Waiting for Time (32 page)

“Think on it—we was married only fourteen year and I been more'n sixty year without him! Beside meself I was. Then, the very day Ned and Isaac was buried I found out Fanny were knocked up—big as a barrel with Thomas Hutchings' youngster in her! I made him marry her, though—you can mark that down in Vinnie's book. Mary Bundle made Thomas Hutchings marry her daughter. Told him I knew all about him and I'd have him carted away in shackles if he didn't!”

Rachel protests, surely the child had not belonged to Thomas, “Lavinia wrote out that it were the Red Indian was the father of Fanny's youngster!”

Mary gives the young woman a scathing look: “Don't pay no heed to that—that were Vinnie's romancin'. She didn't want to think her darlin' Thomas done such a thing to a young maid like Fanny.”

“But Nan, what about that day on the beach, the day Grandfather Toma were born? The book says the Indian come that day and tried to drag Fanny away!”

“Some poor lost savage, half-mad with loneliness, his own people perished or slaughtered. Crowd in St. John's used to have a bounty on Indians in them days. Used to catch 'em alive to show off to the King or some such thing—always the women they used to get like that. I s'pose the poor mortal saw us on the beach and went out of his mind—tried to drag off a woman just like his own been dragged off more'n likely.”

Mary studies the sad little face of her great-granddaughter, who is a granddaughter of the baby born on the beach that day: “Don't pay no mind to that stuff Lavinia wrote down. Though she was forever after poor Ned for tellin' yarns, Vinnie handled the truth careless herself betimes.”

But Rachel has heard many versions of this story. She reminds Mary that the Indian who had tried to drag Fanny off just before she gave birth was also called Toma: “My Grandfather Toma—how come he got named after the Indian if 'twarn't his father?”

“Toma were just a name Vinnie dreamt up—out of them old plays more'n likely. Ever come to ya, Toma sounds a lot like Thomas? And why would Thomas Hutchings rear the boy like his own? Sure your Grandfather Toma's the spittin' image of Thomas, sober as a judge. Not a bit of fun in 'im. Comfort herself told me she useta have to hide his books ta get him into bed with her.”

“None of we crowd is related to Red Indians, then?” Rachel sounds wistful. “I told Stephen I got me dark skin from the Indian who was me grandfather's father—he liked that.”

Mary picks up the girl's hand, small, rough and bony and very brown. Like her own hands before the joints thickened, before heavy veins and dark splotches appeared. She runs her hand over Rachel's. “No maid, yer just like me mother Una. I seen it t'other night—you standin' by the table for all the world like me mother. She were one of them old people, them what used to own England afore the tall fair ones come. She was proud of that—said it gave her second sight,” Mary pats Rachel's hand and tells her to go on up to bed.

Mary has not told Rachel everything she knows about that day on the beach, the day Fanny died and Toma was born. She sits up half the night wondering how much of the story can be written down. What use to speculate now about who Fanny had made fast to? To wonder if she'd done right forcing Thomas to marry her poor foolish daughter? What use to tell Rachel how she had found Peter Vincent that night, holding Fanny's body, weeping like a lost, frightened child?

Peter had looked wild, more animal than man with his long, dirty hair and matted beard and the smell of woods and earth and dried blood on him. “I always loved Fanny—anyone coulda seen that—anyone looked at me. 'Course no one ever did,” he said fiercely.

He had eased Fanny's body down onto the table but kept her hands folded inside his as if he were holding a small bird, “That Indian who tried to take Fanny away today—him and me been friends since we was boys,” he told Mary.

Those two, first as children and later as men, met secretly summer after summer. They had roamed the countryside, hunted together. One winter Peter even travelled into the interior with the Indian, met the rest of his family, two men and a woman, the last survivors of the tribe.

“No one ever took no heed of what I done,” he said. “Then, this fall, when I got home I saw right off how 'twas with Fanny—knowed you and Mudder and Meg'd gotten her married up with Thomas Hutchings. I'd like to have made away with the whole lot of ye.” Peter was trying to whisper and his voice came out rough and rasping, thick with menace.

Gave me the shivers, he did that night, Mary thinks, remembering how Peter was always the one with the gun, how he had attacked Thomas Hutchings that day on the wharf. And here he was standing over Fanny's dead body saying he'd had a mind to kill them all.

Never flinched, I didn't, not even when I saw he was out of his mind—just stood alongside him listenin'. Mary would like to tell Rachel this, to have the girl record how brave she had been—but no, too many threads run out from that night, untied, unconnected threads that will do no one any good.

“I see now 'twas him—the Indian—all the time,” Peter said. Then he described how after he and the Indian fought on the beach he had tracked the man, bashed his head in. He told her where to find the body. The young man had spoken matter-of-factly, as if he were talking about something that happened a long, long time ago instead of that very day.

Mary said she didn't care where the body was, didn't care what he had done, or why. She advised him to get away from the Cape before light, gave him Ned's heavy coat and watched as he walked away up the path that led back through the marsh. She never saw him again and never told anyone about their meeting over Fanny's body. Nor will she tell Rachel now—some things are better left unsaid.

Next morning, when Rachel wants to return to the subject of the Indian on the beach, Mary says she has no idea who he was or where he came from.

“Thomas and Dolph Way found the Indian's body. Then there was a great fuss about where to bury him,” she tells the girl. “Meg said he were a heathen—leastways we s'posed he were heathen—so 'twould be wrong to put him in what she called consecrated ground—whatever that means. But Thomas were set on the savage bein' buried out on the point with all the rest. I didn't care one way or t'other. In the end Thomas got his way—like always—Fanny and the Indian was buried alongside one another. Young Char cut words into two wood markers.”

“I never seen no marker for either one of em.”

“No girl, been gone for years and years—under the sand or under the sea. What difference does it make in the end?” Mary sighs with great sadness. Then, brightening, she says, “I s'pose now when I dies they'll say I was a heathen and bury me outside the churchyard!”

“Go on, Nan! You knows right well they won't—you'll have the biggest funeral the shore ever seen!”

“No more than I should!” Mary says and spends a good hour reminding Rachel of what must be done when she dies. When she is sure the girl understands how each detail of her funeral must be arranged, Mary tells her to write down what happened after Thomas Hutchings left the Cape.

“Can't say I was sorry when Thomas left,” Mary says. “He never told us nothin' but 'twas understood he were goin' back to St. John's to some old life he'd left behind. Before he went I asked for his money tin but when he passed it over to me 'twas empty—not a shillin' in it! I did get this understanding with him, though—'bout me and Vinnie keepin' on with his job—sendin' the tally of fish and orders into Caleb Gosse and keep the wharf fixed up, stuff like that. 'Twas only right after what he done to Fanny—and the bit of money we'd get from Caleb Gosse'd help with the baby he was leavin' behind.”

“You'd think the way Meg carried on we'd all perish and blow away without Thomas Hutchings but I tell you 'twasn't like that at all. The person missed most that spring was Ned—was like the heart was gone out of the place. Isaac was dead too, of course—and Josh Vincent—Josh died the fall before, with the same sickness took our Moses and left Pash Andrews blind.”

The first part of that summer had been terrible. Fish was plentiful but there were not enough hands to bring it ashore. Mary drove everyone so hard that no one had a civil word for her. Her own three boys would run away and hide in the woods to get a bit of rest. But Jane's new husband, Dolph Way, was a big help and in July a new family named Gill settled on the Cape.

“They was always a good, hardworkin' crowd, the Gills. Brose was a grand hand with the fish. Still, when fall started to close in, I was not satisfied in me mind we'd get safe through winter.”

She had been sick with fear—used to go down to the store and count the barrels of flour, the caplin, salt fish and vegetables, and then count the people who had to be fed.

“'Twas the same every year, no matter how hard we worked, we barely made it through the winter—but that winter was worse because we had less fish to trade with Gosse. I'd lie awake nighttime tryin' to figure some way we could make money above what we got for the fish.”

Mary had tried remembering the ways she'd seen people earn money in St. John's and in Christchurch. But none of the things she remembered would work on the Cape, where everyone made what they needed, where everything was patched and mended until it fell apart. People on the Cape did not buy lumber or splits, everyone cut their own, they did not buy pots or kettles, there was one of each in every house, heavy black objects that lasted for generations. Everyone grew their own vegetables, made their own bread and soap and candles, rendered out their own oil. Mary would fall asleep naming things they had to buy from Caleb Gosse—salt, needles, molasses, flour, flannel, nails—but never anything they could make on the Cape.

One night she sat up in bed. Barrels! She could see the
Tern
with a hundred empty barrels lashed down on deck. Alex Brennan would drop a few off at each place the ship stopped, then pick them up in the fall filled with berries, caplin, pickled herring. Each year three or four barrels were kept back to hold their own berries, the salted cabbage, the trout and salmon.

“I worked it out we could make our own barrels! Don't think I closed me eyes the rest of that night for thinkin' about it. Seemed good sense—'twould save bringin' barrels in—and why shouldn't Gosse pay us for 'em same as he paid someone in St. John's? Would mean he'd have more space for gear and salt on each vessel 'comin down the coast.”

At first light Mary went next door to ask Ben Andrews if he knew anything about making barrels. Her brother-in-law had never seen a barrel made, but said he'd study it. He immediately began drawing little pictures, which was the way Ben always worked. The following day he pried a barrel apart and laid out the staves, measured them and worked out how they had been put together.

“I allow we could make barrels if we can get the wood dried for the staves and cut small birch for the hoops. We'd split them and soak 'em in sea water same as I did for the rungs of that chair I made,” Ben told Mary. “But then you knows how far we got to go to get decent wood, and I'm not real sure the tools I got could do such a job.”

“Ben never had much spunk in him—'tho I must say he could do anything he set his hand to on land. I told him a man who could make boats could make barrels—kept after him day in, day out 'til he went down to the store and started working' on some dry wood Thomas had pushed out under the loft.

“You know, by spring Ben had a watertight barrel! He was good like that, once you set him to it he'd keep tryin' till he got a thing right. You mark that down, my maid—'twas Mary Bundle started them makin' barrels along this coast.”

When they got into barrel making Mary would go down to the store each morning before anyone was stirring. She'd count the barrels finished the day before, sweep up the shavings, sort out the right number of staves and arrange the hoops so that Ben and the older boys who helped him would have everything to hand.

Meg heard her leaving the house while it was still dark, and one day scolded her for roaming around in the middle of the night.

“Only two things bed's good for, and since I'm not doin' either of 'em I might just as well be up and about,” Mary snapped.

She liked being alone in the store in the cool pre-dawn. “I used to think, them mornings, plan out me day,” she told Rachel.

Since no one now lived in the store the fire was allowed to die each night. Mary had pushed Thomas Hutchings' few belongings up against the bunk where he had slept to make room for woodhorses, tools, staves, drying lumber and the old puncheons Ben used to shape the wet hoops around. For the first time the store was just that, a storage space and workroom, the smells of cooking and living all gone, only the clean smell of wood, netting, oakum and rope remained. It was quiet there in the mornings, just the soft swish of sea washing in below the floor and the muted rattle stones make when the sea recedes.

“We had almost fifty barrels that first year Ben was at it—and that was with Meg forever draggin' him off work to go at something else. When Alex Brennan come down I told him what I wanted and he was satisfied to bring it up to old skinflint Gosse. I figured we could make twice fifty if we got things planned proper.”

“We was gettin' along! I could see that, anyone with eyes in their heads coulda seen it. The second summer after Thomas left we done better with the fish—and that fall we all had goats, sheep and hens, and only the Norris family didn't have a pig. We women all done our own cardin' and spinnin', grew vegetables, and of course we had the fish, and sea birds was plentiful them times.”

Just as Meg and Sarah had never grown tired of reciting Bible verses, so Mary never stopped tallying things up. How much did they have stored away? How much did they have to trade?

But there was never enough to satisfy her. She was always thinking ahead, always planning, not just for next winter, but for the one after. She would never give herself nor anyone else a minute's rest, would go for days without speaking to a soul, then fly into a rage at the sight of a misplaced tool, a child skipping rocks, or an adult gazing out to sea.

“Every minute ye wastes in summer is a spoonful of food you're without in winter!” she repeated so often that the children would whisper it to one another when they saw her coming.