Sea Over Bow

by Linda Kenyon

  So what? I would lose a sandal. Big deal.

  The thought was so radical that it made me giddy. So I went for broke: I thought, I could drop my sandals in the ocean and it wouldn’t matter. Heck, I could lose my purse and it wouldn’t matter. I could throw my passport off the train, throw everything I own in the ocean, and it wouldn’t matter. I would still be here. I might cause a little inconvenience at the embassy. I might need to borrow some sandals. But I would still be me, here. Everything in the world could be lost to me, and I would still be me.

  I realized I was having a terrible time because I had packed everything for the trip, except myself. I had forgotten to bring my self, the one thing that I know and love and cannot be lost. In a split second, every scrap of worry and misery disappeared and the rest of the two weeks was fantastic.

  So even if the boat went down and Chris were lost at sea, you would still be you. That’s all any of us really has. Relationships, material things — they come and go. And we carry on.

  But enough of that. You have a sturdy boat and Chris knows what he’s doing. Remember that. And know that you don’t have to be out in the middle of the ocean to get into trouble…

  Anna had a big adventure at riding this week. She was riding unassisted, got distracted by the older girls, and let her pony noodle about. Well, apparently her pony thought that he was in his own custody (I am sure he cannot feel Anna on his back, when Anna is not providing any control) so he decided to rid himself of the pesky saddle by lying down and rolling! Anna waited as the pony made his leisurely way to the sawdust floor of the arena, then as soon as he was down on the ground and just getting ready to roll, she leaped from his back, timing it perfectly — like stepping off an escalator, or like Stephen Maturin waiting for the roll of the ship to climb up the side.

  Needless to say there was much yelling and running about, but I remained pretty calm. I could see she had done right and as long as I did not let my imagination get away with me, it was done and fine. Anna was very cool and calm about it, shrugging off the attention of the instructor and the older girls. I was quite proud of her. Must admit that I replayed it a couple of times in the night, but otherwise it was fine. She now believes she is a real rider, since we always say you’re not a rider until you fall off!

  So you’re on your way to the Azores. How exciting! How long till you make landfall? I’m glad the sailing has been easy — may it be so the whole way across.

  Must go. I need to take Anna to pick up her new glasses, then dinner and bath and stories, then I have a graduate class to prepare for…tomorrow. No sense doing things too far in advance, I say.

  Love you.

  Beek

  Brenda’s letter has done nothing to make me feel any better. I close the computer, put my earbuds in. Listlessly, I scan the water around us in the failing light. What’s that? There’s something bobbing in the water just ahead of us, a triangle on a post about three feet high. It almost scrapes the side of the boat, we pass so close to it, but it’s too dark to make out what it says. What’s a sign doing out here in the middle of the ocean? Where did it come from? I fret about it until Chris comes up for his watch. Probably just a net marker come loose, he says. But I’m still uneasy.

  Maybe the sign was a warning of some kind. Prepare to yield. Or perhaps it just marks the halfway point in our journey. We are now as far from Antigua as we are from the Azores. In other words, in the middle of nowhere. We can no longer raise Chris Parker on the SSB, though Chris tries each day, morning and night. We’re on our own out here.

  As I settle into the still-warm berth, I try not to think about the fact that bad things usually happen at night. The worst sailing we’ve had so far was the night we rounded Cape Fear. The Graveyard of the Atlantic, the waters off North Carolina are called, where the cold Labrador current and the warm Gulf Stream meet. It’s an area of shifting sandbars, colliding waves, and unpredictable currents. And one of the highest densities of shipwrecks anywhere in the world.

  The wind was from the southwest — we knew it would be, right on the nose, but it was supposed to clock around to the north, so we put out just a slip of genoa, reefed the main, and settled in for a lively sail. It was rough, but we soon got used to the pounding. You can handle almost anything on a nice sunny day.

  But as the day wore on, the wind showed no sign of clocking and the seas continued to build. There was no way we could hold our course. By nightfall, we were sixty miles off shore, well off Cape Fear, but farther off shore than we’d ever been. And the wind was picking up.

  We had crackers and cheese for supper — neither of us wanted to spend much time below deck, and in truth, we were both feeling a little queasy. Then I went down to try to sleep while Chris took the first watch. I lay there in the dark, trying not to think about the ghost pirate ships locals claim to have seen in these waters. The boat was galloping along, the oil lamp above my head swinging wildly. The rigging creaked and groaned, water rushed along the steel hull. There’s no way I’m going to sleep, I thought, but I must have, because suddenly it was 2:00 am, time for my watch.

  The wind had definitely picked up, and waves were breaking over the bow, I discovered when I staggered to the head. We’d left the hatch open, and I was treated to a saltwater shower. I grabbed a towel and dried myself off as best I could, then, grumpy and wet, took a little too long to pull on my warm fleecy and boots.

  By the time I got above deck, I knew I was in trouble. There’s no mistaking that feeling in your stomach. But it was no wonder. While I was sleeping, Chris had been “letting it run,” as he calls it. This means carrying way too much sail, going way too fast, and heeling way over as we pound into the waves. He saw the look on my face.

  “Let’s reduce sail,” he said, furling in about half the genoa.

  We tied a second reef in the main and the boat slowed down, straightened up a little.

  “That’s Frying Pan Shoal, off Cape Fear,” Chris said, pointing to a light up ahead. “Keep it well to starboard. Oh, and I think there are warships on manoeuvre out here — haven’t seen anything, but there’s been lots of chatter on the radio. Better keep an eye out.”

  With that, he gave me a quick kiss and headed below to sleep.

  I stood bravely at the helm, watching the approaching light, scanning for ships. No, I told myself firmly, taking big breaths of fresh air and searching for the horizon. But it was pitch black — no moon. And the shore was out of sight. There was no way to orient myself, to straighten out the confused little compass in my head. I could feel my stomach churning as the boat heaved up and down. I checked to make sure the pail was at hand, and, oh my god, okay, here it comes — I heaved what was left of my cheese and crackers into the pail.

  I was still retching when an officious voice filled the cockpit.

  “To the vessel at…”

  I pulled my head out of the pail long enough to check our co-ordinates on the GPS. Of course he was talking to me. I took a couple of brave swallows, reached for the VHF microphone.

  “To the vessel hailing, this is the sailboat MonArk.”

  Back to the pail.

  “We are an aircraft carrier with limited manoeuvrability. Please maintain a five-mile distance from our position.”

  I lifted my head from the pail, wiped my chin on my sleeve.

  “Roger that.”

  I had no idea where he was, but I set the radar alarm to six miles and went back to my pail. If anything shows up, I thought, I’ll get out of its way.

  Thankfully, the radar remained clear, and in time, there was nothing left for me to throw up. I drank some water, threw it up, drank some more, threw it up. It was miserable, but much better than the dry heaves. I looked at my watch — five more hours to go — checked the position of the light, scanned for ships.

  It seemed to take forever to come abreast of the light. It was the middle of my watch before it was sa
fely behind us and we were sailing into the dark. No moon. No shoreline. I turned on the radar, scanned for ships. Nothing out there. I checked our position and heading, switched off the instruments. So dark.

  I looked down through the companionway. I could just make out Chris wedged into the sea berth with pillows so he didn’t fall out as the boat pounded and rocked. He felt me looking at him, opened his eyes, smiled.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yep, just fine.”

  He was asleep again. How does he do that?

  I looked back. I could still make out the flashing light marking Frying Pan Shoal, tiny now but still visible.

  What are you doing out here? You don’t know what you’re doing.

  It’s surprising, I thought grimly, how long things take to disappear behind you.

  I never was much of a farm wife. Not that I didn’t try. I helped with the chores — feeding and sweeping were my main responsibilities, I could handle those. Although there was that time I ran over a kitten with the feed cart, which horrified me. Mercifully, the kitten died almost instantly. After that I’d shut all the kittens in the office while I fed the pigs.

  I just wasn’t ready for the reality of farming, had imagined scattering corn for the chickens on a nice sunny day, helping fill the barn with sweet-smelling hay for the sheep. Chickens, it turns out, are horrible scrappy creatures, will peck a bird to death if it’s weak or sick or even just different in some way. When the time came, I took them away to be slaughtered, expected them to come back in neat plastic bags. Bring wash tubs, they told me. I came back home with two zinc tubs full of cold, wet, almost naked birds — I had to pull the pin feathers out before bagging and freezing them. Once. I raised chickens exactly once.

  And hay is dusty, I found out. And scratchy. And heavy. At first I tried to help in the mow, carrying bales from where the elevator dropped them to where we wanted to stack them. But I was too slow. The neighbour’s wife, who was nine months pregnant, wasn’t. She and her husband were helping us, and she matched his pace, bale for bale. Until she decided it was time to go to the hospital, where she very nearly gave birth in the parking lot.

  I was relegated to the wagon, to pushing bales down to Brad, who loaded them onto the elevator. Even then, by the end of the day, I was completely exhausted, red in the face and covered with scratches.

  But there were worse things. I remember working at the sink one Saturday morning, washing up the breakfast dishes. The screen door creaked open and the vet walked in.

  “Let me see your hands.”

  I pulled them out of the soapy water, held them out for inspection.

  “Come with me.”

  I dried my hands and followed him out to the barn. The sow he’d been called in to help was lying on her side, completely worn out. There were several little piglets nursing, but she wasn’t finished giving birth. You could see her straining every few minutes.

  “There’s a pig inside her that needs to be turned,” the vet said. “He’s coming out back first. You need to push him back in, turn him, and pull him out head first.”

  What?

  He gave me a long plastic glove that went right up to my armpit, squirted oil all over it. Then he explained how to ease my hand into the sow, slip it past her cervix, push the pig away, and turn him.

  “Then grab him by the nose and pull him out.”

  I didn’t really have a choice. I was the only one with small enough wrists to do it. I reached in, farther, farther, until my shoulder was against the sow’s hind end and my ear was…well, I tried not to think about where my ear was. There was her cervix. I wormed my hand through and suddenly she had a mighty contraction. Was she going to break my arm? She was trying to push my hand out, I think.

  When the contraction subsided, I pushed the piglet away, fished around until I found his nose, then grabbed him behind his milk teeth, as instructed, being careful not to let him bite me, and pulled him out. He was followed by two other piglets and a massive piece of afterbirth. And a lot of blood.

  “Good job,” the vet said.

  Never again, I thought.

  But of course I helped with birthing when necessary, and with castrating the pigs when needed. I hated holding the squealing newborns while Brad made two quick incisions and pulled their tiny testicles out, letting the tendons snap back into place, pretty much sealing themselves. There was almost no blood, but it was still pretty distressing. To me and to the piglets too, I think, though they would just give their little tails a shake and muscle back into their place at their mother’s side.

  I tried to make a place for myself at the farm, a little room I could call my own. I claimed what used to be the hired man’s room — it was wide enough to hold an iron cot and a pair of work boots — papered the bare plaster with cream-coloured wallpaper covered in tiny violets. I found a small maple cabinet in the garage, filled with paint cans, refinished it, and hung it on the wall above my narrow writing table. There was just enough room for a wooden chair. My office, I called it, a place to do my schoolwork. But more often, I’d find myself looking out at the garden that needed weeding, or the screen door would bang, can you help me for a minute?

  I started going missing on my way home from school — it was the only way to keep up with my schoolwork. I’d go to the library, try to get through the 600 pages I had to read by Tuesday, work on the paper that was due Friday. During lambing season, I’d offer to take the night shift, sitting on a bale of hay reading by flashlight long after the lambs that were due that night were safely delivered. One night I was so absorbed in what I was reading that I didn’t realize one of the ewes was in trouble. The lamb suffocated before I noticed and was dead when the ewe finally managed to push it out. I was reading Jude the Obscure.

  Spring came and a sprinkling of snowdrops pushed through the thin crust of ice on the west side of the house. Lily of the valley appeared under the front window, and clumps of grape hyacinth. A carpet of violets spilled out over the lawn.

  As the days grew warmer, daffodils came up, and tulips, so many colours. A plant I didn’t recognize rose from the damp soil beside the well, all leaves and arching stems, then tiny heart-shaped flowers appeared, pink and white, dangling all in a row. Bleeding heart, my grandmother’s favourite flower, according to Mom. I picked a small bouquet, put it in a green fluted vase, placed it on the corner of my writing desk.

  One morning in April, it was finally warm enough to let the lambs outside. They hesitated at first, when we opened up the barn door — it was so big outside, so bright. But they followed their mother out into the sunshine and soon they were skidding around the muddy barnyard. Then one of them jumped straight up in the air, just for the fun of it, just because it could.

  The light marking Frying Pan Shoal had disappeared behind me. Blackness all around now. I searched the eastern sky for the slightest bit of light that would tell me dawn was on its way. Nothing.

  We couldn’t have known interest rates would hit twenty-two percent. There was no way we could make our loan payments, so I dropped down to one night course and we both started working full-time off the farm again. We hired a kid from the village to do the chores morning and night, and we would do all the other things that needed to be done in the evenings and on the weekend. But it wasn’t enough.

  We held out for as long as we could, falling further and further into debt, then finally gave in and sold the farm to the German who was buying up all the farms in our concession block. We got enough money to pay our debts, almost. We still owed my husband’s grandmother more money than we could ever hope to repay, but at least we didn’t go bankrupt like so many farmers did in the ’80s.

  We didn’t have much stuff worth moving — a bed, a dresser, a dining room table his grandmother had left behind. We were able to move everything we owned in the back of a pickup truck. It was strange living in the city, locking the door at night, cars going b
y at all hours. But what bothered me most was not being able to see the sky. You couldn’t see what was coming.

  Not that I can see much sky right now.

  June 3

  Day 13

  It’s been three days since we made the turn and neither of us is getting enough rest — the sound of waves slamming against the hull and the pitching of the boat keep us from falling into a sound sleep. A thousand miles to the Azores. If we can hold 100 miles a day, that’s just ten days. I can do it.

  But my muscles ache and I’m covered with bruises — I’m getting tired of constantly bracing myself to keep from being thrown into things. I’m not always successful. After two nights of cheese and crackers, I think we’re ready for something a little more substantial. A can of soup maybe. I rummage in the locker, come out with a can of Dinty Moore. You know things are bad when a can of stew looks good.

  Holding the handrails on the ceiling, waiting for the roll before I take a step, I make my way back to the galley, get a pot out of the cupboard, clamp it to the stove. I set the can in the sink to open it then, wait for the roll, quickly tip it into the pot. There. I light the burner, put the lid on, just as a wave slams against the boat and throws me back against the companionway stairs. I don’t care if the stupid stew burns. I climb above deck, sit gloomily in the cockpit rubbing my sore ribs.

  “I’ll get it,” Chris says. “You stay up here.”

  He’s back in five minutes, a tea towel wrapped around the handle of a pot full of steaming stew, two spoons in his other hand. He sets it on the bench between us and we dig in.

  “Mmm,” he says. “Dinty Moore. So meaty good.”