Broken Man on a Halifax Pier

by Choyce, Lesley;

  “Joe! Can you hear me, Joe? Come in!”

  Joe cocked his head, eyes still fixed on the gun. I realized I wasn’t going to dive for his legs. Ramona was ready to fire if she had to. I saw the determination in her eyes.

  “Joe, damn it. It’s Kent Webber. Brody’s stolen my boat. About an hour ago. He’s headed out to sea.”

  Something drained out of Joe just then. He looked at the gun again, at Ramona, not at me. Then he jumped back into his boat and got on the radio. I walked toward Ramona and cautiously took the gun from her. She was shaking.

  When Joe walked back out onto his deck, he looked at me, showed me a fist, but then threw the crowbar over the side. “Brody stole Kent Webber’s new boat. He doesn’t know shit about boats. Somebody spotted him east beyond Fiddler’s Point.”

  We both looked east then. Brody was headed straight into that oncoming storm. Sure, Brody was trying to escape, but he knew enough about the sea to realize a dirty blast of weather was coming. It was crazy, but he seemed to be headed right into it, like he was doing it on purpose.

  “I gotta go,” Joe said. “Rolf, get your sorry ass off my boat.”

  Rolf scrambled toward the gunwales and crawled over into Sheer Delight. He started to untie the two boats, but I stopped him. I jumped over into Joe’s boat and looked back at Rolf. “Take her back to the harbour and get there before this storm hits.”

  Perhaps the her was ambiguous. I’d meant Ramona, of course. And I knew following Joe in my old boat would be of no use. Too old. Too slow.

  But just then Ramona walked toward me, crossed over into Joe’s boat and undid the rope that tied the two boats together. “No. Go,” I said.

  She looked at me with defiance.

  “Get the bitch off my boat,” Joe said.

  “The bitch is staying,” Ramona said.

  “Fuck me, Jesus,” Joe said. He gunned the engine and the boat leapt forward, heading toward the east and an ever-darkening sky.

  26

  Even though Joe’s attention was focused on the ocean, his fury at having us aboard was palpable. We hung back outside the cabin and let the spray from the waves we were hitting rain down on us. The chop was increasing. The wind was coming up. Fiddler’s Point was maybe ten miles east. High dirt cliffs, rocky shoreline, no harbours, no easy place to go ashore.

  I wondered if Joe had any clues as to what Brody’s plan was. Could be the boy didn’t have a clue about geography and thought he was headed to Sable Island or Bermuda. Who could know? Whatever it was, it was a dumb idea. And this storm coming in looked like the real thing.

  I gave Ramona a hug. “Why didn’t you go with Rolf? God knows what this is going to be like.”

  “I figured you needed me for moral support,” she answered. “Also to make sure Joe doesn’t kill you. Or Brody for that matter, if you find him.”

  “Seems like there’s never a dull moment when you’re around.”

  “I thought it was the other way — never a dull moment when you are around,” she said.

  “Hey, that gun thing. I had made sure the gun was unloaded.”

  “I found the bullets in a drawer in the cabin. What are you doing with a handgun on a boat, anyway?”

  “It was Brody’s. I took it from his truck when he was arrested. Otherwise, there would have been stiffer charges. Or something worse.”

  “That boy is trouble.”

  We both looked ahead at the gloom. The seas were continuing to rise. The waves were now a few feet high and we heard a loud whump each time Joe slammed the speeding boat into the larger ones.

  “Let’s see what the captain has in mind,” I said, lifting a hatch cover and finding three floater jackets. I put one on Ramona, one on myself, and carried the third into the cabin to hand to Joe. Ramona came in with me.

  Joe was staring straight ahead, keeping the bow straight into the waves. I handed him the jacket and he waved me away. “Bad luck, those things. Never wear them.”

  We both stood there listening to the marine weather again. The word intensifying kept coming up. “Shit, shit, and shit,” Joe said under his breath. That pretty much summed up the weather report.

  Kent Webber came on the radio. “Joe Myatt, you out there? You hear me, you son of a bitch, over.”

  Joe picked up the mic. “I hear ya, Kent. I’m gonna get your boat back, over.”

  “Damn you, Joe. That kid of yours. Why’d he have to pick my boat? I just bought the damn thing. And I don’t even have insurance on it yet, over.”

  “How much gas was in the tank, Kent?”

  “Not a whole hell of a lot. Quarter tank, maybe. Why?”

  Joe didn’t answer the question. He switched off the radio and I could see he was making some kind of calculation in his head.

  “I reckon he should be running out of gas within the next twenty minutes,” Joe said matter-of-factly, as if his recent attempt to plant a crowbar in my brain had never happened. He was a different man entirely. But I understood. I’d seen it at sea with my father and a hired hand. One minute, my father would be screaming at the guy about being a lazy, worthless son of a bitch, and the next minute something would happen, something would go wrong, or there was need for a cool head, and he turned serious and professional.

  I guess I had a curious look on my face.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Joe said. “I never was very good at math in school.”

  “No. I was just thinking what my own father might do at a time like this.”

  “Your father was a damn good fisherman. Too bad he went nuts like that at the end.”

  Ramona looked at me with a big question mark hanging there between us.

  “He didn’t go crazy, Joe.”

  Joe shrugged. “Anyway, like I was saying, he was a damn good fisherman. And I liked the guy. He never had a bad word to say to me.”

  We hit a bigger wave just then, head-on, and a shudder went through the boat as the spray flumed up into the air.

  “You gonna help me save my boy?” Joe asked, still looking straight ahead.

  He was right. It was his boy. He may not have fully raised the kid I’d helped bring into the world, but he’d been around all those years. Someday, I’d hear the whole story.

  “Yeah. You tell me what to do. I’ll do it.” I held out the floater jacket again. “You sure you don’t want this on?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “What can I do to help?” Ramona asked.

  Joe spit something onto the floor. “Just stay out of the way, lady.” Sexism was a long way from dead on the Shore and especially at sea.

  And then the rain started. Squall is the term often applied, but it’s a weak word for the conspiracy of wind and wave and downpour from the heavens. On shore, you can plant your feet in one place, get soaked to the core, but the storm usually won’t knock you over. At sea, the forces conspire to make air and sea one. They team up to knock you off your feet, wreck your vision, soak you through to the marrow in your bones, and then do something to your innards that will make you want to throw up until you get the dry heaves.

  So far we were inside and dry and nobody was puking. I took all that as a good omen. Steady as she goes.

  Joe leaned a little my way as if confiding some kind of secret, but I guess he was just thinking out loud. “I figure it this way. If Brody got past that headland there …” I couldn’t see any headland. The rain made vision almost impossible. But Joe knew this territory, or so I hoped.

  “If he made it past the point over there, he’d not get far, because he’d be straight into the wind. Wind and wave would start pushing him back. He’d end up on the east side of Fiddler’s. Nothing out there but rocks and dirt cliffs. Nobody lives out there anymore. Best hope is that he gets Kent’s big-ass boat grounded close to shore and he gets ashore to sit it out with the seagulls.”

  “So that looks good, right?”

  “I didn’t say that. If he drifts past the tip of Fiddler’s then he’s screwed. No engine, no
decent way to steer into the waves or away from the waves. He’d get swamped for sure.”

  The rain let up ever so slightly. Just to our left, a high cliff loomed into view. “That’s the point right there,” Joe said. “C’mon, Brody. Do something right for once.”

  The waves were hitting harder now. Not just from one direction either. We were in shallow water. The boat shook. I noticed a kind of A-frame mother of a wave — two waves, I guessed, converging right on the bow. It slammed down on the cabin with a vengeance. Joe held fast to the wheel. I went teetering over. But Ramona grabbed me and pulled me back up.

  “Haven’t had one of them on me in quite a while,” Joe said. “In fact, I haven’t been out in weather like this since I was young and stupid.”

  As we rounded the tip of Fiddler’s Point, Joe eased off on the throttle. The waves didn’t let up and the sky opened up again full force. “Lot of rocks out here. Stuff you can’t see. You guys have good luck with ya? ’Cause I think I’ve used up most of mine.”

  It was the first time he’d addressed us together without some kind of curse attached. “Yeah,” I said. “Ramona is famous for her luck.”

  “Absofuckinglutely,” she said.

  “Hold on to your hats,” Joe suddenly said, gunning the engine again. One of those famous rocks had just appeared to our starboard. We lurched past it just as a wave was lifting us and attempting to drop us on the surface of that craggy ledge.

  Joe had established that understated cool that I’d seen my father take on. It was an Eastern Shore thing. Fishermen did it. Any time it looked like the sea was about to rattle your bones, or sink your boat, or come up with a clever means to suck the life out of you, you’d pretend it was all a game.

  “I always loved this spot,” Joe said. “You come out here on a sunny day and sneak in close to these rocks, you find the sweet spot where it’s good and deep and drop down a rope and a can of tuna with nail hole punched in it. Ten minutes later you’re hauling up a lobster the size of an old Volkswagen bug.”

  “You’ll have to show me some day,” I said, not adding, if we get out of this alive.

  For a minute, it looked like we were dead in the water. The engine was still running, but we weren’t moving. Then the squall let up a little.

  We peered out through the glass.

  “Gotta go in closer,” Joe said. “But these damn ledges, they’ll sink ya before you ever make it ashore.”

  “You sure he’s near here?” Ramona asked.

  “No. It’s a hunch. That’s all I got at this point.”

  And a dangerous hunch it was. When each wave sucked out, I saw those rocky ledges now, all parallel to shore, each one as nasty looking as the one before. Joe worked the engine, idling, then revving, weaving in and out, keeping an eagle eye on white water over submerged rocks and trying to make sense of this turbulent sea. Rational thinking probably didn’t do much good at a time like this. All you had was your gut.

  “There he is,” Joe said, just as the next onslaught of rain hit. At first I didn’t see a damn thing. Then I saw it.

  Kent Webber’s shiny new boat was grounded on one of the ledges and head-high waves were pounding it mercilessly.

  “I’m gonna have to go in kind of tight. You folks want me to put you ashore somehow or do you wanna stick around for the fun?”

  There was no going ashore anywhere there in this maelstrom. I wouldn’t have got off the boat, though, even if it was possible. In the last ten minutes I had grown to admire Joe and love the way that he had absorbed the vernacular of generations before him. When the going gets rough, you tough it out. You just do what you have to do.

  As we moved closer to the boat, there was no sign of Brody at first. And then we saw him. Someone in a yellow floater jacket was still in the boat trying to hang on to the gunwale as a wave hit and knocked him down. The boat was now tilted far on its side and Brody was up high on the gunwale, waving.

  “Gotta get behind that damn ledge,” Joe said. “If we come in with the waves, all we’ll do is crush the boy.”

  More engine, more cowboying around behind the rock ledge with the shore only about sixty feet away. “Pray for one of those deep spots,” Joe said.

  I prayed.

  And then we were around it. I could hear the hull grating against the bottom. Brody was down again and we couldn’t see him. The waves just kept coming. They’d slam that new boat over and over until there was nothing left but a splintered fibreglass hull. Brody got up again and was now on the down side of the boat, waving frantically.

  “Now we have a problem,” Joe said, his eyes still on the chaos outside. “Brody’s got to get in the water and get his sorry ass over here.”

  “Is that gonna work?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “I got a better plan,” I said. “I go in the water, grab him, and haul him here.”

  “Always wanted to be a hero, didn’t ya?”

  “No. Never.”

  Joe slammed his fist into the wheel. He kept looking at Brody, who must have read his mind. He was about to lower himself into the water. “That fucking current will pull him toward the point and out toward the sea and those other rocks. Only way out of this tight little spot is the way we came in.”

  There was not much of a choice there. Only Joe could keep the boat steady and get us out of there. There was no two ways about it.

  I was already out of the cabin before he could say anything else. I found a rope, tied it around my waist. It was a big coil of polypropylene rope. If it didn’t do the trick, I was gonna be lunch for one those Volkswagen lobsters who love eating dead anything.

  Ramona kissed me once, hard on the lips, wrapped the other end of the rope around her waist, and tied a knot. I was shocked to realize she’d done a perfect bowline, a rescue knot.

  As the waves continued to smack away at us, I eased myself over the side just as I saw Brody make the splash into the water. The boat was fully on its side now. Soon it would flip.

  Brody was thrashing away, going under with each crashing wave and then popping back up. I was trying to move my arms and legs. I’d like to say I was swimming, but I wasn’t. I was wallowing, floundering, moving forward and then being pushed back. I couldn’t see a thing. I could hardly breathe as I kept getting smacked in the face by cold seawater. I could hear the engine behind me and just kept moving away from it. That’s all I could do. The water was cold, the waves were relentless, and I was terrified.

  I think I could hear Ramona screaming something, but couldn’t make it out. I just kept going. Dog paddling seemed to work best. First thing I ever learned about swimming. Maybe the last move I’d ever make.

  I saw him and then I lost him. How many times, I don’t know.

  And then we had one of those moments when the torrential rain let up ever so slightly. Still raging wind, still sloppy, bullying waves, but for an instant I could see where Brody was. And I swam like hell.

  There were no words between us. I saw fear in his eyes. Desperation. He would have registered the same in mine. Father and son, the thought went through my head again. Nah. More like two desperate souls about to drown.

  When I was right on top of him, I locked my arm through the loop on the back of his jacket, but he started trying to work his way around me, grabbing a hold of me in some kind of bear hug. I recognized it as the grip of a drowning man on the person trying to save him. When I’d taken a lifesaving course in high school, they’d told you how to break that grip. Otherwise, the drowning person would just pull you under. Out there, the floater jackets might keep you near the surface, but they wouldn’t keep you from drowning.

  I wanted Brody to let go of me so I could try to swim us back. But he wouldn’t let go. We were dead weight in the water, slopped over again and again by the icy cold waves. I could feel what energy I had draining out of me. All too quickly.

  And then I felt a powerful tug on the rope. I felt like it was going to cut through the jacket, cut through my guts. Someho
w Joe must have left the wheelhouse and started hauling us in. I felt one long pull, then another. And another.

  Brody was coughing, swallowing water over and over. I kept trying to keep my mouth shut and not swallow the ocean, but each smack in the face had me sputtering too.

  I wasn’t going to get us back to the boat. Brody’s dead-man bear hug wouldn’t let me move my arms. And I was losing energy fast. The tug was strong and consistent, but the current was pulling us away from the boat. Nothing to do but hang on.

  The rain continued blasting down and wave after wave continued to pound us. Eventually, they slammed us up against the hull of Joe’s boat. Then I felt the boat smash into something. It had connected with a rock for certain. The engine stalled. But then the engine roared again and Joe was backing us up. I was hanging on to the side of the boat with a struggling Brody hanging on to me, but there was no way I could lift him up and into the boat in this sea.

  I saw her arm first, the unlikely slender arm of a woman. I couldn’t see her face. She locked a fist onto my jacket loop and then, with her other arm, she reached out blindly and got a grip on Brody’s jacket.

  “No, let go!” I shouted. I was certain she’d pull herself into the sea with us. But she didn’t let go.

  The boat moved backward and then slowly forward. Joe was moving the boat ever so slowly but steadily away from the tip of the headland into deeper water. Brody and I kept getting pounded by waves, but Ramona did not let go. She was much stronger than I would have ever believed possible.

  Minutes later, with the sea still crazy all around, I saw Joe hovering over us. He leaned over the side and with one massive tug heaved Brody up and over the rail onto the deck. Without missing a beat, he grabbed me by the shoulders and did the same. He didn’t even look at me; just dropped me like a big fish from the sea onto the deck and ran back into the wheelhouse. I heard him rev the engine. It was only then I noticed Ramona had tied herself to a cleat mounted on the hull. She looked exhausted and hurt.