(From Chapter Fifteen: “Calming of the Sea”)
Moon, Pushthrough
It was the lighthouse to the left, and the cemetery to the right that greeted them each day out upon the water….
The sky grew as black as coal, black as the deep ocean beneath them, as high winds and rain pelted their backs and faces.
The great Halibut flapped to the waves as the smaller fish they had just caught eerily seemed to swim once more, within the wooden ribs….All sorts of fears raced through Jerry’s mind….Thunder echoed and lightning cracked the dismal sky…the twelve foot swell towered above the dory—cresting taller than any cottage roof he had ever seen! The tremendous wave was about to swamp father and son, head on, in their seventeen- foot dory as the small mast cracked in two. Jerry could not speak even if he wanted to; early on he was instructed not to distract Father in times of trouble upon the water. And then, James Sutton rose up, and stood tall, as heroic as any Soldier of the Sea—his strong sea legs firmly planted in the flat bottomed boat so as not to capsize, and bravely faced the merciless killer wave head on.
…—…
S.O.S.
With what felt like a whetted knife gutting his own stomach, Jerry tapped his last cry for help, his soggy fingers upon the saturated wooden bench seat, and prayed that Father knew, and his angels heard….
Jeff Weaver’s “Schooners in the Ice Field”
www.jeffweaverfineart.com
From Chapter Nineteen: “Drifts of Ice/Frozen Harbor”)
Moon, Pushthrough
Jerry felt trapped like the fish in the nets they pulled in all summer long.
“You’re a Mariner now…” John’s voice seemed to echo in the wind.
Jerry walked down to the wharf every few hours to see if he could help, and climbed up to Dawson’s Point to see if he saw any signs of the returning men across the ice. Standing in one spot, he was able to view over both harbors of Hermitage Bay and Bay D’Espoir. On each side, the ice was so vast: a frozen tundra his world had turned into.
“What a God forsaken place,” he spoke to the wind, and to the spirits of those who passed before him. The wind howled eerily, and the air was so dry, the snow turned to powder, ashes to ashes and dust to dust…
“Feed the Hungry Man!!”
“I’m Hun-gry…!” The wind blew in a deep baritone voice, all the way from Paris…the Champs D’Elysee, and the Argonne Forest—echoing the voices of the British Newfoundland soldiers, starving in the trenches of The Great War. He heard shillings falling into a tin cup, and Jerry realized it was the flag pole’s brass ring rattling against the frozen steel post in the wind. Jerry sighed and wondered what they were going to feed Bos’n, their great sea rescue dog….
Jerry Sutton, as an adult, rowing in the dory upon his return to Pushthrough, circa 1940s
(From Chapter Twenty-Five: “Making Waves”)
Moon, Pushthrough
“If you have ‘push’ and ambition, anyone can make it in this world!”
Jerry knew.
Father knew before him….