The Big Why (9 page)

I said, Show me your foot.

His foot was pink and dry. It was, as he’d say, healthy. He noted the tired heels of my leather boots. We’ll get you set up with some sealskin, he said.

Feet were important to him, as they are to all travellers. He had seen many toes lost to gangrene, whole sides of feet carved away like soap under a doctor’s scalpel. The gangrene they got was from frostbite. Dry gangrene it was, not the gangrene you got from open, infected wounds. He was very proud not to have lost any toes in the North. I asked him about the
Karluk
, about what had to be done now.

The loss of a ship, he said, affects a seafaring man much like the loss of a loved one. It’s hard to talk about it.

Then he seemed to relent. I’ll tell you another time. That’s a story, that one.

Bob Bartlett invited me iceboating up behind on one of the ponds and I took my sketchbook to make a postcard for Kathleen. They shovelled the snow off the pond, hooked sails on several punts. The punts had skate blades under each corner, with one at the back on a swivel. That was your rudder. They were catamarans and they flew. The pharmacist Jim Hearn had the best one. He let me try it solo and I nearly decapitated myself on the swinging sail.

Spill your wind boy.

Shove down your tiller.

He’s gonna destroy himself.

He’s on the hand of it.

They built a fire on the shore and boiled the kettle. Bartlett was in charge of that. A long line of boats, he said, had sunk under him. He seemed unperturbed in a business way by ship failure. He had carried the footless Peary into the Arctic Circle and then Peary had ditched him. I’ve been a miserable sealing captain, never a good haul like Father. The
Karluk
was money, he said. Otherwise I’d never have taken the job. The
Karluk
. The ship had sunk eight months ago. The men stranded on Wrangel Island. I’m raising money, he said, for a rescue. There’s a Brigus lad, Bud Chafe’s son. I watched him fall over the side and hit his head on the ice. He was unconscious but then came to. We lowered a sheet and he rolled in, like a hammock.

You okay?

Sure I’m good, Skipper.

How many fingers you see?

Three. Three fingers.

What’s your name.

Charlie Chafe.

And what day is it, Charlie?

Sexday.

What did you say?

Sexday. It’s Sexday, Skipper.

Charlie if you die in my charge I’ll never forgive you.

They put him in a bunk and brought him rum and soup.

At the time I was not attracted to these stories of the North. I listened to them and enjoyed them, but I wasnt interested in other people’s exploits. I wanted to have my own. I was a little envious of Bartlett: here was a man who, after a farewell to thousands on the East River, had tied up in Oyster Bay and been received by Teddy Roosevelt. Bartlett had marched about Sagamore Hill and told the president the strengths of the ship that bore his name. I was sitting with a powerful man who had guided Peary to the north pole, and now he was wanted and it was a surprise to hear him bad-mouthing Peary.

I left the iceboats and joined Bartlett by the fire under some spruce. He’d built the fire on rocks and the rocks had melted through the ice to the ground. There was a kettle hanging over it on a green pole. Bartlett wiped his nose on the back of his glove. The gloves were trigger mitts, with a thumb and index finger knitted in. He said the
Karluk
venture was to be a geological survey. What an outfit, he said. They left Victoria with their deck piled high: fresh meat, vegetables, snowshoes, skins, alcohol drums, and canoes. They had unmarked boxes and cases of equipment enough to stretch over this whole pond. It would all get sorted when then reached the rendezvous at Collinson Point. That’s what the commander, Stefansson, thought. It was the worst-organized expedition ever bar none guaranteed.

Me: Vilhjalmur Stefansson?

That’s the man.

I know him, I said.

I hope he wasnt in charge of leading you someplace.

I painted a mural for the post office in Washington. It was a letter being mailed in Alaska and arriving in Puerto Rico. I was impressed with the plight of the Puerto Ricans. So I painted a group of women receiving the letter from a mailman on horseback. One of the women was reading the letter. You could see the writing, but it was in a language no one could understand. The post office didnt like that. So they copied the letter out and sent it to a specialist in northern languages.

Bartlett: And it was Stefansson.

He knew the dialect.

It was an Eskimo language.

Kiskokwims. It said, To the people of Puerto Rico, our friends: Go ahead, let us change chiefs. That alone can make us equal and free.

Youre a strange bird, Kent.

They still paid me, which was nice of them. And I thought it good of Stefansson to figure it out.

I wish he’d stayed on dry land.

You didnt find him striking.

An empty craft, Kent, always looms high.

I realized that I did not know who lived in Brigus. So as we worked Tom Dobie told me. I credit him with an intimate knowledge of the community. He pointed out obvious ones to get me grounded. The Pomeroys next door. Stan and Old Man Pomeroy, he said, theyre fishermen and woodcutters and Old Man Pomeroy he’s a laugh and I used to steal tobacco off him and hide it under a bureau when I was small and he learned me how to catch rabbits.

Next to him, Tom said, is Miles Sweeney and he’s a prate box who knows how to do everything except work. Amanda Sweeney she got a big mouth. That’s Bud and Alice Chafe over there, you knows them pretty good. They had three sons. One got killed in a accident and the other one died when he was young and Charlie Chafe he be the third and now he’s lost on the
Karluk
. Alice she’s as big as a camp. They got a house with a downstairs built into her. Jim Hearn lives in that red house, he works in the pharmacy and he’s always sniffing. Sniffles, that’s what we calls him. Billy Cole he operates a shebeen I’ll take you to, and next to that is Carmel Lahey she’s old, black hair cause she dyes it. Dr Gill is after her, he lived in Boston for a few years and got a straw up his nose.

We worked and then took a breather. And in the breather Tom found a new house to speak about.

That one there’s Rose Foley she sings good you knows that and she’s a widow. She got two youngsters. Patrick Fardy next to her he got one leg. He’s sensible though he lost all his hair and his head shrunk like a wet cat.

How did Fardy lose his leg.

I thought it was a boat hook. But maybe he was fooling around and got stuck in the leg with a prong and it got infected and had to come off.

Now beside him is Tony Loveys and he goes in shares with me and Stan Pomeroy. Tony’s older than us he’s married though his wedding was only a half-hour long cause they havent got any money. I suppose that’s the reason.

Pause.

There’s more, but theyre not all worth a mention. Except for me and Mom over in Frogmarsh. And Jas Kelly, he’s up the droke a piece. He got a set of crabapple trees. Nice apples. People always rogues him and then he goes off his head. I works in the woods around Jas. I like Jas though he’s a bit of a starve guts, he won’t feed you.

And that girl I saw you with. The Bartlett maid.

That be the Edwards. Yeah, Marten Edwards is the cobbler, Mrs Edwards she died of a lung ailment and yes theyre all right.

And the daughter’s name.

Emily. Emily Edwards.

You like her.

She’s a cramp hand.

She’s a what?

Like I said, the Edwards are all right.

Tom Dobie tapped the barometer in the Artic Room and Bartlett saw that.

Did you knock the barometer, Tom Dobie?

Yes.

Did I give you a hammer and say, Check the barometer?

Everyone, I said, is getting up earlier.

Tom: No I’m up the same time every day.

Youre at the door here ten minutes earlier than last week.

No I’m not, he said.

He’s coming, Bartlett said, an hour after the sun rises.

Sun’s the same, Tom said, every morning.

I often, Bartlett said, speak of time in reference to the moon. You haul your nets, he said, two hours before the tide, dont you Tom.

You work in front of the moon sometimes, instead of in front of the sun.

Me: So you think about when the moon will rise.

Tom: The time is always correct in the sky.

Bartlett said the sextant has three knobs to hold, so the heat of your hand does not affect its reading.

All of this I needed years later, in the wilderness of married life.

Tom Dobie: My mother wants to see you. Would you come over to supper.

Only then did I see the distance. How far Tom Dobie had to walk each morning to work for me. When I mentioned it he said, Dont worry, a man’s got to think.

They lived in Frogmarsh, the south side of Brigus harbour. I was on the far northern end. We worked that day replacing a rotting sill. The loudest sound in March was the water in the brook sloshing against its ice cave. There was a young fruit tree encased in ice from a silver thaw, and the harbour was open and quiet. We walked across the stone bridge and down past the churches and the inner pond and around past George Clarke’s house, where some boys were taking cock shots at a bottle on a fence. The mother at the door. I introduced myself.

I’m Tom’s mother, she said.

Sorry what’s your name?

My husband’s name was Robert Dobie.

I waited. And so I called her Mrs Dobie.

Close the half door behind you, she said. To me: I thought you were from Torbay. They all speak like you in Torbay.

Tom here, she said, is a muddler in the head with little to say. He’s shy as a horse, she said. And he can come to a fury and he’s strong enough to make damage though I’ll have none of it. He’s stifled either way, arent you Tom.

They lived in a small saltbox with a linhay off the back. There was a cow in a shed and a root cellar and a northern ash in a field for the cow to stare at in summer. They grew hay. There was a compost and a wooden crate beside the compost with sixteen chicks in it. The heat off the compost.

Tom says you dont eat animals and I wasnt about to cook you fish so we settled on this goose.

Goose is great, I said.

Mrs Dobie was a bright woman. She had long hair and strong hands and she was confident in the little she had in the way of furnishings. She smelled a little. I was relieved she was not embarrassed.

There was soup and then the goose. Potatoes and turnip and cabbage, followed by doughboys in hot jam. It was all good. The soup was yellow and the broth was full of golden globes of oil. When the soup was hot the globes were alive and bright. I could see the oil was from pork fat, though there was no pork in it. I ate it. Tom held one forearm flat on the table. Mrs Dobie did not. If you swirled the soup a slice of carrot would rise and sink. There was barley.

There were just the three of us.

Mrs Dobie sat erect. When the soup turned lukewarm all its happiness sank to the bottom.

I said that I’d heard Tom was skilful with houses.

It’s a far cry from a house, Tom said. A far cry.

The mother looked at her son. He had been all bone, this son, just a shovel with skin on.

Tom sat across the table and listened. Tom considered the bread and decided to say, You can have all you want of me.

Mrs Dobie: Now if ever there was a false consideration. Of paid work.

Tom: I wasnt trying to fool him.

He pushed the bread to his mother and Mrs Dobie held it to her chest and cut off a slice for her son and one for me, sawing towards her cardigan and clicking the blade on the buttons.

What a mother, he said.

As if it were all to do with passing judgment, she said.

I ate the goose. It was the best meal I’d had. Richer meals at the Bartletts’, but this was the tastiest. I noticed that the floors were covered in sand, and that someone had passed a broom through the sand to create a pattern.

Mrs Dobie was the kind of woman who spoke her mind before all the information had been presented. She got to a conclusion quickly, and while this may have been seen as presumptuous and ignorant, if you knew her you’d see how right she was and how her perception paid off. You would come to appreciate her honest sizing-up of a character or a predicament. There was a tortoiseshell barrette in her hair. It was the only thing pretty in the house.

She said to me, Tom said you looked like you’d walked off a coin. Like you’d just come round the world and studied us all before you got here.

They cleared the table and scoured the teapot. Tom opened up the door for a gust of air to wring out the tight supper smell. Want to have a walk around? She was embarrassing him. You could just see my cottage from their front door. It was getting dark. I’d forgotten to leave a lamp on.