Some Day the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More (12 page)

“My grandfather used to tell stories about this when we were boys,” Ben said.
“In the wintertime, when everyone had more time, he would be there in the stage
loft with his buddies spinning yarns about dangerous situations when he was
still fishing. We used to laugh and figured that Pop was blowing up a real story
to get us interested. We soon found out that Pop was telling the truth. Where
are we now?”

“We’re just coming up on Pyramid Head, I think. Boy, it’s slow going!” I
said.

“Yeah, you can say that again. We have to get beyond Rough Harbour, then Crouse
Head, and then a nice steam before Fox Head and Conche.”

The wind was still howling, slop snow interfering with visibility, and the ice
was no more than half a mile away.

“It’s close to six o’clock. We only got a couple of hours of
light left, Ben,” I said.

“We can’t make it to Conche at this rate,” Ben grunted. “And the ice has moved
closer to shore back there.”

Small bits of ice were almost to the boat. We cut the motor and began the slow,
laborious process of watching for every bit of ice that came so that we could
manoeuvre through them. We were now moving very slowly.

“I’d say the wind will die with the light, Ben.”

“It might, but it’s still strong and that tide will continue to bring the ice,”
Ben said.

As daylight faded and the wind subsided, we found ourselves moving ever closer
to shore as we gingerly moved among the ice pans.

“Get the gaff and the oars that are strapped to the wheelhouse,” Ben ordered.
I noticed his face taking a distinctive worried look.

“Right away,” I shouted back.

Although the boat was still rocking, it was far easier on the deck than it had
been earlier. Opening the wheelhouse door, I moved cautiously around the back to
the gaff and oars. Behind here, sheltered a little from the elements, my feet
found purchase on the deck. I got the oars and gaff and made my way back.

“We’ve got to keep moving and we have to watch for the bigger pans now. So you
will have to take the gaff and go up to the bow and be ready to steer some of
the pans away, and keep letting me know what’s coming,” Ben explained, shouting
to be heard.

“Okay,” I shouted back as I left the wheelhouse. With gaff in hand I moved up
to the bow and started my watch and steering the pans of ice.

A sudden flash of memory and I am in Marystown in the fifties, in the harbour
as a boy of ten or twelve. The harbour ice is breaking up and all the boys are
frantic with excitement as we leave shore to begin our copying across the
harbour. But the ice moves this way and that, all over the place, and Kevin
slips and falls, dragging me back on the pan. Tom slips and catches himself. I’m
on my arse and soaking wet. This was in the harbour one fine day. Just harbour
ice!

Several large pans broke me from my reverie. “Cut the engine,
Ben, some big ones are coming.” There were some real ice pans now.

With the gaff I started to nudge a pan off the bow on the port side and then
another to the starboard, calling to Ben as the situation warranted.

I got this sudden empty feeling in my gut. We were in a bloody dangerous
situation—the boat was barely moving. Crouse Head was a couple of miles away. We
nudged along in a sea of ice. I started to think of us and the boat.
How long
can we go on like this?
The wind was almost gone and a small swell was
the only thing left of the turbulence of an hour ago.

Ever so slowly we moved through ever thicker ice. “We’re not going to get past
Crouse Head with the ice packing like this,” Ben shouted as he leaned out the
wheelhouse door.

I just waved to him from the bow, acknowledging what was now obvious. We would
not be able to continue forward movement much longer. Darkness was now upon
us—the ice providing the only bit of light—and we were only half a mile from
shore.

For a moment I could only think of the boat, Ben’s boat. He’d had it for almost
fifteen years, and now, after all its previous trips up and down the French
Shore, it was in danger of smashing to bits. Not going to bottom like most
ships, but a far worse fate.

I was jolted out of this thought as the boat bumped into one of the larger pans
that I could no longer steer away with the gaff. The ice was just too
thick.

Ben cut the motor completely. We were almost abreast of Crouse Head. I made my
way back to the wheelhouse. It was no use trying to go on anymore.

“Well, my son, what do you think of this?” Ben asked, as I slid toward the
door, a look of resignation on his face.

“We’re in a bad way,” I said with great understatement.

In times like these, something natural clicks in; you do not dramatize the
situation. You know the gravity of the circumstance and you deal with
it—clearly, survival is now the main preoccupation. You are not cold.

We could hear the ice beginning to grind against our wooden
craft. “We got two bottles of homebrew left,” Ben said with a courageous
grin.

“Let’s click the caps and have them,” I responded brazenly.

As we took the first swigs of beer, our eyes met—we were no more than a few
feet apart—and there was fear, but controlled fear, as we both considered our
predicament.

“How tight is the ice packed now?” Ben asked. His voice was strong.

“It’s packed pretty tight,” I responded, trying to sound equally strong.

“Let’s take a good look,” he said.

We went out on deck and took a gaff and an oar and began to try to push the ice
pans. There was still a swell and the ice was packing real tight.

“Your sight is better than mine. Do you think it’s tight like this along
shore?” Ben shouted.

“It’s hard to tell for sure, but it looks tight to me,” I answered.

“That’s Crouse Head, I think.”

“Yes, I think that’s right,” I exclaimed. “I remember it from the
chart.”

“Well, we’re going to have to leave her,” Ben uttered in frustration. “Take
the gaff and I’ll take the oar. If we can reach shore, there’s an old path in
there that should take us to Crouse—perhaps three miles from the Head.”

“Our rubber logans are not going to be good on that ice,” I lamented. “We’ll
slip all over the place. Did you ever hear tell of those baseball players in
America? They got steel stuff in the bottom of their shoes that grabs real
good.”

“No,” said Ben, “and we haven’t got time to discuss it. If we only had some
running shoes, that would satisfy me.”

“Now, me son, have you got your mitts and the matches? We will be off this
thing and on the ice. Christ, where’s the axe? We got one somewhere.”

“It’s there in the corner of the wheelhouse, right behind the extra twine that
we took. I’ll get it,” Ben said.

With these meagre additions, we climbed over the starboard side
of the boat onto the ice. Slippery logans and all. The visibility was pretty
good and just a slight breeze blowing. It was now eleven o’clock.

For the first hundred yards, the pans were close together, and by sliding our
boots along the ice we moved at a nice pace. Then we encountered looser ice and
had to be nimble and watch our chance to copy from one pan to the other. This
was the way it was until we reached shore—some packed ice, some looser ice. The
ice was loose at the shore and we were forced into the water up to our knees.
That, we thought, was not too bad.

Now we were on landwash: rocks, ground, solid. Did that feel good!

We sat on a large rock and hauled off our boots. We dumped out the water,
removed our socks, wrung them out, and put both back on. We stood up and looked
out to the boat. There, looming up against the ice, was
Jennifer Dawn
,
Ben’s boat of fifteen years, now left to itself in the uncertain wind and ice of
northeastern Newfoundland.

Ben mused about how his two daughters would feel if they could see what was
happening now to their namesake. Then the silence. I was sure we both mused as
to whether we would see it again.

As we turned and moved up off the landwash, I remembered the flashlight. “Ben,
we don’t have the light. How stunned are we?”

“It’s broken. Bulb broke when it fell in the wheelhouse when I was hauling you
in from the deck. I didn’t have the heart to tell you then.” Ben sighed.

“It’ll be a job to find the path without that, given the light goes as one gets
away from the ice, won’t it, Ben?” I asked.

“We’ll get used to the dark in a minute,” Ben said. “The problem is
remembering where it starts. It’s years since I travelled it.”

Ben had a good nose, and in no time we found the entry to the partly overgrown
path and began our short trek of two or three miles. We were wet and
hungry.

It was after midnight when we approached the first house in Crouse. Joe Kearney
was an old buddy of Ben’s, so when he opened the door of his porch and saw us
standing there, his surprise quickly turned to recognition and we were heartily
received.

As we sat down and began taking off our boots and soaked socks,
Joe exclaimed, “Blessed Jesus, Ben, what have you fellers been up to? Where did
you come from? The ice is tight to the land. It’s been blowin’ a storm up to a
couple of hours ago!”

“Just had to leave the boat off the head,” Ben replied. “Left Croque after
midday and thought we could make it to Englee. The ice was off the Grey Islands
then, but as we came along Windy Point the wind come round to the northeast and,
of course, with the tide coming in, she’s all packed now.”

“You left the
Jennifer Dawn
? I never thought I’d see the day! Is she
gone?” Joe implored.

“Not when we left her almost an hour ago,” Ben said. “The wind has gone down,
there’s a small swell, but that shouldn’t be enough to crush her. If the wind
doesn’t come back up from the northeast, she should be okay for a few hours
anyway. And if the wind comes round to the west or northwest, we could retrieve
her—it’s a long shot, but you never know.”

“Ben, you’re just as crazy as you were years ago when we got caught snowshoeing
out from the logging camp in a snowstorm,” said Joe. “We thought we had to see
those girls that night. Now, my son, you don’t think you can get back on your
boat, do you? That’s a long shot, all right, ’cause when that ice starts to move
off, it will be gone in a flash.”

“We’ll have to watch for the wind, that’s all, and watch closely,” Ben
responded.

“You guys must be starved,” said Joe. “I’ll put a few junks in the stove; fire
is almost gone out. I had just turned in when you guys knocked on the door.”
And, looking at me, Joe asked, “You must be the new relieving officer.”

“Yes, Joe,” I said, “I am here for the summer.”

“Well, you got a good man there in Ben. He knows the water, like his father
before him. But that ice, there’s no way to gauge that—’tis like the cod some
years: one day the fish is in the cove, and the next day there isn’t one for the
pot. They named it right, I say.”

“Got any beer?” Ben asked. “A beer would go down pretty good right now.”

“I just put a brew in yesterday, but George got some bought beer
he got in Conche a few days ago. But you will have to get him out of bed to get
it. Do you remember George? He lost his missus last fall. He was a scaler in the
woods with us.”

Ben took off down the path, got George out of bed, and returned in no time with
a couple dozen Red Label and, of course, with George in tow.

“Now, boys, before we starts, we got to have a system to watch the wind,” Ben
said with some authority. “I’m going to try and save that boat, if I can. The
wife and kids would never forgive me if I didn’t do everything possible to save
her. If the wind veers around at all, we are going to try and get back on that
boat. So we got to have someone outside all the time.”

“Christ, you’re gone crazy,” said George. “You’re lucky to have gotten off
her—trying to get back is pushing it. You got the government man here. If
anything goes wrong, my son, you’ll be finished. It’s one thing to try and cheat
me on the wood you cut; it’s quite another thing to fool with Mother Nature! She
won’t like that!”

Joe cut in. “This is not to be fooled with, Ben. ’Tis like that movie we saw in
the hall the other night, when John Wayne told some of the boys at the bar,
‘You’re rolling the dice!’”

As the beer was passed around, I realized I should say something, since I hired
the boat and that this would be partly my decision. Of course, if I said I
wouldn’t go any farther, the boat would no longer be under hire. But Ben was
determined to save the boat, and he would do that, hire or no hire. Would I then
abandon him and say the hire was no longer in place? That would get any
potential problem for me and the government out of the way. I would be washing
my hands of the thing and I would stay there with Joe and George until the ice
was gone later that day or the next day. Neither Joe nor George seemed in that
good of shape, and getting them involved would only complicate matters.

Ben and I had been together now for a few weeks, and we had become buddies. We
understood one another, we worked well together, and I was developing a liking
for the old craft. Although I
was supposed to be a big
shot—albeit young—I didn’t feel that way and I respected those who confronted
the elements, like Ben. And I already knew in my bones that you never let your
buddy down, and Ben was my buddy.