Tsunami

by Maura Hanrahan

  As villagers carried the Rennie family bodies out of Jim Walsh’s dory, sobs rang through the harbour. In the hall on top of the hill that marks the western entrance to Lord’s Cove, women were already preparing a long table to receive the bodies of Sarah and her children for waking. Their husbands would gather enough planks to make one large and four smaller coffins.

  Patrick Rennie had joined the crowd on the shore of The Pond by now. He covered his mouth as he saw the remains of his wife and children lovingly placed in blankets to be taken to the hall.

  “Where’s Margaret?” he said.

  John Joe, Herb, and Jim looked at each other, not knowing what to say.

  “We have to have Margaret,” Patrick persisted.

  Wordlessly, the three men re-entered Jim’s dory and rowed back out to the house. The moon seemed even brighter now, if that were possible. They circled the Rennie dwelling, contemplating their next move.

  “She might be at the bottom of The Pond, the poor little thing,” Herb said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Jim, though he didn’t know where this thought came from.

  Then John Joe’s face lit up.

  “I know! She’s upstairs!” he cried. “She’s upstairs!”

  Over the next half hour, they got another dory into The Pond and used pressure to sink the house again so that the floor of the second storey was level with the water. Then they saw the cot where Margaret would surely be found. It was covered in chocolate-coloured mud and seaweed.

  “I’ll go in and get her little body,” Jim said.

  “Tread carefully,” Herb cautioned. “Or the whole house will go topsy-turvy.”

  Jim reached into the crib, pushed away the debris the ocean had churned up, and took the little girl’s body. As he carried her to the dory, he thought he heard her sigh. He looked at her face and thought she was a bit pink for a child who had drowned. Perhaps… He rushed her to the small boat and the waiting men.

  “I think she might be alive!” he said excitedly.

  Herb and John Joe crowded in on Margaret. They peeled off their coats and wrapped them around the child as tightly as they could. Jim rocked her and blew hot air on her face as the other two men rowed as fast as they could. Once onshore he ran with her in his arms to John Joe’s house.

  “I think she’s alive!” he cried, hurrying past a row of anxious people in the hallway. “Get some warm water! Quick!”

  When Alberta Fitzpatrick eased Margaret into the tub of warm water the child suddenly woke and screamed. At the sound of her voice, everyone in the house, and then Lord’s Cove itself, made the joyful noise their hearts had longed to make. Their child had been saved.

  11

  Ben and Beatrice Hollett had watched open-mouthed on the shore of Kelly’s Cove as the giant wave reached in and picked up their neighbour’s house and carried it out to sea. Inside, Carrie Brushett and her five children felt as if the house were flying and Carrie had somehow gathered her brood together and shielded them behind a window curtain she kept tightly closed. The men on the beach were still slack-jawed when, as they stood immobile in shock, the Brushett house returned on another wave—intact, its curtains still pulled together, displaying Carrie’s usual neat housekeeping. Then, plop! The rush of seawater plunked it on the beach a hundred yards in front of them. Their chests heaved great sighs of relief when they heard Carrie’s cries for help and the wails of her youngest. Ben bolted and ran to the nearest house for a ladder; he knew the first floor would be full of frigid water and that they’d be on the second floor. The men had also watched the first great wave snatch the Kelly home. Vincent Kelly had built the white two-storey home for his bride, Frances, some fifteen years before. It was near the water on a rocky, exposed patch of land. Since then, the Kellys had had four children: Marion, who was thirteen in November, 1929; Curtis, twelve; Dorothy, and the smallest child, Elroy. Like many Burin Peninsula women, Frances kept chickens, eggs being a good source of protein and essential for the cakes that everyone looked forward to at Christmas and for their birthdays; she had six hens in her chicken house.

  Like most men in the area, forty-five-year-old Vincent had done well in the shore fishery the past few years. The Kellys were able to buy eight gallons of molasses, which the children loved to spread on the bread their mother made every day. They also had twelve quintals of salt fish stored in their pantry, a barrel of flour, a hogshead of salt, and a quarter barrel of beef, a favourite meat that they didn’t get to eat too often. Alongside the house, Vincent had built a barn to store hay—he had plenty cut in 1929—for his few head of cattle in the winter, and the coal he’d got for the coming cold months.

  With Vincent’s extra earnings from the successful shore fishery of the past few years, Frances had bought another Singer sewing machine. She had two now; one for her and one for her daughters, Marion and Dorothy. Already Marion was becoming an accomplished seamstress, while Dorothy was eagerly turning her hand to learning the skills from her mother and sister. She was working on pillow cases, a project that would allow her to master straight lines before she tackled more complicated tasks. She looked forward to making dresses like her mother did. Dorothy marvelled when she thought of how Frances had made her own wedding dress. Once in awhile, Frances took her daughters upstairs to her bedroom closet and released the dress from its wrapping and mothballs so that the girls could ooh and aah at it. Frances smiled at their wide eyes; she knew it gave them something to aim for.

  Meanwhile, she made sure her family had the finest wardrobe in the harbour; nothing suited a lady better than lovely clothes, as her own mother had told her. Making them was an act of artistry. With the cottons, flannels, and even muslin she collected, she made fine clothes for her children and the sons and daughters of her neighbours in the cove. Little Marjorie Willis, five now, was christened in a white lace gown that Frances had sewn. Ben Hollett’s teenage daughters had long, full skirts that Frances made for them. The skirts made their debut at Lady Day in Oderin that August, when the whole bay, Catholic and Protestant alike, gathered to celebrate the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary and share food, drink, laughter, and stories. Frances had made a Lady Day hat for Martha Cooper, another Kelly’s Cove teenager, who had confided to Frances her affection for one of the Oderin boys. Martha had gone into Path End, where she’d bought a straw hat; then Frances sewed layers of violet lace onto the brim. Frances made cotton shirts for the five children of her friend, Carrie Brushett, too; she knew Carrie had her hands full, and for the young son of her neighbours, the Footes. Thus, on Sunday, all the children of Kelly’s Cove wore something made by Frances Kelly.

  Like Sarah Rennie in Lord’s Cove, Frances Kelly had been hard at work with her Singer sewing machine when she felt the rumbling of the earth beneath her. Her foot stopped its almost incessant action on the pedal and she looked up from the machine, fixing her eyes on the kitchen wall opposite. There she saw the kerosene lamp flicker wildly—she lit it at four o’clock every day—and dishes rattle manically. Then she heard the kettle on the stove jump. She creased her brow. She had never experienced anything like this before.

  Dorothy had been running her yellow cotton pillow case through the girls’ sewing machine. She, too, stopped her work at the sudden eruption of noise and trembling.

  “What’s that, Mommy?” she asked. She was more curious than afraid.

  At first Frances said nothing. She tried to move her mouth but it was as if her tongue was weighed down by sand. She shook her head as if that would clear the odd sensation away. Then she opened her mouth as if to spit out the feeling of sand. “Pphhh!” she said and found some relief with the gesture. Then she turned to her daughter.

  “I just don’t know what that strange thing is, child,” she said. She saw that Dorothy’s face was turning red, as if she were holding her breath. “But it can’t go on too much longer,” she added.

  “No, Mommy,” Dorothy said. The little girl had stood up when the rumbling started but now she sat down at
her sewing machine again. The red drained out of her face and she began to wait patiently, reassured by her mother’s words. As the two of them sat there, the dishes, cups and the kettle on the stove continued their odd little jig. The lamp flickered crazily but did not go out.

  About five minutes later, the earth became still again. Dorothy and Frances said nothing but let out great gulps of air. It was awhile before they brought their hands back to the cloth and sewing machines.

  Frances’ older daughter, Marion, was at another house in the village, writing a letter for an old lady who could not write but wanted to send a message to her sister in Boston. Marion wanted to go home when she felt the shock but she stayed put; she would finish the letter and then go—her parents had imbued a strong sense of duty in their children. After Marion signed the old lady’s name to the white sheet and folded it, she threw her coat over her shoulders and ran to the Kellys’ as if the wind were pushing her.

  At the family supper that followed, all the talk was about “the big rumbling,” as young Curtis called it. Dorothy could almost laugh about it now that they were altogether—well, most of them; their father, Vincent, had sailed across to the peninsula, his objective to get a full load of wood for the winter. He would be gone for at least a week, probably closer to two weeks. Between his bites of cabbage and fish cakes, Curtis kept making funny noises, imitating the earth and the sounds it had made. It was an earthquake, a neighbour had told him, an earthquake in some far off place. Although they had felt it here in Newfoundland, it was nothing for them to worry about; these things reverberated from quite a distance.

  Although she could laugh about it with her brothers and sister, Dorothy still had a bad feeling deep in her belly. Marion felt as if ladybugs were crawling up her chest as she did her English homework at the kitchen table and wrote out the assigned sentence: “If you do not leave the house, I will send for the policeman with that fine.”

  After the children finished their homework, Dorothy washed her long blond hair in the wash basin and, while it was still damp, Marion and Frances tied it in a chaotic pattern of red rags. When it dried, they would free it from the rags and it would be full of “glorious curls,” as the magazines promised.

  As they finished tying Dorothy’s hair, Curtis went out to play. Curtis, who had the energy of a workhorse, begged his mother for another hour or so out of doors before bedtime. The youngest Kelly child, three-year-old Elroy, begged to go with him.

  “All right,” Frances said to Curtis, finally giving in. “Stay in the meadow on top of the hill near your aunt’s house and don’t wander into the woods. The fairies are on the lookout for children after dark. But, Elroy, you stay here with us. You’re too young yet.”

  “Take some bread for your pockets, Curtis,” said Marion. She was already tearing tiny cubes off the remains of the day’s loaf.

  “That’s right,” Frances echoed. “That’ll keep you safe from the fairies.”

  Curtis rolled his eyes. He wanted to be a soldier when he grew up and he wasn’t afraid of fairies. “I’m going to play armies,” he said. “The fairies will be frightened of me, not the other way around.”

  “You take it and listen to your sister anyway,” his mother said, pushing a red wool cap over his head. “Go on now.”

  Frances and Dorothy returned to their sewing machines. Curtis barely had time to reach the top of the hill when they heard the roaring of a wave. Marion ran into the yard to see a mountain of a wave slowly approaching them. She scooped Elroy up in her arms and hopped over the fence that separated the Kellys’ fence from their neighbours’. When she looked back, her family’s house was off its foundation and was just going out to sea.

  Gelid salt water had flooded it. The wave lifted Dorothy from her chair and Frances from hers, swallowing them whole. For a minute Dorothy could see her mother’s blue dress and white apron. She stretched her hands as far as they could go and kicked her legs in a bid to reach Frances, but then her mother disappeared. Bubbles came out of her mouth, big ones and then small ones. She felt dizzy and she couldn’t breath. She had to get to her mother. She’d be safe then. But she couldn’t see Frances anymore.

  Dorothy kept moving through the water and her head hit something solid. It was the ceiling of the first floor of their house. Oddly, it didn’t hurt and she could breath now; she’d reached an air pocket. She gulped huge mouthfuls of air and tried to tread water, like they did in the ponds in summer. For the first time she realized the water was cold and it hit her—this was sea water, not freshwater. The ocean had rushed into their house. She shook her head as if doing so would wake her out of a horrible dream. Where was her mother?

  She plunged under the water again, looking for the blue and white of her mother’s clothing, but everything was grey and dark. And it was moving. The house was moving. The waves had taken the house off its foundation and, Dorothy suddenly realized, hauled it out to sea. She thought of her neighbours on shore; surely they could see this and were putting their boats out to rescue her and her mother. She knew that her father and Vincent Brushett were away, but Billy Foote, Ben Hollett, and a few other men were home. It did not occur to her yet that their houses might be swept away, also.

  She pulled her head above the water. The red rags in her hair had come unfurled and had dropped into water like long ribbons of blood. Dorothy began shivering. I must not panic, she thought. She tried to move along the ceiling, trying to find the staircase so she could get to the second storey. It’ll be dry upstairs, she reasoned. Maybe Mommy is already up there.

  It was hard to move along. The water dragged her down like it was quicksand. Her legs felt like they were made of stone. The lamp had long gone out and the blackness of the night was total now. She didn’t know which way to turn. She bit her lip and tried not to cry. Her mother and father would not want her to panic, she reminded herself. They’d want to be proud of her when this is all over. She crept along in the darkness, fighting off a feeling of sleepiness.

  “Mommy!” she called out, figuring the shouting might keep her awake and help her rescuers find her.

  “Mommy! Where are you? I’m here!”

  There was no answer. There was no noise, save the slosh of the waves inside the little house and Dorothy’s cries. It seemed now that the house was moving faster, though she didn’t know in what direction. Maybe it will be put back in Kelly’s Cove, she thought, and all this will be over. But it was as if something was carrying the house a long, long way.

  Then the frigid water rose up to the ceiling and Dorothy was covered in it again. Her arms and legs flailed about desperately as she fought off panic. With her hands she hit chairs and table legs and the walls of the family kitchen. Maybe the other houses in Kelly’s Cove are gone, too, she thought.

  Then she was in the open ocean, just drifting like seaweed. She wasn’t cold anymore and, as it enveloped her, the sea began to give a comfort that felt familiar but that she could not recall exactly. The heaviness she had felt in the house had given way and her body was as light as a feather. She lazily opened her eyes and watched lobsters crawl, fish fly by, an eel scoot. It was all so beautiful.

  As Dorothy sailed through the waters of the bay, she saw a light that had the brilliance of the finest cut diamond. She floated toward it, overwhelmed by its intensity. All around the light were thick glowing arms that reached for her. They called her name and pulled her to them. Without hesitation, Dorothy fell into their embrace and bathed in their warmth. At once, she felt a love even greater than the great love she had known in her short life as Frances’ beloved daughter in Kelly’s Cove, Newfoundland.

  PART TWO: JOURNEY

  12

  On the morning of November 19, 1929 the men of High Beach pulled their coat collars tight and pointed their heads to the gale that swept into their village. Just west of Lamaline, their homes faced the French islands, where they often travelled to trade wood and caplin for rum. Theirs was a prosperous community; everyone had at least thirty dollars
cash in a jar in their kitchen cupboard, some had as much as $150. A few families had bank accounts with sums of one hundred dollars or more salted away. Their larders were full, as they always were. The Bank Crash was a far off thing that had affected those poor fellows in New York and London, maybe even St. John’s, but not anyone here in High Beach.

  Thirty-two-year-old Stanley Hillier was one of the men who emerged from his house that morning. He couldn’t believe that just yesterday it had been bright, almost spring-like, and the tall grasses in the meadow had been straight as arrows in the still air. After the great rumbling, his wife, Jessie, had remarked on the glow of the moon on the water. “How lovely it is!” she had said. That afternoon she had stood over the pansies and violas that still bloomed in her garden, their puckish little faces pointed at the azure sky. So small they were, but always the hardiest of her flowers. Still, she noted, she had never seen them make it halfway into November before…

  Now Stanley smiled ruefully at the memory of the deceptiveness of the day before. He saw that the pansy heads were drooped, the violas flat under snow. As he walked to the waterfront he met other High Beach men. They were on their way to inspect their property. A few of them had done so after the last wave had receded and they couldn’t quite believe their luck, the damage was so minimal compared to what they expected. Now, as the snow flakes thickened, they wanted to be sure they hadn’t suffered hallucinations. It was that kind of night, Stanley thought.

  When he reached the beach, he stared at the foam of the waves where his stage had been. Only a few broken sticks sloshed against the rocks. His dory was gone, too. He had no idea where it was.

  “I found mine inland, in the meadow,” old Robert Pittman said, his eyes wide as he pointed to a large clearing behind the small collection of houses that made up the tiny village. “She was tossed there, the first wave, I think. She was thrown so far in the second wave never picked her up.”