Sylvanus Now
Page 22
Hanging the dripping line up over the rafters in the stage, he kicked beach rocks onto the fire and trudged toward his mother’s yard like an old soldier. And that’s just how they were as they battened down their house, moving into winter, like two old soldiers wearied from battles fought on different soils and now picking through the foundations of what had been common ground, careful lest they trip a land mine and harm their respective solitudes, which kept the flag of truce between them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
OCEAN OF ANCIENTS
CURSED. HE SWORE he was cursed, as winter brought with it screeching winds and snow, and ice storms that befogged even the old-timers’ memories. Cripes, how he longed for the openness of the sea as he pushed through brush, suffering the snow creeping coldly down his neck, branches scratching at his face like a surly cat, and ice-blasted winds snatching at his breath. Even sunny days were wretched as the sun glittered off the white, searing his sockets, and warming the snow just enough to suck him thigh-deep into its banks. And the silence! There was always that silence when the woods were blanketed with snow, a heavy silence that bore down on the trees and the land with the stillness of death. Separate. All sounds became separate in that silence—the creaking of a boot, the rustling of his garments, a cough—all separate and spreading out in time so’s time itself became a thing that had to be ploughed through. No, sir, the woods couldn’t take him as did the sea, rocking him upon her breasts, fanning his face whilst he straddled her belly, plumbing her depths, his hips swaying to her heaving and ebbing beneath him, her bodice spreading so far out that it was impossible to see where water and sky separated.
Come midwinter the snow was banked twelve, fifteen feet deep in most places, making logging and hunting near impossible, and driving him mad as he prowled the limited space of his house, worrying about the meat, the larder, and the cursed knowing that all the while he sat, snowed in, the draggers, the trawlers, the factory freezers, and all else built around a diesel were sitting out there on his banks, sucking in his fish, day in, day out, day in, day out.
She wasn’t doing much better, he noted, grimly, chancing the occasional sideways glance at his wife. Any lightening of mood her absorption with the garden might’ve brought had certainly vanished with the summer sun. Yet, unlike him whose foot tapped impatiently as he stood pressing his face and hands against the frosted windows like something held captive, she was strangely calm this winter, her broodiness well contained within her.
Cripes, he envied her that as he paced and prowled, shovelling the path between his house and his mother’s every day, sometimes twice a day, bringing water when the buckets weren’t even emptied, and overflowing both their wood-boxes with splits. And when that was done and morning not yet over, and his peep-holes in the windows steamed white with his impatient sighs, he’d start back to prowling, working extra hard to clamp shut his eyes so’s they wouldn’t cling to hers like burrs whenever she drifted by—at least, that’s what it appeared like to him, that she drifted, her eyes seeing and resting on nothing except when ensnared by his.
She’d exclaim impatiently over his impatience then and seat herself in her rocker facing the window, her back to the room so’s to escape him. She could sit for hours like that, facing her window, her feet propped on the sill, levering her rocker to and fro, to and fro—no different than when she was immersed in her little red book when they’d first married. Not that he ever bothered trying to bring up the subject of those little red books, for they were directly connected somehow to her brooding, their babies, their dying. Cripes, no. The mere mentioning of anything to do with the babies, and she skittered from him like a cat in cold water. Didn’t matter to her how he ached, building those little boxes. Didn’t matter to her how he had wept upon every nail hammered, that he walked around as emptied as her belly after each burial, that each unfulfilled expectation tore a deeper hole in his heart than the ground into which he had buried them. Hell, no. Too caught in her own grief, she was, to give notice of his.
He’d catch himself then and hang his head, recognizing in himself that wounded dog limping around for a pat, whereas his brooding had nothing to do with her; nothing to do with the burials, even. Truth was, as the long winter days pressed on, he started not giving a damn about any of it: her brooding, his brooding, whatever the hell it was they were all brooding about. Getting back to the sea was what was driving him, and filling his boat and his puncheons, and covering his flakes with fish, and gaining back some comfort in knowing that the mother was still there for him, that she hadn’t abandoned him, and that he could resume the life she had once so generously given.
Middle of March the winds died, and the sun started cutting through the snow. He was out the door like a singed cat, sawing the blade of his bucksaw through the spine of a black vir oozing with sap, and axing off its limbs, wood chips flying, and a ringing sounding through the woods like church bells. First of April he was setting snares, tracking moose, and chopping open ponds for a blessed meal of fresh, pink trout. Christ, what relief to be swinging his arms and legs over bogs and lakes, and envisioning that day when he could finally start caulking his boat and readying his jiggers and gearing up for another season.
His first day on the water, and he near trembled from the want of it. Yet it was the mother’s nervousness that took his mind. He felt it, swear to God, he felt it: her constant shifting, even on the dullest day; her quick leaps from a breeze to a near gale with no warning; her uncalled-for storms up to the end of April; and those long mornings of glassy stillness throughout the latter part of May. He knew the wind to be her accomplice, but it were as though the sun and moon held vigil, too, for it was a queer light on the water these days, and he kept searching skyward for a reading of something to come. More precisely, it was what didn’t come. Two weeks, three weeks, four weeks into the season before a small stream of cod, half the size of four years before, swam wearily to his jiggers.
He near wept. No wonder she was tossing and fretting beneath him. No wonder she was reluctant to yield to his jiggers. He caught sight of a dragger that had crept but a quarter mile sou’west of him, and two more sitting a few miles farther out.
“Bastards!” he spat, watching the one closest to him steaming even closer, two miles farther in than she ought to be by law, the bright orange bobbers of some fisherman’s net quickly sinking beneath its hull. When he thought the beast would swamp him, it cut its engines, engulfing the sea with quiet. The creaking of her winches sounded over the sea, and a mumble of voices as the men aboard milled starboard, leaning over the bulwark. She was raising her net. Lifting his paddles, Sylvanus rowed within a few hundred yards of the mammoth beast, shading his eyes as the iron-shod slabs of wood rose dripping out of the water, thudding heavily against the wooden side of the trawler as the clanging chains winched them upward. The ocean beneath started broiling, foaming white as the net breeched.
“Jeezus!” He knew from talk the size of a trawler’s nets, but he’d not seen one, and he stared in awe now, as the thousand-foot netting rose out of the sea, its bulbous shape gushing back water and vibrating with its thousands of fish all crushed together and bulging, strangling, wriggling out through the mesh. The cranking of the winches grew louder as the net rose abreast of the gunnels. A cry cut forth from the men, and Sylvanus stared disbelievingly as the net split dead centre and its cargo of fish—redfish, mostly—started falling, slowly at first, as though the hand of God held it mid-air, but then with a turbulent swoosh, back into the sea.
“Jeezes,” and he stared disbelievingly as the mass of redfish floated on the surface like a bloodied stain growing bigger and bigger as the waves took them, spreading them farther and farther outward and toward where he was now standing in his boat. Loud, angry cries grew from the men abandoning the trawler’s gunnels. Black smoke spurted out of her stacks, signalling the trawler’s return to the open sea, leaving in its wake the drowned redfish spreading like a ruptured sore upon the face of the sea.
Who, who, Sylvanus silently cried, would accept such sacrifice in the name of hunger? And he sat back, bobbing in his little wooden boat upon the giant expanse of blue ocean, his pitiful few fish at his feet, and he felt his smallness, his minuscule measure against a sphere where thousands of fish can be flung to the gulls thousands of times and count for nothing. He thought of the mother-fish he’d saved from his jiggers over the years, and her sacs of roe, and he drew his eyes now back to the frenzy of the gulls jabbing at her belly, spilling her guts, her unlived life, into the sea, and he weakened, seeing in the mother’s fate his own. He rose, churning with anger at the stupidity, the stupidity of it, and shook both fists at the pillagers, roaring, “Bastards! You goddamned bastards! You stupid, goddamned bastards!”
In destitution, he closed his eyes to the hideous sight surrounding him, reopening them onto the hooded eyes of government, replying, “Yes, yes,” to the angry cries of the fishermen who were forced ashore in droves, “we hear you, and we’ll soon have our boundaries, and we’re working with foreign governments; but let’s not be hasty about blame. It’s as we told you before, there’s a cold front out there these days, and we’ve been telling you and telling you that cod don’t like cold water and that’s probably the reason she’s not swimming ashore. And, too, we got an overabundance of seals this year, feasting on your catch; and it’s the worse year yet for slub, despoiling nets up and down the bay; and it’s your spirit, men, it’s your spirit—you haven’t really given over the ways of the old; still too many of you clinging to your fathers’ day and not taking on the more modern means we’re equipping you with—what of the new fibre gill nets? We’re giving them to you, free—more competitive they’ll make you inshore crowd, more competitive. About twenty thousand we got out in the waters by now, and those fishermen are hauling in the cod, and they like them, they do, they like them.”
SYLVANUS SNORTED, nearly punching the radio one afternoon a few days after he’d witnessed the colossal waste of fish, and heard for the second time that day the government urging gill nets onto the fishermen.
“No, no, we don’t like the bloody things,” he exploded. “We hates them, we bloody hates them. For the love of jeezes, stop giving us what we don’t want and give us what we wants.”
He broke off as Adelaide darted in from the clothesline, a startled look on her face. “Bloody government,” he muttered, switching off the radio, shoving back his chair, “heads up their bloody arse. The more they learns about fishing, they better they gets at catching them, not sparing them.” He dug a tumbler of water out of the water bucket and stood drinking it back, thudding the emptied glass on the bin. “Nothing, Addie, nothing; just fishing stuff, is all,” he added, brushing aside her worried look. “Seen my cap? Where’s my cap? Cripes, the bloody thing is never where I lays it.”
“On the table.” She pointed out as he rooted noisily through a box of woollens behind the stove. “Syllie, what’s got you going?”
“Nothing you haven’t heard a hundred thousand times,” he grunted, pulling on his cap and heading for the door. She stood back, the size of her no bigger than a bean sprout, trying to bar the doorway, the blue of her eyes tinged with concern. “Look, it’s nothing to concern yourself with. Bloody governments, that’s all.”
“What about them?”
“What about them?” He stared at her incredulously. “Cripes, Addie, you knows some things, don’t you?”
“I knows a whole lot more than you thinks I do,” she quickly replied. Her tone softened. “Syllie, perhaps there’re other ways besides jigging. We can talk about it, can’t we?” she pleaded as he balked at her words.
“Talk! I’m sick of talk. Sick of the government’s talk, sick of the fishermen’s talk, sick of my own. Jeezes, how much can a thing be talked about and still remain the same thing? Now, stand aside, else I dumps you over my shoulder and lugs you out on the fishing grounds—you’ll know enough then, about fishing and talk.” And ignoring her cry of protest, he clamped his hands around her waist, lifting her to the wayside. Dropping a kiss upon her cheek, he started toward the footbridge, fuming over the news he’d just heard on the radio, that the Russians were now building another seventy factory ships and two hundred more trawlers, and the Germans were knitting thousand-foot nets with built-in sonar for spotting fish up to two miles away, and still more countries were preparing to come on board.
He cursed upon reaching his boat, realizing he’d forgotten his hardtack and onions. Hell’s flames with it, he muttered silently, hauling out his oilskins. Be more than his belly empty if he didn’t get his arse out to sea; his puncheons would be empty too. And by the look of things, no doubt they would be without their winter’s hold again this year. He sighed tiredly. Still, there was another good six weeks left yet. Who knows what six weeks would bring, he said more to encourage himself on this lacklustre evening of grey skies and squally winds. He pushed off his boat and climbed aboard without courage. He felt tired. Half the fish and half the work he was used to, yet he felt tired.
It was a fatigue that had pursued him throughout the season. By summer’s end, with his prolonged hours on the sea, his persistent jigging and the continuing decline of his catch, he was starting to feel older than the hills.
Stuffing his lunch pack into the cuddy one cold September afternoon, he turned a keen eye to the wind. It was a full-out blow, meaning it would either reach its full pitch in twenty minutes, in which case his boat could easily handle it, and he would then be able to drop anchor and jig; or else she’d keep on building, in which case he’d turn back or run ashore. It was already late in the afternoon, and he was feeling the pinch too hard to stay ashore, wasting twenty minutes waiting to see how hard she’d blow.
“Hey, what’re you at, old cock?”
He looked up in surprise as Manny lunged down onto the landwash beside him.
“How’re you doing, buddy?” he replied, pulling his oilskins out of the stern. “What the hell!” he yelped in disbelief as Manny grabbed him by the front of his coat, throwing him against his stage.
“I asked what’re you at?” yelled Manny, clenching his coat tighter. As quickly as he’d grabbed him, he let go, his breathing heavy, his face darker than the rain clouds threatening overhead.
Sylvanus stared at him, stupefied. “What in hell’s flames do it look like?” he cried. “Never seen a jigger before?”
“Not sticking out of a man’s arse, I haven’t—leastways, not yet. But by jeezes, I’ll see one before the day’s out, you tries getting in that boat in this wind!”
“The wind? You think I won’t turn back if she keeps building? Cripes, I’m not that stun. Manny!” he shouted as his brother grabbed him again, shoving him hard against the stage.
“Yup, and that’s what I’ll tell Mother,” Manny shouted back, “when she’s climbing up on the head, watching out for you agin: ‘Bugger off, Mother, he’s happy as a lark, snuggled in onshore somewhere.’ You think that’s going to save her a night of hell, you little shit!” Hauling back, Manny struck him a clean one across his chin.
Stunned, Sylvanus stared at this brother, whose bearded face, always softened with laughter, was now hardened with rage, his mouth a thin, angry line, his eyes full of fear, and full of—of what?
Haunts, he said softly to himself. Full of haunts. “Mother just
told you about her seeing the drownings,” he said simply. He turned from his brother’s pain, turning a bleak eye onto the bleaker face of the sea.
“How come you never told me?” said Manny. “First, she keeps it to herself, and then you.”
Sylvanus shrugged. “I don’t know, brother. I figured it was hers to tell.”
Manny drew a raspy breath. “Should’ve told us a long time ago, keeping all that to herself. Bloody hell of a thing—” His voice broke, and Sylvanus kept his eyes on the sea.
“Wish I’d lived through it with ye,” he said to give Manny time.
Manny wiped at his face. “You did,” he said brusquely. “Probably closer than we all did—inside of Mother, like that. Anyway, fighting with the missus, that why you were putting off this evening? Go on, b’ye, everybody fights with their missus,” he carried on as Sylvanus never spoke. “No need to drown yourself—not right off, anyway. Get drunk first. Come on—Jake’s got a fire going.”
Sylvanus shifted moodily. “I’m not fighting with the missus.”
“Well, what else would send a man out in a gale, then?” And as if finding the answer to his own question, Manny let go with a wearied sigh. “Looking for a fish, right? Jesus Christ, man, if it’s come to this—pushing off in a storm—it’s time to do something, isn’t it? Look, Syllie, there’s other things coming. You’re going to have to start thinking differently.”
“What other things?” asked Sylvanus. “Manny?” And a different kind of worry knotted his stomach as Manny looked beseechingly to the hills, as though begging for words. “What the hell, Manny? Jeezes, you’re not dying or something, are you?”