Idle Hands
Jib: a small rectangular foresail
William trudged ahead of Harley, looking to see if his granny had arrived. She hadn’t. He was behind Emmett, who was behind Daniel, when they walked into the cemetery for the memorial. He spotted the antique dealer’s Abe Lincoln hat peeking above faces he didn’t know. Manny was there. He clasped his hands in front of him. Positioned away to his left was the painter, Robert Trenton.
Off to a side, head bowed, stood a vested piper, tartan kilt, sporran, a dirk in his knee socks and his pipes by his side — full Highland sadness. There had been a piper at the funeral, too. Come to think of it, there had been a large group of men his father’s age, all wearing rowing team jackets. If they were here, they weren’t wearing those jackets today.
He remembered a painting in his father’s sail loft. It showed a piper playing at the dock as a sailboat spirited Scottish immigrants from their homeland to what they hoped would be a better future. The sorrow he remembered from that canvas was painted on faces here in the graveyard.
There was a folding table beside his father’s gravestone. Whatever was on the table was covered by a cloth that looked like a piece of sail material.
He was going to ask Harley about it when she leaned in and whispered, “The Academy.” She pointed beyond the cemetery to the sprawling red and white schoolhouse. It had served generations of Lunenburg children. He remembered that the inscription on the brass bell had told him his grandmother had taught there. His father had attended. He would have attended if they hadn’t moved to Toronto.
Four rectangular turrets reached above the roofline. That painted a spooky fairy-tale image. Who but the brothers Grimm would put a school next to a graveyard with no fence? School- children could just walk through any old time. Maybe fishermen and sailors didn’t put barriers up between life and death. Maybe that’s why his father had found it so easy to make his way here.
Harley nudged William. She pointed her chin to a car pulling up. William’s grandmother slid out of the passenger seat. She wore the same colourful dress she had worn in the birthday card photo. Her smile wasn’t so much flashed as hoisted. She took Harley’s father’s hand.
His grandmother went right over to Daniel. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. He raised a hand as though to make a point, then let it drop. He shuffled sideways to let her stand between himself and Emmett.
William stepped towards her and was rewarded with a broadening smile. She rocked him with an upper-body sway. These were not the robust arms of the woodcutter who saved Red Riding Hood or those of the Prince who saved Snow White. There was no apparent saviour from his grim fairy tale.
“I’m glad you’re here.” She gave him a squeeze. “How are you getting along with your grandfather?”
“Doesn’t do much except sit in his rocking chair.”
“He’s earned his porch privileges. He’ll get over it when this …” She waved her hand by her side to dismiss the assembled grief. “I’ll be back for good when I’ve finished up in Halifax.”
He thought she’d beam at his daring, be proud of her grandson’s cleverness in coming all the way here. What could be more important than being with him and his grandfather?
Daniel held a photo of Jack over his heart. Family and friends scrunched around them. It made him think of elephants leaning together to stop a wounded member of the herd from falling.
Reverend Strawbridge droned an excerpt from the Bible. He ambled through his father’s life like a new driver backing up. Hesitation and uneasy starts bumped towards a conclusion every- one was dying for him to find. Irritated clouds sprinkled drops of holy water to hurry the service’s conclusion.
Emmett stepped in. “It gives me great pleasure, as chairman of the Old Lunenburg Classic Boat Race, to unveil our trophy that has been renamed ‘the Jack McCoy Trophy,’ in tribute to Jack’s dedication to showing young people how to sail.” Emmett pulled the cloth away to reveal the sailing trophy. William leaned in along with a few others to read the new silver band that bore his father’s name.
Emmett continued. “Oh, and we’re fortunate to have William, his son, here to help us remember him. It’s been a year since Jack McCoy’s death. An unexpected death in somebody so young and, well, so full of life. He taught us all the importance of dreaming. He said you couldn’t make a better world unless you could imagine it. That a child without a dream gave everybody nightmares.” Here he faltered a moment, cleared his throat, and then continued. “If you listen carefully, you’ll hear him teaching the angels to sail.”
His comments had mourners wiping their eyes. Harley’s father gave her a squeeze, a father’s squeeze William would never feel again.
“Amen,” said the Reverend Strawbridge. The piper blew a skirl that screeched until the airflow levelled. His fingers moved up and down the chanter. Reverend Strawbridge’s “Amazing Grace” proved that his strength was song.
Harley whispered, “We’ll be heading over to the Legion before driving back up to Daniel’s. You don’t know these people so it’s cool if you want to take your time getting back. Oh, and Mom and Dad brought you some of my clothes that should fit you. Don’t worry; they’re guy things that are just too small for me now.”
William tried to smile. “Oh, ah, thanks. Thank your parents for me.” Hand-me-downs from a girl — really? The mourners shuffled away murmuring, “Sorry for your troubles.”
Daniel squatted to lay the photo on the mounded earth that looked like it was pushing back. In time, William thought, the mound would settle like all the other graves, resistance fading. Fad- ing like memories of his father’s hands that no longer steadied him.
Emmett crouched beside his cousin. “Not the natural order of things, Daniel. We bury our parents, our children bury us. Burying our children … just not right.” He helped Daniel to his feet and they shuffled off.
William had complained to his mother about his father being buried too far away to visit. Yet standing here didn’t feel any better. Emmett had hit the nail on the head; it just wasn’t right.
He spotted Trenton, carrying the trophy, moving deeper into the graveyard to lean by a grave near the far end of the cemetery. He strode away and William headed up to where he’d stood and read the inscription on the headstone: Thomas Trenton, beloved son and brother, now fishing with the Lord. Thomas Trenton was not quite twenty years old when he had died some thirty years ago. Why had he died so young?
-
The next morning he hurried down to the kitchen, hoping his granddad would be fixing breakfast. Harley had done it yesterday when she and Emmett came to get them for the memorial.
There was no answer when William called out. He opened the fridge to find a dried slice of blueberry pie, a carton of orange juice, and leftovers. William grabbed some juice and slammed the fridge door.
The grandfather clock ticked, ticked, ticked; time was slipping away. He didn’t know if he was staying or heading home and admitting defeat. He slapped the frame, kicked the screen door open, and stormed out.
A patch of garden by the veranda housed the tree people. They were small bulbs of tree roots that had been pummelled ashore where his father had found them. Now turned on their stumps, they looked like grey folk with thick dreadlock roots chaffed blunt by the ocean. They had once sheltered amidst greenery. They seemed surprised at their shrivelled habitat. He knew how they felt.
His grandfather’s minivan had a coating of dust on it as though someone was burying it but was in no hurry to finish the job. His father had called it the Funmobile because it was always going off somewhere to do something fun. It smelled of oil and grease in a good way. A way that would fix things. His father said the Fun- mobile was always crammed with sailing gear and laughing people. Not anymore. It lay there, tires soft like muscles that would no longer move. Its sides were marked by rust blisters that leaked its lifeblood.
It made him think of an animal that had been shot, not for the food or clothing it could provide but simply because somebody could shoot it, did shoot it, and hadn’t bothered to bury the corpse.
The utility shed looked more like a small barn with brass portholes. Decades ago his father and grandfather had salvaged the portholes and the wood from a shipwreck on the beach below.
Stepping by the tractor he pulled open one of the big doors. He saw gardening equipment and fishing gear. A sail draped over a beam above a dinghy that looked just like the model that sat on his bedside table. The sail also had number “16” on it.
The sail reminded him of a dream he’d had a number of times since his father’s death. It wasn’t a nightmare, not as bad as reliving the truck crash. It was more of a bad dream.
In it he found himself on a big sailboat with his father. That alone was strange because his dad had been too busy to take him sailing even when he was trying out sails for a client. “Can’t watch you and how the sails perform,” was his explanation. William knew it was a dream because he wasn’t afraid of water as he was since the crash.
In this dream his father was always in the cockpit. Somehow it wasn’t a cockpit but a sewing pit. His father sewed, head down, never looking at him. William called him, but his father couldn’t hear him above the wind and the thunka, thunka, thunk of the industrial needle.
William always started the dream at the bow of the sailboat. His view of the sewing pit was mostly obstructed by sails, lots of billowing sails. He’d try to move towards his father. He’d push and lean against them. The overpowering sails pushed him back. When he finally got to the cockpit, his father wasn’t at the sewing machine anymore. He had somehow gotten past William to the bow. There he looked up at his workmanship, never at William. He was busy running his hands along the sails he’d just finished making.
His father had been so clever with his hands, yet William couldn’t even fix the broken swing. Why hadn’t he taught him how to use his hands? Why hadn’t his father gone to the doctor and just taken a pill or something for his heart like the ads said on TV? Instead he had just worried about sails. William took a deep breath and continued his exploration of the big shed.
He lifted the corner of a large tarp. Instead of a piece of equipment he found his father’s pickup. Rust and mud covered the McCoy Sails logo. He glimpsed the slashed seatbelt that hadn’t saved his father’s life anymore than he had. He jumped back from the tarp and snarled in anger, “What good are your stupid sails, now, huh, huh?”
He turned to the bulging sail hanging over the beam and slapped it. Then he punched it again and again, to no effect. He jerked the weed whacker from its hook, tore at the pull cord till the steel blades whirred. He slashed the sail till there was nothing left but ribbons waving in surrender.