Sylvanus Now (3 page)

“Sure, b’ye, all the same—big old clumsy schooners, sitting on the water for days sometimes, waiting for a gust of wind for her sails. We’ll be seeing the last of them soon enough, now we got diesel.”

“Still don’t see the difference in them.”

“Difference, jeezes, Syllie, schooners got sails, liners got diesel. How’s that for a difference? One sits on the water for days with dories doing her fishing for her, and the other nets straight from her decks; one salts, the other sells fresh fish straight to the plants; one got twelve men, the other got eight—”

“All right, all right,” interrupted Sylvanus loudly, “like I said, no difference in them. Bunch of men crowding the one deck, hawking and hollering for days on end.”

“Diesel, you young fool, diesel, I just said. She’ll be motoring home every evening, and full of fish to her gunnels with them nice big nets. Cripes, Father spawned you, all right—you hears nothing but what you wants to.” Manny stood before his younger brother, the baby down that had once softened his chin now coarsened into a thick, grizzled beard that opened onto the same heartening grin as when he used to toss Sylvanus aboard his boat as a youngster, wrapped in oilskins. “Come on,” he commanded, walloping his little brother’s arm with such a punch that it drew a look of pain, “before Jake drinks all the brew—and watch your mouth, the trawlers tore up our nets agin and he’s a bit spiteful.”

“A bit! Jeezes, he’s full of it.”

“Ye-es, floats off him like smoke when he moves,” said Manny, starting down the well-scuffed lane. “You coming?” he hollered, as Sylvanus lagged behind, not wanting company just now. “Cripes, why don’t you ask Am for a spot on his liner? You’re getting like Father, bandied at the knees from straddling a boat.”

Sylvanus grinned, giving his door one last jiggle, then trotted after his brother, skirting youngsters and hens squabbling about the door places.

“How’re ye all doing?” Manny hailed, rounding the corner of Jake’s house. Their eldest brother, along with their buddy Ambrose, was lifting a barrel that lay sideways atop two sawhorses that stood side by side inside the wide opening of a canvased wood-house. Sylvanus kicked a junk of wood upright and sat back on it, watching as Manny hurried forward, helping with the lifting. Built onto the side of the house as it was, the wood-house made a good break from the wind, and with the wide flap that had been ripped out for the opening, fastened overhead for a canopy, a good shelter from any weather being dumped from above. Despite there being no fire lit on this sunny afternoon, Sylvanus rested his elbows on his knees, leaning toward an old, overflowing ashpan that was sunk into the ground, serving as a firepit. The barrel in place, Manny and Ambrose seated themselves around the pit, exclaiming eagerly over the foam capping the mugs of brew Jake poured out of the barrel and passed around.

“By cripes, that’s one thing Father taught you, old cock,” said Manny, supping back the foam, “how to make a good brew. Here’s to your new boat, Am,” he toasted, raising his mug.

Jake reluctantly raised his, his mother’s grey eyes appearing more aged upon his sunken cheeks with their thorny sideburns. “Something else to rip up our nets,” he said, “everybody buying liners.”

Ambrose shook his head. “Liners won’t come that close to shore,” he said quietly. “Midshore is where we’ll be fishing—sixty miles out.”

“That’s right,” said Manny, “sixty miles offshore. Lots of room for us inshore fishermen with our trap nets and jiggers. Be all right now, if we could keep the trawlers a hundred miles offshore—or even the three bloody miles that the law says they ought to be out.”

“Three miles,” snorted Jake. “Some distance, that is, a bloody cannon shot—yeah, a cannon shot,” he repeated at the dubious look on Sylvanus’s face, “that’s how far offshore a cannon can shoot: three miles. And in Grandfather’s day, if either a foreign boat come closer than that, they told you to blast the bastards, no problem. Now they even got that took from us—blasting cannon balls up their arse. Don’t laugh, buddy,” he cautioned at a guffaw from Manny, “because that’s what the foreigners are doing, laughing. Our fishing laws are the same as was printed out in Peter’s day. By jeezes, shoot a moose—something we governs ourselves—and see what’ll it get you—life in the dungeons, that’s what.”

“Mind now, don’t get too worked up,” said Manny as splotches of red fired up on Jake’s long, bony cheeks. “Christ, b’ye, face like a broody hen. Here, pour me another one,” he ordered, dumping the dregs of his mug into the pit and tossing it to his brother.

“Another war, another war,” said Jake, his tone rising, “we needs another war and a couple dozen mines out there—that’d keep the bastards off our shelves, if we blows up a few—because I tell you, my son, they never had no problem with no nets when the wars were on and they were all kept ashore; they never had no problem then.”

“Ye-es, my son, just what we needs, another war,” said Manny with a wink at Sylvanus. “Go on, b’ye, make yourself a bib,” he taunted as Jake started to cut in, but belched instead, dribbling brew down his chin, “and get yourself a handkerchief, too, because you’ll soon be bawling if you keeps on talking about them trawlers. What do you say, Am—how many’s out there?”

“Five hundred,” said Ambrose without thought. “Fisheries fellow told me the other day.”

“Five hundred. Jeezes.”

Ambrose nodded.

“Heh, that made you sit up,” said Jake. “You won’t be taunting next week you wakes up and finds them moored off from your wharf, you won’t be taunting then.”

Sylvanus sat up, too. “Five hundred,” he said lowly. “Jeezes, that many?” He sat back, envisioning five hundred of the sixty-foot fishing vessels and their thousand-foot nets. He’d never seen their nets, but he could figure the damage even one could do—all thousand feet of it being dragged along the ocean floor, its jaws held open by massive slabs of wood that were heavily shod with iron— dislodging boulders and flattening crevices and outcrops, crushing and burying billions of fish and their habitats in its path as it rolled along, striving to frighten up into its giant maw the bottom fish, including those mother-fish whose bellies were swollen with pounds of roe not yet spawned. Now then, imagine five hundred of them, all ploughing the spawning grounds, he thought, and sat forward again, notably disturbed.

“How much fish are they catching then, brother?” he asked Ambrose.

“A lot of fish, my son. Tons. And they scraps tons. Right over the side. If they gets a load of haddock and they wants cod, they dumps it. If they gets a load of cod and they wants haddock, they dumps it. Tons. They dumps tons of fish. For sure, I seen enough of it out there on the schooners.” He paused, bulbous eyes falling shyly askance at each of the men he was addressing. “And then there’s the ones they loses, their nets breaks halfways upon their decks, and—whoosh!—everything falls back overboard. Good only for the gulls, then.”

“Jeezes, do the Fisheries fellows see all that?”

Jake smirked. “How can you see anything, old man, when you’re head’s up your arse? If them Fishery people done what they was paid for, they’d banish everything longer than thirty feet fifty miles offshore—or farther. By jeezes, that’s what they’re doing in other countries then—”

A door slammed, and he grimaced into silence along with the rest of the men as a broad-shouldered woman charged around the corner, her presence like the light of dawn drawing a close to the evening’s intimacy.

“They’re down hooking gulls with fish hooks agin!” she exclaimed angrily, her lidless eyes glancing off the rest of the men and burrowing into Jake.

“Who? Who’s hooking gulls?” asked Jake.

“The youngsters—who the bloody hell do you think?” she snipped, pointing to a huddle of boys farther down the beach. “Go—drive them out of it, else I throws your supper to the dogs!” She hustled back inside the house, banging the door shut behind her.

“Ah, you loves her,” said Manny as Jake cut loose with a mutter of oaths. “Ye-es, you do. Go on. Chase after her. Tell her you loves her,” he goaded as Jake rose, a dirty look toward his house as he shuffled toward the landwash. Manny shook with mirth. “Pair of sleeves to the one shirt,” he said to Sylvanus and Ambrose, “and stun as the gnat, the both of them. Out by Mother’s, they was, the other night, trying to dip the moon out of the brook. Yes, they were,” he vowed beneath the disbelieving snickers of the others, “swear to gawd. Go ask Mother—she went out and offered them a strainer.”

A cry of excitement from the boys and Manny rose. “That one of mine I hears? Little bugger, he’s suppose to be chopping wood. Heh, cripes if they haven’t hooked a gull.” He sat back down, grinning, watching as the boys, oblivious to Jake now marching toward them, fist raised, started pulling in their thirty- to forty-foot length of fishing line and the hooked gull. “Yup, nothing we never done, hey, Am. Remember putting bark on the water and watching the gannets dive for it? Broke their necks every time. Cripes, that was bad. How come boys does stuff like that? You do that, Syllie, put bark on the water for the gannets?”

Sylvanus grimaced. “Break their necks? How’d you break their necks?”

“They sees the bark and thinks it’s a fish and dives for it,” said Manny. “Dives hard, a gannet do. Can hear the snap when their beaks hits the bark. Oh, now, it wouldn’t that bad,” he drawled at Sylvanus’s look of repulsion. “And we never wasted them—always took them home after for Mother to bake. She never knew but it was a duck after we had it buffed and picked. Here, pass your mug, Am, I fills it. Where’s yours? Hey, where you going?” he asked as Sylvanus, shaking his head in disgust, kicked aside his stump and headed toward home.

“That’s it, my son, can’t hoot with the owls and fly with the eagles, too,” Manny shouted after him, “but I must say, you was quite the dandy at the dance last night— all dressed up and watching through the window. Next time come on in, b’ye, and have yourself a dance. Well, sir,” he exclaimed as Sylvanus shot him a look, face reddening, “look at that, Am, he’s all red. Gentle jeezes, Syllie’s blushing! What’d you do, find yourself a woman? Did you, did you, Syllie?” he hollered, rising off his seat, giving chase.

“Fool!” Sylvanus muttered and ducked out of sight around the house. Damned if his ears weren’t burning. Melita, Manny’s wife, her curly, capped head heightening a round, dimpled face, glanced suspiciously at him as he stumbled over some hens firking at the feed she was tossing them.

“Nice day, what?” he hailed, skirting the flapping, squabbling birds.

“Nice day,” she called back, and he shook his head, catching her grin as she tossed another handful of feed around his feet, sending him stumbling through another onslaught of pecking and flapping and squabbling.

“Worse than Manny,” he grunted, hopping onto the beach, away from the lot of them. Digging his hands into his pockets, he leaned into the breeze and was soon whistling his way along shore, his nymph from the night swaying before him once more, luring him along some mystic path, beckoning him inside a shanty and seating him beside a fire that warmed his heart as readily as it warmed her hearth. Nothing followed him there—no boats, no fish, no creamy white pods and their wasted spawn—all vapourized by the heat of her fire as it blazed across her bare, naked skin, leaping into his veins and fevering his vision as he wove through the following days, tripping over goats and chicks, and clamouring about his stage, his flakes, his woodpile on weakening legs.

“We needs a new house, Mother,” he said irritably one evening, stumbling over mats that had been lying on the floors since he was a gaffer, and peering critically at unpainted faceboards and faded wallpaper.

“It’ll last the rest of my years,” grumbled Eva, pushing him out of her way.

“There’s holes in the canvas.”

“Stop your pacing, then, big galoot. I was thinking,” she went on as he rested his arms moodily on the windowsill, gazing outside, “perhaps we should take a smoked salmon to the Trapps.”

He near cricked his neck, twisting it sideways to see her, but her face was hidden in the bowels of a bottom cupboard. “You talking about a
visit
?” he asked incredulously.

“With all they done for us, wouldn’t hurt to pay a visit.”

He jammed his hands in his back pockets, studying the back of her head. “Eighteen years ago the Trapps fished Elikum out of the sea, and suddenly you wants go visit them. What’re you rooting at in there? Get your head out,” he commanded, “and tell me why in the name of gawd you’re wanting to visit the Trapps?”

Eva hauled back on her haunches, brandishing a dusty bottle of pickles before him. “You mind yourself,” she said stiffly. “They brought your brother home. Least we got one grave marked in that cemetery. Goodness’ sakes, can’t a body go visiting without all this nonsense?”

“Nonsense! You suddenly wants to visit the Trapps, and my asking why is nonsense? Jeezes, they’d rather sink your boat than let you ashore.”

“They’ve never hurt a soul.”

“Enough the way they looks at you. No thanks, the Trapps don’t like company and that’s fine with me.”

“Then I’ll get Jake to take me.” She creaked to her feet, shuffling tiredly to the bin, polishing off the pickle bottle with her apron. “Besides,” she said, “I got something to ask of them. I was thinking on getting one of their girls to work with me this summer in the garden.”

“Hey!? You wants a Trapp girl working for us? Oh, come now, Mother—”

“Don’t go
now Mothering
me!” cried Eva, turning on him. “I’m not what I used to be, and for all the help you are these days, you might just as well move to Ragged Rock, for that’s where your mind’s at, well enough.”

“Well, sir, is that what’s on your mind—that I’m moving off to Ragged Rock?” He struck a fist into his hand. “Bloody Manny! Up shooting off his face, was he? Got me marrying some girl up Ragged Rock. Fool! And, oh, that’s a good one, Mother. You’d have me marry a Trapp, instead—sly as dogs—”

“How’d you know that? Nobody ever got to know them.”

“That says it right there—a stone’s throw up the shore and we hardly knows their names.”

“Nothing wrong with keeping to yourselves. We should all be more mindful. Least they’re not wanting roads and electricity and to be moving off all over the place.”