The O'Briens (43 page)

He reached for his pants and started pulling them on, lying flat on his back in the V-berth. He buckled his belt, then sat up too quickly and banged his forehead on the bulkhead, so hard he was stunned.

The clarity of pain calmed him for a few moments.
Nothing's happened, nothing's wrong
, he thought to himself.
You're overdoing it now. It's the music, that's all, the wild music. She'll be fine. There's nothing wrong.

The moment was like a gap blown open in the fog, but then it closed in again. The music screeching and sliding across the water was like a taunt, and it was the only thing reaching him through the fog. He dragged on a shirt and sweater and hauled himself up the companionway. A sense of redness burned on his forehead, and touching the spot, he saw blood on his fingertips. It didn't matter.

The deck was slick with moisture. The lighthouse on the island was still extinguished. He couldn't see the island or the government dock or anything on the mainland. He couldn't see the herring trawlers. There was no tide, no current — nothing but fog, the beautiful
Son
wrapped in a ball of grey wool. He heard the buoy banging but wasn't sure of its location. He knew he should check the chart but there wasn't time and he was only three hundred yards offshore, and even if he got turned about and headed the wrong way he'd probably make landfall on the island. A Catholic church, a courthouse, and an RCMP detachment didn't necessarily imply civilization. There would be roads clawing up those rugged mountains and people living along them, not town people.

His granddaughter was utterly dependent on the boy. She was in his power. She had no way of getting herself back out to the
Son
except Kenneth MacIsaac and his dory. If she had to stand on the government dock and yell for her grandfather to come and get her, maybe he would hear her but maybe he wouldn't. He didn't want her stranded in the town while men with hanks of greasy hair falling on their foreheads rumbled through the dead streets in battered, muddy cars. He didn't want her that vulnerable, or anywhere near. He'd been an idiot to bring her up here. The sailing had been far rougher than he'd predicted, the seas too big, the fogs too dense, the harbours too few.

Without being entirely aware of what he was doing he'd been unwinding the dinghy's painter from its cleat, drawing the dinghy alongside, and unhooking the life rail. Before stepping off he glanced at the compass.
Sea Son
's
bow was pointed south-southwest, but not very steadily; with no breeze and no perceptible tidal current, she was drifting on the mooring, and any other boats he came across in the fog would also be pointing haphazardly in all directions. But he only needed to row three hundred yards bearing north-northwest to make the government dock, or close to.

If there were lights in the village, and there had to be, the fog had buried them. He had known fog in Maine, but only up in Fundy had he ever tasted a fog like this, warm and almost smoky, a real pea soup.

As he was stepping awkwardly into the dinghy, a high-pitched ringing started in his right ear. He felt dizzy all of a sudden and froze, clutching the
Son
's life rail. It passed after a few seconds, and he extended his foot and touched the painted wood of the dinghy's middle seat, wet and slippery. He sat down quickly and pushed off
.
The oars were tucked under the seats. He was fitting the oarlocks into their holes when it occurred to him that he should have brought a horn or at least a flashlight.

And he had forgotten to put on his shoes. His feet were bare, sitting in half an inch of warm water slopping around the dinghy. He considered going back but didn't want to waste time going alongside and cleating, or at least wrapping the painter on a winch, and clambering aboard and going down the steep companionway in the dark to retrieve his shoes from the cabin. Most of all he didn't want to have to step down into the dinghy again in the darkness and wet and risk the ringing in his ears and that blast of dizziness.

It was a tiny village, and he remembered that the Catholic church was very near the government dock. It was an odd, ornate little wooden church painted white and just up from the harbour. Everything in Baddeck was just up from the harbour. He wouldn't go inside, just stand across the road, satisfy himself it was okay and she was in no danger. He was already starting to feel calmer now that he was underway. He just needed one glimpse of her. If she was enjoying herself he wasn't going to march in like some hillbilly father and drag her away. It was a parish dance, after all. There really wasn't all that much to get excited about. A parish dance. Last Saturday of every month, young MacIsaac had said. The priest collected the dollar or quarter or whatever he charged for admission, kept an eye on things, and ran the show. She wasn't likely to find herself in trouble in a Catholic church.

The rowing calmed him. Being on the water always had. The fog was disorienting, though, and he ought to have left a compass in the dinghy. How many rules of good seamanship had he broken in the past ten minutes or however long it had been? But he never got spooked in fog the way some people did. He had never minded letting go, losing his bearings for a while, being a bit lost. He'd grown up in the bush, after all. You were never really lost because there was nowhere you weren't lost. Those woods in winter, cutting firewood at four dollars a cord and clawing his way out through deep snow. Lynx he'd seen maybe twice, snow rabbits, starving moose, black bears roaming hungrily in the breakup season. If you got lost it didn't seem to make much difference. It was only panic that caused trouble, and being alone had never frightened him; plenty other things did, but not that.

He knew she was going to be okay, that nothing bad would happen; it was just that wild music that had spooked him. Maddie was a sensible girl and the boy seemed decent and polite — more than you could say for a lot of them at that age.

His head hurt, not just the wound on his forehead but the back of his head too. He tried ignoring it but it was unrelenting. Pain was pushing at the bones of his skull. One thin streak of blood had run down his nose and chin; he could feel it. With both hands gripping the oars there was nothing to do except row to the dock and tie up. He'd need to clean up somewhere. He couldn't tell if it was a scrape or a gash, but she wasn't going to be happy to see it; he had better see if he could rinse it off somewhere. He wasn't going to make a scene at the dance; they weren't even going to know he was here. The things he remembered — the wildness and brutality, Mick Heaney slapping his mother, sawing away at his fiddle — that was all fifty, sixty years ago. That world was gone, dead and buried. If he tried holding on to things that had never belonged to him in the first place, something would get twisted, something would get broken. Fear wasn't a lesson he'd ever meant to teach anyone.

Oh Jesus
, he thought,
where the hell is that fucking wharf?
He ought to have made it by now. Peering over his shoulder, he could see nothing through the blankness of fog. No cars or lights. Even if he had a flashlight it wouldn't have done any good. Maybe if he had a horn, if there was someone on the dock to hear.

“Hello, hello!” he shouted. “Ahoy there, Baddeck! Looking for the dock! Ahoy there!”

Nothing. He gritted his teeth and pulled violently, and the left oar suddenly slipped out of its oarlock. For a few moments he lost control of the dinghy as it spun about. He held onto the oar and fitted its leather back into the oarlock, but he had lost his sense of direction.

“Follow the tide, follow the tide,” he told himself, speaking aloud, just like an old man. He stared at the water surface, trying to get a sense of the flow, but if there was a tide it was very weak, or maybe he was moving on it. His head hurt. He shipped the right oar and touched the blood on his nose, then reached over, scooped up a handful of water, and splashed it on his face. The salt stung the gash on his forehead and dripped into his eyes. He was angry with himself. He tried recalling the harbour chart, the mooring field wedged between Kidston Island and Baddeck village on the mainland. He needed to calm down and listen for the buoy; it was probably at the mouth of the harbour. If he could reach the buoy, at worst he would just tie up to it and wait. Baddeck Bay narrowed to the northeast.

Not a single car, not one headlight. Either the town was smaller and even deader than he'd thought or the fog was thicker. There was a slight chance of missing everything and sliding out into the big lake — really an inland sea — but if he could keep to one heading there was a better than even chance he'd make a landfall very soon, somewhere. He dug in with the oars. His shoulders were starting to ache. The fog was warm but he was cold, cold inside. When you bled, your warmth leaked out: he'd read that somewhere. It occurred to him that he might be in real danger now.

“Ahoy, Baddeck!” he shouted again.

Then he heard a voice calling through the fog. “Granddaddy? Are you out there? Is that you?”

“It's me!” he shouted. “I'm in the dinghy. Where are you?”

“On the dock!” Maddie called. “We're just getting into the dory. Are you lost? Do you want us to come and find you?” The clear, bright line of her voice coming through the fog.

“I'm not lost,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Ahoy, mister! Ahoy there!” He recognized the young man's voice, Kenneth MacIsaac.

“I'm putting up a good light.” MacIsaac called. “Just hooking up the battery; give me a second now.”

“Should we come and find you?” Maddie called.

“No, stay where you are.” Gripping the oars, he started rowing towards the sound of their voices. All his life he'd needed their voices — outside himself, bright and alive, to take a bearing on, to find his way. “Keep talking! I'm coming to you. I'll see you in a moment.”

{ Author's Note }

T
his is a work of fiction.
Characters inspired by real people (what fictional characters are not?) soon asserted themselves and began feeling, thinking, and acting in ways that had nothing to do with anyone's family history or genealogy. My O'Briens live in the world of this novel, nowhere else.

{ About the Author }

PETER BEHRENS
is the author of the Governor General's Award–winning novel
The Law of Dreams
, published around the world to wide acclaim, and a collection of short stories,
Night Driving
. His short stories and essays have appeared in
Atlantic Monthly
,
Tin House
,
Saturday Night
, and the
National Post
. He was born in Montreal and lives on the coast of Maine with his wife and son.