Stormy Cove

by Bernadette Calonego

  No mention of her run-in with Ginette, though Lori was sure they all knew about it. She pitched in with stories about Vancouver, about citizens fighting to raise chickens in their urban yards, about residents protesting against the light in their bedrooms from neon signs, and about the Celebration of Light—the international fireworks competition at English Bay.

  The women laughed and gossiped right along with her, and Lori wondered why she’d never met any of them on the street before. She concluded that social life here mainly took place behind closed doors, and you had to be invited inside. She realized on the way home that, to her great relief, none of them had so much as hinted at Noah. As if obeying a code of honor.

  Lori was just putting a camera around her neck when she caught sight of Noah pacing around on the wharf. It was patently obvious that he was afflicted with cod fever. Elated, she walked down to the boats, her heart beating with expectation. Nate was bustling around the Mighty Breeze. Before she could reach him, though, Archie blocked her path.

  “You’ll have to come with us today,” he said.

  Lori couldn’t tell if he was serious. She tried humor.

  “Oh, what a nice feeling; everybody wants me. Fortunately, the season is long.”

  “But you’re coming with us for the first day—sure to bring us luck.”

  Right then, a female figure walked past her, headed for Noah’s boat. Lori watched while Nate helped Reanna on board. It happened so fast that she’d stayed nailed to the spot beside Archie, unable to utter a syllable.

  She looked over at Noah. He met her gaze, paused indecisively for a second, and then came over to Archie’s boat.

  Archie shouted, “She’s coming out with us today. You can have her afterward for as long as you want.”

  He grinned, but the expression on Noah’s face was serious. He took off his chunky gloves and looked at Lori.

  “Are you OK with that?”

  “Do I have a choice?” she shot back.

  Archie laughed.

  “I’ll find you a life jacket. And you’ll need rubber boots.”

  Noah put his gloves back on. He frowned as he shot her another quick look and turned around briskly.

  Lori followed Archie into the shed, where he handed her an orange life jacket, but he couldn’t scare up any rubber boots.

  “Just stay out of anything messy,” he advised.

  If only I could, she thought.

  Archie’s boat was bigger than the Mighty Breeze, and she discovered a portable toilet on her tour of the deck. No worry on that score at least. She saw two rifles on the wall outside the wheelhouse. She bumped into Coburn, Noah’s oldest brother, along with two other men: Bill and Ezekiel, “Ezz” for short. Coburn identified them as “my second and third cousins.”

  “Why do you need the guns?” Lori wondered.

  “To scare off the gulls,” Coburn explained. “We don’t want them to shit on the boat.”

  She was in a surprisingly good mood by the time they reached the open sea, the coastline behind them still clearly visible. She couldn’t escape the pull of the unending mass of water and what it concealed. What did these men feel, she was curious to know, since they never swam or dove in the ocean? Noah told her he’d wanted to go on the boats even as a little kid, but his father didn’t take him out until he was twelve. Since then, all he wanted to do was fish. One of the first times they really talked, she’d asked him what happiness meant to him. He said, first, fishing, second, living in Stormy Cove, and third, a wife to share his table and bed. At the time, she thought it advisable to play it cool in order not to arouse false expectations.

  Noah’s boat followed them at first, and Lori managed to snap some pictures without Reanna in them. She was probably talking to Nate in the wheelhouse.

  The thought that Reanna would be spending a whole day around Noah irritated her. But the Mighty Breeze disappeared from view, and the thought that Noah knew Lori was in the company of four men filled her with spiteful satisfaction.

  The day got better and better. A loud, hard smack made everyone on board jump.

  “Over there!” yelled Ezz, a young man with whiskers and steely arms.

  “A humpback!”

  They all waited in suspense for the whale to reappear. And indeed, a gray colossus breached a mere sixty feet from the boat. Lori was so stunned that she almost forgot to click the shutter. Then she let the camera run automatically to capture a series of pictures. Archie stopped the boat. Lori knew that the men couldn’t wait to make it to their nets, and she was grateful for his patience.

  The humpback breached again, right beside the boat this time. It must have gone underneath. Through her lens, she could see white lines on its dark skin, as if somebody had mindlessly drawn a tangle of loops with chalk. Some of the lines must have been open wounds, because pockets of water hung from them. The black-and-white spotted edges of its tail fins brought to mind one of her mother’s fashionable silk scarves. Masses of yellow barnacles were stuck around its mouth. Lori was bowled over by the whale’s fishy odor.

  But then she lost her eye for details because the whale’s breaching held her completely in thrall. The mighty animal shot out of the water like a torpedo, executed a half turn in the air, and fell like an enormous sack of lead back into the water. Maybe there was more than one, because the time between breachings grew shorter. The beasts made an astounding amount of noise when their tails slapped the water; it sounded like the slamming of a hundred car doors. Lori thought about shooting some video, but right then, photographs were more pressing.

  “Why are they doing that?” she shouted as a whale leapt once more into the air with incredible agility.

  “Probably having lunch,” Archie roared.

  Afterward, Lori couldn’t say how long the spectacle had lasted, but she knew she’d gotten some fantastic pictures of it. She’d also captured the concentration on the fishermen’s faces, men who’d probably seen this many times before but were still impressed by the gigantic creatures sharing their fishing grounds.

  Archie started up the engine again. They reached the first nets two hours later. Lori couldn’t make out the brightly colored buoys until they were practically on top of them.

  “Look out! It’s gonna be wet and slippery!” one of the men shouted. She couldn’t distinguish one from another in their heavy, green rubber clothing, brilliant blue gloves, and black baseball caps. The boat rocked fiercely as the wheel of the hydraulic winch in the bow began to haul the heavy nets on board. Lori had her camera at the ready and fought fiercely to keep her balance. She saw only water at first, then something white glittered below the dark surface. Fish bellies. Many, many fish bellies. The men grabbed the nets and plucked the fish out one at a time. They were almost three feet long and thicker than a man’s thigh. So that was cod.

  Lori zoomed in on a fish flopping around on the deck. Its back was covered with small dark spots broken along its length by a striking white line. The brown coloration was stronger on the head, in marked contrast with its bright lips. Lori spotted the sharp teeth in one of them. A very photogenic fish.

  Ezz and Coburn swiftly cut the cod’s throat, slit open its belly, and pulled out the guts. Screaming gulls appeared all around the boat and swooped down at the slimy waste arcing toward the water. Many birds caught their meal in midair. Lori was relieved that nobody actually fired warning shots to shoo away the gulls; they performed fantastically for the camera.

  The boat filled up with cod. Lori had to be careful not to step on the twitching, gasping fish. Some had already died in the nets, the thin green nylon cords cutting into their soft flesh. She snapped them in front of a scuffed-up wall, hoping to recreate the effect of a Dutch Renaissance painting she’d seen in Amsterdam—a somber still life in shades of brown.

  Lori was struck by the contrast between the colors of nature and the fishermen’s shiny cobalt-blue rubber gloves. They disentangled sculpins from the nets and tossed them back into the sea because they were out
of season; the same for mackerel, herring, and a lone sturgeon. Coburn took pains to teach Lori the different species.

  The gutted fish landed in plastic boxes, and Ezz shoveled ice on top of them. Archie grabbed a huge cod in each hand and posed with his trophies for Lori’s lens. Even with his powerful arms, he could only hold up the heavy fish with great effort. The muscles in his red neck bulged, and his jaw trembled. Lori quickly clicked the shutter to help him out, and that got him talking. He said he’d set out his nets at different spots.

  “I used to have a hundred nets, but those times are long gone. These days the Ministry of Fisheries only allows us six nets.”

  She’d be with them until day’s end; there was no escape. The distant coastline was just a narrow strip.

  A surprise awaited the crew at the third station.

  A massive steel-gray body was thrashing back and forth in the net and splashing water into the air.

  “A shark!”

  The words shot through Lori like a jolt of electricity. She bent over the rail to see what was going on. Her enthusiasm instantly morphed into anxiety. The shark’s tail fin was tangled up in the net, and no matter how it twisted and flailed about, it couldn’t get free.

  “A porbeagle, a mackerel shark,” Coburn shouted.

  Lori watched the shark go under and resurface.

  “Are they dangerous?”

  As if to answer, the struggling shark turned on its back and opened its jaws wide.

  She instinctively stepped backward.

  The men laughed.

  “They’re pretty aggressive, yeah, and they might attack people.” Ezz held her by the arm for a moment, as if to lend his words more emphasis.

  “But you’re not going to kill it.”

  “No, that’s illegal. But we’ve got to calm it down, or we’ll never get the ropes free.”

  Lori had no time to think about what that might entail. She snapped away as Ezz and Bill drove hooks on wooden poles into the shark’s rough skin; it put up a fight, but to no avail. They pulled the shark up the side of the boat, and Archie grabbed its tail. Coburn sawed through the nylon cords with a sharp knife, one at a time. With two hooks in its body, the shark was at the mercy of the men. The instant Coburn cut the final cord, the fishermen yanked their hooks out of the shark’s blood-covered body. It bolted and disappeared in the ocean.

  Lori lowered her camera; only now did she process what she’d just observed.

  Archie read the shock on her face.

  “It’ll survive,” he said. “He was lucky.”

  Lori looked intently over the water as if she might still spot the shark out there. He was lucky.

  Maybe that’s what life ultimately boils down to, she thought. Some people are lucky, and a whole lot aren’t.

  Maybe she was like that shark and had got entangled and been wounded—and now she was free. But Jacinta didn’t make it. And maybe Una didn’t either.

  Toward two o’clock, their boat neared an island where she spotted hollows and niches and fissures in the cliffs. Though none of the men identified it, Lori recognized the silhouette. The Isle of Demons. The engine cut out.

  Archie joined her.

  “We usually don’t break for lunch, but with a lady on board, we’ll make an exception.”

  He smiled when he saw how delighted she was. Lori was so hungry she could have snacked on one of the cod.

  She sat down on an overturned bucket, like the fishermen, and shared the ample provisions in her backpack. The men were happy to accept and covered up their surprise with jokes.

  “We’ll take a woman out anytime if she’ll run a restaurant on the boat.”

  “Then you’d have to tip, mister.”

  “For the meal or her pretty smile?”

  “Take care she doesn’t feed you to the sharks!”

  “Who’s afraid of sharks? It’s women you’ve got to be afraid of, man!”

  “Sharks only eat mainlanders, not Newfies. Newfies are too tough, eh?”

  “Where did you get that from, boy, that’s—”

  “Quiet! You guys hear that?”

  They sat motionless, listening. They didn’t have to wait long. An extraordinary sound arose, soft at first, then more and more penetrating. The scream hit them like a thunderbolt. A mournful, ear-piercing howl and whine. Like a terrified animal that can only emit distorted sounds. The wailing receded, then blared like a siren until it became unbearable.

  Nobody on the boat said a word. No funny remarks broke the spell the unearthly whining cast. Now it sounded like a begging, heartrending moan that crescendoed into an alarming howl.

  Then a sudden quiet.

  There they sat, glued to their buckets. Lori was aghast as she looked into the men’s now haggard faces. Before she could open her mouth, Archie stood up.

  “That’s enough. We’ve still got nets to pull in.”

  He went to the wheelhouse and started up the engine.

  Ezz, who was staring at the island in a trance, said to Lori, “He wants to move on because he thinks this will bring us bad luck.”

  “What will?” she gasped. “What was that?”

  “The demons,” Coburn told her.

  “What demons?”

  “Who knows?”

  Now they all talked loudly and all at once.

  “It’s the dead baby of that French princess they marooned out here.”

  “The island’s bewitched.”

  “They say she had a baby, and it died, and its ghost haunts the island.”

  “And her lover’s ghost, and her maid’s.”

  Lori’s hands trembled. She was choked with fear.

  “Has anybody seen a ghost out there? Has anybody ever looked? Maybe it’s a wounded animal.”

  Ezz’s laugh sounded forced.

  “You can try. Maybe you’ll find something. But nobody’s going to go with you, eh, Cob?”

  Coburn shook his head.

  “Folks have been hearing that howl for a good long time. Father heard it a lot and Grandfather, too.”

  “Practically every fisherman has. I heard it once a few years ago at night, when it’s even creepier. We couldn’t sleep, remember, Bill?”

  “Mmm. Wouldn’t have thought I’d ever hear it again. And in the middle of the day too. Wouldn’t be surprised if . . .”

  Bill didn’t finish his sentence because Archie returned, glowering. She very much wanted to ask Bill what he wouldn’t have been surprised by, but her instincts told her he wouldn’t give her an answer as long as Archie was around.

  After that, the taciturn men pulled in net after net, but didn’t bring up the subject again, making it all the more sinister.

  When the familiar houses of Stormy Cove appeared, Lori’s stomach was still tense. She saw the Mighty Breeze some distance away, bobbing up and down. But she was still under the spell of the howling demons, the blood-curdling wailing and howls ringing in her ears. Even when she spied Reanna strolling around the wharf, she hardly felt a twinge. She couldn’t see Noah anywhere; maybe he was busy with his boat.

  Coburn helped her off the boat, and she took pictures of Archie and his crew unloading the fish. But it didn’t take long for Reanna to find her target. Lori first tried looking away and ignoring her. But that blond shock of hair was ever present no matter where she pointed her camera.

  Don’t get worked up. Summer’s just beginning. She’d have lots of opportunities later to get shots of fishermen unloading their boats.

  Suddenly Noah appeared, walking heavily in his rubber clothing and boots on his way to Archie’s boat, where Bill was piling up crates.

  “Well, how was it?” Lori asked him. “Big catch?”

  “Not bad,” Noah answered. “Two thousand pounds. But the engine gave us problems at first. We had to come back and fix it.”

  He gave Lori a searching look, his baseball cap shading his eyes.

  “How’d it go with Archie?”

  “Amazing, actually,” she replied. “W
e saw humpbacks that jumped really high. And a shark in the net. A mackerel shark. We cut him free and he swam away.”

  She refrained from mentioning the Isle of Demons because Archie joined them, satisfaction written all over his face.

  “We’ll take her out again. She brought us luck.”

  Not a word about the ghosts.

  She gave him a slight, joshing shove.

  “Other people want me to bring them luck, too.”

  “You owe me a case of beer,” Noah said, “because I gave her to you.”

  “The shark didn’t eat her,” Bill joked. “She must be a Newfie.”

  Without any warning, Reanna was at her side. Her nasal voice interrupted them.

  “Actually, Lori is half foreigner, right, Lori?”

  Before Lori could compose herself, Bill said, “Well, everything’s foreign for people like us—Ottawa, Halifax, Calgary, Vancouver . . .”

  “For sure Quebec,” Noah chimed in.

  The men laughed.

  But Reanna didn’t leave it alone.

  “I’ve heard your mom’s German. Do you go to Germany very often?”

  Lori felt her anger mounting, but she controlled herself.

  “My mother’s Canadian, Reanna, but she has relatives in Germany,” she replied as calmly as possible, given the situation.

  “Is it true she’s a defense lawyer? Who has she defended?”

  Lori counterattacked.

  “What about you, are you from Ottawa? Or Trifton? Or Timmins? Or neither? We’ve heard all sorts of different things.”

  Reanna merely shrugged and trained her lens on Bill and Archie. Noah was watching her intently, as Lori noticed out of the corner of her eye. Reanna prattled on without paying any attention to him.