The Secret Tunnel
Rigging knife: a sailor’s knife used in managing lines
William’s stomach knotted. He threw up in a bucket. After his stomach had settled down, he rinsed his mouth out three times, then leaned against the sink to catch his breath. He released the eyehooks and pushed out the screen and watered the rhododendron with the sink’s spray hose.
William’s chest heaved from the effort of digging the hole behind the shed. He had placed his father’s logo face up before shovelling dirt on top of the sail.
The place was getting on his nerves with the quiet, the absence of life and activity. He looked around. What change might he tackle first? He had to do something. He couldn’t face his dad’s truck, so resurrecting the Funmobile seemed an obvious choice.
He found a long faded green hose. It snaked through the tall grass like an emaciated boa. He sprayed off the first layers of grime that was part salt powder, part dust. He filled a bucket with soapy water. With a soft brush he scrubbed away the most upsetting sight — the blood-coloured rust stains running down its flanks.
He dried the windows. He took a bicycle pump and inflated the tires. The proper tire pressure sticker was on the inside of the door. The tire gauge was in the glovebox just like it was in his dad’s truck.
Then he blended a gas and oil mix and filled the weed whacker like he did with the one they had in Toronto. He changed the steel blades in favour of nylon strings. He pulled on ear protectors, safety goggles, and a well-worn pair of gloves. He cut the tall grass for more than an hour.
The sun stretched its gaze to where Daniel now rocked on the veranda. A post kept his face away from the sun’s reach.
William pulled his ear protectors off and swatted flecks of wet grass stuck to his pant legs. He called out. “Granddad, yesterday Uncle Emmett called to say he was driving over this afternoon. I thought I’d go into town with him for some groceries.”
His grandfather rocked in and out of the gloom. William noticed his shirt was inside out. On the next tilt he saw patches of greying stubble his razor had missed. A fly landed on his granddad’s hand. Unable to get his attention, it zigzagged away.
William heard, then saw, Harley biking up the laneway. She led a spare bike with her left hand. He didn’t want to ask his granddad in front of her, so he hurried his request. “I, uh, could do with some money, for groceries and, uh, while I’m on the subject of eating here, Granddad, I was wondering if we could talk about me staying here with you for …” The fly buzzed back to answer.
William smacked his hands against his pants, helicoptering more shreds of grass back to earth.
“You’re just like Mom and Dad. Never there when you need them,” he grumbled.
William ignored Harley’s reproachful stare. He clumped his gear back to the shed.
“I don’t think that’s nice of you, William.”
“Is it nice that Granddad sits there, just waiting to … and every- one keeping stupid sails around. Even Uncle Emmett said motors were more efficient.”
She started to argue but stopped, threw her arms out, and said, “I brought you a bike.”
William raised a hand in meek thanks. He realized she might have interpreted it as waving her off. Either way, she pedalled back to Lunenburg.
Another hour of weed whacking patched his shirt with sweat. William trudged into the kitchen for a glass of water. He held it to the light for inspection. The last thing he wanted were more visions of sailboats. A mouse skittered across the floor and disappeared under a kitchen island. William nudged the plinth with the toe of his shoe. It fell back.
He peered beneath the island counter and saw a faint light bounce off a shiny surface. His fingers reached a steel ring set into the floorboards. With a few grunts, he pushed the counter across the pine floor. He froze.
William called out the window, “Hey, Granddad, do you know you have a trap door here in the kitchen? Granddad?” Only the wind coming off the sea chimed an answer.
He pulled on the ring. It wouldn’t budge. He tried tapping and heard a hollow sound under the trap door. He clasped the ring with both hands and flexed his knees till they burnt. Like everything in Lunenburg, the rusty hinges wouldn’t yield to him.
He slipped the tip of the fireplace poker under the ring. A piece of firewood gave the poker three feet of leverage. It bowed a little under his weight but nothing more. He bounced his weight on the poker. The trap door jerked open with a rusty screech.
He swung the door open. A set of dusty wooden stairs led to a black, cobweb-filled tunnel. Wind whistled up the stairs. Then he heard a moan. A moment later there was another. “Hello,” he called down. “Anyone there?” He didn’t want to go down the spooky stairs, but what if someone was in trouble? He couldn’t wait for his granddad to react. That might be too late.
Unable to find a flashlight, he settled for a lit candle in a jar. He shoved matches into his jeans pocket and risked one foot at a time down into the tunnel.
Wind shrilled along a dark passage ahead. Then he heard the moans again, this time closer. He yelped as he tripped over an empty crate with Dark Rum, 1923 written in fading paint. His father had told him the house had belonged to a Nova Scotian rum-runner before Daniel had bought it.
He came to a wooden wall with a curtained partition on the left. Rusty lengths of chain hung before him, held together by ancient padlocks. The sounds came from behind the tattered partition. He crouched, drew back a dusty edge of the curtain, and held out the jar with the candle.
There, inches from his nose, was a grinning devil’s face. He screamed. His backward leap sent him crashing through chains and rotten boards.
William smacked his head with a thunk. He landed face down on cold sand. He coughed, blinked, and listened to the ocean’s surf licking the shore. He rolled over and looked up. The wooden hull of a boat in its cradle towered over him. He felt the back of his skull where it had hit the keel. The skin over the bump hadn’t split. He would keep going.
Relieved by the sight of sunlight streaking in through cracks in the boathouse, William pushed on the doors. The rusty chain and padlock yielded only a couple of inches. He relit his candle. Then he crawled back through the splintered wood into the tunnel to investigate what had startled him. The devil’s face — goatee, horns, and all — was painted on a ceramic pitcher. Beside it sat a matching bowl, decorated with an identical image. They were perched on a shelf in a small space. Beside it someone had jammed four chairs and a table with a dusty deck of cards.
He clambered through the splintered wood and rusty chains into the boathouse. The name on the boat’s transom was Fathom. The hairs on his neck stood up. It was the same name as the boat in his dream. How could that be?
William climbed the wooden ladder to its spotless cockpit. He stared through the high window to the top of Daniel’s house, a hundred yards away.
His eye went to a flash of light reflected in the cockpit. It was his dad’s rigging knife. The words William McCoy in gold inlay in the handle left no doubt. He picked it up. How did it get here? How cool. Someone had found it at the wreck site, no doubt. Why leave it here? he wondered. He examined the four-inch blade and marlinspike, the long, tapered piece of steel flipped out of either end of the handle. There was no indication of rust. This was too weird. He pocketed the knife. There had to be a way back to sunlight without using the tunnel.
He grabbed the bowl and pitcher with the devil’s face. The big doors were locked. The door on the side was held shut only by a small piece of wood that swivelled up and down into a catch. Strange, he thought, the latch was thick with dust but the cockpit was clean as a whistle. Maybe there was just more wind up there.
He pulled the door open and closed it, then shook it so the piece of wood fell back into the locking mechanism. He slipped the knife blade in the gap between the door and the frame and was able to lift the piece of wood out of the catch. He had figured out how to get in and out of the boathouse without using the tunnel. He picked up the bowl and pitcher and smiled at the devil.
Back at his grandfather’s house, he washed and dried the bowl and pitcher. He placed them on a shelf just as Daniel trudged in, sloshing tea from his mug.
William took a cloth and wiped up the tea drips.
“Hey, Granddad, look what I found down there, behind the boatshed. The one with Fathom on its cradle. Why don’t you sail Fathom?”
“My father, the Real McCoy, gave it to me. Probably to make up for the fact he only discovered he had a son in Lunenburg when I was a lad.”
“That was nice of him. So why don’t you sail Fathom?”
“I went to Halifax to meet him. But he’d already left Halifax. McCoy had bought that schooner and had done a detour by way of Saint-Pierre. By the time I came home, I found out he had murdered a man.” William wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. Had his grandfather just told him the Real McCoy had murdered someone?
“Obviously I wouldn’t have anything to do with a murderer. So McCoy left me a note.”
“What kind of note?”
His granddad’s face hardened. “We don’t talk about that note in this house. Nobody in this house has anything to do with that boat. It’s got a blood curse on it. I would have sold it except for McCoy’s legal stipulation. Fathom has to stay in the family and not be sold outside the family.” With that Daniel plunked his cup on the counter. He shuffled past him.
William wanted to ask about the murder. Who had died? Why? Was McCoy charged and found guilty? But he knew what hap- pened when he asked his grandfather and his mother questions. Besides, Uncle Emmett was just driving up.
Emmett and Harley brought him and his bicycle into town. After her criticism he didn’t feel like sharing his discovery of the tunnel or asking her about the murder. She sat in the front and stared straight ahead.
As they approached the Fisheries Museum, William spotted a sign: Help Wanted — Apply Within. A job would make up for his missing allowance. He was afraid to ask his grandfather for pocket money. And after their blowup he sure couldn’t ask Harley. “I think I’ll stop off here at the museum, Uncle Emmett.” He caught Emmett’s stare in the rear-view and added, “Please.”
“Good idea. There’s a section on rum-runners — including your great-grandfather, the Real McCoy.” Emmett pulled his vehicle over and added, “By the way, have you given any thought to entering this year’s race with your grandfather? It’s a McCoy tradition. Daniel used to love racing with Jack.”
William didn’t want to admit his fear of water since the accident. “Granddad doesn’t look to be in any shape to handle a boat.”
“Your grandfather will bounce back. Daniel was always what you might call the strong, silent type. Losing Jack’s left him more silent than strong — a terrible blow.”
“I know all about that,” William blurted, impatient to inquire about the job.
Harley corkscrewed around. “Chill out, will you? You’re angry at your dad for dying — fine. But stop taking it out on your granddad and mine.”
Emmett’s hand shot up like a stop sign. “Enough! Both of you.”
“Oh, come on, Grandpa. He’s not the only one with problems right now, right? We’ve got enough to worry about with Daniel’s home, not to mention the loft —”
“Then let’s not mention it,” he pressed. “These are our problems, not William’s.”
“If he’s part of this family —” Emmett’s raised hand stopped Harley.
What was that all about? What was wrong with the sail loft? What was wrong with his granddad’s house? With a shrug and a mumbled “thanks” to Emmett he unloaded his bicycle.
Emmett called out the window. “I’ll drop some food off for you and Daniel a little later. Here’s some money for your admission to the museum. Bye for now.”
Inside, William was told that someone in human resources would be with him shortly. So he waited at the rum-runners exhibit. He stared at a photo. His great-grandfather, the Real McCoy, stood on a dock, wearing an old-style rain slicker and a fedora. It was identical to the one he’d seen on the schooner with the red jib. Maybe it wasn’t the water. Weird stuff was happening in Lunenburg.
The plaque beneath the photograph read, “William (Bill) McCoy was one of the most successful rum-runners. He didn’t water down his liquor. When patrons drank good liquor during Prohibition they said it was the Real McCoy.” William peered more closely at the photograph. Could this man be a murderer?
“Hi, I’m Andrew Knickle, the museum —” The voice, blurted without warning, made William jump and bring his hand up defensively.
“You all right? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” said Andrew Knickle. William stood up from his crouch. Mr. Knickle wore a tweed jacket with a paisley bow tie whose yellow flecks matched his shirt. “Are you here to see about the job?”
William nodded and forced a smile.
“Well, I’m afraid you’re not old enough to know all that much about fishing history, but maybe come back in a few years and we’ll see what we can do.”
William’s face turned red — with anger and embarrassment — but he thanked the man and quickly moved away, then burst through the doors of the museum and out onto Bluenose Drive.
As his dad would say, the way his fortunes were going it looked like he’d be lucky to catch a cold in Lunenburg. Was this town going to be his prison or his salvation?
Even the flat roads seemed uphill. He coasted his bike past the municipal ballpark. A handful of boys were practising baseball. And leading the practice was Manny. He held a bat straight up in front of his body.
As he tipped it to his left, the boys did the boxer’s shuffle in that direction. Their bodies leaned forward, gloves at the ready, right foot extending out then followed by the left foot, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Then Manny tipped the bat over to the right like a slowmotion metronome. The boys shuffled never crossing their feet, never tripping either. William wished he had a coach to talk to.
He biked past the graveyard but kept his eyes on the road.
The sun was resting on a cloud by the time William reached the top of the driveway and leaned the bike against the house. His grandfather dozed in his veranda rocking chair. One side of his cardigan was crooked. It bulged where the button had skipped its hole. A cup sat on the armrest. A teabag floated at the top, cold, untouched.
“Hey, Granddad. Do you think we could talk now? I have some- thing I need to tell you.” Daniel answered with a gentle snore. Sleep had not removed the worry from his face.
He mumbled on the way in to the kitchen, “My day’s been great so far. Thanks for asking.”
He washed his hands in the kitchen sink. As he dried them his eyes fell on the rigging knife he’d laid on a shelf between the pitcher and bowl with the grinning devils.
“Granddad, I’m going back into town for a little bit, okay?” He pocketed the knife.
He popped the eyehooks to the screen on the window and swivelled it out as he’d done before. He tested the water temperature and watered his grandmother’s rhododendron with the hose extension from the kitchen sink.
He called to his grandfather through the veranda. “I’m going to set fire to the Fisheries Museum and sink all the boats in the harbour, okay?”
He biked down the drive, rattling over the asphalt’s web of splits seared by sun, salt, and snow. He gave wide berth to the white rock at the bottom, banked sharply onto the highway, then pedalled to Lunenburg. He passed fish shacks and the Cape Islanders back from their early morning work.
In the Now and Then Antique shop, Harry Pearce sipped sherry. The newspaper he read was dated 1894. He looked up so quickly the glasses clamped to his nose flew off. William caught them. These glasses had no temples. Pearce nodded his thanks as he clamped them back on his nose.
“They’re called pince-nez,” he explained. “Belonged to an early French settler. The prescription’s new, of course. Harry Pearce at your service. What can I do for you?”
“I’m, uh, Will. Could you tell me what something might be worth?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to sell his father’s knife but he might just have to for money.
“You want an appraisal. Do you have the item with you, Master William?”
“Uh, yes, I do,” William answered, glancing at the antiques. Some were suspended from the shop’s rafters. There were a lot of brass fittings and wooden pieces from working boats long retired from the demands of the sea.
“Well? I take it we are not talking of an Edwardian chair or a Louis Quatorze desk?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Pearce added, with a twinkle, “I gather it is a rather small object, unless of course you have deeper pockets than I thought?”
“Right, here it is. It’s a …”
Pearce’s eyes lit up as he cradled the knife. “A whalebonehandled rigging knife.” He flexed the blade before adding, “With gold inlay.” He flexed the spike and noted, “The blade and marlinspike are both French and have been well-maintained. The bone handle was added by a local skilled craftsman.”
“How do you know all this?”
“If the right buyer were to come along it would be worth, let’s say, two hundred dollars — minimum. At auction it might fetch five … maybe a thousand.” William’s mouth fell open. He continued, “If it did indeed belong to the Real McCoy.” William shifted his weight under Pearce’s gaze. “Is it yours? Yours to sell, I mean. Hate to have the police ask how I came into possession of a knife with the name William McCoy.”
“The police? Well, I, I mean, William McCoy is my name.” William retrieved the knife. “I’ll think about selling it, thanks.” The bell over the door clanged as he retreated.