The Brotherhood of Pirates

by William Gilkerson

  Then there were some thin times during the First World War, which is when Grandfather bought the place for what seemed like a bargain, and then there were good times again in the 1920s, (when all of Grey Rocks was a haven for rumrunners during Prohibition), until the depression. Then a guest committed suicide, and the place started a long decline that had gradually gotten worse to the point of ruin. There were a lot of things the brochure did not talk about, such as all our family money going into the renovation, a labour of love. During World War II, my father was called up to serve, and became a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy. He died when a U-boat blew his corvette out from under him. That was in 1943. I was so young I hardly remembered him. In 1950 my grandfather died of pneumonia, and my uncle Bill had to move to Halifax with his family in order to make a decent living, so the Admiral Anson fell to my mother to look after.

  This she had done ever since, with whatever help she could find or afford to hire. That wasn’t much. Me, mostly. And Meg. I suppose I must have become glum at that point, because the captain pointed out that we seemed to be running things very well, and the place itself was astonishing (a treasure, he called it), not only for its antiquity, but its rare beauty as well. There it was on the front of the brochure, commanding its own small peninsula, separating harbour and bay. “In truth, it’s a place reeking with age and charm. Who could not love it?” he asked.

  I found myself telling him about the many reasons so few people came, starting with the plumbing that seemed unfixable, causing spontaneous and drastic changes in water temperatures, as well as pressure that fluctuated wildly. There were eternal troubles with the wiring and fuses. Then there were the ill-fitting doors, windows, and crazy angles because of ancient foundations settling unevenly over generations; the crumbling stonework, wavy floors, and a cellar that flooded periodically. I did not mention that it also had rats. (Mother didn’t kill things, even rats; until recently that had been the job of Cleo the cat.)

  I did tell him the old stories that somewhere below us there were tunnels, built by smugglers, but walled off long ago. My grandfather had diligently searched the cellars looking for traces of them, but found nothing, which seemed to discredit the old hearsay.

  “I’d like to see,” said the captain, but I told him no guests were permitted down there, and there were parts of the cellars where nobody at all went. So well had he kept me talking, it occurred to me that I was probably giving too much emphasis to the Admiral Anson’s difficulties. He seemed to read my mind. “Jim, I’ve real sympathy for your hardships, but everything of what you’re telling me about this grand old place makes me love it all the more, from up to down. I liked that young policeman chap, by the way,” he said, abruptly swerving the subject. “Your uncle-in-law, you said?”

  I told him about Robin, who was not only the best cop in the Grey Rocks Constabulary (which wasn’t saying much), but also in the region, and a real detective. Everybody agreed his talents in law enforcement were wasted in a place where there wasn’t much to detect, except who had stolen somebody’s outboard motor. He had been offered a better career in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but as a Mountie he would have to relocate, and Aunt Karen couldn’t, being now in a wheelchair most of the time. She needed all our care.

  So keen was the captain’s interest in all of this that I went on, telling him (at his prodding) about the other town cops, whose chief was a Moehner appointee, and whose other three constables were also of that camp. They were good at handling brawls, but Robin was most of the brains of the outfit, I bragged, and most of the virtue, too. I asked the captain why he was so interested in the police.

  “Jim, I’m interested in everything, wherever I sail, and I’d be lost without that. Since I’m to be in Grey Rocks for the winter, so it seems, I want to know about the place. Simple as that. And the inn. And this Moehner family. What’s the problem you mentioned?”

  I told him that the Moehners were one of the oldest families in town, whose German ancestors had been sent over as immigrants by George II. Now they had two and a half pages of listings in the telephone directory and much else: the five-and-dime, the Sou’wester Beverage Room, the fish plant, and lots of other properties, not to mention their considerable political pull and banking influence. But the Moehners wanted more. Especially they wanted the Admiral Anson Inn, in order to develop it.

  “Develop it into what?” the captain wanted to know.

  Something a lot more modern, I told him, with a new hotel attached to the building, which was to be rebuilt, with a swimming pool and a yacht harbour with gas pumps. “Rebuilt?” He winced. “Is your mum going to sell it to them?” I didn’t know. Neither did she. Years ago she had taken a mortgage loan in order to keep up with the repairs, and that was from Roy Moehner. If we missed a quarterly payment, he’d foreclose in a minute, so then there would be an auction, and Moehner Realty would be able to buy it at last. They’d had a long-standing offer for it, but the old inn was our all, even with its grief and work, and Mother loved it, as did I.

  Hence, the Moehner clan was as mean as its name, and doing everything it could to make our lives painful to the point where Mother would sell. The visit of the night before was an obvious part of their campaign. So was my harassment at school, and my problem with the dog, Grendel, and the inn’s problems with various authorities about various regulations and their supposed violation. The word was out among the Moehners to make our family feel that being somewhere else would be better. The trouble was, we had nowhere else to go, and our enemies were winning.

  This dismal dialogue was interrupted by Mother, summoning me to my duties. Very respectfully, the captain asked her permission to hire me for some part-time help. I chimed in that he was also going to help me with my essay.

  He nodded. “And I can say for sure that Merry Adventure’s going nowhere until spring at the earliest. She needs work over the winter; I’d like to extend my booking until then.” He offered to pay in advance for a further three months. With what we had saved, it was a sum large enough to allow the inn to make its quarterly payment, nearly due. My mother sat down. She was glad to accept his offers, but had to caution him that the inn was operating on a shoestring, and beyond March 1 she could not guarantee that any of us would have a roof.

  “Madam, allow me to do whatever I can in helping us all through the winter.” Out came the old wallet again, and enough banknotes for our three-month reprieve. While Mother made out his receipt, he told me he would later need my help in shifting something aboard his boat, and also that he was looking forward to resuming our conversation.

  “And then there are the pirates,” I reminded him.

  “There are indeed,” he smiled.

  When I’d finished sweeping enough for Meg to mop, the rain had stopped, and I was sent to town for fresh bread and some lightbulbs, enough to replace all the blown ones for the first time in months. Yesterday’s slush had cleared, so I could ride my bicycle, which was not only faster, but far safer from Grendel.

  Grendel was my nemesis, a raw muscle of a big mongrel dog with lots of teeth, an active animal intelligence, and a thirst for my blood. Avoiding him had become my first order of business soon after the beginning of the present school year, when his attacks had begun. I had avoided his first ones by luck; soon realising that I was being somehow stalked by Klaus Moehner’s dog, I began taking evasive action, and tried to tell people what was happening to me.

  My own theory was that my old grey sweater that had gone missing from the school cloakroom had been swiped by one of Klaus’s kids so that its scent could be used to train Grendel to attack me. I thought he was being deliberately put in my way. And he was, but nobody believed me, not even Mother or Robin, who couldn’t call the dogcatchers unless I was actually bitten. I pleaded that I was not exaggerating; the beast was known for its viciousness; it was famous for killing other animals, which only amused his owner; worse, last year it had attacked a teenage hitchhiker and put him in the hospital. That had got
ten Grendel locked up at last, and Klaus was sued by the lad’s parents. The suit dragged through the court, then was dismissed by the magistrate (Klaus’s other uncle), so Grendel was again at large, free to terrorise whomever Klaus took a notion to turn him onto, currently me.

  The inn was my fortress, and it was built like one, with a thick, ten-foot-high stone wall curtaining it from the outer world, starting with the parking area on the neck of our promontory. The wall was penetrated by a twin gate opened only for truck deliveries; for foot traffic, there was a smaller main gate, with an oak door. I pushed it open and surveyed the terrain beyond like a soldier before leaving a safe bunker for a run through no-man’s-land. Grendel generally wasn’t to be seen on our side of the road unless he was chasing me, but he was always a caution.

  Seeing no sign of the enemy, I went fast out of the gate, mounted my bike at a run, and stood on the pedals for acceleration. I took the most direct route for the centre of town, where Grendel had apparently been trained not to go. His ambushes came from the wooded places or bushes on the way, always when nobody was around.

  Rounding onto Dock Street past the fish plant at a good clip, I entered safe territory and could slow down. I went first to George’s general store, which had for sale the box of paints and brushes I had long wanted. Their cost had been out of reach until my newfound employment. Now I could give George fifty cents to hold the paint set for me until I got paid by the captain. Then I did my other errands and headed home with a full cargo of bread and lightbulbs.

  I had hoped the return trip would also be uneventful, but it was not. As I rounded the route’s final curve before coming to the inn, there was Grendel in the road in front of me, poised, not making a sound, but with his mean, eager little eyes riveted on me, and a show of teeth. If I had been on foot, he would have had me, but my bike gave me a speed advantage. I swerved onto Princess Road and pedalled like a Grand Prix champion, not needing to look back to know where Grendel was; I could hear his breath, and his claws tearing at the road. I had to get past his sprint, where he was as fast as I was, but only for a short distance; then he had to slow down for a long run, when I could gain on him if nothing went wrong.

  So I led Grendel on a half-mile chase along a roundabout route circling back toward the inn, which I got to just in time to open the gate, get my loaded bike through it, and slam it shut about a second before Grendel caught up and lunged. His body hit the other side of the heavy gate with force.

  “You’re out of breath,” the captain observed when I had delivered my load to the pantry. He had his spectacles on, and had made a desk of his table in the public room, which was now littered with papers and a journal in which he was writing with a pen that had to be dipped in ink, which I thought only schoolchildren did. I told him about Grendel. He capped his inkwell and listened.

  “Hmm,” he said when I had finished, “so you’ve got speed on him. But a stern chase is a long chase, eh? You’re about spent, and lucky you didn’t take a skid, or that your bicycle didn’t break.” Indeed, those were the hazards, I affirmed, but what else was I to do?

  “Attack,” he suggested. I told him he didn’t understand the power and dedicated fury of Grendel. “Right, but he’s still a dog. If he’s between you and where you want to go, and you’ve got speed, try steering to pass him close, then, at the last second, turn right at him. Make him have to jump for it, and you’ll be past before he can regroup. You’ll still have a stern chase, but you can head directly for home, rather than having to get winded circling the whole neighbourhood.”

  While I was absorbing the terrifying idea of charging Grendel with my bicycle, the captain rose. “Before you take your coat off,” he said, while putting on his own, “come with me.” I followed him out the back door, down to Merry Adventure, and into her cabin, where he needed my help in extracting a large, locked chest out from under his bunk. He explained that there was a leaky plank behind it that he needed to be able to get to and tend until he could haul the boat and fix it once and for all. So, with much prying and grunting, we wrestled the chest free.

  “Now we need an out-of-the-way place to put it,” he said. In the cramped confines of the yacht, I could see no such place. “There’s no room down here for it,” he echoed my thoughts, “so we’ll have to get it out the hatch, up onto the dock, and . . . didn’t you say something about a cellar where nobody goes? Does that locked door off the wharf go down there?” I nodded. “Well, do you have a key to the cellar door?” I told him I could get it, but asked about the rule not to take anything off the boat yet.

  “Ah, the rules,” he said. “Right. I appreciate the reminder to be sure. What it means is that we mustn’t tell anyone we shifted my old chest, or there’ll be a big fuss over nothing.” I asked him what was in it. “Why, all the silly treasures of a long life. Little things I want to keep: some old journals, papers, odds and sods.” He smiled at me. “I’m not smuggling any rum, or tobacco, or diamonds, Jim, my word on it. I’d open it up for you, but the key’s gone missing. I’ll have another look for it while you’re fetching the key to that cellar door.” And before I knew it, I was helping him. I also thought I was helping my mother—protecting her innocence in this minor matter by simply not telling her about it. I avoided her as I picked up the keys and a flashlight.

  The captain’s old chest was heavy enough, but it had rope beckets, which made it easier to carry once we got it onto the dock. The hasp lock to the cellar took some work with the key, but it eventually yielded; the old door creaked open on its pintles, admitting us into the dank darkness of what used to be a storage chamber for boat gear.

  “This will do fine,” said the captain, who had brought a flashlight of his own. He wanted the chest against a foundation wall among some old kegs and coils of rope, where he dragged a mildewed sail over part of it. On top of that he placed a couple of empty boxes, until it was perfectly camouflaged. “That’ll do,” he said, darting his light over the ancient stonework surrounding us. Parts were vaulted, and there were doorways to other chambers.

  “Where do those go?” he asked, moving to have a closer look at the nearest one. I explained to him that the cellars were on three levels; we were standing in the middle one, which extended through several similar chambers at the same level, including the powder magazine and the old jail, to where it went so deep under the inn that there was another cellar over it. The upper one was used for storage, and the furnace, and it communicated with the kitchen by stairs. That level was blocked off from this one. Down below us was the lowest level, or sub-cellar, which sometimes flooded, and where nobody was allowed lest a piece of ancient masonry fall out of the ceiling and conk them, or some other accident befall.

  An iron grating covered the stone steps that led down to it, and its padlock was thick with rust. The last time it had been opened, to my knowledge, was when my grandfather had yielded to my pleading and taken me down there, which got him in trouble with Mother when she learned about the expedition. I had found it less interesting than I had hoped—a few bare chambers joined by alleyways that dripped, and rodents’ eyes glowing red in our flashlight beams. Nothing about it had made me want to go back. The captain, however, took a keen interest in it at once.

  “This is the sort of thing that historians such as myself find fascinating,” he explained, peering through the grating. “This lock’s a goner; what do you say we cut it off, and I’ll replace it with a good one after I’ve had a chance to look around a bit?” I told him we couldn’t do that without my mother’s permission, and I didn’t see a lot of hope for that. “Well, maybe later,” he said, and led the way out. As I relocked the door, he had a last caution for me: “Remember, Jim, mum’s the word.” I nodded, and he returned to his boat to tend its leak. I went back above to sneak the key ring back onto its hook.

  No other excitement marked that Saturday. The captain took up station at his table by the fire, and spent the time weaving macramé onto an old rum bottle. Robin made his usual call to check t
hings out and chat with my mother. I heard him ask if our new guest was keeping his quarantine. She said he had not gone anywhere, nor brought anything ashore, which gave me a twinge, but I had nothing to say. Robin had a sociable word with the captain, whose only other interruption of the evening was his supper. As he gathered his things to go above, I asked him if I could get his help with my essay the next day, after church. He nodded, asking when the services began, then retired.

  “You’re getting almighty cosy with that old sailor,” Meg observed as we were cleaning up.

  “He’s going to teach me things.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but so far it looks to me like you’re the one doing all the teaching.”

  3

  Scoutings

  SUNDAY MORNING FOUND the captain bringing a roll of clothing from his boat. “It is my poor old black wool suit,” he explained, unrolling it, “and it’s been stowed a while, all through the tropics. I’m afraid it needs some love—at least an ironing—if I’m to wear it to church.”

  “Church?” Mother was as surprised as I was, nothing of his habits having indicated any great bent toward piety. “What is your church?”