Broken Man on a Halifax Pier Read online

Brody laughed. It was a stoned laugh. He punched me gently on the shoulder. “Man,” he said, “this is really great. Just sitting out here like this, me and you, shooting the shit. Not a soul around to hassle us.”

  I guess I was stoned too, but he was right. This wasn’t bad. Father and son and a bag of weed, sitting atop a dying headland on a warm summer day. I tried to envision a quality in Brody that suggested he had inherited something from me. Certainly not his looks, his body build, or the things he was interested in. All I could detect was that we were both classic screw-ups in our own way and in our own right. And, be that as it may, we were growing closer, even if he didn’t know the truth.

  15

  I was staring off into the sparkling water for several minutes when it occurred to me that this weed we were smoking was maybe ten times more potent than what I’d put in my water pipe back at Dal and King’s. I sure hoped that Justin Trudeau knew what he was getting Canada into when he legalized the stuff.

  I sat there lost in my thoughts, enjoying the high and the sunshine, letting time slip away. Sure enough, by the time Brody and I could pull enough brain cells together to realize it was time to head back to the mainland, the tide had come up and we had to wade in hip-deep, icy-cold, North Atlantic water back toward the fish shacks and wharf. I think we giggled the whole way.

  Brody asked me again if I wanted anything stronger — “on the house,” as he put it. But I said no way and told him to be careful.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Shit happens, but I always seem to come out okay. My mother says I have guardian angels.”

  “I wish I was so lucky,” I said.

  I think I had bread and peanut butter for my evening meal. It seemed to do the job. There were messages on the cellphone from someone — Ramona, I supposed. But I couldn’t figure out how to retrieve them, even though I’d already listened to one before. I thought of calling her, but was afraid I was too stoned. I was still obsessed with the idea that I would blunder and screw up this good thing.

  So I did what any good stoner would do at a time like that. I fell asleep.

  Deep, deep asleep. Dope dreams to boot. Some kind of “Kubla Khan” Samuel Taylor Coleridge sort of thing. There were no Abyssinian maids, but there were plenty of underground caves and waterfalls, and there was a lot of weirdness. Like Coleridge, I lost most of it by the time I woke up. In fact, when I awoke, I thought I was still dreaming.

  It was still dark. I heard the tires of a car on the gravel outside the door. A car door opened right away and then slammed. Footsteps on the gravel, the door to the shack opening.

  “Hello?” It was Ramona.

  “In here,” I said, groggily.

  She flicked on the light and walked into the little bedroom.

  “I was worried,” she said, her voice a little shrill. “You didn’t call me back. You didn’t answer the phone.”

  “Sorry,” I offered. “You drove all the way out here at night?”

  “I had to. Like I said, I was worried.”

  I tried to organize a few sensible words to string together. The weed had mostly worn off, but I seemed to have a fuzzy nimbus cloud where my brain once was. “I haven’t had anyone to worry about me since my mother stopped fretting about my well-being. But I’m sorry I made you worry.”

  She took a breath, looked tired and rattled. “Well, I’m here now.”

  “I missed you.”

  She walked close to me and put her head on my shoulder then pulled back. “Phew. What were you smoking?”

  “I was out on the headland. This guy came along, the one who brought the lobsters, the one who …” I thought I better not go there. Way too much. Way too soon.

  “What lobsters, what guy?”

  “Later. Much later. But, yes, Your Honour, I was smoking some mighty powerful weed. Didn’t know it came that way.”

  “Doesn’t quite fit the profile I had of you.”

  “Believe me, it was a one-off thing. I may have my faults, but most of what I know about pot is from old Cheech and Chong movies.”

  She smiled. Ramona smiled. I wanted to write a song about that smile. I wanted to write a novel about it, make it into a movie. I wanted to take that smile and build a life around it.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” she said. And we fell into bed together, our clothes on, me reeking of weed and peanut butter. Ramona smelling like sweetness and light.

  In the morning she made breakfast again. Rolf had leaned in through the open window and dropped a freshly caught and filleted mackerel in the sink. He winked at us but didn’t say a word.

  “I want you to take me out in your fishing boat,” she said.

  “Okay. If the engine starts. If she seems seaworthy.”

  “She?” Ramona teased.

  “You know a boat is always a she.”

  “Of course.” Her eyebrows went up. “I’m just wondering if you can tell how a man treats a woman by the way he treats his boat.”

  “I never thought about it. But probably.”

  “Then I’ll be watching.”

  The weather looked good. I flicked on the radio to the marine weather channel. It brought back a wave of memories. Not all good. But the marine forecast looked just fine. Light north wind. High pressure system stalled on us. Not a cloud between here and Sable Island.

  “Oh!” I said. “There was a message from a Dr. Jenkins. About an appointment. What’s that about?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just a check-up.”

  “How did things go back in dirty ole Halifax?”

  “The lawyer stuff went okay. Turns out my father’s investments did better than we all expected. I have more money than I thought. Too bad he didn’t care about his family as much as he cared about his money.”

  “Sometimes it works out that way. Oh, and Miss Moneybags, thanks for leaving me some cash. That felt kind of like, well, you were looking out for me. Taking care of me.”

  “I was. I am.”

  “That doesn’t exactly make me a gigolo, does it?”

  “No,” she said coyly. “Not yet.”

  Damn, I’d found myself a good woman.

  “What’d you do with the money?”

  I hesitated. “I lost it,” I lied.

  “No. Really?”

  “Really. I think it blew away.”

  “Liar. My guess is you spent it on that weed.”

  “No. The weed was a sort of gift. From that guy who showed up.”

  “You’re a piece of work, you know that? I’m going to have to keep my eye on you.”

  “Please do. Now, what else can you tell me about your day in town?”

  “I visited my mother. She’s not doing so well. She wasn’t quite sure who I was. We talked mostly about the flowers in the room. I need to do more for her. The home is just great. Expensive, but great. But I’m not being the best daughter in the world. I need to go see her again. Soon.”

  “I’ll go with you. We’ll go together.”

  “Okay. Day after tomorrow. I have more business in town.”

  “Ah, you’re going to drag me back to Halifax.”

  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  “I want to. I want to meet your mom.”

  Some of the men hanging around the wharf gave us the serious once-over as we walked the loose thick planks and hopped onboard Sheer Delight. I wasn’t sure of my boating skills and was looking for a reason to say I wasn’t ready to take her out to sea, but the hull looked solid, the deck was freshly painted, the key was right where Rolf had told me it would be — in an old cigar box in a drawer. And the V8 engine fired up like a dream. We had a full tank of gas and a spare can on deck. I had no excuses.

  As the engine idled with a satisfying thrum, I cast off the lines and we began to drift. Then I took the wheel, adjusted the throttle, and we were headed out into the blue Atlantic. I instinctively knew where the channel was, remembered each rocky shoal that could tear the bottom off the boat if you weren
’t careful. Soon we were passing Goat Island and I pointed out the seals lolling on the rocks like old fat cartoon characters.

  I took us two miles out to sea, not so far that I couldn’t get us back easily, but far enough to feel we were free of the mainland and in our own private haven of sea and sky and gentle rolling waves.

  When I cut the engine it was like another world. The air grew quiet except for the little splashing of wavelets against the hull.

  “I can’t believe you gave this up for life in the city.”

  “It ain’t always like this, darlin’. Picture a mean November morning, freezing rain, choppy seas, nor’east gale, and you’ve quickly converted heaven to hell.”

  “Understood. But this. This is amazing. Being out on the water like this makes everything seem so uncomplicated.”

  When she said that word, a lot was going through my head. Like Ramona, I was blissed out by the moment, intoxicated with being there at sea with someone like her. But my mind refused to stay in the moment; it kept wandering, and wherever it went there were complications. I had already dipped a toe back into the turbulent waters of the community and people of my youth. Prodigal son returning. Beth Ann. Brody. What else? What happens, I wondered, when that all comes out in the wash?

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Oops. Sorry. Uncomplicated. You bet.”

  A seal popped up just then, pushing the head of his shiny wet body up out of the depths. He looked at us directly with those deep dark eyes. Questioning. I remembered that fishermen used to shoot them for fun. Or revenge. Claiming that seals were eating all the cod, reducing their numbers and ruining the amount they could catch. I thought that was all bullshit. Shooting seals I regarded as an example of just how crude and barbarous the men of Stewart Harbour could be.

  “God damn them all,” Ramona suddenly said. “I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold.”

  “We’d fire no guns, shed no tears … and the rest as they say is history. But I don’t feel like a broken man anymore. And if you think we’d make good pirates, I’m ready to cruise those seas if you are my shipmate.”

  “What would we hijack first?” she asked.

  “Probably would be one of the big container ships coming this way from Europe.”

  “That sounds messy. What would we do with all the empty containers once we looted them?”

  “You’re right. Let’s scrap that plan. Think of something else.”

  “I can think of only one thing.” And she nodded toward the little cabin.

  At first I thought we were still playing word games. But as she began to unbutton her blouse I could see she was serious.

  “It’s been a long while,” I said nervously. Yes, I was nervous and a tad scared. Did she really want me to make love to her? There on the high seas?

  “I’ll coach you if you forget how. I’m a really good teacher.”

  “I thought you were an actor.”

  “I’ll act any way you want. Just let me know.”

  I swallowed hard. Was I ready for this? Performance anxiety, maybe. I can’t say I had fond memories of the sexual encounters I’d had in recent years. There had not been many. I’d lost my edge, lost my interest in the whole routine of going to a downtown bar, meeting a woman looking to get laid, taking her home, doing the deed, and then waking up the next morning to that awkward conversation. After a while, I had decided the whole silly sexual charade just wasn’t worth it. But this was different. Dare I say, this was shaping up to be the real thing.

  I looked out at the sea, off toward the coastline that was fading from view. “We’re drifting,” I said.

  “Is that bad?”

  “Maybe I should toss over the anchor.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Let’s drift. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “We hit the Gulf Stream and end up in Ireland.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” she said, and finally, probably realizing that I was acting more shy and nervous by the minute, she took my hand and led me into the cabin. We sat down on the narrow bed where I’d once lay moaning with seasickness. She continued to undress.

  “Is this where I should put up a hand-painted sign reading, ‘If the boat is rockin’, don’t come knockin’?” What a stupid thing to say.

  “I think you should just relax,” she said as she unzipped my jeans and slid her hands down into my pants.

  We kissed and our tongues met. We embraced. It was awkward at first, trying to wrap ourselves around each other on the narrow bed. My shyness, my nervousness, and my modesty suddenly abandoned ship. I lifted her up, tossed the dingy mattress onto the cabin floor, and lowered her onto it.

  In my unfinished book, a terse, Hemingwayesque novel of lost idealism, lost identity, lost love, I’d tried more than once to write a decent love scene. It always came out either like a bad Harlequin passage, a porno paragraph, or a sickly sweet dollop of candied prose. So I won’t attempt to describe the next twenty minutes of that glorious day.

  Let me just say that we were linked, biologically and emotionally. We were completely in synch at every point, with every move.

  Okay. It was just this: it was good. It was great. Afterward, lying there on the mattress on the floor, dizzy from the passion, my first words were, “Thank you.”

  She lifted herself up on one arm. “You’re welcome. But thank you too.”

  “I feel like I should spend the next ten years thanking you.”

  “Be my guest,” she said. “Are we in Ireland yet?”

  16

  So, “going to Ireland” became a kind of code to us. Everybody should have their personal code words for things like making love. Yes, I would like to call it that. Making love, not just sex. I wanted to believe there was still such a thing. I had had sex (not all that often, mind you) in recent years, but it had been one hell of a long time since I’d made love — or “gone to Ireland.” Thank God for the Gulf Stream.

  And yes, we had drifted. Miles and miles from shore. But the compass in the wheelhouse — a real beauty installed there by my father — told me what I needed to know. We had drifted south and west, I was pretty sure. All I needed to do was steer us north and a bit east. Or at least I hoped that would work. If I needed guidance, there was a radio on board and some other electronics, but I really didn’t know how to use them.

  To the south I could see storm clouds. Time to fire up the old Chevy engine and get us back to shore, back to the so-called real world.

  Ramona was in a kind of dreamy, post-coital mood, and she was wearing nothing but my old flannel shirt. “All’s well, Captain,” she said.

  “All’s well,” I said.

  And we really didn’t say much after that. In fact, I think we now both felt kind of shy. She walked to me and I put my arm around her beautiful body and held her close as I peered through the cabin window, praying that my instinct was correct and that any minute Nova Scotia would come into view.

  “A man is never lost at sea,” I said, quoting Hemingway.

  She must have recognized it. “They forced us to read The Old Man and the Sea back at Armbrae Academy.”

  “And?”

  “I hated it,” she said. “I felt sorry for the old man, but I thought it was a dumb story. I especially hated the shark. The shark was like God. He gives you something and then he takes it away. Bit by bit until it’s all gone.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “The dark side of Ramona.”

  “You know what I mean. Time. Aging. I guess I’m thinking about my mother. Somebody should change the rules.”

  “They should. But don’t blame Ernest. He was just an honest novelist.”

  “No such thing. They’re all liars.”

  “Well, true.”

  “When are you going to tell me about that novel of yours?”

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve written three hundred pages and it hasn’t gone anywhere yet. My narrator is a whiner instead of a protagonist
.”

  “Let me read it.”

  “No.”

  I felt guilty for refusing her and so I focused on looking out the window. It was then that a thin line appeared in the distance where I guessed Nova Scotia would be. I hoped it wasn’t my eyes fooling me. As it thickened, I heaved a sigh of relief. Land.

  In the days after, I kept wishing that I had made a mistake. I wished that I’d gone in the opposite direction, slipped us over the horizon and taken our chances with those dark clouds, high seas, or whatever else the wet world of the Atlantic could throw at us. I just kept wishing we had not gone back to Stewart Harbour.

  But we did.

  My seagoing confidence grew large as I saw the first marker buoy at the mouth of the harbour and the farthest tip of Prosper Point called Falcon Head. As we sailed past Goat Island and those lazy, moaning seals, Ramona tucked herself into me. “O Captain! My Captain!” she said and slid her hand down into my pants again.

  I smiled the kind of smile that indicates a man has lost every worry in the world and has a brain pumped up on serotonin or dopamine or whatever floods into brain cells when you are so happy that you are about to explode.

  But I should have listened to the tiny, shrill voice of doom shackled in the back room of my brain instead of drowning in all those hormones of happiness.

  I was taking deep breaths. Feeling great. Ramona put her clothes back on and came to stand beside me. She was still acting shy and quiet.

  “Shit,” I said out loud when I first saw it. The ambulance at the wharf. Its top light flashing.

  Ramona looked up. “What is it?”

  “An accident of some sort, maybe. Fishermen are always getting injured. Hooks and winches and machinery. Fuck.”

  The wind was coming up now, shifting so that it was out of the southwest. I had a harder time steering the boat into the wharf than I expected. I could see two paramedics, a man and a woman, aboard one of the fishing boats now. One had an oxygen mask over someone on the deck of the boat. Another was administering CPR.

  I struggled with the boat, going forward and reverse, trying to get it docked at the same berth from where we had left. Finally, I bumped it up against the wharf. Ramona threw the rope over a post at the rear of the boat and then at the front. Just like she had done this a thousand times before. I killed the engine, and we both jumped onto the wharf and began walking toward the boat where the paramedics were.