Lucky's Walk To The Great Whale

Lucky’s first breath was given to him by the kind chestnut horse he was named for. The first of his souls was having a grand time whooshing round the other earth, the one with less water. The second waited by the horse for the right moment. His father’s souls and his mother’s souls willed the breath of life through the horse; the bodies of Jean-Paul Christmas and Catherine Annie Christmas were crushed and flung too far from the carriage for any miracle to save them. The horse also toppled but didn’t land in the ditch. Snow stuck on the horse's eyelashes, yet his warm sweating body and strongly beating equine heart brought the beautifully swaddled baby back to life.

Yes! Thought Lucky, I’m a lucky man. He strode down the middle of the road with the summer sun on his bare back. His gait accentuated his muscular body. He rubbed his hand across his red skinned chest. The children playing in the street stopped to say hello to him as he made his way to his fine Lunenburg Bump house. The finest in the street he thought. The finest wife too in Gertrude Christmas-Marshall, Marshall for his loving adoptive family who found him in the snow and brought him to their Nova Scotian homestead. He ran his hand along the panelling of his hallway. The smell of cedar, beeswax and heat was like a faithful dog greeting him. His actual faithful dog, a Golden Lab, was torn between greeting Lucky and a lamb neck given to him by Elsa, the eldest girl. The dog, Schatzi, tore herself away, wagging her tail with such a sterling beat the plumbing played a tune which could have passed for Good King Wenceslas, had it been yuletide. Lucky installed most of the plumbing. Wide gleaming brass and copper pipes chugged water and heat around his house, a mod con extraordinaire. Schatzi lay down in front of the small sauna Lucky built at the end of the hall by the kitchen and cuddled up with her bone.

“Bonjour,” said Illona, Gertrude’s best pupil at pastry. She took off her apron and put on her bonnet. “Bonjour,” Lucky replied.

“Bonjour,” said Barbara, imitating. Lizbet and Inga were struggling to carry a bucket of fish from the scullery through the corner lot, looking like a pair of drunks. Lucky followed them and he and Inga set to work hanging the fish out on the washing line.

Seed wings blew across the fence, carrying notes from the Old World. Their gazes on an invisible conductor, Mr Macgregor and his son Mackie sat on their deck playing country tunes on the melodeon and violin. Mr Macgregor’s dour disposition belied his ability to make music which moved the soul. Lucky smiled at the miserable song.

Mamma let go o’ me Daddy’s hand—

Her master exiled from the Faitherland.

Mamma was promised the fish in the sea,

Now she’s tilling boulders;

In servitude they hold us.

Lucky sat on the staircase and waited with the door open. He dressed in a loose embroidered waistcoat for the employment Gertrude had organised, fixing brass goods. He’d worked for the man before, a serious looking man named Jim who dressed as if he were a cowhand. Gertrude had come out to the hall.

“A grand day,” she said to Lucky. She scrunched and twisted her hanky. “Not long he be!” They waited in uncharacteristic silence for over an hour. Gertrude disappearing now and then, talking to a delivery boy about the end of tickets and the last train. Schatzi stretched first and sniffed the air. Lucky got up from his step at the sound of the tinkling bell and clopping hooves. Finally Jim had arrived. The cart looked like new thought Lucky. Cream and orange lettering spelled out Cook&Son. Lucky ran his eyes over the cart piled high with scrap, copper, brass and household appliances topped off with a trumpet. Gertrude was already outside, talking to Jim. She must have come through the porch door. Lucky took a seat next to Jim and they set off.

How glorious to have gainful employment, thought Lucky, as he strode down the middle of the road, the late summer air sweet in his nostrils. He walked with a hand on his hide pouch, heavy with coins. He turned the handle of his front door.

“Let go Percy!” The little voices got louder as he stepped in. Schatzi, and the middle children, Peter, Inga, and Lizbet were herding thirteen kittens.

“Impossible,” said Lucky laughing, knowing anything was possible. The kittens climbed curtains and swung from pinafores. Lucky went into the cool of the back of the house, a covered porch. Gertrude was smoking thick cigars with two black skinned men.

…“de cold...I wan’ de warm like this,” said the man Lucky knew as Moses. The other man smiled at the thought of it, although Sierra Leone was a lot further than Jackson. Moses sat back and exhaled a soft ring of smoke. Gertrude leaned with her hand over the ashtray on the side table, smoothing the lace doily underneath with one finger.

“Salut,” said Moses. The other man nodded his greeting. Smoke swirled through the aspidistra plants. Gertrude remembered her manners.

“Lucky,” she said motioning across to the love seat, “Augustine.”

“Hallo,” said Augustine, reaching his hand over a pile of the men’s hockey paraphernalia. Lucky joined them.

“Hallo,” said Lucky. He took off his hide pouch and passed it to Gertrude. She squeezed his hand with her fat warm fingers.

A lucky man indeed was Lucky. He strode down the middle of the road with the early autumn breeze in his long jet black hair.

“Guten Abend!” Lucky greeted his wife with a kiss and patted the heads of the nearest children.

“Good day to you too,” smiled Gertrude. “My cousin has been up north working at the canneries, you just missed him,” she said, smoothing down her skirts. “He caught the early train.”

Lucky pointed to a big stack of cans and smiled.

“It’s a new invention in cans,” said Gertrude. She picked one up with both hands. “Here we are my love; we just put them on the stove and et voila!”

“Fantastisch!” Lucky said, then spun a feather around his finger and tucked it in little Raban’s ear.

Gertrude passed Lucky the hot cans to open with his pocketknife, he passed them down to his children once cooled enough for the younger ones.

“Gertrude, I must meet this cousin of yours,” said Lucky, as the good smells wafted up his nostrils. “A fine fellow he must be.”

He moved the hot can to his lap, on which he had a tea towel. His youngest girl Bobby’s eyes widened as she took a spoonful. He had doled out all the cans now and took his first forkful. Gold dust flecks shimmered around the cans. Lucky’s carrots tasted not of gold, for gold tasted like any metal but instead tasted of sunshine and of fish, chips and mushy peas and everyone in the room basked in the glow from across the hallway and the lovely feeling in their stomachs.

Lucky felt glad of his warm hide clothes as he strode down the middle of the road toward the wharf. The chilled winter air nipped his chiselled cheekbones. The mist a cloud around him.

“Harrumph.”

Lucky started.

He turned, the fog rolled away. He saw two girls on the doorstep of a bawdy house. A white skinned girl, and a yellow skinned girl, who looked on anxiously.

“Hac...a wee drop of this will take the devil away, so it will,” she said. Lucky heard her Irish accent as she looked after her companion. A small wave of fear passed through the yellow skinned girl and settled in her eyes. The white skinned girl opened a bottle of Murphy’s Cough Syrup. She poured a generous amount into a perfume bottle—she didn’t have a spoon Lucky supposed. The rest she poured down her throat, stopping to administer some to her yellow skinned friend. The girls postured as Lucky passed.

“Good morning,” said Lucky.

“Hurr..like some...” The white skinned girl coughed some more. “Compan...hac hurr.”

“No thank you. I don’t have a cough,” said Lucky.

Gertrude can’t have heard Lucky come in the room as she sat in her velvet cloak and replaced a layer of the coconut husk fabric in the chest, then put bed linen on top. She picked up the golden jewelled cup off the floor beside her. A broad smile made her cap wrinkle. She polished the splendiferous treasure with the hem of her outer skirt and put it in the velvet bag Lucky had embroidered with hand colored porcupine needles. Lucky was pleased his wife was smiling even when alone in private. Gertrude told him some time ago the supply of fripperies and finaries she produced to sell in times of need were part of an allowance from her first husband. He was a tall, genial, moustachioed, top hatted man called Tomasz. Lucky had met Tomasz on several of his visits to his children with Gertrude. He knew him to be a music hall theatre producer.

”Must be quite a show!” Lucky had said.

Now she noticed him, Gertrude turned and beamed brightly at Lucky.

“I will take de train to Halifax. The children will enjoy it,” she said.

HALIFAX WRECKED

Awful scene of desolation following the explosion.

The rumble could be heard from 186 kilometres away.

Lucky cursed...pushed his hair off the paper. Tears fell on the headline. The obituary pages wrinkled and stuck together.

Lucky dressed in his black feathered headdress, painted his body black and white, put his best knife in his pouch, and lay down in the hallway of his empty house. He felt the floorboards against his skin. He rubbed a pebble with his thumb, then a small piece of bark and laid them next to him. The decorative glass above the front door made a pattern of blue light, moving across his body, face, then hands. He thought about his house, the house he loved! The family he loved! The spirits of the trees and nature, all of life and everyone he loved.

He made a decision.

Lucky strapped a basket to his back. He put on his favourite pair of moccasins which he had converted to boots with full beading. He walked for quite some time in the salty air. He came to a beach with an old wooden jetty. A tall black skinned woman and her family were busy collecting washed up planks of wood, mostly siding. A boy tied up cream and orange planks in a bundle with some scavenged rope. Lucky stood for a moment and stared. Another boy and two girls picked washed up debris, examining, discarding, putting it in their pockets. A man dragged a loose canvas up the jetty. Unhelpfully the wind blew up. The black skinned woman walked toward Lucky. Her skin shone despite the burdens upon it, the length of her leg showing where her skirts were tied up to her hip.

“Please,” she looked directly at Lucky with her dark brown eyes. “I buy dem basket.”

“No, for you,” said Lucky, undoing the strap. The woman pushed a small purple bag into his hands anyway. She went back; her walk lighter. Lucky opened the drawstring bag, He looked inside and examined a coin he hadn’t seen before with a king on it.

Yes. Lucky knew, as he cut through the sea grasses, onto the coastal path. The sea air tugged at his back and whispered to wrinkles. By the gate sat a man in his middle years. The giveaway mat at his holey boots did not appear to have anything left to giveaway.

“Hello,” said Lucky. The gulls were the only reply. The man drew on his pipe. He stared at Lucky. His top lip curled. The air smelt metallic.

“I would like to buy some tobacco,” said Lucky. A murmuration of starlings circled. The man flared his nostrils and exhaled twice. Lucky opened the purple bag and gave the man the coin with the king on it. The man turned it with the tips of his long stained fingers. He set it down in front of him on the mat, his lip curled again. Lucky saw his breath in the cold. The starlings pulsated then flew away. Lucky took off his fully decorated boots and put them neatly on the mat. The man gave up his pipe and tobacco. Lucky walked through the gate, up and over a slight hill, inhaling deeply.

Yes. Lucky knew, as he walked into the sea.