Mary Pletsch & Dylan Blacquiere
Before I turn off my alarm, I have a few seconds in which I can pretend. For that instant I can let myself believe that my memories of salt spray in my face and the schooner’s deck rising beneath my feet and the night wind howling against her sails are nothing more than souvenirs of a particularly vivid dream. Logic murmurs in my thoughts: the days of tall ships ended more than a century ago.
But I still smell of brine and brimstone, and as I slap the snooze button on my clock radio my hand bumps against an article clipped from the Guardian newspaper. FISHERMAN SURVIVES CLOSE CALL WHEN BOAT SINKS. A young man with a big smile and a crooked front tooth grins at me from the newsprint. The clock radio flashes 7:00.
I’ve had maybe four hours of rest. I need a shower and a coffee, in that order, before I can face waitressing the lunch shift at the Sea Star. Last year at this time I was getting up to go to high school; it still feels weird to think of myself as an adult.
I shower, throw on my work shirt and some black dress pants, then walk down to the Arcade for some coffee. The Arcade isn’t what mainlanders think of as an arcade, even though there’s a decrepit pinball machine and Ms. Pac-Man in the back room. It’s more like a grill and snack bar, and it’s the closest thing to a coffee shop that my village has. If you want a full breakfast, you go to a restaurant, but if you just want a hot drink you go to the Arcade.
The coffee in the Arcade is weak and always served far too hot. I could save money and drink better coffee if I made the stuff I had at home. I rarely do. I had to explain to my last boyfriend that it wasn’t about being too lazy to make my own coffee, or liking the Arcade’s coffee better. It’s about supporting local business and keeping my neighbors employed. That’s the Island way of doing things. If we don’t help each other out, who will?
He didn’t get it, and our relationship didn’t last long. He also didn’t like that I went out at night without telling him where I was going, and I guess I can’t blame him there. I do blame him for acting like he was better than my friends and family just because he was from Toronto. He was only in PEI for a summer job anyway. He went back to Ontario to start college a couple weeks ago, and I’m surprised at how little I miss him. That’ll teach me to date somebody from away.
I notice the autumn chill in the air as I walk the few blocks from my basement apartment in Uncle Lennie’s house to the Arcade. The village is quiet. The tourists are long gone. Fisherman’s Quay is closed, not that anyone local ever eats there. There’s better lobster to be had at Andrea’s Restaurant. Andrea’s is shut now, too, like the fishing museum and the Albatross’s Nest gift shop. They’ll open up again in May for the summer season.
Only the Sea Star Family Diner and the Arcade stay open year-round, for which I’m grateful. The Arcade gives me my coffee, and the Sea Star gives me my paycheque. The Sea Star used to belong to Papa, my dad’s father, and then his second son, my Uncle Lennie, took it over. Now, just like them, I’m in the family business.
I shove open the front door of the Arcade and Gracie Gallant behind the front counter greets me. Gracie’s run the Arcade for as long as I can remember. Candy lines the area below the counter, while bags of chips hang from clips on the wall. In the corner, cans of pop have been wedged into a cooler originally designed to hold bottles. Old-fashioned white boards with clip-on letters spell out the menu: coffee, fries, pizza by the slice, ice cream. Gracie’s pouring me a large coffee before I get the chance to speak.
I pay for my coffee, stir in some cream and sugar from the containers at the side of the counter, and then I go see who else is in the Arcade this morning. I walk to the end of the counter and turn the corner, where tables line a long, narrow room running the length of the building. The place is packed, but in the back corner Uncle Lennie raises his arm and waves to me. He’s sitting at a table with Papa, Art, and Preston. Art is married to Lennie’s wife’s sister; Preston works for Art on his fishing boat.
“Good morning, Maggie,” Art says with a wink. He borrows a chair from the people at the next table so I can sit down.
“Look at this shit,” Preston growls by way of greeting, dropping the day’s newspaper in front of me.
OTTAWA ASSEMBLES THE CONFEDERATION GUARD, NEW CROSS-CANADA SUPERTEAM, screams the headline, right above the date: September 28, 2018.
I skim the article while my coffee cools to a drinkable temperature. Point of national pride … role models for the youth … blah, blah, blah. I’m not really into superheroes or any other kind of celebrity nonsense, but anyone with an internet connection has heard at least a little about Canada’s metahuman defenders. Personally, I think it’s a funny coincidence that the provincial and federal governments started promoting our metahuman heroes right after Alberta’s economy tanked and dragged the rest of the country down with it. Everyone look up at the flashy superheroes in their colorful suits. Don’t look down at the quagmire you’re sitting in.
I open up the paper only to discover that most of the front section has been devoted to superhero news, most of it centring on the new team. True North has been selected leader. That’s hardly news. True North has been running around Ontario since the 1930s, and Ontario still thinks it’s the centre of Canada. Technically, there’ve been at least five True Norths, more if you count the body doubles, and they long ago gave up the fiction that it’s been the same guy all these years. Me, I’ll personally punch anyone who says the body double who took a bullet for the Prime Minister last year doesn’t count as a true True North. If you make the sacrifice, you deserve the credit.
Québec’s contribution, unsurprizingly, is controversial. Jos Montferrand is the popular choice and a genuine hero, credited for pulling a busload of school kids out of the Magog River after a traffic accident— but he’s also a vocal separatist. He’s publicly dithering about whether or not he can accept the invitation in good conscience, and the government is trying to find a suitable backup, just in case.
Meanwhile, nobody’s arguing about Newfoundland’s obvious choice: Jane Wreckhouse. How they’re going to make her storm winds into something that doesn’t ruin every PR opportunity the team gets, I don’t know, but Wreckhouse is drop-dead gorgeous in a way I’ll never be. She doesn’t need to demonstrate her powers. All she needs to do is smile.
Some racist assholes in British Columbia are complaining that Jarminder Arjinpour isn’t “Canadian” enough, by which they mean white enough, to represent their province. To which I say, one, their province should probably be represented by an Asian and, two, nobody can tell what race Jarminder is after he transforms. Maybe those buttheads should go out into the wilderness and get bitten by a Sasquatch— then they can have Jarminder’s job.
Some of the other provinces are still undecided. Everyone agrees that there should be a Native superhero on the team but everyone also thinks she or he should come from some other province, except for the Natives themselves. They’d rather have their own representative, separate from any of the provinces. To resolve the First Nations question, Ottawa suggested giving each of the territories a representative, principally to get Nirliq the Snow Goose on the team. But Nunavut’s greatest hero declined, stating that Inuit are not First Nations people, and First Nations people deserve their own team member.
I sip my coffee and flip a few more pages. New Brunswick’s currently debating whether they have to choose a bilingual hero or if they can push for two, one Anglo and one Acadian. Nova Scotia has a list of hopefuls, as do Manitoba and Saskatchewan. All we get is a listing at the bottom of the page: “Prince Edward Island is still compiling a list of potential candidates.” I snort. I don’t think PEI has many candidates in the running.
“We don’t need none of them folks in long underwear runnin’ around here,” Preston declares. “We need jobs.”
I lift my eyes and look meaningfully at Papa and Uncle Lennie. Lennie lifts his coffee to his lips, almost in time to hide his scowl. Papa blinks innocently back at me.
“Whole paper’s full of that nonsense,” Art spits. “Where they gonna get a hero round here? We don’t have weird power plants or fancy science labs or mutated animals running about biting people. Not unless they want a super drinker, then they can go look down at the Legion on a Friday night.”
Art’s pretty much right. PEI is lucky to pump out a famous author every few centuries, an Olympic athlete once or twice per generation, and the occasional NHL player. We’ve got a small population. We’re lucky to have any metahumans at all. Somehow, though, I don’t think Tignish Tommy’s ability to turn seawater into wine is going to get him onto the Confederation Guard. It’s all Tommy can do to dodge bootlegging charges.
Lennie changes the topic to a catfight between two local women that happened at the Legion the other night. Preston and Art immediately take sides, Preston with one lady, Art with the other. They debate heatedly while I peruse three pages of essays and editorials.
Pride in traditional Canadian heritage vs. the perpetuation of stereotypes. The opportunities for new immigrants, minority Canadians, and people with problematic powers to find a place on the team. Ugly people with problematic powers, I correct, thinking of Jane Wreckhouse. The Québec question. The Native question. The Northern question. I turn to the centre page.
There’s a centerfold diagram of the prospective super team, including all the members chosen or in the running. True North, whose current incarnation I begrudgingly admit is pretty easy on the eyes. Jos Montferrand, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested. Jane Wreckhouse looks like a friggin’ supermodel, as always. A big question mark over the outline marked Prince Edward Island.
I try to imagine Papa or Uncle Lennie in one of those costumes. It doesn’t work. I love Papa and Uncle Lennie dearly, but they carry the consequences of a few too many beers around their waists, and their mustaches don’t make up for the lack of hair on the top of their heads.
I check my reflection in the mirror on the wall and realize that all I’ve got going for me is my youth. I might not have to worry about going bald, but there’s no way I’m ever going to look like Jane Wreckhouse. I’ve got Papa’s big nose and Lennie’s hairy brows and, more importantly, I’m an Islander through and through.
“Hey. Maggie. You goin’ to university next year?” Art says abruptly, jarring me out of my thoughts.
I give him the answer I’ve rehearsed more times than I can count. I shrug and say, “I’m not really sure what I want to do with my life. I figured I’d work for Uncle Lennie, save up some money, and think about my options.”
Art snorts dismissively. “You’re smart, Maggie. Everyone always says so. You deserve better’n what you can get around here.”
Preston shoots Art a dirty look across the table. “Y’know, unlike some people’s kids, Maggie here isn’t gonna forget where she came from.”
Art’s sons all have jobs out in Alberta. It’s a sore point between Art and Preston. On the other hand, Preston’s kids are chronically in and out of work, and he’s usually got one or two of them living with him at any given time. I’m not convinced that’s an improvement.
To Art and Preston’s eyes, I’m doing the same: living in Uncle Lennie’s basement, working in his restaurant during the tourist season, preparing to collect employment insurance in the winter. So many of the jobs here are seasonal.
And my life’s calling doesn’t pay.
* * *
In the end, Ottawa “solved” the PEI problem in the typical way. They gave Manitoba’s spot to a Native superhero and “suggested” to the other top contender that she purchase a house in PEI and make it her primary residence. In spring 2019, the former Gimli Glider moved to Summerside and became the Avonlea Aviatrix.
Summerside is forty minutes away from the Anne of Green Gables house in Cavendish. The Aviatrix’s PR people don’t seem to care. All that matters to them is that she has long red hair that looks great with her new green and white costume. She doesn’t wear pigtails, thank God, but that isn’t stopping the newspaper cartoonists from drawing her as Anne of Green Gables with a cape. She came back to the Island in July for a publicity tour, posing for photos with the tourists, getting filmed at Province House and Gateway Village and Singing Sands and of course, Green Gables House.
I try to be fair. She’s not all that bad. As powers go, hers look pretty good on TV: there’s just something about a human being who can fly without the aid of wings. She’s good with the fans, too, signing autographs and the like, kneeling down to talk to the little kids. She’s got charm and charisma and looks great in the costume.
She just isn’t from here, and never will be.
* * *
Now it’s almost September again and I’m on shift at the Sea Star, trying not to think about the Avonlea Aviatrix all over the news, or how I’ve spent the past twelve months trying and failing to find a better-paying job. I love my co-workers and my Uncle Lennie, but I don’t want to wait tables all my life.
I’m serving a tableful of tourists their burgers and fries when a buzz starts up behind me. I turn around and there she is, the Avonlea Aviatrix herself, stopping by the Sea Star for lunch. The mother at my table digs in her purse for paper to get an autograph, and I can see my co-workers in the kitchen cracking open the doors to get a peek at the hero herself. I stare at the hostess, willing her to take the Aviatrix to someone else’s tables, anyone else’s tables, but, no, the Avonlea Aviatrix gets seated in my section.
I hand the Avonlea Aviatrix a lunch menu and introduce myself as plain old Maggie, not Captain Maggie Doucette, the latest in a long line of captains of the Phantom Ship of Fire.
My vessel’s best known as a ghost of the Northumberland Strait, though we’ve lived on the North Shore for five generations. We don’t rely on sail and rudder alone to steer her; we can charm the winds and tides to take us where we would. The phantom ship responds to her captain’s thoughts, so we have no need for a crew.
I have sailed into the teeth of raging storms and I have lit up the Northumberland Strait with a corona of unearthly fire. I have sent criminals to watery graves and I have pulled unlucky sailors from the gullet of the ocean. This is my Island, and my family has protected its people for centuries.
During the Second World War, Papa singlehandedly destroyed eight Nazi U-boats. Lennie didn’t destroy any Soviet subs — it was a cold war, after all — but when he’s drunk he swears he chased off at least twice that number. When he’s sober he admits the number’s closer to six.
Me, I took the helm on my thirteenth birthday, in the year of our Lord two thousand and fourteen, and I’ve never found any enemy submarines in Canadian coastal waters. Most of what I’ve been left with is drug smugglers making beach drops in the middle of the night and the occasional leaky oil tanker that needs to take its environmental damage somewhere else.
I used to wonder what the hell was the point in a day and age when terrorists come from the sky and any idiot can drive a transfer truck full of dope over the Confederation Bridge. Still. I do what I do because my family’s always done it; and sometimes there’re rewards for the ability to shape the movements of the sea.
Take Gracie Gallant’s ten-year-old son, Calvin. Cal was swimming last month out past the breakwater when he got caught in a riptide. It was his lucky day that I had been off work, his damned lucky day that I’d gone for a swim myself and I don’t need my ship to charm the tides. Cal thought it was his good fortune that the current changed and shoved him back to shore, and I let him think it.
The Avonlea Aviatrix asks for a Diet Pepsi. I go get it for her, and when I return to her table she asks me if I know a good mechanic in the area. Her car’s brakes aren’t working well.
Part of me really wants to ask her why she doesn’t simply fly everywhere— why she even bothers with a car. Part of me wants to tell her that if she was from here, or even really lived here, she’d already know where to go. Part of me wants to inform her that my job doesn’t pay enough for me to get a car, even though I’ve saved the lives of a lot more Islanders than she has.
I bite my tongue and tell her where Uncle Lennie takes his car.
The Avonlea Aviatrix orders lobster with drawn butter, new PEI potatoes, and side Caesar salad. I take her order to the kitchen and remind myself that, if I’d gone to Ottawa to join the Confederation Guard or, hell, if I’d gone to school out of province, Cal Gallant would be six feet underground in Saint Anne’s Cemetery.
* * *
On my break I walk out back of the restaurant: not to the smokers’ table on the north side, where my co-workers gather for cigarettes, but around the corner on the east. I sit with my back against the restaurant and look out to the horizon. In between the trees I can catch a glimmer of the ocean.
“Maggie?”
I look up. Uncle Lennie squats down next to me. “That could’ve been you, you know.”
I run my fingers through red soil. “I know.”
“Me and your grandfather… we’ve wondered a long time. Why you didn’t say anything when they were taking nominations? Pretty girl like you. They’d’ve loved you in the Confederation Guard. A lot more than that Aviatrix. She’s not even a real Islander.”
I watch the sunlight sparkle on the distant waves. “She’s not here most of the year. They keep her busy with the rest of the Guard doing public appearances across Canada. I hear they spend most of their time in Ottawa.”
“Would’ve been a great opportunity for you.”
“Tell that to Calvin Gallant.”
Lennie was quiet for a long time. We watch the sea, lost in our own thoughts, until I break the silence.
“We’ve been here,” I murmur, “since… what? 1786? What year did Prospere Doucette first summon the Ship of Fire?”
“1758. When the British began deporting the Acadians from Prince Edward Island. It was called Isle Saint-Jean back then. Papa told me once that Prospere swore the British would never keep him from his home.” Lennie glances over at me. “You know. Back when thirteen was plenty old enough for a person to start a career at sea.”
“1758,” I repeat, fixing the date in my mind. I need to remember my own history. “They didn’t know the word metahuman back then.”
“Doesn’t seem to me we are,” Lennie replies. “We never had no mutagens or lab accidents or space debris transforming us into something we weren’t before. We are what we’ve always been: a local family with a duty to protect.”
Somehow, heading out into a screaming nor’easter aboard a preternatural ship that burns without being consumed seems a bit above and beyond any ordinary call of duty; and then I’m immediately ashamed of the thought. How many desperate sailors have we Doucettes led to safety over the centuries, or plucked from the waves, or rescued from pirates? How many invaders have we driven away? How many hundreds of lives did my ancestor Mathieu save during the Yankee Gale of 1851?
They forget us, once we’ve brought them to shore. I don’t know why. It’s a thankless job, and sometimes I feel bitter about that. Yet somehow I feel it’s important for it to stay that way.
“I didn’t want to be the first Doucette in over 250 years to open her big mouth to the mainlanders.” I crack a smile. “Besides, where would I dock a flaming three-masted schooner in Ottawa? I’d probably burn down the city. Can’t imagine the ship would like all that freshwater very much, either.”
Uncle Lennie chuckles. “Can’t imagine she would, at that.”
I lean with my back against the restaurant, realizing there’s a reason why the Avonlea Aviatrix is what she is, and why I am what I am. “It’s not about fame and glory. It’s about… it’s about supporting the local community and keeping my neighbors safe.”
Lennie says quietly, “Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair.” For the first time I wonder what Uncle Lennie might’ve done, who he might’ve become, if he hadn’t been captain of the Phantom Ship before me. He’s been running the Sea Star for as long as I’ve been alive. I’d never considered that maybe, when he was younger, he might’ve wanted to do something else with his life. I look down the street to the front door of the Arcade, where Calvin Gallant and his little sister are eating ice cream cones on the sidewalk, and I realize that I can’t imagine being anything other than what I am.
I put my hand on Uncle Lennie’s, understanding why he stayed, why I’ll stay. “Islanders help each other out. That’s just the way we do things here.”
Red soil stains my fingertips. Out on the ocean, for just an instant, I catch a glimpse of an old-fashioned three-masted schooner. She waits for me, my Phantom Ship, and I know the Island is where I belong.
* * *
Mary Pletsch and Dylan Blacquiere live in New Brunswick, where they share their home with books, comics, and four cats.