“I see, I see,” cried his grandchild, Martha Young. “The three stars for his belt, and three there, for his sword.”
“Good, Martha,” James replied to Will and Ann’s eldest. “Now can everyone else see that?”
A chorus agreed. Late this autumn evening a year later, James was giving a class in the constellations outside the new one-room schoolhouse. Lanterns had been set up by the door. “All right now, for something more complicated, Orion’s shoulders. They’re called Betelgeuse and Bellatrix.” As they crowded round, he pointed. “See up there, where his shoulders should be, those two bright stars?”
One after another, they voiced their agreement.
Before he went on, he noticed at the corner of the schoolhouse, the new teacher, watching. In the dark of the moon, James could not see his pasty face but recognized the gaunt frame. Oh-oh, trouble. He had never liked the young man, but he was the only one with a diploma to apply from Montreal. Earlier in the week James had approached him about teaching the stars to the students, but the pimply schoolmaster had objected. However, James was chairman of the trustees, so the twenty-two year old had to swallow it.
“And now, everyone, you’re in for a surprise. Did you know that stars have different colours?”
A couple of the older boys scoffed. “Prove it to us,” challenged his grandchild, Charlie Bisson. James’s grandchildren outnumbered the others because his own children made sure to send their offspring after supper. The Smiths were there, too, with Sarah Nelson’s children, Sam Allen’s, and several others.
“Prove it? Look above Orion’s belt, his left shoulder up there? That’s called Betelgeuse. Now go the same distance down to his right knee, see that bright star? Named Rigel.” Most of them nodded.
He felt the teacher’s eyes boring into him. Pity the young man didn’t want to learn. James’s time in the Navy had taught him a good deal. Even the fishermen here who used stars didn’t know their names.
“All right now, look back and forth. Notice a different colour in each star? What is the top colour?”
Several of the older boys, including Charles Bisson, called out, “Red, orange, pink.”
“All right and what colour is the bottom one?”
They began to call, “Blue.”
“There now, you see? Different colours!”
Out of the general surprise came a question from Charles again: “Why?”
“None of us know that yet. But just be aware there are different colours, and one day, you might get the answer.”
He then went on to point out some of the easier constellations, such as Taurus, with the Hyades sprinkled around. He had picked a good star night, with no moon.
As he was explaining, his mind went back over the night he’d stared up into the heavens when his first child, Mariah, had been born. He always found such consolation in the age-old patterns, with their myths every naval officer knew. Imagine, four decades later, that little baby Mariah had children of her own, already grown up and learning about the stars themselves. How the years roll by!
“Now let’s all have a little cup of hot soup before I show one more constellation, and then, it’s home to bed!”
Jane handed out the soup that her mother Mariah had made, hot and watery. Margie, Will Skene’s daughter, handed the old man a cup, casting her eyes down. James didn’t notice and sat to relax, marvelling in this new building, finally finished this October. Twenty-seven students on a good day when they all came. Well, now he could retire from the trustees at Christmas. Better focus on the barn, which had to be perfect for Jim who was doing most of the work. It might inspire him to get married...
He glanced up to see the teacher still watching. He refilled his cup of soup and walked over. “Like some soup, Henry?”
Henry shook his head. “Sir, this is no time or place for lessons. The students have enough to do. I find it hard enough to get the Scriptures into them, without you diverting them every night.”
“Not every night, Henry, once or twice in autumn, and maybe once or twice in spring, when the skies change.” James wanted to bash the little whippersnapper, but reminded himself to behave.
“You may be chairman here, sir, but I’m complaining to the superintendent of schools.” With that, Henry strode off.
James looked after him. Should have bashed the skinny fella after all — might have knocked some sense into him. Then Margie Skene shouted, “Mr. Alford, Mr. Alford, look!”
“It’s on fire,” another voice yelled.
James turned to the bay, and froze. There, just beyond the cliffs, he could see a schooner, three-masted no doubt, and on fire. What appeared to be sailors were climbing the burning rigging, others were running back and forth with pails, trying to douse the flames. No hope, James could see: it was still afloat, but going to sink for sure.
“Quickly,” he roared, “down to the brook, oldest fellas first, maybe we can row out. How many rowboats we got down there?”
“Two this morning,” a voice piped up, probably a Vautier, who used the brook beach as a landing.
“First ones down, jump in and row. I’ll go in the second lot.”
The children tore off, and James grabbed his staff and followed. What on earth had happened? It looked just like one of the privateers the Bellerophon had been chasing. He remembered all too well that once, when a ship had not heeded their flag signal to surrender, the Captain had issued the order to fire. Only a few shots, but they’d set the ship afire. Since it was only a privateer, the Navy crew felt badly. Lowering boats, they had rowed quickly across the intervening waves, but by the time they reached it, the schooner had sunk with all hands perishing.
He reached the Brook Hill and started down. The children raced on ahead. He saw them stop and bunch up where the road veered near the cliff. “Go on, go on,” he cried.
“It’s not there!” they called back.
James crossed to the road’s edge and looked out over the bay.
Nothing.
But no boat would sink in that short a time! What was going on?
They gathered round, all talking at once. “I heard tell of that before,” young Billy Skene said. “My dad, he told us about it. Him and two fellows was coming home one night from down Port Daniel way, and he seen the same thing, maybe the year afore I was born.”
“My momma too,” another one called out. “She told me she seen it three year ago. She was so scared she didn’t tell no one, made us all promise. Same thing, ship on fire, three masts, sailors runnin’, then she up an’ disappears.”
“Must be the ghost ship,” an older boy called. “We seen the ghost ship!”
They turned and scattered home, all talking excitedly about what they had seen.
Well, the story would be all over Shegouac tomorrow, James knew. He trudged down to the new bridge with some of the children. Could it have been a vision? But they all saw it. He reached the opposite side of the Brook Hill, climbing it slowly, while the others ran on ahead.
Well, better not wake Catherine. In the morning they’d speak of burning ships and constellations. So he passed the house, deciding his addled mind needed time to sort it all out: this visitation, if that’s what it was, his search for faith, and his son, Jim, still without a wife. The oxcart track ran diagonally up the side hill; he climbed it in silence. Not as easy as before. Would there ever come a time when he couldn’t climb it at all? No sir, he’d stride up till he dropped. Three-quarters of the way, he saw Mariah’s children scramble in their back door, agog with their sighting and all their grandfather had explained about the constellations. No going to bed for a good while yet, he guessed.
Panting hard, he reached the top, and looked up. The whole northern sky had come alive with the dancing shifting bands of the Northern Lights, made more vivid with no moon.
So long since he’d seen them — what a treat! The past summers he’d taken to going to bed with the sun and getting up when it rose. There they were, delicate, shifting curtains, all the happy spirits, dancing especially for him. He leaned back on his cedar rail fence, marvelling.
Right now, seeing these heavenly arrays, he asked himself: how could God not exist? Who else created such a celestial spectacle? He studied the purples, pale mauves, and then vermilion, with streaks of white flashing, the mythic heroes up to their hijinks that his old tutor at Raby Castle had spoken about. The man loved Greek myths and had explained a lot of them to young James.
He didn’t feel the cold, though wind swept the frozen fields, rattling the barren branches on the crest.
As he stood, transfixed, in the distance, he heard a woman’s voice.
From the heart of the gracefully waving colours, he heard, “I am here.” The voice of Little Birch! “I am here, James.”
She had told him: “I will always be here for you in the dancing lights.” Yes, he remembered, oh so very long ago, her lithe sapling form, her strength as she held him in lovemaking, so powerful, the grasp of nature itself, of an original inhabitant, nurtured by the bay, by forests, salmon in streams and caribou on their interior highlands, all that first year. How could he ever forget his Magwés?
His eyes misted up. Damned old man: bent frame, wrinkled cheeks, worn-out heart. What a fool, crying at everything and anything: his daughter’s wedding, the birth of his latest grandchild — old idiot, with far too much reason to rejoice. Just as the sky above gathered in its clouds, so his old mind gathered in to itself the milking of his cattle, scything his wheat, stooking sheaves, shovelling pathways through deep snow, seeding his barley over rolling acres, those walks on springtime fields and autumn trails, so many and such wonderful seasons, ever more quickly passing by for him and for his aging wife.
Indeed, how very lucky to have spent so much time at her side. If only he could make up words to say that, he thought, as he hauled out his big handkerchief to smear his face dry.
“So tell me, Magwés,” he cried, “is He up there with you? The Great Creator, is he there? Can you tell me, once and for all?”
James forced his mind to fall silent, and to listen. The wind picked up, he could hear it soughing in the nearby pine; patiently he waited, waited for the words he needed to hear.
But after an endless time, still bathed in the magic of the heavenly curtains, drifting, wafting, caressing the black sky, no word came back.