Broken Man on a Halifax Pier

by Choyce, Lesley;

  But winter was around the corner. Back in July, it seemed like summer would never end. How could it? We’d become accustomed to our idyllic days at sea and our nights back in the fisherman’s shack making love. Now we were on the mainland and headed toward something resembling respectability.

  And maybe that scared us both.

  The money side of things had started to bug me. I was still the guy without a quarter to his name. But Ramona had all we needed. The word gigolo had cropped up in my mind more than once. Part of me still felt guilty about not carrying my weight. Probably my father speaking inside my head. A man thing. Men are supposed to work. If he could see me now, he’d wonder how he could ever have produced a son so totally reliant on a woman.

  “I’m thinking of starting a community newspaper,” I told Ramona at breakfast one day, out of the blue.

  “Great,” she said. “But I thought newspapers were on their last legs. The end of an era and all that.”

  “Not small local papers. People still want local news, local gossip. Articles about church dinners and fish stories. They still love fish stories.”

  “Then do it.”

  “As soon as the house is finished, I’ll suss out the possibilities. A weekly. Full of folksy stories about men with beer can collections and women who have noontime socials wearing funny hats. And fishing news of course. ‘Fred Osborne finds hundred-year-old boot in mackerel net.’ That sort of thing.”

  “I love it. Just don’t forget about the novel.”

  “The trouble with novels is that they’re so ambitious. Big stories with the intention of coming to grips with the meaning of life. Or the meaninglessness of life, as so many express it these days. I think the real truth about living is in the minutiae. The little things. The everyday things.”

  “I agree. Your newspaper will be filled with stories about the ordinary events of people’s lives.”

  “I’ll get Rolf to write editorials. Rants on whatever he wants.”

  “And I’ll do the gossip column.”

  “Now you’re talking.

  We had plenty of warning about the approaching storm. Days in advance, Environment Canada was issuing statements that Hurricane Greta was arcing north from the Caribbean after being spawned off the coast of Africa. But then it stalled just past Bermuda and we all thought it was like so many other tropical storms, just going to spin itself into nothing in the colder northern waters.

  Nova Scotia hadn’t seen a real hurricane since Juan back in 2003, when massive winds had knocked out the power for weeks and whole forests were levelled in its wake. The memory of that hadn’t faded exactly, but we had all begun to feel that we were safe from any repeat of a big storm.

  Ramona’s father showed up with Brenda in tow again. She looked healthier than I’d seen her before and Stanley was cheerful and pleasant. Ramona had slowly accepted that he was back and was trying to get adjusted to the new man that he seemed to be. Stanley was genuinely interested in our new home and asked me endless questions about how we were going to finish it.

  Despite the new drug that the doctors had found for her, Ramona’s mother still had bad days, days when she seemed able to remember only a little. On those days she would forget my name, referring to me as “that boy.” From her tone of voice, however, it was clear that she thought of me in a good way. She seemed to have accepted her day-to-day confusion but grew frustrated when she couldn’t remember something. Yet, occasionally, she would recount stories from her past with perfect clarity. But, of course, the drug didn’t always work and overall there was a steady decline.

  “Ramona, I remember when you were a little girl and you sneaked into the bathroom with my good scissors and cut off all your hair.”

  “I had decided that I wanted to be a boy,” Ramona added.

  “You never told me this,” I said, pretending to be shocked.

  “It was just a phase,” Ramona said.

  “She got over it,” Brenda added, “when she discovered that men had penises. She found them disgusting.”

  “I was only a child,” Ramona said. “I let my hair grow back after that.” She paused and then, smiling at me, said, “I got over my disgust. Eventually.”

  By midafternoon, the sky began to look dark. My father’s old barometer on the wall, the one returned by Ernie Pike, showed that the air pressure was dropping rapidly.

  “Stanley, I think you might want to head back to Halifax,” I told him. But he looked over at his wife who had suddenly fallen asleep on the old sofa. She looked so peaceful.

  “Just like an angel,” he said. “I think I’ll let her have her nap first.”

  Old fishermen speak frequently of being able to predict storms with bad toes or back injuries, headaches, or congestion. It all probably has something to do with air pressure. But other things are deeper seated. A kind of ancient and reliable instinct in the primitive part of the brain that lets someone know there is danger coming.

  I walked outside and saw a wave of gulls and cormorants fly over. I could feel the weight of an approaching storm. I turned on the car radio and heard the news. Greta had started moving. Winds at sea were already at gale level. There was a chance the hurricane would make landfall by night somewhere east of Halifax.

  I went back inside and told Ramona. “I think your parents should get on the road now,” I told her. But just then a powerful gust of sea air hit us.

  “I think they should stay,” she said. “My father is a crazy driver. Even if we just get rain before they get to Halifax, I’d rather he wasn’t driving. I don’t trust him.”

  “Could be a long night,” I said.

  “You okay if they stay?”

  “Sure.”

  I drove out to the harbour then to see that the shack was closed up and to check the lines on the boat. Other fishermen were battening down their boats and looking more than a little worried. I saw Joe’s boat; it looked like he’d already added more lines to keep it in place and he’d stowed his gear.

  We all knew, though, that if a real hurricane hits, there isn’t much you can do to ensure your boat doesn’t get battered or sunk. Some fishermen, fearing for their boats getting smashed against the docks, take them out to sea to ride out a storm. But that is a deadly gambler’s game and not one anyone around there would be willing to play.

  I think I talked to Sheer Delight the way people speak to their dog or their car. “You’re gonna be all right,” I said. “Just hang in there and you’ll be fine.” I had a fleeting image of my father just then, bringing us back to the harbour in the middle of a November squall on his last day of the year at sea. And I realized those were his words I was speaking, not mine.

  “Keep an eye on her,” I said to my dead father. “Help her get through this.”

  You bet I will, he seemed to say. As I stood there on the deck of his old fishing boat, I looked out to sea at the darkness on the horizon. All at once, I felt a powerful surge of emotion — an overwhelming feeling of loss. I missed my parents. I deeply longed to be able to see them again. I can’t say why it hit me just then. But it did. This feeling that I had denied myself for decades hit me hard like a powerful punch to my gut. Suddenly, I was on my knees, crying in that way children do, in great, heaving gasps.

  That was when the first few drops of rain fell. If anyone had been looking, it probably looked like I was praying, and maybe that’s as close to prayer as I ever came. I felt the cool drops of rain on my head and on my back and, as I stood back up, I felt the sea beneath the boat drop and then rise in slow motion. Waves coming from a storm probably still a hundred miles away. But heading this way.

  But so far it was only droplets of rain. I put two hands on the gunwale and promised Sheer Delight I’d be back when the storm was over.

  I went to Rolf’s shack and banged on the door. No answer. So I opened the door and walked in. Rolf was sitting at his wooden table staring at a full bottle of rum.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “If I can sta
re at it long enough, I can win,” he said. “It’s me or the bottle. Always good to keep your enemy close at hand.”

  “Rolf, you idiot, there’s a storm coming. A big one. Come stay at my new house overnight.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Chisel. It’s just a little weather. If you listen to those sissies on the CBC, you’d think it’s something out of the Old Testament. Get the animals on the ark, Noah. Before it’s too late.”

  “Really, Rolf. I checked the boat and I’m going to the mainland. Come with me. Bring your friend there if you like.”

  “No, no, no. I’m staying put. This ole shack has been through many a storm. This one ain’t gonna be no worse. Besides, I like a little bad weather. Good for the soul.”

  “I insist. Come on, you old coot.”

  But Rolf would have none of it. He was staying put.

  42

  On the short drive back to our new house, my brain began to chart the hours ahead. Rain, wind, trees with smashed limbs. No doubt we’d lose electricity. We’d have to ride through the storm in that shell of a house. Big Carl had expressed worries about the house being unfinished, but he had assured me the place was watertight, or “weathertight” as he called it. But this was a hurricane coming our way, the real thing.

  Like most folks there in Stewart Harbour, I believed the media hype about the approaching storm to be just that. Hype. City people would be worried, crowding themselves into supermarkets, buying up canned goods and bottled water like it was the end of the world. Hunkering down in their homes, frantic when they lost electricity. Funny how any storm that was tropical in origin would get so much attention. As a kid, I’d seen winter storms with waves towering at thirty feet and winds that could suck your skin off, but you’d never hear a word about those on the news.

  A little wind. A little rain. By morning it would be all over and everyone would wonder what the fuss was about. On the car radio, they spoke of the path of the storm and it sounded like we were going to be right on the “eye wall” and could experience some serious winds. There was talk of a tidal surge as well. High tide would be the middle of the night. No time to be anywhere near the wharf.

  As I drove over the causeway, the water on both sides looked choppy but normal. Still, time to get myself back inside, ride it out with Ramona and her parents. Could be a mighty strange evening.

  As soon as I pulled in the driveway, it started to come down in buckets. Not much wind, just an avalanche of water pouring down from the sky. I got soaked running to the house. Ramona was relieved to see me and gave me a big hug. She had made some coffee and was trying to figure out what to feed us for dinner.

  Despite the rain, part of me still thought the whole storm news thing was fear-mongering. But suddenly the sound of the rain on the roof was deafening. With no insulation, no gyprock on the ceilings or walls, and just a big empty shell of a wooden house, the pounding of the rain was amplified out of all proportion.

  Ramona’s mother and father were sitting on the old sofa that had come from my childhood home. Brenda looked frightened and Stanley was soothing her. She closed her eyes and leaned into him.

  The rain let up ever so slightly, but we could still hear some kind of drumming. Someone was knocking at our door. Ramona rushed to open it. There was Mackenzie, soaked to the skin.

  Ramona ushered her into the house and grabbed a blanket to throw around her. She was crying and hyperventilating. Ramona sat her down on the floor as I closed the door. When she could speak, she said, “My grandmother kicked me out of the house. I was headed toward Beth Ann’s house, but then the rain started. I got scared. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “You’re here now,” Ramona consoled her. “You’re gonna stay here until this thing is over.”

  Mackenzie tented herself under the blanket and sobbed some more. I watched Brenda studying the girl with the utmost concern. When Mackenzie poked her head back out from under, Brenda suddenly reached out her arms into the air, but the pregnant girl pulled herself away and coiled the blanket around herself. Ramona’s mother looked a little hurt, but then turned to her daughter and said, “Ramona, see if you can find something dry for her, please, honey.”

  I decided to make an inspection of the house to see if there were any leaks or anything else to worry about. The wind hadn’t hit yet. Just rain. But plenty of it. I could see some leaks around a few of the windows but nothing really to worry about. The concrete floor on the basement was dry, but I did see some water dribbling down from the top of the foundation. When I went up to the second storey, I could see water coming in around the eaves. I also noticed a big pile of metal rafter hangers on the floor. The house was still a work in progress, so no surprise there. The roof looked solid, though. No big worries. Just the pounding, drum-like sound of big drops of rain again. Lots of rain.

  The downpour let up around five o’clock that evening. Ramona had been able to cook spaghetti. The power had not gone out but then we still hadn’t been hit with the wind. I turned on the old radio, the beat-up ancient thing I’d brought over from the fish shack. Our only entertainment. The cellphone wasn’t working, so this was our only way of knowing what the outside world had to offer us.

  After dinner on paper plates, Stanley said, “Just like having a picnic.”

  Mackenzie had settled down and was dressed in some of Ramona’s dry clothes. She lay down on the mattress I had hauled into the bare living room, and I watched as Brenda covered her with a dry blanket. Then the rain stopped. Just like someone had turned off the faucet. It grew quiet. Strangely quiet. But also peaceful.

  I instinctively knew all the rain was just that — rain. Something advancing ahead of Greta, drenching us good, but just a warm-up act to the main event. It wouldn’t be over until it was over. And it hadn’t really begun yet.

  And then I heard this on the CBC. “Environment Canada has just announced that it expects to see a storm surge of one to two metres along the Eastern Shore as the storm approaches, coinciding with a rising tide and significant wave height. They have issued a warning to anyone living in low-lying coastal areas to move inland, away from the coast.”

  Ramona looked at me. “What do we do?”

  “We’re okay here. I’m certain. It’s why my father had built the old house here on the mainland. He said it was here instead of closer to the water because of what he called the once-in-a-hundred-year storm. My father liked to be prepared just in case.”

  “What about the boat?”

  I shrugged. “Whatever will be will be.” I figured we’d be lucky if we could even find the boat by tomorrow.

  “The fish shack?”

  “Who knows?” And then it hit me. “Rolf.”

  “I thought you said he’d be okay.”

  “I did. But I didn’t know about the storm surge. Shit. I gotta go get him.” I reached for the car keys on the table but Ramona grabbed my hand. “No. Call someone.”

  I held up the cellphone. “Not working, remember? Tower got knocked out by the rain somehow.”

  “Don’t go. Please.” Ramona pulled me to her, a frantic look in her eyes.

  “I gotta.”

  And I did.

  Everything was soaked outside. There was only a light drizzle now and a whiff of a sea breeze. The proverbial calm before the storm. How many times had my father used that phrase? His presence seemed to be with me again. That would be just like him. Looking over my shoulder, advising me what to do next like I was still a little kid. What would my father do in this situation? He’d go haul Rolf’s ass away from the harbour whether he wanted to co-operate or not. And that’s exactly what I was about to do.

  There were no other cars on the road. I could see that the causeway was already flooded; waves were lapping up on both sides and spilling over onto the road. I slowed the Lexus and proceeded with caution. Halfway across, however, I realized the water was seeping in under the door. Shit. Then I heard a loud, double-barrelled whump as a wave on each side of the causeway slammed into the protectin
g rocks, vaulted spray up into the air, and slammed it down hard onto the hood and roof.

  The engine sputtered and stalled. I got the engine to turn over several times, but then I got nothing but a click. And then, nothing at all. The water had shorted out the battery. Should have seen that coming, my dead father seemed to say. Now get your ass moving.

  I got out. The water was knee deep. It was warm. Gulf Stream warm. I started slogging toward the wharf. A couple more waves hit the rocks and I was pummelled with seawater. But I kept moving, all the while thinking about the way back.

  I was almost back on land, that narrow peninsula jutting to sea that was home to the fishing village and the wharf. The sky off to the south looked pitch black. Ominous. When I looked back toward the mainland, I saw an old truck racing across the causeway at speed, sending up a rooster tail of water on either side.

  It was Joe. I kept walking until I was past the causeway and up on dry land. He pulled up out of the water and stopped.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” It was a familiar line.

  “I’m worried about Rolf. He said he wasn’t leaving.”

  “That stupid piece of shit. C’mon. Get in.”

  I got in. “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

  “I needed to check on my boat one more time.”

  “Tide’s rising,” I said. “Better make it quick.”

  “I lose that boat, I lose everything.”

  “You heard about the storm surge?”

  “I heard. Anything else you want to lecture me about?”

  “Nope,” I said. Joe sped to the wharf, skidded to a stop on the loose stones. He ran off down the wharf. No one else was around. I could see all the boats bobbing eerily up and down. The water was up to the top of the decking already. Soon the wharf would be awash.

  I ran to Rolf’s shack, knocked on the door. No answer. I opened it and there was Rolf. Passed out at the kitchen table where I’d left him with his full bottle of rum. Except now it was empty. The bottle had won. Captain Morgan had spoken.