Sea of Tranquility (20 page)

She had kept herself at a comfortable distance from them for a long time. Now she wondered how she could have done that for so long. She had learned to live fully alone. Men were always polite to her on the island, but always formal with her and she with them. On separate planes of existence.

Now, in a barn, with a fledgling cabbage farmer from the mainland, she felt otherwise. She poured tea, cut off big, thick slices of dark bread, and talked about death for an hour straight. Kyle told her about Hennigar, Kessel, and Johnson. Ugly, selfish, and even violent men, he could attest to that. But one of them had saved his life so he could turn his back on the sea and become a farmer.

“I don't think the rain can keep going much longer,” Sylvie said. “I haven't seen the moon in nearly a month now. The moon always gives me a feeling of peace. And I miss that. But even without seeing the moon, I can close my eyes and feel its effect, the tides tugging one way or the other. I know other people on the island have this ability too. I can tell you if it's high or low, mid or whatever. I can see it in my mind even if I'm not there. Isn't that silly?” Sylvie didn't know why she had launched into talking about her personal little quirks, her eccentric tricks of mind and body, but there it was, out in front of them like the food on the blanket spread out on the straw.

“I don't trust the sea,” Kyle replied haltingly. “Took my father and my brother. But still I couldn't move inland. I feel like this is where I'm supposed to be — in the middle of this island. I'm safe here.”

“You are safe here. And so am I. But why did you come out here?”

“I don't know. I'd never even been here before. Back in Mutton Hill Harbour, everybody talks about this place… well, you know how they talk.” Kyle was sorry he brought it up.
Inbreds,
hicks, and loonies was all that lived on the island.
That's what he had heard. Although it wasn't true at all. Mainlanders' prejudice.

“The island can be kind and good. I know.”

“Hasn't been too kind so far.”

“It's a test.”

“Right.”

“Yes. Think about it. Water, the thing you don't trust. Lots of it falling from the sky. Is it trying to drown you?”

“You're crazy.” Beautiful but crazy, he wanted to say.

She smiled. She'd been called crazy before, and he meant nothing bad by it.“P'rhaps. But you haven't drowned yet, have you?” Sylvie knew all about various forms of drowning. David Young down beneath the ice, over and over how many times in her waking and sleeping. Stories, oh those ungodful stories of all the men who didn't come back from fishing. Of wrecks out front at the Trough. Yes, the sea had its hungers and its taste for humankind.

“No. I'm doing surprisingly okay.” Okay meant he was going out of his mind and couldn't bear to read one more magazine with gossip about Hollywood movie stars and what was going on in Toronto.

Sylvie leaned back against a bale of old, musty timothy and looked up into the darkness of the lofty barn. The warm yellow lantern light dancing on the skin of her cheek and her neck made Kyle catch his breath. He moved towards her and could not stop himself from touching her face, gently with the tips of his fingers. Sylvie closed her eyes.

Above them birds — swallows probably — fluttered. Kyle traced his finger across her lips and then pulled back, lay down on his back on the straw that was his bed. Sylvie found herself lying down beside him. They both lay there still and quiet. The rain came on quite strong just then and the kerosene lamp was running itself down to a half-sincere blue flame. It
was a little chilly, after all, and the two of them came together for warmth.

Kyle didn't know he was going to kiss her until he was already doing it. Sylvie didn't seem to mind, and Kyle knew he should stop there because this was so far the best thing that had ever happened in his life and he didn't want to mess it up.

He knew that he
was
finally drowning, but it was not as he had expected. He touched her hair, stroked her cheek, and kissed her again, so delicately that he didn't go all the way to the bottom of the sea this time. Instead, he drifted down slowly and patiently and all the while he heard the sound of the thrum of rain on the wooden shakes of the roof. And so did she.

The rain stopped six days later. The sun came out and only a third of the cabbage seeds had rotted in the cold, wet soil. That left two thirds to sprout and poke their way through, eager and waiting for the sun. Kyle and Sylvie replanted the lost third and Kyle never complained once about weather problems. The island gave him back the prairie sky he had remembered from the day of his arrival, and, because he was way up on a smooth, round drumlin of a hill, he could see the waters of the ocean and bay on all sides. There it was. And for once he was glad it was there. He had a high, safe place to live on an island and didn't mind the sea at all if it could keep its distance.

After a few days of working, Kyle noticed he had some problems with his feet, and his back was hurting him, too, just like on the ships where he had worked. Sylvie worked his back and massaged his feet sometimes and that made it all better. Sylvie was the most remarkable, intelligent, and mysterious woman he had even known. But then he'd really had almost nothing to do with girls and women. He had expected to live all his life alone and never marry. Now he wasn't so sure.

By August, Sylvie had invited Kyle to live with her, but he insisted they get married first.

“I made a promise to myself never to remarry,” she told him.

“Break the promise. Please.”

And she did. A Lutheran minister of German descent named Keizer married them on Monday afternoon in Mutton Hill Harbour. It was a private ceremony. Kyle's mother was there but that was about it. The minister was only half there. He wasn't all that keen about marrying people who were not in his congregation, but he did it as a favour to Kyle's poor widowed mother who invited him to Sunday dinner once a month.

The cabbage crop was a good one, especially the plants that grew from the late seeds. Some heads grew to be big enough to fill a bushel basket, one per basket. The sauerkraut plant was still gong strong making sauerkraut for the troops and so the price was fair and equitable. Kyle and Sylvie harvested cabbage right up to and beyond the first frost in late October. They were already planning for the next season in late November when Sylvie looked up at the quarter moon one night and knew she was pregnant.

Kyle made the mistake of buying a radio to help entertain them through the long winter. Winston Churchill and FDR came into their lives — news of some very important meeting in Casablanca on the far side of the ocean from here. Kyle and Sylvie talked of Hitler, of Mussolini, of Japan and China even, and ravages of war all over the world. It seemed impossible that all of this was happening on the same planet they lived on.

And then Kyle learned that someone had thrown a rock through his mother's window in Mutton Hill Harbour on a Sunday afternoon while she was having dinner with the Lutheran minister. They were both, after all, Germans. Or at least of German descent.

Kyle went ashore to fix his mother's window and some young hoodlums came by and shouted curses at him. He picked
up a newspaper later and discovered that German spies had been caught in Halifax and that German subs were regular visitors off the coast. Kyle cursed his own heritage but knew that whatever had happened in Germany was like some kind of disease, something he could not possibly understand: Jews being led into gas ovens, monsters killing babies, burning down villages, trying to rule the world. Impossible things.

And so this was the world he was bringing a child into, he pondered on the ferry back to his island, back to Sylvie. All winter and into the spring, the radio reminded him of what was happening out there. Kyle realized how he'd had his head under a bushel basket. He was blessed with a wife and then a child on the way and he was in the middle of another good and profitable season of cabbage growing. He leased another field to grow savoury for the sausage makers in Lunenberg and also planted blue potatoes, kale, and Swiss chard. The crops were bountiful and life was good, but by August, he was cursing his own good fortune and haunted by the knowledge that there was an imbalance of happiness and tragedy in the world.

It was a personal thing. He had no right possessing such good fortune if it meant that all those others were suffering. The thought grabbed him in the middle of the night and would not let go. Nothing could keep him here.

Sylvie could not hold him back, and on the day when he took the ferry ashore to catch the Halifax bus, she sat in the sunlight on the rocks at the Trough and felt the warm north wind, smelled the sweetness of cut hay and wild roses of the island. She waited for the whales to find her. She dipped her feet into the clear tidal pools that swayed with golden seaweed and asked the vast ocean to give her the proper perspective of time, the belief that time would pass and everything would be okay. Her husband would return.
Kyle failed the physical to get into the army, and the navy would not take him. Problems with his feet and a minor deformity in his spine. Kyle had thought it was all mere aches and pains but it was going to keep him out of the war where he felt he should be. He took the failed physical personally, knew there was some personal and historical connection with being German and believed more vehemently that he must be part of the war effort. He had to end the incalculable suffering once and for all like the other men he was meeting who were willing to make sacrifices of themselves, who instinctively knew they must fight to keep the world free. He did not want any of the glory of war. He only felt duty and necessity. He would do this for his wife and child, for them and for all those of German descent in Canada and America who hated what Hitler's Germany was doing to innocent people.

So he did not give up. The Merchant Navy was willing to take him. Yes, of course, he'd had experience on ships. He would not admit how much he feared them, however.

Kyle Bauer was assigned to an old tanker called the
Piccadilly
with a cargo of airplane fuel to be transported to Liverpool, England. With only half a crew, the ship sailed to St. John's Harbour, where more men were brought on board for the crossing. Kyle was shocked to discover that some of the new crew were as young as fourteen and he went directly to the captain, who everyone referred to as the “Old Man.”

“This is unreasonable, sir. They are only children.”

“There's a war going on, Bauer. Look, those lads told me they were of the appropriate age. Lots of these outport kids don't even have birth certificates. How am I to say who's lying and who isn't? Hard times, Mr. Bauer. The worst of times. We need capable bodies on board. Navy's got all the good men. We do what we can.”

Kyle realized that the world outside of his island was an unfair and inhospitable realm. He stared down into the cold,
dark waters of the narrow harbour entrance as they steamed from St. John's and met up with a convoy coming from New York. Safety in numbers, he hoped. They had a military escort. But he knew his ship was a prime target. Airplane fuel — high octane. One good hit.

Sylvie woke to the sound of thunder. She ran outside but it was dark and the sky was full of stars. The wind was sifting through the high branches of the spruce trees and it was a cool, clear night. She had dreamed the sound. But she could not go back to sleep that night and sat up listening to the radio, listening only to the music, always turning it off when it came time for news. She felt panic in her limbs, made tea and tried to be quiet but ended up sobbing and rubbing tears out of her eyes and smoothing them onto her cheeks. She felt the tide ebb and begin to retreat. She could chart in her dark mind the necessary paths of migrating birds and schools of fish, the avenues of whales and dolphins. Wondered at the uselessness of all these things she was feeling and wondered again why she was feeling them.

Kyle saw the first vessel in the convoy take a hit two days into the Atlantic crossing. He was on watch and called the sleeping captain to the bridge. The
Piccadilly
was rear and centre, supposedly well protected by flanking ships, navy ships with weapons to the ready. Within minutes, one of those escorting vessels took a hit that echoed through the night. She did not go down, but Kyle saw her slow her pace. One engine had been damaged. She could not keep up with the convoy.

“Bloody hell,” the Old Man said.

Kyle knew as well as his captain that the
Piccadilly
was now perfectly vulnerable. He studied the surface of the night sea,
understood the certainty of the hidden danger in the waters of the North Atlantic, felt a hot surge of something forged of anger and fear within him. “We've got kids on board, Captain. Boys. They don't have any idea.”

“We tough it out, Bauer. Try to change position to get some more protection.”

But there was no protection to be had. Kyle felt the torpedo hit beneath the water line of the ship as if it had just impacted upon the soles of his feet. An explosion ensued that ripped metal plating apart and killed Newfoundland outport boys as they slept. The Old Man was quick to insist they abandon ship. “I don't know why she didn't blow on the first hit,” he said. “Nothing for it now but to get in the friggin' water.” He gave the order to abandon ship, and his words were barely out when the
Piccadilly
took a second hit and an explosion roared out of her belly with deafening and terrifying force.

Kyle found himself at the rail looking down into the dark sea. Fire swallowed up the sky behind him. A young man with his back ablaze was running towards Kyle. One of the Newfoundland kids. Kyle looked around for the Old Man but he wasn't there. He heard yet another explosion and saw a ball of flame racing towards him. He grabbed the screaming boy and jumped with him into the sea.

The water grabbed at him with icy claws as he hit. He lost his companion, and Kyle felt the sea close in around himself as he went under, but his life jacket brought him back to the surface. He began to swim away from the ship in an awkward stroke. But then the boy surfaced, sputtering, calling for help, wailing,“I don't want to die! Don't let me die!” Kyle could not see him but swam towards the voice, grabbed hold of an arm, felt the hand go into a clenching vice that seemed to want to hurt him. The kid clawed at Kyle's life jacket and Kyle pulled at the cord, undid it and jammed the kid's arm through it, pushed him around backwards
and got his other arm in as he screamed. Then Kyle tried to hang on to the boy, keeping himself at arm's length, but all too aware of his own inability to stay afloat without the jacket. In the light of the burning vessel, he saw it had been nearly ripped in half. The
Piccadilly
was starting to go down, and its descent was creating a current that was pulling both of them towards it. He was unable to continue to hold onto the boy now. Reluctantly, he let go of the life jacket and started to swim away from the insistent, invisible force dragging him towards the sinking ship.