“Watch and see,” muttered Sylvanus on this cold morning of watching his Addie trudge lifelessly back to their house, and the belly of his boat still empty. Watch and see what? The day when there’s no fish to jig? What’s the point of watching, then, when there’s no fish left to jig?
The sea rose and fell beneath him, but he was unable to be lulled by her murmurs this morning, unable to lose thought to the upward, downward jerking of his jiggers as he trawled her depths. Scared. He was scared that that’s all he’d be doing till the day’s end, standing and jigging with his hooks trailing uselessly through empty waters. He raised his eyes to the sun already rising, and his morning’s work not yet started. What was wrong with it—the sky? The thought jolted him when it hit. There were no gulls. Where the hell were the gulls? Christ, and he gave a short laugh. Of course there would be no gulls. Why would they beg breakfast from empty waters?
His jigger hooked. Jeezes. His knees bent in relief, and he sat, hauling in his line. A cod, a good-sized cod. Before he’d chance to bleed it, the other jigger hooked, and a tremor of excitement shot through him. Scrabbling, he hauled in another fair-sized fish, holding the wet, shimmering body before him and near planting kisses on that puzzled, gulping mouth. And then there was another. And another. They were running. Thanks be to Jesus, they were running, and he silently repeated his prayer of gratitude. Left arm up, right arm down; right arm up, left arm down; up, down, up, down, another hook, another fish, another hook, another fish, and he jigged and he jigged, and after fifty pounds or more, he leaned more comfortably into the lop. She was back. The mother was back. And shamed he should be for doubting her doting old ways. She changed habits sometimes, was all, he chided himself, she changed habits. And what harm was that? What harm with Addie wanting to leave the house for a few hours each morning, taking a stroll upon the head, getting a different view on things? Everybody can’t be stayed in habit like me, he thought, not even fish.
He grinned his relief up to the heavens for the mother’s return. One thing he ought to be sure of by now was that the mother would be forever fertile, and the salty taste of her depths would forever dampen his lips. He checked his thoughts, thinking of his Addie, how she looked this morning, trailing out of the house behind him, her face the paleness of a winter’s moon—Addie, his Addie. And as though he had uttered her name out loud, he lowered his head with the shame of his wanting her.
I
T WAS A WEEK
or more after they’d started running he noticed the pattern of the smaller fish. Scarcely anything over a ten pounder in either of his fishing holes. Hauling anchor, he sought out a different run of cod, the larger blackbellies nestling in the undersea gully of Woody’s Inlet. When it, too, yielded smaller size, he motored to the shelves and crannies of Gull Rock, a shoal that rose out of the water at low tide and formed part of a rugged ridge that ran deep into the ocean’s floor. From there he chased down the vagrants at Peggy’s Plate, and the cosmos at Nolly’s Shelf, and the scrub cod that favoured the smooth, sandy surface of Petticoat Falls. Then finally he made the two-hour run to an old settlement, long since abandoned, and jigged the ridges and plates off its shores.
Nothing over a ten pounder. And nothing over a ten pounder up and down the bay, either; nor midshore; and according to word from the trawlers, there were no big fish offshore, either. Gone. All the big fish gone, sucked into the bowels of the colossal leviathans that were starting to crowd the offshore as thick as the trawlers were crowding the inshore.
Blisters popped up on Sylvanus’s hands from his wearying hours of jigging. The smaller the fish, the more hours to jig a quintal. And harder it became to toss back those undersized fish, those that had yet to spawn. But, by jeezes, he would toss them back, he muttered one morning, unhooking the fourth underweight that past hour from his jigger. Tossing it back into the sea, he watched it vanish beneath his boat. Tomorrow’s catch, it was, and God’s speed, for what was he without tomorrow’s catch? Without the milt of this mother who now rocked his boat as he stood trawling her belly?
Cloud shadowed the sun and a stiff breeze veering out of the sou’east shivered inside the open neck of his oilskins. It would blow before the tide let out, but as long as the fish were feeding, he’d cling to this spot. He couldn’t afford not to. Another hour he jigged, his catches becoming fewer, his stomach emptying, and his legs trembling for release. The tide was starting to ebb, taking with it the food holding the cod to shore. Still, it was another two hours’ fishing before the tide was fully out, and as long as his boat remained half full, he’d stand here.
Twenty minutes of jigging with no hook, he pulled anchor and motored to Gregan’s Hole, a quarter mile up the shore. And with his legs now buckling from a growing lop and his stomach gnawing from hunger, he set ashore, hurriedly building a stone pit. Lighting a fire with bits of dried grass and driftwood, he rummaged through his fish for the smallest of the small, gutted and cut it into bits, and tossed it into a cast-iron frying pan with some onion and soaked hardtack he always took to sea with him. Setting it across the firepit with some water from a nearby brook, he lay back on the beach, arms cushioning his head, and closed his eyes against the greying sky, relishing the ache falling from his bones. Sleep slackened his mind. Ten, fifteen minutes later, he awakened to the sumptuous smell of stewed fish, tack, and onions.
Lifting the pan off the fire, he dumped the brewis onto a clean, flat rock, hungrily fingering the food into his mouth. A cup of tea, strengthened with blackstrap molasses, a pork bun, and he was back, bucking in his boat, his stomach full and warm, and jigged for another hour, his back to a breeze that would be full-blown before noon. Hopefully, he’d be ashore by then, save his mother from worrying. He was usually home long before this with his boat heavily laden. Thirty pounds more and he sat down, still jigging, his shoulders slouching forward, his hands smarting. The tide was almost out by now, the fish scarcely biting. And the wind was building. Time to haul anchor and motor home. Not so bad, he thought, eyeing the fish in his boat. Not so bad. Just taking bloody forever, was all, to get a decent catch.
Back on shore he forked his fish onto his stagehead and loaded them inside the stage. Slapping one after the other onto his skinning table, he commenced slitting bellies, gurry flying from his skinning knife, down the trunk hole and into the water, feeding the gulls waiting and squabbling outside. As he worked, his knife became more sure, his hands more hurried, creating a rhythm that needed only the feel of his fingers to execute. Once the fish was gutted, he reached for a different knife, one with a more rounded blade, and started at the fish again, this time cutting it more deeply behind the backbone, slitting it from gill to tail, further opening it till it laid out flat, shaped like a butterfly. This done, he scrubbed them each with sea water from a large trawl tub, quickly and carefully cleansing off bits of blood and entrails and any other thing that could rot or spoil its look, and then laid them out in puncheons, layering each with salt; more on the thick part, less on the thinner parts, and always the least amount needed without risking souring. For it was the more lightly salted fish that got the highest grade, and no matter the fatigue foiling his fingers as he stayed on his feet, sometimes till one in the morning, working the double load of littler fish, it would never be the business of Sylvanus Now to work a lesser grade.
More than his legs and fingers were fatigued that summer. For as the season wore on, his mind crippled, too, with the onslaught of figures he’d never had to think about before with regards to fish: hundreds of thousands of tons being fished from the sea by countries he’d never given thought to; the Germans appearing on the banks with thirty or forty brand-new factory freezers; and the Spanish not content with the hundred trawlers she had out there, but now building more; and the Japanese starting to come on board with the largest fishing fleet in the world; and Poland and Romania and Greece and Belgium and the Netherlands and a whole host of others preparing to set forth onto the banks. And now this latest, the fishermen cried, the stinking Russians had dropped their mesh size, scooping up millions of the smaller cod as they targeted one different species after another—herring, mackerel, squid, caplin—fishing each to the point of exhaustion, not to mention the extra two hundred trawlers they’d brought along, complementing their thirty-five brand-new factory freezers. And all the rest of them, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, and half the bloody globe were hunkering in colossal ships over the fishing grounds two hundred miles from shore, the sea lit up like a starry sky; spring, summer, winter, and fall, sucking, sucking, sucking the mother dry.
Late one evening, about the middle of summer, Sylvanus putted ashore to the unlikely sight of Jake and Manny waiting for him on his stagehead. Noting his fish already gathered off the flakes and stacked into faggots, he rose, a sudden consternation overtaking him.
“Face on you, this evening,” called Manny jovially, as Sylvanus tossed him his painter. “Jeezes, you gets blacker every time I sees you.”
“What’re ye at?” asked Sylvanus,
“Jigging for tommycod. About as big as what you got there, for sure,” said Manny, peering down at his catch.
Sylvanus grinned, relaxing a bit beneath Manny’s easy tone. “Probably easier to catch, too. What’s up, b’ye, what’re ye at?” he asked, gesturing toward his cleaned flakes.
“Slack as you’re getting, we figured we’d give you a hand,” said Manny.
Jake snorted. “Slack as
he’s
getting, he means,” he said to Syllie. “Cripes, got to drive him with a whip these days. Good thing we got clear the flakes when we did. Slower than Father’s old sawhorse, he is these days.”
Manny grinned. “Not surly, is he? Don’t mind him, this evening, Syllie, b’ye. The tap broke off his barrel and he lost half his brew down the dirt.”
“Lost it! Old man, I wouldn’t’ve lost nothing if you weren’t so stun—trying to catch it in a leaky bucket. That’s right,” he said incredulously to Sylvanus, “instead of rolling the barrel so’s the tap’s pointing up and stemming the flow, he leaves it as is and tries catching everything flowing out with a bucket—forty gallons of brew in a gallon bucket, and a leaky one at that! Jeezes, no trouble getting you to dip the moon out of the water, buddy. I believes it now, the time you thought your horse was drowning through his arse. True story, sir,” he argued over the loud protest from Manny. “His horse’s hind legs and arse broke down through the pond ice, and he”—Jake pointed at Manny—“was dancing all over the place for us to quick, quick, haul him out afore he drowns. Fool!” scoffed Jake. “One of the old-timers was after telling him a horse takes in water through his arse.”
“Not just any old-timer,” said Manny, “but old Pete Warford never cracked a smile in his life, the old bastard; face like a mourner. Whoever thought he’d crack a joke? Only time he talks is in the confession box. Go on with ye,” he gave over as his brothers kept chortling. “But I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, making a last attempt to get inside the joke, “that horse looked like she was with foal when we got her out, she was so full of piss. Old man, you want to see a horse piss; all night she was pissing—Mother remembers that—the old horse, pissing all night. We had to take her down on shore, flooding Mother’s garden, she was. Laugh all ye like now, but that horse was pissing for two days after we dragged her out of that water, so perhaps she was taking it in through her arse; perhaps there’s something to it, after all. And besides, that old bastard Pete wouldn’t know a joke if it was up his arse. He must’ve seen something like it before.”
“Right, he did,” said Jake. “He seen a horse swim across a pond once and take a piss right after, and that’s the size of it. And then he told it to you—” Jake broke off as one of his boys sang out to him from down the shore.
“Yes, go on, go on, get started!” he called out. Turning to Manny, “We’re going to have to hurry up, b’ye; the boys is waiting.”
“The boys,” scoffed Manny, bringing an extra pitchfork out of the stage. “They can wait all they wants now. I’ll be there when I’m ready.” And leaping down into the boat, he started helping Sylvanus prong the fish up on the stage. “That’s the third camp we’ve helped them build this year,” he said to Sylvanus. “Gets into fights, they do, and one tears it down on the other. Jeezes, they’re like savages. What’s you, lame?” he goaded, pointing to the empty fish-basket beside Jake’s feet.
“You’re both going to be if ye don’t get the hell off my stage,” said Sylvanus, leaning on his fork, eyeing the two brothers suspiciously. “What’s into you this evening? What’re you doing in my boat?”
“We’re buying a skiff and we wants you with us,” said Jake.
Manny never faltered with his forking. “That’s right, Jake, my son, nothing like buttering him up, first. By jeezes, you missed your calling, you did. A priest, that’s what you should’ve been; you’d have everybody converted by now. Anyhow,” and he leaned on his fork, looking soberly at Sylvanus, “that’s about the short of it, brother. The government’s offering money for a smaller-size longliner—skiffs. Thirty footers. Half the size of a liner. Better, much better—not so much overhead, and they’re safe enough for midshore fishing. And anyhow, like Jake said, we’re getting one.”
“You’ll be foolish if you don’t throw in with us,” said Jake, as Sylvanus, hearing Manny through, went back to pronging up his fish. “Nothing left of the inshore. Bit of plankton for the gulls, that’s all the inshore’s going to be soon enough, unless we haves another war. Cured the problem before,” he argued as Manny rolled his eyes. “Blow the bastards off the water for a few years, that’ll do it, that’ll bring the fish back. Father and them seen it with First War, and we seen it too, after the Second—”
“Yes, b’ye, ye-es, for jeezes sake, don’t take us through that, agin,” groaned Manny. He turned back to Sylvanus, who hadn’t broken stride with his pronging.