Ghost Boats
Cockpit: the steering area nearer the stern of a smaller vessel
In the morning he woke and again looked at the picture of his grandparents standing by their house overlooking the ocean. He remembered the swing at the back of the house. He’d spent hours on it while the adults cooked meals, tended the garden, and laughed. If he swung really hard he could see over the hedge to his grandfather’s sailboat bobbing on the glittering ocean. Then he knew what he was going to do. His grandparents smiled. They were happy. They were normal. He would run away to his grandparents in Nova Scotia and be a regular again in the place he and his father had tried to get to last summer.
There’d been an argument between his mother and his grandfather following his father’s death. He didn’t know what it involved. He knew not to ask. It was one of those questions that upset his mother. All that mattered to William was that it didn’t involve him. It was obvious from his grandmother’s note that they wanted to see him.
He tapped his computer back to life. He Googled “buses to Lunenburg.” He looked up the times, connections, and cost. He opened his piggy bank and counted out the money he had there. He would stop at the bank machine to take out all the money from his birthdays and Christmases and what he hadn’t used from his allowance. He had enough money for the bus — just enough.
But how could he make sure he got there before his mom knew he had run away?
He waited till she left for work. He opened the little book with important phone numbers. He found Saif’s dad’s cell number and dialled it.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Assad. It’s William McCoy. I was calling to say that I won’t be able to go camping with you this weekend after all be- cause I’m gonna help my mother clean up some of my dad’s stuff … Yes, a year already … Yes, I’ll miss you too.” Most of this was true.
He erased the “seven” from the number he had just dialled. Copying his mother’s handwriting, he pencilled in a “nine.” If his mother called Mr. Assad, she’d get a wrong number. This would buy him time. He jammed the lunch his mom had made for him in the top pouch of his knapsack.
He took Brad’s diamond bracelet from the mantle, wrapped it in tissue, and pocketed it. He never stole from his mother. This was different. She needed to be saved from Brad. He locked the door behind him and headed to the terminal.
-
The terminal would get busier as Friday wore into the weekend. He had been to the terminal a few times with Saif and his older brother when they had taken a bus to Saif’s family cottage. There were three or four queues of people waiting outside for their buses to arrive. Without Saif’s older brother to keep an eye on him, he made a point of being more alert.
As he walked into the bus terminal he saw a baby drop its milk bottle. He picked it up from under the seat where it had rolled and gave it to the mother. She thanked him.
When the man at the ticket wicket asked him if he was travelling alone, he lied and said he was travelling with his mom and little sister. Where were they? asked the man. He needed a mother. He got the idea to turn and wave to the woman with the baby. When she smiled and waved back, the man at the ticket counter didn’t ask any more questions.
When he got on the bus, he thought it looked like a giant bug. Its rear-view mirrors stuck out like an ant’s antennae. The comfortable seats and washroom at the back made his day-anda-half trip bearable. They played movies but he couldn’t afford to buy earphones to hear them. Instead he got halfway through Treasure Island, which was now face-down on the seat next to him. The rocking of the bus and the thrumming of its diesel engine made him sleepy.
His first glimpse of the ocean was near Saint-Jean-Port-Joli in Québec. It was strange to think that he’d been such a good swimmer before the crash. Now he panicked when he came close to big bodies of water. His hands got sweaty and he stole a glance at the driver. He looked in control. So had his dad before he crashed his pickup.
William had really liked that truck. It always drew admiring comments from teachers and classmates when his dad dropped him off at school.
The 1948 Chevrolet pickup had soft, round lines. His dad had rebuilt it: a new interior, a V-6, and chromed hubcaps on whitewalled radial tires. His dad’s business logo, Jack McCoy Sails, was stencilled on both doors in his telltale blue and red colours. Nobody had a truck like that.
The sound system made even the smallest sounds stand out. William often picked Toots and the Maytals because they both liked reggae. There had even been a chorus of the old song from his childhood, “Down by the Bay,” where the whale had a polka dot tail. His father had stretched it with new sightings. They included a bear in a chair, eels with heels, and pigs with wigs down by the bay where the watermelons grow. He hadn’t had a belly laugh like that since his father’s death.
That night of the accident, William had pulled the lanyard attached to the bone-handled rigging knife in his dad’s pocket. It had a big spike called a marlinspike at one end. You used it to unscrew the pin in a shackle. William thought shackles looked like a horseshoe with a pin that locked it in various spots on a boat when something needed to be secured in place. He knew the spike was also used to pry open strands of rope when splicing one rope to another or onto itself in a strong loop. His father was skilled enough to do that. Those capable hands had provided a sense of security that had died that night.
William had unfolded the stubby blade and cut up their last apple, half for each of them. His dad growled before snapping up the segments, nibbling on William’s fingers like some fruiteating animal. William McCoy was embedded in gold inlay on the knife’s handle. It had been his great-grandfather’s knife. He had wiped the knife clean of apple juice, closed it on itself, and slipped it back into his dad’s pocket. His dad had leaned in and kissed William’s forehead.
They had talked about swimming out to the island in front of his grandfather’s property and maybe getting permission to drive the Funmobile, his grandfather’s van, on their land. Maybe he’d do it this year.
They had talked about sailing. It was strange that the son of a sailmaker didn’t know how to sail. But William’s dad was too rushed when trying out sails to bring a young son with him. He explained how he couldn’t watch the shape of the sail, how it performed, and watch out for him at the same time. All that was supposed to change last year. William was going to learn to sail from his granddad, a master sailor. Then he and his father would crew for him in the annual race.
He had one clear memory of his grandfather sailing. He was maybe five years old. His grandfather swung him from the dock to the cockpit with one arm. The sail had been so smooth, William had fallen asleep.
They had talked a lot about his grandfather during the ride to Nova Scotia. Then William had laid his head against his dad’s shoulder, sandwiched his big right hand between both of his own, and closed his eyes. He remembered feeling the calluses on the hands that cut, stitched, and hoisted so many beautiful sails, pro- viding his clients with a product that usually exceeded their skill level. His mother called them his artist’s hands.
If only William hadn’t fallen asleep he might have been able to prevent the accident.
Best to think of the future. From his backpack he pulled out the dog-eared birthday card. The cover showed a pen-and-ink drawing of his grandfather’s old-style shop called D & E Sailmakers. The shop’s display window held a sailing trophy with a bronze schooner on top. They were supposed to race for that trophy last year.
-
He switched buses in Fredericton. He was nervous because he didn’t know this terminal. He made a point of refilling his water bottle and stood in line at the gate long before his bus was scheduled to leave just to be sure he didn’t miss it. He was about to ask the woman who stood behind him, to confirm that he was in the right line, when he saw that the ticket sticking out of her book read “Halifax.” With just some coins left in his pocket he couldn’t afford to get on the wrong bus.
Roadwork forced a short detour by the ocean before getting back to the Trans-Canada Highway. He scanned the Atlantic. It surged its high tide into the Bay of Fundy. William shivered at the memory of nearly being dragged out to sea. There was nothing out his window right now but darkness punctuated by shafts of moonlight. It reminded him of that night.
He fought back the memory of black sea water knocking him off the cab of the truck. He’d reached shore and clung to the edge of a rock, and the bullying tide had retreated with a hiss. He had escaped the foamy claws that tried to pull him back under.
The bus was miles away from the crash site, but the ocean that filled his bus window was the one from which they’d dragged his father’s dead body. Some kind of shadow seemed to follow the bus along the water. William was too tired to give it much thought. He sat deeper in his seat. He closed his eyes and leaned against the bus window.
Whoosh! Lightning reached across the sky like a white crack zigzagging through black glass. Then, like in a horror movie, a second flash of lightning illuminated the shape of a forty-foot schooner sailing alongside the bus. He jerked his hands up and stared through splayed fingers.
The boat with the red jib sliced through one of the moonbeams. It flooded the cockpit with light. There was no one at the helm. Then a figure appeared in the cockpit. He laid a casual arm on the wheel. He was a big man, and William guessed he was about his grandfather’s age. He wore an old-style rain slicker and fedora.
The look on his face as he stared at William was all business, right here, right now. It sent a chill down William’s back. A snap of the man’s hand magically filled the sails with wind. The schooner surged ahead. Spray burst from her bow. On the stern of the boat William read the name Fathom.
William blinked and peered out to the ocean: just rain tick, tick, ticking against the window like his mother’s acrylic fingernails on the kitchen table when she brooded. He pulled his jacket tighter against the chill of a bad dream. Could he have slept with his eyes open?
Sheets of water splashed the window. Lightning pitchforked across the sky. Thunder double-boomed through the night like cannon fire from a distant battle. He felt alone and a long way from home. That would all change when he got to his grandparents.