bed, she said.

  We walked over to the telegraph office, where half of Brigus had gathered for news. Marten Edwards was there. It felt awkward to have slept in his daughter’s bed. To have had that dream that ended with his daughter.

  Some storm, I said. I guess I said it cavalierly, for no one spoke.

  Bartlett: All storms are ocean storms, Kent. And they are terrible.

  Wouldnt they love, Marten Edwards said, an arm of land to tuck their schooner into.

  I had forgotten that people were out on that. In ships. In that storm. I had forgotten that things happened beyond the skirt of vision laid before me.

  That’s what they got, boy. They got to St Mary’s. For sure.

  The telegrapher was excited. I got Dot and Dash, he said, right here. The Southern Cross has passed St Pierre and Miquelon.

  Cheers.

  She’s rounding Cape Race the last they heard.

  The Southern Cross, full of men from Conception Bay. The master George Clarke from down the road and the second hand was Jas Kelly of Frogmarsh and there were a hundred seventy-one others from all along the coast. All safe.

  52

  On April Fool’s morning news came off the wire of the sealer Newfoundland in trouble. Its men were missing. A report leaked from the post office clerk that the Southern Cross had round-ed Gallery Head and was holding up in Renews. Relief charged through the shoulders of the Brigus crowd. They could see all their men sheltering now in Renews. Renews was all right. The people of Renews would be useful to them. They were imagining the Southern Cross tied up and the men greeted, the seals aboard and the men waiting out the storm with a big feed of grub on the table.

  But then that hope was met by a discouraging official report: the boat in Renews was certainly not the Southern Cross. You had to erase what you thought you knew. What was the last thing heard of the Cross. Actually, nothing. There was no report that stood up.

  The Nascopi was fine at the icefields, and William Coaker was calling a halt to the season.

  Bartlett: William Ford Coaker. He’s a farmer, not a fisherman. And you know, Kent, Newfoundland has stamps for every kind of industry. Fishing, the swilery, woodcutting, mining, logging, but the one stamp theyve never made is for farming. You know why? Farming is useless. Coaker is a farmer from Green Bay and he heads up the Fisherman’s Protective Union. Now tell me something queerer. First union in the New World. Now he’s sticking his neck into the swilery. A farmer aboard to inspect the conditions of the men, and he has the gall to call a halt to it.

  The union, Bartlett said so that everyone could hear, is strong around here. Too strong.

  Then he changed topic, for he could be a diplomatic man. It was five years ago this very day, he noted, that Peary and Henson left me to make their dash to the pole.

  And how was the weather.

  At eighty-nine degrees? It was a clear, broad morning.

  A boy thought Bartlett meant the temperature. He didnt know it could get so hot at the pole.

  Latitude, son. Degrees of latitude.

  I remained holed up with the Bartletts during these early days of April blizzard. It was frustrating. Mary Bartlett: You won’t return to that drafty cabin. A rogue wind, she said, could funnel in off the lighthouse, recoil off Red Head, and come snatch that cabin up and dump it in the harbour.

  It was a second chance to look on the town in winter.

  53

  We woke up to news on page four of The Evening Telegram, fresh off the train — news of fifty dead off the Newfoundland. Fifty sealers had frozen to death.

  In our harbour we saw three small boats.

  There’s men in those boats, Bartlett said.

  Open boats, Tom Dobie said. They look like rodneys.

  Or a gunning punt.

  Where they from.

  Can they be from the seal patch.

  Theyre not from no seal patch.

  We went down to the government wharf and Bartlett pushed the Morrissey out. We steamed out through the young ice.

  You can tell theyre in trouble, Tom Dobie said. Theyre barely rowing.

  We got in amongst the three boat crews. Bartlett passed a looped rope down and each man pulled it over himself, and we hauled them aboard and gave them blankets. They were exhausted and cold. They were Carbonear men, and they’d been out for the day, one said. Just a mile out from home, on some swatchy ice, when the wind come up. No food or water or heavy coat, nothing on them.

  Where’s your breadbox.

  Ate it out.

  How long you been out.

  Since yesterday last.

  There was a butter tub in one rodney that the three crews had shared. They’d had hard tack and tea and two coconut shells with cork stoppers. One for molasses, the other for butter.

  Bartlett: You men you all got the fiddlers.

  Yes, we’re beat to a snot. But happy now.

  Sure that boat there is leaky as a flake.

  She’s a clever boat for all that. Kept up with the other two.

  Yes, I suppose she’s done you well.

  The Carbonear men were like birds blown off course. The wind had driven them into the bottom of the bay. They knew that if they hung on they’d reach Brigus or Holyrood. Bartlett took them in and fed them pea soup and put them to bed aboard the Morrissey. They were frozen and hungry. Look at them eat, he said. Theyre face and eyes into it.

  The next day, page six: seventy dead.

  But no news of the Southern Cross.

  Bartlett had to leave and I decided to go with him to St John’s. He was on his way west, to the Karluk rescue. I needed supplies from town and I wanted to see the steamers come in. Bartlett kissed his mother and hugged his sister Eleanor and shook his father’s hand and Rupert’s. Then we jumped aboard the pony cart that had Tom Dobie at the reins to take us up to the iron horse for St John’s.

  I sat across from Bob Bartlett. Men were coming up to him. You know anything, sir? He did not. He said the prospects werent good, but we must hold our faith. Faith. I thought of Kathleen. She said once that faith is summed up by Jesus and Adam. She was reading a pensée from Pascal. Morality, she read aloud, is summed up by concupiscence and grace. You believe that? I asked, What is concupiscence. Kathleen: It is the inception of desire. Yes, Kathleen, I believe it.

  St John’s. Bob and I stayed in a hotel on Cochrane Street. Across the road a fire had burnt down three houses, leaving just their chimneys. We walked over and Bartlett leaned into a fireplace. If a chimney, he said, is tall enough you can see stars even in the middle of the day. Take a look. I stretched in and looked up. And yes, deep down the black telescope of the chimney I saw a
pin of light. That single star so deliberate, it looked fake. It was the fleck of white one leaves on the black pupil in a painting.

  54

  Theyre coming in.

  Bartlett was shaking my hip. He was barechested, his trousers on. It was six in the morning and freezing. He had an enormous chest. It was when he was sideways on that you noticed it, when he bent over to pull on his socks. The swilers, he said.

  I dressed and followed him down to the harbour. The snow had melted and frozen again. Bartlett passed me a slice of bread with molasses, and the bread had chunks of pork fat in it. I ate around the fat. There were thousands of men and women lining the finger piers, the air damp and heavy, their hands in pockets. Boys with oversized caps, their collars flicked up at the neck. Behind us people were carefully trudging down the steep, white hills, the towers of the Basilica breaking the cold plain of the horizon, the sun coating the rock of Signal Hill with a bright, thin icing. The delight and fright of a city in the bare morning. Men recognized Bartlett. He repeated the same conversation:

  It was the Newfoundland ’s crew what caught the brunt of it.

  The Bellaventure had the men and would be first in.

  Yes, followed by the Nascopi.

  It was the Nascopi what ended the hunt, a man said, because William Coaker was on board.

  Bartlett put a hand on the man’s shoulder. The hunt was over, he said, because it was the thing to do.

  He took me by the wrist and we pushed forward into the men. He could be intimate, he knew when to be intimate. He waded into the men, offering support, and they recognized that this was the fate sometimes when sealers went to sea and I was getting upset that nobody seemed to be outraged. It was Coaker who’d ended the hunt and no one was telling Bartlett anything different, at least not persisting. There was deferral. And I thought, There is something to be said for persistence. They were too passive for me.

  The flags were up on the hill, so we knew that they were coming in. And then quickly this black vessel steaming hard into port. It had all its flags flying. It felt odd, the speed and the flags. It looked joyous. It belched its horn, zipped through the cold blue water, and sidled up to dock.