by Linda Kenyon
“‘Plant a big garden,’ she would say. ‘Raise some chickens, keep the freezer full. Make pies on Saturday in case somebody drops by after church. Have a house without a pie,’ she would say, ‘be ashamed until you die.’”
“I would have to agree with that,” Chris said.
“It took me a while, but I started to get the hang of it, was happy, even.”
Emily had given up sniffing the flower beds and was snoring at my feet. I leaned over and stroked her soft ears.
“That’s one ugly dog,” he said.
“No, she’s beautiful! Look at her little turned-up nose.”
“Looks like she ran into a wall.”
I pulled her up onto my lap, hugged her tightly. She grumbled a little, but was snoring again in no time.
“I never expected to be living in town, alone. I don’t want this.”
We sat in silence for a while. He was watching the sky, the sun was setting, the clouds fading to purple. I was watching him, so at ease with himself, leaning against the red-brick wall of the old school, long legs stretched out in front of him.
“So what’s the hardest thing for you right now?” he asked.
“Grocery shopping.”
“Come on,” he said, standing up and brushing off his jeans, tucking in his T-shirt.
“I can’t,” I said. “Not looking like this.”
“Yes, you can. Go get your wallet.”
At work the next day, a colleague said she had seen me coming out of the grocery store with a man.
“He was dreamy. Who was that?”
“Just a friend.”
“This day won’t always be so hard for you, I promise,” Chris says, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind my ear.
I smile at him. This morning his eyes are more hazel than brown.
“What day?” I say.
The winds are still light, but we’re holding three knots, which is good enough for us. We’ve decided that if we drop below three knots, we’ll motor, though we’re keenly aware that we can’t motor all the way across the ocean — we don’t have enough fuel, even with both tanks full and all the extra jerrycans. So we’re sailing gently along, nothing much to do but watch the sky, look around for other boats every now and then.
I’ve been keeping an eye on a cloud that’s appeared on the horizon, off to the east. It’s darker than the white fluffy clouds we’ve been seeing, and lower. And it seems to be growing.
“I don’t like the looks of that,” I say, pointing to what is slowly turning into a bank of dark clouds.
“Me either. Looks like a squall. And it’s coming towards us.”
“Reduce sail?”
“No, I think we can sail around it. Let’s tack.”
We’ve been sailing northeast. If we tack, we’ll be heading northwest. We’re not moving very fast, but if we change course, maybe the squall will pass behind us.
As luck would have it, the wind picks up just as the squall approaches and we pick up speed. Four knots, five, six. All we get is a few splatters of rain as the edge of the squall passes over us.
“That was fun,” Chris says, as the boat starts to slow again. Five, four, three. The squall is heading off towards the horizon. We’re back in full sun again, but it’s much cooler now, nice.
“I’m going down for my nap,” Chris says. “Do you want your book?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
But I don’t really feel like reading. I hold the book in my lap, watch the sky.
We were just kids, really. We didn’t tell anyone, just had the minister in the village marry us. The minister’s wife served us white cake and ginger ale at the manse afterwards. There was a lace cloth on the table, a big vase of roses on the heavy wooden sideboard. The house smelled of lemon wax.
Then we went and told our parents what we had done.
Brad’s father was working in the yard.
“Hey, Dad,” Brad began.
“Where have you been? You were supposed to help me…”
He turned around, saw me in a long, unbleached cotton dress, a little lace at the throat, Brad in his best brown corduroy pants and plaid shirt.
“We got married, Dad.”
They’d hoped for more for their only son, a girl from a good farm family, someone from their church, at least. I was glad I didn’t have to face his mother — she was in town shopping for the day. His father gave us his credit card so we could go out for a nice dinner.
My mother insisted that we come back home afterwards, and to my horror, there were cars lined up the laneway, people milling around the lawn, if you could call it that, eyeing the overgrown flower beds. The house had a crumbling cement porch on the side of it, the wooden roof and railing long gone, really just a set of precarious steps going up to the kitchen door. We never used the front door.
“Surprise,” Mom sang, as she emerged from the house carrying a slab cake she must have found at the store in Plattsville. The tiny bride and groom that had decorated her wedding cake stood forlornly in an expanse of almost-white icing.
My husband’s grandmother inspected the cake closely before accepting a piece. She locked eyes with his mother. See what kind of family your son has married into?
“Tea? Coffee?” Mom was handing around mismatched cups. Some had saucers, some didn’t.
Enough of this. Enough. I scan the horizon, no boats in sight, open my book.
We’re reading our way through Patrick O’Brian’s novels about the adventures of Jack Aubrey, an officer in the British Royal Navy, and his ship’s surgeon, Stephen Maturin, set during the Napoleonic Wars. It’s a struggle to keep ahead of Chris, who reads on his night watch rather than gazing at the stars.
When we were in Antigua, I found myself looking around English Harbour, wondering how much it had changed since Jack and Stephen were stationed there, had to keep reminding myself that Jack and Stephen aren’t real. Chris likes Jack, the man of action, but I identify with quiet, introverted Stephen, who knows nothing about sailing and spends his time studying birds.
Stephen doesn’t have to sail the boat — his job is patching sailors together after battles with other ships, sawing off arms and legs as necessary, a messy business. But I am the first mate on this ship — the only mate, actually, though I prefer to call myself the cabin boy because I am responsible for keeping things in good order below, taking care of the cooking and cleaning and just generally looking after our creature comforts. Chris had to teach me how to use a winch — always wind the sheet on in a clockwise direction, keep your hair tied back so it doesn’t get caught, harder, crank harder. I watched him set and trim the sails until I more or less got the hang of it, learned how to scan for boats properly — you don’t just look around haphazardly — how to check our course and speed, how to use the radar. We spent two summers sailing the Great Lakes while I learned how to sail. But there are still times when I feel like Stephen.
Oh, yeah. Stephen isn’t real.
Chris doesn’t nap for long — it’s too nice a day to spend below.
“I’m going to do a little fishing,” Chris says, rummaging in his tackle box. He pulls out spoon boy, his lucky lure, attaches it to a length of wire, ties it onto his fishing line. He goes to the back deck and drops the lure into the water, lets out some line, then props the rod in the holder screwed to the back deck. He stands, one hand curled around the backstay, and watches the lure spinning through the deep blue water. He’s still in his underwear. Life just doesn’t get much better than this.
I’m starting to think about what to make for dinner when Chris yells, “Fish on!”
I look back just in time to see a silvery-blue flash as a big fish leaps out of the water, then plunges back in, shaking its head from side to side.
“Heave to!” Chris says.
I can handle that in these light winds. I turn the boa
t up into the wind until the genoa backwinds, stopping us dead.
“Get the net! No, the gaff! Get the net and the gaff!”
I scramble to the back deck, untie the net and gaff from the radar arch. He’s managed to get the fish up to the stern of the boat, but it’s still got a lot of fight left in it.
“The gaff!”
I hand him a long pole with a hook on the end, sharpened to a nasty point. I can’t watch.
“Sorry, buddy,” I hear Chris murmur. Then I hear it flopping around on the back deck.
“Wow! What is it? It looks like a tuna.”
“I think it might be. Ten pounds at least. Get the rum.”
I hurry below deck, come back with a bottle of cheap rum. I watch as he pours some into the fish’s gills.
“There you go, buddy,” Chris says.
“I’ll go get your filleting knife.”
When I come back, the fish is lying there in a drunken stupor. Or dead. I’m not sure which. Chris may have knocked him on the head while I was below. I’ve brought our guide to ocean fish so we can identify him before Chris gets to work. We study its shape, its colour, the placement of its fins. It’s a slender, streamlined fish, slightly flat, its back a beautiful iridescent bluish green, silvery sides. It’s a King Mackerel, we decide, a member of the tuna family. Definitely something we can eat.
Half an hour later he hands me a big bowl full of fillets. I try not to look at the back deck, but of course I do. It’s slick with blood. I duck back down into the galley. We’ll have King Mackerel steaks tonight, poached mackerel tomorrow, mackerel with rice and peas the next day. Then what? There’s no room in the freezer yet.
Jim would know what to do with all this fish.
We were at anchor in Staniel Cay in the Bahamas. The front had passed over us and the winds had dropped and settled in from the north — good winds for setting out for Antigua. The seas were still running high, though, so we decided to spend one more day in the Bahamas and head out the next morning.
The call came over the radio just as we were finishing our coffee.
“MonArk, MonArk — Salty Paws.”
“Salty Paws — MonArk. Go seven-one.”
“Seven-one.”
Chris punched in 7–1 and said, “Good morning, Jim.”
“Good morning, Chris. We’re going hunting this morning and wondered if you’d like to join us.”
Chris looked at me doubtfully. We’d just drawn up a list of things we had to do before we set out.
“Go,” I said. “We can change the oil and check the batteries in the morning.”
“Sure,” Chris said eagerly. “What time?”
“We’ll be there in five minutes.”
There was a flurry of flippers and mask and wetsuit and don’t forget to sunblock your nose, then he was down the ladder and racing off across the bay with Jim and Bentley. Three boys in a rubber dinghy with spears. I wasn’t sorry to be left behind.
I really don’t get this hunting thing. I like fresh fish as much as the next person — I just have trouble looking at a beautiful reef fish gently nibbling at the coral, then seeing it thrashing on the end of a spear. I go along with Chris when it’s just the two of us — it isn’t safe to hunt alone. The current through the cuts between the ocean and the bank can be fierce, and you have to keep an eye out for sharks, especially if you’re lucky enough to spear something. Sharks can smell blood a mile away. So I follow him in the dinghy, not so close that I spook the fish, but close enough that he can get his catch — and himself — out of the water quickly, if necessary.
But not that morning. I was off the hook, so to speak. I looked at the list. I was planning to make muffins, wash my hair. Instead I poured myself another cup of coffee and reached for my book.
A couple of hours later, I heard a dinghy zooming across the bay and looked up. Jim cut the engine and Chris grabbed the swim ladder at the stern. They were all smiles.
“I speared a huge queen triggerfish,” Chris said, “and Bentley got a lobster.”
Lobsters are pretty scarce now, so this was big news. Bentley held it up for me to admire. It was a big one. Chris eyed it hungrily.
“Why don’t you guys come over for dinner?” Chris suggested. “Between the triggerfish and the lobster, there’s enough to feed us all. Say around 5:30?”
Dinner for four. In about three hours. Yikes. The mail boat had come in since we provisioned for the journey. Maybe we could find some fresh produce.
There are two grocery stores in Staniel Cay — the pink one and the blue one. They’re just a couple of doors apart, so you pretty much have to visit both of them if you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. We started at the pink store, at the top of the hill.
The pink store is in a building about the size of a two-car garage. For some reason, there are no lights inside, and no windows, either. What little light there is comes in through the open door. You have to wait until your eyes adjust to the darkness before you can start shopping.
Just inside the door there was a table piled high with potatoes — local, by the look of it, with dirt still clinging to them. Beneath the table was a big bag of onions.
“Look at this,” Chris said. The bag was stamped “Chatham, Ontario.” Chris grew up in Chatham.
We picked out a couple onions and half a dozen potatoes, looked around in vain for any other produce. Nope. While Chris wandered up and down the aisles — all three of them — I rummaged through the freezer at the back of the store, a chest freezer, the kind people have in their basements. A couple of skinned knuckles later, I came up with a not-too-freezer-burned chicken. We presented our purchases to the woman behind the counter, who looked them — and us — over carefully, then slid a calculator towards us. We hadn’t seen her punch anything in. It read $17.40. I guess we were standard $17.40-looking boaters. While I paid her, Chris loaded our purchases into his backpack.
Though the blue store is much more promising-looking, it had even less to offer. There were screens on the doors, and bright light streamed through the windows — windows! Three of them. The floor was covered with linoleum and the items offered for sale were arranged neatly on shelves lining the walls — cans of icing, toothpaste, small bottles of dishwashing liquid, canned beans. I checked the fridge — they had milk and eggs, both of which we can always use more of. We looked hopefully around for fresh produce. A couple of weather-beaten green peppers and some pale, hard tomatoes, the kind we get in Canada in the winter. Some too-green bananas. Pyramids of potatoes and onions. That was it.
As we hurried back to the boat, I said to Chris, “At least we have lots of eggs now. I can make fresh pasta. That should fill them up. And we can serve rum drinks with lots of lime juice so no one dies of scurvy.”
Back at the boat, Chris tidied up while I made the pasta dough. I was almost done running the last strip through the pasta machine when our guests arrived. Jim handed me a covered dish — he was going to do something with the lobster. I slipped it into the oven without looking at it, put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta, then tried to figure out what to do with the triggerfish. Something simple. I melted a glob of butter in the big frying pan, chopped some garlic and swished it around, then gently simmered the fish. Lemon pepper — that’s what it needed. I sprinkled generously.
Fresh pasta takes no time to cook, and dinner was ready in about ten minutes. I put a big bowl of pasta, a small plate of triggerfish in garlic butter, and Jim’s dish on the table. Chris opened the bottle of crisp white wine Jim and Bentley had brought and Jim removed the lid from his dish. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was lobster thermidor, juicy chunks of steamed lobster swimming in a heavy cream-sherry sauce, fresh parmesan melted on top, garnished with a sprig of fresh rosemary. Fresh rosemary? Clearly Jim was much better at provisioning than I am.
And making the most of what the ocean offers.
Too quiet, maybe. The story I haven’t let myself think much about has started running through my mind. I seem to have no choice but to follow it.
We had moved into a tiny apartment in town, were both working at jobs in the city when Brad’s grandfather died. He decided that he wanted to buy the family farm from his grandmother. What? I had no idea he wanted to farm.
“Okay,” I said, “but I’m going to university in the fall.” I’d already picked my courses.
The man from Farm Credit was stern with me.
“You’ll quit school and work if you have to.”
“Sure,” I said.
No way, I thought.
We both kept working full-time through the spring and summer. Evenings we’d go over plans for the new barn, make little changes — an extra fan here, a sliding door there, maybe another bank of lights above the breeding pens. It was exhausting, but even I was starting to get excited about this new venture. A hundred sows, we were going to run, farrow to finish. Finally Farm Credit gave us the go-ahead and we started to build.
I started school that September, continued working part-time off the farm, helped in the barn in the evenings. Which didn’t leave much time for studying. I would wait until Brad fell asleep at night then get up quietly and read into the early hours. English literature. What are you going to do with that? my mother-in-law would say. She took to telling people that I was studying journalism. At least that was something useful.
We decided to get a few sheep, make use of our front pasture, which wasn’t good for much else. The neighbours thought we were crazy — there’s no money in sheep. They watched closely as we divided the front pasture into narrow strips. It was a lot of work. We’d load the sledgehammer, steel rails, and wire into the wheelbarrow and work our way slowly down to the road and back. I think it took us almost a month altogether, squeezing the fencing in on weekends, but it worked, it kept the sheep from grazing the pasture to the ground.