The Big Why

by Michael Winter

  Now that would get a rise.

  Gill: Hearn’s a lamb when he’s cold. A lion when he’s hot. There’s nothing to worry about.

  And so that was the plan, the ill-conceived, foolish thought.

  33

  Hearn was away to St John’s for supplies and for what he’d threatened: legal entreaty to keep me off his property. All because of Mr Cantwell. As if a piece of paper would keep me off. We played tennis while he was away. I made it clear that Mr Cantwell and Dr Gill were heartily welcome. Everyone knew, of course, about the impending clash. But I carried on my business. I drew the women as they washed and dried the fish. I listened to them talk. Carmel Lahey had a two-year-old she kept in a little round basket, right on the flake. I mean, the thing could have fallen over.

  Emily Edwards: Look at the weather.

  Rachel Dobie: Yes, it’ll keep up.

  Carmel Lahey: How’s the fish.

  Rachel: Fish be good. Not sour at all.

  Not burning is it.

  Emily: Just feel it.

  Looks burnt.

  Feel it.

  Carmel: So we’ll keep it out then.

  We got how many of us.

  Emily: With or without Mr Kent.

  The women giggled and posed coyly.

  Rachel: There’s enough to bring it in.

  Emily: Yes. We’ll bring it in tomorrow.

  How many weeks it been out now.

  Three weeks.

  34

  It was fish fish fish. Everything now devoted to fish, night and day. It had rained.

  I said, The rain will be good for the gardens.

  Tom Dobie: Yes, it’ll make them jump up.

  His hands were raw from hauling nets. He wore mitts to bed, he said, with pieces of raw liver in the fingers, just to soothe them.

  I went again to Dr Gill. To make sure he was on board. He laughed at Hearn. Put him in my buggy, he said, take him into my shop. We’ll fix him up, we’ll give him a fright.

  35

  I watched my wife roll out some pastry.

  Dont make it too thin.

  If you think my pastry’s thin, you can ask how I like it. Second, no one’s asked you to diagnose a problem with the pastry. I am very happy with it.

  No, it’s too thin.

  Kathleen fell out of love with me because of a perceived meanness. She thought that to raise children one needed a gentleness and a discipline. And all I had was the discipline. She had said, Dont do anything to Hearn. Build another court.

  If there was another decent stretch of land, then yes.

  She was adding flour to the rolling pin. She stroked the flour over the barrel of the pin.

  I love your hips, Kathleen.

  My hips are your hips.

  Kathleen’s figure. She had a high tight bum. There was a ledge to it. I put my thumbs on the small of her back. She rolled out the pastry.

  You shouldnt stretch it.

  I slipped my hand under her dress. Her legs were warm. She had such a high metabolism. She was always hot.

  Just bend over.

  Kathleen moved her feet away from the counter.

  I got behind her and then knelt behind her. The children were with Emily.

  Keep rolling the pastry.

  She picked up the pastry with the belly of the rolling pin, then laid it on the floor of the pie pan. She piled in blueberries and sugar. I felt flour on my hands. I pushed my head into her. She was taking a second lump of pastry to roll out. I pulled away layers of her underclothes. I pulled them down over one leg and she lifted the leg. As she did this she threw flour on the counter. She pretended she was alone.

  I nuzzled into her. I licked her.

  It’s tangy, I said. It’s mildly sour.

  She opened her legs. I licked. I licked her asshole. She flinched and I held her ass. I opened up her asshole with my thumb and licked her some more.

  She pulled me up by the hair.

  I turned her around.

  Sit up on the counter. Sit on the pastry.

  I put a hand behind her head. So her head wouldnt bang against the cupboards.

  36

  Word got around about what we had planned for Hearn. The town was turned out at the railroad station to watch. It wasnt something I wanted. I did not want to shame Hearn. I wanted to frighten him. I had Gill with me, but a private event had turned public. It reminded me of headlines in the Sunday Times: President to meet Pope to approve Vatican sanctions. When I see those lines I think, Why doesnt the president just mail the pope a newspaper. Save himself the trip. Perhaps Hearn’s hearing what I had in mind was enough. I couldnt tell.

  Hearn alighted from the train and took a puzzled look at the crowd before I smoothly bent him in a headlock. I dug my chin into a blue eye. I ground the heel of my fist in his bald ear. It was pantomime but forceful. Rocky was delighted. I directed Hearn to Dr Gill’s buggy.

  Me: You all set?

  I’m good to go.

  But the doctor panicked when he saw how red Hearn’s face was, and he drove off without us. Fucker, I thought.

  I have a huge, passive man in a headlock. I am two miles from town.

  Improvise. I heard applause.

  I shifted Jim Hearn’s head, like a rudder, towards the railroad station office. The crowd had jammed the wicket and the office door. I didnt know what to do. But I had to have a performance. When you have an audience you must perform.

  Me: Youre a swine, Hearn. Youre a tiny giant. Youre a perfidious, two-faced, gutless wonder. And having killed many a scoundrel in my life, I am thinking of adding you to the list.

  The ticket agent waded in. We’ll have no murdering in here today, Mr Kent.

  37

  They loved what had happened to Hearn. I was celebrated. Hearn was not liked, I realized. They were eager to play tennis. I taught Tony Loveys how to serve. Jim Hearn stayed in his pharmacy. I thought that was it, a lesson learned. I even felt sorry for the man. I thought about going to him, but a bit of time should pass first. I might give him a drawing. I wanted to make amends, but it’s true I was enjoying the attention. It provided zest to work. I got up at five, walked to the brook nude, hauled up some water. Listened to the dawn chorus. I had a coffee and worked in the studio. I was stoked with ambition and drive. But every time I entered that studio, it was as if I opened a small drawer in an oak cabinet and slipped in a burlap sack that contained my humour. The drawer was a river in which I drowned my humour. It was as if funniness would cancel out serious art. So I banished my humour. And yet I was very careful not to damage that little bag, because I wore it in life. It was my relief. After work, after the workshop of serious labour, I whistled for the burlap sack and the cabinet drawer opened and out pounced my lightheartedness.

  How ambition bled playfulness from my work.

  I look back on it now and I see how romantic it was. How industrial my art had become, and how measured. It was full of effort. Technique appeared all over the surface, and where was I? Where was the personal?

  I have many smaller niggling grievances, but this large, erasing ambition still seems the only evidence left — when it was the small life that really runs things. It is this small life I believe in now: the overall accumulation of disparate events. I believe in the hybrid, I’m convinced that new things come from the merging of tradition and new thought. I had ambition back then and a big heart, and I was ruthless and could laugh. I was mischievous, but I was hard too. I believed in acting on desire. I still do.

  I cut the children’s hair. And the next day the hair looked shorter. It’s as if hair carries around the memory of its long-hairedness for a day. And then sleep and then the short hair wins out. This is true: a new thing will come about and fail. And then the new thing will win. New things fail, then prevail.

  If you get the r
ight rhythm you can love almost anything. Because it involves life and youre in love with life. The reason I could have children is that the predictable drudge of their inevitable growing up never swamped the joy I had at how things looked and how they behaved. I did not shrivel at the thought of inevitability. Death is part of life and children are a sly inheritance. At least that’s the persuasion I come from. I know I will die, I have to die. I’m an old man now, and I’m convinced that I will die. Death spurs me on. It’s a simple logic, especially since my children are not like me.

  Gerald Thayer once said to me, I’m afraid of dying. He was afraid, he said, that there might be a life after death. He was afraid that he believed there might be a God. He did not want it. He could not bear the thought of living again, after death. Seventy years, yes. But forever? It depressed the hell out of him. A short life excited him. He thought that when Hobbes said life was nasty, brutish, and short, he meant the last quality as a relief. I’ve thought the opposite. That even though life is mean and harsh, it’s still better than nothing.

  38

  Tom Dobie came with a constable. There was a written grievance. Jim Hearn had pressed charges.

  Is he serious?

  Constable: It is hard to know the mind of a gull.

  I didnt hurt him.

  Kathleen: You humiliated him.

  Constable: And he knows the law.

  Tom: Perhaps you were too hard on him.

  The thing is, if Dr Gill had not abandoned me.

  Tom: It was funny while you had a man of the town alongside.

  But when it was just me against Hearn.

  And now that the constable had visited, I noticed people were slightly formal around me. They felt Hearn a fool, but still what right did I have to make a public fool of him. I was an outsider. I lived apart from the community, in that house along the headland. I had complained more about the loss of my toolbox than the loss of the Southern Cross. I heard this openly spoken — voices travel well over water and in darkness at night. I had ordered all that coal. It was a show of wealth and that had bothered them. They thought my figurehead above the door outrageous. And wasnt I trying to rile up the fishermen to form a union? How quickly a mood can shift. Perhaps I was a little arrogant. Yes, I see now how they saw my spirit as arrogance. And maybe I was. Even Kathleen was uncomfortable in town — but only when she was with me. The women were quiet around her. But there was nothing I could do to turn this impression. I wanted to work but found their suspicions hard to ignore. It goaded me.

  I asked Bud Chafe. I said, What’s up? And he laughed. Nobody’s that fond of Hearn, he said. Let it blow over.

  I visited the Pomeroys and the Bartletts. They were still the same. They saw the humour. But most of the men were with the fishery now, and I was noted for my apparent lack of industry. Who the hell was I? If only they knew what we lived on. Sixty-five dollars a month and the allowance from my mother. Then it struck me. I was living under the same conditions as the fishermen. I had created my own personal truck system. I was living on credit and was beholden to my agent, Charles Daniel, for a price he had fixed. What kind of fool was I. I was tearing my hair out at my own folly. If I was to rail against the merchants and encourage the men to unionize, I needed to set a better example. It was Kathleen who hit on a solution.

  Why dont you, she said, sell shares in your work.

  I sat at my desk and thought of that. Shares.

  Instead of a monthly stipend from Charles Daniel, I’d draw up shares. I’d sell futures. I would stake my reputation and sell shares in my ability to make art. I had arrived at capital — the future lay in creating equity, not debt.

  I designed the artwork for a single share in Rockwell Kent, worth a hundred dollars. I wrote to Charles Daniel to cancel our arrangement. I included the original share in Rockwell Kent and asked him to make a print run of two hundred. My estate, I wrote, will be worth twenty thousand dollars. Charles, you can acquire a share a month and send me a hundred dollars instead of sixty-five.

  39

  Painting is a solitary and isolating work. What did that Kent fellow do in his house all day? If a farmer saw me up in his fields, painting his cows and his hills, he no longer waved to me. He seemed annoyed at my presence, as though by giving me leave to use his property to stand and paint on, he was guilty of fraternizing with a strange and corrupting influence.

  So I decided to get out of there for a while. There was a floater heading down to prosecute the Labrador fishery. Niner Harris was going aboard with his mother and father. Rupert had said I could stay at their quarters in Turnavik. Would that be okay, Kathleen? Perhaps she alone could begin to build up goodwill. Now that the vegetarian socialist was away. She could have Emily help her with the children. Emily did not seem to mind the talk. And Tom Dobie, if anything occurred to the house of a physical nature, was on alert to help out. Yes, go, she said. She knew that to deny me would make me sulk, would make me judge her as limiting me. She did not allow me to go because she loved my leaving, she just feared the consequences of my feeling stymied.

  It was the great Labrador fishery and I thought I should document it. I should see fishermen at work on the sea. I brought paper and brushes and ink and paint.

  I took a boat down there and planned to stay a week in Turnavik. To hell with this, is what I thought. I dont have to be in Brigus all the time.

  40

  There was a storm out of Conception Bay and we went below the Industry’s deck. On board the floater — a fifty-ton schooner — they ate tinned beef, potatoes, pickles, and a good mustard in a cruet. I was feeling a little seasick and stuck to tea.

  Bit shy of feeding, said one, an old, well-built man in a colourful cloth bathrobe, filling his pipe. You could tell he was of a different class, even from his shoes.

  Yes, I said.

  Because of the storm.

  Is it true, I said, that Newfoundlanders like to point out the obvious?

  If you feel like feeding the gulls, he said, that door is quickest to the gunwale.

  Thank you, I said.

  He was a judge, this man. A member of the floating court, he said, on his way to mete out justice along the Labrador coast. Almost eighty years of age. Come along, he said, let’s get some air.

  He lit his pipe and passed it to me. Prowse was his name. He took me on a tour of the deck and then below deck. The men, he said, they make their way down the Labrador to stations along the coast, including Bartlett’s station at Turnavik. You know Bartlett.

  Yes, I said. I’m staying in Brigus.

  He pointed out that the dories on the port side were painted buff yellow with a green trim, the dories on the starboard side grey with red trim. So the fisherman who slipped out to fish would know by the colour of his boat which side of the schooner to come to if he had to get aboard quickly. If a swell rose.

  41

  Because of the storm we decided to lie to in Harbour Grace. Twenty-five thousand Newfoundlanders, Prowse said, migrate to Labrador each spring. Some, the livyers, stay all year. They live the winter in shacks on flour, tea, and molasses.

  All hands aboard the Industry, he said, are Christian. Except you and the sailmaker.

  I go to church, I said.

  Yes, and he smiled.

  Is it that obvious I’m not religious.

  Let’s say an independent mind stands out.

  The ninety crew aboard the Industry were permanent. They caught green fish. The fish were laid in salt in the holds of the boat. Sometimes a salt banker would come by and more salt purchased. If the fishing was good.

  Belowdecks we checked out the quarters. Most of the hold was salt. On top of the salt was bedding and luggage. We found Niner Harris and his parents, Mag and Mose. They were stationers and late in the season. They were to join Mag’s brother in Turnavik. They shared a bunk on top of the salt — their faces just inches from
the beams and planking of the deck above them. A piece of sailcloth divided them from the next bunk. They cooked and washed on deck but slept and changed down here.

  Mose Harris, joking, We came aboard to get away from you, Kent.

  We passed a coper selling tobacco and alcohol to the fishermen. Illegal, Prowse said, but done openly and freely. The rum and gin then sold in shebeens onshore.

  Aboard at night the dark was devoted to stars.

  Prowse, looking up: Made in vain.

  Me: I wonder about that — is it all in vain.

  I’m speaking of the Milky Way, he said. They call it the maiden vein.

  We slept at anchor along the Labrador coast. Anchorage was marked by a naked man on the shore. In the evenings the officers fished for salmon near the mouth of a river. We had salmon for lunch. The king of fish, Prowse said.

  We stopped into Cartwright for the day, and he invited me to court. You might find these cases sad but interesting.

  I took a seat in back so I could leave if I got bored. A man was brought before the judge and admitted he was a ship’s captain. He was in charge of a vessel outside Lloyd’s security. The claim by him was that his ship had foundered and was wrecked on the rocks off Blanc Sablon. Insurance was received, the ship sold. It was sold back to him.

  This is all true, your Honour, and legal.

  The charge, Prowse read, is that you intentionally wrecked the ship.

  It had been a bad season with no fish, your Honour.

  Yes, but your crew says you forced them to ram the ship onto a shoal.

  I hardly rammed it, sir. A bit of misfortune. She was put up on a low-tide sunker.

  You claimed the ship was beyond repair.

  He shrugged.

  You claimed she was played out, got your money to compensate for a poor season. You bought her back and salvaged her.