Salvage - Stephen Maher

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he finished, he peeled off his gloves and jammed his icy, grey hands in his armpits to warm them. He lay down in the boat, with his face buried in its rubber wall. When he could finally feel his fingertips again — when his hands changed from numb to sore — he started the long, tiring job of hauling the inflatable back to the schooner, pulling hand over hand on the nylon rope. The rain pelting his face was so cold it felt like sleet. Twice he had to stop to rest, warming his hands in his armpits again. The spray and rain mixed with tears on his face.

      “I’s the b’y that sails her,” he sang. “I’s the b’y that sails her.”

      Scarnum almost fell in the water as his frozen hands clawed uselessly at the ladder on the Cerebus and his feet slipped on the rungs. He heaved himself into the cockpit and finally stopped singing. He lay on his back and cackled wildly, staring up into the falling rain, hugging himself.

      “I got you, you son of a whore!” he shouted. “I fucking got you, you fucking whore!”

      Then he crawled to the warmth of the cabin, where he wrapped himself around the diesel heater. His hands hurt badly as they filled with blood again, but it was the pain of life, and Scarnum grinned as he flexed his throbbing fingers. When the cold came out of his bones, he changed into dry clothes and had some long drinks of rum from the neck of the rum bottle. Then he went to the cockpit and smoked a cigarette in the rain, looking back at the lobster boat.

      The Kelly Lynn came off the rocks eventually, but it took some doing.

      On his first try, as the rain turned to snow, Scarnum pulled gently, slowly accelerating until the tow line went taut and the schooner strained in the waves. The old diesel was wide open but the Kelly Lynn wouldn’t give up her perch, even when he steered from side to side and tried to work her loose.

      Scarnum figured that if he let the line go slack and ran the schooner at full speed the sudden shock might pull the Kelly Lynn loose, but he was afraid it might tear the stern cleat out of the old schooner, so he hauled in the tow line and tied several smaller lines to it about ten feet out. These lines he tied to other cleats on the schooner, hoping to distribute the strain. Then he opened the diesel up and ran due south, bracing himself for the shock.

      When the lines pulled taut, one of the lighter ones rent with a sickening snap and the schooner’s bow twisted to the port. Scarnum kept the engine wide open, the taut lines singing. He let out a deep breath when they slackened. The Kelly Lynn had budged.

      It took twenty minutes of sawing back and forth and a few more sudden jerks before she was fully afloat and he could start to tow her, stern first, into the channel and back toward Chester through the snow in the darkness.

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      In the sheltered waters behind Betty Island, Scarnum managed to get a line around the bow cleat of the Kelly Lynn so that she would tow more easily, and he shortened the tow line considerably when he got near to Chester so that he could manoeuvre it more easily through the tangle of lobster buoys and moored yachts in Mahone Bay.

      Scarnum slowed way down as he steered into the Back Harbour and drifted slowly through the mooring field at Charlie Isenor’s boatyard, where he kept his boat. He used a gaff to pluck a spare mooring buoy out of the water, then waited as the Kelly Lynn drifted in, hauling the tow line out of the water onto the deck of the schooner. When the lobster boat was close, he tied the tow line to the mooring buoy and goosed the schooner’s engine so it was out of the way when the lobster boat came up short on its new mooring.

      Scarnum’s exhaustion settled in suddenly as soon as the Kelly Lynn was moored, and he could think of nothing but his bunk aboard his own boat as he tied up the Cerebus to Charlie’s dock.

      Charlie was there on the wharf, waiting for him, a yellow slicker pulled over the workout clothes he liked to wear in the evenings. He was holding a big six-volt flashlight, playing the beam over the Kelly Lynn, which was floating free, although low in the water.

      The house that he shared with his wife, Annabelle, overlooked the boatyard and mooring field at the tip of the Back Harbour, and Charlie liked to sit at his kitchen table and look out at his domain while Annabelle watched television in the evening.

      Down the little hill from the Isenor’s bungalow was his workshop, an old barn of unpainted, weathered wood. A bit farther up the bay was the boat shed where Scarnum had replanked Cerebus. The rest of the yard was full of sailboats on steel cradles, and piles of scrap lumber and marine detritus.

      A long grey wooden wharf ran between the edge of the yard and the bay, its deck resting on a crib of heavy, stone-filled wooden timbers. A floating dock with a few boats tied up to it was attached to the wharf. Beyond was the mooring field — with buoys for sailboats.

      “Holy fuck, Scarnum!” said Charlie as Scarnum climbed up onto the wharf. “Whatcha, buy a fucking lobster boat? Did you inhale too much of that paint thinner? Jesus Murphy!”

      Scarnum smiled. “Salvage,” he said. “Found it banging on the rocks on Chebucto Head.”

      “Holy fuck,” said Charlie. “You managed to haul that rig off the Sambro Ledges, by yourself, in a fucking snowstorm?”

      Scarnum was too tired to do anything but nod.

      Charlie, for once struck speechless, pulled off his ball cap and scratched at his bristly grey hair, looking first at the Kelly Lynn then back at Scarnum. He let out a cackle.

      “Lord tundering fuck, Phillip, you son of a whore, that must have been a job of work. How’d you get a line on her?”

      Scarnum smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you, Charlie,” he said. “It weren’t fucking easy.”

      Then the two men laughed together, Charlie giggling, Scarnum chuckling and wheezing.

      When they finished, Charlie took a good look at Scarnum, taking in the stooped shoulders and the grey pallor of his normally tanned face.

      “You look like an old bag of shit,” he said. “Your eyes are like two piss holes in the snow. You’d better get to bed and you can tell me about it in the morning. You want a bowl of chowder before you turn in? Annabelle made some today.”

      Scarnum shook his head and nodded toward his boat. “I wanna hit me bunk,” he said.

      Charlie put his hand on his shoulder and pushed him toward his boat.

      As Scarnum started to open the hatch on the deck of his boat, Charlie called out to him. “Hey,” he said. “You been aboard the Kelly Lynn?”

      Scarnum looked up at him and shook his head.

      “Funny thing for there to be a lobster boat floating around without a crew, isn’t it?” he said. “Could be it broke free of its mooring and drifted there, I suppose.”

      He let that sink in for a minute.

      “Yuh,” Scarnum said. “Or it could be some poor bastard fell off the damn thing and drowned and his widow’s home fretting, not sure if he’s at the bar or dead in the fucking water.”

      He shook himself and climbed back onto the wharf. Charlie held out the flashlight for him to take.

      “I’ll go out and make sure there’s not somebody dead of a heart attack below. You call the Coast Guard and report the salvage.”

      Charlie brightened and put the ball cap back on his head. “That I will do,” he said and started to climb back to his warm house as Scarnum climbed into the little alum­inum runabout that Charlie kept at the end of the dock.

      “If there’s a body aboard I’ll come tell you,” Scarnum called out. “Otherwise, I’m going to sleep, and in the morning I’m going to see a lawyer about a salvage claim.”

      It was easy as pie to climb onto the lobster boat from the little rowboat in the sheltered bay, and Scarnum shivered as he thought of his struggle hours ago.

      He played the light around the deck of the

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