The Monster of Twenty Mile Pond Read online

  As to the indictment against Esme for purchasing the marijuana, and against Molly as an accessory, the prosecution would agree that, in return for guilty pleas, and because of the extenuating circumstances relating to Maggie, the Crown would consent to conditional discharges. Their records would be expunged after three years of good behaviour, and at that time, the girls would apply for full pardons. If they had stayed out of trouble in the meantime, their applications would be supported by the Crown.

  It was comical and gratifying at the same time, when Morley, Brian, and I told the girls. Looks of relief and appreciation flooded their faces, they gushed out words of thanks, and their embraces of the three of us were prolonged beyond reason. Brian actually blushed when Esme hugged him hard and long, and kissed him on the cheek.

  I saw Esme blush, too, when Molly whispered to her, thinking I couldn’t hear, “I hope no one snaps our Brian up before you can be actually tried as an adult.” Then they laughed, and Esme made a series of little nods at Molly.

  Afterwards, when Morley Sheppard and I were alone in his office tying up loose ends, he said to me, “The crusading prosecutors, Derek Smythe and Winston Myers, send you their greetings and their condolences. They said they would like to know, when you can finally get your head around it, what it feels like to be totally bamboozled, and have the wool pulled completely over your eyes, by your own teenaged niece and daughter.”

  The grin that leapt to my face threatened to split it in two. “Tell them that it was considerably more pleasant than having to listen to two straight shooters spouting truth and justice.”

  Speaking of the truth, I took Esme and Molly to visit the man whose “old foolishness” helped save them—Uncle Hughie Tucker. It was obvious he had a good idea of what had happened. “I’m pretty well plugged in to just about everything on the go,” he told us.

  After we thanked him for sharing his invaluable lore with me, which changed the direction of their lives, the girls became fascinated at the hand holding and snuggling going on between Hughie and his fiancée, Maudie. “Oh my God,” said Esme to Molly, “I hope that’s me in sixty years.”

  Hughie and Maudie invited us all to their wedding, which was to take place in the chapel at the home in a week. “Now you young ones don’t have to come if you’re too busy,” Hughie said to the girls. “It’s only going to be a very informal affair.”

  Molly and Esme replied, almost in unison, “Mr. Tucker, we wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “See, Hughie, what did I tell you?” said Maudie. “Some things are just too nice to miss, even if it’s not Westminster Abbey.” Hughie put his eighty-eight-year-old arms around her—still strong, judging by the way Maudie’s knees buckled and her eyes rolled back and closed in her blissful, seventy-five-year-old face when he squeezed. Molly and Esme looked at each other and smiled wide, their hands clasped over their hearts.

  On the way out of the home, the girls walked ahead and Hughie lagged behind, holding me back, wanting to say something to me. “Bill, tell me the truth, did the government lawyers really fall for that malarkey about the monster of Twenty Mile Pond?”

  “I can’t break a confidence, Hughie. But, yes, something worked.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, a look of astonished delight on his face. “That crowd is gullible enough to believe anything. And to think that’s where my tax dollars are going.”

  A couple of weeks later, I drove Esme and Molly down to Horse Cove to see Tom and Melissa Squires. I told them that Uncle Tommy and his sister didn’t know, of course, that his stories had helped clear them of their crimes, but I did want the girls to meet him as another contributor to their deliverance.

  With me I carried a bucket of salt beef I’d bought at Belbin’s, and in their house, after introductions, I offered it to Melissa to make some future Jiggs’ dinners for them both. She said she’d accept my kind offer if I’d come out for a scoff next Sunday at midday myself, and bring the young ladies and the rest of our family with me. I told her I’d be there, and the girls chimed in that they would, too.

  “If my wife, Jennifer, and my son, Matthew, and my sister, Maggie, are able to come, Melissa, that’d be six of us altogether. Wouldn’t that be too many?”

  “My goodness, no. I’ve had as many as twenty here. We had to set up two card tables next to the dining-room table.”

  “That’s how famous her Jiggs’ dinners are,” said Tommy, “and rightly so. My son, they’re the best.”

  “Don’t mind him,” said Melissa modestly. “I put what he said then in the same category as his old stories about the squids in Windsor Lake.”

  Uncle Tommy giggled. “What is it you calls me, Liss? A what? A pata-something.”

  “A pathological liar,” said Melissa, with conviction, but grinning. “You and Hughie Tucker up there. The two of you, your whole life. So you’d better be ready for more next Sunday, Bill. I think I’ll invite him and Maudie, too, if they’re back from their honeymoon in Gander.”

  “Bring a designated driver with you,” said Tommy. “I’ve been saving that bottle of the good stuff you gave me for this.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Every so often after the murder charges were dropped, and despite the self-confessed unreliability of my sources, Esme and Molly drove to Twenty Mile Pond and looked out quietly over the waves. It was a little pilgrimage, they said, that even their friends were not allowed to join them in performing—nobody could, except me, the one who’d first experienced Twenny so many years before.

  I went out with them once, and they said they wished they could sprinkle rose petals on the surface to honour Twenny. But they knew that throwing anything in the drinking water would be misunderstood by observers. “And it might make Twenny mad,” laughed Esme. “You know what he gets like.”

  In their dedication to their hero, the monster, I could foresee a conflict coming up between me and my oath of secrecy to the premier on one side, and my need, in conscience, to tell my daughter and niece everything I’d learned from her on the other. It did, eventually, and I ended up revealing all.

  We sat around our kitchen table one Saturday—Jennifer, Molly, Esme, Maggie, Matthew, and I—discussing the monster’s future fate. The girls wanted Twenny to be left alone. They didn’t want the government or anyone else poking around in the lake, probing any tunnels on the bottom down there, searching for him and trying to capture or kill him. They were prepared to do anything necessary to stop that, and they wanted me to do the same.

  “He’s harmless if people just stay away from the lake,” said Molly, “like they’re supposed to, anyway.”

  “There’s no evidence he has ever intended to hurt anyone,” said Esme. “He didn’t mean to kill that Jason Power guy. That was a freak accident. He only meant to move him away from the pond and stop him from polluting the water. I’m afraid poor little Twenny just doesn’t realize his own strength.”

  “All the evidence is that he either saves people,” said Molly, “like the governor’s daughter, and me and Esme, or he leaves them to their own devices like the governor and his man or those thugs in the car. It’s not his fault if people like Danny Power’s guys die from their own evil.”

  “What about Multi-Million Dollar Man?” I asked. “A death sentence for using the bathroom in the wrong place?”

  “There’s not a shred of evidence, as Mr. Sheppard would say, that Twenny had anything to do with his disappearance,” said Molly. “If he is dead, he was killed by his own gang, and he’s pushing up daisies in a shallow grave overlooking Conception Bay. Or, if he was alive when he left, I’m with Mr. Tucker on that: Multi is down in Columbia or somewhere, running a drug cartel. So we shouldn’t use guys like him to make Twenny look like a homicidal psychopath.”

  “Right,” said Esme, “and Twenny didn’t even touch those two kayakers a couple of weeks ago.”r />
  She was referring to a story that had been on all the newscasts. I’d been startled when I’d heard it. Two kayak enthusiasts were visiting from Ontario and decided, in their unfamiliarity with the place, to launch their craft in Twenty Mile Pond and paddle about. After an hour or so, when they finally understood the signals from the police on the shore meant that they should get off the pond, they came in absolutely unscathed.

  “I can only conclude,” I said, “that those two mustn’t have thrown any waste into the water. Twenny didn’t even tip over their kayak.”

  “He’s very intelligent and aware,” said Esme. “He knows exactly what’s going on. I’m sure he was sorry he got me in all that trouble. His eye through the ice was very sad, just as sad as the bull moose’s. I think Twenny was happy he could make up for it, when the car went in the pond.”

  “You say ‘he,’” I said, “but it sounds to me like it’s a she, or, if it’s a he, he’s definitely on the girls’ team, the way he only saves girls and either bumps off the guys or reluctantly lets them survive on their own.”

  “I’d rather believe that those two guys in the car got exactly what they deserved, and it had nothing to do with their gender,” said Esme. “It would have been the same if it had been women.”

  “Who’s going to blame Twenny for not saving the likes of them?” asked Maggie. “The only thing that went wrong in the whole thing was that that thug Danny Power wasn’t in the car, too. But he’ll be inside for a good while with all those extra charges against him, especially the child pornography and sexual assault charges. And when he does come out, it’ll probably be in a shoebox. Don’t other inmates in prison kill guys like him who abuse children? They used to, in the good old days. I hope they still do.”

  We were all surprised by Maggie’s vehemence. But no one took issue with it. We went quiet for a while. Then Maggie said, “By the way, I’m not always going to be as crotchety as that. My doctors have okayed me as a candidate for medical marijuana. They think it might work. And even if it doesn’t, at least it’ll mellow me out.”

  Everybody laughed and cheered, and Esme said, “See, I told you. And they all thought I was just a juvenile delinquent.” We laughed again, but a little more nervously this time at the way Esme may have put her finger on a bit of a tendency in her makeup.

  Jennifer broke that ensuing silence with a change of subject. “Talking about Twenny’s attitude to men, Bill, what about you? She certainly saved you. And from a fate worse than death, the way you told it, when the sight of the seahawk and the gull and the tentacle made you turn around and come back from your suicide mission.”

  “Yes, Dad, she brought you and Mom together. So please keep in mind that you owe Twenny big time, too.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I’d been thinking, leading up to this conversation around the kitchen table, about whether or not I should release publicly all the information and stories I possessed about the monster of Twenty Mile Pond.

  But what about my oath of secrecy to the premier? Well, I’d concluded, she only made me do it to shut me up for her own purposes. I was grateful she did intervene to get the girls off the hook, but before I threatened to go public, everyone on the government side had been prepared to railroad Esme and Molly into jail to score some political brownie points. And for what? Because the “murder” of a vicious thug had been associated with the sale of drugs? Marijuana, for God’s sake, which was in the process of being decriminalized just about everywhere in the civilized world. Therefore, I figured, I was never truly bonded to my promise. I was coerced into making it and, figuratively, that was the same as if I’d crossed my fingers behind my back.

  Satisfied that, morally, I could disclose all I knew, my next question to myself had been, should I? Well, it might save people’s lives if they were aware of the peril of doing something stupid in or near the lake. But more important, it might help save Twenny. The mere possibility of her existence might make her such an icon to people everywhere, and a magnet to fascinated persons wishing to survey the surface of the lake in hopes of catching a glimpse, that the government would be obliged to leave her alone. Because, otherwise, the outcry would be too great.

  I raised all this now with my family in the kitchen and asked them to discuss with me whether, for those reasons or any others, I should share with the world our stories of the existence of Twenny of Twenty Mile Pond.

  I was met with a chorus of yeses.

  “Let’s make him or her,” said Matthew, “a national treasure.” He gave Molly and Esme another hug, an action he was prone to perform half a dozen times a day since the night they’d escaped alive from the car in the lake.

  “If you do, Uncle Bill,” said Esme, “and I really mean this—I promise to be good from now on.”

  “Esme,” I said, placing an arm around her shoulders and squeezing, “I can’t turn that offer down.”

  Maggie seemed to concur. “Yay-y-y Twenny,” she cheered, and then giggled at length, a behaviour so out of character since her accident that I could see everyone wondering if her doctors might not have already given her a sample of that new medicine she’d been prescribed.

  It made Molly, Esme, Jennifer, Matthew, and me rise from our chairs and gather in a ring around Maggie and touch her, and smile and laugh at each other through our tears.

  “The world will know,” I said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My heartfelt gratitude to Susan Rendell for editing this book. It was a great pleasure to work with her again and receive her creative insights. My sincere thanks once more to graphic designer Graham Blair for his superb cover. And, as always, my wholehearted appreciation to Garry, Jerry, and Margo Cranford, and to Laura Cameron, Bob Woodworth, Peter Hanes, Randy Drover, and Gerard Murphy, all of Flanker Press, for their dedication to publishing, marketing, and distributing the book.

  Born in Newfoundland, Bill Rowe graduated in English from Memorial University and attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, obtaining an Honours MA in law.

  Elected five times to the House of Assembly, Rowe served as a minister in the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and as leader of the Official Opposition. He practised law in St. John’s for many years, and has been a long-time public affairs commentator, appearing regularly on national and local television, as well as hosting a daily radio call-in show on VOCM and writing weekly newspaper columns.

  Rowe has written eight books: Clapp’s Rock, a bestselling novel published by McClelland and Stewart and serialized on CBC national radio; The Temptation of Victor Galanti, a second novel published by McClelland and Stewart; a volume of essays on politics and public affairs published by Jesperson Press of St. John’s; the critically acclaimed political memoir Danny Williams: The War with Ottawa, which appeared on the Globe and Mail’s bestsellers list in 2010; Danny Williams, Please Come Back, a collection of newspaper articles covering social, political, and economic issues; Rosie O’Dell, a critically acclaimed crime novel published by Pennywell Books, a literary imprint of Flanker Press; and The Premiers Joey and Frank, which was a Globe and Mail bestseller in 2013, and which the Hill Times selected as one of the Best 100 Books in Politics, Public Policy, and History in 2013.

  Rowe is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and has served on the executive of the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador. He is married to Penelope Ayre Rowe CM of St. John’s. They have a son, Dorian, a daughter, Toby, and three grandchildren.

  Bestselling author Bill Rowe dishes up a long-awaited tell-all memoir that covers the years he spent in the political arena with Newfoundland premiers Joey Smallwood and Frank Moores. The Premiers Joey and Frank is three stories in one. First is Premier Joseph Roberts Smallwood’s, whose ego and force of personality dominated every room he walked into, and strained to the breaking point every personal relationship he had. The latter half of the book covers Premier Frank
Moores and his mixed personal motives, combined with a singularity of political purpose: Get Smallwood. Entwined in both these stories is that of Bill Rowe’s own roller-coaster political life, where family and partisan politics were often inseparable. This is a riveting, entertaining, and often hilarious account of three men who aimed high, Icarus-like, and who earned three very different places in the history of this province.

  #8 on the Globe and Mail (Canadian Non-Fiction) Bestseller List

  (October 12, 2013)

  #8 on the Globe and Mail (Biography) Bestseller List

  (October 12, 2013)

  Selected for the Hill Times’s

  Best 100 Books in Politics, Public Policy, and History in 2013

  Rosie O’Dell is a creature of beauty, brilliance . . . and unspeakable secrets. When she was young, terrible crimes had been committed against her. Tom Sharpe became Rosie O’Dell’s high school sweetheart, and in revenge for the transgressions against her, the two young lovers committed their own crime of passion together, which ultimately ripped them apart. Thirty years have now passed since Tom has seen his Rosie O’Dell, and the intervening years have been a source of endless torment for him. He has been torn between yearning for his lost love and wanting never to see her again. These days, Tom is a successful lawyer in the city of St. John’s, but trouble seems to have a way of finding him. And now here she is: Rosie O’Dell has returned to ask for his help once more. Tom Sharpe will soon find out that his troubles are just beginning. Critically acclaimed author Bill Rowe’s political memoir, Danny Williams: The War With Ottawa, was a Globe and Mail Bestseller. The novel Rosie O’Dell marks his long-awaited return to the realm of Canadian fiction, where fans will agree he is a master at the game.