The Big Why (18 page)

She said his name, Stan.

I could see the pair of them then and I thought, Theyve slept together. Stan Pomeroy. Emily was yelling at Stan Pomeroy to leave off. Then she hauled Tom up, but Tom pushed her away. Stop your screeching, he said. Stan watched them. Another man came out. Tom’s knees buckled, then he put his hands on his knees to find his breath. Stan went back into Billy Cole’s with the other man. The men inside were laughing.

Let’s walk up to the corner, I said. Tom and Emily were wrestling now. Emily was rough with him. I realized they were the same size. He was tough and young. Emily, a bit taller. Get your can hooks off me. Youre as foolish as a hen, Tom Dobie.

He was grabbing at her.

Kathleen called to her, Do you want to come with us?

Yes.

Kathleen walked over to her and stood planted. Tom took this in — he stared at my wife as though he did not know her. He said, You can hear the ocean panting.

Kathleen, I realized, had not met Emily before. Emily was tucking her hair around her ears and then this happened: a goat sprang out of the open shebeen window and landed on Tom’s shoulders. It knocked him over. The goat scrabbled up, stood there a moment to look at us, and then darted sideways into the dark.

Tom Dobie was perplexed and drunk, one hand in the dirt. He pushed himself up. I went to him. He leaned back against the pharmacy, rubbing his chest. Then he bounced off the side of the pharmacy and came at me, as if I’d been the goat. I tried to block his progress. I put a hand to his chest. He hung his arms down low.

I said, Are you okay.

Stay out of it, he said.

He reeled in to me and I could smell the alcohol. I thought his chest may have been broken, but he was only winded. He looked in pain but ignoring the pain. He said, One man stands downstairs, the other upstairs. In a pit saw.

You better get some sleep, Tom. And I’ll see you in a few hours.

We had promised to go fishing. His arms were stiff and his fists ready to fight. You dont know who youre talking to.

It’s time to go home, I said.

That’s what we were going to do.

I’ll see you at the slipway in six hours.

Kathleen walked ahead with Emily. Tom Dobie said, I’ve got you noted.

As though I was some kind of informer.

I leaned him up against Bud Chafe’s store. He was so drunk. Kathleen and Emily doubled back. Emily said, Maybe I should go to him. He’s not gonna like me now.

Kathleen: I think it’s best to call it a night.

Kathleen held her and laughed to me at something Emily said into her shoulder.

It’s not right to laugh, Emily said.

I wasnt laughing at you.

They were hugging. He should know he’ll never do better than me. I’m too good for him.

You are, Kathleen said.

We had no sure idea what the fight was about.

She walked home with us. Emily would not talk about it. She just said that Tom Dobie was the sweetest thing, but sometimes when he’s kegged he goes around like he’s got three small dogs hanging off his elbows.

I had no notion, I said.

Yes, you see the good in him.

She looked away, as if a bit shy of showing me the difference in her mind between me and Tom. She stared above the hill. Look at the fox eye.

A ring around the moon.

This is how we had Emily Edwards stay with us.

Tom did not arrive at the slipway. I walked there the next morning and then back home. We ate with the blinding seven oclock sun on our faces, a beautifully sweet Emily Edwards fresh and young and Kathleen and I agog at her in a delightful way. Kathleen, I could tell, was impressed with how Emily had held her own. How she’d pushed off Stan Pomeroy and then corralled Tom. The children, too, all crazy for her.

I asked her again about what had happened.

I’m a slut for honesty, Emily said. But really, honesty is such an easy thing in this town.

She ate with her elbows all over the table. When she breathed she breathed with her belly.

Kathleen: I’m so sensitive. People are sensitive, dont you find?

Me: Not me.

Emily: No, me neither.

Kathleen heard this and wished she could be in league with us.

Stan was only trying to get a rise out of him, Emily said. Not get into a hammer and tiss. But he said too much. Said I was trying to jig him. It was just for badness Stan said it, a bit of devilment, but that’s when Tom went and give him a bazz in the face.

She had slept on the chaise longue. Upstairs the night before there had been something in our trying to be quiet. It was realizing that a house guest is the same as your parents. I had mocked a cry to our quiet passion.

You sound, Kathleen had said, like the tenor in that opera.

Pagliacci. But I dont know the opera.

That is the opera. Yes, youre operatic. Youre a lot of instruments.

I’m not just some piccolo.

Oh youre a huge wind instrument.

I’m not too huge.

I mean youre symphonic, Mr Kent. Youre a voice surrounded by the symphonic.

Just let me know if I’m too huge.

All the instruments have their ears pointed in my direction.

Yes they are very much perked.

Now you have to wait for the crescendo.

Youre the conductor, Mrs Kent. Tell me when I can let rip with the cymbals.

Youre the cry of a large lonely bird in the copse of a larger forest.

That you come upon in a clearing.

A glade.

The greens and blacks of a glade.

What is an everglade.

Oh God, say it. Say
everglade
.

Ever. Glade.

I held Kathleen close. Maybe it’s to do with evergreen. Perhaps the green never goes.

A permanent green.

That was very nice.

Wasnt it, Mr Kent.

In the morning, as I said, I had awoken early to meet Tom Dobie. As I left I saw Emily guzzling water from a ceramic jug. She needed to breathe, but she had to have water. The jug dropped off her mouth and she gasped for air. Then quick to the mouth again. She slugged at the water until the suction of her mouth slipped off the opening. She licked it. Dropped the jug to the counter with a ka-thunk. Exhaled then inhaled deeply. She is finished. She is tired. She would like to lie down on something larger than the chaise longue. Just the sheet over her hip, the blankets kicked and pushed to the floor. And as I stood there at the open door I thought we were in Italy. Maybe the windows shut with louvres where the sun is. I’m in Umbria with this woman. We will open only one side of the apartment at a time. In the middle of the afternoon we’ll change sides.

Excuse me, I said. I’m going to see Tom.

I should be on my way.

Nonsense. Make some coffee or go back to bed. I’ll be out of your road.

There was a note from Tom. Tomorrow morning, sun-up. I got up and was out the door in the dark. I met Tom at the slipway with Smoky.

We slung the dory out into the water and climbed aboard. Tom rushed to get the oars in.

Sit back, he said, in the arse of her.

How you feeling.

We were whispering. The dark makes you whisper.

I couldnt get out of bed yesterday, he said. I had the dawnies all morning. That drink at Billy Cole’s will pure kill you.

You can row with your chest like that?

Stan caught me in the solar plexus is all.

I watched him row.

Dont go giving me a hard stare.

I was just wondering what that was all about.

Me and Stan, he said, we’re the best of gear, okay?

So it was Emily.

It was about everything. For me it was everything, and there’s no point in getting into it except to say that me and Stan, we got more nature than what we need.

The horizon arrived as a shade of blue. There was not a wag of sea. The wet oarlocks and the slap of the boat in the water. Tom rowed crosshanded for half an hour. The sun arrived and painted the land back in. I let the sun warm me. I let Tom do all the work. I had Smoky’s chin on my shoulder.

Try the four-ounce minnow, he said.

I flicked out a line and caught a mackerel.

That’ll be our bait.

It was six in the morning.

It was grey and overcast, a good day for fish.

Water’s cleaner over there, he said. More tide over there. Fish swim against the current.

I took a turn on the rowing. Line up those two houses, he said. To keep you straight. Now hook up and you catch the water with your paddles. Yeah, that’s a nice catch. Feather the oars. Ten minutes of that and your arms will feel it.

Tom leaned back and closed his eyes in the bow. He was listening to me row.

What’s the most powerful thing on earth, he said.

Wind?

No.

Water?

The power of God, Kent. Next thing.

The sun.

Nature. You can’t fight nature. You got to go with it.

He opened his eyes again. Fish, he said, meaning cod, is in a hundred and fifty feet of water. To jig proper, you got to have your line vertical. Some fishermen, they sit down. I find you got to stand. They never catch as much as me, that’s cause they sit. You can’t feel the fish sitting, I find. Youre vertical and you jig three times. That’s when you get one. Never been as much fish in the bay my whole life.

We werent that far from shore. It was nice to be on the water, so close, and seeing the land you lived on. I could hear someone calling out, Here, chuck, chucky. Here, pig. There was a kingfisher in top of a fir. Chirping its sweet chirp. Three kerns coasted over the water.

They eat, Tom said, about ten pounds of fish a day.

I rowed out farther.

We’ll get to the spot, he said, and then you keep her up.

The shoreline was opening up behind us. A smear of birds on the water. Tom lined up the Head of Brigus with Bell Island behind him and said, Those are your marks.

Youre using triangulation.

No Kent we use no navigation whatsoever. You just line up the naked man over there by your house with the island at your shoulder, and when you can see Colliers past the Red Rocks then you know youre on the ledge.

Tom had pulled out two lead jiggers and line and handed one over. I watched him as he paid out line. He wore woollen wristbands to prevent blisters.

So you find some men are better fishermen than other men.

There is a trade in it, Kent. Some men will never make fishermen. There is a lot to learn in it. You have to know just where to go and how to get there.

I let my jigger sink until it touched bottom, then pulled it in a yard. Smoky watched me. He watched me tug on the line. He knew what I was doing. It was as if I was his hands.

I felt my line resist solid, as though I had snagged a sunken log. I pulled up the log, arm over arm, it took twenty seconds to haul in the line. A large white belly emerged from the water. A slow twist of codfish upside down that broke the water plane and gained weight. I yanked it over the gunwale. It twisted stiffly, waking up, and I released the jigger where it had gaffed the fish in the side.

Dont get your gear all tangled. Just throw your jigger over.

It seems rude, I said, not to catch them in the mouth.

Tom had one coming over the side as well. You, he said. Everything’s got to be done in a beautiful way.

We left the fish to suffocate under the snout of a licking dog.

He loves the salt.

Again the dull resistance of the line but now more understood to be a fish. I could tell by the weight on my finger that it was a smaller one, but still it rose big and white, about seven pounds, over the side, its gills stretching wide for water, its huge alarmed eye staring out. The fish looked brand new.

We’re in for a good spurt of fishing, Kent.

We hauled about twenty such fish aboard. The floor of the dory filled with their grey, speckled sides. They looked like English setter puppies. There was a small metal box to make a fire in. Tom stoked in a fire.

Get me a pan, he said, from the cuddy.

There was a cabinet under the front seat. He cleaned a fish over the side, and herring gulls raced in for the floating guts. They fought for them and he cut the fish in chunks. The fish was full of pale roe, and he cooked these on the side. He had some potatoes already peeled in the pan, with pork fat and an onion. Tom covered the pan for ten minutes and then laid in the chunks of fish, the blue porcelain of thick fan blades. It was something solid and blowing. As we waited he scooped out the roe and split it in two and we ate it off our fingers.

The lady fish, he said, wears the britches.