by David Giblin
Troutbreath would point in the direction of the boathouse and say, “Yeah, I think I saw him going over that way earlier.”
The people that worked in the boatshed would be equally as helpful: “Bill? Oh no, you just missed him. I think he was going over to the store.”
The resort was quite a large complex; tourists could be kept on the hunt for a remarkably long time. You had to admire their persistence.
As a qualified technician, Troutbreath had done some work on a guy’s motor, a high-performance outboard. The next day the guy returned for some minor adjustments. When Brad offered to do it for him the guy was quite adamant. “Oh no, I only want that qualified technician touching this baby.”
Troutbreath watched the RCMP boat disappear behind the islands in mid-channel and then turned his attention to the tourist trying to dock his yacht at the gas float. The man was awkward with the controls, and the generic look of the yacht suggested that the boat was a rented one, probably out of Seattle. Yachts like this could be rented on the strength of a valid driver’s licence and a current credit card. After much yelling back and forth between the man on the flying bridge and a woman, presumably the man’s wife, standing on the deck ready to throw the ropes, the boat was secured.
The man climbed down from the flying bridge and approached Troutbreath with a worried look on his face. He cleared his throat and in a low voice said, “Say, uhhh . . . Tom . . . I was wondering if you could help me with a small problem.”
Troutbreath had helped with small problems before.
“What seems to be the matter?” he asked.
“Keep your voice down please! I don’t want my wife to hear us talking. She worries, you know.”
Troutbreath adopted a more conspiratorial volume.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong.”
“It is kind of worrisome,” the man said. “The bottom of the boat keeps filling up with water.”
“I don’t quite understand what you mean. The bottom of your boat?”
“You know, inside the boat, down where the engine is.”
Troutbreath was slightly incredulous.
“You mean as we stand here talking your boat is filling with water?”
“Well, yes, it seems to do that every time we stop somewhere.”
“Have you turned on the bilge pump?”
“The what pump?”
“You know, the bilge pump. It sucks up any water that gets in the boat.”
“Uhhhh,” said the man, looking a bit lost, “what’s the bilge?”
Troutbreath looked at the man and then at the fifty-five-foot yacht he had piloted to the gas dock. He took the man on board and up to the wheelhouse. He pointed out the large switch labelled BILGE PUMP on the control panel. Troutbreath flipped on the switch. There was the sound of the pumps working, and then two heavy streams of water began pouring from the outlets in the hull.
“So that’s a bilge pump.”
The man was clearly impressed with Tom’s expertise.
“Perhaps we should go down below and have a look. To see what’s going on,” Troutbreath suggested. He tried to remain as calm as possible. From the volume of water the pumps were moving it was clear that the boat was in danger of sinking.
Troutbreath and the man went below, into the engine room, where a set of floorboards gave access to the bilge. The boards were nearly floating. But the pumps kept up with the flow and the water began draining. There were no signs of a hole in the hull or other damage. Troutbreath was puzzled. The pumps continued to move water; it must be coming in from somewhere. He asked a few questions.
The yacht was indeed rented. It had been stored on dry land and dropped into the water on the day the man had picked it up. He and his wife had spent the next three days working their way up the coast. Every time they stopped somewhere the boat began filling with water. The water seemed to disappear as soon as they started running. This left the man in a difficult position. He didn’t want to alarm his wife by telling her that the boat was sinking, but he was quickly using up all his excuses as to why they had to keep moving from one place to another. They had been running almost non-stop until they encountered the rapids.
“You haven’t stopped running for two days?”
“I am starting to get a little tired.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a thing called a seacock?”
“Does it have something to do with the water?”
Troutbreath explained it for the man.
“A seacock is installed in the stern of the boat. When the boat is stored on dry land it allows any rainwater to drain out of the boat. This place in Seattle forgot to check it for you when they dropped the boat in the water.”
He showed the man the compartment in the stern of the boat with the seacocks set into the bottom of it.
“See here,” said Troutbreath, “when the boat is running, the water can drain out of these valves, but as soon as you stop, the water just flows in through them.”
“Say, that is good to know. That sure makes me feel better.”
“I’ve closed them now, so you won’t have to worry about any more water getting in.”
The two of them walked back to the bridge and the man offered Troutbreath a drink.
“I can’t thank you enough. Is there any way I can repay you?”
“There’s no need, that’s what I’m here for. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Uh . . . there is one more thing you can tell me.”
“What’s that?” asked Troutbreath.
The man pointed to the channel and the tide flowing past the mouth of the bay.
“Why does this river run both ways?”
sixteen NEATNESS IS NOBILITY
VOP AND I were sitting in our living room tying leaders. The dogfish had taken over the fishing holes and, as sharks will, were munching through anything that came in the way of their mouths, simply biting off our hooks along with the herring we used for bait. We needed to tie three or four dozen leaders a day just to keep up with the rate of attrition. Like people who knit, we were constantly surrounded by paraphernalia: spools of line, boxes of hooks, and small envelopes for coiling the finished leaders into.
A leader consists of two hooks and about four feet of line, the hooks artfully wrapped onto the line in a fashion proven to stand up to the stress of fighting a fish. Of course, each guide had their own method and considered all others suspect, even a sign of shoddy workmanship. Great care had to be taken so the line wrapped without kinking, looping over itself, or leaving flattened spots, or else the leader would break off on a fish.
Like knitting, after years of practice, it became an unconscious act. Vop and I gossiped as we tied. The university required Vop to live in the dormitories unless he could satisfy certain exemptions. Carol, for example, could prove she had resided in the township for the last twelve months. Vop had arrived in the final days before classes began. Most of the dorm rooms were already occupied. Vop found himself sharing a space with someone who wouldn’t have been his first choice.
The room Vop was expected to live in left him sputtering with indignation. The dormitory was a cement block building, a filing cabinet for people. The rooms were about the size and shape of a shoebox. They were all identical. Each room was organized the same way on two sides: at the entrance was a door-less closet, then a set of double bunks, a series of shelves, and built-in desks for two people. These rooms had originally been designed to house four people back in the days when the college was a religious institution. Vop supposed people studying the Bible needn’t worry about such worldly things as comfort and privacy. At the far end of the room was a large picture window with a fine view of the parking lot.
Vop’s roommate in this space was about five years older, but the age gap could have been fifty years for all he and Vop had in common. He was a Greek man who had just spent the last four years in the Greek army. He was now studying engineering and had applied for the excellen
t school of engineering at UBC. However, that university did not accept first-year students from outside the country, so he was fulfilling this requirement at the much smaller college. He was not happy. He was not happy about the inferior school. He was not happy about the food in the cafeteria. He was certainly not happy about the constant rain and grey skies. He was very, very unhappy about his new roommate.
Vop agreed with his roommate’s dissatisfaction on some points. Vop found the food in the cafeteria rather frightening as well. He was served some liver one night that was so tough he took it back to his room and fashioned a pair of sandals using the liver for the soles. He wore them back to the cafeteria the next day at dinner to prove his point. The sandals proved to be so comfortable and wore so well that he kept them for guiding. There were many areas, however, where Vop and his roommate would never be reconciled.
The Greek army had trained him well. In the closet, three suits were arranged with military precision, each suit an equal distance from the others like soldiers on a parade ground. Beneath the blue suit was a pair of brown shoes, perfectly aligned. The dark grey and the black pinstripe suits had black shoes neatly arranged the same way below them. The shoes were so highly polished Vop could see his face in them. Vop’s roommate woke up precisely at 6:00 in the morning every day, whether he had classes or not. He stripped the blankets and top sheet off the bed, folded them, and placed them carefully under the pillow. The bottom sheet was tucked in so tightly you could bounce a quarter off it (Vop had tried this for himself). The roommate’s books were arranged alphabetically on the shelves. The mathematics book had a small label on the edge of the shelf underneath it. The label read mathematics. Beneath the physics book was a label that read physics, and so on. The pencil on the desk was laid precisely beside the ruler, and the ruler was aligned neatly with the pen. A sign was taped to the wall by the desk that detailed man’s hierarchy of needs. They formed a neat pyramid; at the top was the word success. Vop couldn’t find sex mentioned anywhere.
Vop had better things to do with his time than line up all his shoes with the laces tied. It’s not that he was a slob or even inconsiderate, but he had different ideas about the things he wanted around him, like the liver sandals. He liked to go for long walks in the woods surrounding the campus. He was always bringing home things he found there, the big pine cones or interesting rocks. One day he found a deer skull complete with the antlers. He found a special spot for that on his desk.
Vop enjoyed the nightlife in town and visiting with new friends he made, dropping in on them unexpectedly sometimes. Quite often he wouldn’t be out of bed until it was time for classes to start, so he had no time to make his bed. Vop made friends easily and they were always welcome to drop by. If they tracked a little mud into the place, Vop wasn’t going to make them feel uncomfortable by pointing it out. That wasn’t his idea of being a good host. As for laundry, well, with so much going on who could be expected to do it every day?
One evening when Vop came back to his room, he noticed there was a new sign taped above the windows. It stretched almost the full length of the wall and in large letters it read:
NEATNESS IS NOBILITY.
Vop regarded the sign carefully. It was clearly there as some sort of comment. And it was one that he wasn’t about to let stand without making some sort of reply. He noticed the way the sign was arranged across the wall and an idea occurred to him.
He sat down and cut out a square of white paper and taped this over a strategic part of the sign, altering the gist of it completely. Vop stepped back and admired his handiwork. The room now had two signs on either side of it:
NEATNESS
on one side, and on Vop’s,
NOBILITY.
seventeen WET LENNY
THE DOGFISH WERE partly responsible for Wet Lenny earning his nickname. He usually didn’t fish the rapids much. They lacked a certain precision that his style of fishing needed. He certainly didn’t spend much time in the chaos that was the Far Side, but if powerboats couldn’t stay in the back eddy, neither could the dogfish. The water there flushed the dogfish out; they’re lazy swimmers and didn’t want to fight the rapids. When they show up in the area in great numbers, the rapids become the only refuge. At such times grown men have been reduced to tears by the futility of trying to keep a herring in the water.
Lenny had fallen out of his boat before. Once he was trying to net a fish that was just out of reach. His feet slipped out from under him and he pitched forward, head first, into the water. This happened to people on occasion but, as Wet Lenny had lost the fish by falling in, it was considered unprofessional.
Then there was the time he was attempting to remove some line tangled around his propeller (another reason he didn’t venture into the rapids). Lenny tilted up the outboard but neglected to lock it into position. He leaned out over the stern, clinging to the motor, and reached out to the prop. It looked like he was riding the outboard; his arms were wrapped around it like those of a man clinging to the neck of a horse. The motor must have decided it didn’t want to be ridden. It tipped back down into the water with Lenny still riding it. That was a little stupid perhaps, but still not enough to earn a nickname.
The fateful day on which Lenny became Wet Lenny started quietly enough. Spring was turning into summer and the big tides were waning. The water slipped past the back eddy like drifting smoke. It gurgled like a well-fed baby. The sun was now hot on the skin, and some guests were fishing with their shirts off. Others fell asleep with their heads on their chests. Even the guides were showing signs of drowsiness. They struggled to stay awake behind dark glasses. You could almost forget the danger.
The whirlpool at the back of the Far Side watched and waited.
One of Lenny’s lines had been bitten off by a dogfish and tangled with itself—what was left of the leader line was wrapped up around the weight, and he had to re-tie the whole set-up. Lenny hunched over, concentrating on his knots. Each one had to be perfect. The guest whose line was out hunched over with him helpfully, getting in the way, while the other guest, still fishing, sat back with his feet on the gunnel and enjoyed a cigar. There was an eagle up in a tree he was keeping an eye on.
Lenny was having trouble getting the knots tied. His tongue appeared and he bent his head lower. His boat drifted back slowly, pushed by the tide. Lenny didn’t have a free hand to correct it. Lenny had the line by his teeth and both hands, to keep the tension. He drifted back farther, getting closer to the tideline at the back of the hole.
“Those eagles,” the man smoking the cigar thought aloud, “that sure is a magnificent bird.” He took another pull on his cigar, letting the smoke out slowly, and it rose in the air, languidly, like the water that flowed below it. The whirlpool chose that moment to yawn open.
When your stern drops into a whirlpool, the sensation in the pit of your stomach is similar to what you feel when dropping in an elevator. It’s not that unpleasant, but when your boat starts to spin around, the feeling is quickly drowned in a host of other concerns.
When something happens at sea, from catching a big fish to sinking, it is important to remain calm. Terror tends to get in the way of clear thinking. Unfortunately, Lenny couldn’t get past his initial panic. His first impulse was to jump up, run to the bow of the boat, and break out the life jackets. A good impulse, but when he got amidships he was seized by another good impulse, to run back to the motors and start up the big one. This was such a good idea that he took a couple of steps back to the stern. He saw water rising above the transom and the impulse to get to the life jackets took over again. On the way there he looked up and saw exactly where he was. The impulse to start the big engine and get the hell out of there reasserted itself. His panic had frozen the decision-making area of his brain, and he dithered ineffectually, hopping from one foot to the other in the middle of the boat. From the other boats it looked like he was doing a little dance—a whirlpool jig as he was disappearing into one.
Lenny had forgotten to t
ell his cigar-smoking guest to reel in his line. The man, his feet still propped comfortably on the gunnel, watched his rod tip the way Lenny had showed him. The view from the boat did seem to be spinning, but he assumed Lenny had things under control—he appeared quite calm as he did a little dance to get the kinks out of his legs. Lenny had told the man earlier that the only way he was going to catch a fish was to keep his eyes on the rod tip, so that was exactly what he intended to do.
Lenny fished for the Carringtons, and Big Jake was the head guide there. When Jake saw what was happening he started his big motor immediately. He cut both his lines and was the first boat to reach the lip of the whirlpool.
Lenny’s boat was whooshing around in big circles with its stern well down; his bow swung past Big Jake’s as he pulled up. Lenny’s crippled decision-making saw an answer to the problem. He danced up to the bow of his boat, and as Big Jake’s bow swung past Lenny reached out and clamped a death grip on the gunnel. He held on with all the strength his five foot four– inch frame could muster. Big Jake circled the vortex with him; with Lenny hanging on in such an awkward manner, there wasn’t much he could do. Big Jake yelled some instructions to Lenny, but Lenny’s brain was past hearing. There was nothing else for Jake to do but throw his engine into reverse and try to drag them both away from the gaping water.
Jake’s motor strained and churned away. The already foaming water turned to froth as the two boats slowed their rotation and Big Jake’s inched backwards. Jake was attempting to pull Lenny uphill and against the suck of the water. Lenny hung on, his skinny arms shaking with the strain. He was out as far as his armpits when he began to slip; then he was out as far as his chest. He clenched his teeth and slipped out as far as his stomach. Lenny hung on grimly.
The guides in the hole, along with their guests, were all gathered around, watching in fascination. Big Jake gave the engine more power. Lenny struggled to hold on with his knees, but he slipped again. He was soon suspended in the air, his hands on Big Jake’s gunnel and nothing but his feet tucked in his own boat. His whole body shook with the exertion. A small log, caught in the same whirlpool, bumped into the side of Lenny’s boat. The slight jar was all that was needed to pop Lenny loose, and he fell into the water. Big Jake fished Lenny out, coughing and sputtering, and pulled him to the safety of his boat. Wet Lenny, Big Jake, and the rest of the guides paused for a moment. The thought occurred to us all at the same time—Lenny was safe, but what about his guests? We all turned as one to look at the boat whooshing around in circles, its stern still buried.