Authors: Barbara Walsh
F
ine china and crystal decorate the dining table. We feast on silver capelin, potatoes, and prime rib, raising our wineglasses to toast our first journey “home.”
A few nights before we are to leave Marystown, Alan Brenton has invited us to dinner. We sitâmy sister, father, and Iâin between Alan and Jack's family. Conversation spills from four corners of the table, and there is much laughter as stories are swapped about our respective families and lives.
Throughout our week, we have felt welcomed and indeed, as if we were “home.” The Brentons have done everything possible to make our stay comfortable and help us connect with families who lost their kin to the August Gale. “They treated us,” my father will later say, “like royalty.”
Sufficiently satiated after cake and coffee, we settle into Alan's living room where Jack suggests we watch a video of Ambrose's eightieth birthday celebration in Marystown. Knowing that Joanie and I have never met our grandfather, Jack offers the film as a way for us to glimpse Ambrose, to get a sense of his personality. The impromptu suggestion catches my father by surprise. He is not eager to view the video, but he does not want to offend. Standing in the corner of the room, he is quiet, steeling himself for an unwanted visit with Ambrose. Joanie and I sit on the couch, curious about what the movie will reveal and concerned about how it will stir our father's emotions.
The video opens with a couple dozen people gathered around Alan's family room bar. Ambrose stands in the center of the crowd. At eighty, my grandfather is strikingly handsome, muscled and fit. His black hair is still thick and black with flecks of gray. Traditional Newfoundland music plays in the background, and Ambrose is surrounded by his family and friends. His dark eyes flash as he grins, savoring the attention. As Ambrose begins to dance, twirling a woman around the room, Joanie whispers to me, “This is bizarre.”
I nod, mesmerized by the image of our grandfather, who is so alive, so vibrant; it is as if a ghost, an apparition has walked into the room. I glance up at my father knowing he is confronting his own phantoms. His lips are pressed tightly together, and he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. He considers leaving the room but forces himself to stay, to watch. A cake with numerous candles is presented to Ambrose, and he blows the tiny flames out amid cheers and clapping. “This is quite an honor and a surprise,” Ambrose says, his laughter echoing in the room.
You son of a bitch
, my father silently curses.
He has not seen Ambrose for fifty-five years. The last time was in 1948 before Ambrose stepped into a San Francisco bookie shop to bet on the horses. While my grandfather gambled, my grandmother lay in a hotel bed, threatening to jump out a window. I stare at my father's eyes. They are wide and dark with rage. I can only imagine his resentment, the contrasting memories that flicker through his mind. The images of his mother devastated, shamed, heartbroken and now the pictures of Ambrose jubilant, charismaticâthe cherished hometown boy.
The room is suddenly too small. I hear Joanie's breathing, her sighs as she exhales her own confused emotions.
This is too much
, she tells herself, feeling guilty for asking our father to come to Newfoundland to relive a past he would rather forget.
I shouldn't have pushed Dad to come here
. The film ends showing Ambrose on another day walking around Alan's pool with his grandson. Ambrose holds the child's hand. The boy is five or six, and I think of my father, once a young boy of the same age, his palm locked inside Ambrose's hand, safe, secure.
The screen dissolves to black, and someone shuts off the television. The Brentons realize the film has upset my father, and they apologize. “It's okay,” he tells them, knowing they were trying to share a celebrated milestone in Ambrose's life. It is late, and we thank the Brentons for dinner and head outside to our car. My father's sneakers kick up stones from the gravel driveway, and the sound seems unnaturally loud in the still night air.
In the distance, Paddy's house is silhouetted in the dark. I consider my great uncle's wake, the contested and curious gathering to bid the skipper farewell. No matter whose body lay in the casket, friends and family gathered to pray, to mourn, to accept the death of a fearless and famed captain and his crew.
I recall Ambrose's final wish, his self-designed wake. Had he the chance, would my dad have attended? Listened to the stories, added his own memories before the wind carried his father's ashes into the sea? Would a wake have helped mark Ambrose's passing, providing finality, an easing of my father's animosity? Somehow my grandfather does not seem departed. There are too many emotions, unanswered questions, and mysteries to put him to rest. I breathe deeply and glance at the stars. I wonder if Ambrose's spirit, his soul, understands that we are here, in his home, resurrecting the past.
A few years before he died, Ambrose speculated about his journalist granddaughter, musing that maybe I had inherited his loquacious manner, a trait that would have benefited me in my reporting career. He marked my progress through my Nana's correspondence. She sent him the stories I wrote and informed him about the 1988 Pulitzer Prize my newspaper won for articles on escaped first-degree killer Willie Horton Jr. and Massachusetts's flawed prison furlough program. I was one of two principal reporters who had worked on the yearlong series, and my Nana had proudly shared this news with my grandfather. Intrigued by my journalism career, Ambrose harbored hope that maybe, one day, I would grow curious about my California grandfather, track him down, and visit. “I wonder would she come this way and try to look me up?” he had asked a family friend. “But then,” Ambrose quickly added, “I suppose she would have no reason to.”
Thirteen years after he drew his last breath, I want to talk to my grandfather, to ask him questions, to seek resolution and understanding. I wish I had sought him out, realized that one day I would regret not meeting, never knowing him.
The scent of the Newfoundland sea fills the air as I turn to the night sky. From Alan Brenton's driveway, I gaze at the string of stars, the gauzy stretch of the Milky Way.
I am here. I've come looking for you. What do you want me to find? What do you want me to know?
T
he fishermen followed the boy with the white cross.
Dressed in their tattered Sunday suits, the men pulled a wooden cart along the dirt path. They took small steps and kept a careful eye on their precious cargoâthe two pine coffins that cradled the remains of Paddy Walsh and his young son Frankie. The church bell tolled, marking their solemn procession. Outfitted in their long black dresses and dark jackets, men, women, and children formed a ragged line behind the wagon. More than two hundred had come to pay their final respects to Captain Paddy. Many rose before sunrise, walking distances of five, ten, and twenty miles from the villages of Fox Cove, Spanish Room, and Burin. Families from Little Bay, Beau Bois, and Duricle crowded into their dories and rowed along Mortier Bay to the northern shore of Marystown.
The mourners' faces were somber beneath their caps and black veils, yet their eyes couldn't hide their disdain and disbelief. They nodded to one another, declaring their contention in hushed voices.
Queerest thing to be carrying on this charade. Burying Tom Reid as Paddy Walsh. No sense of it a'tall
.
Despite their doubts, they filed through the doors of the Sacred Heart Church careful to keep their grim humor hidden from Father McGettigan's ears. The Walshes, Brentons, Powers, Reddies, and the Reids made their way toward their wooden pews, the hierarchy of their wealth, or lack of it, placing them in their proper seats. Billy and Emile Reid climbed the stairs to the church balcony and settled in their places, farthest from the altar and the coffins. The young men had not spoken to their mother about what they had witnessed at the wake. They couldn't find the words to tell her: “Ma, they've made a mistake. They're burying Da!” She would have cuffed their ears and scolded, “Stop your nonsense and say a prayer for your poor father.”
Their mother hadn't stopped sobbing since McGettigan came to their door with the grim news. They didn't dare push her further into grief. Still, none of this made any sense. The boys wished they could ask their da for help. He was a strong and stubborn Scotsman who had worked long hours at sea to put food before his family. In the years before his death, dark circles permanently smudged their father's eyes. A weariness clung to him like the scent of cod that lingered on his boots. No matter how many barrels of fish he caught with Skipper Paddy, it never seemed to be enough. It had been several months since they had tasted a bit of beef or butter. Like many of Marystown's families, the Reids survived on the cabbage and potatoes, carrots and beets that grew in their garden.
“Count yur blessings, boys,” their mother often told them. Now that their father was gone, the boys didn't feel so blessed. And the struggles their da had endured to provide for the family would now fall on their young shoulders. Their mother had already confessed to her sons that she might have to put one or more of her children in the St. John's orphanage. “There are too many mouths to feed,” she'd told them. “Too many, dear God.”
Now, as they eyed the coffins resting before the altar, the boys prayed for their da and their family, knowing the months ahead would test them all. Below the balcony, the bereaved fell silent as Lillian Walsh and her four surviving children slowly shuffled down the center aisle. Village women stifled sobs as they glimpsed Lillian's pale face, her slow, unsteady walk. “Aye, she still isn't with us,” the women whispered. “She mustn't have a clue to where she is. God bless the poor thing.”
As many of the mothers in Marystown had tried, Adella Power did her best to console Miss Lil. Adella understood the painful loss of a child. Her own son, Ernest, had drowned in the bay on All Souls Day. He'd taken over the wheel of the
David & Lizzie
while the captain had gone below. The boy was never seen again. The skipper believed the young man had somehow fallen overboard and drowned in the harbor, just a mile from his home. Adella remembered Father McGettigan and Dr. Chester Harris coming to her door, their faces pinched, hands folded. She had collapsed onto the kitchen floor after they had told her Ernest was gone. Two years had passed since that day, but the grief still pierced her heart like a winter wind. Adella could not fathom Lillian's sorrow.
How do you carry on after losing three sons and a husband to the sea? There'll be no getting over it. Sweet Mother of God, you'll be driven mad
.
Father McGettigan stood before the pulpit uttering prayers for the souls of Captain Paddy, his sons, Frankie, Jerome, and James, along with the other eleven Marystown fishermen lost in the gale. The Latin words tumbled from the priest's mouth; he knew the phrases as well as Shakespeare's sonnets.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis. Eternal rest give to them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them
.
As the priest spoke, the mourners silently mused about the charade unfolding before them.
A shame they're burying the wrong man. Aye. Can't make no sense of it a'tall. Tom Reid in Paddy's coffin. And soon to be buried in Paddy's grave
.
Young children squirmed in the church pews and covered their noses as the earthy scent of incense rose from the altar. Chanting Latin prayers, McGettigan sprinkled holy water onto each of the two caskets. Before he could return to the pulpit, a loud bang startled the priest and the church full of mourners. The wooden doors of Sacred Heart slammed shut as a messenger boy walked briskly toward the front row, where Ernest Walsh's family sat. Knowing that the telegram could bear ill news of her missing husband, Cecilia Walsh made the sign of the cross and uttered a quick prayer.
Dear God, have mercy on us
.
As the boy leaned over the pew to deliver the small sheet of paper, McGettigan commanded from the altar, “Bring it here.” Gertrude Walsh held her breath and prayed that the message did not bear news of their father's death. “Please Lord, spare our da,” she pleaded. McGettigan fell silent as he read the small black words. He cleared his throat and informed his parishioners, “Let us thank the Lord for this welcome news. Ernest Walsh and his crew made safe harbor from the gale. They are alive in St. Pierre.”
Gertrude and her sisters collapsed against one another, weeping with relief. Their mother quickly prodded the girls. Wiping away her own tears, she told her children, “Hush now! There are plenty of other families who aren't so fortunate!”
The girls turned toward their Aunt Lil, seated a few pews away. The widow's shoulders convulsed with sobs, her weeping muffled by the organ that echoed in the cavernous church. Women reached for their handkerchiefs as fishermen carried the coffins from the altar. Accompanied by Lillian's criesâwhich had grown to high-pitched wailsâthe men slowly made their way from the church to the burial grounds of the Sacred Heart Cemetery. Dorymen and skippers shook off sudden chills as the caskets of the twelve-year-old boy and Captain Paddy were lowered into the earth. The men couldn't get out of the boggy cemetery quickly enough. The screams of the skipper's widow would haunt them more than any of the gale winds they had heard at sea.
The bodies had been in the ground less than twenty-four hours when Lillian's mind began to clear from the tranquilizers; the thought struck the widow like a sudden summer storm.
The scars! The scars will tell the truth
. As sure as Sunday, she knew that the body they had buried was not Paddy. The marks, she told herself, will end this travesty.
The morning after the funeral, Lillian sent a message to Father McGettigan:
The body in the grave is not my husband's. Either you exhume him or I will do it myself!
Soon after he received the note, McGettigan arrived at her door. Lillian explained that both her husband and Tom Reid had scars that would identify their bodies. A loose pinwheel from a boat motor had permanently disfigured one of Paddy's knees; a scar branded Reid's right shoulder, marking where he fell on his ax while chopping trees in the woods.