The Doryman Read online

  Now, in the early dawn, his stomach churned as it had when they’d left Burin. Sometimes the food inside seemed to jump up into his chest, but he always managed to swallow it. He felt dizzy, too, and had to work hard to focus his eyes at times. In the bunk at night, it was as if his body were spinning like a top; in fact, the image of his little brother Jimmy spinning a top never left his head. It was seasickness, he reasoned, had to be. But he wouldn’t dare let on, not to anyone. He didn’t know what his father would say. Or the Captain. None of the other men seemed ill, and he didn’t want to let anyone down. So he suffered through it and somehow managed to keep his grub inside. He didn’t know that throwing up would bring at least some relief for a time. No one had told him this and he didn’t ask.

  Richard thought, and hoped, his sickness might disappear when he was in Dory Number 2 with his father. It was a smaller boat with no funny smells, and they’d be in the bracing fresh air. It wouldn’t be unlike the shore fishery, he told himself.

  But now he recalled that even off Beau Bois, a small boat was pretty sheltered, not like here on the open sea. And Little Bay was doubly sheltered. He’d never been out in storms or even rough weather, which he considered this to be, though it seemed not to faze his father. There was no denying he was a sufferer of seasickness. Did it ever get better? Did it go away? Was there anything for it? he wondered.

  As the schooner disappeared into the damp fog that was characteristic of the St. Pierre Bank, he grew frightened in the little dory. What would happen to them if a storm came up or a sudden tidal wave carried them away? He’d heard of tidal waves around here, and everyone knew there was no telling when a storm would erupt. Just how far from the ship were they? It seemed as if they had been rowing forever. In spite of the open air, Richard still felt queasy and his arms ached from rowing. His father’s impatience with him was making him feel worse. Steve was like a rider pushing his horse to the limit. Richard was too tired and sick to realize that such slaving was his father’s only insurance against a hungry belly.

  Then they stopped rowing. Or, rather, Steve did, saying nothing, and Richard quit rowing, too. He hoped against hope that they’d have a little break now, maybe eat a bit of hardtack. As difficult as it was to get it down, hardtack was the only thing that his belly could tolerate.

  But no, the next phase of work started immediately, as Steve set out their first line and tied the dory to the buoy at the far end of the trawl lines. There was a little rest, finally, though Richard could scarcely enjoy it as he rocked helplessly in the boat, fighting a rising queasiness. Steve looked at his son suspiciously but said nothing. Instead he lit a cigarette and smoked it, the wisps of smoke adding to the cocktail of smells and sensations threatening Richard’s stability.

  Then, suddenly, they began to underrun their trawls. They pulled up the line – the work giving Richard a welcome respite from thoughts of his plight – with Steve in the bow gaffing the fish off the hooks. Richard noted the cruelty of his father’s actions, of any fisherman’s actions, including his own, but he dismissed it and rebaited the hooks. Then he dropped the line back into the inky sea to wait for more fish.

  Steve counted every shiny wet fish that appeared in their little boat.

  “Count them yourself,” he ordered Richard. “Every fish. Never trust the skipper or anyone else to count them for you. You just don’t know.”

  Richard had learned that they would be paid by the fish, specifically the number of fish they caught. It didn’t matter then to the fishermen if they caught small fish or huge ones; weight didn’t matter, only numbers did.

  Some five hours later they rowed back to the schooner. The dories had left the Laura Claire like the spokes of a wheel, going outward away from her and each other. Now they returned in balletic fashion.

  Richard wondered how one dory’s lines could get entangled in another with a system like this. He knew this happened, but he couldn’t see how. He was afraid to ask, though. Besides, he didn’t really care; he was feeling unwell again. He was cold, and his stomach refused to settle down. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed blood trickled down his father’s right hand, but the older man ignored it and rowed as if his life depended on it.

  Richard and Steve used pitchforks to unload the slimy, silvery cod from the dory onto the schooner. It was hard work. In the four fish crates they cut, throated and headed the fish, working as rapidly as they could. On the splitting tables, they quickly removed the backbones using square-topped knives with curved blades. In the two fish tubs they washed the dressed fish. Still hurrying all the while, they loaded it into the holds to be salted.

  They threw gurry into the gurry kids, the large wooden pounds they’d built back in Burin, on deck.

  “You can’t dump gurry on the fishing grounds,” Steve said curtly to Richard, his hands bloody as he flung fish guts to the container. “It’d be bad for the water and the fish.” Richard nodded, grateful whenever his father spoke to him like he was just one of the men, but still feeling queasy.

  Finally the Captain joined them in their work. He stood over the liver butt into which the men threw dozens, then hundreds, of cod livers of all sizes. Richard watched Captain Brinton take a fryer, a stove-like contraption with a grate and a fan-shaped funnel, and put it through a square hole in the top of the first butt. He heated the fryer with dry kindling and soft coal at first. Then he added hard coal after a while. When the oil was rendered out of the cod livers, the Skipper removed the fryer and placed it in the next butt to begin the process over again. There were four altogether.

  “So that’s how they make that rotten stuff,” Richard said to himself. He could taste the horrible oil in his mouth, remembering his mother’s insistence that all her children swallow it every day in winter. The memory made his stomach begin flipping and flopping again.

  When all their fish was finally salted, Steve jumped back into his dory and Richard followed him. Again they rowed out to the fishing grounds, again not saying a word, and again they fished and returned to the Laura Claire, where they gutted and salted their fish. They did this twice more that first day.

  That night Richard was so exhausted even his stomach pains and spinning head could not keep him awake. For the first time since leaving Burin, he slept soundly.

  Chapter Eleven

  One day was like the next in the Banks fishery. The men’s hours became an endless round of rowing, baiting hooks, letting out trawl, hauling trawl, unhooking fish, counting fish, pitching fish onto the schooner, heading them, gutting them, tossing their livers and guts, throwing them into the hold, salting them, rowing, fishing. The only variation came from their meals, which the cook tried his best to make satisfying, and the dreams that filled their few hours of sleep each night. Through it all, Richard tried his best to ignore the queasiness that never left him and sometimes threatened to overwhelm him.

  By the fourth day of fishing Richard was throwing up uncontrollably. He hadn’t eaten much the whole trip because of his sickness, so before long he vomited green bile, which cut his throat with its bitterness. Then convulsive dry heaves overtook him. His eyes were bloodshot from the fruitless effort of throwing up. Tiny pinpricks of red appeared on his pale cheeks, put there by the force of his retching. As the men rose from their bunks in the morning dark, Richard found he could hardly stand up.

  The men gathered around him after breakfast, the very smell of which made him retch even more. They said little but looked at him intently, trying to figure out if he was seized by seasickness or something even worse.

  “Have some hardtack,” Matty suggested. “It’s good for what ails you.”

  “You’ll be able to hold it down,” Larry Walsh added. “That’s the thing for seasickness.”

  Richard slowly shook his lolling head as he leaned against the bulkhead of the galley.

  “Drink something,” said Danny, sounding worried for once. “
You got to have water in you or you’ll get the dry heaves.”

  Richard nodded, meaning he already had the dry heaves, but the men misunderstood. One of them shoved a mug of water into his face. Richard licked his dry, cracked lips and stuck his tongue into the mug. He tried to drink a little. But he immediately began vomiting again and he couldn’t stop himself. He sprayed drops of water and the bile that remained in his stomach all over the bulkhead and the floor underneath it.

  Richard was almost too sick to feel embarrassment, but his face grew red and hot anyway in some sort of primitive, almost automatic response. No one said anything. One of the men backed into the galley to get a rag cloth and bucket.

  “He’s awful sick, that boy,” Matty said finally.

  “There’s no time for sickness here,” Steve said gruffly. “And there’s nothing wrong with him that can’t be cured.”

  Without warning, he leaned his right arm back, then pulled it forward and hit the left side of Richard’s head. Then the right. Then the left again. And the right. The thuds echoed in the boy’s head, and he winced from the pain and the dizziness that enveloped him. But Steve went on boxing his son’s ears till the boy almost blacked out.

  “Give the lad a break, Steve, b’y,” Danny said sternly.

  “He’s fifteen years of age, for God’s sake,” someone else added.

  “And he won’t be seasick anymore, I guarantee it,” Steve answered. He looked at his son on the floor now, shivering slightly and trying to hold in his whimpers. “Now get up and get to work,” he barked.

  Somehow Richard rose slowly from the floor, his head feeling as fragile as an eggshell. He said nothing. He couldn’t have spoken if he wanted to. He tried to focus his eyes on the steps in front of him. He ignored the men who still stood standing around him. Then he followed his father up top and to Number 2 Dory, where they would spend most of their day.

  The air was cold and wet with drizzle and fog. It was hard to see beyond the schooner. Richard pulled his oilskins close to his body and got into the dory. His head was filled with pain and his stomach ached. Even worse, he felt an excruciating combination of shame and fear. But gradually he became frozen, all of him, his mind, his body, his heart. And, despite everything, he was able to carry on. Somehow he didn’t feel as seasick as he had since the Laura Claire hauled out of the harbour.

  Though the weather was miserable, the fishing that day was easier. There was a fish on almost every hook. For once, neither of them cut their fingers. Richard’s seasickness levelled off to a manageable state and he tried to forget about the morning’s events.

  As they rowed back to the schooner, Richard watched his father out of the corner of his eye. His mother, he knew, would be disgusted with what her husband had done to his son. But she’d probably be afraid to say too much. Instead, she would treat her son to lassie bread and talk quietly to him as he got into bed. She’d treat him like he was her little boy even though he was almost a man. There was no sense trying to say anything to Old Steve. Here on the St. Pierre Bank, Richard’s life back in Little Bay seemed so far away now. Now Richard wondered: Was his father cruel? Was he mad? Was he human? Was he possessed by a demon or something? Did he know it hurt like hell to have your head beaten in?

  Richard looked at Steve’s uneven lips, sternly pressed together. He took in the sunken eyes, the long, thin hands, and the tightness of his father’s body as he imagined it through the oilskins. He saw the baldness of the older man’s head, the remaining hairs turned grey and white, and the crevices that were worn deep into his narrow face. The boy realized that he could not recall ever seeing his father smile. He watched the frantic way Steve rowed. It was the same frantic way he did everything. His intensity never wavered, onshore and at sea. He was not yet forty.

  How old did Steve say he was when his own father first took him out here? Fourteen? No, younger maybe? Did his father box his ears, too? Did anyone say, “Don’t be so hard on him, he’s just a boy”? Richard saw the constant fear of starvation in his father’s eyes. No, he didn’t think they did say those things.

  Richard didn’t feel anger or hatred towards his father. He felt only fatigue. And a hardness in his chest that had not been there before.

  Around them were low grey clouds and choppy dark waves. They were in the middle of a mizzling rain, marked by drizzle and a thick mist that seeped into the bones. There were no blackbacks or hagdowns sailing through the air. They could see no other dory. The water made the only sound, and it sounded angry.

  Richard pushed his teenaged body into his large wooden oar and helped haul the dory back to the schooner.

  Chapter Twelve

  Finally, Captain Brinton decreed that it was time to return to port. When Matty told him this, Richard was so relieved he let out air that he did not know he had been holding in. He hated it here in the middle of the cold ocean, the middle of nowhere, a godawful place where they did nothing but suffer from back-breaking work and bone-deep fatigue. He was sick of all of it: the hardtack, the salt beef that was parcelled out to them, the fish soup that they gulped down every evening. He had never experienced life as so fruitless and gloomy. He felt like a bear in the woods that does nothing but search for food. There was no joy, no happiness, never any laughter. Out here, there was only the trepidation he felt in the presence of his father and the Captain, worry about how many fish they were catching, and fear of the weather that could turn at any moment and take their lives.

  Richard tried to take pride in his work – he knew that’s what his mother would tell him to do – but somehow he couldn’t always do this. There was too much fatigue in his heart and in his young body. Sometimes, although he would never tell his mother, there was even hatred, for the water, for his father, for the Captain and the damned Banks fishery.

  He thought of these things as the Laura Claire headed around Chapeau Rouge. “Red hat,” he remembered Steve said it was called in French. He thought of the ladies on the streets of Burin, the ladies with the fancy hats with feathers coming out the top. Then he thought of his own mother and her big strong hands. She will never wear a fancy hat, he thought.

  He knew, too, that he wouldn’t be able to buy nice dresses from a store for his sisters. It had gradually dawned on him as the men talked and tried to joke about it that he’d never see money this trip. Nor any other trip this year. Maybe never. Instead, all his slaving might help erase a little of his father’s debt, built up through two and a half decades in the Banks fishery. That’s all his hard work would do, all it could do. It’d mean they’d have tea, some flour, and a bit of sugar, that’s all. It’d keep them alive, but not prosperous, nor enjoying the rewards of their labour.

  He remembered setting out that February day from Little Bay to Mooring Cove with his father. He recalled the anticipation he’d felt, in spite of the fear, and even the hopes he’d dared to feel. He laughed an old man’s laugh as the keenness of his disappointment took hold. Things were the way they were and there was nothing he could do about it.

  The Laura Claire’s first stop was Burin, where the Brinton family’s enterprises were headquartered. Back through the passage of islands they sailed, their hold bursting with fish salted down. Back to the berth between Path End and Bull’s Cove. Once again, the streets of the busiest town in the bay filled Richard’s eyes and teased him with dreams. They would stay here a couple of days, to be spent unloading fish. Then they’d move into Mortier Bay, where they’d bring fish to the women who waited in Beau Bois, Little Bay, Creston, Marystown, and Mooring Cove.

  During their first day ashore, Richard managed to get away from the Laura Claire and the fish-covered wharf alongside her. He felt the unsteadiness of his legs. Sea legs, they were called. It took him awhile to walk completely upright and straight without any difficulty. Many of the men landing here walked like this, so many that the harbour seemed full of drunks.

  On the wharf
he struggled to get his footing. Eventually he walked steadily, and then with the step of a man. He looked not at the muddy spring ground but all around him at the carpenters carrying lumber, the fishermen pushing wheelbarrows full of dead fish, the horses clip-clopping by, the sheep that scrambled up the hills that ringed the harbour. His toes were curled under in the boots that had become too small for him, but as he walked, he held his head high.

  It didn’t occur to him that Steve might be looking for him, that his father wouldn’t approve of him taking half an hour to take himself off on a walk. He couldn’t worry about such things now. He wasn’t afraid of his father anymore. He was just desperate to have a few minutes to himself.

  At the top of one of the hills, he saw a familiar blond head out of the corner of his eye. Yes, there he was, there was Peter Moulton crossing the path that led from one of the largest white buildings in the harbour to the other. Even at this distance, Peter seemed taller. His increased height made the confidence with which he walked even more noticeable. Richard watched him silently.

  He thought of Peter’s life, working ashore with his uncles the whole year round. Even in summer. He imagined the work the young man did, shaping from beautiful wood the boats in which the men of the South Coast would spend their lives fishing. Peter, he knew, would never be paralyzed with seasickness and have his ears boxed by his father as a cure. He’d never have to lick the blood off his hands on a cold, lonely offshore bank.

  When he had met Peter weeks ago, Richard had wondered if he could do work like him, work that was filled with craftsmanship and comfort. He smiled at the thought of this, but his smile was rueful, even bitter. He knew now that such work could never be his. Fishing on the St. Pierre Bank, hauling the heavy wet trawls into the dory and ripping the fish off the hooks had told him somehow. He had learned his place in the world, he knew where his destiny lay – on a cold, wet sea in a dory – and he knew in his marrow he had no choice but to accept it. As he thought of this, something inside his body twisted. He would never even voice his wish to do the work of an onshore tradesman. He had learned not to, so he kept it to himself from that day on.