Sea Over Bow

by Linda Kenyon

  At six o’clock the workers go home and we have the boatyard to ourselves. We hit the showers, then sit on deck with a cold beer and watch the fishermen come in after a long day out on the water. The big boats seem to do okay, but the men in small open boats sometimes come home empty-handed. No wonder the men in the boatyard seem so happy. At least they can feed their families. We fall into bed before it gets dark, exhausted, then are wakened by the travel lift at first light.

  I empty all the food lockers, wonder how on earth we’re going to consume eight cans of tuna, two jars of capers, one jar of spaghetti sauce, two jars of peanut butter, and a can of artichokes in the next couple of weeks, never mind the many pounds of rice and pasta and dried beans. I agonize over what to take with me, what to leave behind. My olive bowls? The skimpy sundress and gold espadrilles I bought in Mallorca? Will I wear them in Canada?

  Some things require no thought: I’ll take my recipe for paella and several packets of saffron. The little pink top I bought in St. Martin will stay on the boat, along with the long white cotton skirt I picked up in Antigua. The backgammon board and a nice bottle of port will stay behind as well, so that when we come back to check on the boat, as we will have to do from time to time until we can get back to it for good, it will feel like home.

  Three days to go. We’ve rinsed the decks with fresh water, flushed and serviced the engine, topped up the batteries, put additive in the fuel to keep it from growing things while we’re away. The water tanks are empty and disinfected, the bilges are clean and dry. The fridge is almost empty, too, and we’re down to two tins of tuna and a can of artichokes. We’re pretty much ready.

  And then the unthinkable happens.

  Chris is heading to the shower. I’m down below, making coffee, and Bica is sitting on the deck watching him go, as she’s done every morning we’ve been in the boatyard. But for whatever reason, this time she decides she’s going with him and flings herself over the side. We are twelve feet above the ground, which is solid asphalt.

  Chris hears a thud, followed by a heart-wrenching scream. I fly up the steps of the companionway to find him carrying a limp, crying puppy up the ladder. We’re too stunned to say a word to each other.

  As luck would have it, we have the number for an emergency vet at hand — there’s one on the tourist map of the town. While Chris covers her with a blanket and tries to comfort her, I dial the number. A sleepy vet asks all the important questions. Is she bleeding? Are there any broken bones? No and no. Or at least none that we can see. She won’t let us touch her right leg. The vet provides directions to the clinic and tells us she’ll meet us there.

  Next problem: the clinic is in the next village and we have no car. I hurry across the river and dash from rental place to rental place until I find someone with a car available. I rush through the paperwork, grab the keys, run out into the street. The car is wedged impossibly between two other cars. I run back into the rental place.

  “Get my car out for me. Now!”

  Bossy American, I’m sure they’re thinking. I race back to the boatyard. Chris is waiting at the gate with Bica, who is now quiet and shaking but alert, still wrapped in her blanket.

  How can a puppy survive such a fall? I think as we drive away. Surely she is all smashed up inside. I put these thoughts from my mind and concentrate on finding the clinic — no easy task. The next village is full of narrow streets and dead ends. At last we find the place. The vet is there, waiting. She takes us right in.

  “Can she walk?”

  We don’t know. The vet tells Chris to set her on the ground, then step away and call her. I’ve never seen anything as heart-wrenching as our little puppy, hobbling across the floor on three legs, crying out as she goes. All she wants is to be back in Chris’s arms. Clearly three of her legs are just fine. But the fourth… The vet tells us she needs to x-ray her back right leg and hip, tells us we had better wait outside.

  A half hour later — a long half hour later — the vet comes out. Bica has a plastic cast on her leg. Broken in three places, the vet tells us. And she may have injured her bladder — a very common thing when puppies have had a great fall. We are to give her pills to keep her sedated, and if she doesn’t pee in the next few hours, we’re to bring her back.

  We take her home, cuddle up with her in the cockpit, and just pet her and watch her. She falls fast asleep, no longer in pain, thank goodness. Then she wakes and, wonder of wonders, wants to pee. Chris carries her carefully to the aft deck, helps her stand. She squats awkwardly in her plastic cast and a beautiful puddle of clear yellow urine appears.

  “Puppies can’t fly,” I murmur to her as she falls back to sleep in my arms.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” Chris says.

  We know we should be working. We still have a lot to do in the now only two days left. But all I want to do is sit in the cockpit and hold our puppy while she sleeps. Chris goes below and I stroke her curly head.

  Chris emerges with two steaming cups of coffee, sets them on the side benches to cool. A fishing boat has come in with its catch, a flock of gulls trailing behind, crying loudly. We watch them scrapping over bits of fish floating in the water. Carefully, without disturbing Bica, Chris pulls me close to him.

  “I don’t want to go back,” he says.

  “Neither do I.”

  The boatyard is quiet now, most of the workers gone home for the day. But the sun won’t set for another couple of hours. We should get back to work. But instead we sit quietly in the cockpit, the three of us, until the sun begins to set.

  I have come to truly love this sturdy boat, I think, surveying the rust patches that show us every nick in the paint, now that we’ve been in salt water. The varnish that’s fading and in some places peeling after a winter in the tropical sun. The makeshift preventers we’ve rigged. The teak deck, silver now after being scoured by the seas.

  And I have come to love this man more than I thought possible. I promised I would never put myself in the way of another broken heart, but here I am. I trust this man. I trust this boat. And I realize that I trust myself, in a way I never have before.

  It’s time to go. We have clearance from the vet to travel with our broken puppy, who is already putting a little weight on her leg. She’s going to be okay. But are we? We open up the bilge so it can air while we’re away, lock up the boat, tarp it as best we can to protect it from the sun and rain.

  I look back as we drive away. The bow of the boat hangs over the boatyard fence. Our anchor is the last thing I see.

  Postscript: I’ll fly away

  We’ve been back in Canada almost a full week before I manage to slip away from Brenda’s place in Guelph for a walk along the river. Bica still can’t walk far with her cast and Chris has stayed behind to keep an eye on her. It feels funny to be out on my own.

  It’s a beautiful sunny day, cool, fresh. The leaves are just starting to turn. I hear a kingfisher scolding loudly, see a flash of blue as he skims across the dam, disappears into a maple tree on the other side of the river. There is a rustle in the leaves above my head. A flock of cedar waxwings is working the elderberry bushes beside the path. There are still berries on them. Enough to make a pie for Thanksgiving? I inspect the bushes closely. Not quite.

  A young woman with a golden retriever puppy comes around the bend. I struggle for the right words. Ola? Buenos dias? Bom dia?

  “Good morning,” she says, with a smile.

  Oh, yeah.

  “Good morning,” I reply.

  Chris and I are in the Azores, walking along a winding road lined with purple hydrangeas. We’re lost, of course. We come to a little village. There’s an old woman dressed in black leaning on the low stone wall in front of her house. She looks sad and tired, her face lined with years of toil and worry.

  “Bom dia,” I say, then because I’m Canadian, I begin my question with “Desculpe…” The words come to me slowl
y. “Onde está, um…”

  She breaks into a wide grin, all trace of sternness disappears completely from her face.

  “The caldera is just up this road,” she says in perfect English. “Turn right at the next crossroads.”

  How many times a day does she say this? Is this the only English she knows, or is she perfectly bilingual? I’m embarrassed by my limited Portuguese.

  “Muito obrigada,” I say.

  “Nada.”

  Everything will be easier here in Canada, with no language barriers to contend with.

  And harder.

  I find a job at the university and Chris starts looking for work. We rent a small apartment on campus — people comment on how tiny our place is, but it’s huge compared with the boat. We get the few things we have out of storage, hang up our favourite picture: a tall ship out on the open sea, crashing through the waves, a small figure in yellow foul-weather gear on the foredeck, hanging onto the rigging for dear life.

  Before we left, I had said to Chris, “We’ll never see seas like that, right?” Now we look at the picture and smile. We’ve been through much worse.

  Several trips to IKEA later, we’ve furnished our apartment with bookshelves and tables and chairs that will break down and store flat when we go back to the boat. In a year, we’re thinking. We should be able to get back to the boat in a year. Next time, we’ve decided, we’re going to keep a household in storage, just in case.

  We set up a tiny office for Chris in the corner of the living/dining/kitchen area of our 400-square-foot space. Bica claims the armchair beside his desk as her domain, sleeps there curled up in a ball while he works. Barks at him when she wants to go out and play. Chris has decided to take advantage of living on campus and has signed up for a few graduate courses. Not surprisingly, he’s particularly interested in corrosion. And alternative energy sources.

  I unpack my books, my Gashlycrumb Tinies! I curl up on the couch, flip through the pages. There’s Neville, still peering out the window. And Prue, still reaching for the door handle. Don’t do it! I want to tell her. Then I think, maybe Neville doesn’t die of ennui after all. Maybe he’s just waiting for the rain to stop so he can go outside and play. And maybe Prue isn’t actually trampled to death, maybe she gets up and brushes herself off, a little wiser about the ways of the world.

  I discover that things in the workplace have changed in the five years I’ve been away. There is so much to learn — the university has moved to an online calendar system called BookIt. It takes me a while to get used to the idea that people can just book me whenever they feel like it, but I can book them too. It’s kind of fun.

  There are other new realities to get used to. The puzzling signs in all the washrooms. I study a picture of a man sneezing violently into his elbow. I thought sneezing was something people pretty much knew how to do. WASH YOUR HANDS, another sign orders. In case you’re not sure how to do this, step-by-step instructions are provided. In the supply cupboard, along with a giddying array of pens and Post-it notes and pads of paper, there is some kind of killer antibacterial product for wiping down door handles and phones NOT TO BE USED BY PREGNANT WOMEN. What is going on here? I discover that the university has a pandemic plan.

  Before long, I’m booking meetings online, sneezing into my elbow, and washing my hands like a pro. It feels like I never left.

  Sometimes, though, when I’m in a meeting, my mind drifts. Instead of concentrating on how to enrich the work-term experience of junior co-op students, I find myself thinking about the young girl who used to slink into the café in Portimão where I liked to go to write letters. She would sidle up to a table, grimy palm outstretched, dark eyes imploring. The tourists would wave her off, embarrassed, but the locals would take her up to the counter, let her pick out a small cake, which the woman behind the counter would wrap up for her. One day I saw the girl out on the street, sharing her cake with the tiny, wrinkled woman who sold chestnuts in the square — her mother? her grandmother? The old woman was hungry.

  There are worse things than spending your first co-op work term filing sewage plans.

  One afternoon I find myself standing in front of a big map of the world on the wall outside the office of the associate dean in charge of international agreements. With my finger, I trace a line down the Erie Canal to the Hudson River, past New York City to the ocean, down the coast of the United States to Miami, then across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. That’s farther than most people sail in a lifetime. But my finger keeps moving, farther south to Antigua, then a long arc from Antigua up toward Bermuda, then across a wide expanse of open sea to the Azores.

  It’s a big ocean. We sailed across it. Twenty-six days, it took us. I’m not the same person I was before.

  Saturday morning I make the rounds, to Vincenzo’s for cheese and olives and bread, to the florist on Belmont for a spray of yellow freesia, to the Old Kitchen Cupboard for the makings of a big batch of granola. I’m thrilled to have a full-sized oven again. I’m baking cakes and cookies, even soufflés again, things that are hard to make when the only temperatures available to you are zero and 400.

  I’m scooping rolled oats into a plastic bag when I spot a big glass jar filled with dried figs. I stop what I’m doing, study them. They look so pale and shrivelled. I know now that fresh figs are a beautiful deep purple. And these miserable things are more than $12 a pound. I can’t believe my eyes.

  We’re clambering around the ruins of the old fort on the island of Menorca. We come across a huge bush spilling over an old stone wall and down the hillside towards the sea. It’s heavy with figs.

  It takes us a while to figure out how to pick them. You can’t just pull them off the bush or you end up with squashed figs and purple hands. You have to hold the ripe fruit in the palm of your hand, then twist it gently until the stem gives away. We fill our pockets with them, then our hats, then our hands, as many as we can carry. They are warm from the sun.

  We take them back to the boat and I slice them in half, cover them with a crumble topping, bake them in my little oven. That’s our supper. We eat huge bowls of warm fig crisp drizzled with cream, wash it down with a bottle of Spanish wine as we watch the sun go down behind the island, listen to the gulls settling on the rocky cliffs for the night.

  I’m pedalling as hard as I can to keep up with Chris, those long legs of his, but so far, I’m doing okay. Perhaps having Bica in a bike trailer behind him slows him down just enough. I can see her little brown head through the back window — she’s loving this. It’s the fastest she’s gone since she broke her leg.

  We’re on our way to the Waterloo farmers’ market, a good fifteen-kilometre bike ride. It’s been a long, cold winter and we’re both glad to be outside again, heading off on a little adventure. Will there be asparagus at the market? For sure there will be rhubarb by now. I’ll make us a pie.

  Summer sausage. Chris is probably thinking about summer sausage.

  I’m keeping an eye out for lilacs along the way, planning to swipe a few branches on the way home. I scan the ditches for wild garlic. Then remember where I am.

  This being home is okay, though. We’ve settled happily into our little apartment, and we’re finding it a relief not to have to worry about dragging anchor in the night. Every morning we wake up in exactly the same place we went to sleep.

  I’ve discovered that I can do my job — in fact, I’m rather good at it. I’ve made peace with pantyhose, have a smart haircut again, and I like my new work clothes. And Chris is enjoying his work and his studies. I see a wind turbine in our future, to supplement the solar panels on the boat.

  Oops, I’m falling behind. I pedal like mad on a downhill stretch to make up the distance. We stop at the top of the next hill, to catch our breath and have a swig of water. I take off my helmet, run my fingers through my hair. The sun is warm on my face.

  Bica whines to get going. We both smile. Such a little tyr
ant.

  This is nice, I think, as we don our helmets and pedal off again.

  Brenda is driving me back to Waterloo after a day of shopping for summer work clothes. There’s been a big accident on Highway 7, so we’re taking the back way. Anna is in her booster seat in the back. She’s looking out the window, swinging her feet, kicking the back of Brenda’s seat from time to time.

  “Anna,” Brenda warns her. She stops for a minute, then starts swinging her feet again.

  “Can we sing, Mama?” she asks.

  Brenda pushes a CD into the player, fast-forwards without looking to the song she wants.

  Some glad morning when this life is o’er

  I’ll fly away

  To a home on God’s celestial shore

  I’ll fly away

  Anna knows all the words, and her voice is sweet and strong and true. I had no idea she could sing like this. This is something that has happened while I was away. I glance over at Brenda. She’s smiling, listening to her daughter sing. My sister’s hair, which was black when I left, is touched with grey now, and there are more lines around her eyes than I remember. But she looks happy.

  “You guys sing the other part,” Anna orders when she reaches the chorus. She doesn’t know that Brenda and I have been singing together since we were kids. This is one of our favourite songs. Brenda picks out the harmony above the line Anna is singing. I fall in below. As our voices intertwine, tears fill my eyes. Brenda reaches over and takes my hand.