Chapter Four
It rained the morning Jack and Angela loaded up the car to catch the ferry in Channel-Port aux Basques. Jack at the wheel, nervous in the fog, watched for the mud brown of the moose’s hide, prone to charging, plowing vehicles of all weights and sizes off the road under the girth of its weight.
He thought of his brother Bill, driving to town with Rose, barely ten minutes out of Brighton when a moose charged past the front of the car, smashing the windshield to bits. Bill had clamped his hand on the horn and driven back to their father’s house, Rose immobile, shattered glass over her face and thighs, her legs trembling with fright. The horn sounded sharper in the panic, neighbours clamouring to get a look out their windows, tired miners just finishing their night shifts hauling curtains closed, angry at the bleating horn.
When they’d pulled in the driveway, Jack had been the first out the door, steadying Rose on his shoulder, shaking and pale, her legs rubbery as a vinegary bone from the shock.
Now on the road to Port aux Basques to catch the ferry, Angela said, “We’re well past dawn, honey,” and offered Jack a can of cola. She knew he was worried about hitting a moose. But she also knew there was little chance of the animals being on the highway at this hour, even during a foggy fall morning.
“We’ll be in Port aux Basques before dusk,” she said.
Besides which, she felt blessed and protected. She had driven to St. John’s when she was pregnant with Katie, and it had been nothing short of a miracle. She’d gone with her mother to shop for baby things. Angela already four months along and fat around the face and hips. They’d spent the night with Angela’s sisters Cynthia and Marie, both bartenders on George Street.
“The apartment will be quiet,” they’d promised since they’d both be working the night shift. It was a loud downtown apartment close to George Street, the thumping bar noise intolerable, horns from traffic, drivers drunk and confused pulling into Water Street backwards, disrupting traffic.
When Angela and her mother had driven to town, a moose had come out of the forest, charging so quickly, Angela was instantly engulfed in its shadow. It came so close she could see its underside, shaggy hairs matted with muck and bits of spring green moss. Its hind muscles were bulky against lithe bone. Suddenly, without prodding, the hulking beast changed course, sparing the lives of Angela, her mother, and the baby.
“An Act of God,” Grandmother McCarthy said and crossed herself repeatedly.
“Moose never, ever change course,” everyone said.
They could have been killed.
Angela thought the moose had sensed the baby’s rapid heartbeat. Compelled by instinct, it had swerved to preserve the young life it sensed. Angela knew nothing about animals, or moose, but that’s what she thought.
So on the day they drove to catch the ferry with Jack brittle and nervous at the wheel, mood as sharp as glass, she worried little, lulled into a sense of grace by the rapid heartbeat in her belly.
“Moose come out at dawn and dusk, don’t they?” Angela asked.
“You’re thinking of mosquitoes,” Jack said sourly.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Angela mumbled and took her eyes off the road to assemble lunches of cheese and sandwiches for the girls.
After lunch they stopped for gas just outside of Stephenville.
“Washroom key’s at the till,” the high-school boy pumping gas said. His beanie was emblazoned with a Quebec Nordiques emblem.
They bought a small brown paper bag filled with penny candy, yellow and orange chewy cones and five-cent sour jelly candy drenched in coarse sugar. The store smelled of flour. There were fillets of dried salt cod, gutted and spread like stingrays, in cardboard boxes next to the till.
“Can I get you some?” the chubby cashier asked and gestured to the cod.
Angela and Jack both shook their heads.
“God only knows the next time we’ll have dried cod,” Angela said.
Jack looked away.
They’d had cod last night at their going-away party. It had never tasted so fresh — buttery soft, chalk white, and saltier than the ocean — it was one of the best meals they’d had in a long time. The party was held at Jack’s parents’. It was a bleak evening, cold and rainy, sparsely attended — not too many left in town to see them off — no music, no grand speeches, awkward and depressing, save for the food.
Angela ran her finger over the edge of the cardboard box with the cod in it. She wanted to take the silvery wet-dog scent of the dried fish with her.
“You sure you don’t want any?” the cashier asked.
Back on the road, the fog had lifted. They cruised through several bay towns and saw lovely homes, all in shades from a springtime palette, almost Easter-egg looking, pass by, homes snug by the shore or at various altitudes against rock cliffs overlooking the ocean.
When they arrived at the ferry, Jack paid for their passage with a small packet of bills he took from his wallet. He had all the money for the trip allotted into envelopes marked for their purposes. This one said FERRY in block letters across the front. He had others marked HOTEL, FOOD, and GAS. His fingers shook nervously as he handed over the money. He’d better have calculated correctly; this was all he had.
As they waited with the queue of cars leaving Newfoundland, Jack stared straight ahead while Angela sang with the girls and played “I spy with my little eye.”
Too much green, he thought, watching the hills in the distance, crowded with balsam fir. Too much blue, he thought and watched the vast ocean swelling before them. Rats leaving a sinking ship, he thought as he drove the car onboard. All of us, scurrying away, in desperate hope for something better.
Once aboard the ferry they went up on deck to let the girls watch the water.
The metallic grey steel and cranberry-red-trimmed ferry hissed in the winter air, icicles hanging off the upper deck and railways like crooked, arthritic fingers. The deep Atlantic churned and spat underneath the motor.
Harried moms, resigned dads, and excited children lounged on deck. They watched the land recede from the heavy boat that crawled across the channel to the mainland.
Angela had gone to the tiny café for snacks. Jack sat slumped on the upper deck, Lily in his lap, Maggie and Kate beside him. They hung over the rail to point at the great granite rock dotted with emerald trees, covered with the filaments of the first snowfall.
Tears drifted down his face and mixed with the salty spray from the ocean, flung up by the stir of the winter wind and the force of the engine underneath him.
Angela returned with bags of salt and vinegar chips. She avoided his eyes and gave him a few moments to stare uninterrupted at the grey block of land, shrunk to the size of a mere pebble — a stone skipped across the ocean — before it was swallowed by sky.
The girls ate their chips quickly, clumps of salt on their fingers, eager to run and play in the open air. Lily drifted off to sleep in Angela’s arms. Angela rummaged through her bag to find one of the leftover sandwiches. She found one and tore off chunks of bread, manoeuvred the sloppy meat and lettuce into her mouth, losing the crust altogether. She was feeding the baby in her belly, which continued to swell like high tide. Strangely saddened by the prospect of this new baby, who would most likely be delivered in Alberta, not in Brighton by Dr. Nelson and his team of enthusiastic student nurses from St. John’s; who would not hear Newfoundland music on a daily basis, or smell the ocean or taste the salt cod and fresh potatoes with drawn butter or eat beet salads and pickled beets, or suck on Purity biscuits or peppermint knobs.
Her little Albertan would eat beef, lots of it, probably, and be raised amongst strangers in a