II
The road through to Windsor was worn. I had never traveled this far in land, and as the buildings gave way to forest, I was starting to feel the way only traveling can bring. A soft tingling in the small of the back, a slight tension in the shoulders accompanied by the arrest of somewhere new and the whispering sublimity of it all. When I was younger, traveling had always been in the safest and predictable conditions – as vacations or going with my father on his business trip.
Hymel and I were crammed in a large surveying truck driven by whom, I guessed, was a large labourer. I can’t recall his name at the moment, or if we were even introduced. He did not speak in the truck. Hymel attempted to make conversion with me several times during the journey but to be quit honest, I’m not one for polite conversation in automobiles. I find it necessarily overextended and I’m distracted by the terrible noise and constant jostling.
The trip took us most of the day. It was coming to be the early evening when we reached the Annapolis Valley. The dense fir forest had given way to a flat countryside that once was marshland. There were deep dykes of red mud veining across the green fielded valley, and behind them, the landscape was rowed with small apple trees. My eyes followed the road out toward the horizon. My eye glazed along the gravel, to a barbed wire fence, beside it, to a blue and rust tractor and a cow with a white face. It gazed above to a sweeping, weeping willow tree and beyond that, a green North Mountain.
It was a kin of the Appalachian Mountain line that veined up Eastern Canada and Cape Split, where the ocean claimed it. I wasn’t sure how we would make it up such a slope but the labourer seemed to know the route well and we wound our way slower up the mountain road.
Once at the top, we stopped at a clearing by the road, and peered between the trees, out over the great valley. It looked so far away; like a great painting – not because of aesthetics but because of the way the details blur away from a far. As I panned the landscape, the valley looked a great chessboard with the various colours of grains and agriculture. The Manus Basin framed this image; its own boarders vanished of to the East of me
“It’s amazing,” I whispered.
“Indeed,” Hymel replied. “Wait until you see the Split. You’ll never forget it.”
The road led down, across the top of the mountain, winding between small houses and modest farms. I never noticed the decline, yet after twenty or so minutes I saw the Bay of Fundy, auburn under the setting sun. My eye followed the lapping water. As it traced the beach, that motion was a caress in the world of the picturesque.
“Oh my,” I was at a loss for words.
“Yeah, it’s nice.” The labourer broke his silence.
“Indeed,” Hymel responded.
We entered an off road that took us down toward the shoreline the sky had grown dark and the stars shown out. The road was bordered by think alder bushes as tall as the truck. They hugged the road tightly and offered us nothing but the dark.
The head lights finally stopped on a small, white cottage at the end of the road, in a space cut from the looming pin trees and bush. From the outside it seemed too small to house two men, let alone the three of us. There was no electricity and the landscape was black, untouched by civilization’s artificial light. It was hard for me to imagine that this was how people once lived and how some still do.
I stepped from the truck in the moist cool air. I could smell the ocean.
The labourer started to unpack our luggage. Bib, his name was Bib - I don’t know what his real name is, but that was what Hymel told me to call him.
“What do you think?” Hymel said slapping my back.
“Oh, it’s nice.” I said. “I can’t wait to see the inside.”
“You’re not a very good liar, are you Raymond?” Bib scoffed as he passed behind me. I’d be damned if I was going to bow to his crude understanding of me. I grabbed my bags from the hairy fists.
“Actually, I got these.”
Hymel’s silhouette was fumbling in the shadow of the cottage. The ringing of keys and the rasping of his boots against the wooden doorstep. I remember these sounds vividly. He drug his feet when he walked. The door creaked open and his shadow disappeared inside. Bib followed with the bags, and I watched overwhelmed by the sudden realisation that the night was not truly dark but not truly light. The moon, almost full, cast a heavy hue down on the earth. Everything glowed in a dark tone, and looked away from the cabin out over the water and in the crispness of the moonlight in the distance, I saw the foreboding barb of the Split. On it, there was a tiny flicker in the dark - flame, perhaps a fire, all with a strange blue hue.
*
The next morning we rose early. When I woke, Hymel was already outside tending to his surveying gear. Bib, who turned out to be more than a labourer, was preparing breakfast: ham, potato-hash, and boiled tea.
The cottage had but a single room that served as kitchen, bedroom and parlour. The latrine was outside in a shack which also housed the firewood. We slept on wall mounted bunks with woollen sheets and checkered quilts. It managed little sleep for the ocean’s lapping waves seemed to thrash in my ears all night. I dressed with Bib’s back turned to me. He didn’t say a word. I slipped into my boots and joined Hymel outside.
“Raymond, how did you sleep?” Hymel asked. He was digging under a think tarp on the back of the truck; there must have been hundreds of pounds of equipment.
“I slept fine.” I lied. “I found the waves to be quite soothing.”
“As do I.” Hymel said. “If your government accepts my proposal, I’ll be spending many of my days here and that would be no downfall.”
“Indeed,” I relied. The grass and air was still cool. I turned toward the water to better see what my eyes could only infer the night before. But what lie before shocked me. I saw no water at all, only red mud as far as I could see. The mud was rippled and was devoid of all life.
“That’s the mud flats of the
“Where is it?”
“Across the bay, in Parsburough.”
That was the key to Hymel’s project, the shear awe that I felt knowing that all the water in sight could be pulled away must have struck Hymel the same way. Yet while he thought to profit from it, I could only stare, mouth open. And through it all, like Apollo, the
The goal for the day was to go to the local wharf and take some surveying measurements. The art of this craft was, and is still, completely unknown to me. All I learned from Hymel was that it was monotonous and scrupulous. It was certainly not the manner of work for me.
After breakfast the three of us set out for the wharf. We drove along the end of the cliffs to come here, rock face was toothed and cut from the land with deep gouges. While Hymel and Bib set to measuring, I walked about the place, looking for, well, anything interesting.
The wharf was nestled in a shallow cove, carved into the forty foot basalt clefts – dark, rough and black in the moisture of the shore fog. The dock itself was located at the bottom of a steep paved road smoothed in the rocky landscape, for bringing the boats in and out of the water. It was littered with wooden lobster traps and netting. Small lobster boats lined the wharf, all setting on tires, in the red mud. Beached, so to speak, by the recess of the tide. Hymel and Bib set up on the high point of a hill, down the road, where they had planted a metal post.
I wondered down the cement roadway toward the boats. I tilted my body back as I walked, to compensate for the incline.
There were bins upon bins of nets stacked upon stacks of traps. I saw one collection of traps painted orange, with “DC” painted on their buoys.. The majority of them looked to be completely out of order. These seemed to be the only traps to be ruined.
I jumped when someone yelled behind me form the road.
I turned to see a short, stout man, in rubber boots and a woollen jacket. He had salt and pepper hair that extended down his hardened face around a bushy moustache. The rest of his face formed a cleanly shaved scowl.
“Get away from those.” He yelled waving an arm. “Who the hell are you and what to you think you’re doing to my traps?”
I back away from the pile, not knowing if I was truly being accused of vandalism or not.
“I’m sorry sir.” I stammered. “I just noticed that these traps were broken and I was just having a look. ‘Just callous curiosity, sir. I suppose I should know to be wondering around. But I can assure you…”
“Jesus, son. Calm down” He sighed. “Your words are just running down you chin.”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“I had to call at you at least to see it were. You see what’s happened to my traps already so when I see someone poking around on the dock when were ain’t no tide, I figured I’d better come and see. When you didn’t run, I figured it wasn’t you. You don’t look the type to.”
“Indeed,” I agree turning back toward the traps.
“Is your name Dale Cornelius?”
“Hm.” He groaned. “Why? You’re not government, that’s for sure.”
“And why is that?”
“Because for one, you’re foreign, a Chap or Irishmen…”
“England.”
“Fine…and for two, you’re with here with that Yank, Hymel and his ‘goon.”
He examined his broken traps with pursed lips. There was a silence.
“Vandalism?” I asked, pointed toward to traps.
“You could say that,” he coughed. “Someone around here ain’t to keen on me, it seems.”
“My name is Raymond Bale,” I extended my hand. “I’m sorry that I appeared so suspicious but actually it’s quit strange that I’ve run into you.”
He shook my hand as he crouched there.
“Is that so?” He stood up and began to sort out some of the salvageable traps out of the bin and stacked them on the dock. “And why is that?”
“I was actually hoping to find you. I read of you in the paper.”
“The paper…” He trailed off in his work. “Look at this mess.”
“Yes... The claimed that you found the shark here, in your herring nets. That’s not really the reason I’m here. I went…”
He stopped his work and looked over at me. I could not read his squinted face. It was a part anger, maybe confusion. Something alarming? I’m so tempted to attribute to his character all I know now, after the fact. This account can only be a post-script to the events. I can only speak of him as past. I want to feel confident in knowing that he was concerned - to have it not simply be my concern now for what was about to rust against me. Yet, his face was only puzzling to me – like a signal with no message then and now.
“Is something wrong?” I asked and turned, looking up toward Hymel. I was afraid I may have started some sort of scandal with the fisherman. It would not have been favourable in Hymel were I to come all the way up there, just to bicker with the locals.
Cornelius traced my gaze to the hill where Hymel and Bid worked. With a crooked look, he began to walk away up the hill, leaving his traps.
“Mr. Cornelius,” I called after him. He was silent.
“Wait sir.” I followed. “Have I done something to offend you? Mr. Cornelius.... please slow down.”
“Listen, Mr. Bale.” He barked as he climbed the cemented slop. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I do know that you’re not in good company. No sir. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll deal with that mess latter,” he pointed to the traps. “And say farewell to ya.”
We were reaching the road.
“Do you know Dr. Furlong?” I asked.
“Furlong,” Cornelius turned back. “Furlong’s dead.”
“What?”
He stopped: “He’s dead boy. So, you ain’t going learn nothing from him.”
“Really? Well, how’d that happen?”
“If I was you, I’d go home.” He stepped on the road where his blue Ford pick-up was parted.
Hymel and Bib had begun to walk down the road towards us and the truck.
“Go home?”
“That what I said,” Cornelius stepped into the truck.
“I’m not I understand, sir. Am I being threatened here?” I said.
Cornelius leaned out his window and stuck his thick finger in my face. I thought he may strike me, or shove me into the bushes. He lowered his finger, and signed heavily – his breath was smelt of rum and boiled eggs.
“The Split took him,” he gestured toward the woods. “There’s a leads in there that goes all the way to the split. It’s the only one. He going along there, wondered to close to edge, and…” he paused, “well, he fell. Coast guards found him in New Brunswick four days later, swollen, just bobbing along in the tide.”
“That’s come at a surprise,” I said. I had questions but no real direction. I looked at him like a mute. After a moment, he reached up and turned the ignition.
“The shark...” I whispered.
“Yea,” he said. He seemed to speak past me.
“34 feet long, 17 feet across.” I said.
“Is that what they said?” he smiled.
“Basking sharks don’t grow that big. Do they?”
“No, not usually.” He looked in my eyes, like we had just made an agreement.
“So? What do you make of that?” I asked.
There was a silence. At last I spoke: “So, not a shark.”
Another silence....
“... it came here in the body of a shark.” Cornelius said at last. “And, Mr. Bale, it doesn’t need you to disturb it.”
And he drove away, disappearing on the road as it laced amongst the scattered white houses.
I was chilled those last words: It came in here in the body of a shark. And the events with Furlong... I looked out at the Split and wondered what kind of secret was being kept when he fell over its edge. The fragments, the notes, – “origin unknown” – this was, naively intriguing. I don’t know what feelings I had now. Perhaps, a slight pain to my stomach, a tension in my spine?
Over that next hour the urge grew. Those blank spots occupying the corpse on the beach and Furlong - well he had studies the damn thing! I had to know what happened. Yet, there was also a sullenness to his voice, something that pollutes.
“Raymond!” Hymel’s call broke my trance; he waved me up to the survey point with some excitement. “The tides coming back in. Come see from this hill, here.”
The red mud, stretch out like velvety sweeps - a scarlet desert, a barren plane. As if drawn with a single horsehair, the horizon was trimmed with silver, glistening in the sun. It slowly grow larger, advancing, like an army of polished tin soldiers marching home. What was caked mud, was now lapped, and then swallowed up, by the waves. And then I was standing there, looking out that an ocean.
***
That night, in the cabin, Hymel discussed the importance of the measurements they’d taken that day. Most of what he said, if not all of it, was in engineering terms, far beyond my understanding. Bib, as per usual, kept silent. The night was chilled. The moon was approaching full and the breeze of the water was crisp.
We talked, lying in our bunks, each with a mug of black, stove boiled coffee. At first, I found the taste abhorred, acidic, but after some reflection, it seemed that bitter, stove boiled tea and coffee were best drank under such frigid conditions. It complemented the salty pork stew we ate for dinner. Through it all, I could hear the steady pounding of the waves outside. It throbbed through me but kept my heart steady.
“I saw you talking with that fisherman, Cornelius.” Hymel said after a several soundless sips of coffee.
“Yes,” I responded quickly. “He’s an odd duck…” I trailed off into my mug. I would have preferred not to discuss Cornelius. To be honest, I was trying to keep him off my mind. The very thought of our conversation makes my stomach ache.
“You know,” Hymel said. “You should be careful interacting with him.”
“Is that so?” I said into my mug.
“There’s a reason why his traps had been vandalized.”
I was surprised he would have known that detail.
“You’re astute,” I said and then I lied: “I didn’t really know those were his.”
“People around here aren’t too fond of him. They blame him for a lot of things. None of which are good.”
“It sounds like you’re demonizing him,” I said cheerfully.
“He’s dangerous.” It was Bib who spoke, after not speaking for hours.
To put it plainly, I was confused. I thought, hadn’t Cornelius warned about Hymel, and just then, Hymel was warning me about Cornelius.
“What did people say he’s done?” I asked.
It was Bib again who answered. Slowly and curtly.
“He’s sick. Sees things and scares people with his recollections. He used to be a good man, hard working, honest, but last going off, he’s not been speaking other than to trouble folks...”
“Essentially,” Hymel interrupted. “He’s delusional. Now, I don’t know if it to with that or not but the other fishermen around here a trying to drive him out. They’ve smashed the majority of his traps and someone cut a hole in his boat. I guess that want him to leave the Bay.”
“My God,” I said. “Have the police not said something? I find it hard to believe that you can just run a man out of town these days.”
Hymel laughs. “There are no police here, Raymond.”
“Hm,” I groaned.
“What were you two talking about?” Hymel asked after a sip of coffee.
“Well: he just asked who I was, what I was doing there, where I was coming from; the usual niceties. Then he left. I guess he wasn’t all that concerned with me. I don’t think he much cares for the English.”
“He didn’t say anything else?” Hymel laughed.
I can’t even recall why this paranoia snuck up on me to lie. Why would Hymel have been concerned by what Cornelius told me? He probably would have laughed at the foolishness of the man. I could have played the snob and attributed his words to the speculative naiveté of small towns, or the credulous assumption of the uncultured. It’s a rouse, a charade, blunder of the overeager, I should have wondered these things. I should have told Hymel the truth but that eerie- feeling has stayed with me.
“No,” I said.
Bib knew I wasn’t telling the truth. But, why expect me to lie in the first place? No, Bib and I were playing a game then. He looked at through one squinted eye, smiled, and then closed it. He never said a thing. Never. What was he thinking? It seems that he was always playing his own game. But what were the rules? I thought. This paranoia now has its reasons, but at the time, it coxed me deeper in. No, I had to be playing. It was the same kind of silent agreement I had made with Cornelius. I still didn’t understand the rules, but I thought I knew content: there is no word for what washed up on the beach, and no way to name it, or even gesture toward it with plan words. It is somehow forbidden, I thought.
With this, the tokens moved again, a move devised by the closing of an eye.
"It came here in the body of a shark..."
ReplyDeleteNice creepy stuff Hiltz.