Finally I travelled on foot through the berry bushes to the tall stones on the South Side Hill where William Pender died. I touched the stones and made a fire. Older stories came to me, from three hundred years ago instead of one hundred. The ghosts of old French battles came out of the rocks. I visited Placentia, and saw old coins and muskets the ghosts had dropped.

By now I was getting used to going back in time. Every night when I closed my eyes I could see William Pender's world. I could see William Pender himself, with his black moustache and his cap, and his T-handled snow shovel, as he shovelled the streets with gangs of other unemployed workmen. Whenever I walked in downtown St. John's, I no longer saw it only in 1996. I saw the present as a dream that hung like a veil over a very real 1904, and a vivid 1698. I saw that what used to be there is just as real as what we see there today.

Shaping the Story

Now I knew a lot about William Pender's world. At first I wove two kinds of stories together. I wrote about him, and then I wrote about the things around him. I shaped the personal details around the last day in his life. I had him do things I knew a cooper in his situation would do. You can see what these things are when you read the story. But I kept the factual things about his world separate from his story.

For example, I inserted small essays about the poor house, factory working conditions, and hospital conditions, and Gordon Snow's memories, as separate boxes inside the main story.

After awhile I felt this did not work. The reader kept having to jump out of William Pender's story to get at these "side" stories. That works in some writings, but I did not feel that it worked in this piece. I did not know what to do.

One night I asked this question: How would it be if I melted all the side stories into William's main story? If I put everything inside William's head, or made it apply directly to him, how would it flow?

That is what I did. I gave William Pender Gordon Snow's memories. I gave his wife the recipe for curing scarlet fever. I gave his neighbour knowledge about what went on inside the poor house. I melted all my research into his life.

That was a big step. It raised a lot of questions about how you get at the truth of a story.