James Alford roamed the large kitchen, striding back and forth like an animal from the Chic-Choc Mountains with nowhere to go. East wall. West wall. Change. Diagonal, this corner, that corner, all the while eyed by a silent Catherine at her weaving, another silent Eleanor at her knitting, and Hannah, busy as always about the open fireplace, making their next meal.
He raged. For three days they had been shut in by the most unholy blizzard. He felt confined — confined by the high drifts of snow that reached over two of his windows, confined by the prison of his ever increasing years, which led to such unexpected surprises. Like yesterday.
Such a simple task. Go out, fork down straw for the cattle, a bit of hay for the two oxen, collect the eggs, though only three chickens were laying, bring out slops for the pigs, all tasks he usually did by rote. The old barn only lay a hundred and fifty feet away. Had that been badly planned? Young Jim had always gone on about needing a new barn. But then, who would ever dream up that great unbinding catastrophe that had befallen, one that had shaken him to his roots, that had forced him to face his increasing age. Whoever would dream that so close to the kitchen door, with the raging wind and bleaching snow, James Alford would ever come over dizzy, and fall down?
James, the young sailor, the Midshipman who had himself helped haul out the heavy cannon through their gun ports, the settler who had shot moose even as they thundered down upon him, who had faced the worst that Gaspé weather could ever invoke, would now, suddenly, within thirty feet of his own house, find himself thrown down, and anchored by the chain of just too many long years of hard work. Whenever had he not been able to bound up and stride on? Whenever had his muscular limbs failed to respond?
His brain, so alert always, so focussed, now spun out of control, dizzying, forcing him to thrash wildly as he tried to lift his addled frame up onto once-sturdy feet. How long must it be before this body would again respond, smart as a sailor’s salute, agile as that Midshipman who manoeuvred so well on the topmost spars of the Bellerophon? Maybe if he lay still and waited, the necessary strength would come back. He knew too well the white, looming extinction that overtook the unwary, once they succumbed to this icy numbness now threatening.
So don’t wait too long. You know what might happen. Imagine, a few feet from your own front door! What would Catherine and her mother do without him? What about young Hannah? Could the women feed the animals alone? Would the animals survive? Who would ever have thought such ridiculous questions might teem in his spinning mind?
James felt his will to rise evaporating, as snow fell on his black, huddled form. And after all, was it not comfortable here? Why struggle? Hannah could feed the cattle, she’d done it before. Instead, he’d let her continue the housework, make the big breakfast awaiting them all inside, while Eleanor knitted and Catherine loomed?
Maybe if I can just get my hands down onto the solid ground, I can lift my shoulders, James thought. But this seemed another world: no ground could be felt, only soft snow, liquid as the sea. To drown him. To sweep him under. No rising today, no heaving up on waves of power. Would they worry inside? But he lost that thought in another welter of images: son Jim leaving the house — how long ago? It seemed years. Or just yesterday? His baby daughter Elizabeth, dying at three years old, oh so many years ago. And how many others? Two grandchildren, also snatched away — well, was he not this minute on his way to see them again?
The images whirled round, the thoughts circled, but not one of them capable of lifting him from the deep drift and throwing him up against the door to call for safety.
The door. Yes, the door. And all that lay behind...
* * *
Someone was bathing his face in hot water, someone else was pulling off his clothes. He opened his eyes. Such concern on Catherine’s face. Tears. He wanted to comfort her. But no limbs responded.
“I told him not to go out alone!” Eleanor’s dry voice cut the murmurs of concern burbling around him. “I don’t know what possessed you, Hannah, but you did right with that hunch of yours, going out there after him!”
Hannah was far too busy caring for James to respond. And as his strength and sanity returned, James forced himself unsteadily to his feet. “I’m fine, I’m perfectly fine.”
“You’ll go right upstairs and lie down,” Catherine ordered.
“I will not.” James walked unsteadily over to the table and sat. “I’ll have a nice cup of tea and then some of that breakfast Hannah’s been making. Then, who knows,” he wavered, “I might just take your advice.”
And so, the episode had been closed.
And now, he was pacing the room. Was yesterday’s fall anything to do with his present rage? Of course. Everything. And now, the women had not let him go do his chores this morning. Hannah had done them, and apparently with ease. She’d make such a great wife for someone, and he had an inkling who that someone would be. Already the man was building his own house down the coast in east Shegouac, over by her siblings Mary Jane and Joseph. A fine worker, Ned Hayes, but so shy. James had noticed him around women. Never opened his mouth. Well, James would encourage his daughter Hannah to open hers, no doubt about that. She may not be the prettiest of daughters, with her brown hair so plain in a bun, her brown eyes rather small, but she was a thorough worker and would make a great wife and mother. So proud of her, and Jim — yes, Jim, oh dear! Back swooped the vultures of depression that he had fought ever since that departure. Yes indeed, was that also making him rage?
His farm, their farm, what would become of it now? Apart from Hannah, his daughters were happily married with their own farms, so no need of this. Of his two sons, Joseph had married, which left Jim as sole inheritor. And now, would his farm just give in to the relentless Gaspé growth, the bushes which crept in from the edges of the forest to take over fields, spring after spring?
Yes, James thought, that was it: his growing age, and Jim’s departure, what two challenges, what two catastrophes, could ever compare with these? And what could he do about them now?
* * *
Late that night, James thought he was awake. He saw great throngs of hooded spectres surrounding the house, throwing their insubstantial but massive shoulders against the wood frames, jostling the joists, heaving their shoulders at the walls with the strength of giant moose. Did they intend to drown the creaking house in acres of unfathomable snow, buried icebergs, wastes of ocean under depths of ice? Yes, if he could howl like a wolf, like a hundred wolves, howl he would.
This great gulf, between the onset of everlasting dark approaching so quickly and an immensity of light dazzling the house with its drifts and ice caverns, was this the divide that one day he must cross? Now, again, he heard the phantoms flap their ghoulish sheets against these upper windows, lacing the panes with harsh whips that seemed everywhere assaulting him. Oh to end all this — put off his uneasy flesh and take on a garment of light, to allow the blinding whiteness of snow outside to smother him in its downy cloak, pierce his brain with flashing shards to illuminate happy dreams at last.
With their monstrous clubs, the giant trolls of weather battered the icicles beneath the eaves and bludgeoned the walls with heartless abandon. But downtrodden though he might feel, stamped on by the heavy and unbearable tread of years, this headlong leap into an eternity was not to be any time soon. So, dream on: let this phantom wind prowl the house on padded feet and fling its gusts against the eaves. He’d lurch through the rooms, tread the worn boards in slippered feet, a gaunt form moving idly from room to room, down the stairs, finally to crouch by the open fire, upon which he threw more fuel. Let them sleep on upstairs. He’d huddle here awhile, and sip some warming soup, and think a spell.
* * *
Catherine didn’t hear James get up. She was off in the fields of childhood, playing tag with her brothers. And then, watching wide-eyed at the table the night the young Midshipman arrived from his Waste Land down the coast, so polite and straight with military bearing, his blue eyes and smooth cheeks and fair brown hair bleached by the sun; she had known at once that she would be his wife. That engagement to Billy Brotherton, well, that had just been to rile him up, so angered had she been by James’s failure to return as promised. And how she almost swooned that awful day when he had brought her the young Portuguese laddie, Benvenuto, whose mangled arm he had sawn off and then cauterized to save his life. What a husband he would make!
Now again, she rocked in her canoe on that trip down the Coast with Mariah in her arms to bring the baby to her new home. And then, such glorious lovemaking after, and even now, infrequent but still good. She wondered how her husband could still love this old withered body. But love it apparently he did, and her spirited core no less. She felt keenly, even more keenly than he did perhaps, this rage at his increasing incapacities. Worse for him, she thought, even though her back troubled her so that she could not sit long at the loom without getting up to stride around, tidy the room, dust the bowls, even empty the slops — anything to keep moving. Must be hard for a man to lose the muscular strength he once employed so happily clearing woods, ploughing lands, hauling yellow grain into the darkened barns. And now, as she caught a glimpse, in their one mirror with its own wrinkles, of her reflected face, she would even smile at how she had outwitted Fate, for she had a man who loved her, long after she would have thought herself desirable.
* * *
Eleanor’s soul, as upright as her body, was sunk in deep repose. She had grown used to the gales of wind that rattled the panes and shook the foundations and rafters. She had never felt such shakings and heavings in New Carlisle, where their house nestled in a clustered settlement. Comfortable lives, she and William had made for themselves and their children in the United Empire Loyalist village, beginning with their arrival in the Brig Polly back in 1784. Yes, and now William was gone. She no longer mourned the bluff, gregarious husband whom she had loved and put up with — and guided, yes, over many years. She was even thankful that he had gone to his rest. He would never, had he lived, accepted this life in another’s house, with another’s rhythm, that of her son-in-law James, much as her daughter Catherine had tried to make it pleasant.
Such a daughter. And what great-grandchildren! It was their faces that nightly populated her dreams. One after another, too numerous to recall in her waking hours, each childlike face and then teenage rascal would swim into her consciousness. What delight as she presented them the socks she had knitted, or scarves, or little chapeaux. What a delight this last new one had been, another Joey, born next door to Mariah and Thomas the twenty-ninth of November. His little cap she had just finished before coming to bed. She had even added blue ribbons cut from a frock she had worn herself in better times.
The nightly litany lulled her into a lazy dreamland. The first: Henrietta Eliza: “Thank you, Grandma.” Janey: “Oh byes, Grandma, you make the best socks!” John: “Now Granny, will you make me a pair of red ones? I seen some fellas in school with red socks. They look terble fine.” Yes, red socks she had made for him, dying them carefully from old red material she herself had worn as a young girl. Lucky she had not passed that skirt on to anyone. Shorn of its colours, it now lay on a bottom shelf of her armoire. So many mothers, so many children, and how polite they had been to their great-grandmother. She smiled in her sleep. Not many great-grandmothers around these days, for sure.
But when the Good Lord above decided to lift her in His strong arms and carry her off to his Heaven, who would make their little sockettes, their scarves, their woollies, their sweaters, then? And on into the night, her great-grandchildren arrived and drifted by, waving and smiling. Always satisfied, mostly well behaved, just as Eleanor preferred.
* * *
Hannah ached all over! Every time she thought of her Edward, she felt like this. How she longed to be with him right now. Perhaps if she thought hard enough, he might materialize right there, next to her, on the lonely bed of her tiny room. She could just feel his hands holding her tight as he whispered his cuddly words. Oh why had she picked such a shy man — two kisses, that is all they had ever shared.
But why else was he building his house? Surely it must be for a wife. She had been careful to keep her ear to the ground: no rumblings of another taking his fancy. No, so it must be her. Momma had told her, “Hannah, just wait, dear, just wait another year. And then, if he hasn’t asked you, I will tell you how it is done. For you know, my dear, such things are best left in the hands of women.”
But how? Ask him into the barn? Show him the loft with a gentle smile, and then climb the ladder first and, from the top beam, motion him up? Ridiculous. She was not that kind of girl. So how to get that shy man into a position to ask the all-important question, even with his slight stutter, perhaps on a bended knee? What frustration! What a hard time a girl her age had — how she wished, but in this case only, to be a boy so that she’d not waste more time. My! But the Devil was entering her. Shut out those thoughts, she told herself firmly, and rolling over, hoped that soon she’d fall asleep.
* * *
“Wake up, Poppa.”
James felt a nudge and opened his eyes. There was Hannah, on her knees before him. Where was he? Downstairs. He looked around. By the deadened fire. He’d fallen asleep in the night.
“It’s over. The blizzard is passed. Sun’s out. I’m putting on wood, and I don’t want ye to get burnt.” She stooped and placed some dry twigs on the embers, coaxed them into flame, added a log or two. “Are you all right?”
“All right? Of course I’m all right.” James reached up for a hand and Hannah helped him up. “I’ll get me things on and I’ll be right out.”
“No Poppa, Momma said you’re not to come. I can do it all myself. I’m used to it. Don’t you trouble.”
“What you mean, not go out?” Something stuck in James’s craw. “I’ll do what I bloody well please!” he shouted. He stood firm on his two stockinged feet and looked after his daughter who had gone into the back kitchen where they stored the firewood. Woodshed in winter, kitchen in summer. In hot July days, so much handier to make a fire back there, cook the meals, heat gruel for the pigs, even do the baking when they didn’t want to fire up the outdoor oven.
Hannah came back in with more wood and looked at him in alarm.
“If I want to feed the animals, then feed the animals I shall.” His voice carried upstairs and he heard Catherine call down, “James! Are you all right?” He heard movement on the rough boards above.
“Damn right I’m all right,” he shouted. “I’m going to feed the animals with Hannah.”
“No James, it’s too dangerous.”
He knew his eyes were flashing. He looked to Hannah for encouragement.
“The storm’s over, Momma,” she called. “I think it’s all right. If Poppa wants to come with me, let him come. I’ll be beside him.”
Not often Hannah stood up to her mother, James knew, but he could see that she was alarmed. As his anger subsided, he motioned. “Let’s go.”
Hannah threw her wood down beside the fire and followed as he went to the back door and struggled into his heavy coat and tuque.
The dazzling snowdrifts swooped over his farm in contours, reaching up against the hill behind, looped and whorled around the barn, lying in drifts about the stable doors and at the woodshed. James turned. The house itself was banked high, in some places over the windows. Hannah moved ahead, beating a way on snowshoes to the stable. They had been careful, some years ago, to build partitions on each side of the stable door to shield it from the snow so that it could open, and to place a peg for a shovel in case it didn’t. But the partitions now, after this heavy blizzard, were of little use.
James watched Hannah shovelling, and stooped to fasten on his snowshoes. Not as easy as when he hunted back in the caribou highlands with the Micmacs. How he resented his aging frame not responding. But be thankful, he reminded himself, give praise to God that you are still alive and have everything you want.
He looked up and saw high, high above, the delicate streaks of cirrus wafting across the crisp blue sky, delicate whorls crafted by the Almighty, spreading out as if to extend a winter welcome. He was beginning to feel better: the worst had passed. He even felt guilty for his earlier outbreak. But how else could he have come outside, strapped on these snowshoes, and stood in his own farmyard in all its cloaked glory to behold yet again another winter?
Once in the loft with his two-pronged wooden fork pitching straw down onto the thrashing floor below, James felt cheerful. The motions of his arms, the rustle of straw, the barn smells of old hay and fresh manure, the occasional bleat of a penned sheep, all spoke to the notion that he’d go on for many more years. Comforting.
“I bet Jim is missing all this,” Hannah called up. “I bet he feels pretty lonely in that there big city.”
“I bet he does too, Hannah.” Yes, how easy it had been for Jim to just take up and leave. His daughters, they could never do such a thing. They were dependent upon marriage, upon husbands, some of whom could even read and write. And why should that be? What about all his neighbours, who had not been schooled, as he, in the Old Country? Mind you, he’d run errands for the elderly scholar who tutored the children of the Earl so that he might learn from him. And learn he did. How much James had loved those sessions.
And then, the thought struck him: why not put yourself into a new project, one that indeed might live on? A school! Yes, build a school, right here in the centre of Shegouac. It could be used for church services, too, instead of way down in Port Daniel. What an idea!
Would that not encourage his son’s return? The community would have its own school, and produce children proud of their learning everywhere.
Yes, he decided, set about building a school.