Refuge Cove

by Lesley Choyce

  “No,” I said. “Ravi wouldn’t let the Coast Guard take them. He doesn’t trust anyone in a uniform. He might rather see his family sunk to the bottom of the sea before they turn themselves in to the authorities. He has good reason not to trust anyone.”

  Harold shook his head. His eyes were fixed straight on me. “Anyone but you, right?”

  “Right,” I said, reaching for the mooring rope.

  “Wrong,” he said. “Anyone but us. Now forget this bathtub toy and get your ass in my boat. We’ll find “em.”

  Chapter Ten

  As we pushed out of the cove into the open sea, the waves began to roll the boat around. Spray splashed over the sides. Harold threw me a jacket. The wind was picking up steadily now as we got further from shore. The waves grew bigger and bigger, some as high as seven and eight feet.

  Harold turned west, away from the wind. The boat slid smoothly down the face of a wave. This old fishing tug of his was a big, heavy boat, but it felt like a matchstick in this powerful sea. “Most likely they’d come this way, with the wind. That old boy wouldn’t be able to row against a breeze like this. We’re far enough out now. I think that if they’re anywhere, they’ll be between us and the shoreline.”

  “Anywhere along here is going to be a pretty tough place to go ashore,” I reminded him. “I know from experience.”

  “Join the club,” Harold said. “I sank out here once back in 1957. Got caught in a storm that came up out of nowhere. I was in too close and a bloody rock punched a hole in my old crate big enough to let in half the Atlantic Ocean.”

  The wind was behind us now and we were picking up speed. We were cruising up the back of a wave and then skidding down the front. If I hadn’t been so worried about Tamara, I would have called it fun.

  “How’d you get in?”

  “Well, I had a pile of lumber on board I was bringing back from the mill. Just tied it up in a bundle, tied myself to it and washed in with the waves.”

  “You were lucky,” I said.

  “That’s the name of the game.”

  Right then I was thinking that luck was about all we had going for us. It was a big ocean, an impossible coastline. I guess Ravi was good and scared and wanted to get somewhere far away. He figured that he’d get away quicker in a rowboat. But I’m sure he hadn’t been expecting this weather. I kept thinking of Tamara out here somewhere. It made me shiver.

  “Only so much luck to go around, though,” Harold added. “I’ve seen it all. Some boys go straight down the first boat they sink. Others get away with it. But around here, in these waters, luck’s only good enough to save you once. When the second time comes around, you don’t stand a chance. The bloody sea remembers the first time and feels cheated.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I found myself saying. “That’s like some stupid old superstition.”

  I could tell I’d hit a sore point. Harold frowned. “You grow up around here, you don’t call it superstition. You count the men who go out and you count the men who come ashore and you study the facts.”

  I wanted to debate with the old fart just then, but I knew it wasn’t the time or place. I kept my mouth shut and studied the sea.

  “Don’t worry,” Harold said, realizing we shouldn’t be arguing about anything. “A kid from Toronto can’t drown out here. He’d never let himself die on account of mere superstition.”

  I thought about my first dunk in the waters here. I thought about the ice—the bergs, the bergers and the cold, cold water. I thought about the fact that Harold saved me the first time I lost it out here. I wondered if I was ready for number two after all.

  Harold handed me a beat-up pair of binoculars. “Up periscope,” he said. He pointed a finger towards the top of his boat’s cabin. “Get up there and look. Just hang on good.”

  The waves were still getting larger, the wind stronger. I grabbed onto a brass hand-hold and hoisted myself up on top of the cabin. I looked for something to hold onto and saw a steel pole. At the top of the pole was an antenna.

  “I didn’t know you had a radio,” I shouted down. “Maybe you should call for some more help. This sea looks pretty impossible. We might not find them in time.”

  Harold yelled back. “Good idea,” he said. “I might have thought of it myself except the radio hasn’t worked for three years. No backup. It’s just us. Besides, we’re running out of time. That storm’s gonna be on us soon. Get a look out.”

  I looked back to the east and saw the dark horizon. I saw the endless lines of waves, pushing our way. Then I put the binoculars to my eyes and began to scan the water. There was a lot of wild water between us and the dark granite cliffs of the Newfoundland coastline.

  “Greg,” Harold shouted up to me, “you want to call it quits, you just say the word.”

  I kept my mouth shut and held the binoculars up tight against my face. I held on for dear life as the boat rolled and pitched in the sea.

  Chapter Eleven

  I caught sight of something halfway between us and the cliffs. “There!” I shouted. Harold turned the boat in the direction I was pointing.

  I fell flat onto the top of the cabin and clung to the aerial, praying it was solidly anchored. When I crawled up on my knees again, though, I couldn’t see anything. Maybe it had just been some driftwood.

  “Hang on, Greg,” Harold said. “I saw something too.”

  It was an up and down fight to make any headway against the waves. I hung onto the antenna pole and stood again. I waited until we were at the peak of a swell and then put the binoculars up to my eyes.

  We were closer now. It was a dory, a dory filled to the gunwales with water.

  “Hurry!” I screamed.

  Harold made the engine roar just as we took the first real smashing impact of a wave breaking over us. I hung on with all my strength. I saw Harold fight the wheel as the wave threatened to spin us about.

  “We’re getting in too close,” he screamed at me. “Too shallow. We can’t take too many like that.” Harold was scared.

  I heard the engine sputter like it was going to stall, but then it came back to life. Harold gunned it again. I could see the dory clearly now. It was upright but swamped. Still hanging on inside it, though, were three people. I saw Tamara put one arm up in the air and wave.

  Their boat was drifting dangerously near the cliffs. At the foot of the cliffs, monster waves smashed on jagged rocks. The wind and waves were pushing the dory closer to the cliffs, closer to disaster. It would only be a matter of minutes. There was no place for them to scramble ashore. There was no way they would get out of there alive.

  Suddenly Harold’s boat connected with something hard. We lurched to a near stop and I slid across the cabin roof on my stomach. I grabbed onto the steel pole just before I would have ended up in the water.

  “That’s it,” Harold shouted to me as I scrambled off the roof of the cabin. “We have to get out of here. This place is nothing but hungry rocks.”

  “No!” I shouted. I made him look, made him see Tamara’s family.

  “Get below and see if we’re taking on water,” Harold said.

  I opened the cabin door and went in. Water was coming in a steady stream through planks that were cracked pretty badly. Already there was a foot of water on the floor. As the boat shuddered and lurched, I made it through the indoor swimming pool and flicked on the bilge pump. If I was lucky, Harold would never notice the noise of the thing.

  I clambered back up on deck. “Dry as a desert down there. No problems,” I said. I kicked the door shut.

  We were off the rock, in one piece, and still floating. Our luck was holding. Harold gunned the engine again between swells and managed to avoid more hidden rocks. In fits and starts we neared the dory.

  As we came alongside, I leaned over and grabbed the dory. I tried to hold the two boats together. Ravi grabbed onto the boat as well. We held on grimly as Tamara and Indra climbed across.

  Just then a wave crested and cold water smashed down o
n us like frozen cement. Tamara and her mom had made it in to Harold’s boat. The force of the water made Ravi lose his grip. I couldn’t hold onto the waterlogged dory. It started to slip away.

  The dory tipped and Ravi was thrown out. I looked around for something to throw but everything had been washed overboard.

  I watched as Ravi floundered. I tried to use my senses, but nothing made any sense. He was only feet away. There were only seconds before the crest of another wave might push us away from him. I threw myself in the water. It was so cold it felt like hot knives against my arms and legs. I floundered but forced myself to move my arms. Flailing wildly, I grabbed his outstretched hand. I pulled and tugged. Ravi was trying to stay up, trying to swim.

  It was like pulling deadweight. I caught a look of terror in his eyes and didn’t let myself look again. I swam, I pulled, I cursed the cold. I could see we were sliding up the face of another wave now. I saw the white water near the top. I sucked in a big gulp of air as I saw it coming.

  Harold was screaming something at me. Tamara was at the side of the boat. Her arm was reaching out. I locked my hand hard around Ravi’s wrist as I felt him start to go under. My other hand shot up like I was trying to dive up into the sky. Tamara grabbed my hand just as the wave smashed down. In the next few seconds of pure fear, panic and hope, I knew that she could not let go. I could not let go. Our whole world depended on us hanging on to each other.

  We were on the backside of the wave now. Harold and Indra were pulling Ravi up into the boat. He was coughing and gagging. Tamara pulled me inside and we sat exhausted in the seawater sloshing around on deck. She was still hanging onto me.

  Chapter Twelve

  I was so cold and exhausted just then that I didn’t want to move. I knew we were still in deep trouble. The wind was wailing and the boat was getting battered. Tamara and I were huddled together, which made me think if I was going to die soon, this wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. I pressed Tamara tightly against me.

  A kick in the ribs brought me back to reality. Harold’s boot had connected with my sense of priorities. “Get up here, Greg, you lazy bum,” he snarled. “I need your help if we are going to make it.”

  I left Tamara and tried to get my footing beside Harold.

  “We can’t go ashore,” Harold told me. “Not for miles in either direction. We don’t even have enough fuel to fight this swell all the way back to Deep Cove. Our only chance is to get out to deeper water and go with it, downwind. Ride it out, full tilt.”

  “I lied about the desert,” I confessed. “She’s taking water below.”

  “I know you did. You’re like your mother—a bad liar.”

  “I’ll go check on the pump.”

  “Good idea.”

  I opened the cabin door. The hum of the bilge pump was music to my ears. The water was still coming in through the seams, but it was only about two feet deep.

  “We’re okay,” I told Harold.

  “That’s what you think,” he countered, pointing to the maze of frothing waves pounding on exposed rocks straight ahead.

  “Get up on top and help me steer us out of here.”

  “Aye, aye, captain,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.

  There were only three major obstacles in our way, but each low island of submerged rock looked deadlier than the one before. Harold tried to use the deeper water of an approaching wave to sneak over top of the first shelf of rock. That put us dead on course for number two. Harold was forced to come about and crawl up the face of the sea demon at full throttle. I held my breath as we reached the peak of the huge swell. The engine sputtered. I thought for a second we’d slide backwards down into the trough right on top of rock number two. But the wave passed beneath us without breaking and Harold pulled back around.

  I screamed out, “Hard right!” Harold responded and we barely skirted the third shoal. We had our back to the wind and waves, and even though the storm raged all around, we were suddenly okay. Harold was in control. We were away from the rocks and in deep water.

  “You can only fight a storm like this for so long,” Harold said as I climbed back down. “Then you have to learn to ride it out. Harrington Cove is up there somewhere. Deep water the whole way.”

  A few minutes ago, everything had seemed like chaos. Now we were going west, with the wind. I could see there was an awesome order to the sea and the storm. A minute ago they were trying to rip us apart. Now we were skidding along at an amazing speed—engine, waves, wind all working for us.

  The sky cut loose with a cold pelting rain. I helped Tamara and her family down into the cabin. Tamara’s father still had a troubled look about him. “It’s okay now,” I told him.

  He took his finger and traced across my arm where he had first sliced me with his knife. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Forget it,” I told him. “It was an honest mistake.”

  We rounded a low headland and Harold eased the boat into Harrington Cove. Finally we were protected from the worst of the storm. When we got to the wharf, we tied up the battered boat and Harold went looking for his cousin, Russell. Russell took us home, got us some dry clothes, a couple of gallons of tea and chowder, and then drove us around to Deep Cove. He never once asked about Tamara and her family.

  After all that we’d been through, it seemed strange to be home, safe and sound, long before my mother came back from St. John’s.

  Then a strange car pulled up.

  “Should we hide?” Tamara asked.

  “No,” I said.

  But when the door opened and my mom walked in with the guy from immigration, I had second thoughts.

  “Don’t anyone move,” the man said, dropping his briefcase and holding out his hands, “until I have a chance to explain. My name is Wilkins. I’m with the Department of Immigration.”

  I looked at my mom like she was some kind of traitor. I went and sat down beside Tamara.

  Wilkins took off his coat and sat on a wooden chair. He started to open his briefcase as he began to speak, but my mother stopped him.

  “There have been others,” she said, speaking directly to Tamara. “The government is aware of who you are. No one wants to send you back.”

  She sat silently as Tamara translated to be sure her parents understood.

  Wilkins shuffled some papers in his briefcase. “I can’t officially say that you have refugee status, but if you are who you say you are, we already know your situation. We can do the first step of processing you in St. John’s tomorrow. Then we will put you on a plane to Toronto. There you can join other people from your country who can sponsor you. You need a sponsor to look out for your financial needs.”

  Tamara translated again. But I could tell she didn’t like what she was saying. They seemed to be arguing. Something was still wrong.

  Then Tamara spoke up. She seemed very nervous now. “We want to stay here.”

  “In Deep Cove?” The man seemed flabbergasted.

  “In Deep Cove,” she repeated. Her father nodded.

  “We have standard procedures …” Wilkins began. Before he could get another word out, the door flew open. In walked Harold, who had obviously been listening at the door.

  “The hell with standard procedures,” he told Wilkins. “If they want to stay, let “em stay.”

  Wilkins looked up, a bit startled by this wild-haired old rum smuggler. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “It don’t matter who I am,” he said.

  “No, it certainly doesn’t.” Mr. Immigration turned back to my mother as if she would support him. “What I’m offering these people is a chance to move to a city where there is opportunity. Where they can be with others from their country. And, of course, there is also a matter of financial support.”

  “I don’t understand,” my mother said.

  “Money,” Wilkins said, rubbing his thumb and index finger together. “If these people want to stay, they need sponsors. People who will provide money and support while they get on
their feet. We can connect them with such organizations in Toronto.” He said it as if we’d all understand right away. The bottom line was money.

  “We can sponsor them,” I said, looking at my mother. “We can support them.” But I knew that my mom was just about broke. We’d spent most of the money we had on the house. Dad’s life insurance was barely enough to live on.

  Wilkins looked around at our humble surroundings. “I don’t think that is possible,” he said, almost laughing. “I think you are all being unreasonable. Our studies indicate that a large urban center is the best place for Asian immigrants.

  “What would you have if you stayed here?” he asked of Tamara. She translated.

  Her father got up and walked up to the man. For a second I thought he was going to pull out his knife again. Instead, he said, “Friends. We have friends here.” His English was perfectly clear.

  “Look outside,” Harold said. We all got up to look.

  The drenching rain had finally stopped. The wind was easing. The gravel road up to our place was crowded with people. Everyone in Deep Cove must have been out there on the road. As we looked, they all began to swing flashlights so that lights danced off the dark night sky.

  Wilkins didn’t quite know what to make of this. He folded his papers back into his briefcase. “I think I’ll just head on back to the city. You’ll have a chance to reconsider this. Perhaps things will look different to you in a day or so.”

  “Thank you,” Tamara said, this time looking at me. “But I think we will always feel the same.” Wilkins shrugged and closed the door behind him. He had to ask people to move aside so he could get to his car and drive away.

  Ten months have gone by since then. We survived a long, hard winter. There was a house to be fixed up for the new family of Deep Cove. Everyone in town pitched in to make it livable. It turned out Ravi had a way with wood and he proved to be a very good carpenter. With the leftover lumber he has started to make furniture. There has even been some interest in his delicate chairs and tables from the mainland.