“I said, get!” cried Adelaide, raising her fist as Janie was about to bolt across the room.
“Dyin’ jumpin’, my dear,” said Janie, then ducked back outside as her eldest sister kicked at a boot and bolted toward her. Slamming the door, Adelaide leaned against it, staring out the window, hot tears swaddling her eyes, and the watery shape of the flakes out on the beach blighting what sight was left.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE FLAKES
A STARK DIFFERENCE marked the quiet between mother and daughter as they followed the muddied path to the beach the following morning. Florry, aside from a few guarded glances at Adelaide, tutted at the brisk winds, the gulls screaming like haunts overhead, and looked no farther than the baby swinging off her arm in a basket. Adelaide walked woodenly beside her, eyes glazed upon a face fixed in marble.
Her step faltered as they came upon the all-toofamiliar sight of a dozen or more women and young girls, all dressed—like Adelaide herself, this morning—in brown wrapper aprons made from burlap, with white cotton skullies on their heads. Like some kind of rite, she thought, as the women hobbled hunchback over the wooden platforms, ceremoniously laying out their armloads of fish, the wired brims of their skullies shadowing their faces from the sun, and the flaps, sewn along the back to protect their necks, flapping in the wind. Some of the women straightened upon seeing Florry and her girl, waving largely and calling boisterously, “Good morning,” and, “A bit breezy. Good for the flies, though.”
Adelaide walked stiffly past them, leaving her mother to return the pleasantries. It was like a dream, a bad, horrible dream. She approached with trepidation the faggots—piles of partly dried fish all neatly stacked atop each other—some as high as four feet. They didn’t even look like fish, all split open and flattened and shaped like dirtied paper kites.
“Don’t be scared of them; they’re not going to bite,” bawled out Gert, the boss woman, from the middle of the flakes—hired, no doubt, for the foghorn harbouring in her gullet, thought Adelaide. She burned beneath the pairs of eyes turning onto her. Choosing one of the higher faggots, where the fish were already a bit dried and not too soggy with brine, she cautiously picked one up by the tail, grimacing at the coldness of the pickled flesh. It slipped out of her fingers. Picking it up again, she laid it across her arm, grateful for the long sleeves of her blouse, and held the thing arm’s length from her chest.
Trampling over the flakes toward her, Gert hollered, “My gawd, not squeamish, is she?” and started piling wet fish onto Adelaide’s arms. “There, how’s that for a load?” she asked as Adelaide had to stretch her neck to see over the fish. Amidst the spurts of laughter erupting from the women working the flakes, Gert grinned broadly, slapping on a last fish, squishing the cold, wet flesh beneath Adelaide’s chin. Near vomiting, Adelaide twisted her head sideways, her stomach heaving from the sharp, fishy smell. Florry, having deposited the baby alongside three or four others sleeping in baskets nearer the flakes, waddled toward them with a look of concern.
“Having a fine old time, are you, Gert?” she said a mite contrarily. “You never mind her, Addie, bad as the devil, she is. Wait there for me, now. We works together.”
Gert laughed, “I allows you’ll get more work out of that sleeping baby over there than this one.”
Fighting back nausea, Adelaide crept away, trying to see her footing over the bundle of fish.
“The other way, the other way, cripes, you’ll end up home agin, if you keeps going that way,” sung out Gert amidst more spurts of laughter. A figure darkened the entrance to the stage. Suze. Suze Brett. Adelaide groaned. Stun as the gnat, Suze was, and always chasing after Adelaide, till, much to Adelaide’s relief, she got took out of school, two, three years ago to work the flakes, and was since married.
“Addie,” said Suze. “My gawd, what’s you doing on the flakes?”
Adelaide said nothing. Clutching onto her yaffle of fish, she crept toward the farthest end of flakes down by the water, where fewer bodies were hunched. Small wonder, she thought dismally, examining the godforsaken structure before her. The flakes were rickety platforms made by laying long, skinny birch poles side by side and covering them with a layer of boughs onto which to spread the fish. Beneath them, holding them in place and levelling them against the sloping beach, were stilts of varying heights, with the ones nearest the water’s edge being the highest—six feet, thought Adelaide, eyeing them. And with a full tide, as it now was, the flakes extended about ten feet or more out over the water, creaking crazily as the water lapped against the stilts. Along with the women’s trampling, the whole thing felt to Adelaide as though it were on the verge of collapse.
“Not deep enough to drown, even if you do fall in,” called out Suze.
Latching a foot onto the bottom rung of a spindly ladder and awkwardly balancing the fish against herself, Adelaide started climbing. Boldly, yet shakily, she stepped onto the flakes. They felt knobby beneath her feet, despite the layering of boughs. Her ankle rolled, near throwing her, but she kept steady as she caught sight of Suze abandoning the stage and lumbering toward her. Mannish, Suze looked, with her broad shoulders and broader hips, and by the bulging of her wrapper, it looked as though she might pop a youngster any minute. Yet easily she climbed up the ladder, swinging herself onto the flakes, and propped herself before Adelaide, face flushed with exertion, eyes brimming with light, and berry-red lips stealing away from the shadings of some future moustache.
“Here, give me some of that,” she ordered, reaching for Adelaide’s fish. “Likes a bit of fun, that Gert do.”
“I’m fine,” said Adelaide.
“Won’t be if you falls over,” said Suze as Adelaide stepped precariously close to the edge of the flakes. “And what’s you doing here, anyway? Your mother take you out of school? Cripes, brains like you got, I’d keep you there somehow. Here, give me some.”
Ignoring Adelaide’s protest, she scooped half of Adelaide’s bundle onto her own arms and started laying out the fish.
“Like this, skin side up,” she instructed, hunching over, laying down a fish. “Head to tail, tail to head,” she added, laying down a couple of more fish, hobbling along, “and you does that right to the end of the flake, and then you starts back—skin side up—head to tail, tail to head. Not that hard, hey, maid?”
Without a word, Adelaide followed, gripping the slimy wet fins and throwing down the fish, skin side up, head to tail, tail to head; skin side up, head to tail, tail to head. Florry, halfway up the ladder, toting a yaffle of brine-soaked cod, hailed. Suze, her load mostly laid out, tossed down the rest and hurried toward her.
“Size of you,” she called out. “Cripes, don’t toddle too close to me, else we’ll break down through them flakes,” she warned, hand on her belly, eyeing Florry’s. “Perhaps we’ll keep Addie between us. For sure we won’t have to worry about her breaking a pole—skinny as anything, isn’t she?”
“She’ll pad out soon enough,” huffed Florry. “We was all skinny as her once, hey, Nelly maid?” she called to a cumbersome elder, waddling by.
“Make sure they lays them skin side up,” Gert hollered to Suze from over beside the faggots.
“Yes, lord jeezes, hard thing to learn, laying out a fish,” Suze hollered back. “How long was you in training for that, Gert? Cripes, the mouth on her—foghorn,” Suze declared as Gert carried on hollering over the quips and chortles of those others enjoying a good morning’s razzing. “What you say, Addie, think she’d make a good foghorn? My, you’re awful quiet,” she added to Adelaide’s silence. “What’re you thinking about? Bet you’re missing school, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps I got nothing to say,” said Adelaide, laying out her fish all the faster so’s to get some distance between her and Suze. Blessedly, the woman fell silent and hobbled off, leaving room for her mother to lumber into place beside her.
“Lord almighty, the tongue on you,” sighed Florry. “The girl’s only trying to help.”
“Didn’t need her yesterday, don’t need her today,” said Adelaide. “And don’t need you, either,” she muttered beneath her breath, and watched as her mother stooped off, grunting—like Old Maid Ethel’s pigs herself, thought Adelaide, kicking her fish into place: head to tail, tail to head; head to tail, tail to head.
Wasn’t the only time Adelaide was to think of Old Maid Ethel that morning. For as she plodded through the hours, hunching and hobbling over the bough-covered poles, laying out the stinking fish and biting down on her tongue as she repeatedly jabbed her hands with bones, she prayed for a hovel, for exile—anything to escape this hell and the stupid, yakking women and the stupid, scratchy skullies and dirty-looking wrappers. And always Suze, working right alongside, seemingly noting nothing of Adelaide’s silence as she kept a running commentary on the weather and the water and the bloody screaming gulls and the size of Gert’s pipes bellowing over the wind.
The morning crept, the brim of her skully slipping too far over her face as she hunched and hobbled, the flap flapping against her face each time she turned her head sideways to the wind. Yaffle after yaffle, from the flakes to the faggots, from the faggots to the flakes, head to tail, tail to head; head to tail, tail to head. By midmorning, the low of her back ached as though it were cracked. A quick cup of tea on the beach, heated by some of the women building a fire and boiling the kettle, and Adelaide groaned to see a couple of boats returning from their traps, and the fishermen pronging more fish up on the stagehead.
“The day they comes back with none is the day you got no bread,” said the eldest Dyke sister, Effie Jean, sitting close enough to catch her groan. Shrugging, Adelaide finished her tea, flung the dregs into the fire, and leaving her mother breastfeeding the baby with two other mothers, she trudged back to the dwindling faggots. Come noon, the faggots were gone, the fish all laid out beneath the sun, and with her back screaming louder than the gulls, she followed the women back to the beach fire. A longer rest this time, with yesterday’s leftover bread pudding and a thick slice of uncooked bologna for sustenance. When the mothers had their breasts tucked back inside their clothes once more, and the babies tucked back inside their baskets, she tiredly shoved herself upright, traipsing with everybody else back to the flakes. Starting at the front again, where they’d started out that morning, they began flipping over the fish already laid out; this time, flesh side up, head to tail, tail to head; flesh side up, head to tail, tail to head.
Late afternoon the wind died out and a battalion of black fishflies buzzed in, whizzing about her head. And the mosquitoes, hellish they were, whining and nuzzling around neck, ears, and nose till reason was lost and she was smacking at her face and throat with salt-crusted hands that served to further ignite the dozens of bites that were already stinging and reddening her exposed flesh. But even that was preferable to the beads of fly spit that grew more and more plentiful as the days wore on, all beaded and glistening wet upon those scattered spots of the fish that had escaped salting, and oftentimes already turning to maggots before they were firked off with a stick. Christ, it curdled her stomach, it did, firking off maggots with a stick, and more than once she simply turned the fish, pretending not to notice the spit, caring not a damn for the rot that would set in, spoiling the fish. Rot, for all she cared. It was bloody rotted anyways, from the stench of it. And unlike the low of her back, which strengthened as the days wilted into weeks, and the palms of her hands, which calloused after her first month rolled past, nothing immunized her to the stench of soggy salt fish.
She straightened one morning midsummer, her neck as crusted with salt as her hands from scratching at fly bites, and felt a heavy spatter of rain hit her cheek. Immediately, another one struck, and another, followed by squeals from the women as an unexpected sun shower unleashed itself. Holding out her hands, Adelaide raised her face to its cold, wet sweetness as though it were her first christening.
“Get at it, get at it! Cripes, what’s you, addled?” yelled Gert, clipping her on the shoulder. Reluctantly, she joined the scurrying, frantic group snatching up fish to keep them from getting wet and mouldy, and running with them to the faggots, stacking them one atop the other and covering them with canvas. When the last fish was rescued and the babies collected, and all hands huddled inside the stagehead, and those that smoked jumbled in the doorway, lighting up butts, Adelaide kept standing by the faggots, unwilling to leave the cool, clean rivulets washing down her throat, soaking her skin.
She prayed for rain after that. No odds that each rainfall disrupted drying time, which sometimes led to slimy fish and lower prices, or, the worst dread of all, dun would set in: that green, mouldy fungus that can sometimes spread over an entire fish and infect others and send yaffle after yaffle to the dump. What mattered, thought Adelaide, about losing a few fish when the fishermen kept coming ashore twice a day, day after day with boatload after boatload of more and more? Daily she prayed that each fish caught would be the last in the sea, that the flakes would rot and crumble from lack of use, and never, never again would she have to hobble hunchbacked, laying out fish, head to tail, tail to head, firking off spit, firking off maggots, firking off the damn, bloody flies needling her neck, her ears, face, and eyes.
One burly September morning, she looked up from the flakes to see a couple of women hurrying along the road toward the school with their scrubbing buckets and cleaning rags. Her eyes filled with hope. Emissaries, she thought, sent by angels, signalling the end of the fish-drying season, and a scant few weeks more before she, Adelaide, would be hurrying along the road, her books tucked under her arm, for hadn’t her mother said she might start back to school again in October?
She snorted, bending back to her work. One truth she knew: a girl never went back to school once she got took out. No, two truths: a girl never got out of the outports, either, without education or money. Unless it was to marry. Or go serving somewhere for her keep. And given how there wasn’t a man’s hand in Ragged Rock that wasn’t soaked in gurry, and doubly worse to be a serving girl in a stranger’s house, she shut down her mind from all thought except the work at hand.
Her eyes crept back to the road and chanced upon old Mr. Jacobs creeping down the church steps, the door left ajar behind him, lending her a glimpse of the little baby Jesus lying in his manger and those gloriously robed figures standing about him. The fish slipped awkwardly in her arms, and she clawed them back, staring at her hands, those long, tapered fingers that had so gracefully scrolled calligraphic lettering across the pages of her scribblers. They were all reddened now and scaly from brine and bone bits.
“Addie,” her mother croaked from somewhere behind her. She watched as her mother’s fat, swollen body shuffled toward her, struggling with a yaffle of fish. “Addie,” called Florry, breathlessly, “quick—the fish’s slipping.”
Pretending she hadn’t heard, Adelaide bent over her work.
Gert darted toward them, hollering, “Name of gawd, Ad, what’re you in a trance? Sweet jeezes, Florry, time to go home and drop that youngster, don’t you think?” she yelled, catching the woman and her armload of fish.
Adelaide continued with her work, any guilt she might’ve felt buried beneath the anger of a soul forced along another’s wake.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE KING NO MIGHTIER THAN SELF
TWO YEARS OF SCRUBBING FLOORS and youngsters and working the flakes, Adelaide’s anger began wearying itself. Thus, on her eighteenth birthday, as roads and electricity began creeping through the outports, she listened with a calm heart to the governing fathers as they lectured the fishermen to “haul up your punts and burn your flakes, b’yes, for the midshore fishery and sixty-foot liners is where she’s going to be, and fish plants and freezers are the new way of curing fish and providing healthy paying jobs for women as well as men.”
Hope glimmered for Adelaide then, when the government encouraged the local merchants to buy a couple of longliners and build a fish plant in Ragged Rock, poohpoohing the old-timers still want
ing the flakes. “It’s not the poor Negro markets over the seas you want, my boys, but the North Americans,” they lectured, “and their nice modern housewives and their want for nice recipes and fish sticks made out of fresh fish. And just think, my sons, how organized it’ll all be then, with you men bringing fish straight to the plants, no more salting and drying, and your women cutting and packing them, ready for the markets, and the prices all set and everyone getting regular pay. Can you imagine that, outport housewives? No more working the flakes? Nice indoor jobs all year round with regular pay, and dressing your youngsters in nice clothes from the catalogues, and getting rid of them old oak dressers, and furnishing your kitchens with vinyl and chrome and all those other nice things you’ll be seeing on your nice new television sets once we gets you electrified and everything modernized?”
“Mod-er-nized,” drawled out Joycie-Anne, Gert’s girl, huddling to the front of the stage with a bunch of others one morning, waiting for a light rain to hold up. “That’s all I hears about these days, getting mod-ernized. I wonder what we’re all going to look like when we gets mod-er-nized.”
“Aah, Joycie, you’ll be prettier than a fancy city woman,” said Suze, tightening her skully against the rain as she leaned against a faggot next to Adelaide. “God bless their little pinkies—they think that worms lives only in the ground. What you say, Addie, think we’ll all have pretty pink fingers then, when we haven’t got bones jabbing them to bits? Imagine,” she carried on as Adelaide, face held to the drizzle, said nothing, “no more lugging in wood and emptying ashpans. Just flick a knob on a stove and there she’ll be—a hot oven for our chickens. I say, sir, we’ll have the prettiest pink fingers around.”
“I says they’ll be pink,” cut in the only man amongst them, an old geezer too crippled to haul a net. “And not only your fingers that’ll be pink, but your stumps too, because that’s all’s going to be left of your fingers you works in a plant long enough—stumps! Your fingers froze up and cut off.”
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