Salvage. Stephen Maher
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Scarnum held his breath before he entered the wheelhouse, half expecting to see some old fishermen dead of a heart attack on the floor.
“I’s the b’y that builds the boat,” he sang to himself. “I’s the b’y that sails her.”
But inside, there was nothing special. The instrument screens were all dead. The throttle handle, Scarnum noticed, was pushed all the way forward. He absently pulled it back to the off position.
Below, there was six inches of water sloshing around in the crew quarters. There was a small TV, three narrow bunks, a duffle bag, and a little galley with a propane stove and fridge and some little cupboards.
In a daze, he made his way back to his boat and collapsed into his berth, still fully dressed.
Friday, April 23
HE DIDN’T FEEL TOO GOOD in the morning.
He didn’t wake up until nine and didn’t get out of bed until ten.
He stripped down in the fibreglass hallway of his Paceship 32 and gave himself a once-over in the little shaving mirror in the cramped head. His arms and legs were badly bruised. He had blackened blood in the palm of his hand, although he didn’t see the source anywhere, aside from a handful of little cuts and scrapes on his hands and forearms.
His tanned, sharp-featured face looked haggard, but not much more so than usual, considering his forty years of hard living.
The Paceships were built without showers, so Scarnum had installed one in the head, but it was awkward, standing half bent over the toilet, under the little shower head. This morning, in the awkward position, his sore body complained as he washed himself.
All his cuts and bruises came to life under the thin stream of piping hot water, and he had to force himself to scrub himself raw. After he shaved and towelled dry, he went to the back of his hanging locker and came out with a pair of grey wool dress pants, a pressed pale blue button-down shirt, and a dark blue blazer. He dressed, then stepped back into the head to survey himself in the mirror.
“Not bad,” he said. “Gentleman salvor.”
Charlie was waiting for him up at the house with a pot of coffee.
Scarnum sat at the table in the warm little kitchen, which was decorated with paintings of boats and photographs of Charlie and Annabelle’s grandchildren. From Annabelle’s sail loft off the kitchen, Scarnum could hear the rattle of a sewing machine.
“There’s Chester’s newest lobster fisherman, Annabelle,” said Charlie, cackling. “Them are fancy clothes for a lobsterman, you.”
The rattle of the sewing machine stopped, and Annabelle came in from her sail loft and gave Scarnum a good look as Charlie poured him a cup of coffee.
“My God, Phillip,” she said, “you must have had quite a time bringing dat ting in.”
Annabelle was sixty and had lived in Chester for forty-two years, but she had never lost her soft Acadian accent.
“It was a good day’s work,” he said and winked at her.
He told them he had no appetite for breakfast, and he settled down to drink his coffee and tell them how he had snagged the Kelly Lynn.
They both looked at him with horror as he told them about his grim minutes hanging off the stern, half in the water, and both grinned as he described the moment when the lobster boat eventually let go of the reef.
When he was done at last, Annabelle suddenly flushed.
“Phillip, I don’t know why you would take such a risk,” she said. “It’s crazy. You could have easily drowned. From the sound of it, you almost did. You can’t spend your money if you’re dead.”
She threw up her hands, got up from the table, and turned to the sink to rinse her cup.
Scarnum looked at Charlie for support, but the old man just looked at him with narrow eyes, as if he was wondering the same thing.
Scarnum looked at them both, down at his coffee cup, and then out at the Kelly Lynn floating on the dock.
“Well,” he said. “I suppose you’re right. I likely should have called it in on the VHF and shared the prize with someone. On the other hand, the Kelly Lynn looks pretty good sitting out there in the Back Harbour.”
She just shook her head at him and walked back to her studio.
When she was gone, Charlie told him that the Coast Guard had no reports of a missing vessel by the name of the Kelly Lynn, and Scarnum told Charlie what he’d found aboard: nothing.
Then Scarnum called a lawyer — William Mayor — who had a little office in Chester.
The receptionist told him at first that Mr. Mayor was booked up.
“Tell him, please, that it’s Phillip Scarnum calling, and that I’ve salvaged a lobster boat, and I’d like to see him today.”
She put him on hold and came back and told him Mr. Mayor would be free at one, if he didn’t mind watching the lawyer eating his lunch.
“That would be fine,” said Scarnum.
Chester is built on a wooded hill at the head of sparkling Mahone Bay, a sailor’s paradise dotted with pine-clad islands. There is a bay on each side of Chester — the Front Harbour, lined with wooden wharves and filled in the summer with sailboats and cape boats going to and fro, and the Back Harbour, a quiet backwater lined with houses.
It was built when every village and town around Nova Scotia had a shipyard, where men with hand tools turned trees into wooden vessels, so the houses were built by shipwrights with all the time in the world on their hands and plentiful, cheap timber. They are handsome, sturdy, wooden homes, clad in clapboard, with peaks and gables and widow’s walks looking out over the water.
In the early part of the last century, rich Americans discovered Chester’s charms, and since then the little port had been largely bought out, taken over each summer by well-off come from aways: Americans, Ontarians, retired Halifax professionals. The summer people have bought up most of the beautiful homes from the descendants of the sea captains who built them, driving up the property values, which has sent most of the locals inland or down the bay, where land doesn’t cost so much. In the summer, Mercedes and Land Rovers clog the narrow, tree-lined streets, but during the rest of the year, there are pickup trucks and old sedans.
What passes for a downtown strip — a bank, some churches, a few cafés and pubs and a ship chandler — takes up one street a few blocks from the water.
There was not much going on this Monday at lunchtime, and Scarnum found a parking spot for his old Toyota pickup right in front of the Victorian house on Queen Street where William Mayor had his office.
Inside, Mayor’s receptionist greeted Scarnum and showed him into Mayor’s office, a pleasant wood-lined room with a view of the carefully groomed backyards of some of Chester’s nicer homes.
“Phillip, good to see you,” Mayor said, rising from his chair and extending his big, soft hand.
“Good to see you, William,” Scarnum said and sat down in a wooden chair in front of the lawyer’s desk.
“Phillip, you hungry?” said Mayor, patting his oversized belly. “I’m starved. I’m about to get some fish and chips sent in from the Anchor. Want an order?”
Scarnum did. Mayor called in the order and sat back in his chair, looking at Scarnum over his rimless reading glasses.
“So,” he said. “Sounds like you’ve got a story to tell,” he said, and leaned back in his chair.
“Well,” said Scarnum, “I was doing a delivery run yesterday, taking a schooner into Halifax, when I saw a boat