Lock Up Your Daughters

Aside from fire and flood and the random hurricane, there wasn't much that unsettled the island folk - they simply circled the wagons and trudged through whatever adversity befell them, taking eventual victory for granted.  It was never supposed to be an easy life, they reminded each other, God was on their side but had no intention of letting them slide.  Everyone knew that you got to the next life through charity, good deeds,
faith, and most especially, hard work.

Well, almost everyone.  Scallopers didn't have a chance in hell.

For an honest, industrious, early to bed and early to rise, usually law abiding fisherman, the arrival of the scallop fleet signaled eight long weeks of troubled waters.  Hide the whiskey and lock up your daughters was the general rule if not the battle cry - the dredging muddied the passage, the boats took up valuable space at the breakwaters and the scallop crews were a hard drinking, hard fighting, hard cussing lot with big tempers and big appetites.  They cleaned up on Saturday nights with after shave and shiny boots and hit the town square like gunslingers looking for a new sheriff and ready to make a name for themselves.  The only rule seemed to be that there were no rules - they were loud, had no respect for property or virtue, and prided themselves on being hard drunk.  They didn't stand in line for anyone and though most all had wives and children in Port Wade or Church Point, their loyalties appeared to be defined by geography.  One frivolous, foolish night with a scalloper often meant ruination for a curious and restless island girl - more than one found herself alone and in dire (if predictable) straits at summer's end - but when it happened to a tired, overburdened, taken for granted and vaguely restless married woman, well, things had simply gone too far.

The wife of the lighthouse keeper was in her forties and ran a small take out canteen at the other end of the island.  She'd never strayed before, never did again, but on one starry summer night after a fierce fight with her husband and feeling unappreciated and old before her time, she'd put on a low cut blouse and a short skirt and had come to the dance, a small flask tucked into her purse for courage.  She woke the next morning, on the floor of the canteen with an empty flask and a powerful headache, cursing her own foolishness and wondering what in the world had gotten into her and what she would tell her husband.  She had no idea a makeshift posse was forming with the lighthouse keeper in the lead nor that the life of a scallop fisherman was about to take a drastic turn.  She dressed and crept home, hoping against hope that she wouldn't be seen but her husband, waiting quietly in the kitchen and drinking coffee with his old shotgun laying on his lap, was expecting her.  It only took one shot - she died before she reached the back door.  The lighthouse keeper drove to The Point and joined the gang of men he'd hastily organized to avenge her honor but the scallop boats had sailed before dawn and there wasn't a trace of them.  By then the Mounties had been called and the entire island knew the sordid story.

The lighthouse keeper surrendered, the scalloper was never caught, and the dead woman was buried with only the minister and his wife standing sadly standing at the grave.  

Island folk have long memories and it was several years before the scallop fleet returned to the waters off St. Mary's Bay.  They fished, they minded their own business, and each time they left, Miss Clara would find fresh flowers on the grave of the lighthouse keeper's wife.