Jules is driving back from Montreal with five hundred dollars in his pocket and the promise of a new investor. Or the ghost of a whisper of a promise. He pulls off the 401 onto winding Highway 2 at Cornwall, just to slow down and take in the sights. And to get his story straight. There will be some explaining to do when he gets back to Preston Mills. He has been gone for ten days. He was supposed to be back in three.
He will tell Trudy about his meetings with Guy, the film producer who might buy the rights to film the jump now that his TV deal is well and truly dead. Guy has mostly produced pornographic shorts for coin-operated peep-show film booths, but those are still films and he has still produced them.
He will not tell Trudy what he did to earn five hundred dollars in ten days. This included: a bare-knuckle fight (which he lost); a bet on a bare-knuckle fight (which he won); a minor drug deal (low-risk, with known participants); and a slightly distasteful sexual favour (better forgotten). Nor will he tell her where he slept (in his car in a parking lot by a warehouse by the river).
He looks like he has been dragged behind a tractor. And he doesn’t smell very good, either.
Gliding around curve after curve in the road, the sky soft over the river to his left, Jules is starting to feel just a little bit hopeful. He will go home, take a shower, and go see Trudy and tell her all about his plans.
Jules feels like maybe he is back in charge. He will get his own movie made about the jump — with Guy’s help — and he will do his own promotions. He will need new investors to get the ramp and the car into shape. It will take some time. Trudy will like that part, anyway. Surely, she will forgive him the rest. Maybe he will stop and buy her a present. Something for Mercy, too. A belated birthday present. He is thinking of the gift shop near Ingleside where they sell beaded moccasins and snow globes and little silver spoons with tiny ships on the handles. Or maybe that shop is closed for the season now. Never mind. He will come up with something. As he heads out of town past the paper mill, Jules sees the biggest ship he has ever seen. It is blue on the bottom and white on the top and the bow seems to be coming up onto the shore.
He pulls onto the gravel shoulder. There is a crowd of maybe thirty men standing around on the shore, hands in pockets. As Jules approaches, he sees that the ship is still and has run completely aground. It is at a slight angle, almost parallel to the shore, its bow resting in the muddy riverbed. The shallow waves eddy around it gently, making it seem like it is rocking a little, side to side. He is astonished by the height of it, the length, the sheer mass. It towers ten stories high. All spectators are silenced by the strangeness of it. In the middle of the river, a ship looks reasonable, sensibly sized; here on the riverbank, it is as incomprehensible as a flying saucer touching down in the backyard. Nobody expects a ship to heave itself right up onto the muddy earth like that. It looks like it could have kept right on going, across the grassy park and onto the highway.
It looks like the weight of it could split the earth in two.
Jules walks along the grass, along the length of the boat to the stern. There is no sign of life aboard. Where are the men? Below deck? Have they been taken away somewhere already? It is like a ghost ship. Abandoned. He sees the keel, fully exposed, a tangle of seaweed hanging off the top. Something long and slick and black detaches from the knot of weeds, drops into the shallow grey water and slithers away.
And standing there on the shore, Jules lets himself think that one black thought he never allows himself to think. Just for a moment. Then he turns away. Back to the car. Back on track.
Like the man said: The stunt to end all stunts.