Chain Locker (38 page)

“Emily, dear, your father is beat out from being on the water all day,” Ada said calmly. “They'll be out there again by daylight, after this mauzy weather clears away.”

“But time is running out, Mama. We need to go back out for Henry now, before it's too late.”

“Emily, I believe your mother is right,” Basil interjected. “You must respect your father's heroic efforts today, but he shouldn't face the ocean again without some rest. I recommend that everybody get a good night's sleep and then consider the situation in the morning, calmly and clearly.”

“That's all very well for you, Basil, sitting here in a comfortable kitchen, but put yourself in Henry's place—out on the ice, cold, lonely, in pain. Where is your sense of charity?”

“Emily, my dear,” he replied in a soothing voice, “it is not a question of charity; if I could snap my fingers and have him delivered here to this room I would. But the facts do not support our best hopes. I suspect your friend is no longer suffering and you need not—”

“Basil, what are you saying?” she replied in a shocked whisper.

“Only that the time has come to face the truth,” he continued. “How can any man survive after what he has gone through?”

Jim opened his mouth to say something when Jackie's cold voice cut through the rhetoric with the precision of a scalpel. “You cowardly bastard!” he said, locking his rigid gaze on Basil until the appalled minister was forced to look down. Ada's cup struck the edge of the table on its way to the floor, sending tea and broken china everywhere. “You don't know Henry. He's alive and I'm gonna get 'im.”

“So am I!” Emily announced. “You'll come, won't you, Wints?” casting him a look that said, “Because I jumped in and fished you out of the water and the time has come to pay me back.”

Wints could not mistake the look. She had not mentioned the swimming incident from that day to this, but he had never forgotten his own desperation and how heroic she had been. Emily was desperate now. Only one answer would do. “For sure!” he replied, as Ada threw him an incredulous stare that said, “You should know better!”

Her father tapped the barometer on the wall and declared, “If that's the case, then we'll need two punts again. The glass is risin' which means it'll cool off and the fog might soon clear up, and if we're lucky there might be a decent moon and a few stars to see by. It's worth a try. Who else can we get, Wints? Art and Harold were all in and they're probably gone to bed by now. How about Ches Rideout and his boys?”

“I'll dart over and talk to them while you figure out the navigation,” said Wints, twisting himself to get up from his chair.

“Oh, Wints, I—” Emily blurted.

“No, I'm goin'. We'll find him.”

“Gentlemen, I strongly urge you to reconsider. This is extremely risky,” Basil implored, but by now nobody was paying him any heed.

In the commotion he quietly put on his boots, grabbed his coat off the rack, and was almost out the door when Ada touched his shoulder, her face pale, her voice shaking. “Reverend Hudson, there was never such language ever spoke in this house before this night; I never heard the like of it before in all my days. 'Tis bad enough saying such words to an ordinary person, but to the minister! Bless my soul; my poor mother must be turning in her grave!”

“That's quite all right, Ada,” Basil replied quietly. “It's a time of very high emotion. I must go now.”

Ada implored, “Well, at least put your coat back on…oh, is that you Sade?”

“I was just comin' over to see if there was any news.”

“My dear, you never heard such oaths to come out of a youngster as that young fella just spoke to the minister. You never heard the like!”

“Oh my, what did he say?”

“I won't be repeatin' it. Reverend Hudson is terrible upset and so he should be.”

“Well, you're coming into my house right now and I'll make you some tea, Reverend.”

“Really, Sadie, thank you but I—”

“I won't take no for an answer. Come on, now…”

Taking him by the arm she firmly led him towards her back door. Basil, taken aback by such un-Sadie-like behaviour, followed meekly. She sat him down and put the tea on.

“Don't be downcast, Reverend,” she said. “Everybody's upset and worried and hoping for some good news, and there's none, I suppose.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Basil.

“You been praying for poor Henry all day, have you? At home, all by yourself with nobody to take care of you, or up to the hospital visiting. It must be terrible lonely. You need to get yourself a wife. The way you devote yourself to the people around here, you're just running yourself ragged, sure. The minister needs somebody to talk to, too, you know. You can't just look out for other people and their problems,” she said as she fussed with the dishes. “Now you take that young Gennie. It's nice of you to keep her company, she with no family here and all. She's a bit sharp-tongued, I'll admit, and she might not be what you'd call beautiful, but she's not afraid of work and I think she would make a good wife. She loves youngsters.” Then she added in a lower voice, “It's too bad she got TB, though.”

She glanced at Basil and down at the stove, as if realizing that she wasn't making much of a case. “But there's other, heartier young women on the go, and I'm sure any of them would make you a good wife. Come over here, now, and sit by the stove, where it's warm. The tea will be boiling in a minute.”

Good Lord, he thought, do I appear so lonely that she feels the need to match me up with Gennie?

“How did Jim and them do?” she asked. “Nothing, I suppose?”

“No. They're going out again.”

“Well, I guess they got to keep trying. Maybe things will look more hopeful tomorrow.”

“If you can believe it, they're going back out tonight! I tried to talk them out of it but there's no reasoning with them.”

“Who? Jim? Going back out tonight? Sure, he must be all in after such a long day. Who's going with him?”

“Emily—”

“Emily!”

“And Wints.”

“Wints?” She gasped. “I don't know how he'll manage with his bad leg.”

“I notice he has a slight limp.”

“A stray bullet grazed his knee last spring at the ice, and it's still not a hundred percent. He was never too fussy about sealing but that's the end of it for him, now. Well, he knows what he's doing, I suppose. But I don't know about poor Emily. Sure, she don't know what to be doin' with herself, she's in such a way over Henry. I suppose you can't blame her for wanting to go out with them.”

Basil felt a twinge inside. “Do you think she's putting herself in danger?”

“Well, for a young maid, she's a good hand on the water; her father taught her good. But she's not very big. You might have noticed.”

“What do you think are the chances for this young man's survival?”

“If we all pray enough, I'm sure God will deliver him,” she replied dutifully.

“Do you believe in your heart that he's alive?”

She stopped. “I must say, I don't know, Reverend. I hope so.”

Basil looked into her concerned, motherly eyes. She was a kindly soul who venerated him and loved to address him as Reverend, as though every time she did so, a little trickle of grace dripped down like oil anointing her from on high. It was obvious to him that she wanted nothing but good things for him. Perhaps he could talk to her.

“Sadie, may I tell you something?”

“Of course, Reverend,” she replied, looking expectantly into his eyes.

“Sadie, the fact is that I have feelings for Emily, too.”

“I'm sure you do.” She smiled her approval. “She must be a wonderful help at the church, taking care of the Sunday school and playing the organ so beautifully. Her grandmother taught her when she was little. Ada don't have the music in her like Emily do.”

He hesitated. He wanted desperately to unburden his heart to somebody supportive. “What I mean is that my feelings are beyond just what I would feel for a helper and…”

Sadie nodded slowly, her expression changing.

“And frankly, I, I have some conflict over the current turn of events.”

She changed her position on the chair. “You do? What kind of conflict?”

“With my feelings for Emily, I'm unsure how I would like things to turn out. Do you understand what I mean?”

She glanced down and started to fidget with the hem of her apron.

“Perhaps I'm not explaining myself very well. You see, I, well, that is—”

“Reverend, it almost sounds like you're saying you don't want them to find Henry,” she said quietly, “but I know that can't be what you mean.”

He looked at the floor and rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. What's the point? he thought. How can this woman ever understand my anguish over Emily, that she's driving me to think such awful thoughts? Looking back up into her sad eyes, he replied, “Of course not, Sadie, really. I just want everything to turn out well for Emily.”

A look of relief crossed Sadie's face like a lamp entering a room and she snatched the opportunity to end this disturbing exchange. “I know you want the best for everybody, Reverend,” she replied, as she rewarded him with a huge slice of cake. And, patting his hand gently, she continued, “You really should find a wife. Maybe Gennie will get better. I think what she needs is a good dose of Owbridge's Lung Tonic. That's what they used to take for TB in my day—because the TB is in your lungs, you see. My grandmother swore by it…took it right up to the day she died.”

chapter forty-three

When Wints poked his head inside the Rideout kitchen, his simple, “We need a hand with the searchin'. Can you fellas come out tonight?” was met with an equally concise, “Okay, we'll pack a lunch and be down in a couple o' minutes.”

In less than an hour they were pushing the two punts through the tickle to the open water and were underway. Wearing long johns, a worsted sweater and a long oilskin coat with a sou'wester on her head, Emily looked like she was heading for the Grand Banks. With her skinny-woppers gripping the ice as she pushed the punt, she was already contributing to the effort; the boat carried only crew.

Jim placed the compass box firmly on the thwart and removed the wooden cover. “Okay, let's get ourselves squared away, here. About four points to starboard, Wints.” Wints swung the boat with the sculling oar. “Good. Ches,” he yelled to the other boat, “all you fellas gotta do is stay off our starboard beam and just keep us in sight. Okay, Wints, let's get goin'.”

The wind strengthened from the northeast and the temperature continued to fall, refreezing everything that the warm day had thawed. Emily had to hold herself to keep from sliding off the icy seat. Since their departure, Jackie had been standing and looking back at the land, facing Wints, who stood like a boatman of Venice working the long sculling oar at the stern. He had to keep looking around Jackie to see where he was going.

“If there's one person who can find Henry,” said Wints, “we got that one aboard. Jim Osmond can smell his way around Notre Dame Bay with his eyes closed. He's—”

“We're goin' the wrong way!” Jackie cut him off.

“What?” Wints exclaimed. “How can we be goin' the wrong way when there's only one way to go? Out!”

“I memorized the shape of the hills from what Henry told me. We need to be farther that way before we head out,” he said, pointing with his left hand to the north.

Nobody argued with him. Jim nodded and Wints turned the boat to starboard and the other boat did the same, now travelling parallel to the land and heading out the bay. “How much further in this direction?” Jim asked, as the boats squeezed between two floes, almost touching one another.

“I suppose I'll know when we get there,” was Jackie's snippy reply.

Jim and Wints glanced at one another as if to say, “Lippy kid! Needs his arse kicked.”

Away from the comfort and safety of her home, Emily was experiencing the desolation, the immensity of the sea and the night, and their insignificance in comparison. She remembered happier times on her father's schooner, standing alongside him at the wheel, the huge sails reaching above them to the sky. How different from this sixteen-foot punt with only their own energy to move them along. The enormity of the task was overwhelming and she was beginning to regret her impulsive reaction to Jackie's childish pronouncement. And how she had coerced poor Wints! It was unfair; there was no comparison between what she had done and what she was now asking of him. She regretted the words the instant she spoke them but she knew that Wints would never back down once he had said yes.

She needed to talk to shake this negative thinking. “Daddy, do you remember the year you took me to Labrador as the cook on the
William and Emily
?”

“I sure do. The grub was good that summer. It went downhill after you went in to St. John's, though.”

“This evening reminds me of that trip. Remember all the ice we ran into when we got north of Belle Isle?”

“That was a bad year for ice. It turned out to be a half-decent trip though. We did another one after you left that year, as I recall.”

Turning her attention to Jackie, she asked, “Whatever possessed you to stow away on a sealing ship?”

He kept standing with his back to her, facing the land. “I dunno. Something to do, I guess.”

“I guess it wasn't such a good idea, huh?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Don't call me ma'am, please. That's what we call old ladies.”

“Sorry, uh, miss.”

“That's what my pupils call me. Feel free to call me Emily—or if you don't like that, you can call me Miss Osmond.”