The Doryman

by Maura Hanrahan

  One day in early August, Richard was on the Marystown waterfront when Captain Paddy Walsh approached him. Captain Paddy was an old friend of Richard’s family, respected by everyone in Little Bay, and a skilled skipper. In turn, he had the highest regard for Richard’s talents at sea. Once or twice over the years, Richard had fished with him. The Captain again gave his sympathies for Jack’s death the year before. Like Richard, the unexpectedness of it had stayed with him.

  “Dick, I’ve been meaning to speak to you about something,” the Captain said after a minute of respectful silence had passed. “I need some help with something, something important, and you’re just the man I’d go to.”

  Richard nodded, growing slightly concerned.

  “It’s James, my oldest,” Captain Paddy continued. “It’s his first time out. He’ll be skippering the Mary Bernice.”

  Richard nodded. He knew the ship well. She was a western boat, weighing no more than thirty tons, a small schooner with only two dories. She had been built only a few years before. Richard thought she was solidly built, ready for any seas, not like the aging Ronald W that he’d sailed in for the last time.

  “She’s a good little ship,” Richard told the Captain. “He’ll do well in her.” He couldn’t fathom what was bothering Paddy.

  “He will, Dick, he will,” the Captain agreed. “But he’s young, only twenty-three. It’s his first time out. It’s August, and you know what that means.”

  He did. They all did. The memory of the 1927 gale was still raw in their minds and hearts.

  “His mother worries about him,” the Captain added.

  And she’s not alone in that, Richard thought.

  “I’d really like for you to go with him,” Captain Paddy finally said. “To act as his first mate, but to train him in, really.”

  Richard started to shake his head.

  “We ... she wouldn’t worry then, not with you there,” Paddy added.

  “Captain Paddy, I’ve got plans to stay ashore the rest of this summer,” Richard said. “I’ve been making fish, and I’ll be making more – ”

  “I know, Dick,” Paddy interrupted. “But it’s just one trip, his first, that’s all. It’s only a few weeks, less, I’d say.”

  Richard hesitated. He realized he’d get offers like this all the time and that he’d have to learn to stand firm.

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” he said finally. “But I got a customer now, and I’m bound to get more. I’ve got to stay here and mind my premises. I can’t help you.”

  Captain Paddy looked downcast, even hurt, and this was not lost on Richard, whose shoulders began to slump a little.

  “Would you even think about it?” the older man asked.

  “All right, I’ll think about it,” Richard replied. “But there’s more men around than me willing to go to the Banks. It’s one of them you should be talking to. Don’t let Mrs. Lillian get her heart set on it.”

  Captain Paddy tipped his hat at Richard and smiled as he walked away. Already his worries about his son’s first trip as skipper were easing. His wife Lillian would feel the same way.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The next morning, Richard was at his little premises before dawn. He looked around at the tables and knives and smelled the fish guts and blood and the oil that sat in the barrel. He watched the blackbacks dive at the water that pooled around the stouts holding up the flakes in the harbour. He looked down at the bottom of the bay, where the woods were green and thick, then to the little valley where he’d seen the fairies. He shivered at the fear-filled memory of it. He turned his back on it and peered into his fishing room piled high with salted fish, salt crumbs on the plank floor. A collector boat would be by sometime later that day. He wished he had more fish. But that was all he had. He knew Philly Walsh, in the employ of A.H. Murray, had a lot more. So did Paddy Hanrahan, a distant cousin, who was working for himself.

  He furrowed his brow. Everything was spotless here. There was nothing to do, and there was enough of Old Steve in him to hate enforced idleness. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten yet. He looked at the position of the sun and noted that it was after eight now. He started for the hill and some breakfast. If anyone had met him they would have seen a grim look in his eyes.

  When he was near the top, he saw his youngest son in his sister Rachel’s kitchen garden. He remembered Rachel’s harsh words from the summer before, when Patrick and young Jack had torn up her cabbage with their running around in there. Rachel was right. Those vegetables were food, food they depended on to survive. Why couldn’t those children learn?

  He hopped Rachel’s fence and rushed toward his son. Then he pulled the child up by his collar, taking him completely by surprise.

  “What the hell are you doing in this garden?” he yelled.

  Patrick was stunned into silence, his great green eyes staring up at Richard.

  “Answer me!” Richard shouted. Then he dropped the child to the ground and kicked his bony little hip. The boy curled himself into a ball and cried out. Then he began whimpering, afraid that more blows would come. But none did. When he realized he had nothing else to fear, he started to bawl.

  As Richard turned toward his own house, Rachel’s husband Jerry, home from fishing out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, burst out his door.

  “I saw what you did to that child,” he shouted angrily.

  Richard’s eyes narrowed. He said nothing.

  “If I ever catch you laying a hand on one of your youngsters again, or any other youngster for that matter, I’ll kill you, so help me God.” Jerry’s face was purple-red. He bent down and pulled young Patrick to his feet. Rachel stood in the doorway and stared hard at her brother. Richard’s eyes met hers. The air between them was thick with the ghost of their father. Richard looked back at Jerry, who held little Patrick’s hand.

  “So help me God, I’ll kill you, I mean it,” Jerry repeated.

  Richard spun on his heel and walked out of the garden, not looking back. He trudged up the hill alone, bent over as if he were carrying a cross.

  When he reached his own house, Angela greeted him at the door. She said, “Ah, there you are, Dick. Have some tea and bread. It’s right out of the oven. Lizzie helped me with it. She’s getting to be some baker, I tell you.”

  “Thanks,” her husband said sullenly, his voice low. He sat down abruptly and took a huge bite of the bread as soon as his wife handed it to him. He ate quickly, looking at the table.

  “Well, b’y, there’s nothing stopping you from eating when you’re hungry,” Angela said.

  Richard threw a look at her.

  His wife stood over him, smiling and wiping her hands on her apron. “I don’t mind you taking up space in my kitchen, as long as you move when the girls sweep the floor,” she said happily. She wasn’t going to let his gloom interfere with her bright summer’s day.

  She chatted with Bride and Lizzie as the three of them washed the breakfast dishes, beat the rugs, lugged buckets of water, and gathered the bedclothes to be laundered. As they went about their chores, they created the energy of a tornado. Is it like this every morning? Richard wondered. He noted their efficiency, that they did all these things without talking about them, and decided that, yes, it was.

  Richard sat at the long table, shifting only when Bride needed to sweep the floor beneath his feet. Then there was a lull in all the activity and the girls seemed to disappear briefly.

  “Angela,” he called out. “Angela!”

  “Yes?” she answered from the pantry out the back. Then her chestnut-brown head appeared around the corner. The twinkle in her eye coaxed a smile from him in spite of himself. He heard the sound of her laying a heavy container on a shelf, and then she joined him at the table. She took his hand and looked at him expectantly.

  After a minute he sp
oke. “I’m going on the Mary Bernice for Captain Paddy next week,” he said at last.

  “What are you doing that for?” she asked. “We can get by.”

  Richard shook his head. “It’s not just that ... I ...”

  “You just feel like you got to do it,” Angela said. Her words were more of a statement than a question.

  He nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Well, I suppose it’s only one trip,” she said, ever practical. “He’ll probably make you a good offer, Captain Paddy. Sweeten the pot a little.” She smiled.

  “Oh, he will,” Richard said. “He as much said so. He’s wanting me to do it as a favour.” Then he stopped. “And I suppose it would be only one trip. I suppose. My last, I hope.”

  “We could use the earnings,” Angela said brightly.

  They sat at the table, Richard’s sombreness refusing to lift.

  “Angela,” he said. “If anything ever happens to me, take the boys into St. John’s so they’ll get a good education.”

  Angela started at his words. Then she laid her hand on his arm, but he was still and she could not reach him. It was as if an impermeable curtain had descended between them.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  With young James Walsh skippering the Mary Bernice, Captain Paddy would be captaining the Annie Anita not too far away. He planned to take his two youngest boys, Jerome and Frankie, on the Annie Anita for the adventure. Unfortunately, one of them, Frankie, was prone to seasickness. Captain Paddy hoped the boy would grow out of it, for he wanted all his sons to follow him into the Banks fishery as captains someday.

  The Captain’s wife, Lillian, had been wistful, thinking of little Frankie go off to sea. This was an important time for her family. Things were changing so fast, with James becoming a captain himself now. That night when the Annie Anita was moored in Little Bay, Lillian asked James to fetch both of the little boys and bring them home to spend the night with her. They could join the schooner in the morning, she reasoned, and it’d be so nice to have them spend the last night before their trip at home. But when James peered into the Annie Anita’s forecastle to find them, his little brothers were sound asleep. He thought about his mother’s request, and then decided not to disturb them. He returned to his mother’s home alone. She was disappointed, but accepting. “That’s all you can do, son,” she told him. “At least they’re getting their sleep.”

  Lillian’s relatively serene mood changed the next morning after breakfast. The day dawned bright and still, a beautiful late summer morning. It was a fine day to set off for the fishing grounds, everyone in the community said. The harbour was full of activity as men readied themselves for a trip to the Banks, one of the last of the summer. Thoughts of August gales were far from their minds under the hot sun as the month drew to a peaceful close. They had to keep optimism at hand in the business they were in.

  But as Lillian sipped on her tea on the night of the twentieth with Captain Paddy, she heard an odd sound at her window, a small scattering noise on the pane of glass. There was no wind, none at all. The night was calm and clear. But, in spite of that, some sand and grass had flown up and hit the window. As an occurrence in nature, it was inexplicable. But the people of Placentia Bay knew the phenomenon as an omen. A bad omen. Lillian was suddenly filled with foreboding. She knew she was helpless to do anything about it. She stood at the window and looked at the ground, hoping against hope that she had imagined the sound, but she knew she had not. In the otherwise cloudless sky there was an inky black cloud, adding to Lillian’s sense of foreboding.

  She mentioned the omen to her husband, and he reassured her with a laugh that it was just a little whirlwind. Those things happened sometimes, he said. But she could not dismiss it so easily. Although Captain Paddy was ready to sail in the Annie Anita that night, Lillian asked him to wait. She feared something terrible was going to happen. He acquiesced. He didn’t want her fretting, and one night wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

  The next day she saw her husband and son off to their respective boats, giving them kisses and hugs as she walked them down the path that led from their house. After they left the house – James to walk to Marystown to meet his vessel – Lillian sat down, looked at her youngest, a child of four, playing with a spinning top on the kitchen floor, and started to worry.

  *

  On the morning of August 20, Richard picked up his canvas bag, which lay waiting for him in the doorway of his home. It contained his oilskins, freshly dipped for this trip, a sweater coat Angela had recently mended, and a few odds and ends that he’d need on his voyage to the fishing grounds. They’d likely be fishing off Cape St. Mary’s, Captain Paddy had told him, for the area was one of the Walshes’ favoured spots.

  On the top of the hill, Angela stood in a little meadow that fringed her kitchen garden. She watched Richard begin his journey to Marystown, where the Mary Bernice was moored and waiting for him. His canvas bag slung over his back, he walked slowly towards the harbour in his Kingfisher boots. He’s usually quicker on the feet than that, Angela thought of her husband, who was, after all, one of the best dancers in the bay. Then she recalled that he’d been dragging his feet altogether lately, maybe even since Jack died, but perhaps even more lately. She watched him pass Rachel’s house. This was her habit, to watch him almost until he disappeared from view, no matter how much work she had waiting for her back at the house. It was her way of passing on good luck to him, though she never told him that. She watched him although he never, ever looked back, not once in their nearly twenty years of marriage. He probably didn’t even know she watched him. She didn’t mind, though. Once he had a job of work on his mind, that was it. There was no room for anything else. He was like Old Steve that way. Now he was at the bottom of the hill. She took a few steps forward to keep him within her sight.

  Then the strangest thing happened. He stopped, turned around, and stood there looking up at her. He didn’t move; he was as still as a frightened deer. He was like that for a moment, his eyes on hers so far away. They stood that way, far apart, looking at each other. Then Richard turned back towards the harbour, where Rachel’s son Jim was waiting for him in a dory to row him to Mooring Cove.

  After she could see him no more, Angela stayed at the edge of her garden, focused on the spot where her husband had frozen, staring up at her. It was the strangest thing, she thought. Shivers went up and down her body, despite the late summer heat, and she felt the threat of a lump in her throat. But she didn’t want to dwell on it. There was no point thinking about oddities. She spun on her heel and marched towards her house. She had a mountain of laundry to tackle.

  From inside the house, her son Vince watched her. He did not tell his mother that he was thinking of something that had happened to him and his little brothers the previous fall. They had been in the bottom of Little Bay on their way back from Beau Bois when they saw their father in his leather boots, green wool jumper, and windbreaker. He stood at the edge of the woods in the middle of a path, quite still, not far from where some men were digging for clams. The boys rushed towards him but he disappeared. He had not been there at all, the clam-diggers told them. Sure enough, he was back in Little Bay. What the boys had seen was a token.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The Mary Bernice sailed for Cape St. Mary’s at midnight, as was the custom in the Banks fishery. Richard stood on her deck with young Captain James Walsh under the roar of her sails in the cool night air. As they moved out into Mortier Bay, passed the mouth of Little Bay, and finally reached Placentia Bay, the unceasing thunder of the sails rang through the night. Richard found some reassurance in the great claps and licks overhead. The Annie Anita was not far up ahead, and they easily caught up to her. Then the two vessels headed for the Cape.

  With dawn still a whisper, they anchored in a little cove north of the Cape and put their dories over the side. Then they jigged for
squid. They needed bait; the crew had run out on the last trip. Richard was in a dory with Billy Reid, his close friend from Little Bay. In a dory alongside him were the rest of the Mary Bernice’s crew, Dennis Long of Fox Cove, and Michael Farrell, another neighbour from Little Bay. Richard held a line in each hand, waiting somewhat impatiently for the tug that would signify a bite. On the end of each line were two hooks welded together back to back; the idea was that the shine would attract squid, though very often it hooked young cod, herring, or lance. No matter, though, they could use any of it for bait. Handlining was slow work that day, but they finally had sufficient bait to head back to their western boat.

  Richard began counting the hours until he could go home. He was starting to feel that he was too old for this, a thought that had never quite come to him before. He had dropped a block of ice on his hand the previous year’s fishing season and it ached now. He figured it was rheumatic and that handlining was probably not the best thing for it. Rachel had put a dozen poultices on it this many months, but it had never quite healed.

  On the Cape, the southeasterlies usually associated with late fall and early winter had already arrived this year. There was just no predicting the weather at this place, Richard reminded himself. It was probably sweltering on the Placentia Bay islands or on the Southern Avalon Peninsula that led to the Cape, but this place had its own mind. The autumnal winds brought the thick fog and damp drizzle for which the Cape was known.

  Richard knew there were many vessels around them, though the curtains of fog rendered them invisible half the time. Anything from dories to western boats to 200-ton schooners could be out there, and he cautioned Captain James to remember this. They still had no radios in the Banks fishery and could communicate with each other only through flags, lights, or by voice. Every few years, larger ships ran over dories or other small boats, and it was incumbent upon skippers to take every care to avoid it. Some did, but others did not.