Newfoundland Stories (7 page)

He walked. From morning to night, day after day, that was all he did. At first the people of the community were puzzled by the sight of this young man tramping for endless hours around the settlement and the surrounding countryside, seemingly lost within himself. But they soon grasped the undeniable reality that, as Uncle Ezra Porter put it, Elijah was shell-shocked. That realization, however, did not distract from their affection and respect for the young man, for had not the boy been prepared to make the supreme sacrifice on their behalf, to ensure their freedom and their way of life? To them, no matter what his condition, he was a war hero, and he was now theirs to look after and care for as best they could.

Elijah did not usually awake to begin his long periods of walking until late in the morning, quite often noon or even later. It was not laziness, but simply the heavy artillery and the blood and gore that would not permit him to sleep, and invariably, night after night, slumber would not come until daybreak. Then, sleep was fitful, and he generally awoke drained and almost too tired to face another day.

He walked for three years. Then his plight worsened when his mother, with whom he had lived since returning home, died. Oddly, it was this sad occurrence that set in motion the curious sequence of events that would finally set Elijah on the road to restoration and the achievement of a degree of happiness that had hitherto seemed impossible. A family relative, while searching through the drawers of a dresser looking for a suitable garment in which to bury his mother, had unearthed a dilapidated old fiddle and presented it to Elijah. The sight of the battered instrument stirred long-buried images in his mind. When he handled the fiddle, it felt comfortable and familiar in his hands.

Suddenly, despite the loss of his mother, a sense of purpose crept back into Elijah's life. He started working on the fiddle, trying to restore it to some semblance of working order. For hours on end he cleaned, rubbed, and polished until he was finally satisfied with its appearance. Then he set about trying to tune it. Vague memories of his father showing him how to do this as a young boy and teaching him how to play simple ditties strengthened in his mind as he worked. He tweaked and manipulated the fiddle's tuning pegs, and gradually the sound he was searching for emerged from the old instrument. In the process, the musical talent long dormant bubbled to the surface.

“Elijah's got his father's ear, that's for sure,” Uncle Ezra would often say. “And there was never anyone better.”

During the ensuing weeks and months, Elijah practised and experimented, mastering every song he put his mind to, until eventually, he had a repertoire of jigs, reels, hymns, and ballads, along with a number of his own compositions, to make any musician proud. When he played, he was as one with the fiddle. He would close his eyes and breathe deeply as he lived the music and the moment with every fibre of his being.

His walks became shorter and fewer.

And then he started something completely out of character. He began to appear at houses around the settlement, bringing his fiddle with him and playing his music for the people who lived there. His first appearances were tentative, and the recipients of his visits were surprised, if not shocked, to see him. But when he began to play, they knew they were being treated to something special, something wonderful which was being offered to them by this war-weary young man.

He developed a routine from which he rarely varied. He would show up in the evening, usually after supper dishes had been cleaned and put away. He did not want to impose himself on anyone for a meal; he simply came to play. He rarely spoke other than to say hello. Placing his scruffy green felt hat on the chair and sitting on it, he would make a few tentative strokes of his bow across the strings to make sure the instrument was in tune, and then launch into an hour's worth of playing. His impromptu kitchen concerts, given once a week, were never identical although the format was consistent. He would usually begin with a familiar hymn or two, or a ballad, followed by a long interlocking sequence of jigs and reels in which the transition from one song to the next was so masterful and transparent that everything blended wonderfully into a single uninterrupted medley. Then, the fiddle would become a violin and his last two or three offerings would be plaintive and haunting, and so poignant they invariably brought tears to the eyes of his listeners. Finally, standing and beating his rumpled hat back into shape, he would take his leave. Sometimes, he would accept the cup of tea and the biscuit or two he was usually offered before he left.

Elijah played his music for the people of his community once a week, month after month, for forty-two years. Over a period of several months he would visit every house in the settlement and would then start over again. He was never rejected. People welcomed him into their homes and were never disappointed. His playing brought a measure of joy into their lives, and his appearance was a welcome break from their lives of toil and hardship. For a few minutes every now and then they were able to forget their own troubles and simply enjoy themselves. Sometimes they sang along to Elijah's music as he played, or danced with each other around their hot kitchens. Even Aunt Sue, who was stone deaf, somehow felt the rhythm of his playing and tapped her feet to the beat of it. Sometimes they cried. And equally important, by his simple act of love and giving, Elijah himself was again made whole.

Elijah wasn't the only one who had difficulty adjusting to life after the war. John was having a great deal of trouble as well. His sufferings, though, unlike Elijah's, were readily apparent to everyone the moment he arrived back home. People who had known him all his life now had difficulty reconciling themselves to the fact that the walking skeleton they saw was the same brawny young man who had left them fifteen months earlier. His torment and despair were evident in his vacant stare and gaunt appearance. Their greatest shock, however, came from their discovery that he had come home without one of his limbs. His left leg was missing.

John retired to his parents' house and to the tiny bedroom at the top of the stairs that had always been his. For several months, he spent most of his waking hours there, reluctantly emerging only to take the meals his mother cajoled him into eating. No amount of coaxing on the part of his parents and others, however, could entice him from his sanctuary for anything else. In his depression, he had become a recluse.

Like Elijah, the horrific sounds and scenes of the battlefield still haunted him. He had by then, though, been able to compartmentalize them and they no longer overwhelmed him as they did his comrade. The root cause of his continuing despair was the loss of his leg, and that alone. He felt that he was no longer whole. He was incomplete, and the thought of people looking upon him and pitying him, undoubtedly referring to him as “poor John,” was more than he could bear. Shame and humiliation dominated the gamut of emotions that coursed through him. At one point, in his frustration, he took his artificial leg down to the kitchen and dumped it into the wood-box and told his mother to burn it. He would get by on a crutch.

The anguish he had felt on that dreadful morning after the Battle of the Somme, when the field doctor told him that his leg would have to be amputated lest he die of gangrene poisoning, was infinitely worse than anything he had seen or experienced on the battlefield. Even the passage of time and his long convalescence in the hospital in England did little to ease his torment. He hadn't wanted to go home. He didn't want to live.

His state of depression continued with no end in sight. Luckily, as had been the case with Elijah, a small miracle occurred and John was finally able to begin the long climb out of his despair. John awoke earlier than usual one morning to sunbeams playing on his face. He arose, dressed himself, and went to the window to look out upon the new day, something he rarely did anymore. The early morning glint of sunlight on the calm harbour water gave it an extraordinarily blue hue, and the screeching of gulls and a loon's mournful call from somewhere in the harbour pleased his ear. Even the discordant barking of a dog couldn't distract him from the beauty in that moment. His eyes strayed to the land-wash directly below his window, and he watched the small coastal birds that frequented the beach pick at the kelp and seaweed that had been left exposed by the low tide. Occasionally, preying gulls swooped down at them, and they were forced to dart away or be devoured. Invariably, undeterred from their purpose, they returned mere seconds later. The warrior in John recognized the tenacity of these tiny creatures, and he suddenly felt different than he had in a long, long time.

He remained at the window, drinking in the scene as if seeing it for the first time, until his mother tapped on his door to tell him that his breakfast was ready. In that brief space of time he had come to the decision that he was finally ready to get on with the rest of his life, come what may. Furthermore, he was going to work. He was going to be a fisherman. He went down to the kitchen and retrieved his artificial leg from the wood-box and strapped it on. For the first time, the sight of it did not revolt him or cause him pain.

He told nobody about his plans, but when he finally came out of his room and ventured out into the settlement, his parents, friends, and relatives rejoiced in the fact that he was at last on the road to recovery. Over the next two weeks he acquired a small boat and enough fishing gear to make a start, and when he had done so, he rowed out through the narrows one misty morning to the fishing grounds that lay beyond, telling no one where he was going. He stayed out there all that day, and when he returned, fifteen codfish lay on the floorboards of his boat. Not much of a yield for a full day's work, but it was a start. Spent and sore from rowing after his long period of inactivity, he was satisfied that things would get better.

The ensuing weeks saw him on the fishing grounds every morning except Sunday, holding his own and gradually regaining the strength and stamina that had slipped away. Foul weather did not deter him. He watched what the other fishermen of the settlement did and if any of them ventured out in less than ideal conditions, he did too, and in that way learned how to gauge the weather and the tides for himself and to make his own decisions.

Everything went smoothly until he got caught in an unexpected summer squall and was forced to make a dash for shore. The moment the tempest erupted he grasped the gravity of his situation and immediately began to row toward the nearest point of land, his jib sail being of no use to him because the wind was blowing offshore directly toward him. The fury of the sudden storm intensified as he rowed, and he made little or no headway against the force of the wind. He feared being capsized or blown out to sea. He strove doggedly on until he was on the verge of utter collapse, and then he felt the miraculous crunch of gravel beneath the keel of his boat. He had come ashore almost three miles south of his intended port and had to wait there until the squall abated and he recovered enough strength to row home.

He was shaken by the experience, and for the first time was forced to acknowledge his vulnerability out there alone on the open water. While he was quite capable of rowing out to the fishing grounds and back home again in normal weather conditions, or even rough water, he realized that his one leg was not enough to enable him to balance his body properly for the extra leverage and power that was needed to see him safely home in conditions similar to what he had just experienced. He concluded that he needed a partner.

As he pondered the idea, he thought that it might also be nice to have someone in the boat with whom he could share the long lonely hours – someone he could tolerate for long periods of time and who could put up with him in return. He knew who he wanted, one of his old war buddies.

Cecil was his man. Even though he and Cecil hadn't seen much of each other since returning home, he knew enough from their war experiences to assure himself that Cecil was someone he could rely on and trust in any situation.

When he broached the matter with him, however, Cecil laughed and thought he was joking. “It must be bad enough with one cripple in the boat,” he scoffed. “Why would you want another?”

Cecil's story was similar to John's. He, too, had come home an amputee, without his right leg. He also had the additional misfortune of losing his right arm in the war as well. Like John, he had become depressed and had withdrawn from all aspects of life in the community.

“I don't care, you're coming out with me tomorrow,” John persisted, and Cecil, despite his protestations, found himself perched on the front thwart of the boat the next morning, propelled there by the sheer force of John's will. Cecil, there against his wishes, refused to participate in that day's fishing in any way and did not speak even once during the entire time. He wanted to put a firm end to the whole business before it advanced much further. John, however, was at his door again early the following morning and the scene of the previous day was replayed in its entirety: John insisting and Cecil resisting. In the end, however, Cecil found himself once again in John's boat. When John returned the third morning, he found Cecil waiting outside for him, sitting on his wooden lunch bucket with a set of oilskins slung across his shoulder.

Thus was born a partnership that would last for almost forty years. The people of the settlement would never cease to marvel at the sight of these two men, an amputee and a double amputee, clumping their way to their boat in the early morning hours and returning several hours later to clean and store their catch before once again clumping back to their homes for the night. Together, with only two legs and three arms between them, they braved the cold sea every morning in all weathers, and managed a degree of success. Cecil built up enormous strength in his one arm and provided the power and leverage, as well as the companionship, that John had sought. The two were shining examples for others in the community, who, when faced with hardships and adversity of their own, had only to think of John and Cecil, and their own problems would often seem minuscule in comparison.