Newfoundland Stories by Eldon Drodge Page B

the people of his community once a week, month after month, for forty-two years. Over a period of several months he would visit every house in the settlement and would then start over again. He was never rejected. People welcomed him into their homes and were never disappointed. His playing brought a measure of joy into their lives, and his appearance was a welcome break from their lives of toil and hardship. For a few minutes every now and then they were able to forget their own troubles and simply enjoy themselves. Sometimes they sang along to Elijah’s music as he played, or danced with each other around their hot kitchens. Even Aunt Sue, who was stone deaf, somehow felt the rhythm of his playing and tapped her feet to the beat of it. Sometimes they cried. And equally important, by his simple act of love and giving, Elijah himself was again made whole.
    Elijah wasn’t the only one who had difficulty adjusting to life after the war. John was having a great deal of trouble as well. His sufferings, though, unlike Elijah’s, were readily apparent to everyone the moment he arrived back home. People who had known him all his life now had difficulty reconciling themselves to the fact that the walking skeleton they saw was the same brawny young man who had left them fifteen months earlier. His torment and despair were evident in his vacant stare and gaunt appearance. Their greatest shock, however, came from their discovery that he had come home without one of his limbs. His left leg was missing.
    John retired to his parents’ house and to the tiny bedroom at the top of the stairs that had always been his. For several months, he spent most of his waking hours there, reluctantly emerging only to take the meals his mother cajoled him into eating. No amount of coaxing on the part of his parents and others, however, could entice him from his sanctuary for anything else. In his depression, he had become a recluse.
    Like Elijah, the horrific sounds and scenes of the battlefield still haunted him. He had by then, though, been able to compartmentalize them and they no longer overwhelmed him as they did his comrade. The root cause of his continuing despair was the loss of his leg, and that alone. He felt that he was no longer whole. He was incomplete, and the thought of people looking upon him and pitying him, undoubtedly referring to him as “poor John,” was more than he could bear. Shame and humiliation dominated the gamut of emotions that coursed through him. At one point, in his frustration, he took his artificial leg down to the kitchen and dumped it into the wood-box and told his mother to burn it. He would get by on a crutch.
    The anguish he had felt on that dreadful morning after the Battle of the Somme, when the field doctor told him that his leg would have to be amputated lest he die of gangrene poisoning, was infinitely worse than anything he had seen or experienced on the battlefield. Even the passage of time and his long convalescence in the hospital in England did little to ease his torment. He hadn’t wanted to go home. He didn’t want to live.
    His state of depression continued with no end in sight. Luckily, as had been the case with Elijah, a small miracle occurred and John was finally able to begin the long climb out of his despair. John awoke earlier than usual one morning to sunbeams playing on his face. He arose, dressed himself, and went to the window to look out upon the new day, something he rarely did anymore. The early morning glint of sunlight on the calm harbour water gave it an extraordinarily blue hue, and the screeching of gulls and a loon’s mournful call from somewhere in the harbour pleased his ear. Even the discordant barking of a dog couldn’t distract him from the beauty in that moment. His eyes strayed to the land-wash directly below his window, and he watched the small coastal birds that frequented the beach pick at the kelp and seaweed that had been left exposed