River Odyssey (18 page)

He barked excitedly. He was happy to see me. I picked up the tool bag, put it around my shoulder and was about to hurry away. I looked at Bim. He was still curled up on the ground holding his shins and crying. I came a little closer. I really felt sorry for him.

“Are you going to be okay?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you think it’s broken?”

No answer.

“I didn’t want to fight you, you know.”

He was still crying, though I couldn’t tell how much was for the pain and how much for something else. I had a feeling there was something else.

“Well, I hope it’s not broken.”

I turned and left. Before we went out of sight I looked back one last time. Bim was still sitting on the ground but had raised his head and was staring at the river. I wondered what he was thinking.

On our way back, I let Hollie walk. Seaweed joined us. I could tell they were ready to leave. I wanted to so much too, but couldn’t. Not yet. Just one more day, I told myself. I hadn’t told Buddy who I was. He hadn’t told me. It wouldn’t feel right to leave yet. Everything felt more unfinished now than before we had come.

We walked up to our favourite restaurant for a double serving of spaghetti, apple pie and ice cream. Debbie, the waitress, greeted us with a big smile. “Spaghetti, Al?”

“Yes, please.”

“And how is ‘Special-occasion’ mutt today?” she said sweetly, and reached inside the tool bag and scratched Hollie’s face. Hollie loved Debbie because she was the one who brought us spaghetti.

“He’s had a tough day today.”

“Has he?”

She clicked her tongue, blew him a kiss and went to serve other customers. We sat at our regular booth and looked around and tried not to feel impatient. We were hungry. We were regulars now. That was a pleasant feeling. I put my feet up and patted Hollie’s fur. Seaweed was probably on the roof. I would save him a piece of garlic bread.

My head was spinning. I surely never expected to be in a fight. The dockyards was a rough place, I guessed. Good thing Hollie was okay. Bim had lots of problems, that was for sure. Maybe he came from a broken home. It was too bad Buddy wasn’t nicer to him. That would help. If Bim had a chance to work with somebody like Ziegfried for a while it would do him a world of good. Ziegfried would treat him with respect, because Ziegfried treated everyone with respect. That was his nature. Buddy treated Bim with contempt. What chance did he have with that?

It really didn’t feel like Buddy was my father. Hugh said that he looked like me but I didn’t think so. I couldn’t feel it. What would Sheba have said about that? Buddy was definitely from Newfoundland. But so what? Lots of people were from Newfoundland. And in Newfoundland, everyone called everyone else Buddy. Was Buddy’s real name Russell?

If he
was
my father, I didn’t like him. I knew that much already. We didn’t have anything in common. I didn’t see how I could ever like someone who didn’t like animals, especially somebody who threw stones at them. Sheba said it didn’t matter if I liked him or not, all I had to do was meet him face to face and tell him who I was. Okay, I would, tomorrow. Tomorrow I would confront Buddy, tell him who I was and find out if he was my father. I’d get it over with. Then, we could return to the river, sail back to Newfoundland, prepare for the Pacific and do what I was put on this earth to do: explore.

With full bellies we crossed the long pier in the dark. I waited until the security truck made its rounds, then started off across the open space. The moon was out. A couple of times I felt that someone was following us. I didn’t see anyone, just shadows, but the shadows were moving and the feeling was strong. Hollie kept turning around too. He stared and sniffed. We looked at each other.

“What is it, Hollie?”

He sensed something. We both did. But there was no one there. We climbed into the sub, the three of us, and I turned the lights low.

As I lay down on my cot and drifted off to sleep, I suddenly remembered it was my birthday. I was sixteen now. Cool.

Bim didn’t show up for work the next morning. I wasn’t surprised. Probably his leg was too sore to stand on all day.

I went back to sharpening saws, chisels and the blades of a few axes and hatchets. These were very secondary tools in a machine shop set up for refitting a ship and they tended to get used for things other than their original purpose. The axes, for instance, had been driven into something much harder than wood, so that their blades were flattened out like putty on a knife. I had to run them through an industrial grinder for quite a while before I could take a sharpening stone to them. The chisels looked as if they were being used to puncture holes in steel. Maybe they were. Probably it was cheaper just to buy new chisels than pay a full-time worker to sit and sharpen the old ones, which is why they piled up in a box.

About mid-morning, Hugh stuck his head through the door. “Break!”

I picked up Hollie and went out. Nobody bothered me about having a dog at work because I kept him in the bag and he was as quiet as a mouse. Neither Hollie nor I liked being around the cigarette smoke outside but we had to accept it. It would have been unthinkable not to stand with the other men during break. Buddy came out last and he was in a bad mood. I could tell from the way the other men stepped carefully around him. He wasn’t bigger than any of them but he was more intense. Today, he completely ignored me, as if I wasn’t even there. Well, I was going to confront him anyway. And then, something completely unexpected happened. A man stepped outside and yelled: “Russell! It’s your daughter on the phone.”

I stared at Buddy. Now I knew it was him. How many Russells from Newfoundland were working on the dockyards of Montreal? Even Ziegfried would find that a bit of a coincidence. And yet Buddy didn’t react. Hadn’t he heard?

“Russell! The phone!”

“Tell her I’m busy! I can’t come to the phone.”

The voice had come from behind me. I turned. There was another man standing there all by himself. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed him before. Maybe he hadn’t been there. He was not very big. He didn’t look or sound much like the others. He seemed reserved and quiet, rather shy. The other men seemed to ignore him. He didn’t look like me either, I thought, and yet, something about him was strangely familiar. What was it? Was it his voice? Was it his movements? I couldn’t tell what it was but I could feel it. I felt tingles in my spine. Was this my father?

“Take the call, Russell, that’s the third time she’s called this month already.”

“Tell her … ah, yah, okay!”

He stamped out his cigarette and went inside. I was stunned. I looked at Hugh. He must have read my face.

“Oh … yah. That’s Russell. That’s his girl from his first wife, umm … or his second, I guess. I dunno. He doesn’t live with her anymore. He lives somewhere else now.”

I was so shocked I didn’t know what to think. “Do … do you know how old she is?”

“Who? His daughter? Ahhhh … no. She’s younger than you, I think. I’m not sure. He doesn’t see her too much. As you can tell.”

“Why?”

Hugh shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno.”

Russell came back out. He went past me without looking at me. He kept to himself. Suddenly, Buddy spoke up. “So … Peddle. I see you’re still here. You didn’t run back to Newfoundland yet?”

I shook my head then turned to see if Russell had heard that. He was staring straight at me now in a confused way. Yes. He had heard. The name “Peddle” meant something him. He looked like he was wrestling with it. The men started in. I followed. As I passed the phone stand I noticed a binder labelled
Contact Info.
I wanted to look at it but didn’t want anyone to see me. Russell had a daughter. If he was my father that meant that I had a sister. I couldn’t believe it. But as I returned to the tool room and sat down, all I could think of was getting my hands on that binder.

It was hard to concentrate. I picked up a chisel and the sharpening stone. The chisel had gouges cut into its edge. It was useless as a chisel like that. In fact, it would destroy anything it was properly applied to. But you could certainly puncture holes with it, if you hit it hard enough. But why not use a proper tool for that, like a punch? This chisel would have to run through the grinder. I dropped it into the box and picked up another one. It had tiny nicks but I could remove them with the coarse side of the stone. I turned and looked at Hollie. He was staring at me through the mesh of the tool bag.

“We should go.”

He wagged his tail.

“I’ll be right back.”

I jumped up and went to the phone stand. I took the receiver and put it to my ear, then pressed some buttons to make it look like I was making a call. The receiver started beeping but I ignored it. I pulled the contact book down, opened it and flipped through it quickly. Under “P” I found “Pynsent, Russell.” That pretty much confirmed it. I had found my father. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. I needed to think straight.

There were several addresses and phone numbers, all crossed out with heavy pencil except the last one. The one at the top of the page read: “Antoinette Babbette, 269, rue de la Rivière Ouest, Dorval.” None of the other addresses included a name other than Russell’s. I scribbled down Antoinette’s address on a piece of paper, shut the book, put it back and hung up the phone. As I turned, I saw Russell standing there watching me. I turned red. I folded the piece of paper and put it in my pocket. When I looked up again, he was gone.

I went back to the tool room and sat down. Hugh came in. His face was soft and compassionate. “So. You figure it’s Russell?”

I nodded. “Looks like it.”

He shook his head. “Don’t expect to get much out of him. I haven’t heard him put more than two sentences together in all the time I’ve known him. He’s a good worker though.”

I stared at the chisel box and thought about it. “All the same, I’m going to talk to him today.”

“You can’t.”

I raised my head. “Why not?”

“Because he’s gone home.”

I stayed and finished the day. Because my father hadn’t, I wanted to. I didn’t know why. I hated quitting. I hated the very thought of it. Besides, I wanted to think, and sharpening tools was the kind of work that helped me do that.

But as the hours passed, the only things that got sharper were the tools. My mind just went around in circles. I had never expected my father to run away from me. It shouldn’t have surprised me I supposed, when I thought about it. Still, I wondered what he was so afraid of.

When we left for the day, I shook hands with Hugh, thanked him for the job and apologized for not staying longer. He stood at the door. “No worries. Just remember something, will you?”

“Sure. What is it?”

He looked me in the eye. I found it difficult to look back because I was upset. “Nobody’s perfect. Russell’s a decent man.”

I nodded, shook his hand and left. But his words stayed with me.

WE HAD BEEN FOLLOWED.
I was certain of it. Someone kept creating shadows and the shadows kept moving. Hollie was always looking back. But we never saw anyone. Weird. Could it have been a ghost? I didn’t see any light. If ghosts were really what Sheba said they were it was unlikely one would follow us. But the feeling was strong.

We crossed the long pier. Clouds drifted across the city and covered the moon, although the city was never dark at night in the way the river was. There were too many lights everywhere to allow for much darkness, even on the dockyards. We climbed into the sub. I fed the crew, dimmed the lights and got ready for bed.

My submarine was my sanctuary. That’s what Sheba had called it. She said your sanctuary was the place you felt happiest, where you could sit and think and work out things that were bothering you. It was where you felt safest. I would have thought Sheba’s sanctuary was her kitchen but she said it was her bedroom. That’s where she practised yoga. That’s where she read. Well, my sub certainly was mine. I think it was Hollie’s sanctuary too. I couldn’t speak for Seaweed. He was happy almost anywhere, except that whenever he settled down by the observation window in the middle of a storm, I bet it felt like a sanctuary to him. It was our home. Sheba said Ziegfried’s sanctuary was his workshop.

But when I lay down I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept racing. Half an hour later I jumped up, dressed, told the crew I’d be right back, and went out. There was something I needed to do. In my pocket I carried the paper with Antoinette Babbette’s phone number. Maybe it was not too late to call.

I went quickly across the long yard. The patrol truck was not in sight. There was a phone booth on the other side of the train tracks, but I had to go around the gate. By myself I could climb along the seawall. Just as I reached the end of the yard, where the grain elevators rose in the dark, I turned and looked back. For a second, I thought I saw a shadow move in the centre, the very spot where I had knelt down to hide from the truck. It must have been my imagination. What were the chances that somebody else was doing exactly what I had done?

I started to go, then stopped. Wasn’t that exactly why it had worked for me when I had hidden from the truck, because no one expected a shadow to turn into a person? I decided to take a minute and stare at that spot. If nothing moved in one minute I would continue. I waited. It was difficult to see across in the dark. It was probably nothing. But then, I thought I saw something move. Sure enough, the shadow shivered and shook. A few seconds later it stood up. It wasn’t a ghost. It was Bim!