The Year of Broken Glass

by Joe Denham

  I start fidgeting with the buckle on the strap hanging down beside me. “I know Figgs. It’s a big ocean.”

  “It’s not just that. If anyone could find your husband without the aid of the Coast Guard it’s Arnault.” He pauses for a second, as though trying to decide what to say next, or if even to say it. “I’m going to tell you something, but you need to promise not to talk about this with Arnault.” He’s got an aged, weary look on his face. It’s much more lined, his skin rougher, as though calloused by all the wind it’s weathered, than I’d noticed before, and it occurs to me this is the first time I’ve spoken at length with Figgs in full, open daylight.

  “Why not?” I ask, though I have a feeling whatever answer he gives will be only a portion of what it is that motivates him. Figgs, the lifelong seaman. It’s a storied life he’s lived, no doubt, and I’m starting to wonder if getting even as close to him as I’ve gotten, which isn’t saying much, was such a good idea. Then he smiles, and my upswelling paranoia subsides. “Because Arnault’s a dreamer and it’s part of how things work for him and me that I don’t burst his many little bubbles. But that’s the thing I need to talk to you about, though first I need your promise. This job is important to me, and I want it to stay just as it is. It’s all I’ve got now and if its current harmony is disrupted it will only be a matter of time before I lose it. So if we’re to have this conversation I need you to swear it stays here between us.”

  I’d noticed right away that Figgs takes his job seriously, but this is a whole other level. Whatever. “I promise,” I say, those simple two words that can mean so much and at the same time so little. Now Figgs is the one fidgeting with the buckle of his shoulder strap.

  “Jeremy Gibbon is his name,” he says. “The man who’s looking for your husband. He’s from Quebec, sort of. Now he lives in India. He’s a young man, and very wealthy like Arnault, and he’s equally intelligent. The thing is this, Anna. It’s almost certain he’s already found your husband. Arnault informed me of the coordinates you found, and I’d bet my life on the fact that EPIRB got set off when Jeremy found Miriam and your husband.” I keep calm as he tells me this, remarkably so, not sure why he’s telling me or whether even to take him seriously.

  “And?” I ask, as in, What’s your point?

  “And I don’t want you to get your hopes up when Arnault starts flying this thing around, because your husband’s not out here.”

  Not out here. Got it. “What you’re telling me is we’ve just travelled for a thousand miles, in the wrong direction, when you know where my husband already is. Is he even alive, Figgs?” I’m starting to lose it again. “Is he? Are you telling me my husband’s been murdered?”

  Figgs takes both my hands, which are beginning to flail before me like the blades of this machine, and holds them steady. “No, Anna,” he says. “He’s not been, but he’s not out here, either. Listen. It would be foolish for Gibbon to kill your husband, because then, according to the myth, his presence would no longer be required in order for your son to break the float. But if he has him, he won’t readily give him over. And that, I think, is why Arnault is continuing on this search, because he knows as difficult as this search is, getting your husband back from Gibbon is going to be infinitely more challenging. He and Gibbon have known each other for a long time and as I understand it there is nothing but bitterness between them now. Arnault is not a man who wants blood on his hands. He’ll do whatever it takes to get your husband back, Anna, but it may end up costing him more than you or I could imagine.”

  “Okay. So we just go along with this then. Wasting time while my husband’s been kidnapped to where, India?”

  “I would suspect so. That’s a very big, very crowded country though. Gibbon could be keeping him anywhere. It’ll be impossible to find him, just as Arnault knows it will be impossible to find the float without Gibbon handing it over. Though I’m sure he has people trying as we speak. I’d say Gibbon’s gone after your husband so he’s got something to bargain with to keep Arnault and his people at bay.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why does this Gibbon guy want the float so badly? Why wouldn’t he want Arnault to help Ferris and Willow break it?” I can’t believe I’m asking that question, as stupid and fairy-taleish as this all is, but I’ve decided to give over to the whole scenario for the time being, because right now these men on this boat are all I’ve got to work with and it seems more and more that my husband is in great danger. This is no longer the time to argue the premise of the thing, though part of me even now wants to yell at Figgs to give it up, to stop trying to place responsibility for all the problems we’ve created on this earth on some ancient myth of questionable legitimacy.

  “I don’t know, Anna. I haven’t a clue why he wants the float. I’ve just overheard enough over the years to know about the rift between Arnault and him, and I thought you should know what we’re really in for here.”

  “And now I’m just supposed to sit back and watch the show?”

  “You promised Anna.”

  “Right. I promised. Well fuck your precious job, Figgs. This is the father of my son we’re talking about.” I unlatch the door and jump from the helicopter. I’m going to go have it out with Vericombe, the old moron. I’ll commandeer this goddamn ship if I have to.

  Figgs grabs my arm from behind and pulls me around and to him, hard. “I’ve already said it all to him, Anna. It won’t make any difference. Please. Just give it a few days. Think about it. If Gibbon wants to harm your husband he’ll have already done so. So just let the old man go through his motions. We’ll get to the next stage of things eventually.” I tear myself away from him and start walking again toward the cabin. “I’d leave it if I were you, Anna. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. There’s a good chance your husband is safer now than he will be if and when we go after Gibbon.” I don’t turn back to answer. I’m going to see Vericombe. I’m going to give that old fucker’s head a shake.

  When I storm into the wheelhouse I find him there with Smith and my son. Willow is seated at the helm, his hands on the wheel, a great big smile ear to ear on his face. I glare at Vericombe, who seems to accept it without hostility. Smith, too, looks at me with a kind of sympathy, and I realize that they’ve just watched from their window my and Figgs’s little spat out on deck. I’m about to launch into them both, into the absolute fallacy of what I suspect they assume they were just witness to, but then Willow interjects. “Guess what, Anna?” he says. “Arnault says I can go up in the helicopter with him.” He’s so thrilled I can hardly believe the position I’ve been put in.

  “Only if your mother will allow it,” Vericombe corrects Willow. “Anna,” he says to me, “this is of course your decision.” I tighten my glare on him. It smells of musty old man in here and I find it hard to breathe.

  “We need to talk,” I say, and walk as calmly as I can out to the back deck. For my son’s sake, I’m trying to contain myself.

  Vericombe steps from the wheelhouse, his impeccable white linen shirt almost impossible to look at in the sunlight. “First of all, don’t get my son excited about something and then leave it to me to spoil the party ever again. It’s hard enough keeping things on the straight and narrow without you giving him some reason to freak out. Secondly, what the hell are we doing wasting our time out here?”

  Vericombe considers for a moment before responding. “I apologize Anna, for offering Willow a ride before asking your permission to do so first. I have very limited experience with children. I had none of my own. It didn’t cross my mind that this might create a problem for you and I’m sorry if it has. As for your question, I thought we already discussed this the other day. We’re doing everything we can to find your husband. I suspect the little row I just witnessed between you and Figgs might have something to do with your asking me about this again, and in answer to that I can tell you that Figgs has his own notions of what is going on here, which I have already discussed with him, and which are based on a very limited, perip
heral knowledge of the situation. There are things Figgs can not and does not know. Just as I respect that you know what is best for your son, you’ll have to respect that I know what is best for this boat and this crew and this situation. I understand it must be hard for you right now, but you’re going to have to trust me. There’s no other way this is going to work.”

  Vericombe has this candour that’s completely disarming, the problem with it being that I’m so thrown off-kilter by all this that my guard falling means my tears do the same, and before I know it I’m choking on my sobs again. This time I step away from him, avoiding any embrace he might offer me. I grab the steel rail with both hands and steady myself before turning back to him. “What if you’re wrong Arnault? What if Gibbon has my husband already, and the woman that’s with him, too?”

  “Miriam.”

  “Right. What if he’s got them both? Figgs says he won’t harm them, but anyone who sends a bunch of men to shoot up a house the way he did can’t be all that safe.”

  “He doesn’t have them, Anna.”

  “How do you know? How could you possibly know?”

  “I have more eyes than the two looking at you right now. That’s all you need to know, and that’s between you and me. Okay? I know for a fact that Jeremy Gibbon does not have your husband or Miriam. And I’m telling you only because I know you’re not a player in all this. I can’t be entirely certain of anyone else on this vessel, Fairwin’ included. I’ve gotten to people in Jeremy’s inner circle and it’s clear by what happened in Hilo that he’s done the same in return. So if you want to see your husband again, you do two things. First of all you keep this conversation between us. I mean that with the gravest of gravity. The only person I can trust on this boat entirely is you, because I know the only reason you’re here is to find your son’s father. The others I’m less certain of. Secondly, you start trusting me, too. I want your husband safe and sound on this boat as much as you do, albeit for different reasons, and if we’re going to find him we have to be orderly and efficient in our efforts. Now clean yourself up.” He takes a handkerchief from his back pocket and hands it to me.

  “Please decide whether or not you would like your son to go for a helicopter ride, and let’s go back in there with composure.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Keep it,” he says, smiling, as I offer him the hanky back. “We’ll find your husband, Anna. Come hell or high water, we’ll find him. And we’ll finish this as it is supposed to be finished no matter what it takes. Then we can all get back to our lives as they should be. You’ll see.”

  I follow him back into the cabin, my eyes still stinging, and give my son a big hug and a kiss on the top of his shiny blond head. “Lucky boy,” I say to him. “It’s going to be fun to fly, hey Bub?” This lights his eyes up instantly and he wraps his arms around me while I reach behind him and knock on the strip of wood trim lining the instrument console, hoping Vericombe knows, in so many different ways, exactly what he’s doing.

  •

  I’m not a dreamy person. Ferris is, and Willow inherited the disposition from him, but my dreams are very seldom vivid. It’s like they’re low-lit movies, filmed in sepia tones, and I’m always in the audience, at least one step removed from all that’s occurring. As a consequence I’m normally unaffected, unlike Willow and Ferris, who both seem to wander around some days as though still half-asleep, caught as they are in that other world. These past few days have been different, though.

  Since the day Vericombe and Fairwin’ started taking to the sky to search for Ferris I’ve been overwhelmed by a wild, boundless dreamscape that spills so far over into my waking I almost can’t decipher what is real and what is not. I see Ferris in all different shapes and sizes and species. Ferris as a howler monkey, a grey whale, a mirage-like visage in a rolling desert. I’ve seen him old and infantile, crippled and more alive and powerful than I’ve ever known him. I’ve been sleeping at random intervals whenever the need takes me, like a wave breaking: morning, noon, the middle of the night. Willow has asked me several times if I’m okay, and I answer him yes, yes I am, and because the answer is genuine he believes me, and is reassured. And so I’ve been allowed to drift in and out of my dream—I think of it as this, as one long sequential dream—for almost a week now, happy to be with Ferris when I’m asleep, in whatever form he takes, and assured when awake of his still being alive and well, and of us coming nearer and nearer to him with each moment that passes, despite Vericombe’s many disheartening returns, having found nothing out there in the endlessness that surrounds us.

  Which is why when I wake to the sound of the helicopter coming down in the middle of a bright afternoon, and lie for a time with the dream of Ferris, young and strong, making love to me in our bedroom back home by the bay, keeping it with me even as I rise and walk to the galley, even as I pour myself a cup of coffee with cream and honey, becoming more and more aware of the commotion on deck as I do, so that I walk with my mug to the window and look out, and see the skin-and-bones likeness of Ferris laid out on the deck, naked, his body both sunburnt red and gauntly pale—it is why at that moment I don’t believe it, don’t believe I’m actually awake and that it is actually him. I walk to the galley table, set my mug down and smile at the dream’s turn, its dark offering, before rising again to head out on deck to face it.

  Which is when I realize this is actually happening, the sun’s heat too real, the scene before me too tangible. Willow is on his knees beside his emaciated father, Vericombe, Smith, Fairwin’ and Figgs all gathered around them. Vericombe is discussing something with Smith while Fairwin’ is trying to lift Willow, dragging his feet in defiance, from his father’s side. Figgs is nodding up at Smith and grabbing hold of Ferris under his arms. Smith takes his legs and they start to carry him toward me, toward the cabin. “He’s alive,” Fairwin’ is saying to my son. “He’s going to be all right Willow.”

  Just like that I’m jolted from my dreaminess and a severe clarity, an extremity of the state I normally function in, sets upon my mind. This is my husband passing by me, hanging limp as a hammock in the arms of Figgs and Smith, unconscious, with the appearance of one who has only the slightest veil between himself and death. I watch him pass, wanting to lunge down and take him in my arms, but my limbs are heavy as though frozen still with the inertia of sleep. I look up to see Willow coming toward me, tears gushing, so I take him instead in my arms, looking to Fairwin’ and Vericombe for something, anything.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Vericombe replies to my unspoken question. “He’s severely dehydrated, but we’re prepared for that. Smith is a doctor. My own personal doctor, the best I’ve ever known, and we’ve got everything we need to treat this.” Okay, I think. Okay. This man has been right so far, hasn’t he, despite Figgs’s doubts, despite my own? Ferris is here now, and whatever his state it’s better than him being out there still, unprotected, uncared for, alone.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I tell my son, soothing him as best I can. “He’s going to be okay. He’s here now. We found him.”

  SOME WOMEN HAVE the sea in them. They have its fierceness and its tranquility. Such a woman has its depth in her body and a wind always blows around her. It rises from her. Heat transfer. They’re rare. I’ve been to every major port on this earth, where I’ve bedded more whores than I care to remember. It’s on my soul, that sex, those nights black as base oil, the whiskey. But that’s not what’s brought me to this dilemma. It’s two of the few women I’ve known with the sea in them, Miriam and Anna—how knowing the one has led to knowing the other, and now has led me to this choice I have to make.

  I first met Miriam nearly a decade ago. I’d just come off the farm, out of rehab, and after a year or so on the tugs in the Fraser and the strait I ended up in French Creek on Vancouver Island, living in a small seaside Pan-Abode at the French Creek Cottages. A friend I’d made on the farm—the son of a fisherman, and a fisherman himself whenever he wasn’t too far gone on the needle—got me a job helping his ol
d man drop a new engine into his seiner. It turned out he was doing a major refit on the whole boat, and he kept me on most of the winter, through which I picked up work on other boats in the French Creek fleet whenever we were stalled up waiting for parts, or fabrications, or decisions to be made. By the time the seiner was finished I’d built up a reputation, and so my work was in enough demand that it seemed only sensible to stay on at the cottages, as I did for a number of years, until I got this job with Arnault. But that’s getting ahead of myself a bit. First, Miriam.

  I met her through her husband at the time, Horace Maynard. He’d bought a hand-built wooden ketch off a bush pilot from Port Hardy, a guy who’d spent the better part of his life building her only to sell her upon completion. His retirement plan I guess, building that boat, labouring passionately—you can see it in the detailing, the precision joinery—for years just to sell her off to the first rich man willing to pay the price. Such is our lot in life, brother… So Horace was that rich man, and Miriam his wife, a woman more suited to that bush pilot for certain, just as the boat was, but it was Horace who had the bucks, and so he had it all, including me to care for his boat and desire his wife like I had not desired a woman before in my life, and haven’t since, until I met Anna.

  Horace bought the boat, then named the Tsulquate River, for a song. He had no idea the calibre of boat he had acquired, and neither did the bush pilot, obviously. At any rate, he hired me to care for her, which seemed a fine side-job to me, a bit of wood polishing and light duty maintenance instead of the usual heavy wrenching I was being hired to do by the fishermen. First thing I did was have the boat moved from French Creek to Schooner Cove, a more suitable home for her. First thing Horace did, unfortunately, was rename her.