23

The Culler

A crowd had gathered outside Jack’s house by the time he reached it. They were curious. They were pitying. Most were astonished. Jack spoke to no one but walked past his house and continued on to the cemetery on the hill, where his mother-in-law had said his family lay in one grave. A few children as well as a couple adults followed him but stayed outside the graveyard fence. The mound of earth above his wife and child had not yet settled. It still looked and smelled fresh. There was no marker yet.

Jack’s mind was reeling. He realized then that he had asked no explanation from his mother-in-law. Jack had simply rushed to the cemetery, as if there her cruel statement would be proven false. Confused and disbelieving, he fell upon his knees, making an imprint in the tender mud. But with no evidence, he still did not weep.

He stayed long in the cemetery as he tried to come to terms with his grief. How had they died? Were they the only ones who had died? Was there some disease in the place? They had been the picture of health when he left. His head reeling for answers, Jack stumbled out of the cemetery and went along the road. The children parted to give him way.

He burst through the chandler’s door. Poring over his precious ledgers, the man was startled when the door was thrust open and had half-risen out of his chair when he saw who had entered. “’Tis you, Jack my b’y!”

“What ’appened to Sophie and little Emiline?” Jack demanded. He was visibly upset. His face was drawn, and he was shaking with grief. Here he knew he would get the answer, even if his face showed reluctance to knowing it.

For once, the chandler’s face looked contrite. He sat back in his chair and opened a drawer behind the desk, from which he pulled a dark bottle half filled with brandy. He said, not without kindness, “Sit, my b’y, and have a shot.” He pushed the bottle, along with a tumbler, toward Jack, who had crossed the room and stood over him.

Jack waved the bottle away. “I’ve not come fer drinkin’. I’ve come fer answers. Where is my family?”

“Why . . . they . . . they are in the cemetery, Jack. Surely someone has told you?” The chandler, thinking Jack already knew, wasn’t sure how to deal with this situation.

“I’ve been showed a fresh grave. Nothing more. No one has told me anyt’ing. ’Tis a mistake, fer sure! Now, fer God’s sake, man, tell me where they are.”

“There is no mistake, Jack my b’y. Your wife and child are buried in the cemetery.” The chandler offered the bottle again. “You will need it,” he said.

“I told ’e I don’t need a damn drink! I need answers!” Jack slammed his hand upon the desk. Papers fell on the floor, and the chandler jumped in fright.

“Sit down, Jack, and I’ll tell ’e all I know. I need a drink, if you don’t.” Reaching for the brandy, the chandler gulped from the bottle. Placing the bottle down again, he smeared the back of his hand across his mouth. The cheap brandy burned all the way down. And thus fortified, he told Jack what—as far as anyone knew—had happened to his family. It was a sad, sad tale. The chandler hated to be the one to tell it.

The day after Jack had left on the Plunging Star, his wife, Sophie, was seen walking to the post office. Little Emiline toddled along with her, and at times her mother carried her. It wasn’t long before they were seen returning home in the same manner. Sophie was carrying a letter in her hand. There was nothing really unusual about that, though people who saw her go by wondered who the letter was from.

Late afternoon that same day, the neighbours noticed Sophie setting forth again. She carried Emiline and was obviously struggling with the child’s weight. There was still nothing unusual to see a mother walking through the place, child in arms. What was unusual, though, was to see what else the mother was carrying. Sophie was carrying a hammer in her free hand. It was thought by a woman who was hanging clothes on the line that Sophie was lending the hammer to someone farther down the lane. The woman waved to Sophie. She took it a bit strange when Sophie did not wave back.

The evening came, and no one but the woman who lived next door to her noticed if Sophie had come home or not. When she saw no lamplight coming from Sophie’s kitchen window, she assumed that, with Jack being gone, maybe Sophie had decided to spend the night with relatives. All the next day, no smoke rose from Sophie’s chimney, and that evening, when she still had not returned home, her concerned neighbours went looking for her. When dark came, neither Sophie nor her child had been found. It was decided she was nowhere in the Place.

Then an elderly couple who lived hard by the forest at the end of the settlement recalled seeing a woman with babe in arms head up the arm toward Muddy Cove. A search party was got up, and at first light the next morning they walked to Muddy Cove. The tide was out when they got there, and Muddy Cove was showing the searchers how it had obtained its name.

Between the shoreline and the water were a half-mile stretch of cloying grey mud, shallow tidal pools, and small green gardens of kelp interspersed with a myriad of small grey boulders. During the flood tide, this would all be six feet under water. At low tide the cove had that unpleasant odour common to all muddy coves, of tiny organisms, most of them invisible, which died in the mud each time the tide ebbed. The tide was out now.

Imprinted in that muddy plain for all to see, though washed by the tides, were the clear prints of a woman’s feet leading seaward. There were no other prints in the mud. Only three of the searchers wore rubber boots. The three men stepped into the cove and followed the tracks. With every step their feet sank deep into the mud and had to be pulled hard out of the suck before continuing.

It was slow going. Eel-like tansies writhed away as they approached, and long, skinny, flat worms the colour of human flesh burrowed into the mud. It was clear to the three men by the prints they were following that the woman had struggled hard. In several places the imprint of a child’s footsteps, barely breaking through the mud and stumbling beside the woman’s prints, could be seen.

They led toward what appeared to be an oddly shaped rock covered in mud. The farther from shore the three men went, the more cloying became the mud. Perched atop the rock was a lone saddleback seagull, and prancing all around in the mud were several lesser gulls, which stepped on webbed feet without breaking through and frequently billed at the mud. The saddleback was pecking at the rock upon which it stood. As the men neared, the lesser gulls flew away. They walked nearer still and shouted before the saddleback grudgingly flew off.

The rock was in fact Sophie’s body, lying on her right side on the muddy bottom. Both her feet were lodged deep in the mud well above her boots, and there was no evidence to show she had tried to free herself from the mud’s grip. By then, several tides had flooded and receded in the long cove. Also lying on the mud, face up, was Sophie’s little daughter, Emiline.

The daughter was at arm’s length from the mother and had been held there by what appeared to be a lady’s silk stocking fastened to the mother’s waist and one of the child’s hands. Sophie’s body, by use of the silken tether, which had filtered the mud like a colander until it looked like a flattened hemp rope, had served as an anchor to keep her child by her side and prevent her from being carried to sea by the perennial tides.

Emiline’s bonnet was still tied, and even the muddy water could not fully disguise several locks of her hair, the same burnished hue of her father’s, protruding from beneath. The child’s skull had received a severe blow, as evidenced by a bloody spot that had dried the size of a government copper. Other than the rent in Sophie’s shawl where the saddleback had pecked a hole, there appeared to be no other marks on the mother’s body. Lying prone on the bottom between mother and child was a steel hammer with a wooden handle. Sea lice and the long, flesh-coloured flat worms had found the bodies.

One of the three searchers turned his head away and retched violently. Another, looking white and feeling sick, walked away from the grisly scene, one that he would never get out of his head again. The sound of his boots pulling out of the mud was disturbing to the others. The third man watched his two companions leave. He studied the scene for a while and waited for the others to regain their composure and return. Then he picked up the hammer. He held it aloft between mother and daughter for a second before letting it fall from his hand. With a plopping sound the steel hammer settled into the mud, its handle sticking straight up.

“The ’ammer ’ad to ’ave been dropped while the cove was flush wit’ water. ’Twould ’ave settled into the mud elsewise.” His companions saw his logic now that it was pointed out to them and nodded in agreement. The one who had vomited before turned away and threw up again. The one who had dropped the hammer looked out the cove to the nakedness of the glassy sea beyond and said quite suddenly, “The tide ’as turned! Quick is the game, now! We’ll need a ’and-cart along wit’ more men afore the tide floods.” His voice held authority.

“I’ll go,” said he who had the weak stomach, and he gladly plodded toward the shore.

By the time a sturdy hand-cart was obtained, which was primarily used to carry yaffles of codfish to and from the drying flakes, the tide was flushing new water in over the mud flats. Though rigor mortis had claimed both bodies, the tides had kept them malleable, and they were loaded onto the hand-cart as they were found, the mother still moored to her child by the umbilical silk, and they were carried ashore. The men’s feet sank deeper into the mud with the added weight, and they struggled with their load.

Fresh sea water, as clear and cold as ice, ran in the cove. It trickled over the grey mud flats and swept over the place where mother and child had died. It purged the sticky mud from the boots of the men who struggled with their burden. The racing water gave the men reason to hasten. Spindrift, frothy and white, surged ahead of the water. Seagulls volplaned above them, drawn from above the cove by the commotion of the swilling tide. When the men reached the shore, they were knee deep in the tide. Eager hands reached to help, and their sorry charge was lifted out of the cove and brought back to the Place.

It was nearing midday, when kettles boiling for the dinner meal were placed back on the hob, by the time the searchers came abreast of kitchen windows and people came out of doors in great alarm. A sight such as this had never been seen in the Place before. Soon a large crowd followed the pallbearers.

Sophie’s mother, Emiline’s grandmother, who had been wringing her hands between kitchen window and door all day, dreading, and by now knowing what the searchers had found, collapsed into her husband’s arms when they came abreast of her door. Before the procession reached her home, some thoughtful woman had covered the cart with a clean white sheet.

The searchers stopped beside Sophie’s father’s door, and the entourage behind them shuffled near. The men carrying the hand-cart, not knowing if they should stop here or go on to Jack’s house, looked to Sophie’s father for direction. The old man, his face hardened by a thousand winds, his eyes softened by two deaths and still holding his barely conscious wife, said in a stricken voice, “We’ll lay ’em out in my inside place.”

And so it was that Sophie and little Emiline’s bodies, still bound by the silk stocking, were laid out in the room below the stairs, across the hall from the kitchen, which was only used for special family gatherings such as holiday feasts. Or for wakes.