Chain Locker

by Bob Chaulk

  “That was a very fine meal, Olive,” said Basil as he drained the last drop of tea from his cup. “If you don’t mind, I’ll be on my way now.”

  “Thank you, Reverend; I’m sorry I didn’t have time to prepare something better. And thank you for spending some time comforting my mother and praying with her. Lord willing, things will turn out okay.”

  “Indeed. We must all pray diligently for the safe return of your father and br—”

  “Oh, it’s Wints,” said Olive, as the back door swung open. “How is Aunt Darc and they doin’, Wints?”

  “Not too good. They already knew by the time I got there.”

  “Were there others from our community aboard the stricken ship?” asked Basil.

  “Our first cousin, Aunt Darc’s son is aboard,” said Olive. “Wints just got back from taking the news to her and Uncle Eli in Cottle’s Island.”

  “Dear me; another family member in peril.”

  “Yes. His mother and our father are sister and brother. We don’t see much of him these days, although he used to visit next door fairly often to see Emily, before the winter set in.”

  “Eli is her second husband. Henry’s father died from TB years ago,” said Sadie. “You’ve heard me talk about your uncle Cliff, Olive.”

  “Yes, Mom, I remember.”

  “I’m sorry for being so anxious, Reverend. I…I…”

  “It’s all right, Mom. The minister understands.”

  “I didn’t ask you if you liked the seal, Reverend. Have you had it before?”

  “Yes, Sadie, thank you for asking. I have had it before. The highlight of the meal for me was that capital fruit cake of yours. I declare, that’s an award-winning cake.”

  “Yes, I mind you liking my cake the other night over to Ada’s.”

  “Speaking of Mrs. Osmond, perhaps I’ll drop next door to say hello on my way home.”

  He stopped outside Sadie’s back door. Had they noticed his jaw drop at the mention of somebody visiting Emily? Was she interested in another man? Was that why she had seemed so evasive when he brought up the subject of marriage? He had to find out just what was going on—that is, if she was not still upset with him. Perhaps she had had time to think about his offer and could see what an opportunity it was for her.

  Ada invited him in. “She’s up in her room with a bad head, but I’ll check and see if she’s up to seeing you, Reverend Hudson.”

  Ada was back in less than a minute. “I’m sorry, but she’s very low over the news about the sealing ship and is feeling too poorly for a visit right now. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course,” said Basil. “The news about Simeon and his sons must be very upsetting. I imagine she has known them since childhood.” “Yes. She growed up with them boys. Will you have a cup of tea?”

  “Did she have any relatives aboard? Any cousins perhaps?”

  “No, no relatives; just a special friend,” Ada replied cautiously.

  “I see. A special friend in what way? Somebody from school?”

  Ada paused before replying. “Perhaps you might like to ask Emily yourself when she’s feeling better.”

  “Is there something else troubling her? She seemed very distant last evening, when your guests were leaving.”

  “She’s worried about Gennie…and what that will mean for the school. She’s always been very conscientious and not having Gennie has her worried. Will I put on the kettle?”

  “No, thank you. I must be going.”

  Emily had tried all evening to focus on preparing tomorrow’s lesson plans and correcting the day’s work, but all she could do was think of Henry. She finally got into bed and stared into the blackness, thinking back to her premonition. At worst Henry was dead, or at best he was in terrible straits. Sleep was the last thing on her mind. She thought of talking to somebody, but she was reluctant to encumber others with her emotions when other women were facing the possible loss of a companion of many years or sons they had borne. Poor Sadie: her husband and two sons! And Olive: her father and two brothers! Suddenly she felt selfish. She had considered going next door, but was afraid that she would have been a burden instead of a comfort. Sadie was by nature emotionally fragile, and poor Olive was probably exhausted from trying to comfort her. She was riddled with guilt for not being a source of strength for her friend.

  Her mind went to the evening Henry had proposed to her, in the very place she had sat last night when Basil brought up the subject of marriage. She had been deeply moved by the tenderness of Henry’s thoughts for her, his bright blue eyes brimming with sincerity as he expressed his love to her, a simple but profound declaration that he had probably memorized, and she could remember almost every word of it. He was not an eloquent man, but he was a man with deep feelings. She should have said yes on the spot.

  Basil’s proposal had been almost businesslike by comparison. The words were well chosen but, of course, choosing the right words was part of his calling: a word to comfort the sick; a gentle touch on the arm and a reminder of heaven to strengthen a faltering widow; the appropriate tone whatever the situation called for. That competence and smoothness that she had found so attractive was not sitting well with her now. Charismatic he was, and heaven knows he had charmed his whole congregation (well, all except Gennie; Emily smiled at the thought), but he lacked Henry’s sincerity. She was finally coming to appreciate the depth of his love for her. Basil seemed to be more interested in what she could do for him, how well she would complement his career. Perhaps Gennie had been right all along—he cared more for how he would look walking in the park in London with Emily on his arm. She must make a point of letting poor, sick Gennie know that she had come to her senses and realized what, deep down, she had known all along—that her heart belonged to Henry.

  She should have told her mother weeks ago that Henry had proposed to her. Why was she so reluctant to share such things with her mother? Wasn’t that what mothers were there for? If she had, then Ada would not have worked so energetically to match her up with Basil, and this tangled state of affairs would never have materialized. I just wanted to spite her for always sticking her nose in my business, Emily thought. I need to grow up.

  She should have had the courage to go downstairs this evening and tell Basil about Henry. She listened to the wind outside her window. It had started to snow, small hard flakes that smote the side of the house and pinged against the window. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pictured Henry on the ice, with nowhere to take shelter, the hard snow hitting his face as he squinted to keep it out of his eyes. “God, please give me another chance to make things right with Henry,” she spoke into the blackness.

  chapter twenty-seven

  Fifty miles out to sea, in the absolute darkness of the North Atlantic, the waves were building. For the first time in the thirty-something hours that they had been on their ice island they started to feel the forces of the sweeping ocean acting beneath them. Bit by bit in his half-awake state, Henry was becoming aware of the movement, but he was weary and it didn’t fully register. He was tired of the hard ice, tired of shivering, tired of drifting in and out of sleep despite being exhausted. His senses were numb, like his body. Their situation was so precarious and the number of things that could befall them so vast that he did not even want to think about it. But the creaking ice and the howling wind screamed for his attention. Why were they harassing him? What did they expect from him, whose resources were non-existent? What good was vigilance when he had nothing with which to react?

  Suddenly a violent crack jolted him out of his apathy and he jumped to his feet. There was no mistaking what had occurred. The stress of the sea’s heaving had started to break up their ice sheet. Bang! it went again.

  “Jack!” he yelled. “Jack, b’y, where are you to?” There was no answer.

  The sound of sloshing water seemed to surround him. He gingerly extended his left leg sideways, like a timid crab, feeling with his foot for solid ice and straining to keep his balance to
avoid falling in. How he missed his gaff. “Jack!” He slid his right leg over to meet his left and continued to inch his way across the ice, alternately extending his left foot and catching up with his right, like a dancer doing a two-step. Suddenly he kicked what he thought must be the gaff. Getting down on his hands and knees he groped around until he found it. Now that he could steady himself, he felt more confident. “Jack, my son, where the hell are you? Answer me.”

  The roaring of the wind and the sea swallowed his words. Poking the gaff forward like a blind man with a cane, he slowly moved about, praying that Jackie had not drifted away. He clunked into what felt like a low wall of ice—their ice shelter? Yes! Good. At least now he knew where he was. Taking his bearings, he moved forward perhaps twenty steps in the direction where Jackie had been when he last spoke to him. Hitting something soft, he gave it another prod with the gaff.

  “Ouch! Who’s there?”

  “What’re you doin’, sleeping when you’re supposed to be on the lookout?”

  “Well, excuse me for being tired,” he answered, dragging himself to his feet. “Who do you think you are, anyway, my friggin’ father?”

  “You said you weren’t tired. I was gonna take the first shift and let you sleep. You’re lucky you’re not drove away. And why are you so damned cranky? Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed?”

  “If I had a bed to get up out of! Man, I wish I’d never seen the Viking.”

  “Well, we’re here now, so we got to make the best of it. There’s no point in keeping a watch; we can’t see nothin’ in this weather. Let’s get in outa this wind.”

  Back behind the ice wall, as they huddled together to wait out the night, the significance of Henry’s remark sank in. “Did you say the ice is breakin’ up?”

  “Didn’t you hear those cracks just then?”

  “Never heard a thing. I sat down to rest my legs and that’s all I remember until you stuck the gaff into me.”

  “I wish I could sleep like that. There was a couple of pretty good cracks a few minutes ago. I got no idea what’s left of this one, but at least we’re floatin’.”

  For now, Jackie thought. He had lost his desire for sleeping.

  The snow swirled above them as they huddled in their crude ice shelter, fearing what was coming next. With unspeakable relief, they eventually detected signs that the longest night either of them could remember was finally waning. In the pale morning light they scraped up some of the freshly fallen snow to relieve their burning throats.

  The morning was grey and the ceiling bore down on them, but at least the snow had stopped falling, and was now eddying like low smoke across the ice. “The wind is after dyin’ down a bit, but without the sun it’s hard to tell which direction it’s comin’ from. My gut feeling is nor’norwest, but that could be wishful thinking on my part. You’re covered in snow like a sled dog, Jack. Give yourself a shake.”

  Henry stood up, brushing the snow from his arms and legs. “Anything out there this morning, I wonder?” he said as he slowly turned to scan the horizon. “What the hell! Look at that!”

  “What?” Jackie turned. “Aaagh!”

  The ocean lapped within six feet of where they had spent the night. “I make no wonder that crack was so loud,” Henry exclaimed. “Man, oh man. If we had walked a few feet to the left last night we would have had it.”

  “We’re done for,” Jackie said in a low voice, barely a murmur.

  “We lost maybe half, but there’s still plenty left. We’re still afloat—that’s what counts—but we’ll have to stay close together in case she splits open again. If that break had come ten feet farther in, we would both be out there floating around on our own now.”

  Jackie unconsciously grabbed hold of Henry’s sleeve. “Buddy is gone, too, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah, I guess he must be—”

  “Man! In the dark, all by himself…”

  “It’s okay, Jack. It was just his body; he was already gone.”

  Failing Henry by falling asleep on watch was bad enough, but the thought of getting separated from him was beyond bearing.

  Henry put his arms around him and clung to him in silence. He was trying not to despair as he realized how frail their existence was. By calling it an island of ice they had been fooling themselves. Islands did not have a thousand feet of water below them, and they did not break apart in the wind or melt in the sun or drift away to God knows where.

  A sickening realization hit him. Their wood was gone! It had been on a pinnacle thirty feet in the direction of what was now just water.

  “Oh, great! Just great!” Jackie moaned, kicking the ice in frustration. “We could’ve had a nice fire with that—but no! I hope you’re satisfied.”

  “I s’pose we could always burn the gaff if it comes to that,” Henry said wistfully, looking at the six-foot-long handle he was holding.

  “Some fire that would make,” Jackie grumbled under his breath. “I’m some friggin’ hungry.”

  “Well, we got something else to be thankful for.”

  “What in hell have we got to be thankful for? This’ll be good.”

  “There’s no flies,” said Henry with a big grin, waving his arms like the ringmaster introducing a circus act.

  “No flies? What are you talkin’ about now?”

  “There’s always something to be thankful for, Jack,” said Henry.

  “Just imagine if we were lost in the woods in the spring o’ the year instead of bein’ out here. They’d have us drove crazy by now. That’s one of the things I always liked about the winter. I always have a hard time in the summer. The flies like to have me over for dinner, except I’m always the dinner. Remember that story I was telling you, about being in the lumber woods one winter with the Frenchmen from New Brunswick? You remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That spring, when we went on the drive to get all our logs down the river, you should have seen the flies. First came the black flies in swarms and then the nippers. They just about carried us off.”

  Jackie stared at him in disbelief.

  “I don’t know which is worse. The nippers with their constant buzzing in your ear or the black flies crawlin’ up inside your clothes. You can’t open your mouth, sure. You would be standing up with a plate of beans, and every time you tried to take a forkful at least one of those bloomin’ things would fly down your throat. One of them crawled into my ear and took a bite and sucked out so much blood that he couldn’t get back out. You ever try listening to a fly that’s inside your ear, trying to get out?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s some loud, I’ll tell ya. I nearly beat my brains out, whackin’ at the side of my head trying to kill the miserable thing. I almost lost my mind. I was dancin’ around shaking my head, when the foreman got hold of me and poured some water into my ear and drowned the little bugger. Served him right. Then he put his handkerchief on the end of a stick and rooted him out. I was up all night with that bite itchin’ and me not able to get at it.”

  “Hmph,” said Jackie.

  “Oh, come on, now, Jack,” said Henry. “What can we do to cheer ourselves up? How about that spittin’ contest we talked about last night? You wanna go first?”

  “Nah. You go.”

  Henry scratched a line with the tip of the gaff. “All right, you got to stand with your toes on this line.”

  He swished his tongue around, trying to make some spit. Nothing came. He bit the sides of his tongue, dragged his tongue over his teeth, sniffed, snarked, and snorted, applying all the tried and true methods but to no avail. “Huh! I can’t even round up enough spit to start. Some showing I’ll make.”

  “Me neither,” said Jackie. “Not even enough for a lousy spittin’ contest. If I don’t get a decent drink soon, I’m gonna shrivel up like a capelin.”

  “Well, I think this will be the big day,” said Henry. “I figure somebody will be givin’ us a nice hot cup o’ tea before the day is out.

  Whe
n we spot a ship we’ll raise a flag on the gaff. I guess one of us will have to donate his shirt for that effort.”

  “One of us, meaning me, I suppose?” Jackie griped.

  “Only if you volunteer it. Then, when they welcome us aboard I can say, ‘If it wasn’t for my buddy we wouldn’t be here; he gave me the shirt off his back!’”

  “I don’t know if it will come off anyway; it’s probably grown on by now.”

  “That’s nothin’, sure. When we were…shhh! Shhh!” He beckoned Jackie to get down. “There’s a seal just behind you.”

  “Where?” Jackie whispered. “Can I turn around?”

  “No, keep still. She’s about fifty feet away looking right at us.”

  Henry made a dash for her with his gaff forward, ready to strike, but she slithered into the water before he got halfway. Bitterly disappointed, he leaned on his gaff and stared towards the water where she had slipped in. “That was stupid,” he said. He had allowed himself to become excited; he should have stalked her, moving slowly and quietly to get her trust, and made his move when he was almost upon her. He consoled himself with the fact that adult seals are remarkably fast and the odds were probably against him, no matter what approach he had tried.

  chapter twenty-eight

  As he stood catching his breath, to the right he saw two big eyes nestled in a plump white body looking up at him. Ah, now there’s a better target, he thought; so she did come up on the ice to pup after all. Knowing that this one would be an easy prey, he casually walked over to the whitecoat, raised the gaff above his head and brought it down with a crunch on the newborn seal’s forehead. It died instantly.

  Dropping the gaff and reaching for his knife he yelled, “Yeeha! Time for breakfast, Jack.”

  Jackie stood immobile.

  “Hmm, we should save the blood,” said Henry. “Gimme a hand here with this, Jack.”

  Jackie didn’t move.

  “I thought you were hungry. What’s wrong with you?”

  Jackie cleared his throat. “Nothin’.”

  “You sure you’re all right?” He looked up at him and down at the seal. “You’re not gettin’ squeamish over this seal, are ya?”