Authors: Bernadette Calonego
CHAPTER 14
From: [email protected]
Sent: May 2, 2013
Hello Mona,
This is my first report from Stormy Cove, as promised. As I told you two weeks ago on the phone, I found a rental quickly and have made some initial contacts. I haven’t bought a snowmobile yet because the man fixing one up for me is still looking for parts. But he gives me a ride on his if I have to take pictures somewhere. People here really take their time doing things, which I have to get used to. Everyone has been welcoming, though they’re observing me as much as I am them. I expected more mistrust, especially with my camera, but it didn’t happen. The people are proud that Stormy Cove and its residents are going to be documented in a book.
I’m very busy processing my photographs and notes. A few days ago, I visited an elderly dart champion named Elsie Smith. I wanted to get her permission to publish my pictures of her. She told me how she’d met her husband, Garfield. There were no streets here (forty or fifty years ago), and young men would go from village to village, where girls would gather and chat with them. Garfield only had eyes for her, she said, smiling like it was only yesterday.
She invited me to Sunday lunch, which they call
dinner
here. It was Elsie’s birthday. Half her family was there (five out of eleven grown-up children and their children, plus a great-grandchild, because a seventeen-year-old had already had a baby [!]), and I was allowed to take pictures, which was fascinating. You know all about this, but I found it interesting that Sunday dinner always looks the same (potatoes, cabbage, seabirds, chicken, salted pork, peas pudding, carrots/beets/turnips), but NO FISH! There’s no fresh fish right now, I know that, but the sheds are stacked with dried cod. Apparently, fish is considered too ordinary for a Sunday. And to think I pay a fortune in Vancouver for fish even if I buy it right off the boat on Granville Island.
When the food was ready, the men—and only the men—sat down at the table (there wasn’t enough room for the women, too few chairs) to eat first. The women ate on the sofa or the carpet or standing in the kitchen. Even Elsie wasn’t given a place at the table! I asked why, and she explained that, in the old days, the men came home from fishing and had to eat fast and then hurry back to their boats. Women ate later. I said, “But the men aren’t fishing now.” Elsie’s daughter and the girls laughed at me.
“We don’t know any other way,” they said.
Of course, I got some terrific shots.
Nevertheless, I found the family atmosphere very pleasant, with gossip and hugs. It struck me that relatives here hug, but not couples, because any visible evidence of romantic affection by a man is seen as a sign of weakness. (Uncles
do
hug their nieces a lot, which I regard as completely hypocritical!)
One of the topics of conversation was a fisherman’s huge dog that runs around free, scaring kids and mothers and killing chickens, but nobody dares say anything to its owner. The people here avoid conflict at all costs. Because it could be that someday you’ll need that dog owner’s help. I’ve seen the dog, actually, and he really is intimidating. Of course, I’d rather run into him than one of the polar bears (I’ve seen only one, and it was in a net, so I still don’t have that longed-for polar-bear shot).
And this might interest you: Stormy Cove apparently has a skeleton in the closet. Twenty years ago, a fourteen-year-old girl named Jacinta Parsons was murdered. It must have traumatized the people here—nobody wants to talk about it. The killer was never caught. It’s all hush-hush, but one of the locals suspected a member of the team excavating a prehistoric Indian gravesite. Jacinta’s grave is said to be similar to the prehistoric one.
At Elsie Smith’s party, we talked about how far back her family goes and about her Irish ancestors who settled the coast at Stormy Cove. I foolishly pointed out that the settlement surely began more than eight thousand years ago—the nearby grave of the Indian teenager proves it. One of Elsie’s male relatives said, “Better they’d never found that grave.” When I naïvely asked why, he said, “Because it’s only brought us terrible luck.” And somebody else said, “Only a mainlander would stick a body in a grave like that.” It was obviously an allusion to Jacinta. Then a young kid piped up, “Yes, because we fellows would dump the body in the ocean and nobody would find it.” The boy had evidently crossed a line because his dad said, “Shut your mouth!” and the subject was changed immediately.
Something else about the pictures: I’d like to shoot some in black-and-white, because I visualize them better that way. It creates more drama, more emotions in the observer, the effect is—how can I say—more sublime, dignified (I can’t think of a better word right now), but it’s also more revealing. Black-and-white photos are like windows into the soul. What do you think?
The ice in the bay should break up soon, and then fishing will start up. I pray I won’t get seasick.
I’ll send you some photographs soon. The Internet speed in the library leaves much to be desired, but my home phone should be in next week and a proper Internet connection too. That will make things easier. I’ll let you know my number.
All the best,
Lori
The librarian looked transformed. No longer the gray bookworm. It took a while for Lori to figure out what it was. Her hairdo. Gone was the flat, helmetlike haircut that so many Stormy Cove women had, and a bold creation with feathered ends strutted in its place.
“I like your new hairstyle,” Lori said. “It looks good on you.”
Aurelia beamed.
“I was visiting my sister in Corner Brook, and she talked me into it. It’s the first time I’ve been to a different hairdresser.”
“Where do you normally go?” Lori inquired, secretly happy she’d been able to snap Aurelia in her earlier, unchanged state. She’d looked frumpy but somehow more authentic.
“To Patty’s Haircuts. Everybody gets their hair cut by Meaney.”
“You can tell,” Lori blurted out.
Aurelia didn’t take offense.
“What can you do? She’s the only show in town. I can’t drive six hours to the hairdresser’s all the time.”
Aurelia felt free to talk since Lori was the only other person in the library, which resembled a gymnasium. The only other people Lori had seen so far were a couple of schoolboys surfing the Internet. When she came during school hours, it was just Aurelia. Many of the books she leafed through had never been taken out.
Lori put her hand on the back of her neck, where her hair was longer. She’d probably have no alternative but to drive down to Corner Brook. Or . . . or let her hair grow like the mermaid’s. The idea was less upsetting than usual.
Aurelia looked at the books she was sorting. “Any new leads on Marguerite?”
Lori smiled. “You’ve no doubt heard about our bad luck on the Isle of Demons?”
Aurelia nodded, her eyes still lowered.
“Things like that happened a lot to Noah. He was a daredevil as a young man. Archie always had to get him out of a jam.”
“Looks like nothing’s changed. Archie really did save us.”
Lori looked out the window. Although a snowstorm was predicted for that afternoon, there was no sign of it yet.
“What’s there to see on the Isle of Demons?”
“I think some ruined houses. They must have collapsed completely by now.”
“Is there any fresh water?”
“Yes, otherwise Marguerite wouldn’t have survived.”
“Have they ever found anything on the island that might be connected to her?”
“Not that I know of . . . and there was nothing in the book I gave you, eh?”
Aurelia sat down and resumed work on her rug. She was obviously setting in for a long chat, but Lori was anxious to get home before the storm hit. She had one final question.
“If it’s true that her lover and maid died there, and maybe a child, then there must be graves somewhere.”
“Graves? I can’t imagine you could find something like that after all this time. I’ve never heard a word about them.”
It flashed through Lori’s mind that the word “grave” was far from an innocuous word in Stormy Cove. It would always evoke Jacinta Parsons’s violent death.
She put on her beret.
“I guess I won’t be catching another ride out to the Isle of Demons anytime soon.”
“Perhaps you should try someone else next time,” Aurelia offered as she pulled a green thread through the canvas mesh.
The librarian’s voice was friendly, as always. But as Lori got to her car in the first flutter of snowflakes, she felt uneasy.
Was Aurelia trying to warn her about Noah? He didn’t come across as a daredevil. Weren’t a lot of men risk takers when they were young? She had been too—selling her little house, giving up her job, moving to Germany with Volker. That time it was her mother who got her out of a jam.
Nevertheless, the thought gnawed at her:
What kind of jams had Archie gotten Noah out of?
The storm did not materialize that day or the next. She waited anxiously to see water replace the sheet of ice on the bay.
Lori decided to go back to Birch Tree Lodge for the weekend in order to get some distance on Stormy Cove and its residents. One in particular. She also wanted to drive to Corner Brook to stock up on olive oil, garlic, butter, German crispbread, and Gouda cheese—things she couldn’t find in Stormy Cove.
The day before she planned to leave, a telephone company workman put in the phone line and Internet connection. Lori felt like a desert nomad who’d just gotten running water. She called her mother out of pure joy.
Lisa Finning was not in her office. Her secretary informed Lori that she was tied up with a trial for the whole week. Lori left her new number and said it was nothing urgent.
She held on to the receiver, deciding whether to call her friend Danielle, who was at her parents’ in France and hard to reach, or Andrew—but she’d need to wait until it was evening in Germany.
Then, a sudden inspiration. She took a business card out of her desk drawer and dialed the number. A man’s voice answered at once.
“Hello?”
“Is this Lloyd Weston, the archaeologist?”
“Yes, this is Lloyd. How can I help you?”
“Hi, Lloyd, this is Lori Finning, the photographer from Vancouver. We met at a B and B in Deer Lake. You gave me your card.”
His voice perked up.
“Lori. Yes, of course I remember! How’s it going up in the northern wilds?”
“I’m settling in slowly. Folks here are very friendly.”
“Yes, aren’t they? It’s a completely different world up there.”
“You can say that again. But it’s exactly what I’m looking for.”
“Are you calling to find out when I can take you to our new excavation site? I’m drawing up a work schedule right now. I’ve got to organize and supervise thirty people. A logistical challenge, I can tell you. But you and I could go up there ahead of the others.”
“I’m
very
interested. I read your report on the first grave and found it really amazing.”
“You’ve piqued my curiosity. What in particular did you think was amazing?”
Lori didn’t have to think twice.
“That the Indians made such a lavish grave for a boy or girl more than seventy-five hundred years ago . . . and that nobody actually knows why even today. And that there seem to be so few of these burial mounds around here, that it’s so very exceptional for the Indians in the region.”
“Maybe there
are
more, but my common sense tells me that if there were, we’d have discovered some by now.”
Lori sensed that Weston was eager to talk about his work, so she was encouraged to keep picking his brain.
“What do you think . . . I mean, how do you see the reason for this unusual burial—was it a hunting accident, and the Indians were trying to appease the gods? Or was it a human sacrifice? Did the tribe kill the teenager all together, in some sort of ritual?”
A sigh at the other end.
“If we only knew. As an archaeologist, I try to avoid speculation. What we do know is that it would have taken a number of families to build such a grave, considering their primitive means. Just imagine: They probably dug that trench in the sand with caribou antlers. Then they hauled up twenty-five-pound stones from a stream bed, three hundred pieces of rock, that’s an enormous job—just a sec, there’s a call on the other line.”
She heard a beep and he was gone. Suddenly she remembered the whistle carved from bird bone that was found in the grave. The article said it could still produce sounds even after seven thousand years! Some things in this world truly were virtually imperishable.
Weston’s voice interrupted her train of thought. “Sorry, things are crazy around here. Where was I?”
“I asked if it could have been a human sacrifice.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But it’s irrelevant. What I mean to say is, those people led an incredibly hard life: hunting caribou in early winter, then fish and birds and seals and walrus in the summer. It was a constant struggle for survival—and they nevertheless put valuable time and energy into an elaborate burial ritual. That’s the crucial point.”
He’s not answering my question,
Lori thought, so she pushed it.
“I was just thinking it would be interesting to know because of that murder case, Jacinta Parsons. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
There was a slight pause before Weston replied.
“Heard of it? God, the whole business was a nightmare, for the girl’s family, sure, but for our team too, because the cops suspected practically every one of us.”
“I’ve been told that Jacinta’s grave was similar to the Indian one.”
“Look, the cops never disclosed how they formed that hypothesis. And they never said what exactly was found in the victim’s grave—the so-called grave attributes. Officially, they said that since only the killer could know those details, they wouldn’t be made public. Though there’s one case we know—” He stopped. “Why are you interested in all this?”