August Gale (15 page)

Joanie and I smile and say nothing, figuring we haven't a clue where Marystown is anyway. We take turns driving, and as I focus on the flat stretch of road ahead, I muse that it could be worse. The fog that often shrouds Newfoundland in the summer, endangering fishermen and sailors, would make this ride particularly unpleasant. The sheets of mist would blind us and put us at even more risk of hitting one of the myriad of animals (bears, coyotes, caribou, and moose) that roam the barrens.

I take careful note of the bright yellow road signs that depict a moose and a crushed car. An hour or so into our journey, we are heartened by the sight of villages and harbors. We read markers for Petite Forte, Rushoon, Red Harbour, towns that lie to the east on the shores of Placentia Bay. Settled in the early sixteenth century, the Placentia Bay communities were named by the European fishermen who were drawn to Newfoundland's bountiful waters. Portuguese, French, Irish, English, Spanish, and Basque fishermen sailed along Newfoundland's shores, eager to hunt cod, the bottom-feeding fish that British explorer John Cabot noted were so plentiful that they could be plucked from the sea with a basket weighted down with stone. “The sea is swimming with fish,” Cabot reported when he claimed the island in the North Atlantic as “New Found Land” for King Henry VII in 1497.

Four centuries later, I picture Paddy sailing the bays of Placentia and St. Mary's, the hold of his schooner filled with layer upon layer of cod. I see the sails of
Annie Anita
stretched tight against the wind, with Jerome and Frankie on board as the schooner sluices through the water on its August journey. I am eager to reach Marystown and to stand along the bay where Paddy's crew unfurled his sails and heaved the anchor on that warm summer morning. I am excited, too, to see Paddy's home, the old Molloy Hotel bought for his wife Lil. Fortunately the 120-year-old house is still standing and is owned by my cousin, Alan Brenton, who has done little to change the historic building. I am anxious to step inside, to walk along the pine floors where Paddy, Lillian, and their children once stepped.

The summer sun continues to sink lower in the sky, and after traveling nearly two hours along this bleak highway, we are restless to arrive in Marystown, the largest of the five communities on the boot-shaped Burin Peninsula. “Jesus Christ,” my father mutters again, exasperated. “I wish I had a beer.”

Spotting a roadside shop, we pull over to stretch our legs, get beer, and buy a gift for our relatives. Inside the store, which is actually a garage of sorts, Joanie and I find a sparse collection of groceries—milk, bread, cereal, cigarettes, beer, and liquor. We explain to the woman who presides over the premises that we're looking for a present for our relatives. She quickly suggests Screech, Newfoundland's beloved one-hundred-proof rum. I will later learn the liquor received its name in the early 1900s, after an American commanding officer was offered a shot of the caramel-colored liquid as an after-dinner cordial. Seeing his Newfoundland host toss back the drink, the officer did the same. Not prepared for the scorching sensation as the liquor traveled down his throat, the officer let out a loud and anguished howl. His scream drew the attention of his sergeant, who pounded on the door and asked, “What the cripes was that ungodly screech?” A Newfoundlander replied “The screech? 'Tis the rum, me son.”

The setting sun burns the clouds orange and violet as we begin to see houses along the road, signs of an oncoming community; Marystown, we hope. Soon a roadside sign informs us we are indeed in my grandfather's birthplace. “Thank God,” we tell each other, relieved that our arduous day of travel is nearly over.

Not long after we enter the town, we find our relatives' business, Brenton Rentals and Sales, which is co-owned by Jack and his father, Alan. We pull up to the large garage doors and yard, where several large tractors and excavators loom. Inside the garage bays, the Brentons are waiting for us. They shake our hands and offer hugs, telling us, “Welcome Home.”

Both Alan and Jack are eager to meet Ambrose's firstborn son and his granddaughters. They consider our side of the family a bit of a mystery: the relatives who were never heard from, the family that chose to disavow its Newfoundland roots. Years ago, through Ambrose, the Brentons have heard bits and pieces about our lives. They know that my father was a successful engineer who at one time managed hundreds of employees. They know he has a home in New Hampshire, a wife, Patricia, six daughters, and several grandchildren. And they understand, after phone calls and e-mails with my father, that he is apprehensive about this trip and meeting strangers, relatives who are familiar with far too many details of his life and the life of the man who abandoned him.

After a few minutes of awkward conversation, my father, Joanie, and I realize that the Brentons are sincerely excited that we have traveled to Marystown. While Jack gives us a tour of his offices, Alan silently studies my father, considering the likeness between my dad and Ambrose. He notes their similar build, their tall, muscular frames. Alan also takes a quick liking to my father, whose confident nature and affable manner remind him of his Uncle Ambrose. Still, Alan is careful not to say too much about my grandfather on our first night. An astute businessman adept at reading customers' wants and needs, Alan saves details and conversations about Ambrose for later—some of which will be difficult for my father to hear.

While Alan is more reserved and quiet, his son Jack, a thirty-five-year-old man with a family of his own, is jovial and outgoing. He feels comfortable with us soon after we meet. “It was like I knew ye all my life,” he will later tell me. “Ye felt like family pretty fast.”

The Brentons' hospitality quickly sets my father at ease. Joanie, too, is surprised at our cousins' friendly nature, and she wonders about their resilience, their ability to thrive in such a struggling community. She sizes up their looks, their features, disappointed that they do not share our family's likeness, our dark hair, our freckled skin.

I am struck by the sound of the Brentons' voices. When Jack and Alan speak, their tone is lyrical, singsong, like the Irish brogue that was first spoken in Marystown and other southeastern outports in the mid-1800s. Their conversation is infused with “aye, right on, and ye,” and I am comforted by this connection to our Irish ancestors.

“Right, so why don't we give ye's a quick tour of Marystown before we head out to camp. Aye?” Jack suggests.

We nod and follow the Brentons in their car past Tim Horton's, McDonald's, the town's one traffic light, and over the Cannery Bridge which was built in the 1950s to connect Marystown's southern and northern shores. The bay that leads east to the sea is dark and rippled by a slight evening breeze. Here, Paddy's schooners once moored. Here, he unloaded thousands of pounds of cod, his catch drawing a crowd of young and old fishermen, who marveled at his skill in finding the fish. Across the bridge, we turn left and stop before a hill that slopes down the road. A three-story house looms above us. Several of its windows are boarded, the paint is peeling, and the two chimneys are crumbling; still, the sight of my great-uncle's home mesmerizes me. I picture Paddy slamming shut his broad front door and walking along the footpath to his wharf. He would have strolled along on the road where we now stand. I envision young boys carefully doffing their caps and offering, “Evening, Capt'n Paddy, sir.” I hear Frankie and Jerome running after their da, hollering as they raced toward the
Annie Anita
, eager to climb the rigging, place their small hands on the helm.

There is a chill in the early June night air, and the sky is black with a sprinkling of stars. Lights flicker in the homes that hug the bay; a century ago, village kerosene lamps cast shadows onto walls, woodstoves warmed small kitchens, and Rosary beads were pulled from pockets for evening prayers.

Knowing we are eager to get inside Paddy's home, Alan promises to give us a tour the following day. Back in the car, we drive over the bridge, past the Sacred Heart Church, past the cemetery, to Jack's nearby summer camp. Not long after we drop our bags in the cottage, we offer our gift to the Brentons. Jack and Alan laugh as they open the bottle of Screech. Jack pours a glass for each of us, and we toast to our unexpected trip to Marystown. I swallow the Screech and wince; the liquor is potent and burns my throat. My father also grimaces. “Wow,” he says, “that is strong.”

Joanie sips hers with ice and puckers her lips after a swallow. “This isn't bad.”

The Brentons have stocked our fridge with bacon, eggs, cheese, milk, coffee, and beer. Their hospitality, we will later discover, has just begun. Noting our tired faces, they bid us goodnight and tell us once more, “Welcome Home.”

Exhausted, my father, Joanie, and I quickly claim our beds. My father offers to sleep on the pull-out couch, Joanie chooses the room with bunk beds, and I head to the adjoining bedroom. My father falls asleep quickly, and in the dark I listen to his slow, measured breathing. I cannot hear Joanie from behind her closed bedroom door, and I want to whisper, ask her if she too is awake, but I don't want to roust her or my father. I toss beneath my bedcovers and wonder what the next few days will bring. What stories will we hear about the gale and about my grandfather? How will people treat us, how will they react to Ambrose's son?

In my mind, I hear the Brentons' initial greeting, spontaneous and heartfelt, “Welcome home.” Home, they tell us, as if we were missed, long awaited, and are now embraced after decades of absence. Before I drift into sleep, I think of my grandfather and my Nana: What would they have thought of our coming home?

A
few days old and whirling north, the hurricane season's first tropical storm caused little concern along the American eastern coast. The National Weather Bureau reported the tempest had blown out to sea with no apparent danger of striking the States—unless it unexpectedly changed course.

While the gale presented little threat to Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, weather reports cautioned vessels that the hurricane carried severe winds as it roared up the North Atlantic shipping lanes. Luxury liners and steamers traveling from New York to Bermuda and Puerto Rico on August 23 faced the storm's wrath. The center of the hurricane passed one hundred miles northwest of Bermuda, lashing the island with heavy gusts and waves. The gale battered the twenty-two-thousand-ton
Queen of Bermuda
liner as it rode out the storm five miles off Bermuda's coast. The luxury ship's six hundred passengers, bound for honeymoons and vacations, fought seasickness and injury as the waves and winds tossed the liner like a small boat.

Later on in the afternoon of the twenty-third, the gale continued on a northeasterly path. Weather reports noted that while the storm had lost some of its viciousness, it had gained momentum and speed. Though the hurricane remained six hundred miles east of North Carolina, its powerful winds—which had been blowing steadily on the sea for the past three days—created an ocean swell hundreds of miles north of the storm. Along the New York and New Jersey shores, the surf raged.

At Jones Beach and Fire Island, waves towered more than ten feet high, rumbling like thunder as they crashed along the coast. Few swimmers dared venture into the ocean, and those who did drowned or required rescue. A forty-one-year-old man disappeared at New Jersey's Manasquan beach when a fierce current pulled him under and dragged his body out to sea.

Heavy seas flipped boats and tossed fishermen into the ocean. A series of large waves swamped a thirty-eight-foot boat off Long Island's coast, plunging ten fishermen into the water. Three waves—enormous and unrelenting in their quick succession—battered the boat's cabin to splinters, washed the men overboard, and punched a hole in the vessel causing the boat to sink within minutes.

By midnight August 23, the hurricane continued, as most North Atlantic gales do, on a northeasterly path. Now close to eight hundred miles out to sea, it traveled well east of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, and as the storm spiraled above the cooler waters of the North Atlantic, its intensity began to weaken.

Had it kept on its northeasterly course, the storm would have barely brushed the Grand Banks before extinguishing over the frigid waters of the Labrador Current. But on the morning of August 24, the gale had collided with a massive trough of low pressure that blanketed much of America's East Coast and Nova Scotia. And when the hurricane's warm air mass merged with the trough of cold air, the contrast in temperatures fueled the storm like gas to a fire. Instead of feeding off the ocean's warm water, the gale now fed off the clash of energy, and instead of dying, it was growing bigger. Its ferocity and size magnified, generating violent gusts that blew continuously on the ocean, pushing waves higher and higher until they rose like monsters in the sea. The low pressure front also pulled the gale in a new direction. Hundreds of miles east of Cape Cod's coast, the hurricane dramatically changed course. Instead of continuing on a northeasterly path, it veered directly north, heading straight for Newfoundland.

Hundreds of miles from the hurricane's fierce winds, the waters were calm, and the sun slipped toward the horizon in a clear blue sky. A yellow dory cut through the sea pointed to Lear's Cove, a small beach to the north of Cape St. Mary's fishing grounds. From the boat's bow, Paddy Walsh pulled the oars, his broad shoulders leaning back and forth with each steady, strong stroke. The captain's sons, Frankie and Jerome, sat in the stern of the boat; the boys were eager for the chance to be off the schooner and to stretch their legs on beach sand. Paddy had also reckoned that a quick trip to collect springwater would provide Frankie with some relief from his seasickness.
The poor fella had leaned over the rail and retched for most of the past four days
. The boy also suffered a gash in his palm from a trawl hook while he helped the crew bait the lines. Frankie did not cry while Paddy cleaned the wound, but the skipper knew the boy's hand throbbed from the pain.