Thunder from the Sea (11 page)

Enoch and Fiona came into the kitchen and looked in astonishment at the six creatures. Two of the mummers began speaking to each other in high-pitched jannie talk.

“Nowwho'sdatscraggyladmedear?” one sang out.

“‘E'sdaonedatamoswantstowarnboutdedog,” another mummer answered in a chirping voice.

“What are they sayin'?” Tom was bewildered.

“I've no idea,” Fiona answered.

“And what has this to do with Christmas?”

“Not a thing that I can see,” Enoch whispered.

The mummer with the golden crown didn't say a word. But another mummer, who wore a stringy mop as a wig, danced a jig and sang, “We're here, my dears, to entertain you!” Tom couldn't tell if it was a man or woman—it wore a patchwork skirt topped with a man's shirt and a yellow-and-black necktie on backward. Its feet
were huge, and as the creature danced, Tom could see red-striped stockings that went up to its knees. “Let me introduce myself,” the stranger said with a bow. My name is Pickle Herring. And I am the Mischief Maker.”

The jannie with the horse's head said in an echoing voice, “I am the Horsy-hops!” He pulled a string and the horse's mouth opened and shut with a knocking sound. Tom could see nails for the horse's teeth.

The Horsy-hops pointed to the stranger with the crown. “This here's the Fool. And your dog knows this to be true.”

The Fool nodded.

Thunder stood by the parlor door and watched, his head tilted quizzically.

Pickle Herring and Fool? What could that mean? Tom glanced at Fiona and Enoch, who were laughing and shaking their heads.

A mummer played a harmonica through a hole in his yellow papier-mâché mask. The Fool stood by silently while the other mummers danced and stomped their feet on the linoleum floor. Pickle Herring pulled Fiona by the hand
and she, in turn, pulled Enoch. All eight danced in a circle. “Come on, Tom,” said Fiona. “These circle dances stand for the different cycles of life.” But Tom shook his head. He didn't feel at ease joining in with these strange creatures.

When they stopped, a jannie with a lunker—a yellow oilskin hat—and a beard of pine needles glued to his pillowslip mask, croaked, “Now it's time for you to give us a grog or some of that duff pudding I spy on the table.”

“Why, certainly,” said Fiona, scooping pudding into dishes while Enoch filled mugs with hot cider. The mummers sat on the floor by Thunder and gobbled up their treats through the mouth holes in their masks. Never once did they lift their masks.

Thunder sniffed at the strange costumes and the jannies spoke to him in their squeaky jannie talk. “Whadafine'ncleverbeastiewe'ave'ere.”

“An'eblongsright'erewiddatbye.”

“Now, this here dog is the reason for our visit,” Pickle Herring finally said. He took the crown from the Fool and placed it on the dog's head. “I hereby crown you the King of Dogdom,”
he proclaimed. Thunder cocked his head and the crown slipped over one ear.

Everyone laughed.

“You are the finest animal on this great island of Newfoundland. And this here's the greatest fool,” Pickle Herring said, pointing to the silent mummer.

Surprisingly, the Fool turned to Tom and spoke in a guttural whisper. “Now hear to my warnin', me boy. Don't risk your dog by bringin' him to Chance-Along. Keep him here at Back o' the Moon. There's peril waitin' across the bay.”

The odd group then got up, went to the door, bowed, waved good-bye with their hats, and left.

“Who were they?” Fiona asked. “I couldn't tell.”

“One of them reminded me of someone, but I can't put my finger on it,” Enoch said. “They must have come across from Chance-Along. The ice is strong enough now.”

“They came to pay homage to Thunder,” Fiona said, “the King of Dogdom!”

“No,” Tom said. “They came to warn me … and Thunder. There's some sort of danger waitin' for us in Chance-Along.”

Fiona and Enoch looked at each other, then Fiona said, “It's too bad their visit had to end with the Fool's warning.”

“Don't worry about it, Tom,” Enoch said, after thinking about it for a moment. “After all, the message came from ‘the Fool.' You can't rely on anything a fool tells you.”

But when Tom went to bed that night, even the soothing, familiar
ticktock
beneath his pillow couldn't drown out the Fool's throaty warning:
There's peril waitin across the bay
.

d
uring January, blizzards drove the snow in drifts so high that the windows were completely covered. Enoch and Tom shoveled and threw ashes onto the slippery walkways. Fiona stayed in the house, except for the times she went to see Margaret for a granny visit. Then Tom or Enoch went with her to help her walk on the icy paths. Everything seemed to be going well with Fiona and her baby.

Thunder's gunshot wound had healed nicely too, so he was let outside to play. Thunder loved to burrow his nose in the clean snow. Then he'd roll around in it like a puppy.

“We need more firewood,” Enoch said one morning. “We've used more than I expected, and the pile in the woodshed is gettin' low.
Come on, Thunder. It's time to put you to work!”

Thunder stood quietly, though, as Tom hitched the harness tackle to the slide—a sled that had wide runners, like skis, to enable it to slip easily across the snow. Enoch tied a piece of canvas to a make-shift wooden mast that was hitched to the slide by a bracket. “The canvas acts like a sail and will lighten Thunder's load on the way back,” he explained to Tom.

It was a sunny day with a bright blue sky and glittering snow. Tom and Enoch wore heavy woolen jackets, hats, gloves, and masks to protect themselves from the cold. “Thunder will have enough to carry on the return,” Enoch said, so neither of them climbed aboard the slide but walked alongside.

Thunder jogged merrily on the harbor ice, sniffing the breeze and looking back now and then to make sure Tom and Enoch were catching up.

“He's as happy as a clam in a mudflat to be outside again,” Tom said.

Once they approached Eastern Head, they could see beyond the ice to the sapphire blue ocean with its white spray of breaking waves. The
woods in back of Eastern Head were loaded with trees, whereas the shoreline near their home only had small, scrubby saplings, so each fall Enoch came out to Eastern Head to cut timber. Now he and Tom would take the rest of the wood that had been harvested and piled last year, but they would leave this year's stock of timber to dry for next winter's fires.

Thunder waited patiently as Tom and Enoch filled the slide with logs, set the sail, and headed back to the house. Thunder tugged at the slide. Once the sail filled with wind he trotted at a good clip with Enoch and Tom pacing alongside.

It was a pretty sight—Thunder's black form against the sparkling white snow, and the sail billowing above the sled. The only sounds were the flapping of the sail and swish of the runners on the snowy surface.

“Thunder's doing really well,” Enoch called out. “We'll take him across to Chance-Along for supplies in a few days. Should only take an hour or so to get there if we head toward Dr. Sullivan's place. That's the nearest jut-out from the mainland.”

Tom stopped. Go to Chance-Along? After the
mummer's Fool had given him that warning? Perhaps he'd say he was sick and stay home with Fiona. Still, Thunder would have to go, and that's who the warning was intended for in the first place.
Keep your dog at Back o' the Moon
.

Enoch looked over his shoulder. “You all right, Tom?” he called.

Tom ran to catch up. Should he tell Enoch his fears? Enoch and Fiona had told him not to pay a bit of attention to what the Fool had said. But still …

When they returned home, Tom unhitched Thunder from the slide. Thunder pawed at the kitchen door to be let in. Fiona opened the door. “Come in, my dear sweet thing,” she said to the dog. “You've had a long haul.” Thunder licked her hand as he scampered into the kitchen. Fiona bent down with some difficulty and wiped the wet paw prints from the linoleum with a dish rag.

“Fiona,” Enoch said, frowning. “That dog should stay outside. He's trackin' mud and water all over the house. You could fall on that slippery floor.”

“Very well,” Fiona said. She fetched Thunder's
rug and took it out to the porch. “Come, Thunder. You can stay out here from now on.” Thunder trudged out and plunked himself down on the rug. He looked up at Fiona sadly, but when she appeared with his food bowls, he stood up eagerly, his tail wagging like a flag in the wind.

Enoch and Tom put half the wood in the woodshed and stacked the rest near the back door. “I swear that dog is spoiled since he was shot,” Enoch said. “He's used to bein' pampered in the house. Now he expects it, see?”

“But it's been shockin' cold outside,” Tom objected. “And he was hurt pretty bad.”

“Aye, but now he's well. Dogs like Thunder don't mind the cold. In fact, they love it. They're born to it—with an extra coat of fur next to their skin, like underwear!” Enoch chuckled. “They curl their tails up over their heads and stay as warm as toast.”

Tom didn't answer. At least when Thunder was inside Tom knew no harm could come to him. As long as Thunder was at Back o' the Moon, there was no real danger. The peril, whatever it was, was waiting over at Chance-Along. Tom made up his mind. He'd go with Enoch to the
mainland, but he wouldn't let Thunder out of his sight, not for a single moment.

Early one morning a few days later, Enoch hitched Thunder up to the slide. Then he and Tom headed out across frozen Rumble Reach, toward ChanceAlong. Thunder seemed to enjoy the hike, walking briskly towing the empty slide. At times Tom and Enoch had to run to catch up with him.

They headed for the jut of land where Dr. Sullivan lived. “It's over to the east more,” Enoch called, pointing. “Not directly opposite our house.”

Tom squinted against the sun, but couldn't make out the distant shore distinctly. “If I had to go alone, I'd have no idea where I was heading,” he told Enoch.

“You aim for that small cliff—the one that looks like a hat of woods—you know, a head with a thicket of trees for the hair. Dr. Sullivan's is a little to the right of that bluff.”

Tom squinted and nodded. “Aye, that's a good marker,” he said.

When they were more than halfway across the
bay, Tom could see the tall red-and-white harbor markers—the ones that warned ships of shoals—frozen solid in the ice. “Let's stop here and rest,” Enoch suggested. “It won't be much farther to the other side now.”

Thunder sat down, his tongue sticking out from the side of his mouth. The drool that always slipped down his chest had frozen into icicles on his white streak. “Here, let me get rid of those conkerbills,” Tom said, brushing them off.

Enoch examined Thunder's paws. “He's picked up some ice. That can hurt, even bleed.” Thunder yelped while Enoch pulled gently at the lumps of ice that had wedged between the dog's paw pads.

“In the spring, around March and April, when the ice becomes slush, you can't cross the bay,” Enoch said. “It's too dangerous. The currents shift beneath the ice and could leave you stranded, or you could fall through and drown.”

Tom shuddered at the thought of drifting out to sea on an ice pan. “I'd rather go hungry, or eat fish guts, before I'd cross in the spring.”

They continued on their trek to the mainland,
and soon the small cliff became close and clear. “There's Dr. Sullivan's!” Tom called. “I can see it now.” The windows in the large, sand-colored house on the hill reflected the sun. Smoke from the chimney curled through the trees. Thunder barked and began to race toward land. Soon they were pulling the slide up onto the shore.

Enoch plunked himself down on one of the boulders that lined the waterfront. Evidence of the tidal wave was everywhere. The remains of Dr. Sullivan's wharves stuck up at odd angles from beneath the snow. Broken trees reached up like bony fingers to the sky, their limbs gone. “By the great codfish! It's a blessin' that Dr. Sullivan built his house up on that hillside,” Enoch said. “It was spared from the wave.”

Tom sat on a log. “I have an idea,” he said suddenly. “Why don't you go on ahead to Chance-Along with the slide and I'll wait here with Thunder. That will give 'im a rest.”

At that moment Dr. Sullivan came out of his house and walked down to the shore. “Lo and behold you! Tom! Enoch! How's that wife of yours doin'?”

“She's as fit as a fiddle,” Enoch answered. “Say,
Doc, do you mind if we leave our dog here while we go into town with the slide?”

“That'll be fine,” Dr. Sullivan said. He went to Thunder and let the dog sniff his hands. “I heard how he knew the earthquake was about to happen and saved folks from the tidal wave.” Dr. Sullivan sat down by Tom. “Animals have another sense, I swear. They can feel and smell danger long before it comes.”

“He's a right clever dog,” Enoch acknowledged. “He can pull a sledful of lumber, so we're goin' to try him out with supplies today.”

The doctor picked up one of Thunder's paws. “He's got a few deep scratches from the trip over here. I'll put somethin' on them,” he said. He looked up at Enoch. “Say, is it true that Amos shot this dog?”

“Amos thought the dog had gone mad, attackin' his children and other such nonsense. He should've known better,” Enoch told him.

“That man's right sorry, let me tell. He's always talkin' about how this dog saved his family. He's feelin' pretty bad about all that's happened since,” Dr. Sullivan said.

“What else is he sorry about?” Tom asked.

“Oh, didn't you hear? When you first got the dog, Amos was inquirin' everywhere to find who the owner might be. Well, just before Christmas he got a telegram from Gloucester, down in the States. Seems a ship's captain by the name o' Fowler lost him overboard during that August squall. He's offerin' a reward.”