by Tyler Keevil
‘You can say that again.’
So I do say it again – just to rib the old guy. He gets a kick out of that.
By quarter to two we’ve finished the starboard bin. Rather than tackle the port side, Roger calls it a day. We head upstairs to wash up before our company arrives. There’s a decent bathroom in the bunkhouse, with a full shower and toilet and sink. Roger likes to lather his hands in soap and rub them over and over, cupping one inside the other. He can never get them quite clean – the creases in his palms are stained black by years of dirt and engine oil.
‘I think I might put on a shirt,’ he says, stepping aside to dry his hands. ‘Tidy myself up a little. It’s not every day we have guests, eh?’
I can tell he’s suggesting I do the same, so when he goes back across the breezeway I shuck off my coveralls and dig around beneath my bunk. I don’t have many fancy clothes, but I’ve got this one pair of jeans and a collared shirt that I save for when we have shore leave. I hop into that outfit, slap on some deodorant, and run a comb through my hair. Then I check myself in the mirror. There’s a long crack in the glass, running slantwise across my reflection, so it looks like I’m split in two. Roger’s going to replace it during the off-season.
When I cross the breezeway, the galley is empty. The counters are dusted with flour and the air smells fragrant as a bakery. I hear voices coming from the lounge, so I head that way. Roger and Doreen are sitting on the couch beside the window that overlooks the shore – our duck-watching window. Opposite them, on the smaller couch, is this girl in a red dress. Her dark hair is pulled back behind her ears and pinned in place with barrettes. A baby boy is standing on the floor in front of her. He’s not old enough stay up on his own, so she’s holding him by the hands to keep him balanced.
The three adults look my way as I come in.
‘My,’ Doreen says, ‘don’t you look like a catch.’
I laugh at that, because I’m expected to. Beverly and I don’t get formally introduced. We just skip that part. The only seat is the one next to her on the couch. She shifts down to make room for me but it’s still a tight fit. Our knees keep touching, and it’s hard to get comfortable. The couch has a dip in the middle that eases us towards each other.
Doreen says, ‘Isn’t little Josh the sweetest thing?’
‘He sure is.’
The four of us stare at the baby, because it’s easier than looking at each other. He’s wearing these blue overalls and underneath them I can see the puffy shape of his diaper. His mother is still holding him by the hands. When she lets go, he totters on his own for a second or two before sinking to the carpet. He gazes up at me from down there, uncertain.
‘Hey, big guy,’ I say, and prod him in the belly. ‘How you doing?’
He giggles and makes a grab for my finger. I pull it away.
‘Oh – you like that, do you?’
He likes it. They all do. The two of us play like that for awhile, making everybody laugh. When the game gets old, Beverly picks him up and rests him on her knee. He sucks on his hand, still staring at me, his chin glossy with drool.
‘And how did it go today?’ Doreen asks.
It’s hard to tell whether she’s asking me or Roger, because she’s still gazing at the baby. We all are, as if we’re afraid he might disappear the moment we look away.
‘Oh, pretty good,’ I say. ‘We finished the starboard bin.’
‘What were you doing?’ Beverly asks.
I tell her about shovelling the ice, about how the rakes can’t empty the last six inches and so we have to do it by hand. As I explain I glance at her every so often, but my eyes keep sliding away, not knowing where to rest. Her dress has these wide straps that meet behind her neck in a little bow. I can see a sprinkling of freckles on her bare shoulders.
‘What about you?’ I ask. ‘What are you up to these days?’
I say it as if we’ve met before, but nobody seems to notice.
Doreen says, ‘Beverly is going back to school. Isn’t that right, darling?’
Beverly nods and wipes the drool from Josh’s chin. ‘I’m training to be a nurse.’
We nod and listen as she tells us about her course, which she’s taking out at Langara College. The whole time, Josh is sort of waving and pawing at my shoulder, struggling against his mother’s grip. Eventually he breaks free and squirms right into my lap.
‘Oh, isn’t that the most darling thing?’ Doreen says. ‘We should get a photo.’
She disappears into their bedroom, and comes back with a camera – an old film camera with the kind of flash that takes about two minutes to charge up.
‘Okay, smile you two.’
Beverly leans in towards me, and I make sure Josh is facing the camera. The flash goes off, catching us clean. Doreen takes a few more photos, and the whole time Roger just sits there, smiling and content, his fingers laced together over his belly like Santa Claus.
When the photo shoot is done, Doreen looks at him and says, ‘Now I think it’s about time I checked on that date cake, Roger.’ She slips around the corner into the galley. We listen to her puttering about in there, humming to herself, opening and closing the oven. ‘Oh, Roger,’ she says, a bit too loudly, ‘would you fetch me some cream from the downstairs fridge?’
I volunteer to get it, but Roger is already up. He motions for me to stay put.
‘You just have a sit, there. I need to stretch the old legs before I doze off.’
I hear the deck door slide open as Roger steps outside. Then it’s just Beverly and I, sitting thigh to thigh, with me cradling her baby on my lap. We’re both real quiet. Even the baby’s gone quiet. So I start talking. About anything. Mostly I ask her about herself: where she grew up and which high school she went to and what she does for fun on weekends. I tell her it must be hard, having to balance work and school and trying to be a mother at the same time.
‘What you end up missing is your personal life. You don’t go out with your friends, don’t get a chance to meet people. I haven’t really dated anyone since Josh’s dad.’ She lowers her eyes from me to him. ‘But I suppose Roger told you about that.’
‘Some. He told me some.’
‘What about you?’ she asks. ‘Are you involved or whatever?’
I don’t know how to explain my situation. My long-distance situation. It seems sort of airy-fairy, as Roger would say. Inappropriate, even. So instead I sit there and say, ‘Well.’ Just that, nothing more. Well. And while we’re sitting there with that word hanging between us, Josh starts squirming in my lap, stretching his hands out towards his mother.
She sighs. ‘Looks like somebody needs a feed.’
Taking him from me, she rests him on her knee. Then she angles her body away from me – but not really far enough to hide anything – and unfastens the tie at the back of her dress. The left side comes down, half-exposing her breast. She discreetly guides Josh’s little mouth to her nipple, which is dark and ripe with milk. He fastens onto it and starts to suckle. She turns back to me, smiling, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it is.
‘What about this summer?’ she asks. ‘Do you have a job lined up yet?’
I tell her about landscaping, as best I can. I tell her that, if the summer is dry and I can cut lawns quickly, I sometimes make a hundred and fifty, two hundred dollars a day. But I’m stuttering, talking too fast, feeling heat prickle my scalp. In the middle of that, Roger comes back with the cream, and Doreen finally brings in her coffee and cake. She places the tray on the table and hands out napkins. The date cake is cut into neat little squares, all stacked together to form a pyramid, and as she pours the coffee steam twists out of the spout like a genie.
‘Ah,’ Roger says, trying the cake. ‘That sure is tasty.’
I lean forward to take a piece for myself. I eat it slowly, sitting with my elbows on my knees,
concentrating on each bite. I’m not looking at the baby, now. Nobody is. We look anywhere but at the baby, and that breast. Roger’s talking about next season, again, about how it could very well be his last year on the barge – no matter how much money the company offers him to come back. Then the phone rings, cutting him off.
I look over. ‘You want me to get that?’
He waves it away. ‘Probably Stanley calling again. Hankering for his money.’
Doreen sighs and makes a tut-tut sound with her tongue. When Beverly asks, the three of us explain about Stanley trying to nose in on Roger’s job when he retires.
‘If you want to retire anyway,’ she says, ‘then what’s the difference?’
Roger just stares at his hands for a minute. ‘It’s the principle of it,’ he says. ‘What I’d like is somebody I can trust, who I can train up to take the old girl over when I’m gone.’
Doreen is nodding and smiling. Looking right at me. And I know I should tell them. I’ve got to bring myself to tell them. But I just can’t, in front of their granddaughter, with all of us sitting here like this. And while I’m trying to figure it out, to figure it all out, my gaze wanders over to the window. I catch a glimpse of movement out there, on the water.
‘Roger,’ I say, not quite believing it. ‘Look.’
Roger springs up from his chair, followed by me and Doreen and Beverly, still cradling little Josh in her arms. We all gather at the window. About twenty yards away, a mother Mallard is paddling along near shore, trailing half a dozen ducklings behind her. Through the glass I can hear their muted quacking.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Roger says. ‘Who would have thought?’
‘Shhh,’ Doreen says.
She reaches for his hand. Beverly shifts Josh to her other hip, and I feel her shoulder brush mine. Then there is a settling, a stillness. The four of us gaze out together, framed by the windowsill like a family in a portrait, as the ducks drift slowly past.
Fishhook
My lure hit the water with a satisfying plop. I locked the reel and waited until the tip of my rod bent from the weight. Then I pulled back on the rod, eased up, and reeled in. You have to pull gently and not yank because yanking makes the lure look all wrong, and the fish can sense something fake in how it moves. To attract them the bacon fat should sort of flap in the water, fluttering along like a moth with busted wings, because that’s what bullheads want. Dale explained it to me one time. He said, ‘Bullies like to bite stuff that looks maimed and hurt. That’s the trick.’ I’ve never really understood why, but it works. I guess it’s instinct.
‘Nice cast,’ Dale said.
We were fishing where we always fish: on this old wharf near Port Moody, way the hell out at the end of Burrard Inlet. The water was still choppy, slopping at the pontoons, and the pilings of the dock creaked and groaned like an old man’s bones. Evening was coming on and a few crows shrieked from among the sycamores that lined the shore. The dock isn’t too far from the city, but it’s far enough that you still feel like you’re getting back to nature when you’re down there. No people, no cars, no bullshit. Just this primal sort of feeling. I figure that’s part of what makes fishing such a thrill.
On my first cast I didn’t catch anything, and neither did Dale. That was typical. The bullheads aren’t usually interested right away. You got to get their attention first. I reared back and leaned into the next cast. The lure sailed out a long way before I heard the slap of lead and bacon on water.
‘Beer up,’ Dale said.
I took the can of Lucky he offered me and began reeling in.
I got the first bite. I don’t know what it’s like to catch a big fish, but with bullheads sometimes you can’t tell they’re on the line. You feel the resistance and your rod bends like a bow. Maybe you’re hooked in weeds, or snagged on a rock – it’s hard to say. Then, when you give it a tug, the rod starts trembling and nipping up and down like a needle on one of those lie detectors.
‘Got one.’
I said it like it didn’t matter but it did.
When you’re reeling in, you got to keep the tension on the line or you’ll lose the fish. I never use a barbed hook on account it hurts them – gets stuck in their mouths too easy, and tears when you pull it out. I use plain hooks, but without a barb you need that tension or the fish can slip off if he’s cagey enough. Bullies aren’t very cagey, but once in a while you get one with some savvy. Dale doesn’t have to worry about that, because he uses barbed hooks.
‘Ain’t a goer,’ I said. ‘Fight’s gone out of him.’
I could see a white shaft sliding up through the water to meet me. Sometimes the littler ones do that – they go all limp and passive so it isn’t any fun. It’s like playing with yourself or something. Fishing is supposed to be a two-sided sort of exercise.
The fish cleared the water and got lighter without the drag.
‘Aww, man,’ I said. ‘Just a baby.’
‘Still a catch.’
‘It’s barely bigger than the bacon.’
Dale snickered. ‘Bit off more’n he can chew.’
We never keep the fish we catch, but even so I don’t like hooking the babies. I think it’s kind of unfair, seeing as how they’re so young and all. I mean, where’s the sport in that? Dale doesn’t care one way or the other. He always says, ‘Thrill’s just the same to me.’
Dale’s funny like that.
I scooped the fish up with my left hand. I hate that part most of all and wanted to get it done quick. The fish thrashed about and I had to tighten my grip so as not to lose him. I was working the hook out of the mouth when Dale’s rod dipped sharp towards the water.
‘Got one,’ he said.
After that things picked up. Usually we nab about half a dozen bullheads each by the time night drops her skirt and they stop biting. But the fish were acting crazy that day and we hooked at least that many in the first hour.
‘This is really weird,’ I kept saying. ‘Man, this is weird.’
And Dale would reply, ‘These fish are going loco, man.’
I think loco is Spanish for crazy. I took it up on my tongue, because it’s one of those words you like to roll around inside your mouth. ‘Yeah,’ I’d say, ‘these fish are loco, man.’
But mostly we didn’t have time to say anything except, ‘Got another.’ After the first one it was always, ‘Got another.’ We kept saying that until we didn’t even have to do much more than grunt and the other would understand.
At one point I started thinking about how many bullheads were in the water. I always figured that after you hooked one and let it go, it would shoot off and go hide someplace. But we’d caught at least twenty, maybe thirty bullies so far that night. It seemed like too many.
‘You think these fish are all new ones?’
I could tell Dale hadn’t considered it because he didn’t answer straight away.
‘Reckon so. Wouldn’t make sense to come back for more, would it? Even bullies ain’t that stupid.’
‘Yeah. Reckon so.’
‘Seems like an awful lot of fish, though.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
We were both poised with our weight on one foot, ready to cast. But we didn’t.
Dale said, ‘Maybe we could find out.’
I looked at him. Even before he told me, I’d cottoned on to what he had in mind. It made a kind of sense. We’d been stapling posters all day – my uncle had paid us to put them up on notice boards and telephone poles around town, advertising his landscaping company. The big industrial stapler he’d lent us was still in my car, back at the parking lot.
I was the one who went to get it.
I would hold the fish and Dale would staple them. We figured the best place to do it was between the spines of the dorsal fin. There’s this thin skin between the spines, like the webbing on a frog’s f
eet, and when we clipped a staple there the bullies didn’t even seem to notice. Dale said it would be like the tags you see those scientists using to track whales or dolphins or whatever. This way, we’d be able to tell if we’d caught a fish before. It worked, too. We’d only tagged eight or nine fish before I caught one that already had a staple. I held my rod upright, so the fish dangled at eye level. He was as thick as a fist, and about ten or twelve inches long. That’s pretty sizeable for a bully.
‘I remember him,’ Dale said. ‘It’s that big mother I caught first.’
‘Looks like it.’
‘What a dimwit.’ Dale flicked its belly with his finger. ‘You stupid dimwit.’
‘Let’s double him up,’ I said.
Dale wrested the dimwit off the hook and turned him sideways so I could clip a second staple behind the first. Then Dale hucked him. He grabbed him by the tail and just threw him, high and far in the air. He splashed into the water on his back.
‘Last can of Lucky says he comes back for more.’
‘I don’t know, man,’ I said.
‘Come on.’
I didn’t care about the bet, or the beer. I would’ve given it to Dale if he’d asked. I just didn’t like how Dale said it – as if it meant something. But I knew how he could get.
‘Okay,’ I said.
We plunked our lures back into the water. Then we both stood silent, thinking.
‘Maybe they don’t have such hot memories,’ I said.
‘Why would that matter?’
‘My uncle told me goldfish only remember things for seven seconds. That’s why they never get bored swimming around in circles. Maybe bullies are the same.’
‘Maybe.’
Dale didn’t sound convinced.
‘What, then?’
