Fit Month for Dying by M.T. Dohaney Page B

northeasters. The fences surrounding the rocky meadows that climb the hills behind the houses have fallen in upon themselves, and the lanes are gullied and rutted from spring runoff. A heartbreaking sight, especially since I know that most of the occupants of these houses had no choice but to leave.
    And I know not only why the people left, but also where they were headed when they pulled out of the village. As I walk along, I wonder about the ones who left and whether anyone who has been weaned on salt air and sea can ever be happy in the tar sands of Alberta, in a factory in Toronto, in the timber woods of British Columbia. And I wonder if at night these expatriates from the Cove long to hear the roar of an angry tide battering the side of a cliff? Or the blatting of a foghorn. Or the scrape of a dory being hauled up over beach rocks. I wonder, too, whether the weight of their loneliness will one day become too heavy to endure, and then, like the whale that couldn’t support its own weight on land, they will return once again to the sea looking for it to bear them up.
    Verses from a song composed by a mother whose son had to leave the Cove for the tar sands of Alberta come to mind, and I hum as I walk along.
    Are you ever lonely, Neddie,
    For the life that you once had,
    Walking on the beach rocks
    And fishing with your dad?
    And are you ever angry
    That they led you to believe
    There’d be work right here for all of you,
    No one would have to leave?
    Despite all the signs of decline in the village, I notice a comforting sameness. Spruce trees still cover the back hills, even if they are a little more scraggly and wind-whipped than I remember. The pond is still there, holding the separate parts of the village together although its landwash has changed. No longer is it edged with purple flagroots. Years ago, the Americans dug these up to replant them on their army base, eight miles away; surrounded by asphalt and dry ground, they parched to death. And the strip of narrow beach is still there, as always appearing inadequate for the task of keeping such an expanse of ocean at bay.
    When I left Philomena’s house to go walking through the village, it hadn’t been my intention to go to the beach, but after only a few minutes, I find myself veering in the direction of the shortcut over the cliff. The path is so overgrown, I tell myself as I push aside young birches, spruce saplings and skinny poplars, that I might as well be blazing a new trail, that I would have been better off taking the road. I recall what Grandmother used to say to me about taking shortcuts: “The longest way round is the shortest way home.” She would say this as if I were supposed to understand what she meant. However, as I push through the underbrush and feel the sting of young junipers snapping back at me, I understand that the shortest way is not necessarily the easiest way. I regret not having taken the road to the lighthouse, from where I could have doubled back across the long stretch of rocky beach.
    The struggle through the underbrush makes me recall a trip I took with a friend to Cape St. Francis a few weeks earlier. It was her mother’s birthplace, and although the tiny, isolated community no longer exists, she wanted to see for herself the nooks and crannies her mother had so often spoken about. The road that led down to the shore was rutted and potholed and so leached out from running water that rocks as sharp as axe blades jutted up every few feet, gouging the tires on the car. And its undercarriage also took a walloping from the road’s raised centre. At the end of the day the car was in such bad shape we were barely able to hobble it back to St. John’s. For the next several days, especially after she received the repair bill, my friend questioned the folly of that journey.
    Now I, too, question the folly of this journey that takes me over the cliff to the beach. The undergrowth is so dense, so snarled and