Broken Man on a Halifax Pier

by Choyce, Lesley;

  “I told you. I was an actor who did a couple of movies that went nowhere and then bowed out. I wasn’t a movie star.”

  “Then you can cook?”

  “Yes. Just watch me, Chisel.”

  The nearest store was a little general store in Burntwood. It seemed to have everything. And I do mean everything. The guy behind the counter, a young man, watched us closely as we walked around the crowded aisles — Ramona picking up cooking gear and food, then handing things to me to carry. When my arms were full, I walked to the counter, spilled my goods, and walked back to her. She had picked up a towel, sheets, and a blanket. That threw me, threw me good.

  Even I knew that there were times when it was best to keep your mouth shut, to not ask a single thing. This was one of those times.

  I took another load to the counter. The guy there was ringing up the first load and looking at me now with a little smile on his lips. He nodded toward Ramona and raised his eyebrows a notch. She was studying the meagre wine selection and I was thinking it more than fortuitous that this little ramshackle store had an NSLC licence. Ramona came toward us with a couple of bottles. “This’ll do,” she said.

  Ramona paid cash and buddy was all smiles now. He even helped us haul some of the stuff to the car. “You folks aren’t from around here, are ya?” he asked.

  “Actually I am,” I said. “Grew up in Stewart Harbour.”

  “No shit. What’s your name?”

  “Charles. Charles Howard.”

  “Howard?” The name had triggered something in his head.

  “You probably remember my father, Desmond. Or at least stories about my father.” My legendary father. He’d been gone all these years. But he was still remembered.

  The guy looked puzzled, troubled even, but then said, “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  He nodded and gave one of those furtive sidelong glances at Ramona, the kind men do when they think they are being coy. But women always know. “You both have a good evening,” he said. “Thanks for the business.”

  “Cheers,” I said. “Thank you.” And wondered, was there really going to be an evening?

  9

  Ramona made sandwiches for our rather late lunch, and I took her for a long hike out to Prosper Point and out around Falcon Head. It wasn’t easy going, walking on those loose rocks, but she didn’t seem to mind. There were shiny fat seals sunning themselves on the ledges offshore and filling the air with those otherworldly moans. Gulls swooped down overhead and spindly-legged shorebirds — sandpipers or plovers maybe — tricked in and out with the waves along the sandy stretches.

  “Heaven,” Ramona said. “This makes me think that this is what heaven must be like.”

  I laughed. “It didn’t seem that way when I was growing up here. And the sun wasn’t always out. In fact, we have more fog here than probably any place in the province.”

  “Shh. Just let me hang on to this. This illusion or whatever it is.”

  I picked up a really flat stone and tried skipping it on the waves. It skipped once and then sank. Ramona picked up a stone and made four good skips with it before it sank. “It’s all in the wrist,” she said.

  “Show-off.”

  “I’m an actor, remember? I play my roles well.”

  “A lot of stone skipping in your movies.”

  “No, usually just a lot of bad dialogue in coffee shops or bars. I got real good at holding a cup of coffee or a beer in the air while delivering my lines.”

  “Why didn’t you stay with it? The acting?”

  “Times changed. Filmmaking in Canada was on the decline. I didn’t want to stay in California. I guess it’ll sound like a cliché, but I found the whole business just a bit too shallow.”

  “No?” I said, pretending to be shocked. “So you just quit?”

  “Yeah. There was some money in the family that came my way and I’d saved a fair bit. Unlike the other people I worked with out there, I kept a fairly low-key lifestyle. It seemed to work for me. Kept me grounded.”

  “Sensible girl.” I pointed to her feet. “You even wear sensible shoes.”

  “Yeah, when I put them on this morning I was thinking to myself, Hey, maybe I’ll meet a nice man who will take me hiking on an empty beach somewhere. How romantic is that?”

  “Very. So you think I’m nice?”

  “Nice enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  But she didn’t answer.

  We were rounding the tip of the headland. The hillside was badly eroded by the sea — red dirt cliffs and large rocks sticking out in places. “The sea just keeps carving away at the land,” I said. “This is an old drumlin, a pile of mud and rocks left here by retreating glaciers.”

  “Ah, the professor is back.”

  “I used to play out here all the time. Pete and me. I thought of myself as the king of the drumlins.”

  “Cute. How did you know what a drumlin was?”

  “I read books. Lots of books. Books on anything. Poetry to geology. Books made me want to leave all this.”

  “Big wide world out there and all that.”

  “I only got as far as Halifax. Dal. Then journalism at King’s, the job at the Tribune. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  “That sounds all too tidy. I’m still trying to figure you out. You just left to go to university and you never looked back. Just left friends, family, and girlfriend all behind. People don’t do that. It’s not human.”

  “I did it. It’s what I had to do. Pete was already gone — out west. Pretty soon we didn’t have anything to return to.”

  “But now you’re here.”

  “Yep.”

  I led her up a trail toward a gully at the top that would loop back toward the harbour. As soon as we were away from the sea breeze there were mosquitoes and blackflies we had to shoo away. “One of the things I liked best about Halifax was that there weren’t any mosquitoes or blackflies.”

  She gave me a strangely curious look and then said, “Let’s run. Let’s get the hell out of here.” And she started running. I was sure she was going to trip on a root or rock but she didn’t. She ran like a woman who knew her way around obstacles. I could barely catch up to her, but I loved watching her run.

  When we came back along the sea, we were both breathing hard. I reached out and grabbed her hand. “Stop, please. I gotta catch my breath.” For some reason I didn’t let go of her hand.

  “Wow. I’d never seen bugs like that before. It was like a scene out of The African Queen.”

  “Bogart and Hepburn,” I said. “That’s us.”

  “All we need is the boat.”

  “Well, apparently we have that too. Let’s go check it out.”

  It seemed incomprehensible to me that old Rolf had kept my father’s fishing boat in repair. An old Cape Islander like that needed annual maintenance, and many fishermen in Nova Scotia had given up on them years ago and bought expensive fibreglass boats. But then, being there was like going back in time. Not all that much had changed since I’d left. I guess you can go home again. It all just seemed so bloody weird.

  The stones rattled in a most pleasing way as the sea shoved them up the steep shoreline and then sucked them back. It was a sound I had become familiar with as a kid whenever I’d slept over at the fish shack. Something straight out of a poem.

  A few men stared at us as we walked past the other buildings and out onto the old wharf. I didn’t recognize any faces. There wasn’t much activity. Just a few boats already in for the day, men in oilskins gutting hake, joking, drinking beer, gulls swirling above shitting on them.

  The boat was unmistakable. Pretty much like all the others but the name stuck out. It never made much sense. Still didn’t. Sheer Delight.

  “Your father had a sense of humour.”

  “Sometimes. Nothing about fishing was anything but hard work as I recall. Hard. Wet. Cold.” But I wasn’t really thinking of the fishing. I was thinking of him out there on his final day at sea. Me, gone to Halifax.
Not looking back. Not caring.

  “Why did he do it then?”

  “Fishing? It’s what he did. What his father did. Work was work. Nobody much questioned it.”

  “Father to son. But not to you.”

  “Not Pete either. He got the hell out of here the day he graduated from high school.”

  “Were you and your brother close?”

  “No.” End of story. “Come on. Let’s get on board.”

  The boat was clean and looked like it hadn’t been doing any fishing that season, that was for sure. As we stood on the deck, I was haunted by old feelings, old memories. I was thinking about that day Pete went overboard. I figured I had to tell that story. If nothing else, to get it out of me.

  “Right there where you’re standing,” I said. “That’s where Pete was standing when he went overboard.”

  “Really? What happened?” She looked at me with a sudden intensity. So I told her every last detail. The whole thing played out before my eyes as if it was all happening over again.

  “We were both young — teenagers fooling around, really getting on our father’s nerves. Total jerks. My dad was tossing lobster traps overboard. They had stones in the bottom to help them sink. Me and Pete were pushing at each other. Roughhousing like we did all the time, but sometimes it got nasty. Pete had just knocked me down into a big tub of bait. I was pissed. So I got up, wiped off the slime and charged at him just as one of those big traps was going over the side. I didn’t even knock him over, but he lost his balance and his leg went into the coil of rope. He tried to shake his leg out, but the rope tightened; he got slammed into the gunwale then dragged over it, feet first into the water. He looked like some kind of rag doll.

  “He went in and down, those rocks in the trap pulling him toward the bottom. My father screamed and grabbed for the rope, but it had just yanked the marker buoy out of the boat and into the drink. I stood there paralyzed. My father screamed again. Not at me but at the water, at the sea itself. ‘You motherfucking ocean,’ he yelled. ‘You’re not getting away with this.’ He said he hated the sea on some days. This was one of them.”

  I had to stop then and take a breath. I hadn’t told this story in a long time. Ramona studied my face.

  “What happened to Pete?” she asked.

  “My dad grabbed the peavey, the long pole with a hook on the end. He hooked the buoy, lost it, then caught it again. I stood watching like a little shit, not able to do anything but feel the hot panic in my head. My father pulled the buoy in, began yanking on the rope. Hauling and cursing. It seemed to take forever. It seemed an eternity.

  “I broke out of my trance and went over to help but he pushed me away. And then I saw my brother, still under the water, his body limp. My father, still holding the rope with one hand, reached down with the other and grabbed Pete’s foot. He yanked Pete up and over the side and took out his knife and cut the rope to the trap.

  “Pete was unconscious and my father stood there for a second and stared at him. I saw the fear in his eyes. And the anger. He’d seen drowned men before. All of us there in the Harbour had seen them. He knelt down and turned Pete on his side, began pounding his back. I wanted to say something about artificial respiration but I didn’t know how to do it. And I knew he didn’t.

  “So I just watched him pound. Pound and curse. Then I saw Pete’s body go into some kind of convulsion. Then he crunched up into a fetal position and began to cough and vomit — spit and seawater and the breakfast our mother had made us eat before we went to sea.

  “My father was leaning over him and saying over and over, ‘You’re gonna be all right.’ I knelt beside them and uncoiled the rope from around Pete’s leg. The twisting of the rope had torn through his pants and had ripped right through his skin. His leg was raw and bleeding. Pete kept coughing and heaving even after there was nothing left in him to heave.

  “‘Watch your brother,’ my father said, then he pulled up anchor, charged into the wheelhouse, fired up the engine, and turned the boat back to shore. He pushed that old engine until it roared loud enough so I couldn’t hear whatever my father was saying. But he wasn’t speaking to me. He was looking out at the water. Maybe he was praying. Maybe he was still cursing. I don’t know. But he never took the two of us out to sea ever again. Could have been my mother’s doing but it never ever even came up in conversation.”

  “Maybe that’s why Pete wanted to get as far from this place as he could.”

  “That and other things. How do you like the boat so far?” I asked, realizing what a dumb jerk I was to be telling her that story at a time like this.

  “I like it. And I’ll take the story as a warning, a cautionary tale. I’ll steer clear of any coils of rope I see. Anything else I need to be wary of?”

  “Come on. Let me show you inside the cabin.”

  “Said the spider to the fly. Do you always try to seduce your women with stories about your brother’s near drowning?”

  It had never occurred to me to try and seduce Ramona. I was still thinking she was way out of my league, didn’t have a clue why she was even hanging out with me or even why I had brought her to Stewart Harbour. Everything just sort of happened on its own.

  Those few seconds of thought probably came off as stunned silence so I had to say something. “Works every time.”

  “Every time?”

  “Well, most.”

  The door to the wheelhouse wasn’t locked. I lifted the little latch and we walked in. It was just as I remembered it. The wood still shiny with its clear varnish, the wheel, the salt-stained glass windows, the compass, the tiny sink, and single propane burner with an old kettle still sitting on it. And the narrow uncomfortable bed where I fell asleep a couple of times after being seasick, resting there since my father refused to take me ashore until he was finished with his tasks. All before the Pete incident, of course.

  “It’s no luxury yacht, is it now?” I said.

  “I’ve never been on a luxury yacht.”

  “I thought all you California starlets liked to get wined and dined at sea on them with billionaires.”

  “Not to my taste,” Ramona said. “I was more of a dry land with a dry martini kind of starlet.”

  God, I liked this woman. I liked her smile. I liked her mannerisms, I liked the way we could banter back and forth like this. I even liked her goddamn shoes that allowed her to dance her way across those shoreline boulders that would have made most city women go racing back to level sidewalks. I wanted to say all this to her. And maybe I should have, but now someone was addressing us from the wharf.

  “Yo, Rolf?” a man’s voice said. “Is that you in there? What’s goin’ on? You have some ole floozy with you, you son of a bitch?”

  I waved for Ramona to sit on the bed where I had once thrown up so violently. I poked my head out. I didn’t recognize him at first. And he didn’t recognize me.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said, now sounding a little arrogant. “This ain’t your boat. What are you doing here?”

  I studied him before I said anything. He was studying me too. He seemed to be practising at making a fist now. Is that what men did when they felt threatened? And then it clicked. “Joe?” I asked. “Joe Myatt?”

  He was still trying to figure out who I was. And maybe I thought he was going to break into a smile when he recognized me. But I was dead wrong.

  “Charles? Charles Howard.” Nope. He wasn’t the slightest bit happy to see me. “What the fuck are you doing back here?”

  10

  Ramona was peeking out from the small window in the cabin. I was trying to figure out why Joe looked at me like he hated my guts. We’d never been close in school, but I’d never done anything much to make him despise me.

  “I don’t know, Joe. I just thought it was time to reconnect.” Bad word choice. A bit too intellectual for a guy like Joe.

  “What the fuck is there to reconnect with?”

  After I left, after I disconnected with Beth Ann, I’d heard word th
at Joe had moved in. They seemed like such an unlikely couple. Joe Myatt, the wrestling jock, none too bright but considered a small-town hero after he won some provincial title. Joe, destined for a career in Saturday afternoon Grand Prix Wrestling or some such thing. It had thrown me when I heard the news, made me think about what a crazy backwater world I’d come from. And they had a kid too. I lost touch after that. Maybe the idiot thought I was after his wife.

  “I don’t know. Truth is my life was flushed down the toilet. Lost my job. Lost most everything.”

  Joe gave me half a smile, huffed, and shook his head. “So what’d you expect to find back here? Pot of gold or something?”

  “No, just trying to make sense of things.” It’s funny what you say when you really don’t know what you’re looking for and when your life really has had a good flushing.

  “Screw that. No point to it.”

  “How’s Beth Ann?” I ventured.

  He huffed again, spit a gob of something into the oily water around the boat. “That bitch? We broke up a long time ago.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Not me. Discovered I didn’t really like being a husband. Made me want to puke at the thought of settling down. Coming home every night sober. Washing dishes. Mowing a lawn.”

  “Yeah, guess that would be pretty tough on anyone,” I said, and had my little moment, my flash into the world of what might have been. Me and Beth Ann settling down. Sobriety, dishes, and lawn mowing didn’t seem all that bad from where I stood.

  “Anyways,” he said, stretching out all three syllables, “we’re both better off.” He nodded across the wharf. “That’s my boat over there. The big one.”

  And it was one hell of a big-ass boat, with a really wide hull and a super-deluxe-looking cabin. “Fishing must be good,” I said. “Maybe I should get back into it.”

  “Fishing’s crap, really. Bank owns that thing, not me. They’re just too chicken-shit to take it from me. They tell me to just keep making payments, but I’m nearly a year behind.”

  “Must be tough.”

  “Fuck, yeah. But ya gotta make a go of it.” He spit again, hitting the exact spot in the dark water where his first gob had landed. The man had obviously had a lot of practice. All the venom had gone out of him with the spit. “Can’t believe Rolf kept this old thing shipshape all these years. And, you know, we all felt bad about what happened to your father. You weren’t around so we couldn’t say it to you.” That was a little dig. He just couldn’t help himself, I guess. “You and Pete stay in touch?”