Sea of Tranquility

by Lesley Choyce

  She would have visited with Kit Lawson just to make sure she was keeping herself sane, and she would have liked to have one last good look at Greg, the boy who had had enough faith in an old woman to risk his life. But the door to Kit’s house was closed. Even from outside, she could hear bed springs squeaking, and that was enough to make her smile and feel nostalgic about all the passions of youth.

  Sylvie went home and took a long nap, woke around five o’clock, made a meal of Swiss chard, rice, ham, garden salad, and brown bread. She drank a glass of her own homemade raspberry wine and toasted her mother and her father. After dinner she gathered all of her dead husbands together. The kitchen felt very small and full indeed. She allowed them to counsel her one by one and accepted their gifts of wisdom, patience, tolerance, imagination, mental stamina, and curiosity.

  By eight in the evening, as the sky towards the west expressed its own opinions with vermilion clouds and other famous colours upon the water, Sylvie settled her supplies into the stern of the dory and rolled it down her ladder of spruce logs until it kissed the dark calm waters of Front Bay. Sylvie set her dry shoes in the boat, not sure why she was taking shoes along at all, then she lifted her skirt and waded into the water, tugging the boat until it was fully afloat. Then, bracing herself with a hand on the gunwale, she got in, fixed a good grip on each oar, and took one full stroke. This made her suddenly feel like a small child shaking hands with an old gentleman who wasn’t afraid to give a solid grasp to a kid’s hand.

  Then she was gliding on the calm sea, looking down at the forest of kelp and other seaweed swaying in the dark, cool waters like the long, flowing hair of her mother.

  A fish jumped. One and then another. And then all was still again. The sky above was perfectly clear. One star off to the east. Venus, rising. Then another off to the south. The moon would not appear tonight. Stars would celebrate the event. Many things rushed through her mind, but she tried to keep the questions from crowding out what she felt. And Sylvie was glad her muscles felt strong, glad her heart was healthy and pumping blood to every part of her old woman’s body.

  The shoreline was empty. Rowing seemed almost effortless. She pulled at the oars in a slow but serious manner. She passed by the fisherman’s shack where Greg had first stayed. Someone was there, a boy, it seemed. He waved to her. Sylvie waved back, but she was sure she was too far away and that light was too dim for him to see who was in the dory. Then she scooted past the sea cave, tonight looking exotic and benign, and then her boat found the deep current of the Trough. She felt the tug of the current, the pull of the unseen moon, and the graceful, immense power of invisible guiding forces. She propped the oars for a while and let the boat drift away from the island until it was a dark silhouette with a faint red glow of sun behind it. And then it was a smudge until it was erased by distance.

  When darkness swallowed what was left of the sun’s light, the stars had already grown restless and extravagant above her head. Sylvie arranged her small luxury of needlework cushions on the bottom of the boat and on the hard edge of the seats, and then she lowered herself to the slat floor of her dory, flung her head back, let her mouth fall open, and looked up into the night sky until she felt like she was being drawn up into it. Not a ripple upon the sea, not a breeze. She felt weightless, free, and happy. What she felt inside her chest was like music, but there was no sound save a kind of internal vibration. And with it knowledge akin to what it was like to dowse for water. You just kept quiet and waited and you eventually knew.

  Floating now, alone on a dark night with a canopy of brilliant suns above her, she knew that she had chosen the right time to finally leave her beloved island. She thought of old native women of the north, setting themselves adrift on ice floes, old Mi’kmaq women going to the woods alone for spiritual resolution. And she also thought of old women dying in nursing homes.

  Whatever it was she was doing, she knew somehow it was the right thing for her and for the island.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  When Yoshiteru Kojima stepped out of the taxi at the Mutton Hill Harbour wharf, he was surprised that the long ride from the airport had been so inexpensive — only a hundred and fifty dollars Canadian. He gave the driver a twenty dollar tip. Yoshi stood stone still for a minute after the taxi left. He closed his eyes and breathed the air, smelled the sea, heard the sound of hammers and saws. Men working nearby, building something, boats maybe. Honest work. A Ben’s Bread truck was parked in front of a store and a man was carrying in a large rack of baked goods. Cars passed by and the sun glinted off their windshields. Children were laughing somewhere nearby.

  Yoshi had grown up in such a town, a world away, on Hokkaido, the big northern island of Japan. Something welled up inside of him. Why had he spent all those years in Tokyo? Why the great drive, the great ambition? His father had been a much simpler man, a fisherman, satisfied with his small, orderly life, content with his work, his wife and only son. But not Yoshi. And because Yoshi was willing to make so many personal sacrifices for his job, he had done extremely well in Tokyo. His employers were always pleased with his work. But he had been growing restless, waiting for some kind of signal that it was time to change.

  The phone call from his friend Bruce Sanger in New York had been too great of a temptation. An island. With an untouched resource that was in great demand in Yoshi’s country. Yes, there was profit to be made — but there was also something else. Profitable deals had been the basis for a long-distance, mainly-business relationship with Bruce Sanger. And they shared a belief that profit and good work, good deeds even, could go hand in hand. Yoshi found that few of his colleagues, his late-night-heavy-drinking-in-the-Ginza buddies, understood why this combination of seemingly disparate elements was so important. Why things like resource renewal were better than rape and pillage of the land or sea. Yoshi knew it was a deep-seated belief that his father had given him — like a thorn it was sometimes, but like the flower of a rose as well.

  Bruce Sanger had started out as cynical as the next trader on his floor about ethical investing. Investing in a company because they had a good working relationship with a union? Was that enough to qualify for a hefty chunk of their mutual fund investment? Yes, it was. Even if they made automotive parts for the military governments of a dozen countries around the world? Geothermal was better, however, and profitable as well. It was a sorcerer’s brew of ethics and profit where performance always outweighed moral issues if it came down to the crunch. Leading investors to those vineyards in Chile and oil recycling plants in Philadelphia. And Bruce knew deep down that his co-workers were still sharks — sharks with teeth as sharp as any of the best traders on Wall Street. He knew the calibre of those teeth because he brushed his own set of them every morning.

  And then this thing that happened with Angeline. The world went cockeyed and for weeks afterwards he was still trying to get his equilibrium. The story poured out of him one day when he was on the phone to Yoshiteru Kojima. Business had linked them initially: Japanese fish farming with environmentally appropriate methods. Non-intrusive hi-tech scallop farming in Malaysia and the Philippines. For mutual profit in several mutual funds they helped to administer, they had traded information. With good results. But neither trusted the security of e-mail and both despised the clinical nature of faxing back and forth, so they had resigned themselves to the old-fashioned luxury of the telephone. And over the phone lines their friendship had grown.

  Once Bruce was back in New York after Angeline’s near tragedy, he was trying to carve away at the pile of work on his desk. It all seemed so trivial. He gave up and phoned Yoshi instead, realizing it was very early in Japan but that his Japanese friend was already likely to be at his own desk in Tokyo. And he told Yoshi everything that had happened on the island.

  Yoshi and his wife, Taeko, did not have children, and it looked as if their window of opportunity was closing fast. It had been a conscious decision on his part, on their part. Career obligations for both. Now that they were o
lder, they both regretted it very much but rarely could bring themselves to speak of it. Late last year Bruce had mailed Yoshi a Christmas letter with news of his own family and he’d sent a photograph as well: Bruce in his backyard with his arms around Elise, Todd, and Angeline. Yoshi had not shown the photograph to his wife because he knew how it would make her feel, but he had folded the photo carefully and placed it in his wallet. He looked at the picture now and again. And he had taken it out and studied it as the Air Canada jet was touching down on the runway in Halifax. It made his eyes burn, and Yoshi knew it must be the stale air in the airplane cabin or the physical and emotional debilitation that came with jet lag.

  Yoshi knew that he looked out of place. Still dressed in his dark business suit, carrying his Samsonite hard-shell luggage out towards the end of the wharf. The tourist books had said there was ferry service to the island. He had been uncertain about actual departure times and decided to make his own way to the island and then find Bruce on his own. He didn’t want to put his friend to any inconvenience, and besides, he liked figuring out things on his own.

  He saw the ferry but there was no one on it. It did not seem to be active. Then he saw the sign: the times of departure and arrival, but another board with neat government printing diagonally across it:“Ferry Service Cancelled.”

  Yoshi looked out towards sea, again sniffed at the fishy smells of the air, like an elixir in his lungs. On the other side of the wharf, a man was loading groceries into his boat.

  “Excuse me, I was hoping to catch the ferry to Ragged Island but it appears…”

  “It appears to be dead, my friend. Done for. Kaput. The ferry has ferried its last.” Moses Slaunwhite said the words with a mix of cynicism and mild humour. He knew a lost tourist when he saw one.“It wasn’t the whales you were looking for, was it?” He’d hate to have to crack the bad news about that as well.

  “I didn’t know there were whales.”

  “There were, but there aren’t anymore, I’m afraid.”

  Yoshi was unsure where the conversation was going. He was pretty good at American customs but knew Canadians were different. Could he offer this man money to take him to the island on his boat?

  Yoshi handed Moses Slaunwhite his business card and bowed. Moses wiped some winch grease off his hands and accepted the card, nodded. Yoshi Kojima, global investment analyst. Moses blinked, looked up at Yoshi — the clothes, the fancy black luggage, the goddam shoes.

  “Oh shit,” he said out loud. “You want to buy the frigging island, I bet.” What else could it be? It would be the last straw.

  Yoshi waved his hand in the air. He smiled. Something about hearing a man he just met say “shit” made him feel more relaxed and comfortable. “No. No. Nothing like that. I’m looking for my friend, Bruce Sanger. He lives on that island.”

  Moses swiped a dirty hand across his face, pulled down on his chin, embarrassed.“Sorry. Didn’t mean to be such an asshole. Of course. Bruce is living out there on my island.”

  “Your island?”

  “I don’t own it. But I live there with my family.”

  “Ah, family.”

  “Wife and a couple of kids. See all that food? My kids eat like horses. Viddy stuffs all of us real good.”

  Viddy. Family. Yoshi liked the sound of all of it.

  “Hop in. Give you a ride.”

  Should he ask about the fare? Perhaps it would be the thing to do.“How much would you charge me, sir?”

  Moses couldn’t help but laugh. Snot accidentally flew out his nose and that made him laugh harder. “Sorry, bud,” he said, “Didn’t meant to blow boogers on you like that.”

  “It’s okay, you missed. What did I say wrong?”

  “Ah, nothing, man. Nothing at all. Just the way you said it. So formal and everything. I didn’t mean to be a stupid herring choker but I guess that’s what I am.”

  “And what can I pay you?”

  “There you go again. Nothing, pal. I gotta take these groceries home anyway. It’s on my way. Wouldn’t be right to ask for anything. Sit down and enjoy the ride.”

  And Yoshi did enjoy the ride. Immensely. He felt free of everything that had tied him down, everything that was dragging him down in his successful life in Tokyo. A man named Moses was carrying him across the water in a fine, foreign place called Nova Scotia.

  School began the day after Labour Day as usual. The class was smaller. Fourteen students. The school was officially closed. Some parents had followed the direction of the government and sent their kids ashore to board in town and go to Mutton Hill Harbour Consolidated. Several families had moved ashore altogether, some gone to greener pastures in Ontario and B. C. Said it was time to go.

  But many stayed for what was turning out to be a fine, fine September on the island. Cloudless days, very little wind. Kit and Greg held some classes outside, took the kids on hikes. Science lessons by the shore with rocks and living things. Kit was impressed with how much Greg knew and what a good teacher he was. Kit was feeling pretty good about herself, but she had begun to worry about Sylvie. She had not seen hide nor hair of her old friend for five days, and it seemed like she had just upped and left. And that seemed impossible. It was rumoured that she’d just gone ashore to visit some old friends who had moved off already, but no one had actually seen her leave the island. This wasn’t like her. But Kit knew Sylvie was okay. The old girl was smart and resourceful and was her own woman. Sylvie had certainly pulled Kit back from the brink of madness before Greg had come along to keep her sane.

  Now the two of them taught side by side. Unpaid. Unofficial altogether. As far as the province was concerned, the school was permanently closed. Kit’s contract was terminated. Island parents, however, had backed Kit’s ideas about keeping on as if nothing had happened. She said she didn’t care about money, about pay. Everyone said they’d work something out. Barter, or whatever. Food and firewood could be provided. Phonse and Moses said they’d both work at providing whatever else the pair needed. Greg had told islanders he was really happy to be able to stay on and help. He hadn’t graduated from St. Mary’s but he was close. He’d be a good teacher, he promised. Hell, after the cave thing, all those who kept their kids on the island trusted Greg. They admired the son of a gun and most even approved of the fact that he’d moved in with Kit Lawson. He was sure to be a better catch than the dope grower.

  Most of the kids thought school was very cool. Greg had invented a bunch of games for teaching math. Kit had little kids creating fantastic, goofy poems. There were videos and computer labs and music. The American family had donated VCRs and computer gear. A typical day ran the gamut from nature hikes to Internet research. The old and the new mixed up and shook up like some fancy pedagogical milkshake, and the kids loved it.

  Sure, island people were still hurting in any number of ways, most of them financial. Not much money coming into or going out of Ragged Island. But there you had it. Not so different from the old days.

  September, September, September. A gift of weather, a long last pull at summer. The hum of bad news always in the background, though. A cold, dark November to come. Blasty weather of December and the ice and snow of the dark months. Days already getting shorter. Nights cool, though — good for sleeping. Some fishing activity, but hardly worth the price of fuel. Just take one day after the next. Like the old times. Not much sign of anybody from the province since several families sold their houses. Boarded them up like something gone out of business. Sad. Sorry, sorry thing. But it was chin-up for the rest. Bloody stay put and forge on with a life. See how she sails. Weather it out. Or watch it get worse. Not such a bad thing to be cut off from the mainland, really. Cut off from the world.

  Moses cut the engine and let the boat thump gently up against the big truck tires nailed onto the dock.“All ashore that’s goin’ ashore, bud,” Moses said. He hopped off onto the dock and seemed to be walking away.

  The quiet settled upon Yoshi until Moses fired up an old, cut-down Chevy Nova parked
at the Aetna Café across the road and roared out onto the wharf. Moses set Yoshi’s suitcase in the back and said he’d run him out to see Bruce Sanger in this contraption that he referred to as “the truck.” When he dropped Yoshi off at his destination, the Japanese man gave him a small lapel pin, an unlikely gift, with an image of Buddha on it. “For good luck,” he said.

  “Right on. Thanks, bud.” Moses had no idea that the pin was solid gold and made by a famous metal sculptor in Kyoto, that Yoshi had bought the pin for something like $300 American. Moses liked it okay, but studying it in the glinting sunlight, decided it was something more for Viddy than him and maybe she’d think it exotic or whatever. Never hurts to come home bearing gifts, even if it was just a little trifling thing like this.

  Yoshi had already decided he did not like the island. He loved it. He wanted to give up life in Tokyo and move here. No, he wouldn’t buy it, but he knew that he could probably afford it, backed by some of his friends. If he wanted to, he could own this whole amazing, lovely place, create a world there, bring his wife. Forget about Tokyo and the sewer rats he worked with. But as he sipped English tea and ate zucchini muffins with Bruce and his lovely wife, Elise, he absorbed the sorry tale of what had recently happened to the island and knew that he had not come here just to do something selfish; he had come to do something much larger.

  “I’m not going back to New York,” Bruce told his good friend. It was only his second ever face-to-face encounter with Yoshi, although they had talked on the phone for many years. Once they had crossed flight paths in Honolulu, spent an evening drinking at a bar in Waikiki, become close allies in the crazy world of commerce, then flown off in opposite directions. But here they were on this island. For a reason. Insane as it was. “I’ll have to fly down once a month and do the office thing for a few days, then come back. We’re renting the house in Montclair. In the end, we let the kids decide.”