by Philip Roy
I took the paper, looked at the address again, then stared at the address on the door. It was the right address. We stood and stared at each other for a minute. I had the feeling that maybe he was waiting for me to say something to prove myself. I took a shot at it.
“Your grinder needs oil.”
“What?”
He sounded insulted.
“Your grinder. It needs oil. Sounds like somebody’s killing a baby.”
He grinned. “Does it now? And how the heck would you know it’s the grinder?”
“Cause it’s sitting beside the lathe and it can’t be the lathe.”
“Is that right? And why can’t it be the lathe?”
“Cause nobody would forget to oil the lathe. And if it were the lathe, it would sound like a hundred babies were being killed.”
His grin opened up into a laugh and I saw a row of yellow teeth. He grabbed the paper out of my hand and read it again. “Can you really sharpen tools?”
“Yup.”
He looked up at me again. It wasn’t a look of respect, but he didn’t roll his eyes either. “Follow me.”
I followed him through the noisy workshop, down a hallway to a door on one side. It was just a large closet. He swung the door open, clicked on the light and stepped inside. There was dust everywhere. There were tool cabinets, benches with vice grips, and, on one wall, about two dozen saws hanging. There were cross-cutters and rip-saws, short and long-toothed, coarse and fine, long and short. At a glance they all had one thing in common: they were dull. As we stood and stared at the saws, an old man in janitor overalls passed by the door.
“Hey! Jacob!”
The old man stopped and entered the room. He had white hair and a sparkle in his eyes. He looked friendly.
“Yah, boss?”
“When’s the last time these saws were sharpened?”
It sounded like an accusation more than a question.
“Hmmm. How long have I been working here?”
Jacob looked at me and winked.
“Seventeen years,” said the boss.
“Oh. Ummm … seventeen years ago.”
The boss turned to me. “Sharpen them.”
“All of them?”
“All of them!”
He went out the door. I wanted to ask where the files were. Jacob read my mind. “You’ll find the files in the drawer.” And then he said something that showed he was paying a lot more attention than you’d think. “Sweet dog. Keep him quiet.”
I put Hollie down where he could see me. Then I climbed up on the bench, reached up and forced open a small dirty window to let in some fresh air. It had probably never been opened before. I pulled the first saw down from the wall, searched the drawers for the files, then settled comfortably on the chair and started to work. Through the mesh I saw Hollie watch me curiously, sigh, roll around a few times, plop down and go to sleep.
A few hours later I had three saws sharpened. The boss stepped into the doorway and watched me file. He was holding a four-by-six block of wood in one hand.
“How many’d you do?”
“Three.”
“Lemme see.”
He came in, picked up a long cross-cut saw, fastened the block of wood in a vice, dropped the saw onto it, took a breath and began to cut the wood. The saw fell through the wood like butter. The boss smiled, but not at me. He put the saw down and went out the door without a word. I took a sandwich out of my jacket pocket, took a bite and gave Hollie a bite. This was my first paying job. Cool.
In the afternoon, when everyone was leaving the shop, everyone except Jacob, who looked like he lived there, I went to him and asked him if he had ever heard of a man called Russell Pynsent.
“I don’t remember so. Does he come from Newfoundland too?”
“How did you know I was from Newfoundland?”
His eyes sparkled a little like Sheba’s. “Oh, you can just tell. Now, if you were from New Orleans, or Boston, I’d be able to tell that too. It’s the way you speak.”
“Oh.”
“Pynsent, you say? So … you must be a Pynsent too, I gather.”
“Ummm … no. Peddle.”
“Oh. And why would you be looking for this Russell Pynsent fella?”
“No reason.”
“Mmmhmm.”
Jacob made a serious face and looked as if he understood perfectly. I was pretty sure he could read my mind.
“Got a place to stay, have you?”
“Yup.”
“And I figure he travels with you?”
He nodded towards Hollie, who was awake and standing in the tool bag on my back.
“Yup.”
Jacob scratched his head with one hand. The other hand was wrapped around the handle of a wide-bottomed broom. “I live here. Got a room in the back. Fridge and TV too. There’s always room on the floor if a young fella is stuck for a place to stay. I’ve seen worse places.”
“I’m great. Thanks.”
I wasn’t about to tell him I lived in a submarine.
“Sure enough. There’s quite a few machine shops on the dockyards. Ask around.”
“Thank you. I will.”
Hollie was happy to get out again, even on concrete. We walked back to the employment office, which took about an hour. Hollie was ready for the bag by then. I entered the room again, not knowing what to expect. Would they have discovered that my information was all made up and tell me to get lost? Would they have called the police? Probably not. I went up to the counter and waited.
“Peddle?”
“Yes.”
“Here. Be there tomorrow at ten sharp. Don’t be late.”
He handed me an envelope.
“Thanks.”
He never answered. I went to the door and opened the envelope. There was money inside. Fifty-five dollars and one quarter. They had kept some money for unemployment insurance and other fees.
“Peddle!” yelled the man at the counter. Rats! Now they’ve figured out I am an imposter. I turned.
“Yes?”
“What size are your feet?”
“What? Oh. Ten.”
He reached behind him, lifted up a pair of old steel-toed work-boots and dropped them onto the counter with a loud thud. “Wear these on the job. It’s the law.”
I went back and picked them up. “Got it.”
I didn’t say thank you this time. I caught his eye for a second and thought he almost smiled. And I went out.
Outside, the street was filled with the noise of the city. Cars, busses and people rushed by. I felt strangely happy. There was something magical about receiving money for a day’s work. I couldn’t quite get my head around it. I enjoyed sharpening tools. It was something Ziegfried had taught me and he was a good teacher. It seemed strange that someone would pay me money to do it. Tomorrow I would make even more money. Cool.
Chapter 21
HOLLIE AND I WERE starving. So, we went into a small, quiet restaurant, not fancy. I put him down on the seat beside me and dropped the work boots beside him. The waitress came over, saw him through the mesh, but didn’t seem to mind. I think she liked us.
“First day on the job?”
“Yah. How did you know?”
“The boots. Tomorrow you’ll be wearing them.”
“Oh. Yah, you’re right. Do you have any spaghetti?”
“All kinds. And the mutt?”
“He likes spaghetti too.”
She laughed. “I don’t know if it’s good for dogs to eat people food.”
“It’s a special occasion.”
Hollie loved spaghetti.
“Well, in that case. And to drink?”
“Milk.”
“And the special occasion mutt?”
“Water.”
“Okee-dokee.”
While we waited for our spaghetti to come, I watched a man enter the restaurant, take off his baseball cap, lift a newspaper from the counter and take a seat. The waitress came over and poured him a cup of coffee without say
ing a word. He was a regular. As I stared at him I felt strange inside. Was he my father? He could have been. He looked a bit like me, only older. What would Ziegfried say? The odds of meeting my father by accident were too low to even consider. And Sheba? There are no accidents; trust your feelings.
The waitress returned to the man. “Ça va, Pierre?”
“Bien.”
It wasn’t my father. Ziegfried would have won that round.
With bellies full of spaghetti we hit the pavement once more. Now I was tired. It had been a lot of walking, a lot of sharpening and a lot of excitement for one day. A full belly always made me feel sleepy. Hollie was already asleep. But I couldn’t return to the sub yet. I had to wait until dark and sneak across the empty pier.
When darkness came I was lying behind some bushes next to the train tracks in front of the pier. I had already fallen asleep. Hollie was out of the bag and sleeping with his head on my lap. I put him back in the bag, crossed the tracks and went quietly across the open lot. Halfway across, I saw the lights of a truck.
“Shoot!”
I bent down slowly and froze, kneeling close to the ground, making myself as small as possible. It was a dark night; maybe the truck wouldn’t see us.
They didn’t. They drove around the circumference of the area and headed back. A routine check. I needed to find a better place to hide the sub. Not tonight though. I was too tired tonight.
Seaweed was on the hatch. He was glad to see us. I didn’t know what the food was like for him in Montreal, but he sure was happy to have dog biscuits. He followed us inside.
“Hi, Seaweed. You can hang out with Hollie; I’m going to sleep.”
I shut the hatch, went down ten feet, dimmed the lights, climbed onto my cot and fell asleep. The last thing I heard was Seaweed tapping his beak on the rim of the observation window, which was his way of telling Hollie to pass the ball. Like that was going to happen.
Second day on the job was fun. Jacob turned out to be a really nice old man. He had a deep love of animals too, and that put him in good stead with Hollie, who also liked that the old man could pull nibbles of food from his pocket every time he came over to visit, which was often.
I was halfway through the saws when the boss came in the room with a wooden box of chisels and dropped it on the floor with a bang. “When you finish the saws!”
He spoke really loudly. That’s what happens when you work in a noisy shop all day. Then he went out. Jacob came in next. He bent down, picked up a chisel and ran his thumb along its edge. “There’s a couple days’ work here.”
“I like sharpening.”
“You’re good at it too. Where’d you learn to sharpen like that?”
“In Newfoundland.”
“Uh huh? Somebody was a good teacher.”
“Yup.”
I never told anyone about Ziegfried or Sheba.
“Any luck finding that Pynsent fella yet?”
“Not yet.”
Jacob reached down and fed Hollie a piece of cookie through the open top of the tool bag. Hollie licked his fingers to say thank you.
“I guess you’ve travelled a long way to look for this fella.”
“I suppose.”
Jacob could read my mind. I could just tell.
“Hmmm. I did that once. The very same thing, I think.”
“Really?”
“Yup. A long time ago. I suppose I was about your age.”
“Was it worth it?”
He reached in and patted Hollie’s head affectionately. “No. Not really. How long has this fella been working on the dockyards?”
“Sixteen years.”
“You could check out the machine shops by the Aeolus.”
“What’s that?”
“A ship. She’s being refitted. If he’s been working here that long, there’s a good chance you’ll find him over there.”
Aeolus. Cool name for an ocean freighter. Aeolus was the Greek god of the wind. Sheba talked about Greek gods and goddesses as if they really existed, but surely she didn’t believe that? You can’t believe in everything. That doesn’t make sense. Imagine a world where gods, goddesses, ghosts, mermaids, angels and sea monsters were all real. You might as well add fairies, trolls and witches too. What about dragons? Marie believed in the Loch Ness monster. I guess she now believes in the curse of the mummy too. Oh boy!
Chapter 22
AFTER WORK I WALKED up to get paid, bought a sandwich and ate it on the way to search for the Aeolus. This time we caught a bus for part of the way back to the dockyards. It was late evening when we found the yard where the Aeolus was lying. I was wearing my own pass now that said that I worked at the dockyards, and so I was allowed through the gate. How strange to enter that way instead of sneaking in through the shadows. It was funny how one piece of paper could make so much difference.
The Aeolus lay in dry dock like a tired warrior. I didn’t like seeing ships out of water. There was something sad about it. Freighters like her sailed all over the world, even up rivers, in all weather. They braved the fiercest storms and kept going even when their decks were caked with ice. They became floating islands for flocks of migrating sea-birds that flew thousands of miles every year. Nobody will ever know how many seabirds die every year because they get caught in storms or fall out of the sky from exhaustion. From the air, those birds can spot a freighter for about a thirty mile radius. Finding one must sometimes make the difference between life and death. For me, the freighters, like the seabirds, were noble creatures. I always found it sad to see one pulled out of the water like a dead whale, its rust and barnacles exposed for everyone to see.
But refitting was necessary. There certainly was no shame in tuning up an engine. Ziegfried taught me the importance of that. Why should it be sad to tune up a ship? It was the same thing, and yet it bothered me to see her hauled out of the river.
There was no one around except a few security guards. The machine shop closest to the ship was closed. At least I knew where these shops were now, another place where my father might be working. I quickly scanned the waterfront for places to hide the sub, but didn’t see any obvious ones. I would come back on Saturday, when I was off work, and look more closely. And I would come in the sub.
Once I knew where my father worked, all I had to do was go there first thing in the morning, say hello, return to the sub, get back into the river and sail back to Sheba’s island. Then we could prepare for the Pacific. I wouldn’t have to return to the shop and sharpen any more tools. Nobody would even remember me after a day or so. Nobody even knew who I really was. And yet… that didn’t feel right. I thought about it all the way back to the sub.
I couldn’t figure it out. Why would it bother me to leave like that? Did I want to become a machinist, like my father? No way! Did I want to live in a little room in the back of an industrial shop, like Jacob did? No. Did I want to live in the city? Not a chance. Then why would I be so reluctant to leave, once I was able?
For the last part of the walk back, Seaweed joined us. He drifted down from the sky like a snowflake, landed beside us and did his little cakewalk of hopping, skipping and flying short spaces to keep up, a little like a vulture. He looked happy and free, so wonderfully free. That’s how I wanted to stay, happy and free. No, I didn’t belong in the city and I didn’t belong in a machine shop. So why would I find it difficult to leave? I told myself I would have the answer by the time I touched the metal of the hatch.
I did. It was my promise. Nothing more than that. By accepting the job I had agreed that I would finish sharpening all of the saws and all of the chisels and blades in the shop. I hadn’t promised anything more than that, but I had promised that. It would only take me a few more days. Maybe by Saturday. Then I could leave. That is, once I had found my father.
Seaweed came to work with us the next day. He must have had enough of the big city already and decided he didn’t belong there either. I could understand. I never thought that anyone would pay attention to
another seagull on the dockyards and so I never worried about us being spotted walking along together. But we were.
When we reached the shop, Seaweed flew up to the roof. Hollie and I went inside. As soon as we settled in the tool room and I picked up a chisel, Jacob came in. He was excited. His voice was in a whisper.
“Alfred! I saw you through my window.”
“Oh. Yah?”
“You were walking with a seagull!”
“I was?”
“Yes. You were. Alfred. I have something to show you. Come down to my room for a second.”
“Umm … okay, just for a second. I’m just getting started.”
“It will only take a second. I promise.”
I picked up the tool bag and followed Jacob down the hall. Hollie wouldn’t appreciate being left behind. Jacob’s room was just another large closet at the very end of the hallway, but it had a larger window, a fridge, hotplate, TV, sleeping cot and small bookshelf. It was kind of cozy. He pulled out a seat for me. I sat down with Hollie on my lap. Jacob reached for something under his bed. It was a scrap-book, big and fat and stuffed with newspaper clippings. He opened it delicately and turned its pages with care. I caught a glimpse of photos of ships and submarines, old ones and new ones. Why did he have pictures of submarines? What was this adding up to? He found the page he was looking for, stared at it closely for a minute and grinned.
“There! Hah!”
He turned the book around and brought it over and pointed to a newspaper clipping from the Montreal Gazette. It was a photo of me handing a family over to the coastguard. I had rescued them from their capsized sailboat in a storm. Seaweed was standing on the hatch behind me. The caption read: “Submarine Outlaw Assists Coastguard with Rescue.”
“That’s you!” said Jacob excitedly.
I looked him in the eye, took a breath, paused, then let it out. “Yah.”
“I knew it! You’re the Submarine Outlaw!”
“Could you please not tell anyone?”
He put his hand over his heart. “My word.”
I flipped through the pages of the scrapbook very carefully. It was filled with cut-outs from newspapers, some of them old and faded. There were pictures of ship launches, sinkings, wrecks and piracy. There were oil-spills, drilling rigs, explosions and accidents. I saw the Carolus, the Newfoundland ferry, and the U-boat that sank her. There were pictures of the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway. There was the Queen, President Nixon and Pierre Trudeau. I felt honoured to be in the same scrapbook.
