by Paul Watkins
The morning of my first day on the Grey Ghost, Kelley persuaded Marco to buy insurance from the man. Marco rushed straight to the bank and took out some money, but it seemed like the man hobbled away every time Marco went looking for him.
Kelley said he was bad luck, said he was the Grim Reaper, who’d come into the world with clothes bought at the Salvation Army.
As we left port, less than a day after a mechanic from Fall River had repaired our engines, the insurance man stood on Sabatini’s dock and waved to us.
‘I don’t like that one damn bit.’ Kelley leaned against the stern. Wind twisted his hair back and forth across his skull.
I’d been on land so short a time that the motion of the waves never stopped in my head. I was glad to be back in the rhythm of the boat, where I had a place and where I belonged.
A storm piled up on the horizon.
Gil put music on the loudspeakers and we danced to it with short, hobbling steps, made clumsy by the pitching of the boat. We were far away from land, hedged in by a grey wave of thunder that stretched miles into the sky.
The sea changed colour. With the bad wind coming, it took on a sheen like tin, heaving up through the scuppers and across our deck.
I saw the path of the storm, churning water as it approached. I felt the first warning dapples of rain.
Clouds with a strange brassy light in them crowded down to the water. They pushed forward a hedge of mist and clogged air, which sifted past us and blew high-pitched squeals through the rigging.
We dressed in our rain gear and lived in the rubbery clothes. The huge hood of my jacket blocked my view like blinkers on a horse.
Lightning flashed in the bellies of the clouds. Thunder reached my ears as if from under water.
I tasted salt from waves that broke in spray against the bow. When they struck, I staggered a few paces out of my way and then continued working.
As the dredges came over the side, they swung across our deck and smashed into each other like huge, ragged cymbals.
I crouched behind the lazarette until both dredges lay flat on the metal plates, then attached the pelican clips and waited for Gil’s order to hammer out the pins.
Far down in the trough of a wave, I heard Gil yell over the loudspeakers to send the dredges down. I swung the hammer. By the time I had my balance back, the dredges were gone and the clips lay like dead snakes on the deck.
Now and then, while Kelley and I cut out the scallops, strips of foam blasted under the canopy and left us soaked.
From where I stood leaning over the scallop pen, I could see nothing of the deck except ladders of water pouring down from the bridge and a greyness of rain along the stern.
During a pause in the work, when we sat on our whalebone seats, legs braced to take the shock of waves, I asked Howard if he didn’t ever worry about losing his wife to another man when he was out to sea.
I had been thinking of Gil and the faith he had to have in his wife, or whether he loved her at all. And I thought of my parents, wondering how it was that they had learned to trust in the time spent away from each other, without jealousy forcing things apart.
‘Well, I know you’re asking me a serious question,’ Howard sat with his hands on his knees, hidden in his storm gear so that the only parts of him I could see were the tips of his fingers and the tip of his nose. ‘But you’d laugh if I told you the truth. I don’t think anybody else would have her.’
I didn’t laugh. I saw Howard’s fingers tighten against the knobby cups of his kneecaps, waiting for one of us to make fun of him.
Kelley giggled, then snorted and shook all over.
Howard turned to us and I saw his face now, wet strands of hair in trails down his face. ‘I mean, she has such habits. I remember when she was pregnant, she used to drive round and round in circles past the McDonald’s drive-through, ordering cheeseburgers.’ He looked at us as if that one habit would explain all the others she might have. ‘I been with her a long time. Unless I don’t know her like I think I do, I could tell if she was seeing another man. I just could.’
‘So what was it like before you were married?’ I raised my voice over the splatter of rain.
‘What’s the matter? Are you getting married?’
‘No. I couldn’t help but think about it is all. My father is a fisherman and he isn’t home much. I’ve only just now started wondering how he and my mother work things out.’
‘You should ask them.’
‘It’s easier for me to ask you.’
‘Well, I met my wife before I started fishing. I was running a bar down in Roanoke. Then somebody started breaking into the place two or three times a week. I had an alarm system installed but they got around it somehow. I asked the police for protection and they hung around for a few nights but nothing happened. So they went away and that same night somebody broke in. I couldn’t stay in business. When it got to the point that I would either have to shut down or move someplace else, I bought a shotgun and hid behind the bar after closing time.’
Kelley leaned closer to listen, the yellow of his rain gear smeared with oil and monk blood. His hands were knotted together in a big fist.
Howard spoke louder so we could hear. ‘The second night of waiting, around two in the morning, the light on my alarm system suddenly goes out. Then I hear a noise in the bathroom, and a minute later there’s someone standing in the middle of the barroom. I stand up and point the shotgun at him –’ Howard crooked his hands as if he were holding the gun again – ‘and I tell him to put his hands up. For a second he just stands there. Then he reaches into his jacket. So I kill him.’
Waves broke in regular jolts against the bow. The deck seemed to melt with the force of rain coming down. ‘I didn’t know you killed anybody.’ Kelley’s hands stayed knotted together.
‘He didn’t die right away. But he died. He had a gun in his jacket, so when the police came I pleaded self-defence and got away with it. But by the end of my trial I was poor. I was dirt poor and wouldn’t have opened the bar again anyway. The trial went on for weeks. It was the most expensive thing I ever lived through.’
‘You’d think it would be more clear cut.’ Kelley touched the toes of his boots together. ‘A man breaks into your house or your business. He’s trying to rob you. He has a gun. You kill him. He obviously expected to kill anybody who got in his way or he wouldn’t be carrying a weapon. You’d think it would be more clear cut.’
‘After the trial it was clear cut. After I was poor. Gil was a customer in the bar. He offered me a job and I took it. That was maybe eight years ago. It was the best thing that ever happened to me and my wife. If we had to be together all the time, we wouldn’t stay married. One time, just after Gil made me the offer and I was still looking for other jobs, she and I had a fight, and do you know what she did? When I left for a job interview, both of us yelling and screaming at each other, she went out and rented a wood chipper. You know, one of those machines you can feed a log to and it busts the log into little bits of sawdust. She took every piece of furniture in the house and fed it to the chipper. Even my record player. I got home and she was sitting on the front steps crying. ‘Howard, I wish I hadn’t done it! I didn’t mean to do it, Howard!’ The front lawn was covered with sawdust and shreds of plastic. The neighbours were all lined up on the street corner, pointing and whispering. I knew right then that if I didn’t take Gil’s offer, our marriage wouldn’t last a week.’
The storm hadn’t quit by dinner time.
Sitting at the galley table, we had to keep our cups stuck between our legs so they wouldn’t fall over.
The ketchup and Tabasco sauce swung in their wooden rack along with the pepper and salt. Back and forth, swaying like people at a football game.
Franklin arranged a plastic mat on the table to stop our plates from sliding. He showed us scars on his hands from times before when he’d been cooking in storms and the rocking of the boat threw grease out of frying pans onto his skin.
&nbs
p; Kelley came in late and sat down, dripping at his place. His hair hung in dreadlocks over his eyes. He swept it back, and in that movement he was himself again.
He reached over, took my hand and spat something into it.
A pearl.
‘Give it to your girl.’ He sat back smiling.
It was a little, little pearl and not even round but still a pearl.
‘It’s a scallop pearl. I found it about halfway through the last watch and had it in my mouth all this time.’ He was very pleased with himself.
‘So Pfeif has a girl?’ Gil set down his knife and fork, which immediately tipped off the plate and on to his lap.
‘Sure enough.’ Kelley nodded and ate a mouthful of potato, filling his cheeks to bursting point.
‘How do you know if I have a girl?’ I squinted at Kelley.
He swallowed. ‘I saw you walking down Severn Street with a girl the last time we were in port. Well, the time before that. She was pretty.’ He turned to the others. ‘She had on jeans and a white shirt. She was pretty, all right.’
‘That was Emily.’ My cheeks felt hot.
‘She’s still a girl.’
I was made to describe her and rate her and tell if I loved her.
Then Gil sighed and shook his head, said he’d never known a fisherman and a woman to stay together forever.
‘Well, what about me?’ Howard craned his neck up.
‘You haven’t been with her that long. You two keep breaking up and getting back together. You know what I’m talking about. You tell me honestly if I’m wrong.’
Kelley said it was right, sure enough. You couldn’t blame a woman for taking off when her husband hardly ever came home, and stayed mostly drunk when he did. ‘At the same time, you can’t blame a fisherman for drinking himself into an idiot after two weeks of cutting up the monk and getting so he thinks the scallops are talking to him.’
Howard looked around the table. ‘That happens to you too? Sometimes I could swear those scallops are whispering to each other.’
‘I know what I say is true. I’ve seen it all from up there’ – Gil jerked his thumb at the wheelhouse – ‘and I know what I’m talking about.’
At the end of our next watch, I sat in the ice room with Kelley and drank a beer that he had stashed there while we were still in port.
Gil had said he’d fine anyone he caught drinking alcohol on the boat four hundred dollars, so we stayed down with the monk and scallops in the musty air.
The storm still shrieked through the outriggers. Warm seawater splashed down through the ice hatch.
We stayed down a while longer in the hold, drinking the beer slowly because it was so cold it hurt our throats. When we decided to go up and have some food, the next watch was already bringing in the dredges from their first tow.
I climbed the ladder ahead of Kelley. As I came to the top, I looked up to see the sky and it was not there.
On my hands and knees.
Pain.
Grey. White. Brown.
Pain.
I spat crumbs from my mouth.
Focus. Grey. Focus, you fucker.
Why can’t I see?
Pain. Tight-veined, shuddering pain.
My body thundered. I was deaf from it. Clattering and thundering.
I saw the floor in front of me. I saw it and it popped back out of focus.
I spat out more crumbs, closed my mouth to spit and pain like a spike rammed up through my jaw into my brain. I bowed my head down and screamed.
Eyes open now. Speckles of blood on the floor. The ice room floor. Back in the ice room. What am I doing in the ice room?
I touched my tongue around my mouth. My gums felt as if they were lined with broken glass. The crumbs I had been spitting out were my teeth.
I bit down again and the spike crushed up through my flesh and bone into the miserable softness of my brain.
Trying to sit up, I fell over and banged the back of my head.
Kelley stood over me. He spoke, but with the thunder going on inside me, I couldn’t hear. He bent down and touched my shoulder. Cold water running across the floor splashed against my head and ran down my back.
Out of focus. Kelley’s face blurred and far away. Very far away.
I was sitting at the back of the ice room.
Franklin dabbed a cloth against my face.
Gil stood behind Franklin, hands on hips.
Pittsley looked down from the ice hatch.
The cloth Franklin used was dirtied red.
Everything stayed in focus now. The thunder in my head continued.
I touched my face and touched it again. There was a hole in my jaw. Tatters of skin, warm and soft and bloody against my fingers. I pressed the hole and felt the bone of my chin through the wound.
Then I tried to stand, but Franklin pressed me down and said something that reached me only as a snuffling sound.
‘I want to see.’ I bit down as I spoke and screamed in Franklin’s face with the pain. Everyone jumped. I bled quietly onto the chest of my oiler coat until they came back.
Franklin squinted at the wound, trying to measure the damage. ‘The dredge swung over the ice hatch and nailed your head as you were climbing out. How do you feel? Can you understand me?’ Franklin’s voice was out of sync with his lips, like a badly dubbed movie. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ He held up his hand.
‘What’s the damage? What am I going to do? Can you fix me up again?’ The shock of being hit forced a pressure on my chest, making it hard to breathe.
I tried to stand again, then remembered the bits of teeth and went down on my knees to look for them. ‘Help me find my teeth.’ I tried not to sound panicked as I crawled on the floor around their feet. I pawed through the melt-water washing back and forth across the ice room.
‘It’s no use, Pfeif.’ Franklin set his hand on my shoulder.
‘Well, if you won’t help me, I’ll just have to do it myself.’ I couldn’t see any teeth. I could hardly see the floor. Then I sat back on my haunches. ‘All right.’ I spoke carefully so as not to bring back the pain. ‘All right, I can’t do it by myself. Please help me.’ I tried to focus on the concrete, still bleeding from the wound on my chin.
Gil hooked his hands under my armpits and lifted me up. ‘It’s no good crawling on the floor.’
I blinked at him. ‘Why won’t you help me? It won’t take long to find them if we all pitch in.’ My eyes blurred and my lips pressed tight together.
Then Gil and Pittsley helped me up the ladder into the galley.
*
Franklin walked me to the bathroom so I could see the damage for myself.
In the polished steel mirror, I looked at the gash on my chin. The wound was swollen and puckered. I touched carefully along the length of my jaw, waiting to feel the raggedness of broken bone but there was none.
Some of my back teeth had been cracked from top to bottom. One had split in half and the piece was missing. My front teeth didn’t even look chipped. I couldn’t understand how it happened this way.
Franklin sat me down on the toilet seat and dabbed yellow-brown iodine on the gash. I yelled in his face again as the liquid pinched my nerves.
It was hot in the cramped space of the bathroom. I took the hand towel and pressed it to my face, the thunder now only a mutter far away inside my skull.
‘I’ll take good care of you.’ Franklin pushed sweat from my eyebrows with his thumb. ‘There’s something you have to understand.’
‘What?’ I let the word slip carefully from my mouth, afraid of the pain if my teeth touched together.
‘You have to understand that Gil isn’t going back to port just because you broke a few teeth. It wouldn’t be fair to the crew and it would lose us a lot of money. The only time he’ll even think about going in is if we’re running out of fuel, or we have a full load of scallops, or if someone’s dying. You understand me, or are your bells still ringing?’
‘I understand.’ I hadn
’t thought about going in. In time it would have occurred to me. The only thing on my mind for now was how I would be able to eat.
‘There’s something else you have to understand, which is that you aren’t officially registered as a member of the crew. That’s why Gil’s paying you cash. This means you’re going to have to pay for the damage yourself.’
‘How much is it going to cost?’ I lisped at him, only now feeling my hip and back hurt where I struck the concrete floor.
‘Not much, I guess. They just fix your teeth and off you go again.’
‘Fifty dollars, maybe?’
‘About that, I suppose.’
I opened a drawer under the sink and fetched out a needle and thread. I held them out to Franklin, needle in one hand and thread in the other. ‘Stitch me up.’
‘I can’t do that. Besides, it’s not a big hole. Just keep it clean and it will close up fine.’
I stood up, stooped in the tiny room. ‘I’ll get Kelley to do it.’
Franklin pushed me back down on the toilet seat. ‘Now don’t be asking Kelley to do anything like that. He’ll sew your face into a quilt. You just sit there and rest a bit. Kelley and Howard will take care of the work.’
When he was gone, I cried, dabbing at the wound and watching my fingers come away red.
Then I felt suddenly tired, knowing I would have to work again in a couple of hours or risk losing my pay. I rested my head back against the wood-panelled wall and fell asleep.
Franklin fixed me porridge for every meal, making it sweet with brown sugar and cream.
I couldn’t chew except with my front teeth, like a rabbit, and could drink liquids only at room temperature, since anything too hot or too cold rammed the hurt into my head again.
The boat carried no medical supplies. Nelson gave me a Band-Aid but it wouldn’t stick to my chin because of the sweat. I washed the gash before and after every watch. The wound turned purple and began to fill in.
