The Wreckage (7 page)

He picked up one of his shoes, heaved the weight of it against the cabin door. “Useless fucking shoes,” he said.

He picked up the other and heaved it after the first.

The wind moderated enough by early afternoon for the coaster to weigh anchor, and she got under way just after two. The change in the motion of the ship woke him and he turned onto his side, blinking, trying to orient himself. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, couldn’t remember where Hiram had gone. A knot of anxiety in his stomach but he couldn’t identify the source of it. He sat up and looked out the porthole.

Sadie. Mercedes.

That peculiar name. Portuguese or Spanish, he was certain, French. Maybe Norwegian. He tried to recall some other country whose vessels he’d come across on the fishing banks but couldn’t think. The Cove was still in sight behind them, distant and about to disappear behind the headland. He pulled on his shirt and shoes and found his coat. He headed out on deck, pushing the weight of the door against the wind. A heavy sea running across the foredeck as the coaster crested each successive wave. Wish walked unsteadily toward the stern, going hand over hand along the length of rope fastened to the wheelhouse wall. The spray was bitter and he turned up his collar against it, stood watching Little Fogo Island recede.

He was just about to give in to the cold when he felt a shudder running the length of the vessel as she went into full reverse. He ran back toward the bow where several men had already come down from the bridge and were at one of the ship’s boats, stripping off the tarp, lowering her to the level of the deck on her chains.

“What’s going on?”

“Men in the water,” one of them said. “Out to starboard.”

Wish stood up on the railing to get a better look but couldn’t see anything in the shifting expanse of water. “Did they go aground?”

“Trap skiff gone over. A couple of fellows hanging on.”

Three men had stepped into the boat and were setting the oars into their locks. Someone shouted, “Let her go,” and the boat dropped down the side.

By the time the boat came back to the coaster all hands were at the rail. Two men went down the ladder to guide the survivors up to the deck. They were wrapped in woollen blankets and they moved like decrepit old men as they took the hands reaching to help them out of the boat. One of the two was Mercedes’ brother, Hardy. The other an older man Wish didn’t recognize.

The captain was at the rail as they came aboard and he ordered them carried to the saloon and stripped out of their sodden clothing. He shouted down to the men in the boat. “How many more?”

“They said there was two others, Skipper. Carried off hours ago now.”

Mercedes’ father, Wish knew.

The captain looked up at the horizon. “A few hours of light yet,” he said. “Let’s get those other boats in the water. We’ll carry on with the wind a ways before we turn back to the Cove.” He shouted to the men below. “Head in close to shore. Maybe God landed one of them on solid ground. We’ll pick you up on the swing around before dark.”

Wish volunteered to go out with the boats and took his place at the oars, hauling against the wind to keep her from going abroad of the sling of each wave. They went by bits and pieces of gear floating free in the water and then passed the overturned skiff.

“Not a soul could swim far in this,” the man on the opposite oar shouted.

“They might of got hold of something to keep afloat,” Wish said.

The man beside him looked across. “You knew them, did you?”

Wish came back hard on the oar. He was soaked to the skin by the salt spray. “One of them,” he said.

A third man stood in the bow as a spotter, staring out at the water ahead of them. He started in on a hymn that Wish didn’t know, singing it out over the wind.

It was gone to dark before the coaster had finished her turn and come back to pick them from the water. They had to light a lamp and set it aloft on an oar so as not to be missed. The wind had gone down with the sun and they had no trouble bringing the boat aboard. Wish saw the Parsonses’ trap skiff gleaming white on the foredeck and leaning hard to one side, like she was in open water and about to go over again. He ran his hand along the gunnel, as smooth as glass and dry.

They were brought to the saloon for rum and tea and a hot meal. The stoves had been kept humming and the room was stifling with heat. Hiram was sitting alone at a table beside one of the stoves. He raised his hand.

“No luck?”

Wish shook his head.

“Got some dry stuff for you,” Hiram said, pointing to a pile of clothing on a chair.

The barman went around the room with a tray of rum and he set a glass on their table. Wish tipped back a mouthful before he stripped off his soaked clothes.

“It was a fellow Slade in the skiff with them,” Hiram said. “The father of the one Hardy’s been courting. Slade’s youngest was out with them. Eleven year old.”

“Where are they?”

“Put them to bed,” Hiram said. He waved to the bags and blankets stacked along the wall on the far side of the stove. “They were going to set them up here, but I volunteered our cabin.”

“Your dream berth, Hiram. Bunking out in the saloon.”

He smiled. “Died and gone to heaven.”

The mention of death sobered them again and they sat quiet a few minutes. “We’re heading back to the Cove, are we?”

“We’ll put in by nine or ten, I expect,” Hiram said. “You should stay aboard when we get in, Wish. That might be best for all concerned.”

The barman came back to the table with a plate of fish cakes and fresh bread. Wish was so hungry he felt nauseous. He took another mouthful of the rum to calm his stomach.

“You still got it in your head to quit me?”

“I’m already gone, Hiram.”

The older man nodded. He’d been hard at the liquor since boarding the ship at noon and he was drunk, though a stranger might not see it in him. He leaned onto the table and looked down into his glass. “I should’ve known better than to open my door to a goddamned mick,” he said.

Wish gathered his few belongings together to head in to shore at first light the following morning. As he was going over the side to the dory waiting below, Hiram gave him five dollars, which was enough to keep him at the boarding house awhile and pay his way back to town besides. Wish tried to refuse the money, but Hiram insisted.

“What’s your plan, Wish? Swim back to St. John’s, is it?” He was viciously hungover and belligerent. “I have a feeling I owe you the fiver anyway.”

Wish decided it would be simpler to take the money and repay it later than to argue with him now. Mrs. Gillard set him up in the same room he’d been in two nights before and she served him breakfast, then Wish made his way down to the landwash. Most of the boats in the Cove were already out on the water. Only Clive Reid and his two sons still tied up, trying to start a contrary engine. Wish walked along to their stage and put one foot on the gunnel of the boat.

“You’ve missed your trip home,” Clive said.

“Thought I might stick around, see if I can’t help out. The more eyes out there the better.”

“They’ve been all day and all night in the water,” Clive said. “I don’t expect we’ll find anything pretty.” His bottom lip was distended by a wad of chewing tobacco. He spat over the side of the boat. “Won’t do much looking anyway if we can’t get this bastard of a thing to turn over.”

Wish stepped down into the skiff. “Mind if I have a look?”

The inboard stuttered alive half an hour later, an explosion of black smoke rising out of the housing before the engine settled into a steady chug. Wish closed his eyes a moment, listening. He was grease up to his elbows.

“That’ll do her,” he said. “She’ll get you out and home, anyway.” And then he said, “Would it be all right if I come out with you today?”

“More eyes the better, like you said.”

As they made their way to open water Wish sat aft, looking back at Mercedes’ house behind them. The blinds drawn over the windows.

He said, “Do you know what happened out there yesterday, Clive?”

“According to Hardy, they were already making for home when the weather turned. They’d had a good morning at the fish, nearly a full load aboard of her. Hit the heaviest wind when they came around the backside of the island, the seas coming over the rail and the engine swamped. They tried to get the sail up, but they made a fuck of that in the wind and couldn’t keep the skiff face on. They were trying to pitch the fish back over side but it was too late by then. Went broadside to the waves with all that weight in her. No way she could right herself.”

“What time was that?”

“Sometime after noon. They never saw the youngster after they went over. Just disappeared, they said. Hardy got ahold of his father and hung on to him a few minutes. But the seas tore him loose. Couldn’t swim a stroke.” Clive stared straight out over the water toward the headlands. “Faster going down, I guess,” he said.

Wish glanced at the two boys in the boat with them. The youngest, David, not much older than eleven himself.

Three days the Cove’s boats went along the coast beyond the headland to look for the missing. The searchers used fish finders and glass-bottomed buckets, leaning over the gunnels and holding them in the water to search the rocks and seabed in shallow areas. Wish and Clive’s two boys took turns at the glass while Clive drove the boat slow along the coast.

The missing boy was found early on the third day, his clothes snagged on shoal rock fifteen feet below the surface. Clive noticed boats gathering near the shoals, like bluebottles hovering over a garden composted with capelin. He nudged Wish’s shoulder and pointed.

As they came up close, Wish could see that two men had lines over the sides, using the metal hooks of a cod-jigger to grapple and haul the body free. One of the men straining at the lines was Willard Slade. The body was brought up to the side of the skiff, Willard and another man gripping the clothes to hoist it over the gunnel. All Wish saw of the boy was one of his hands at the end of its cuff, the skin as white as salt. Willard Slade bawling hard as he set his son’s body down in the skiff.

They headed back to the Cove in a small convoy. Wish and Clive sat at the stern, talking in whispers. Clive said it was most likely Aubrey had drifted out into deeper water and been driven off to God knows where by the Labrador current.

“I allow he’s gone and gone,” he said.

“You think that’s it then? Will they give it up now?”

Clive shifted against the tiller. “That’s three fine days of fishing lost,” he said. “I’m glad we got the youngster. That’ll be a comfort to his mother. But I wouldn’t want no one wasting their time out here after me as long as this.”

Wish nodded.

“What about you now?”

“What about me?”

“You going to set yourself up at that boarding house for good?”

“Not hardly.”

“It’s Sadie you’re hoping for, I spose. Staying on in the Cove. Out here all hours, fishing for strangers. Got to be a woman at the root of that.”

Wish didn’t answer him and Clive settled back at the tiller, taking his silence as answer enough.

Wish hadn’t gotten up the nerve to go by Mercedes’ house since coming back into the Cove. Hardy had been on the water every day and made note of Wish in Clive’s boat, though they hadn’t exchanged a word. He’d been hoping Mercedes might find a way to come to him at the boarding house or down to the wharf to see the boats off in the morning.

“You’ll want to step careful,” Clive said.

Wish looked at him.

“I’m only saying. It’s a hard time. And you being from away. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Folks won’t stand for it.”

Wish looked ahead to the skiff that carried the boy’s body, his father sitting over it in the bow. “What was his name?” he asked.

“Willard,” Clive said. “Same as his father. Little bugger used to steal rhubarb out of the garden. Don’t know why. They always had plenty of rhubarb over at Slade’s.” He spat into the wake of the boat. “Always sweeter if it don’t belong to you, I guess.” And he smiled across at Wish, his teeth the colour of dried peat.

After his supper he went up to his room and stripped down to his undershirt. He filled the basin and scrubbed his face and neck and his arms up to the elbows. He wet his hair enough to comb it flat and buffed at his shoes with a rag. He put on his one clean shirt and buttoned it to the neck. Then he walked across to the Slade house where the boy was being waked.

The back kitchen was busy with people, though strangely hushed. Willard Slade got up from his seat and came across to greet him. “Appreciate you coming along,” he said. He introduced Wish around to the few people he hadn’t already met—Willard waved into the pantry, “The wife and Ruthie,” he said, but neither woman looked at them—and then brought him in through to the parlour. Clive was standing near the window and he raised his glass to Wish.

The plain wood coffin was against the far wall, set on two chairs at opposite ends. The casket was closed and the room smelled of camphor and lime. Wish ran his fingers across the top of the coffin briefly, as he’d run them across the gunnel of the trap skiff several nights before. Both made by the same hand more than likely. He crossed himself as he stepped back and became immediately aware of being watched by everyone in the room. Mrs. Slade came up behind him with a glass of syrup and a tray of fruitcake.

“Thank you, missus,” he said. “I’m sorry for your troubles.”

She seemed to look through him and made no response except to wave the fruitcake at him until he took a piece. Then she went back out to the kitchen.

Wish took a mouthful of the syrup. It was thick and sickly sweet. Everyone in the house was stone sober. Clive came across the room and stood beside him.

“This is it, is it?” Wish whispered.

“Not what you’re used to, I imagine.” He had shaved off the grizzle of beard and his face looked misshapen without the plug of tobacco under his lip. “There’s a flask handed around outside now and then, if you need a drop to get you through.”

Wish lifted his glass again and smelled the syrup but didn’t taste it. “I only wanted to pay my respects,” he said. “I think I should be on my way.”