Some Day the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More

by Brian Peckford

  Ben leapt for the wheel, and getting to my knees I went for the door, grabbed the door knob, and slammed the door shut!

  “Holy Jesus, that was close!” I gasped.

  “I thought you were gone,” Ben uttered breathlessly. “That deck froze in a few minutes. Just look at that ice—the tide’s coming in and the wind coming with it. There will be pieces of ice around any minute, and then we’ll have to slow down even more. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Shoulder is paining a bit and one of my elbows is bleeding, but nothing serious. I never saw anything move like that ice—the devil himself must be in charge,” I said.

  “My grandfather used to tell stories about this when we were boys,” Ben said. “In the wintertime, when everyone had more time, he would be there in the stage loft with his buddies spinning yarns about dangerous situations when he was still fishing. We used to laugh and figured that Pop was blowing up a real story to get us interested. We soon found out that Pop was telling the truth. Where are we now?”

  “We’re just coming up on Pyramid Head, I think. Boy, it’s slow going!” I said.

  “Yeah, you can say that again. We have to get beyond Rough Harbour, then Crouse Head, and then a nice steam before Fox Head and Conche.”

  The wind was still howling, slop snow interfering with visibility, and the ice was no more than half a mile away.

  “It’s close to six o’clock. We only got a couple of hours of light left, Ben,” I said.

  “We can’t make it to Conche at this rate,” Ben grunted. “And the ice has moved closer to shore back there.”

  Small bits of ice were almost to the boat. We cut the motor and began the slow, laborious process of watching for every bit of ice that came so that we could manoeuvre through them. We were now moving very slowly.

  “I’d say the wind will die with the light, Ben.”

  “It might, but it’s still strong and that tide will continue to bring the ice,” Ben said.

  As daylight faded and the wind subsided, we found ourselves moving ever closer to shore as we gingerly moved among the ice pans.

  “Get the gaff and the oars that are strapped to the wheelhouse,” Ben ordered. I noticed his face taking a distinctive worried look.

  “Right away,” I shouted back.

  Although the boat was still rocking, it was far easier on the deck than it had been earlier. Opening the wheelhouse door, I moved cautiously around the back to the gaff and oars. Behind here, sheltered a little from the elements, my feet found purchase on the deck. I got the oars and gaff and made my way back.

  “We’ve got to keep moving and we have to watch for the bigger pans now. So you will have to take the gaff and go up to the bow and be ready to steer some of the pans away, and keep letting me know what’s coming,” Ben explained, shouting to be heard.

  “Okay,” I shouted back as I left the wheelhouse. With gaff in hand I moved up to the bow and started my watch and steering the pans of ice.

  A sudden flash of memory and I am in Marystown in the fifties, in the harbour as a boy of ten or twelve. The harbour ice is breaking up and all the boys are frantic with excitement as we leave shore to begin our copying across the harbour. But the ice moves this way and that, all over the place, and Kevin slips and falls, dragging me back on the pan. Tom slips and catches himself. I’m on my arse and soaking wet. This was in the harbour one fine day. Just harbour ice!

  Several large pans broke me from my reverie. “Cut the engine, Ben, some big ones are coming.” There were some real ice pans now.

  With the gaff I started to nudge a pan off the bow on the port side and then another to the starboard, calling to Ben as the situation warranted.

  I got this sudden empty feeling in my gut. We were in a bloody dangerous situation—the boat was barely moving. Crouse Head was a couple of miles away. We nudged along in a sea of ice. I started to think of us and the boat. How long can we go on like this? The wind was almost gone and a small swell was the only thing left of the turbulence of an hour ago.

  Ever so slowly we moved through ever thicker ice. “We’re not going to get past Crouse Head with the ice packing like this,” Ben shouted as he leaned out the wheelhouse door.

  I just waved to him from the bow, acknowledging what was now obvious. We would not be able to continue forward movement much longer. Darkness was now upon us—the ice providing the only bit of light—and we were only half a mile from shore.

  For a moment I could only think of the boat, Ben’s boat. He’d had it for almost fifteen years, and now, after all its previous trips up and down the French Shore, it was in danger of smashing to bits. Not going to bottom like most ships, but a far worse fate.

  I was jolted out of this thought as the boat bumped into one of the larger pans that I could no longer steer away with the gaff. The ice was just too thick.

  Ben cut the motor completely. We were almost abreast of Crouse Head. I made my way back to the wheelhouse. It was no use trying to go on anymore.

  “Well, my son, what do you think of this?” Ben asked, as I slid toward the door, a look of resignation on his face.

  “We’re in a bad way,” I said with great understatement.

  In times like these, something natural clicks in; you do not dramatize the situation. You know the gravity of the circumstance and you deal with it—clearly, survival is now the main preoccupation. You are not cold.

  We could hear the ice beginning to grind against our wooden craft. “We got two bottles of homebrew left,” Ben said with a courageous grin.

  “Let’s click the caps and have them,” I responded brazenly.

  As we took the first swigs of beer, our eyes met—we were no more than a few feet apart—and there was fear, but controlled fear, as we both considered our predicament.

  “How tight is the ice packed now?” Ben asked. His voice was strong.

  “It’s packed pretty tight,” I responded, trying to sound equally strong.

  “Let’s take a good look,” he said.

  We went out on deck and took a gaff and an oar and began to try to push the ice pans. There was still a swell and the ice was packing real tight.

  “Your sight is better than mine. Do you think it’s tight like this along shore?” Ben shouted.

  “It’s hard to tell for sure, but it looks tight to me,” I answered.

  “That’s Crouse Head, I think.”

  “Yes, I think that’s right,” I exclaimed. “I remember it from the chart.”

  “Well, we’re going to have to leave her,” Ben uttered in frustration. “Take the gaff and I’ll take the oar. If we can reach shore, there’s an old path in there that should take us to Crouse—perhaps three miles from the Head.”

  “Our rubber logans are not going to be good on that ice,” I lamented. “We’ll slip all over the place. Did you ever hear tell of those baseball players in America? They got steel stuff in the bottom of their shoes that grabs real good.”

  “No,” said Ben, “and we haven’t got time to discuss it. If we only had some running shoes, that would satisfy me.”

  “Now, me son, have you got your mitts and the matches? We will be off this thing and on the ice. Christ, where’s the axe? We got one somewhere.”

  “It’s there in the corner of the wheelhouse, right behind the extra twine that we took. I’ll get it,” Ben said.

  With these meagre additions, we climbed over the starboard side of the boat onto the ice. Slippery logans and all. The visibility was pretty good and just a slight breeze blowing. It was now eleven o’clock.

  For the first hundred yards, the pans were close together, and by sliding our boots along the ice we moved at a nice pace. Then we encountered looser ice and had to be nimble and watch our chance to copy from one pan to the other. This was the way it was until we reached shore—some packed ice, some looser ice. The ice was loose at the shore and we were forced into the water up to our knees. That, we thought, was not too bad.

  Now we were on landwash
: rocks, ground, solid. Did that feel good!

  We sat on a large rock and hauled off our boots. We dumped out the water, removed our socks, wrung them out, and put both back on. We stood up and looked out to the boat. There, looming up against the ice, was Jennifer Dawn, Ben’s boat of fifteen years, now left to itself in the uncertain wind and ice of northeastern Newfoundland.

  Ben mused about how his two daughters would feel if they could see what was happening now to their namesake. Then the silence. I was sure we both mused as to whether we would see it again.

  As we turned and moved up off the landwash, I remembered the flashlight. “Ben, we don’t have the light. How stunned are we?”

  “It’s broken. Bulb broke when it fell in the wheelhouse when I was hauling you in from the deck. I didn’t have the heart to tell you then.” Ben sighed.

  “It’ll be a job to find the path without that, given the light goes as one gets away from the ice, won’t it, Ben?” I asked.

  “We’ll get used to the dark in a minute,” Ben said. “The problem is remembering where it starts. It’s years since I travelled it.”

  Ben had a good nose, and in no time we found the entry to the partly overgrown path and began our short trek of two or three miles. We were wet and hungry.

  It was after midnight when we approached the first house in Crouse. Joe Kearney was an old buddy of Ben’s, so when he opened the door of his porch and saw us standing there, his surprise quickly turned to recognition and we were heartily received.

  As we sat down and began taking off our boots and soaked socks, Joe exclaimed, “Blessed Jesus, Ben, what have you fellers been up to? Where did you come from? The ice is tight to the land. It’s been blowin’ a storm up to a couple of hours ago!”

  “Just had to leave the boat off the head,” Ben replied. “Left Croque after midday and thought we could make it to Englee. The ice was off the Grey Islands then, but as we came along Windy Point the wind come round to the northeast and, of course, with the tide coming in, she’s all packed now.”

  “You left the Jennifer Dawn? I never thought I’d see the day! Is she gone?” Joe implored.

  “Not when we left her almost an hour ago,” Ben said. “The wind has gone down, there’s a small swell, but that shouldn’t be enough to crush her. If the wind doesn’t come back up from the northeast, she should be okay for a few hours anyway. And if the wind comes round to the west or northwest, we could retrieve her—it’s a long shot, but you never know.”

  “Ben, you’re just as crazy as you were years ago when we got caught snowshoeing out from the logging camp in a snowstorm,” said Joe. “We thought we had to see those girls that night. Now, my son, you don’t think you can get back on your boat, do you? That’s a long shot, all right, ’cause when that ice starts to move off, it will be gone in a flash.”

  “We’ll have to watch for the wind, that’s all, and watch closely,” Ben responded.

  “You guys must be starved,” said Joe. “I’ll put a few junks in the stove; fire is almost gone out. I had just turned in when you guys knocked on the door.” And, looking at me, Joe asked, “You must be the new relieving officer.”

  “Yes, Joe,” I said, “I am here for the summer.”

  “Well, you got a good man there in Ben. He knows the water, like his father before him. But that ice, there’s no way to gauge that—’tis like the cod some years: one day the fish is in the cove, and the next day there isn’t one for the pot. They named it right, I say.”

  “Got any beer?” Ben asked. “A beer would go down pretty good right now.”

  “I just put a brew in yesterday, but George got some bought beer he got in Conche a few days ago. But you will have to get him out of bed to get it. Do you remember George? He lost his missus last fall. He was a scaler in the woods with us.”

  Ben took off down the path, got George out of bed, and returned in no time with a couple dozen Red Label and, of course, with George in tow.

  “Now, boys, before we starts, we got to have a system to watch the wind,” Ben said with some authority. “I’m going to try and save that boat, if I can. The wife and kids would never forgive me if I didn’t do everything possible to save her. If the wind veers around at all, we are going to try and get back on that boat. So we got to have someone outside all the time.”

  “Christ, you’re gone crazy,” said George. “You’re lucky to have gotten off her—trying to get back is pushing it. You got the government man here. If anything goes wrong, my son, you’ll be finished. It’s one thing to try and cheat me on the wood you cut; it’s quite another thing to fool with Mother Nature! She won’t like that!”

  Joe cut in. “This is not to be fooled with, Ben. ’Tis like that movie we saw in the hall the other night, when John Wayne told some of the boys at the bar, ‘You’re rolling the dice!’”

  As the beer was passed around, I realized I should say something, since I hired the boat and that this would be partly my decision. Of course, if I said I wouldn’t go any farther, the boat would no longer be under hire. But Ben was determined to save the boat, and he would do that, hire or no hire. Would I then abandon him and say the hire was no longer in place? That would get any potential problem for me and the government out of the way. I would be washing my hands of the thing and I would stay there with Joe and George until the ice was gone later that day or the next day. Neither Joe nor George seemed in that good of shape, and getting them involved would only complicate matters.

  Ben and I had been together now for a few weeks, and we had become buddies. We understood one another, we worked well together, and I was developing a liking for the old craft. Although I was supposed to be a big shot—albeit young—I didn’t feel that way and I respected those who confronted the elements, like Ben. And I already knew in my bones that you never let your buddy down, and Ben was my buddy.

  “She’s still under hire, Ben,” I exclaimed. “If you want to try it, I’m with you all the way.”

  “Well, look at that, Joe,” George said. “Ben’s got him converted! Ben must be like that preacher up in Roddickton last Sunday. They say he saved more than twenty; they got up dancing and going off in tongues.”

  “I’m not saved,” I responded, “but I am staying with Ben.”

  “That’s it, then. Let’s alternate outside, half an hour each time,” Ben said.

  “I’ll go first,” I interjected, “and you guys can yarn awhile. I’ll sniff out the wind on the path to the point. Give me an extra beer and a flashlight.”

  It was around 1: 30 a.m., perhaps two or three below zero. The night was dark, but as you looked to the harbour it lightened up with the ice close to Joe’s stage. I took the path for half a mile until I came to a little rise so I could detect if there was any wind. There wasn’t a draft. I headed back to Joe’s.

  As I entered the kitchen, the boys were in a big discussion on the fishery.

  “No wind, boys,” I said. “Who’s next?”

  “I’ll take the next turn,” Joe said and put on his jacket. As Joe headed for the door, he turned to me. “Mr. Peckford, I know you’re not with the fishery, but you’re a government man. We were just talking about the fishery. We want you to give a message to those fellers in St. John’s and up in Canada. The foreigners are taking our fish—we can see them out there on a clear night—you can’t catch a fish twice, and that new gillnet, well, there’s the ruination for sure.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard a lot about those two issues since I have been on the French Shore, and I also heard it last year when I was in southern Labrador. Boys, it doesn’t seem to me that anyone’s listening. But I will pass it along nevertheless. I know it’s a big issue, but a lot of people want to ignore it, and I don’t know if those people up in Ottawa understand. They don’t live near the ocean.”

  Joe proceeded out the door on to his shift and George, Ben, and I continued our discussion on the fishery and the logging business. And so with the beer and some food and lively conversation, the shifts to check
the wind continued as the morning slipped by.

  It seemed almost too still outside, a sure sign that a new wind was coming. Soon enough, around five o’clock, George rushed back from his watch. “She’s veering round, Ben my son. I dare say it has already picked up on the point.”

  Ben scravelled for his jacket and boots. I did the same. We were out on the trail with a few beers in our pockets and an extra gaff from Joe while shouting back our thanks to the boys.

  We broke into a run as we sensed that time might not be on our side. Ben was in the lead and I was some ways back; both of us were trying to keep from hitting each other with the gaffs. A scrawny old stump tripped me up, and down I went. One of the beer cracked open in my pocket. I picked myself up and sprinted hard to catch up with Ben.

  He shouted back, “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” I cried.

  That last half-mile seemed like going around the world. George’s words to Ben—you’re crazy—kept humming in my ears. We left Croque and got into trouble, and now we were leaving Crouse? Suddenly, we broke clear on the landwash. The sky was starting to lighten.

  “The ice is starting to move already,” Ben gasped as he rushed down to the edge of the ice and water, slipping and stumbling on the rocks and using the gaff to right himself. He looked around and I was almost falling on him. Here we were again, looking squarely at one another, not inches apart.

  “We can do it, Ben,” I shouted with brash determination, looking straight into his eyes.

  The Jennifer Dawn was a little farther out from where we had left her, but not a lot, so we had a real chance. She seemed like she was waiting for us; she was calling us now!