Refuge Cove (2 page)

“What?” my mother asked, flabbergasted.

Harold held up my torn sail. “I checked the boat. It's okay. No cracks. Looks solid. Sail's got a few problems, though.”

“Who are you?” my mother now screamed at him.

“Name's Harold, like the boy said.”

“He found me and brought me back,” I said.

“Oh.” My mother relaxed a little. She still seemed unsettled. “I guess I should thank you,” she said. I could tell she didn't trust this stranger. “You scared the living daylights out of me. Why didn't you knock?”

Harold shrugged. “Don't know. Never
thought of it, I guess. Folks knock before they come in in Toronto?”

Right then I was glad I had met Harold. And not just because he had helped me out on the water. Mom and I needed all the friends we could find.

“Got a sewing machine?” Harold asked again. “I'm good at this. The best there is. I'll only charge you my standard fee.”

“Which is?” my mother asked.

“Which is nothing.”

My mom smiled, warming up to this crazy old coot. “I'm not sure we'll be needing the sail, though. I don't think it's safe out there for Greg. Not with icebergs and God knows what.”

I figured she was going to say something like that. But if that was what she wanted, we would have to move back to Toronto. I couldn't live anywhere without sailing.

“Mom?”

“I'm sorry. I just can't stand to lose you too.”

“I know what you're saying,” Harold began.
“But I think the boy just made a mistake today he'll never make again. He picked the wrong day and he didn't know what to look out for. We all make mistakes. A different wind direction and a sharp eye for little bergers and he'll do just fine.”

I don't think my mom was convinced. But as hulking Harold sat down at my mom's Singer sewing machine, she found it so comical that she cracked up laughing and couldn't say another word.

My sail looked pretty lame with a big white patch down the middle, but it worked. While my mom watched, I tacked back and forth around Deep Cove with my floater jacket on. It wasn't exactly exciting, but it was good to be on the water.

People from Deep Cove kept showing up at our house to give us food—their way of welcoming us to their community. My mom
could never quite get used to them walking in without knocking so she put up a little sign that said, “Please knock before entering.” But everyone ignored it.

Harold took me out fishing in his boat. “Maybe we'll catch some fish, maybe not.” We never did get our lines wet, but he showed me some monster icebergs and he showed me how to avoid the smaller “bergers” and “berger bits.”

“Another boat of refugees came in down at Harrington yesterday. They nearly drowned coming ashore.”

“Where are they from?” I asked as we came in close to a craggy jumble of rock that he called Boink Island.

“Asia somewhere.”

“Why are they coming here?”

“I guess because it's a good place to sneak ashore and not get caught. But it's not a safe coast unless you know it.”

“Ever get in trouble out here?”

“Lots of times. Especially when I was running rum. Had to do it in the fog sometimes.”

“You were a smuggler?”

“Was. A long time ago. Made lots of money. Got in lots of trouble. It was the time of my life.”

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later, in the middle of June, that I got to go out in my Laser again. Harold had taught me everything he could from the deck of his boat. We had surveyed every inch of coastline for miles.

“Wanna come along for the cruise?” I asked him.

“Big man, little boat. I don't think I'd fit. Besides, I'd only get in the way and slow down a hotshot like you.”

It wasn't a mega-wind, but a good stiff breeze was blowing off the land when I steered a course out beyond the cove. My mom was home painting rooms and feeling pretty good. I told her I'd be careful.

I stood up on the gunwales and let the boat fly with the wind. I toured a couple of
bergs and kept my eyes peeled for every cube of ice that bobbed. The world was blue, blue, blue. Sky, sea and everything in between. I wanted my life to stay like this forever. I felt free and alive.

Off in the distance, I spotted a couple of whales spouting. That really blew me away. They were too far away for me to give chase, but I decided to keep watching for more and try to get in close for a good look. Twenty minutes later, I spied something maybe a mile further out and to my left. I came about in the wind and headed straight for it.

Soon it became clear that it wasn't a whale at all. It was a boat, a pretty small boat—no cabin, no sail. As I came closer, it seemed that there was no one aboard. It was just an empty lifeboat that must have been cut adrift from some ship. Curiosity got the better of me. I decided to go up real close for a look.

There was a tarp over the top of the boat. I tied a rope onto her and let my sail luff in the wind. With all Harold's talk about rum
smuggling, I think I half expected that I'd lift the tarp and see a boatload of drugs or smuggled gold or booze or something.

I undid a knotted rope holding down one corner and thought I'd just take a peek. Suddenly, a knife came jabbing up right through the tarp and nearly sliced off my left nostril. I screamed and fell back into my Laser. As the tarp flapped open I saw a dark-skinned man with a crazed look in his eye jump out. The knife in his hand was aimed at my throat.

We were rocking around like we were ready to dump. All I could think was that I was in over my head again. The guy had one hand tight on my throat and I was pinned down. The other hand held the knife. He was snarling at me but I couldn't make out anything. Then I looked in his eyes and noticed that he was as scared as I was. He was breathing hard and he was trying to say something. “You tell, I kill,” was what I finally made out.

“I won't tell, I won't tell,” I said, not knowing what he was talking about.

The guy eased up a little, but he looked like a firecracker about to go off. Just then the boom of my sail came whipping around in the wind. I yelled, “Duck,” and I pulled him down. He got the wrong idea and lunged at me with the knife, slicing into my arm.

I let out a wail at the pain and fell back onto the tiller. I think I scared him because he suddenly dropped the knife. He scrambled for it in the bottom of the boat. He was about to lunge at me again when I heard another voice.

A girl had come out from under the tarp in the other boat. She was yelling something at the man. I don't know what. I was ready to jump overboard to get out of the way of the knife. I kept thinking about how cold that water was.

The man and the girl started arguing. I kept one hand on my arm and kept my eyes on the maniac with the knife. Another head popped up from the lifeboat. It was a woman.

The girl looked at me now and spoke in clear English, “Can we trust you?”

I took one look at the man with the knife and a long hard look at the coastline a couple of miles away. “You can trust me. Honest.”

She spoke to the man and he seemed to be satisfied. He backed off and kept his hand on the boom so it couldn't smack him in the head. The sail was making an awful noise in the wind with the slack lines. I was afraid it might rip again.

“What's going on?” I asked the girl. She looked like one of the Pakistani kids from my old school. “Who are you?”

“I'm Tamara,” she said. “This is my mother and father.” The mother nodded. The father looked like he was waiting for a bomb to drop out of the sky.

“I'm Greg.”

“And you are bleeding. I am sorry. My father saw your uniform.”

“What uniform?” Then I looked down at the colors on the floater jacket. Somebody really out of touch might have considered it a uniform. “I'm not a cop or anything,” I said.

“What are you?”

I didn't know what to say. I looked around at the empty ocean, the distant icebergs and the receding coastline. My arm was burning. “I'm someone who wants to help,” I said.

“How?” she asked.

“Let's get ashore before we end up in Greenland.”

I tied a rope onto the lifeboat. Tamara persuaded her father to change places with her. I didn't trust that knife near all my vital organs. It would be a slow, difficult trip towing that much weight. We would need to tack a bunch of times to get near Deep Cove. But what else was there to do?

It wasn't until we were under sail going a really mean half a mile an hour that I realized I was sharing my Laser with one of the most beautiful girls I'd ever met.

“We used all of our money to come here on a big ship,” Tamara said. “When we came into Canadian waters, the man said we were only a few miles from shore. We got in the lifeboat and they lowered us into the water. But there were no oars.”

“How long have you been out here?”

“Two days.”

“Were you scared?”

“No,” she said, looking far off toward the horizon.

“You're lying.”

“Maybe,” she said, and smiled.

“You're refugees, aren't you?”

Suddenly she looked nervous. “Will you turn us in?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you turn us in and have us put in jail?”

“No,” I said. “It doesn't work that way.”

“My father says we must avoid getting caught. He has been told there are very few people living on your coast. He says we can just go ashore and live there. In peace.”

I wanted to try to explain a lot of things just then. I wanted to paint a picture for her of the rugged coast of Newfoundland and tell her that you couldn't just live in total isolation, even here.

“In our country there is much fighting and killing. My father was in prison. He would have been executed. He escaped. We found a ship. First to Amsterdam. Now to here. If we
can avoid the authorities, we will live again as a family.”

“The immigration people will help,” I said. “I've heard about stuff like this in the news.”

Slowly but surely we were nearing the coastline. But even once we got near shore, it would be another slow four miles along the coast before we would get to Deep Cove. There was nothing but high cliffs and narrow gullies along here. Nowhere to go ashore. And if the wind changed direction we might as well be ten miles back out to sea.

Tamara was looking back at her mother and father. Her mother looked pretty nervous, but her father looked like a volcano about to erupt. I rubbed my arm where I had been cut with the knife. It had stopped bleeding. It stung from getting wet with salt spray, but I knew it wasn't very deep. I'd be okay.

Tamara gave me a soft sad look. “I'm sorry,” she said. “My father thought you were going to arrest us.”

“Oh yeah, my uniform.” I had been so caught up in trying to keep us on course that
I hadn't noticed that Tamara was shivering. With one hand still on the rope and a foot on the tiller, I undid my floater jacket and handed it to her.

She shook her head no.

“Take it. If you fall in, it will float you. Can you swim?”

“A little.”

“Yeah, but can you swim in water that just came down from the North Pole?”

“I don't understand.”

“Just put on the jacket. Please.”

The magic word. She put it on. I showed her how to snap it up. My hand brushed against her long black hair and I found myself looking into her eyes. I guess I forgot I was trying to steer a sailboat just then because I was holding the sail too stiff and we tipped up very high on my side. I had to grab onto Tamara to keep her from sliding out of the boat and giving the floater jacket a real tryout.

When I regained control I apologized. I looked back at her old man and gave him the
thumbs-up. I don't think he understood.

That's when I saw the Coast Guard ship headed our way. “Look,” I told Tamara. “We're in luck. If I can signal them somehow, you guys will be safe and sound in no time. They can see my sail, I'm sure, but they're too far out to see much else. They have no reason to think we need help.”

I was thinking that maybe I could flap the sail in some erratic manner and then they'd notice and come check us out.

Tamara was looking back at her father. He saw the boat too and was shaking his head sideways. The knife was back in his hand. “What's wrong?” I asked her.

“Do not signal them. They will send us back.”

“No, they won't. I promise. It's not like that.”

“You don't know. They have guns, right?”

“Well, I don't know. Maybe. But look, it's just the Coast Guard. They're out here to help.”

“No!” her old man shouted at me from behind. He said something to his daughter in a rapid rattle of language.

“We must hide,” she told me. “My mother and father are very afraid. We need your help. We must trust you.”

“Where are we going to hide out here?” I asked her. This all seemed crazy. I looked at the steep cliffs along the shore. We were already in much closer than I liked to be. With the wrong gust of wind we'd be chewed up by granite. “There's nothing I can do.”

“There,” Tamara said, pointing to a narrow gully that cut from the sea into the sheer rock face. It was about twelve feet wide.

“You can't just pull into a little inlet like that with a sailboat. There are a lot of factors to consider here.” I suddenly sounded like somebody else. I realized that I sounded like my father. He was always the one who would tell me to look at a problem logically. Logic told me that I couldn't slip my Laser between those two big rocks like it was a quarter dropping into a video game.

“I can't get in there,” I repeated. I saw the Coast Guard cutter was headed our way now. It was getting closer. I wanted to tell Tamara that they'd never come in this close to shore anyway, so don't worry.