She smiled at him. “Was that your first sight of a Red Indian?”
“I saw one in Poole,” Peyton said between strokes. “Before I come over. A little girl. She didn’t look. A thing like that.”
Cassie nodded but didn’t say anything more. Peyton leaned hard on the oars again. Without discussing it they had agreed not to mention the Indian to John Senior. A shared secret, a space cleared just for them. It made him want to kiss her. He looked overhead at the oncoming weather. Where the black banks of cloud met and overlapped there were brilliant red and gold seams of light burning through, the colours as vivid as molten lava.
Years after that first trip to Reilly’s for the haying, Peyton still thought of Cassie’s mother making the mistake of her life. He could still smell the fresh baked bread in Cassie’s lap, heat rising from its centre. Peyton took a slow mouthful of his beer which was piss-warm and tasted just as foul.
Reilly reached into the bucket of river water for another bottle. He said, “You never mentioned that Indian to John Senior, did you?”
The younger man shook his head. “Not a word,” he said.
Reilly nodded. “Is your man Buchan still hunting the coastline for them?”
“He is.” Peyton look up at the Irishman. “What do you give for his chances?”
Reilly said, “He’ll not but lay eyes on them, is my guess. And after what happened the winter, that’ll as likely as not be a blessing.”
“Why did they kill those marines, Joseph?” “There’s no odds in guessing at what that crowd were thinking.”
Peyton pointed with the tip of the bottle he held. “You know, don’t you.”
A look passed across Reilly’s face, as if he’d stepped wrong on a gimpy ankle. They could hear the argument between Richmond and Taylor still going on near the water.
Peyton said, “It was them, wasn’t it? Those two on the beach?”
Reilly sat up straight and put both hands on his thighs.
“And Cull and Hughster.”
The Irishman let out a long breath of air. “They might have had suspicions about some of us. If they recognized anyone, I’d be willing to wager it wasn’t from the most pleasant of circumstances.”
Peyton pointed with the bottle again and was saying, “John Senior —” when Annie Boss came out of the tilt carrying the child and seated herself near the two men. He didn’t finish the thought.
Annie pushed the dress away from her breast and settled her son at the nipple. When she raised her head from the baby, Peyton could see the gold flecks in each iris sparking in the sunlight. She smiled across at him, a close-lipped smile that seemed to him to be an apology of some kind, as if she was embarrassed to be sitting with him, nursing a child. It was an embarrassment they all felt and had no notion how to overcome.
Reilly said, “What do you figure to do, John Peyton?”
“Do with what exactly?”
He gave an elaborate shrug and then looked directly at the younger man. “It must be hard living in that house,” he said. “With the two of them.”
Peyton stared down at his feet and scuffed at the ground. “Where have I got to go?” he said.
The following year Buchan returned to the northeast shore, although he sensed the governor’s will to continue the search fading as the summer progressed. He responded with an intense, desperate hope like a man attempting to save a failing marriage. He sent detailed reports to St. John’s each month, including a list of all camps, trails and artifacts he’d come across and recounting the sightings reported to him by others. Each letter included assurances that the hoped for encounter was not only likely, but inevitable. There is the greatest probability of attaining our goal if we follow up the operation without intermission until the end of August, he wrote. Our continued efforts to bring the natives into civil society, he insisted later in the season, should be considered a national object and our ultimate success will wipe away a certain degree of stigma brought on us by the former barbarity of our countrymen. He wrote, My dear Duckworth.
John Thomas Duckworth’s service as governor of Newfoundland ended in the fall of 1812. The discreet expeditions he had permitted to be undertaken in Red Indian country he considered to be abject failures and he returned to England complaining of headaches so severe he lost peripheral vision in his right eye for hours at a time.
Lieutenant Buchan’s petition to the governor’s successor to continue the work Duckworth initiated on the northeast shore was denied. It would be seven years before he returned to the Bay of Exploits.
Part 2
dwall n also drool, dwoll MED dwale n ‘dazed or unconscious condition’ (c1400-1450); EDD dwal(l) sb 1 ‘light slumber’[…]
28 Dwoll: a state between sleeping and waking….
— Dictionary of Newfoundland English
Other Losses
1817–1818
ONE