Falling off the shoulder of the road, the sleek gray Porsche skims across a rapid series of shallow potholes, causing the undercarriage—the shocks in need of repair—to sound like an old-fashioned Gatling gun. Then the car bucks out of a deeper puddle sending a whole other cascade of water up and over the vehicle. Barely hanging on, the driver steers back onto the road, or what she thinks is the road, and taps the brakes gently. Wipers fight against the wet but the windshield takes its own sweet time to clear. When she can peer through the opaque smudges again, she sees lights. She’s arriving in a town, the only one left before the land drops into the Bay of Fundy and the sea.
The town’s name is Blacks Harbour, commonly referred to as Blacks. Any apostrophe has been lost to time or never existed.
Crossing the border from Maine into New Brunswick, she stopped for a pee, but otherwise it’s been straight through from Portland, where she gassed up and grabbed a coffee and doughnut, and before that, Boston, where she took the call from her father’s maid. Or whatever she is. Whore, perhaps. With him, you never knew. In a bout of honesty one time (who could tell if that’s what it was or if he was ever close to speaking the truth), or if not honesty, then at a moment when he appeared to have no particular agenda and no special grudge, her father mentioned in passing that he never found himself interested in women who were, in his words, difficult. He said, “When the nitty gets down to the gritty, everybody has their thing. My thing is, I’m only attracted to promiscuous women. If they’re not sleeping around, they’re not sleeping with me.” He was explaining why he’d never remarried. At the time, she didn’t know what to make of his thing. The peccadillo seemed unique, she’d give him that, but it also kept him safe from marriage, for what man married a woman with that proclivity? If real, his preference dovetailed with his nature—was he not being cruel? Did he not just call every woman he ever slept with a whore, by virtue of his thing? And didn’t that include her own mother? And wasn’t that just the cat’s meow?
During her drive, she’d been doing this, chewing the cud of her past, regurgitating old debates and conversations as though she might masticate history until it became something quite different. She could scarcely believe it, but on occasion the water on the windshield was less of a problem than the tears in her eyes, but she could believe it when she assessed that she was not grieving for him, but for all the old gripes and the nasty memories and for what caused them, and she grieved for the life that might have been yet never had a snowball’s chance in a pizza oven. He was not a man she’d ever want to know yet knew him to be her father. That thought dredged up a well-worn anxiety—namely, how much of him existed in her?
Blacks is not a large town, although the drive in from the outskirts takes a while. The homes spread out, then a lengthy stretch of woodland returns, followed by shopping areas and more bungalows. Finally, the road dips to a mere smidge above sea level and a big arrow rears up on the right, indicating Grand Manan. The ferry won’t be running at this hour. She carries in her purse a phone number passed along by her father’s maid. A while back, she made the call, which gave her an address. She remembers the town well enough that she finds the street without too much difficulty, missing her turn once on account of the rain, but she circles back and finds it on the next pass and drives slowly along, checking numbers. Seeing anything is virtually impossible in these conditions. She gets out once and is soaked in an instant. She runs to a door and checks the civic address, then counts houses after that to hopefully land at the right one. She gets out again and gets soaked again. Some numbers were skipped so she’s gone too far, but on her third attempt at walking up to a door she’s right on the money.
She rings the bell and hears chimes.
The man’s been waiting for her. He lets her in as far as his vestibule and shuts the door behind her. They don’t know each other. Suspicious, his wife hangs back in the hallway and two small kids gape up at the visitor from behind their father’s thighs. She supposes that on a night like this she might resemble a feral cat.
A very wet feral cat.
From her eyes she clears hair away that feels knotted and pasted on her skin.
“Hi,” she says. Often the tallest in the room, she’s a head above him.
“You’re wet,” he says.
“It’s raining,” she replies.
“I believe you,” he says.
“Are you Mr. McCarran?” She tries to smile, first at him, then at his kids, but gives up when she receives no similar expression in return. She won’t bother trying her act on the man’s wife. The two women are about the same age. The man is much older.
“Sticky,” he says.
“Ah, excuse me?”
“My name. It’s Sticky.”
Perfect, she thinks. “Ah, okay. Sticky. Sticky McCarran? I’m the one who called. I need to get to Grand Manan.”
“In this weather? You don’t mean tonight.” When she does not answer promptly, he thinks that she just might. “Don’t you know how bad it is out there?”
“I’m led to believe that you own a good boat. I understand that you’re a pretty good skipper.”
“That doesn’t make him stupid,” his wife says from fifteen feet away.
The man doesn’t turn his head when she speaks. He continues to study the new arrival.
“I’ll pay four times your usual rate,” she says. “A fair price, times four. On account of the hour and the storm, and everything.”
He’s not a large man, but by the way he carries himself she can tell that he’s as strong as a bear. Being a fisherman, he would be. He seems to mull over her offer, then points out to her, “There’s a ferry in the morning. Usually that’s how people go. Plus, you can take your car.”
She nods, to accept his reasoning, and returns the gaze of the little girl on his left side. The boy seems the shier of the two, and looks back to his mom often, as though to make sure that she’s still there. Someone to run to should things get scary. Or more puzzling. The girl is waiting with bated breath.
“Mr. McCarran, it’s my father. He’s dying. Maybe tonight. This might be my last chance to see him alive.”
She notices now that he was quite determined when she first showed up, although she hadn’t noticed then, to dismiss her request. Now that he’s hesitating, she can spot the difference in his attitude. Almost like his son, he glances back slightly toward his wife, who takes a step forward and clutches her left elbow in her opposite hand.
“Sticky,” he corrects her.
For a moment, she’s perplexed, then acknowledges her mistake. “Yes. Of course. Pardon me. Sticky.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. He’s thinking to himself for a moment, then adds, “It’s a brute nasty storm, isn’t it?”
“It’s…” She begins as though she has something critical on her mind, then forgets what it is and starts over on a different tack. “He’s Orrock—my dad—he’s Alfred Orrock. You must have worked for him at some point. He gave me your number. I’m not from around here. At least, not anymore. I’m up from Boston. I’m his daughter.” She pokes her hand out. “Madeleine. Friends call me Maddy.”
He shakes the proffered hand, and she’s right. He’s strong. After they disengage, he stares at her silently for a moment, then checks back with his wife, who takes another step forward. This seems meaningful somehow. Maddy Orrock feels that she’s winning them both over, and the daughter is looking up at her dad as though urging him to go along with this drenched late-night visitor. This feral cat. The little girl is giving him her okay.
“Being an Orrock, you been on boats before,” he says.
“Sticky, trust me, I’ve been on boats smaller than yours in storms bigger than this. I won’t be a liability.”
When he shrugs, it’s not to fully concur. “A woman on a boat is automatic bad luck.”
She checks how that line is going down with his wife, and is surprised to see that she also seems to object. “Who says?” Maddy asks him.
“Everybody knows,” he answers.
“An ancient superstition, Mr. McCarran. Sticky! Sorry. You’re a more modern man than that, I’m sure.”
He appears to concede as much. “I’ll tell you how modern I am. I will take you across to Grand Manan for six times my going rate.”
She looks at him intently. Her glance skids across to his wife, but she’s holding firm also, no help there, then she looks back at him. “Six times. What’s that, a special tax for being an Orrock?”
He shakes his head, and his big right hand touches the cheek of his daughter with such tenderness that Maddy Orrock wants to weep again, although she doesn’t know why. He says, “The high cost of fuel is all. In a storm like this, we’ll burn triple to make headway. The tide’s running foul. The waves. I’m sympathetic to your situation, Maddy. A death in the family is a hard thing. Doesn’t matter the family.”
“Thank you, Sticky. For your sympathy. Six times the rate, then, because of the hour, the risk, the inconvenience, the cost of fuel, my family name, my gender, and my general desperation, I suppose.” She tries to laugh off her own animosity, but he’s still looking at her intently.
“You don’t get seasick at all?” he asks. “My wife, she gets seasick herself.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’ll be a black and rolling night. No fun to be had out there.”
“I expect to be sick. In rolling seas, I usually am.”
His look conveys a mixture of sympathy and admiration. “You go to sea still?”
She gives the question more attention than perhaps it deserves. “You know that my name is Orrock. Do you think I’ve had much choice?”
He goes on staring at her. “You have a choice right now tonight, you do.”
She agrees. “I want to cross to Grand Manan tonight, Sticky.”
He seems to be consulting his daughter when he looks down at her, then back up again. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll get my gear. We’ve done this before.”
While he’s gone, Maddy finds herself exchanging a long gaze with his wife, then asks, “What did he mean by that?”
“He’s peculiar.”
“Your husband?”
“Peculiar.” Then she emerges from something, adding, “There’s tea. In the kitchen. Come through. A warm cup to send you on your way. You’ll be miserable through the night, might as well start out warm. I’ll make sandwiches, put hot soup in the thermos.”
The kids run through the house ahead of them as they go.
Maddy asks, “Can I leave my car in your driveway while I’m gone?”
“Off to the far right side will be fine. Don’t let the storm scare you. Stick will get you home all right.”
“Oh,” Maddy says quietly, “I’m not sure I’d call it that.”
“Mmm,” the woman says, as if she knows what she’s talking about, but that cannot possibly be true.