He stepped outside to relieve himself a final time before he went to his own bunk, pissing into a snowbank at the edge of the trees. He said, “ Take note, take note, O world, To be direct and honest is not safe.” Where was that from again? He lifted his head to stare up at the sky as he shook himself. Stars winking through the moving branches of trees like flankers rising from a distant fire. He was drunker than he realized. He raised his head a notch higher and fell over backwards into the snow, his cock still in his hand.
The morning John Senior and the officer left for White Bay, Cassie pulled a pair of John Senior’s leather trousers on beneath her skirt, turning the cuffs up at the bottom for length, and buttoned a sheepskin waistcoat over her bodice. She closed the animals up in their shed with a week’s supply of hay and packed herself a bag with provision enough for two days’ travel. It was late November and there had been a steady week of snow. She followed the shoreline towards the headwaters of the river until she was in sight of Peter’s Arm. Joseph Reilly’s trapping tilt was at least five miles more up the Exploits from what she had gathered listening to the men talk among themselves. She decided to make her way to the river through the woods so as not to pass through Ship Cove.
Cassie started into the forest bearing southeast and the large Indian rackets she wore sank a foot into the loose powder with every step forward, coming away with a weight of snow like a shovel. It was heavy work and out of the wind the day was surprisingly warm. She removed her gloves and opened the heavy overcoat to the air and then unbuttoned the waistcoat as well.
Before dark she tramped a piece of ground firm and took off the rackets and sat on her overcoat against a tree. She had no clear notion of how much further a walk was ahead of her. Her right leg ached. She ate a cold meal of blood sausage and bread and closed her eyes long enough to feel the weather begin to steal into her body.
When she pushed herself up to start moving again the pain in her leg throbbed in time to her pulse. It seemed strangely appropriate to feel her heart swelling the hurt that way.
It was a clear night and the constellations watched her through the branches of the trees as she travelled and where she came upon a clearing she stopped to take her bearings by the stars. When she came out of the woods it was near dawn. The River Exploits still ran open but there were runners of ice along the banks. Cassie took off the Indian rackets and strapped them to her pack and headed south, keeping as close to the shoreline as she could, watching all the while for signs of Reilly’s traplines or his shelter or rising smoke.
His tilt was built in the bush on the north side of a narrow stretch of river. His dog caught sight or sound of her as she approached and Reilly and his wife came out of the tiny shack to see what had raised the barking. Reilly carried a rifle, thinking it might be a wolf or a bear. Annie Boss was wiping her dark hands in the skirt of her rough calico dress. She whistled for the dog and kicked awkwardly at his shoulders when he refused to quiet down.
Reilly walked down to meet her and shook her hand. Cassie had not until that moment considered what she would say to these people and stood with her mouth open while Reilly smiled at her. He was sure she came with news but was in no rush to hear it.
“Come up,” he said, “the kettle is on. We haven’t had this much company in all my days on the river.”
“Company?” she said.
“Sure the Thames doesn’t see as much traffic in a week,” he said and motioned up the clearing towards the tilt.
Cassie looked up to where he pointed. John Peyton stood in the tiny doorway in his shirtsleeves, watching her come up the bank.
Annie Boss was born and baptized on Cape Breton Island but she’d moved with her parents to Newfoundland at such a young age that she thought of no other place as home. When she was a child, her family spent winters in the country near White Bay where her father and brother trapped marten, beaver and fox, and each spring they migrated down to St. George’s Bay on the west coast for the summer. Her mother was born the seventh of seven daughters, a puowin, with a rare gift for healing. Annie accompanied her when she was called to deliver a child or nurse an injury or comfort the dying. She inherited her mother’s knowledge of roots and herbs and the position of a child’s head in the womb that distinguished a boy from a girl in the same unconscious and predictable way she had taken on her gestures, her habit of hiding her eyes with her hand when she laughed, the way she rubbed the length of her thighs while considering a thorny medical problem.