Free Newfoundland Stories by Eldon Drodge Page A

Simon, or anyone else could say to her could comfort her or get her to stop. It finally got so bad that Ned’s father said he was going to do something about it.
    â€œI’m going to go up there the next time to see for myself what that light really is,” he vowed. “This has gone on long enough.”
    Ned’s mother didn’t want him to go.
    â€œI don’t care,” he insisted. “I can’t stand this every night. And if someone doesn’t do something about it, Alice will soon be off her head.”
    So the next night, while the rest of them waited, Ned’s father went up in the darkness, crawling on his hands and knees most of the way. Even though the others couldn’t see him, they could hear him grunting and panting as he made his way over the hard ground. They were all on pins and needles. The minutes seemed like hours. Then suddenly they heard a loud guffaw and then Jake clumping his way back, laughing as he came.
    â€œHere’s your token, Alice,” he said, and passed her a piece of broken glass. “Every night,” he explained, “when the moon is in a certain position in the sky, its light reflects off that piece of glass, which just happens to be in such a position that it can only be seen from your house and nowhere else.
    â€œThen,” he continued, “when the moon moves farther along in the sky and gets too far out of position to reflect on the glass anymore, the light just disappears. It’s as simple as that.”
    That made a lot of sense, or so it seemed to Ned, because they could never see it from their own house even though it was only a short distance away.
    â€œThank God!” said Aunt Alice, “I’m some glad that’s over. I was some worried.”
    After that they forgot all about it. Then, a few weeks later, the mail came and Silas Spurrell, the man who operated the mail-ferry, came directly over to Uncle Simon and Aunt Alice’s house with a letter. Aunt Alice knew what it was even before she opened it because of the black border around the envelope. The letter was from the War Office, notifying her that Harold had been killed in action and was now buried in a small village in France with a number of other Newfoundland soldiers who had fallen in battle with him.
    The news of Harold’s death shocked them all, especially Aunt Alice. She was devastated. She withdrew into herself and resisted all efforts to be comforted or consoled. Before this tragedy she had always visited the home of Ruth and Jake at least once a day, usually on the pretext of borrowing or returning something but really with the intention of having a cup of tea and a chat. Now she never left her own house. Concerned, Ruth dropped over to see her every now and then, but all Aunt Alice did was rock in her chair and cry, and Ruth could rarely get a sensible word out of her.
    A day or so after they’d learned of Harold’s death, Ruth, Jake, and Ned were sitting around the supper table when Ruth suddenly stopped what she was saying in mid-sentence.
    â€œWhat date was Harold killed?” she asked.
    â€œJuly first,” Jake replied. “I think that’s what it said in the letter.”
    â€œThat’s what I thought,” Ruth said. “You know,” she continued after a slight pause, “I believe that was the first night the light appeared up in Simon’s potato garden, wasn’t it? Oh well, just a coincidence, I suppose.”
    They had all nodded uneasily.
    Now, even though the light and Harold’s death had occurred a year earlier, it seemed to Ned that they had happened only yesterday.
    After he delivered the soup and returned to pick up where he’d left off in Riders of the Purple Sage, he felt strangely out of sorts. A sense of loneliness and uneasiness gripped him.
    â€œHow is Aunt Alice today?” his mother asked.
    â€œAll right, I suppose,” Ned answered. “She’s over there