Pat shook his head; he was certain the old couple was in danger. But there were others to warn, more doors to bang on. He moved on. He looked up from the beach and saw dozens of people streaming out of their houses to the higher ground. Some of them went into dwellings built on the hills around Lawn; others went beyond the houses to even higher land.
As Hilda Tarrant led her children out the door, with her youngest in her arms, she looked behind at a sponge cake on the kitchen counter. She had baked it for Pat’s birthday, which was today.
At seven-thirty the water drained out of Lawn harbour, revealing a mass of seaweed over endless grey and blue beach rocks. By now Pat had rejoined his wife and children who were climbing up the hill to the Tarrants’ barn.
“Don’t look back,” Pat told them.
But Anna did and she saw her neighbours’ homes go out to sea when a hundred foot wave came in and took them. Then the water withdrew again, leaving two-masted schooners high and dry in the harbour. Around them were splinters of wood from dories, flakes and stages. Pat realized that old Tom and Kate Tarrant had remained in their home. Even in the dimness of the evening light he could see that their house remained intact. Pat pulled away from Hilda and the children and confided his worry to the men he fished with. With a squeeze of Hilda’s shoulder, he hurried down the hill with his dory mates.
“Will you be all right?” she asked.
“I will!” he called. “I think that’s the last of it! I’ll be back— stay there with the little ones!”
Anna shivered as the darkness drew in. Her throat ached; how she wished for some molasses.
Down below, Pat and the other fishermen waded through icy sea water and debris to reach Tom and Kate Tarrant. Oddly, the fence surrounding the old couple’s garden remained standing and the men had to climb over it in their soaking wet clothes. When they opened the Tarrants’ door, Kate said, “Thank God!” Then the cries she had been holding in came out full force. Pat picked her up and laid her over his shoulders. The other men carried Tom. The hardest part was getting them over the fence, which they tried to kick down but could not since the water was so heavy. Once they were clear of the sea water, the Tarrants walked up the hill to join the neighbours in the barn. But before he returned, Pat dashed into his own house and retrieved his birthday cake.
There was no loss of life in Lawn, due largely to the efforts of Pat Tarrant. But the property damage was considerable, especially for those families who lived near the beach. Pat Tarrant’s own fishing enterprise suffered considerably. His stage was swept away, and his wharf and flake were badly damaged. He lost his trap moorings, five trap kegs, a leader for his trap, a buoy rope, a herring net, and thirty hogsheads of salt. In addition, two tons of coal meant to keep his brood warm over the winter were swept away. As he stood on the shore in the morning, on the spot where his stage had been, he was dumbstuck at his losses. He had been fishing since he was a boy and now, thirty years later, with a wife and five children, it was as if he was starting all over.
The house of Pat’s neighbours, Celestine and Jane Edwards, was so badly damaged it would have to be entirely rebuilt. The parents of five young children, the Edwards’ food stores were completely gone as well. Jane lamented the loss of the organ she loved to play every evening; getting another one would have to wait—her prized possession had cost $135—and would be hard to come by in any case.
Frederick and Margaret Edwards’ house was also beyond repair. The first wave had ripped it from its foundation. Assessing the damage in the dark after the sea had returned to its normal state that night, Fred saw that all the house’s concrete pillars were broken. So was the chimney, which lay flat on the soaking ground, ripped right off the rest of the dwelling.
“I expect we’ll need twenty or more barrels of cement to rebuild,” Fred told Pat Tarrant in the blackness of the night. “Maybe more.”
“Yes,” Pat nodded. “And a thousand feet of lumber.”
Fred shook his head.
“Don’t worry,” Pat said. “We’ll pull together. You’ll come through it somehow.”
Fred’s heart was like lead. His wharf was also beaten up, as was his store. The giant wave had stolen a hogshead of salt, a barrel of flour, and a ton of coal—in the cold month of November. It had also destroyed his stable.
“I don’t know,” he told Pat.
Young Augustine Murphy was also in need of comfort. At eighteen, he was the sole breadwinner for his thirty-nine-year-old widowed mother, Angela, his fifteen-year-old brother John, and his three little step-siblings. He cracked his knuckles as he paced back and forth on the spot where his flake had been. He hadn’t had a particularly successful fishing season and he really couldn’t afford a loss of any kind. In fact, his family had virtually no provisions. His stage was rendered useless by the first wave; his moorings destroyed. He’d have to get all that sorted out over the winter for the next fishing season.
The second wave had hauled away their half ton of coal and ten planks Augustine had collected to build a little bridge to his stage and flake, which were now gone anyway. He wiped his forehead when he thought of it. After he surveyed the damage the waves had wrought, he headed home to tell Angela and the children what they faced the winter. He lugged in their barrel of flour but about half of it had been ruined by sea water. Stoney-faced at the news of their losses, Angela turned to the flour and picked through it, trying to salvage what she could.
6
In Lamaline, Herbert Hillier had almost convinced his wife, Nan, that the tremor they had felt on the way from their home in Point au Gaul was nothing to be concerned about. Nan tried to enjoy the Orange Lodge supper in Lamaline with her neighbours from home and their friends in other communities on the bottom of the Burin Peninsula. But, in spite of Herbert’s attempts to reassure her, memories of the earth’s rumbling nagged at Nan. It didn’t help matters that the diners at the Orange Hall talked of nothing else.
At the supper Nan sat next to her sister and brother-in-law from Point au Gaul, Jessie and David Hipditch. Jessie told Nan of the strange vision of her baby, Elizabeth, she had experienced just after the tremor. But with her husband’s encouragement she had brushed it off. The Hipditch children, including five-year-old George and three-year-old Henry, were safe with their grandmother, Lizzie Hillier, who was Jessie’s mother.
As people arrived at the hall, they brought the fanciful news that the harbour waters had receded way below the normal low tide mark. In fact, the mark kept falling farther back, as if some giant force was sucking the water out of the harbour, so much so that the bottom of the harbour was now exposed for the first time ever. Jessie, David, and Nan rushed outside to see this remarkable phenomenon. The hall was on the highest point of land in Lamaline and they peered down on the dry harbour bottom, amazed to see the smooth stones, dark sand, and reams of seaweed that lay there.
“I never thought I’d see that,” David said. A small group that had gathered behind him murmured in agreement. But worry lines crossed their faces as well. Their fears were realized when the water that had disappeared so quietly came barrelling in with the force of a canon ball.
“It’s coming in!” Nan heard someone shriek. “It’s coming in!”
She clung to Herbert as dusk drew in and they strained to watch the water rise to twenty feet from almost nothing a few moments before. Then a wall of seawater, icy and swift, raced to the houses that clung to the shore. Nan gasped as she saw men and women run away with screaming children in their arms. The ocean flooded the homes they had vacated just in time and swamped the school which had also been built on lower ground. The roads were buried in water as well.
Nan swallowed her breath as she watched the water rise up the hill toward the Orange Hall where she stood as stiff as a marsh bittern. What would they do if the water came up there? But then it stopped, still two hundred yards away, and began to recede. It carried out chicken houses, dories, and fences. The fence posts reminded Nan of matchsticks as they were s
wept away. The squawking of the poor drowning birds stuck in her ears. She turned to her husband.
“Oh Herbert, what will we do? What about the children?”
His answer was gruff. “Never mind, never mind now,” he said. “They’ll be all right. Don’t be frightened.”
But Nan’s heart crept up in her chest into her throat and mouth. All around her, women cried and the faces of men grew white as snow. They were deathly afraid for their children in Point au Gaul, High Beach, Taylor’s Bay, and Lord’s Cove. It would be at least an hour before any of them could get home. They walked in and out of the hall, letting their gravy solidify and their potatoes harden, as they waited for the next onslaught from the Atlantic.
It came, as they knew it would from the behaviour of the sea, but it was not as fierce as the first wave and the houses on the lower ground in Lamaline were empty now. When it receded this time, the people in the Orange Lodge were more confident it would not return and they were right.
Jessie Hipditch had watched the whole thing and could not contain the thumping in her chest. By now, she was convinced the sight of baby Elizabeth on the walk to Lamaline from Point au Gaul was a dark omen, maybe even a token. She pulled on her raven hair as she rushed up to Nan.
“Are you going home?” she asked. “We’re going now.”
Nan nodded and Herbert agreed. “Don’t worry,” Herbert told Jessie. “There was enough warning that everyone got out of their houses on time. There’s only been property damage.”
Jessie’s husband, David, joined the trio by now and he gave a quick nod in agreement but Nan could see the worry flush on his face.
“Let’s get going,” she said.
Out of habit, Herbert picked up their suitcase, which contained only one cake by now. The four of them discussed the safest route home and decided they would stick to high land. They said quick good-byes and left the hall. They crossed the bog on high ground, rather than risk walking through Lamaline itself, on the off-chance that the seawater wasn’t done rushing in.
Traversing the bog was hard work and cold in November. All four were soaked to their knees by the time they made it to the road that would take them to Point au Gaul by an inland route. Nan tried to chat, but while Herbert made small talk, she noticed that Jessie and David were silent the whole time. They reached the road first and then walked as fast as they could in bogwatersoaked clothing to their village.
On the way, they passed a Lamaline man with his granddaughter in his arms and his daughter walking wordlessly alongside him. Nan’s mind was cloudy and she did not speak to him; five minutes later, she couldn’t say if he was an apparition or not.
When Nan and Herbert reached Salmonier Bridge, they stopped. Its great wooden piers had been washed away by the tsunami. Farther, what remained of the bridge was tipped at such an angle that they could cross it only by clinging to the rail, which was now on the top of the bridge. The moon bathed the land in a brilliant glow by now and Nan could see Jessie and David on the wrecked structure, quickly pushing on.
“Well, we’ll have to cross it, too,” Herbert said. Nan nodded. By the time they crossed the creaky bridge, Jessie and David were out of sight. As the harbour came within view, they could see it was chock-a-block with wreckage. It was as if a half dozen ships had gone aground.
“Well, my boat is gone,” Herbert said. He sounded nonchalant; indeed, he had expected this after the events he had witnessed in Lamaline, but Nan felt a catch in her throat.
Than a man appeared out of the darkness and shouted, “Stop!”
Nan hesitated; she wanted to ask him what he wanted, but Herbert said, “Never mind, come on!” He had just felt the weight of a boulder in his belly and he suddenly knew that something much worse than property damage had happened in Point au Gaul.
Then he and Nan passed a woman who was moving slowly and crying.
“Did you notice that woman, Herbert?” Nan said. “I wonder why she’s crying?”
But Herbert, weighed down by the weight in his stomach, didn’t answer. He rushed into the village with his wife. In the moonlight their eyes took in the destruction along the waterfront: the wrecked stages, stores, gears, traps, and boats. Herbert could form no words. Not even the sight of the wave action in Lamaline had prepared him for this. He grabbed Nan’s elbow and turned up toward their home.
Nan’s brother, Chesley, met them at the gate. Nan saw that he was alone.
“Where are the children?” she screamed.
“They’re safe. They’re with mother on the hill,” he answered quickly. “I brought them up and came back here to meet you.”
Nan’s body went soft. She hardly heard Chesley explain how he barely had time to get the children to their grandmother’s house on high land. Her heart ached for them. She had to see them. She turned to Herbert. “Let’s go to the children,” she said.
“You can’t go, Nan,” Chesley said. “The bridge across the brook is gone.”
Herbert saw the wetness in his wife’s eyes. “You stay here with Chesley and I’ll go get the children,” he said.
Nan let out a heavy sigh. She went inside to put the kettle on. Even though Chesley told her there had been no damage to the house, she wanted to check for herself. She wondered if Jessie and David’s children were all right.
An hour earlier, eight-year-old Ruby Hillier, Nan and Herbert’s daughter, had been doing her homework at the kitchen table. Her brothers Leslie and Lawson sat alongside her: ten-year-old Leslie doing his sums and five-year-old Lawson doodling on a slate. Their uncle Chesley had already put the baby to bed.
All of a sudden Ruby heard a thunderous noise, not unlike the one that had accompanied the earth tremor earlier that evening. Ruby jumped up from her chair and ran to the window where she raised the blind and peered into the dusk. She blinked at the sight that greeted her; it was a white mass tumbling toward her house.
“Oh my!” Ruby cried. “Look at the sheep!”
She was stunned at how fast they were moving. They were half way up the meadow across the road from their house.
Chesley joined his niece at the window.
“I don’t believe they’re sheep,” he said as it dawned on him that his niece had mistaken the foamy whitecaps of the huge waves for sheep. Moments later sea water surrounded the Hillier home.
Then the general panic began. From outside, Ruby heard a roar. Chesley ran into the back bedroom to fetch baby Cyril. With the child in his left arm, Chesley shooed Ruby and the boys out the door. The little group stopped dead at the front door; the porch was filled with frigid water. They stepped gingerly over it and managed to keep their feet dry. Then they rushed up the hill, Uncle Chesley looking behind constantly. He feared another wall of water was on its way.
Near the top of the hill, they met their grandfather, whose face was wet with tears.
“Grandpa, what’s wrong?” Ruby asked. “What’s the matter?”
The old man didn’t answer, but Chesley said, “I don’t know. I suppose he’s confused.”
When the group reached the safety of the high ground, Ruby looked at the village below. It was empty of people, all of whom had rushed to the top of the hill. But the little girl’s face whitened at what she saw. The harbour was blocked with broken boats, stages and flakes that had crashed into the water, and houses that the giant wave had torn down. On top of the hill old Mrs. Walsh stood making the sign of the cross. Her family was gathered around her, intoning the “Hail Marys” of the rosary. Three-yearold Magdalen Walsh sat at her grandmother’s feet; the child was wet to her hips with sea water.
“I’ll never forget this sight,” Ruby told her older brother, Leslie. “I wonder if anyone died.”
Leslie said nothing but bit his bottom lip in response.
7
As Herbert Hillier made his way up the hill to make sure his four children were safe he made one gasp after another at the destruction that greeted him. Where his father-in-law Henry’s house had stood, there was now a ba
rren space. Herbert stopped in his tracks and looked around; Henry’s stage was gone, too, and so was his store. Even the old man’s fence had disappeared. Herbert was gobsmacked. Henry had lived in that house as long as anyone could remember, for most, if not all, of his sixty-eight years and now there was no evidence that it had even existed.
The hairs on Herbert’s head rose and his body shook. Then his legs began moving again. He had to get up the hill to make sure the children were all right. But then he was struck with a horrific thought: where was Henry? Had he gone to the Temperance meeting that had been planned for this evening? He usually did, he was an active member. And where was Lizzie, Henry’s wife? She was Jessie’s mother, too, and Jessie had left the children with her for the night. Herbert shuddered now as he thought of Jessie and her husband, David Hipditch, racing through the darkness from the Orange Lodge meeting in Lamaline to Point au Gaul.
He plodded on with fear in every step. When he reached his mother’s house he threw the door open to hear wailing. He ran inside and flashed his eyes around to take in each of his children. He let out a whoosh of air when he saw them all, safe and warm. But the tears…
“Nan and Jessie’s mother is dead,” said his own mother. “Washed away.”
“Grandma is gone!” Ruby cried.
“But that’s not the worst of it,” old Mrs. Hillier wailed. “Jessie’s three children are gone.”
Herbert couldn’t move.
“What? The three of them?” he said. “Gone?”
“The three of them, swept away,” his mother answered. “Thomas, Henry, and Elizabeth, the baby that she was still nursing.”
Ruby emitted a great sob.
“What are we going to do, Daddy?” she cried.
Her father’s tongue was thick.
“Well,” he said finally, “we’re going to go home to your mother and help her and Aunt Jessie out.”
Tsunami Page 4
