River Odyssey (15 page)

“I can.”

“Okay. Here you go. It starts at twelve-fifty an hour. It’s only six hours a day and it’s temporary. But if they like you they might keep you. Come back here to get paid.”

“How often?”

He squinted at me. “Every day.”

He took a sheet of paper, wrote down the address, drew a quick map and handed it to me.

“When do I start?”

“Yesterday.”

He turned his attention to somebody else.

“Thank you.”

He never answered. I looked around the room at the men staring at me. I never knew I was a skilled worker.

THE MACHINE SHOP
was in a corner of a long building that sat on a pier. I had to show the paper I was carrying to be allowed through a gate into the area. If I got hired, they would give me a card with my name on it and I would have to use that to go in and out. I had let Hollie walk on the way down so that he was good and tired and was happy to sleep in the bag for the rest of the day.

As I pulled open a heavy metal door and stood in the doorway, I heard the whir of industrial machines, and, above them, the scream of a motor that needed oil. Metal spinning against metal at high speeds, without sufficient lubrication, could sound like raccoons fighting at night. It was a disturbing sound, and yet, if you were working right beside it all day, you might not even notice it. I was met by a burly man who looked like he believed I didn’t belong there.

“What do you want?”

I tried to look bored and handed him the paper without saying anything. He squinted at the paper and got it all dirty with the grease on his hands. “What’s this?”

I cleared my throat and considered spitting out the door but didn’t think I could do it convincingly enough. I didn’t want to look like an amateur spitting.

“We don’t need anybody. Why’d they send you here? Must be a mistake.”

Rats. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. He handed back the paper. “They made a mistake, kid. Go somewheres else.”

I took the paper, looked at the address again, then stared at the address on the door. It was the right address. We stood and stared at each other for a minute. I had the feeling that maybe he was waiting for me to say something to prove myself. I took a shot at it.

“Your grinder needs oil.”

“What?”

He sounded insulted.

“Your grinder. It needs oil. Sounds like somebody’s killing a baby.”

He grinned. “Does it now? And how the heck would you know it’s the grinder?”

“Cause it’s sitting beside the lathe and it can’t be the lathe.”

“Is that right? And why can’t it be the lathe?”

“Cause nobody would forget to oil the lathe. And if it were the lathe, it would sound like a hundred babies were being killed.”

His grin opened up into a laugh and I saw a row of yellow teeth. He grabbed the paper out of my hand and read it again. “Can you really sharpen tools?”

“Yup.”

He looked up at me again. It wasn’t a look of respect, but he didn’t roll his eyes either. “Follow me.”

I followed him through the noisy workshop, down a hallway to a door on one side. It was just a large closet. He swung the door open, clicked on the light and stepped inside. There was dust everywhere. There were tool cabinets, benches with vice grips, and, on one wall, about two dozen saws hanging. There were cross-cutters and rip-saws, short and long-toothed, coarse and fine, long and short. At a glance they all had one thing in common: they were dull. As we stood and stared at the saws, an old man in janitor overalls passed by the door.

“Hey! Jacob!”

The old man stopped and entered the room. He had white hair and a sparkle in his eyes. He looked friendly.

“Yah, boss?”

“When’s the last time these saws were sharpened?”

It sounded like an accusation more than a question.

“Hmmm. How long have I been working here?”

Jacob looked at me and winked.

“Seventeen years,” said the boss.

“Oh. Ummm … seventeen years ago.”

The boss turned to me. “Sharpen them.”

“All of them?”

“All of them!”

He went out the door. I wanted to ask where the files were. Jacob read my mind. “You’ll find the files in the drawer.” And then he said something that showed he was paying a lot more attention than you’d think. “Sweet dog. Keep him quiet.”

I put Hollie down where he could see me. Then I climbed up on the bench, reached up and forced open a small dirty window to let in some fresh air. It had probably never been opened before. I pulled the first saw down from the wall, searched the drawers for the files, then settled comfortably on the chair and started to work. Through the mesh I saw Hollie watch me curiously, sigh, roll around a few times, plop down and go to sleep.

A few hours later I had three saws sharpened. The boss stepped into the doorway and watched me file. He was holding a four-by-six block of wood in one hand.

“How many’d you do?”

“Three.”

“Lemme see.”

He came in, picked up a long cross-cut saw, fastened the block of wood in a vice, dropped the saw onto it, took a breath and began to cut the wood. The saw fell through the wood like butter. The boss smiled, but not at me. He put the saw down and went out the door without a word. I took a sandwich out of my jacket pocket, took a bite and gave Hollie a bite. This was my first paying job. Cool.

In the afternoon, when everyone was leaving the shop, everyone except Jacob, who looked like he lived there, I went to him and asked him if he had ever heard of a man called Russell Pynsent.

“I don’t remember so. Does he come from Newfoundland too?”

“How did you know I was from Newfoundland?”

His eyes sparkled a little like Sheba’s. “Oh, you can just tell. Now, if you were from New Orleans, or Boston, I’d be able to tell that too. It’s the way you speak.”

“Oh.”

“Pynsent, you say? So … you must be a Pynsent too, I gather.”

“Ummm … no. Peddle.”

“Oh. And why would you be looking for this Russell Pynsent fella?”

“No reason.”

“Mmmhmm.”

Jacob made a serious face and looked as if he understood perfectly. I was pretty sure he could read my mind.

“Got a place to stay, have you?”

“Yup.”

“And I figure
he
travels with you?”

He nodded towards Hollie, who was awake and standing in the tool bag on my back.

“Yup.”

Jacob scratched his head with one hand. The other hand was wrapped around the handle of a wide-bottomed broom. “I live here. Got a room in the back. Fridge and TV too. There’s always room on the floor if a young fella is stuck for a place to stay. I’ve seen worse places.”

“I’m great. Thanks.”

I wasn’t about to tell him I lived in a submarine.

“Sure enough. There’s quite a few machine shops on the dockyards. Ask around.”

“Thank you. I will.”

Hollie was happy to get out again, even on concrete. We walked back to the employment office, which took about an hour. Hollie was ready for the bag by then. I entered the room again, not knowing what to expect. Would they have discovered that my information was all made up and tell me to get lost? Would they have called the police? Probably not. I went up to the counter and waited.

“Peddle?”

“Yes.”

“Here. Be there tomorrow at ten sharp. Don’t be late.”

He handed me an envelope.

“Thanks.”

He never answered. I went to the door and opened the envelope. There was money inside. Fifty-five dollars and one quarter. They had kept some money for unemployment insurance and other fees.

“Peddle!” yelled the man at the counter. Rats! Now they’ve figured out I am an imposter. I turned.

“Yes?”

“What size are your feet?”

“What? Oh. Ten.”

He reached behind him, lifted up a pair of old steel-toed work-boots and dropped them onto the counter with a loud thud. “Wear these on the job. It’s the law.”

I went back and picked them up. “Got it.”

I didn’t say thank you this time. I caught his eye for a second and thought he almost smiled. And I went out.

Outside, the street was filled with the noise of the city. Cars, busses and people rushed by. I felt strangely happy. There was something magical about receiving money for a day’s work. I couldn’t quite get my head around it. I enjoyed sharpening tools. It was something Ziegfried had taught me and he was a good teacher. It seemed strange that someone would pay me money to do it. Tomorrow I would make even more money. Cool.

HOLLIE AND I WERE
starving. So, we went into a small, quiet restaurant, not fancy. I put him down on the seat beside me and dropped the work boots beside him. The waitress came over, saw him through the mesh, but didn’t seem to mind. I think she liked us.

“First day on the job?”

“Yah. How did you know?”

“The boots. Tomorrow you’ll be wearing them.”

“Oh. Yah, you’re right. Do you have any spaghetti?”

“All kinds. And the mutt?”

“He likes spaghetti too.”

She laughed. “I don’t know if it’s good for dogs to eat people food.”

“It’s a special occasion.”

Hollie
loved
spaghetti.

“Well, in that case. And to drink?”

“Milk.”

“And the special occasion mutt?”

“Water.”

“Okee-dokee.”

While we waited for our spaghetti to come, I watched a man enter the restaurant, take off his baseball cap, lift a newspaper from the counter and take a seat. The waitress came over and poured him a cup of coffee without saying a word. He was a regular. As I stared at him I felt strange inside. Was he my father? He could have been. He looked a bit like me, only older. What would Ziegfried say? The odds of meeting my father by accident were too low to even consider. And Sheba? There are no accidents; trust your feelings.

The waitress returned to the man. “
Ça va, Pierre?”

“Bien.”

It wasn’t my father. Ziegfried would have won that round.

With bellies full of spaghetti we hit the pavement once more. Now I was tired. It had been a lot of walking, a lot of sharpening and a lot of excitement for one day. A full belly always made me feel sleepy. Hollie was already asleep. But I couldn’t return to the sub yet. I had to wait until dark and sneak across the empty pier.

When darkness came I was lying behind some bushes next to the train tracks in front of the pier. I had already fallen asleep. Hollie was out of the bag and sleeping with his head on my lap. I put him back in the bag, crossed the tracks and went quietly across the open lot. Halfway across, I saw the lights of a truck.

“Shoot!”

I bent down slowly and froze, kneeling close to the ground, making myself as small as possible. It was a dark night; maybe the truck wouldn’t see us.

They didn’t. They drove around the circumference of the area and headed back. A routine check. I needed to find a better place to hide the sub. Not tonight though. I was too tired tonight.

Seaweed was on the hatch. He was glad to see us. I didn’t know what the food was like for him in Montreal, but he sure was happy to have dog biscuits. He followed us inside.

“Hi, Seaweed. You can hang out with Hollie; I’m going to sleep.”

I shut the hatch, went down ten feet, dimmed the lights, climbed onto my cot and fell asleep. The last thing I heard was Seaweed tapping his beak on the rim of the observation window, which was his way of telling Hollie to pass the ball. Like
that
was going to happen.

Second day on the job was fun. Jacob turned out to be a really nice old man. He had a deep love of animals too, and that put him in good stead with Hollie, who also liked that the old man could pull nibbles of food from his pocket every time he came over to visit, which was often.

I was halfway through the saws when the boss came in the room with a wooden box of chisels and dropped it on the floor with a bang. “When you finish the saws!”

He spoke really loudly. That’s what happens when you work in a noisy shop all day. Then he went out. Jacob came in next. He bent down, picked up a chisel and ran his thumb along its edge. “There’s a couple days’ work here.”