Sea of Tranquility (10 page)

“Right you are,” Moses said. “Guess I'll owe you folks a freebie. That's what I do, you know. No whale, no pay.”

“We couldn't allow you to do that,” Elise said.“We'll pay as agreed. It's been a good ride to sea. The cappuccino was lovely.”

“Well, okay. As long as you are satisfied. What say we go back and lunch is on me. The Aetna Canteen. Fresh-cooked lobster all around.”

The engine roared to life, the anchor was hauled up, and the boat arced around in a U-turn, headed back to the island's government wharf. Once underway, Bruce sidled up to the captain and quietly asked about the other island attraction, the shooting range.

“Of course. It's part of your package. I just wasn't sure you were a gun man.”

“I'm not. It's just…” But Bruce didn't have the right words for it. A fantasy of sorts, was what he had meant to say. Despite the fact that he supported gun control, donated money to the Lobby for the Elimination of Handguns, voted for congressmen who demanded better gun legislation, Bruce knew that he just had to get his hands on some sort of gun and shoot at things. When he'd read about this salvage yard and the interesting angle — “Get back at the technology you hate the most”— well, it stuck in his head like an old piece of chewing gum on the bottom side of a sixth grader's desk.

Elise would never understand.

“Can we go visit the old woman?” Angie asked.“After lunch?”

“The old woman?” Moses said. “You mean Sylvie. Sure, heck, Sylvie would love to have visitors. She's all alone. Some think she's a bit daft. Not me, mind you. Sylvie is something else. Four husbands. All dead. What a tragic streak of luck for a woman. But she's got the courage to keep on. I'll take you and your ma over there if you like. Remember, I got to make up to you folks for all this disappointment.”

“No disappointment,” Elise said. “Everything is fine. But yes, why don't I take Angie to visit this woman. Perhaps we can help her with some chores or something.” Elise had no real affinity for “chores.” She had hired help to clean her house, a top-of-the-line Maytag dishwasher for the dishes, professional men to call when things broke down. But today she would go slumming in the boondocks. Maybe down on her knees with a bucket of well water, a hand scrub brush, and some lye soap. Would be good for her. She was even looking forward to it.

Bruce had just seen the heavens open up and a favour granted from the gods of munitions.“Maybe Todd and I will go look around that old junkyard up on the hill. That'd be a real education for the boy.”

Moses winked, understood. Todd endorsed the idea.“Maybe I'll get some good idea for a science project or something.”

Sylvie was not there at her table by the Aetna but the family sat and ate cold, cooked lobster. Todd pretended to be dissecting his, collected all the little hard-cased eyeballs on crustaceous stalks and set them together in a pile. Angie could not eat hers, said it looked like something she'd like to keep as a pet, thought it might still be alive. Bruce knew enough to keep his mouth shut and to not report that it had undoubtedly been boiled alive, screaming even as it met its scalding fate.

Elise sucked the lobster meat out of the legs and Bruce wrenched his apart like he was wrestling it, savoured the sweet tail meat and even ate the green stuff that Todd mistakenly thought must come out of the lobster's brain.

They tore off big pieces of Sylvie's bread and ate it without butter. Delicious. Never had anything like it before from
the best of the gourmet bakeries in Upper Montclair. There was a raspberry pie for dessert and ice cream. And then the women were off with Moses to find Sylvie. Before he departed, Moses scratched his forehead, pointed a finger up the hill towards Phonse's junkyard, and, cautious that Elise wasn't looking, raised a thumb, crooked a finger, and mimed the firing of a gun. The great conspiracy of men. Todd smiled, although he didn't quite understand.

Phonse Doucette greeted Bruce Sanger like a long-lost cousin, introduced him to Alistair Swinnemar, who looked vaguely familiar. Phonse's office looked like maybe a front-end loader had tipped the roof off temporarily and dumped in a load of car parts and technological junk. It had a chaotic lived-in look that Bruce and Todd both found very attractive. It was the antithesis of their orderly lives. Weapons in a glass case lined one wall. Old World War II rifles, shotguns, handguns.

“Guess you heard about us on the Internet?”

“No. Actually it was the tourist agency.”

“Oh, right. Chicago. They think we're onto something here. Cutting edge, so to speak. ‘Get back at technology.' They think we need to copyright the idea or patent it or something. Personally, I'm not in it for the money. It's just good, clean, safe entertainment. What's your pleasure?”

“This for real?” Todd asked his dad.

“We'll have to explain it carefully to your mother.”

“Can I shoot, too?”

“What do you think?” he asked Phonse.

“Parental discretion advised, but I've seen boys younger than him put a bullet hole or two in an old Caddie and come up smilin'.”

“Okay then, but only if it's safe.”

“Safety first, that's our motto. Alistair, you wanna unlock the gun cabinet? I think we'll stick with the shotguns today for the first-timers.”

“Right, Phonse.”

Twenty solid minutes of safety instructions and father and son were deep in the centre of the junkyard in a dug-out kind of quarry adjacent to Oickle's Pond. Bruce had elected to shoot the bejesus out of a faded piss-yellow Volvo station wagon. Todd blasted away at a rusty VW bug with stick-on flowers.

“Lock and load,” Phonse said. Nothing he liked more than to watch the smiles on the faces of trigger-happy tourists. Father-son bonding at its best, this time around.

“It's when the windows shatter, that's the part I like the best,” Bruce announced.

“I think I hit the gas tank. How come it didn't blow up?” Todd wondered out loud.

“All fuel has been safely removed before using the vehicle as a target,” Phonse answered. This lesson had been learned the hard way.

“If you like the sound of glass, Mr. Sanger, may I suggest we move you into televisions if you feel you're ready.”

“I think I am finding my range,” Bruce said.

“Yeah, Dad, can we? Can we shoot at TVs?”

A curious look to Phonse. “TVs, computer monitors, you pick or mix and match as is your pleasure.”

So, while Alistair monitored the guns for safety's sake, Bruce and Todd assisted Phonse in setting a big old Motorola floor model TV in the centre of the pit. Acer and Goldstar computer monitors were also expertly placed, one atop each decimated car. Bruce's ears were ringing pleasantly from all the gunshots. Todd's shoulder was sore from the kick of the shotgun.

Bruce fired away at the computer monitors over and over until they were shredded into a ragged mass of plastic, wires, and riddled electronic fragments. But it did not compare with the magnificent implosion of the old TV screen on the Motorola. Todd brought television to its knees with one crippling blast from his shotgun. After that, the excitement dwindled.

Alistair suggested they fire at old five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks tossed in the air, but for these novice gunmen, it turned out to be a bit beyond their skills. Nonetheless, after two hours of therapy in the Phonse theme park, both men were pleasantly exhausted and knew it was time to find the womenfolk.

“Time for a beer?” Phonse asked.“I made it myself.”

“No. Just tally up what I owe you and we'll be on our way. You do take Visa?”

“Visa, MasterCard, Sears card, if you have one. I can't do Air Miles, though.”

“This has been amazing.”

“We aim to please,” he said taking Bruce's credit card.“Get it?”

Todd was polite enough to laugh.

“What do you do with all the stuff after it's been used for target practice?” Bruce asked, environmental conscience creeping up on him from behind like a stalker in Central Park.

“A lot of it is recycled. For what's left over, well,Alistair takes the Caterpillar and shoves the junk into a hole. We bury it. It goes back into the earth. It's only right.”

Something continued to tug at Bruce's scruples as he was handed back his Visa card and signed his name in the usual place, surprised that the total for the afternoon fun was so much less than he'd expected.

“Tell your friends,” Phonse said as they walked away, down the dusty road towards the Aetna Café.

“But not your mother,” Bruce whispered under his breath to his son.

Bruce could not stop smiling. Yet he couldn't believe that he had allowed himself (and his son!) to indulge in such a thing. He swore to the sky above him that he was still a pacifist; he would donate even more money to the lobby for gun control. He would work for a cleaner world. He would do these things even as he silently admitted he was a hypocrite.
No
. He was a walking paradox. Everyone was. Better to understand the central ironies of your life and get on with it. Better than hiding them away in a closet. This was something to discuss with his wife when the time was right. Not now. No, not today. He would not destroy the euphoria of the day. A day without whales had turned out to be not a bad day after all.

Men, off to do what? Go to a junkyard. Well, that was a first for Bruce. Nonetheless, it was a good chance for mother-daughter bonding. That was an important part of what this vacation was all about, after all. She didn't have to read an article in
Cosmopolitan
to realize that kids didn't spend enough time with their overactive mothers these days. Complicated lives. Who didn't have a complicated life? Certainly, Elise Sanger had one.

Angeline was not only insistent, she was imperative. They would go knock on the door of the old woman, Sylvie. Not hard
to find her, they said in the Aetna Canteen. Take the road from the wharf and when it splits, go left, out towards the sea, front of the island. Only a few of the “old ones” living out that way. Most sons and daughters had built homes away from the sea. Newer houses down thisaway, here by the government wharf. Closer to the ferry, easier to get back and forth to the mainland.

Elise thought she heard some kind of a blast off in the distance.“A gun?”

“Only them at the junkyard. Phonse and the rest. Old cars and such. Men and their little odd jobs,” the canteen woman said. She wore a little button name tag that read “Binnie.”

Maybe it wasn't a gun, some kind of air-compressed tool ripping a rear-view mirror off a car. What did she know about such things? Thought of her husband and son around all those rusty cars. Was it safe?

“The whole island's safe, ma'am,” the woman said.“Not like some places on the mainland.” It was a stock phrase for tourists. Binnie was working up a number of stock phrases for the summer tourists, if they ever got here. Seems that summer was a little slow gearing itself up. Everyone on tenterhooks, worrying about the whales and whatnot. Some slow returning this year, the whales were. Now these tourists back from Moses' boat tour and no whales. Poor old Moses giving them a freebie on him… lobster dinners yet (lunches as the mainlanders insisted on calling them). If Moses was buying, she'd give him twenty-five percent off. And of course, there were no tips unless the tourists decided to go the extra distance. This husband had left an American five. Nothing to write home about, but it was a start. Undeclared income. No taxes to be paid on that bit, anyway.

Angeline thought the gravel made a little song underneath their feet. She studied the coltsfoot flowers growing by the side of the
road, the pretty green spires of horsetail plants, saw a frog in a pond. Dragonflies the size of model airplanes. Small yellow birds sat on spruce boughs and chirped so loud she thought she might have to cover her ears.

Mother and daughter walking down a dirt road on an island. An enchanted island, Angeline was certain of that. Yet it somehow seemed so much more real than where they lived in Upper Montclair. Maybe that life had all been a dream. She was just now waking up. Waking up to blue sky, shredded cotton candy wisps of clouds. The smell of sea everywhere. Old barns, tilting to one side as if a giant had been leaning against them, taking a rest. Ravens sitting on the ridge posts, louder than the chirping yellow birds, big awkward voices echoing against the forest.

The road looked less and less travelled. Fewer driveways with cars, gravel giving way to grass and dandelion beneath their feet, two tracks and a hump in the middle, little blue flowers in the hump, and a well-placed bony boulder or two that was hungry for the undercarriage of the car of anyone willing to drive here without caution. Then a little driveway off to the left, a footpath really, leading through tall trees and opening up into a clearing.

An old house with weathered grey wood shakes on the walls, the same weathered shingles for a roof. Moss on the roof and lichen. Yellow and orange. A scruffy-looking chimney, tottering. Sylvie's house. Old woman in a shoe. Not quite. But this was better.

Robins hopped around in the early summer grass. A harmless snake lay on a flat slate stone, relaxing, slowly absorbing solar energy to bring it fully back to life. An osprey flying overhead. Angeline noticed it all as if in an instant, witnessed it all and absorbed it, said to herself,“This is me. This place. I am at some special, special place and it will stay with me for the rest of my life.” She knocked on the door. They did not have door bells or buzzers or outdoor intercoms here on Ragged Island.

A door swung inward.
Open Sesame
. The old woman, blinking in the light. Slightly surprised. Not many visitors for her, Angie guessed.

Elise cleared her suburban throat.“Hope we're not intruding.”

Sylvie adjusting her bearings. The word “intruding” had a funny foreign feel to it. People on the island usually didn't worry about intruding. You were either there to visit or you were not. You did not worry about if it was intruding. But these were not islanders. Mainlanders. Little girl and her mum. Sylvie smiled, opened the door as wide as it would go. “Not at all. Was just sitting alone with a not so interesting book. Close it up. Easy enough at that. Come. Sit. Angeline, isn't it. Cookie, girl?”