August Gale

by Walsh, Barbara

  I recall Ambrose’s final wish, his self-designed wake. Had he the chance, would my dad have attended? Listened to the stories, added his own memories before the wind carried his father’s ashes into the sea? Would a wake have helped mark Ambrose’s passing, providing finality, an easing of my father’s animosity? Somehow my grandfather does not seem departed. There are too many emotions, unanswered questions, and mysteries to put him to rest. I breathe deeply and glance at the stars. I wonder if Ambrose’s spirit, his soul, understands that we are here, in his home, resurrecting the past.

  A few years before he died, Ambrose speculated about his journalist granddaughter, musing that maybe I had inherited his loquacious manner, a trait that would have benefited me in my reporting career. He marked my progress through my Nana’s correspondence. She sent him the stories I wrote and informed him about the 1988 Pulitzer Prize my newspaper won for articles on escaped first-degree killer Willie Horton Jr. and Massachusetts’s flawed prison furlough program. I was one of two principal reporters who had worked on the yearlong series, and my Nana had proudly shared this news with my grandfather. Intrigued by my journalism career, Ambrose harbored hope that maybe, one day, I would grow curious about my California grandfather, track him down, and visit. “I wonder would she come this way and try to look me up?” he had asked a family friend. “But then,” Ambrose quickly added, “I suppose she would have no reason to.”

  Thirteen years after he drew his last breath, I want to talk to my grandfather, to ask him questions, to seek resolution and understanding. I wish I had sought him out, realized that one day I would regret not meeting, never knowing him.

  The scent of the Newfoundland sea fills the air as I turn to the night sky. From Alan Brenton’s driveway, I gaze at the string of stars, the gauzy stretch of the Milky Way. I am here. I’ve come looking for you. What do you want me to find? What do you want me to know?

  CHAPTER 27

  DIGGING UP THE GRAVE—MARYSTOWN, 1935

  The fishermen followed the boy with the white cross.

  Dressed in their tattered Sunday suits, the men pulled a wooden cart along the dirt path. They took small steps and kept a careful eye on their precious cargo—the two pine coffins that cradled the remains of Paddy Walsh and his young son Frankie. The church bell tolled, marking their solemn procession. Outfitted in their long black dresses and dark jackets, men, women, and children formed a ragged line behind the wagon. More than two hundred had come to pay their final respects to Captain Paddy. Many rose before sunrise, walking distances of five, ten, and twenty miles from the villages of Fox Cove, Spanish Room, and Burin. Families from Little Bay, Beau Bois, and Duricle crowded into their dories and rowed along Mortier Bay to the northern shore of Marystown.

  The mourners’ faces were somber beneath their caps and black veils, yet their eyes couldn’t hide their disdain and disbelief. They nodded to one another, declaring their contention in hushed voices. Queerest thing to be carrying on this charade. Burying Tom Reid as Paddy Walsh. No sense of it a’tall.

  Despite their doubts, they filed through the doors of the Sacred Heart Church careful to keep their grim humor hidden from Father McGettigan’s ears. The Walshes, Brentons, Powers, Reddies, and the Reids made their way toward their wooden pews, the hierarchy of their wealth, or lack of it, placing them in their proper seats. Billy and Emile Reid climbed the stairs to the church balcony and settled in their places, farthest from the altar and the coffins. The young men had not spoken to their mother about what they had witnessed at the wake. They couldn’t find the words to tell her: “Ma, they’ve made a mistake. They’re burying Da!” She would have cuffed their ears and scolded, “Stop your nonsense and say a prayer for your poor father.”

  Their mother hadn’t stopped sobbing since McGettigan came to their door with the grim news. They didn’t dare push her further into grief. Still, none of this made any sense. The boys wished they could ask their da for help. He was a strong and stubborn Scotsman who had worked long hours at sea to put food before his family. In the years before his death, dark circles permanently smudged their father’s eyes. A weariness clung to him like the scent of cod that lingered on his boots. No matter how many barrels of fish he caught with Skipper Paddy, it never seemed to be enough. It had been several months since they had tasted a bit of beef or butter. Like many of Marystown’s families, the Reids survived on the cabbage and potatoes, carrots and beets that grew in their garden.

  “Count yur blessings, boys,” their mother often told them. Now that their father was gone, the boys didn’t feel so blessed. And the struggles their da had endured to provide for the family would now fall on their young shoulders. Their mother had already confessed to her sons that she might have to put one or more of her children in the St. John’s orphanage. “There are too many mouths to feed,” she’d told them. “Too many, dear God.”

  Now, as they eyed the coffins resting before the altar, the boys prayed for their da and their family, knowing the months ahead would test them all. Below the balcony, the bereaved fell silent as Lillian Walsh and her four surviving children slowly shuffled down the center aisle. Village women stifled sobs as they glimpsed Lillian’s pale face, her slow, unsteady walk. “Aye, she still isn’t with us,” the women whispered. “She mustn’t have a clue to where she is. God bless the poor thing.”

  As many of the mothers in Marystown had tried, Adella Power did her best to console Miss Lil. Adella understood the painful loss of a child. Her own son, Ernest, had drowned in the bay on All Souls Day. He’d taken over the wheel of the David & Lizzie while the captain had gone below. The boy was never seen again. The skipper believed the young man had somehow fallen overboard and drowned in the harbor, just a mile from his home. Adella remembered Father McGettigan and Dr. Chester Harris coming to her door, their faces pinched, hands folded. She had collapsed onto the kitchen floor after they had told her Ernest was gone. Two years had passed since that day, but the grief still pierced her heart like a winter wind. Adella could not fathom Lillian’s sorrow. How do you carry on after losing three sons and a husband to the sea? There’ll be no getting over it. Sweet Mother of God, you’ll be driven mad.

  Father McGettigan stood before the pulpit uttering prayers for the souls of Captain Paddy, his sons, Frankie, Jerome, and James, along with the other eleven Marystown fishermen lost in the gale. The Latin words tumbled from the priest’s mouth; he knew the phrases as well as Shakespeare’s sonnets. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis. Eternal rest give to them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them.

  As the priest spoke, the mourners silently mused about the charade unfolding before them. A shame they’re burying the wrong man. Aye. Can’t make no sense of it a’tall. Tom Reid in Paddy’s coffin. And soon to be buried in Paddy’s grave.

  Young children squirmed in the church pews and covered their noses as the earthy scent of incense rose from the altar. Chanting Latin prayers, McGettigan sprinkled holy water onto each of the two caskets. Before he could return to the pulpit, a loud bang startled the priest and the church full of mourners. The wooden doors of Sacred Heart slammed shut as a messenger boy walked briskly toward the front row, where Ernest Walsh’s family sat. Knowing that the telegram could bear ill news of her missing husband, Cecilia Walsh made the sign of the cross and uttered a quick prayer. Dear God, have mercy on us.

  As the boy leaned over the pew to deliver the small sheet of paper, McGettigan commanded from the altar, “Bring it here.” Gertrude Walsh held her breath and prayed that the message did not bear news of their father’s death. “Please Lord, spare our da,” she pleaded. McGettigan fell silent as he read the small black words. He cleared his throat and informed his parishioners, “Let us thank the Lord for this welcome news. Ernest Walsh and his crew made safe harbor from the gale. They are alive in St. Pierre.”

  Gertrude and her sisters collapsed against one another, weeping with relief. Their mother quickly prodded the girls. Wiping away her own tea
rs, she told her children, “Hush now! There are plenty of other families who aren’t so fortunate!”

  The girls turned toward their Aunt Lil, seated a few pews away. The widow’s shoulders convulsed with sobs, her weeping muffled by the organ that echoed in the cavernous church. Women reached for their handkerchiefs as fishermen carried the coffins from the altar. Accompanied by Lillian’s cries—which had grown to high-pitched wails—the men slowly made their way from the church to the burial grounds of the Sacred Heart Cemetery. Dorymen and skippers shook off sudden chills as the caskets of the twelve-year-old boy and Captain Paddy were lowered into the earth. The men couldn’t get out of the boggy cemetery quickly enough. The screams of the skipper’s widow would haunt them more than any of the gale winds they had heard at sea.

  The bodies had been in the ground less than twenty-four hours when Lillian’s mind began to clear from the tranquilizers; the thought struck the widow like a sudden summer storm. The scars! The scars will tell the truth. As sure as Sunday, she knew that the body they had buried was not Paddy. The marks, she told herself, will end this travesty.

  The morning after the funeral, Lillian sent a message to Father McGettigan: The body in the grave is not my husband’s. Either you exhume him or I will do it myself! Soon after he received the note, McGettigan arrived at her door. Lillian explained that both her husband and Tom Reid had scars that would identify their bodies. A loose pinwheel from a boat motor had permanently disfigured one of Paddy’s knees; a scar branded Reid’s right shoulder, marking where he fell on his ax while chopping trees in the woods.

  Lillian demanded that the priest dig up the body that rested in her husband’s plot, and the widow had another request for McGettigan: “Please check on Frankie, too. What if the body in his grave is really that of his older brother Jerome?”

  “Both your boys are gone, Lil,” McGettigan told her, his voice sharp with irritation. “What’s the difference which one is buried in the grave or in the sea?”

  McGettigan’s mood had soured since he had received Lillian’s request. He wanted no part of exhuming a body that had been buried the day before. There had never been a body dug up in the history of Marystown, and McGettigan didn’t want to be the first priest to oversee such a desecration. The whole town had gone mad, McGettigan thought. He couldn’t walk the footpaths without meeting the eyes of a grieving widow or a fatherless child. The entire community slowed to a standstill. Several schooners had not left the bay since the storm. The shades of most homes remained pulled, the dwellings dark with sorrow. Many years would pass, the priest reckoned, before his congregation would recover from this terrible loss. Even McGettigan, himself, struggled to wake himself from a netherworld of shock and sadness.

  The priest shivered at the thought of the roaring wind that had shaken the presbytery’s roof. And there was no forgetting what he viewed on his doorstep the night of the gale. McGettigan knew that many of his parishioners believed in tokens, spirits that foretold of death. But the priest had little belief in such foolishness. The only spirit he believed in was the Holy Ghost, and he scolded himself for sharing his vision of Paddy and his crew with his maid. Now it seemed everyone in town looked at him queerly, thinking he was as daft as the town’s grieving widows.

  Still, there were other strange things that had occurred since the hard rain lashed his windows. The priest had begun to hear odd sounds as he walked through the church. Hooks like those hanging on the trawl lines rattled, unseen, hidden in the shadows. McGettigan had shouted in the darkened sacristy, “Who’s there?” His voice echoed in the empty church, his fear rising to the rafters. He had departed from the building quickly, discounting the odd noises. I just need a good night’s rest, he told himself. Still, he couldn’t shake the image of Paddy on his doorstep, his old friend staring at him with vacant, unseeing eyes.

  As if he weren’t tormented enough, now Lillian was demanding that he dig up Paddy’s body. Knowing he had little choice but to put the rumors to rest, the priest reluctantly gave in to the widow’s request. McGettigan informed the local doctor and the constable of his decision. The three men agreed to examine the body the following day, before the flesh could further decompose.

  Along the dirt paths, the fish wharfs, in shops and kitchens, word about the exhumation passed from mouth to mouth like a fire in the dry September woods. “Did ye hear, McGettigan’s digging up Paddy’s grave?” “Aye, the body never should have been buried there in the first place.”

  Predawn fog crept into the Marystown harbor, as men with pickaxes and shovels headed along the dirt path to the boggy woods of Sacred Heart Cemetery. A small motorboat cut across the bay, ferrying the doctor and the constable to the northern shores of Marystown. Two young lads, Hughie Ducey and Bernard Butler, sat quietly among the men. As the boat neared the mooring, the skipper cut the engine and warned the boys, “Ye stay here till this business is done.”

  Hughie and Bernard nodded. From their seats, they watched the men disappear over the hill leading to the graveyard. Once their backs slipped from sight, the boys jumped from the boat, running into the woods that bordered the cemetery. They settled behind trees for cover, hushing each other, as they eyed the crowd gathered at Paddy’s grave. McGettigan stood by the freshly dug plot, cursing the dozen men who had shown up for the spectacle. Billy Mitchell placed himself at the front of the grave, his bloated face mocking the priest with a toothy grin. Three young men stood quietly with their shovels, waiting for McGettigan’s orders. Tom Reid’s eldest son, Billy, held his spade, nervously shuffling his feet, fearing whose body they’d find beneath the earth. The eighteen-year-old didn’t relish the gruesome task ahead of him, but he couldn’t stand the thought of his da resting in the wrong grave.

  Shaking off the morning cold, the priest shouted to the men: “Get on with it!” The pickaxes and spades struck the ground, and the piles of dirt grew taller as the men removed the earth covering the two coffins. Mitchell took pleasure in the look on the priest’s face; McGettigan’s cheeks grew redder with every strike of the spade. The priest sighed as the pine boxes grew visible.

  “Pull Paddy up,” he ordered.

  The men carried the casket to the grave’s edge and removed the nails from the wooden cover. No one spoke as the crowd viewed the body. A few of the men stepped back and blessed themselves. They knew your luck could turn after touching a corpse, that strange things could happen to those who disturbed the dead. McGettigan glared at the superstitious fishermen and pulled a knife from his pocket. The priest bent over the coffin. His thick arms raised the body upright. Without a word, McGettigan slashed the back of the coat covering the broad shoulders. The ripped cloth tore to reveal a long red scar—the gash Tom Reid suffered from his own ax.

  Billy Reid stared at the blackened face of his father. “Da!” he cried.

  McGettigan dropped the body back into coffin and turned from the grave with a final command: “Carry him up the hill and bury him in the Reids’ plot.”

  Tom Reid’s sons carried their father’s coffin up a small knoll and began digging their dad’s grave. The boys would later build a large wooden cross to mark the plot where their mother would stand for hours, weeping and praying for her lost husband. While Reid’s sons toiled in silence, two other men tossed dirt back onto Frankie Walsh’s coffin. McGettigan wasted no time in leaving the cemetery and the dreadful mess behind him. Black robes slapping his heels, he retreated to the parsonage, where a bottle of rum waited. Billy Mitchell patted his bountiful belly and laughed. “Big Bull McGettigan won’t soon forget this one!”

  “Aye, Billy,” muttered one of the grave diggers. “I’m sure ye won’t be letting him.”

  Left alone to place the last shovelful of dirt on his father’s grave, Billy Reid whispered a prayer for his da and his family. “How,” Reid wondered, “do I explain this to Ma?”

  Later in her kitchen, Jessie Reid, scolded her son: “’Tis a shameful thing, you at the wake and not knowing your own father!” Billy Re
id dug the toe of his worn shoe into the kitchen floor, unable to meet his mother’s angry eyes. Throughout Marystown and the rural outports beyond, word of the mismatched bodies traveled. On fish wharves, in backyard gardens, at kitchen tables, and in huddled groups of schoolchildren, the stories were swapped, the details savored: “You should’ve seen McGettigan’s face after he slashed the coat off Tom Reid’s back. Shockin’ angry he was.”

  Slumped into his parlor chair, the priest sipped from a tall glass of rum. McGettigan gazed at the midmorning sun sparkling on the bay. His thoughts drifted back to just a week past, before the gale had torn apart this small outport and his reputation. McGettigan knew there would be no forgetting this day: a Catholic priest digging up a corpse and swapping bodies from one grave to another. The sacrilege would be remembered for generations.

  He reached for the decanter of rum, hoping to dull the memory of Billy Mitchell’s face, gloating at the graveside. The priest had no doubt Mitchell would make his way from one kitchen table to another, drinking cold beer and greedily consuming platters of beef, as he offered the details again and again. There would be no getting over this, the priest thought. No getting over any of it.

  CHAPTER 28

  GRAVEYARDS AND REDEMPTION—MARYSTOWN, JUNE 2003

  Alan Brenton leads us through the graveyard. He walks past dozens of white-washed, century-old markers. “It’s over here,” Alan says.

  My father, sister, and I follow him toward the center of the Sacred Heart Cemetery, where two dark granite markers rise from the grass. We fall quiet, awed to be standing before Paddy Walsh’s gravestone. The words etched in the polished granite read: CAPT. WM PATRICK LOST AT SEA 1887 – 1935. EVER REMEMBERED; EVER LOVED. Next to Paddy’s stone stands another similar marker: IN LOVING MEMORY OF JAMES, JEROME AND FRANCIS. LOST AT SEA AUG. 25, 1935. REST IN PEACE.