by Philip Roy
“My name is Alfred.”
“Well, my name is Margaret. Where are you from?”
“Newfoundland.”
“And where is that?”
“In Canada. Just a second.” Hollie was whining at the bottom of the ladder so I climbed down and picked him up. Seaweed squeezed past us, hopped up the ladder, and jumped into the air. When we came back up, the woman’s eyes were bigger than before.
“Young man, a seagull just flew out of your submarine!”
“I know. That’s my first mate.” Seaweed was already beginning to circle in the air. He would wind slowly around and around because there was no wind to give him lift. It would take him about half an hour to rise until he was just a tiny dot in the sky above us, only to discover nothing but water for as far as he could see. Then he’d come back down.
“And the little dog, is that your second mate?”
“Yes. This is Hollie.”
“Are there any more?”
“No. Just us. Is there anyone else on your boat?”
“Just Brutus and Clive.” She pointed towards the mannequins. “They keep the pirates and bogeyman away. What’s your name again?”
“Alfred.”
“Alfred, I’m Margaret.”
She had already told me that. We stared in awkward silence for a moment.
“Why don’t you come over for tea, Alfred?” she said.
“Okay.”
“Okay then.”
So I motored closer, tossed a line, and she tied it up. She was pretty able for someone who looked older than my grandfather. Her sailboat was made of wood, and was about twenty-five feet long, the same size as the sub. The deck was low and the cabin deep, so that waves would wash over the entire thing without rolling her. She was built for ocean voyages, not just for day trips along a coastline. But she was old. A sturdy railing wrapped the deck, and I wondered how many times Margaret had been thrown against it in bad weather. She was the oldest person I had ever seen at sea, but she didn’t look feeble. As soon as we stepped on board, Hollie wriggled free, and she caught him and scooped him up. Now that I could see the mannequins up close, I couldn’t believe I had been so easily fooled. “I thought they were real.”
“The most useful men I’ve ever known, these two. I found them in an alley behind a shop in Melbourne, a few years ago. I knew they were the right blokes for me straight away. Of course I’ve had to buy each a new set of clothes, and give them beards, but they’ve turned out all right. They’re nothing to feed. But let me look at this little doggie. What did you say his name was?”
“Hollie.”
Margaret looked affectionately into Hollie’s eyes. He liked her right away.
“How long have you been stuck here in the doldrums?”
“The doldrums? Is that what you call it? I was thinking it was just a meditation. Doesn’t it look like the sea is meditating?”
I glanced around. It looked like the doldrums to me. “Did you run out of fuel?”
“Well, I suppose I did, considering that the wind is my fuel.” She put her nose to Hollie’s nose. “Yes, I’d say we ran out of fuel. But then, we weren’t going anywhere anyway, were we, cutie-pie? And now that I’ve got you here, I think I’ll eat you up.” And she cradled Hollie in her arms like a baby.
“You must be going somewhere?”
“Nope. This is it. I have arrived. Doesn’t this look like the end of the world to you?”
She had a point, but I didn’t know how to answer that so I just followed her inside, sat down at her table, and looked around while she boiled a pot of water. There wasn’t much to see. The sun came in through the door and windows, so that it was almost as bright inside as on deck. She had some photographs thumbtacked to the walls of her cupboards, but they were curled up so much you couldn’t see the people in them. She had piles of books on the floor and on her bed, which wasn’t in a separate room. Her cabin was just one large open space, with a few smaller compartments in the stern, like my sub. But she had a real kitchen with a table bolted to the floor, and she had a fridge and stove. I noticed that the fridge door wasn’t shut, and there appeared to be books inside. Then I realized that she had boiled the pot of water on a small one-burner hotplate hooked up to a propane tank, instead of her stove. She had no electricity because she had no fuel to run an engine or a generator. There were a couple of packs of playing cards on the table, and they were worn ragged. She must have played a lot of solitaire. I wondered if she was lonely.
She took the water from a plastic barrel. Rainwater. Hollie was cradled in one of her arms like a football. He didn’t mind. She looked thoughtful, as though she were turning something over in her mind. When the water started to boil, she raised the pot and poured two cups. She turned off the stove, put the pot down, took two tea bags out of a jar, and dropped them into the cups, all the while holding Hollie under her arm. Then she put powdered milk, sugar, and spoons on the table. The tea smelled slightly stale, but it was nice to have someone else serve me a cup.
“Are you sailing to Australia?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I want to help save the oceans. I was told that Australia is the best place to learn how to become an environmentalist.”
She stopped, and stared at me with wonder. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
She broke into a strange laugh, which almost sounded like a witch’s cackle. “Most boys your age just want to chase girls. You want to save the world. That’s amazing.”
“The oceans are dying. I want to make them healthy again.”
“Indeed they are. But are you the sort of young man who likes to hear the truth, or do you just like to hear happy endings?” She squinted at me.
“I like to hear the truth.”
“Yes, I can see that you do. Well then, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you, but I think that you’re about thirty years too late.”
“What?”
“You can’t save the oceans now. Nobody can. It’s too late.”
The way she stood in front of the little stove, by an open window, we might have been in any old shack in Newfoundland. “Oh, you might save a few turtles, dolphins, or whales, but you can’t stop the poisoning of the sea. And you can’t stop global warming. It’s too late for that. We crossed that line a long time ago.”
She stared with ice-cold eyes and a severe face. Then, like butter melting in a pan, her face changed. She became more sympathetic. Her eyes turned glossy, and she spoke as if she were apologizing to me personally. “I don’t think we were ever meant to survive, you know, as a species. We seem to have been born with a special talent to destroy. It’s what we do best.”
I took a drink of my tea. Then I put more sugar in it. “But…there are lots of people trying to make things better. Lots of people want to save the Earth.” My voice came out a little higher than I wanted it to be.
“True enough. But for every person who cares, a thousand don’t. That’s the problem, don’t you see? And we can’t keep up with our own destructiveness. We cause environmental disasters every single day. Do you read the papers?”
“I listen to the radio.”
“Then you know what I say is true. Do they tell you how we’ve stopped drilling for oil, burning coal, and making weapons? Is that what they say?”
“No.”
“Do they tell you how we’ve cut carbon emissions, are saving endangered animals, and are no longer making war?”
“No.”
“You see? And the Earth just can’t take it anymore.” Her face changed again. She relaxed and smiled as if the bad news was over. Now she seemed like a grandmother. She reached into a cupboard and pulled down a chocolate bar. Her movements were a little shaky. “I keep this for special occasions,” she said warmly. She pulled on a pair of glasses with Coke-bottle lenses. Her eye sockets were deep, her cheekbones high, and the skin on her bones thin. But her hair, even though it was silver and white, was wild and full of lif
e. She reminded me of an eagle. Her face was sharp like that, and her hands long and bony, like talons. She broke the chocolate in half, and then broke the halves into smaller chunks. “But good for you that you want to save the world! What a noble pursuit. How I wish it weren’t so darned hopeless.”
“But…I don’t think it’s hopeless. I think there’s always hope.” My voice sounded high, like a girl’s.
“Of course you do, dear. You’re a young man. You’re supposed to be full of hope. Where would the world be if young people didn’t have hope? Would you like some chocolate?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Good.” She pushed the plate of broken pieces across the table. “We’re not the first species to go extinct, you know.”
Chapter Five
MARGARET’S WORDS WEIGHED heavily on me, but I was determined to stay positive. “Can I look at the engine?”
“You want to look at the engine? Well, I suppose you can. I don’t know if it works, but you can look at it.”
I opened up the main compartment in the stern, and found books, dishes, bags of clothing, and sleeping bags all stuffed around and underneath the engine. I could tell right away it hadn’t been used in years because of the way it was packed. It couldn’t breathe.
“Can I pull all this stuff out?”
“There’s stuff in there?”
“Yah.”
“Oh, yes, pull it out. We can always put it back. I didn’t know there was…Oh! Look at that! I had forgotten about those clothes. Look here! Books! Oh! Silent Spring!” She held the book close to her heart as if it were an old friend. “Rachel Carson died of cancer right after she wrote this book to warn the world of the dangers of pesticides. It was the first one of its kind. If you’re going to become an environmentalist, you’ll want to read this book.” She handed it to me. “What a brave woman she was. Look, here’s a copy of Walden. Have you read Thoreau, Alfred?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’d know if you did.” When she stared at me with her glasses on, her eyes looked twice as big. “You must read Thoreau, Alfred. He was the father of the environmental movement. I don’t see how anyone can become an environmentalist if they don’t read Thoreau. I bet you’d find you’ve got many things in common.” She handed me the book. “Here, take these books with you. It won’t make any difference to the world now, but it sure will make a difference in your own life. Everybody should read Thoreau.”
I put the books under my arm. “Thank you. Would you mind if I tried to start the engine? I’m curious to see if it still works. I’ll have to get some things from my sub first.”
Margaret frowned. All the pleasantness washed out of her face. “Well, I don’t see the point, really. But if you must, I won’t stop you. You do see the irony of starting an engine to go out and save a world that is dying because of people burning too many engines though, don’t you?” She examined me so closely I felt like a bug.
“Yes, but…”
“It seems to me your time would be much better spent reading these books than starting another engine. Aren’t there enough engines running in the world?” She stood with her hands on her hips and a kind of impatient look on her face. I didn’t want to be rude, but I really wanted to see if I could get the engine running. What if she got caught in a terrible storm? She was crazy to be at sea without fuel and a proper working engine.
“The man who sold me the boat told me that everything worked just fine. But that was seven years ago. I don’t know if it works now.”
“You mean you’ve never used it?” I couldn’t believe it.
“No.”
“But…how do you get in and out of port?”
“Very slowly. They hate me when I come into ports. I don’t know why everyone’s in such a hurry. Isn’t that the point of sailing?”
Oh boy. They must have really hated her. In a busy port, she would have gotten in everyone’s way. “How long have you been at sea?”
“Seven years, on and off. I went to sea for the first time when I turned seventy-one. I didn’t know a thing about it. I was looking at retirement condos one day when I saw an old man in a sailboat. If that man could do it, I said to myself, then so could I. So I sold my house and car and all my furniture, took a sailing course, and bought this boat. It was the smartest thing I ever did.”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
“Nope.”
“Aren’t you afraid at sea, alone?”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Then why should I be? Somewhere along the way I passed the point of being afraid. I’ve already lived longer than I ever expected to. We’re all terminal, Alfred. Here would be as good a place to go as any, don’t you think?”
I raised my head over the bags of clothing to look at her face. I realized I couldn’t tell when she was joking and when she wasn’t. Maybe she was never joking. I really didn’t know.
“If a bad storm comes, I think you’ll be glad to have a working engine.”
“I’ve been through plenty a storm, let me tell you. I just tie everything down and go to sleep.” She raised her eyebrows. Man, she was stubborn. But I supposed she had to be.
“I’ll be right back. Can I leave Hollie here?”
“You sure can. You can leave him with me and pick him up on your way back to Newfoundland.”
Now she was joking. I mean, I thought she was. I went back to the sub, filled the tool bag with a can of oil, an assortment of tools, and a plastic tarp, and hung it over my shoulder. Then I picked up one of the portable tanks of diesel. It was so heavy I had to make a separate trip for it, and carry it with both hands. Getting it up the ladder was really tough. If I hadn’t been doing chin-ups every day for the past two years, I probably wouldn’t have been able to lift it out by myself. But I managed. When I climbed out, Seaweed was there to greet me.
“Hey, Seaweed.” He stared at the can and twisted his head. He wasn’t impressed. He had just learned that there was no land. That meant no beaches with dead carcasses to tear apart, or crabs to attack and eat. I knew he would explore Margaret’s boat for food though, and that’s what he did next. He took a hop and landed on her cabin. “Good luck with that, Seaweed.” I dragged the fuel over.
As I expected, there was no oil in the engine, either. The whole thing would need a flushing and a tune up, but before I could even consider doing that, I needed to know if it would start. So, I poured in a little oil, and let it seep into the engine. It was a small, old, two-stroke diesel motor, the kind that runs forever and is easy to fix. I emptied the whole tank of diesel into the tank. That was a bit sneaky. I wanted to know that she had enough fuel to ride out a storm, whether she planned to use it or not.
“That stinks!” said Margaret, and she went out on deck with Hollie.
“It will go away,” I said, “after a while.”
“I sure am glad Brutus and Clive don’t play around with engines.”
Now was she being serious? She sure sounded serious. If she was, that meant she was crazy for sure. But then I thought of my grandfather’s sense of humour, if you could call it that, and realized that she must have been joking. Maybe really old people just didn’t care anymore if you thought they were funny or not.
I greased the engine everywhere that I could. It had nice brass fittings. It would look really beautiful cleaned up and polished. Margaret had protected it from the salt without knowing it by wrapping it so tightly with plastic bags. I spun the flywheel. It turned easily enough. That was a good sign. Once the fuel and oil had settled in, I tried igniting the engine. Nothing. I tapped the starter gently with a wrench and tried again. Nothing. I tapped it a little harder and tried again. This time the engine coughed a little, like an old troll waking up under a bridge. “Cough…cough…cough…cough…chug…chug…chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug…” Awesome!
“Alfred! There’s a cloud of blue smoke out here! It’s horrible! Turn the darned thing off! You’re killing th
e environment!”
I poked my head outside. “Please just give it a minute. It’s burning old oil. The blue smoke will go away in a minute. But I really should clean the engine. Do you mind if I do that? It would take a day or two.”
Margaret made a fussy face. “I don’t see the point, Alfred. I’m not planning on using it. You’d just be wasting your time.”
“It would be good practice for me, actually.”
“I won’t use it.”
Gosh she was stubborn. “Do you mind if I do it anyway?”
“Don’t you have to get to Australia to save the world?”
She was losing her patience. But I felt stubborn, too. I didn’t want to leave her without fuel and a working engine. Maybe she was ready to throw in the towel, I didn’t know, but I wouldn’t be part of that. My newfound gratitude for life made me very determined.
“One or two days shouldn’t make too much difference.”
“Oh, suit yourself!” She went to the bow with Hollie, and sat down.
So, I got to work. I shut off the engine, drained the oil, and flushed the engine with diesel fuel. Then, I left it to dry. I sprayed lubricating and anti-rust oil everywhere there were moving parts that could be loosened, tightened, or removed, and let it sit. I took fine steel wool and buffed the rust from the casing and driveshaft as well as I could. It was a small engine, and it didn’t take two whole days for that much work, but it took a whole day for everything to dry and the oil to work its magic.
Once it was dry, I tightened everything up again, filled the engine with oil, and snuck in another can of fuel for the tank. It was slow, steady, relaxing work. While I kept at it, Margaret and I chatted. Usually she was out on deck, and I was inside, and we talked without seeing each other, except when she got worked up over something. Then, she’d come in and stand in the doorway to the cabin with her hands on her hips, and wait for me to make eye contact, such as when I suggested that she didn’t have to be so negative, that it wasn’t too late, there was still time to save the oceans and the world. I had my head buried beneath the engine when she stood in front of the light and darkened my view.