Newfoundland Stories (8 page)

In 1968, fifty years after the Great War, the community decided that they wanted to honour their three war heroes while there was still time, for few veterans of World War I were still living. In other settlements all around Newfoundland soldiers had returned home after the war to try to resume their normal lives. Some came back so maimed and disfigured physically or emotionally they couldn't cope, and lived out their days in pain and misery. Others could never surmount the horrors they had known at Beaumont Hamel and were never again the same men they once were. Still others, however, were able, somehow, to put the war behind them and get on with their occupations and the raising of their families. Elijah, John, and Cecil could be counted in this group. In the fullness of time, these three young men, each in his own unique way, transcended their tragic circumstances and enriched their community and the lives of the people in it and touched the hearts and souls of generations.

It was a cold frosty evening in mid-February when John and Cecil, along with Elijah, all three of them now old and frail, sat in the front of the building that served as the settlement's meeting hall, feeling slightly ill at ease as they looked at the expectant faces staring back at them. The four generations comprising the settlement's population were present, and every person there, from the oldest to the very youngest, knew the stories of the men they were paying homage to; love and respect for the three heroes were evident in the faces of everyone in attendance.

Elijah took the proceedings in stride, as did John and Cecil. The thunder still sometimes roared in his head, but it no longer overwhelmed him and he was able to push it aside and focus on other aspects of living. John's missing leg still ached as if it were there and he was often known to say, “I allow I'm the only man in the world that ever had arthritis in a wooden leg.” Cecil, too, at times felt aches and pains in limbs that no longer existed.

The indomitable spirit that had guided their footsteps that morning in 1915 when they set off to war still breathed in each of them as strongly as ever. Individually they had been, and still were, inspirational models of courage and perseverance. Together they soared. And their community knew it.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This fictional account of Elijah, John, and Cecil was inspired during a visit my wife and I made to a small community in Notre Dame Bay where we were invited into the home of a gentleman resident. While there, we were shown an artificial leg, proudly preserved as a family treasure, which had been worn by the man's father who had served in World War I, and we were told the war veteran's story.

Having lost a leg and having suffered other serious injuries during the Battle of the Somme, the soldier had eventually returned home, overcome his tragic circumstances, married and raised a large family, and lived out a productive life as a fisherman and respected member of his community.

Upon reflection, both my wife and I realized that this soldier's story was similar to those repeated in communities all over Newfoundland, for of the 801 soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Somme only 69 had been left physically unscathed. All of the others had either been wounded, many of them very seriously, or killed in action on the battlefield.

THE LIGHT IN
THE GARDEN

E
ven though it wasn't Sunday and he wasn't supposed to be there, Ned was curled up on the settee in the front parlour reading his dog-eared copy of Zane Grey's
Riders of the Purple Sage
for at least the fifth time. As a twelve-year-old, he had many chores he was expected to do each day. Having completed them for now, he had quietly crept into the room reserved for the Sabbath and other special occasions to pursue his favourite pastime, a rare opportunity during weekdays. He was starting chapter two when his mother, Ruth, called from the kitchen.

“Ned,” she said, “I want you to take this drop of soup over to Aunt Alice for me.”

“Oh, no,” he groaned. If he had known that was coming he would have tried to be somewhere else, Zane Grey or not. He hated having to go over to that place. It was so gloomy and depressing that he always came back feeling gloomy and depressed himself.

“Make sure you walk around the long way,” his mother added, “so you won't spill any of it climbing over the fences. And remember to bring back the pot.”

It hadn't always been so solemn over at Aunt Alice and Uncle Simon's house. In fact, not long ago, Ned had loved going over there because it was so bright and cheerful. His aunt and uncle always made a fuss over him, and there was always a glass of syrup and a piece of cake or a few sweet biscuits to be had. To him it was like most other houses in the small community, a place where people laughed, carried on, and cared about each other. A place that made you feel welcome.

But no longer. He now went only when he was forced to – like now. Aunt Alice was sure to be there; she never left the house these days, but she was nothing like her old self. Usually when he went in now, Ned would find her crying and muttering about things that didn't make a whole lot of sense. Uncle Simon, on the other hand, was hardly ever home. He was usually up in the woods or roaming somewhere around the harbour. Ned had a feeling that Uncle Simon felt a lot like he did.

It had all started a little more than a year ago, around the middle of May, when Uncle Simon came over one morning to tell Jake, Ned's father, and Ruth about his experience the previous night.

“A funny thing happened,” he told them. “I went out around the corner of the house to empty my bladder before I went to bed, like I always do, when I happened to glance up in the potato garden – and there was this light.

“It was the strangest thing,” he continued. “It wasn't very big or very bright and it never moved around or flickered. I must have watched it for an hour or more and then it disappeared, just like that. I was watching it so long that Alice came out to see if anything was wrong with me, and she saw it too.”

That was all. Jake and Ruth talked a little bit about it later, but neither of them really gave it much thought until Uncle Simon came back the next morning to repeat the same story – the light had been there again.

“Tell you what, Simon,” Jake told him. “If you see it again tonight, let me know, and I'll come and have a look at it too.”

Sure enough, that night, an hour or so after nightfall, Uncle Simon tapped on their door and poked his head in to tell them that the light was there again.

“Ned,” Jake told his son, “stay here with your mother. I won't be gone long.”

Ned protested, “I'm coming too.”

Surprisingly, for once, Ruth came down on Ned's side. “I'm sure it will be all right, Jake. There's nothing to harm him.”

Ned smiled to himself. Obviously, she wanted to go herself. His father wasn't pleased to be challenged, but after he and Ned's mother argued for a few minutes, they agreed that they would all go over to see what this light was all about.

And there it was, just as Uncle Simon said. It was hard to say for sure how close it was or how far away. It could have been just a few feet or it could have been all the way up to the top of the garden, perhaps even farther – there was just no way of telling. Ned and his parents watched it until it disappeared, just like Uncle Simon said it had the night before. They waited a little while longer to see if it would reappear. When it didn't, they all went home. When he was upstairs in bed later that night, Ned could still hear his mother and father talking about it down in the kitchen. He felt oddly disconcerted.

The light was there again the next night and the night after that. By that time Aunt Alice was convinced that it was a token.

“It's Harold, I'm sure of it,” she insisted. “There's something wrong and he's trying to let us know.”

Harold was their only son. Uncle Simon and Aunt Alice had three other children, all daughters, but they were all married and had by then moved out on their own. Harold and a boy named Tom Peddle from across the harbour, along with two other young men from the other side of the bay, had all left together several months earlier to go to St. John's to sign up for the war. Aunt Alice and Uncle Simon hadn't heard anything about Harold for a long while until one day they received a letter from him letting them know that he was over in France. The envelope also contained money from his soldier's pay. Aunt Alice never spent it. She just put it away in her bureau to give back to him when he came home again after the war.

Night after night for a full week the light reappeared for an hour or so, and then disappeared, just like clockwork. The two families looked for it every night. After a while they began to wish that it would just go away. It was starting to play on their nerves. Sometimes Ned got the cold shivers and felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck when he saw it, and instinctively stayed as close as possible to his parents' sides. When he went to bed afterwards, he sometimes asked his father to stay with him until he went to sleep.

By that time Aunt Alice had herself worked into a state of anxiety. She was sure Harold was dead, that that was what the light was trying to tell them. She cried and moaned for hours on end and nothing Ned's mother and father, Uncle Simon, or anyone else could say to her could comfort her or get her to stop. It finally got so bad that Ned's father said he was going to do something about it.

“I'm going to go up there the next time to see for myself what that light really is,” he vowed. “This has gone on long enough.”

Ned's mother didn't want him to go.

“I don't care,” he insisted. “I can't stand this every night. And if someone doesn't do something about it, Alice will soon be off her head.”

So the next night, while the rest of them waited, Ned's father went up in the darkness, crawling on his hands and knees most of the way. Even though the others couldn't see him, they could hear him grunting and panting as he made his way over the hard ground. They were all on pins and needles. The minutes seemed like hours. Then suddenly they heard a loud guffaw and then Jake clumping his way back, laughing as he came.

“Here's your token, Alice,” he said, and passed her a piece of broken glass. “Every night,” he explained, “when the moon is in a certain position in the sky, its light reflects off that piece of glass, which just happens to be in such a position that it can only be seen from your house and nowhere else.

“Then,” he continued, “when the moon moves farther along in the sky and gets too far out of position to reflect on the glass anymore, the light just disappears. It's as simple as that.”

That made a lot of sense, or so it seemed to Ned, because they could never see it from their own house even though it was only a short distance away.

“Thank God!” said Aunt Alice, “I'm some glad that's over. I was some worried.”

After that they forgot all about it. Then, a few weeks later, the mail came and Silas Spurrell, the man who operated the mail-ferry, came directly over to Uncle Simon and Aunt Alice's house with a letter. Aunt Alice knew what it was even before she opened it because of the black border around the envelope. The letter was from the War Office, notifying her that Harold had been killed in action and was now buried in a small village in France with a number of other Newfoundland soldiers who had fallen in battle with him.

The news of Harold's death shocked them all, especially Aunt Alice. She was devastated. She withdrew into herself and resisted all efforts to be comforted or consoled. Before this tragedy she had always visited the home of Ruth and Jake at least once a day, usually on the pretext of borrowing or returning something but really with the intention of having a cup of tea and a chat. Now she never left her own house. Concerned, Ruth dropped over to see her every now and then, but all Aunt Alice did was rock in her chair and cry, and Ruth could rarely get a sensible word out of her.

A day or so after they'd learned of Harold's death, Ruth, Jake, and Ned were sitting around the supper table when Ruth suddenly stopped what she was saying in mid-sentence.

“What date was Harold killed?” she asked.

“July first,” Jake replied. “I think that's what it said in the letter.”

“That's what I thought,” Ruth said. “You know,” she continued after a slight pause, “I believe that was the first night the light appeared up in Simon's potato garden, wasn't it? Oh well, just a coincidence, I suppose.”

They had all nodded uneasily.

Now, even though the light and Harold's death had occurred a year earlier, it seemed to Ned that they had happened only yesterday.

After he delivered the soup and returned to pick up where he'd left off in
Riders of the Purple Sage,
he felt strangely out of sorts. A sense of loneliness and uneasiness gripped him.

“How is Aunt Alice today?” his mother asked.

“All right, I suppose,” Ned answered. “She's over there now, knitting socks and cuffs for Harold. She says he'll need them, with the cold weather coming on, because those he took with him must be full of holes by now.”

“The poor old soul,” his mother murmured. “And did you remember to bring back my pot?”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

In most communities throughout Newfoundland, superstition and belief in the supernatural have traditionally been part of the community fabric. Ghost stories from years gone by still abound and are still being told today. Many of them are horrible and chilling, yet are sworn to be the gospel truth. Tokens, in particular, played a significant part in people's lives. Often appearing in the form of mysterious and unexplained lights, these tokens were generally accepted as harbingers of death or catastrophe. The fictional story “The Light in the Garden” is rooted in this belief.