The Big Why (15 page)

Bartlett was angry at Coaker. He should know better, he said. Coaker’s blaming Abram Kean. Kean could do nothing. Kean thought the men were safe. The problem was not Kean’s arrogance or his lack of thought for the men, Bartlett explained. The problem was that the ship had no wireless. Political, Coaker makes it all political.

But isnt that an indication of the captain’s lack of concern for the men?

Wireless is an expensive addition, Kent.

And its main purpose, I said, is perhaps to notify other ships of the welfare and whereabouts of their men?

This is true, Kent. But to say it the way Coaker is, it’s as though Kean meant to do harm to those men.

Negligence is the charge, I believe.

Then I believe Kean did what was right and is certainly following precedent. Misfortune is what it is.

I thought Bartlett was misguided. I waved him off, though, with a feeling of loyalty and deep affection. Bartlett could delay no longer. He had his own men to rescue, and he was leaving sunken and serious. I gave him fifty dollars. It was my mother’s money. Put this towards something, I said. Youre a good man. His last words to me: Dont make a scene.

I got my own supplies (fruit, nuts, lentils, and vegetables from T. J. Edens; photographic film from the Likeliness Shop) and headed back to the train station. I was early, so I stopped into the Anglican cathedral. Men were at work on the steps, a rope across and one red word:
danger
. I stepped across the rope. Inside, the organ. I’d heard the organ, it was the reason I went inside. And, regardless of the danger and the men at work, because the door was open. I like accepting unexpected invitations. Why? To avoid what I think is to happen next and to move myself into the unforeseen.

Inside, some scaffolding and one iron ladder. The organ played “Ode to Joy.” There was a horn player. It was a strange tune in the face of mourning, but it felt oddly appropriate. There was just one man with a boy sitting in the pews, and I recognized the man’s profile. They were sitting in the front, the man’s legs out past the kneeler, his cane hooked over the pew. Leaning back and taking in the organ and the horn. It was William Coaker. I sat over to the side of them. He turned and saw me and nodded. My appearance is one of a foreigner. His shirt was undone at the neck and he was holding his brown tie folded in his hand in front of him. As if it were on a plate. It’s the horn what makes the organ beautiful, he said, turning around to face me.

I introduced myself. Yes, he said. I’ve heard of you. The painter out in Brigus. I told him I admired him, his organizing the fishermen. That I was a socialist too, and an atheist, and believed in the struggle for labour. He was pleased to hear it, except for the atheism. A little inappropriate to say that here, he said.

But this is not the place to discuss business either, he said. Not in front of the boy.

I stayed on an extra day and visited Coaker at the offices of the Fisheries Protective Union. I showed him the letter of introduction from Rufus Weeks. That did not impress him. He gave me pamphlets to distribute to the men in Brigus. There are many men, he said, to form a cadre. Get Marten Edwards and George Browiny. Talk to Tony Loveys and George Clarke’s family. A grieving family is always useful. Even Patrick Fardy. A one-legged man adds depth to a movement, though I admit he’s pretty useless.

A cadre. Coaker was harder than I thought, but I admired his resolve. As I took the train back to Brigus, even I felt exhilarated by this new responsibility.

I would wear red socks, if red socks were plentiful or cheap or readily available. I would buy them and wear them. I thought this as I happily pulled on my cream wool socks. I opened the door to the grey day, a man wearing nothing but a pair of socks. This is the thing about eccentrics: they do not spend time looking for red socks. They may decide to wear them, but they are absent-minded. I stretched up and stroked the wooden painted breast on my figurehead.

By the fifth of April the
Southern Cross
was officially given up for lost. Precisely one month before, she had left Brigus on her way to the Gulf. The harbour had been clogged with slob ice and a hawser was winched out and the men, like a tug-o’-war, heaved the ship through the ice. The men had given thanks and I remembered how I wished I could have been with them. I wanted to be with those Brigus boys. There was a good chance the
Southern Cross
would have been first home, and that was what had sunk them. They probably went down while George Clarke was figuring out how to fly her all flags. He gambled with the greed and pride of being first. Weighed down with seals they struck a hard storm.

The people of Brigus grieved for their eight lost men and boys, and then they exhaled and entered the world again. They opened doors and shook one another and tried to discover what could be done now with eight of their best gone for good.

One dead man did return to Brigus — Miles Sweeney. He had died from a fall on the
Nascopi
. Miles had hit his head. He was put in a rough coffin made of narrow spruce boards, the seams of the box caulked with oakum and then pitched. One of the crew had prepared the body. The body was washed and clean clothes put on it. Coarse salt was packed around it. The shroud kept the salt in place. Gauze was laid on the face and a pint of rum poured over it. Then the shroud was sewn up from head to heels. The body put in the box and this placed on deck to remain there until the ship reached St John’s, when it was passed on to the undertakers.

There was an assumption that the big ships were permanent, like a hill. One man might fall off or break his leg or freeze or drown. Fishermen were used to men in dories and small boats disappearing, even a schooner. But a steamer, even a wooden wall like the
Southern Cross
, promised some kind of permanent rigging on the ocean. There was something urban in a steamer, something of the New World that shunned the savagery of small things run on human power.

I watched April pass in mourning. I wrote to Kathleen that the town seemed dumbfounded. The Dobie boy was treated as though it were not conceivable for him to be alive. As though people forgot momentarily that Tom had not been on the
Southern Cross
, that the rest werent back with him, that he had sold his berth to Rose Foley’s son. There was resentment that he had stayed to help the American, even when he gave Rose Foley back her son’s five dollars. It was unfair. The absence of the men was hard to fill in. There was no satisfying story to explain it. There were no witnesses.

Thomas Connors, captain of the
Portia
, was the last to sight the
Southern Cross
, off Cape Pine. He came to Brigus. There was a town-hall meeting. She answered the
Portia
’s whistle, Captain Connors said. She answered it and he figured George Clarke would head her into St Mary’s bay. But the storm, the high bulwarks, the heavy load, and the low-mounted engine. An act of God, they called it.

I stood up. I cannot let that remark go unchallenged. Acts of God, I said, are often an excuse to explain away human disregard.

That made people listen. They turned to me. I stared at Captain Connors and could sense these white faces turning to see who was talking.

It is the nature in which this hunt is run, I said. That is the problem. The priority is seals. The priority is profit for the sealing captains. George Clarke was only following orders. He was beholden to the merchants here in Brigus and in St John’s. He had to be first home. He disregarded the welfare of his men. If only there had been a telegraph system aboard the
Southern Cross
, but the reason is, it’s too expensive. And the only reason to have wireless is to signal the state of the crew. This tragedy would not have occurred, I said, if the fishermen were unionized. If they had a say in how the hunt was run. I have pamphlets.

I shook my yellow leaflets.

This caused much muttering and confusion.

Are you calling George Clarke to blame?

The man is dead.

Butterfly wings, one man said. Referring to the leaflets.

Patrick Fardy stood up on his crutches and came over to me. His bald head was sweating. He put a finger to my neck. Just watch what youre saying. He looked ready to ask me outside.

Thomas Connors continued as though I hadnt spoken. The
Kyle
, the
Seneca
,
and the
Fiona
, he said, were all out looking for her. The
Bloodhound
had spotted a mass of debris ninety miles off Cape Broyle, but all hope was not yet lost. He made it sound like this searching for evidence was an example of the care given to sealers. He wished all the grieving families his prayers and optimism. When he finished men came up to him to shake his hand.

Nothing else was heard of the
Southern Cross
. Later in the summer there were reports of planks, pelts, and wreckage off the coast of Ireland. But they were just reports.

I wrote to William Coaker and told him of my mistake. He wired me back three cryptic words:
CHECK AND MATE
. I got the message when I went to the wireless office for news of my tools. I felt bad inquiring about them in the midst of these deaths. I felt my resistance was frivolous and yet I would wake up at night and think about that box with my father’s tools and realize it was the sole important object in my life. Kathleen had sent them steamer freight a solid two months before and now I learned from the shipping agent, George Browiny, of their demise. In the storm that had caused the deaths and disappearances of so many, the
Sydney
had run a reef in fog off Halifax.

Yes, so a delay. How long a delay.

George Browiny: I wouldnt call it a delay, sir. The freighter’s sunk.

I understand that. I am interested only in my tool chest.

It is completely sunk. Everything on board gone. We have nine steamers and three wooden walls gone without a trace.

He was looking behind me at Niner Harris, next in line.

I dont want everything on board, I said.

All cargo is on the harbour floor, sir. It’s been some awful bad weather.

If the cargo is on the bottom of the harbour, then it has hardly disappeared without a trace.

Oh they know right where she’s to.

Well then I want someone to salvage it.

Look, Mr Kent. There are two hundred men lost at sea out there. The men and women in line here are looking for fresh word. There are small boats astray. There are cousins and uncles and children and mothers, all out of whack. Do you really want me to tie up the lines for a tool box.

They are my father’s tools, with insurance.

Well, sir, you’ll have to do without them I’d say.

Cable Halifax. Put up a twenty-dollar reward.

What a fuss for a box. Your insurance —

Good money for a box on the bottom of the ocean. They were my father’s tools. They are of German manufacture. You dont find tools like that.

George Browiny: A man should not travel too heavy.

Just put up the reward and shut up about it.

When I left the wireless office, I regretted my rudeness. I had wanted to ask George about a union. I thought a man in his position, a shipping agent, could help be a leader to fishermen. When I turned around I saw Niner Harris and Tony Loveys and George Clarke’s wife, all waiting for word on their relatives. But I had lost my tools — my father’s tools, forged in a Stuttgart foundry from the hardest steel in the world. The tennis court was there, it just meant playing with snow up to your hips. My cottage was a sieve for drafts and my coal was under four feet of snow. Bartlett was gone. The monthly cheque from Charles Daniel was late. The food was bad. I was alone and damp and tired of winter. I wanted my family. My wife. My children.

Events
Too
Bad Are
Good

Events
too
bad are good. And one may
some day learn, in honoring those factors that have made us men, to put the
last straw first.

— Rockwell Kent
N by E
,
1930

They had heard of my wife and they had heard of children. There were the other stories too. I had made my stand for a union, so people, naturally, had a desire to talk. These people had long lines of communication. Stories that had come from the post office and from the railroad station. But there was anticipation about the arrival of Kathleen.

Kathleen made my New York friends uncomfortable. She was a shy woman with a sensual presence. She looked about a room and sought out how she could help. She often did the chores she disliked doing, assuming that others disliked them as well. This is a strength of character. But in the long run, after a stay of several days, she bored my friends. Men are attracted to beauty and a sensual nature, but they do not want to be trapped by it. They appreciated her manners: she was a woman who made her bed in the morning, especially if she was a guest. Gerald said he hardly knew she’d spent the night. She left no evidence. She was an animal in that way, but out of politeness and embarrassment of her own functions. Kathleen was not a person to relax when a room was full of conversation. She seemed oblivious to silence. She was inward, but she held an enigmatic charm, an honesty that people wished to cultivate and preserve. People like the idea of the Kathleen Kents of this world existing as testaments to integrity. And there she was to answer for the greatest betrayal. I had asked her to decide for us. I had relinquished control of my future, this in the eye of a God I had rejected. But my God rested more on an ethical standard. I clung tenaciously to the desire to do good, and the only good was for Kathleen’s will to be done.

It’s true that the body will betray us and everyone we love will die. This was Gerald Thayer’s big dread.

I never spoke a word of this. But a man and his acts cannot be separated for long. And Newfoundland possesses a cir-cular wind that carries information. You can know a man in Newfoundland and never have met him. Men replacing men, men who have lived alone in tilts in desolate harbours. Alone in a cove for three generations. And if you slip by as a passenger in a one-handed dory the fisherman who is rowing will say, Never dodge in there, son. For that loner will take a shot at you before he looks at you. There are men alive today pinned to the stories of their grandfathers. They
are
their grandfathers, and in a sense the story of Rockwell Kent, the who of it, was being filled in by curious people. Who was this man who lived alone in that old Pomeroy house out along the far end of the harbour.

The private acts of an American cannot be silenced from the ears of a Newfoundland outport. He carries these acts in his eyebrows. They sift out of his trouser cuffs. They are as obvious as the acts he commits in public.

I hoped the weather would warm for Kathleen. She arrived with our three small children, after boarding a ferry to Port-aux-Basques and then the Red Cross Line to St John’s. Rupert Bartlett had been in town and was pleased to chaperone her. They all came down the path to the house. It was a fine day, crisp air. Kathleen wore a pale blue skirt that curved out like a bell at the ankle. The skirt was printed with flowers. Or printed with the outline of flowers, for the flowers were white. I watched them stop at the Pomeroys’ so Mrs Pomeroy could see the baby, and I could tell that Kathleen was polite about that but hungry to see me. She was enjoying the delay and I decided to meet them at the gate, not to go up to the Pomeroys’. The children ran ahead, the children we’d named after ourselves, throwing themselves at me and then Kathleen, who was holding a harness she had invented for Clara. Kathleen’s body against me, her strong frame, the smell of the hair behind her ear. I love you. I love you too. Rupert with a tin of candies for the children and a pear for me.

What is it, Rupert said, about naming children after yourself. Rockwell and Kathleen.

He handed me the pear.

My wife and I have little imagination for names, I said.

Kathleen: The pear is from Gerald Thayer. He said you wrote about vitamin deficiency.

He sent me a pear?

There was a basket. The children ate the rest.

I held my wife. Kathleen is taller than me, with dark hair. She has a deep voice. I loved her so much and yet I did not love her. Explanation: I knew she was loveable. I knew she was good. I loved her body. I loved the privacy of knowing that I had, when she was breastfeeding Clara, tasted her. I loved making the goodness of her turn sexy. Of making her realize she enjoyed being carnal. She had virtue, and towards this I willed myself, even though I knew the outcome. I knew the outcome would be my sleeping with someone else and then the torment and exhaustion of fighting about it.

Rupert would be going. If ever, he said to Kathleen, you need anything, we’re only across the way.

And oh —

He handed me a letter. It’s from my brother.

Kathleen’s bright, kind face. Her long hair. I loved her back. Let’s take this letter for a walk, I said. We went out to the naked man with the children, to see the water and the Pomeroy cows. The cows were lying down. It’s going to rain, Kathleen said.

Me: How many legs does a cow have.

Rocky: Four.

Me: Five. If you count their heads.

We were taking a little time to get used to each other. There was something stiff to Kathleen. Something unhappy that surfaced on her face, and then she managed to bury it. I did not want to point it out.

I remember walking down a street with Kathleen in New York. There was a new set of traffic lights, a man at the corner manually operating them. We held hands. Kathleen did not enjoy main strips: they were too noisy. I never noticed the noise — in fact, I loved the busy drive of intersections. So we were approaching the intersection, to cross over and enter a side street and the quiet. We had had bad luck. We had eaten a bad meal in a restaurant with bad service. I knew bad luck would linger. I held Kathleen’s hand and I thought, If the light turns yellow I will leave her. And the light did turn. The man did not linger on the green for us. I could tell that Kathleen was blaming herself. We did not speak of it, but she knew what I thought. I was with a woman who cultivated bad luck and did not like loud avenues.

Rocky, the eldest: Where are the lambs and their mothers?

Me: Gone to slaughter.

And he gasped.

I rubbed my son’s blond head and held him to my thigh.

Not all the lambs, sweetheart.

The Pomeroys kept lambs and we skipped over to the bottom of the garden. If youre up early, Rocky, you will see them etched in the new sun. They will all be baa baa black.

I loved my son. Years later, after the divorce, I took my son to Alaska. I was a man who liked to travel with his son. He was thirteen during Alaska and serious. He drew and he painted and he was careful to look at the world accurately. I did not teach him this. Or it was not a teaching of mine. I was reluctant to instruct my children on how to draw. I left materials out for them. There were pots of hard watercolours, lots of paper, crayons, and brushes. I let them mangle cheap brushes. But I would not tell them how to paint. If they asked a question I would be honest. I remember Rocky asking me once about the face. I said, Often people draw the face too big.

I opened Bob Bartlett’s letter. I heard, he wrote, youve met Coaker. That youve spoken against Thomas Connors. He said, You know not what you do. Wait. Let me help you.

I stared at Kathleen, but she would not speak of it. I tried my child voice but she was reluctant. She set up her kitchen. She turned the rooms into family quarters. She dressed the children’s beds. Something had happened to her and I decided to live with the silence. I can be patient.

Her feet were hot. I filled a basin with water from the brook. Sit down. There was a towel. I placed her feet in the basin.

Kathleen: I feel like I’m heating up this water with my feet.

Youre heating up my bathwater.

The snow melted off the black coal. Seven exact tons of it. I picked up a chunk. There is a glint to coal, it is built of wafers. To see the immensity of the load — these black blocks converted to heat, my children warm in their beds — it made me feel responsible and a good father. The Brigus men were puzzled by it. It was the only remnant left of the
Southern Cross
. The size of the order and that somehow I had robbed the
Southern Cross
of a power that might have saved it. Spring would soon be here, what was I doing.

It took three days to cart the coal over and house it in the shed. We started with pressed eggs of coal and then larger chunks on top. The heat made us happy. It surprised me. Tom Dobie told me this: You can be two of three things — hungry, cold, or tired. But if youre all three, youre doomed.

Kathleen had brought her guitar and sheet music, and she sang “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” I sang her a local song I’d learned from Rose Foley. I’d quote a verse here, but I dont like books with song lyrics. The one word in it I love is
pulverized
. I told her she’d have to learn it — I’m so bossy. Though I didnt know I was bossy then. Something in my tone said her song was not enough. I was oblivious to this injury. I did not know that I was stifling her. I wished only to be unguarded.

I worked in the new little studio. I painted a picture of our house, the Brigus harbour in the background. I wanted to mark the occasion of our reunion. I could hear the children’s footsteps above me. I ate Gerald’s ripe New York pear. It was like I was savouring the fruit of the big city. That is so Gerald, to send me a pear. I saved the seeds and buried them in a pot on my studio window. They germinated. I’d plant them in the garden in mid-June, that’s what Tom Dobie recommended, to avoid the last frost. The birches began to unfurl. All around me these buds of hope, but I knew there was something not right about Kathleen, and her mood made me despondent.

I had painted a picture of the house and was ready to put people in it. I had built a part of this house, had tarred the roof and painted the shingles. So it was odd to now be painting a picture of it. It was as if I were creating my entire world and then making art from it. I looked at the house in the painting. At the windows. I painted in Kathleen. She was leaning out the bedroom window — with despair, it looked like. Then me, slumped against the side of the house, head down. Boy, was that bleak. Was that it? Was that what I’d desired in com-ing here?

Her arrival was not fabulous. I did not know this fully until I started the painting.

I asked her to look at the painting.

What is it, I said.

It’s upsetting.

Why is that.

It fills me with dread, she said.

I tried to say that it wasnt the full breadth of my feeling. Just on occasion. But I agreed it was a house of dread and I felt she was responsible. I was showing her the painting to make her confess. When I painted it, I said, it helped get rid of the feeling. Also, happy things are less interesting to look at.

Kathleen had nothing to say to that. She had three children to look after. It just made her sadder, that painting did.

I wrote letters to friends in New York. They were letters I did not show Kathleen because they were flirtatious and I didnt think she’d understand. I love to flirt in my letters, to men and women. Kathleen was trying to absorb Brigus. She had a camera, and she photographed the town. It made her seem less attached to the place. More of a witness.

She was a good photographer. She remained objective and she knew a good composition. She understood that the world appears smaller in a photograph. That grand things, like the shoreline and the horizon, appear thin and insignificant on photographic paper. She’d make sure to have a side of rock in the picture, or some substantial house in the foreground. When you looked at Kathleen’s photos it appeared that you were looking at the land directly, and that you were in the land. They were photographs with thickness. As though her eye encouraged a thickening, or strength. And something in the encouragement of thick landscapes informed me of her spirit. She was generous.

I realize now that I was judging her from the first moment of the day to the last, but judgment can often be a good judgment. She put up with it. Well, she put up with it for fifteen years.

Once I went for water and before I got to the brook I returned.

What is it, she said.

I just wanted to tell you I love you. I woke up this morning in love with you and I didnt tell you.

She did not stop clattering the dishes.

Do you love me, I said.

Yes, she said.

In an energetic way?

I love you throughout, she said.

I took the doors off to paint. I had a line of doors outside against the sawhorse. Doors outside, I said to young Rocky, appear very tall. They relax into a larger size of themselves, dont you think? If you build things outdoors that are meant for indoors, you have to measure very carefully.

He seemed to think about that. I did not know really what I meant. I liked talking about things I wasnt sure I believed. I preferred to speak of things as they occurred to me. Kathleen was the opposite. She liked to compose her thoughts, come to a conclusion, and then speak the full thought. I was often unprepared for a discussion, or too hotheaded.