It began like any other day in the cove. I ate rolled oats for breakfast with tea. I looked out the front room window to see if my friend Felix was out and about. Lately, he and I were spending our time playing one-on-one hockey on the pathway between his house and my nan’s. We would stand some twenty feet apart with a couple of rocks for goal posts, see who could score the most on the other.

We had been doing this for a long time and enjoying it very much. Until that fateful day when the crime wave hit the little cove. It happened innocently enough. Just two small kids with hockey sticks. Felix’s older brother had sent them from away. For some reason, Felix and I found ourselves fighting for possession of the rubber ball that served as our hockey puck behind the porch. The ball became loose and both of us hit for it – it went flying through the air and broke a window.

Well. As you might imagine, this caused quite a sensation. I got the blame for the whole affair, being the one ‘from away’. God might forgive your sins, but not so the people of the little cove!

I ran home to my nan’s. Wasn’t much comforting there. Nan was mad at me, and that hurt the most. She said I couldn’t stay here anymore. She’d have to write to my mum and my mum would have to pay for the glass.

Those were my darkest days in the cove. The years of imprisonment, the bread and water three times a day and all those other things they did to criminals was nothing compared with having to leave the cove in a cloud of shame.

My sentence was shorter than I first thought. Next summer I was back in the cove, pardoned for good behavior I guess you could call it. The hockey sticks where burned, I was told, the evidence destroyed, you might say. My criminal career was short indeed.

Cyril Griffin
New Perlican, NL