Klee Wyck - Emily Carr [36]
There was a great bright moon now. The fish looked alive, shooting through the air. In the scows they slithered over one another, skidding, switchbacking across the silver mound till each found a resting-place only to be bounced out by some weightier fellow.
The busy little boats broke the calm and brought a tang of freshness from the outside to remind the Inlet that she too was part of the great salt sea.
So absorbed was I in the fish that I forgot the packer till I heard the enthusiastic ring in Jones’ voice as he cried, “Packer!” He ran to his cupboard and found a bone for Ginger while Smith parleyed with the packer’s Japanese captain. Yes, he was going my way. He would take me.
Smith led me along the narrow plank walk and gave me into the Captain’s care. Besides myself there was another passenger, a bad-tempered Englishman with a cold in his head. As there was nowhere else, we were obliged to sit side by side on the red plush cushion behind the Captain and his wheel. All were silent as we slipped through the flat shiny water bordered on either side by mountainous fir-treed shores. The tree tops looked like interminable picket fences silhouetted against the sky, with water shadows as sharp and precise as themselves.
My fellow passenger coughed, hawked, sneezed and sniffed. Often he leaned forward and whispered into the Captain’s ear. Then the Captain would turn and say to me, “You wish to sleep now? My man will show you.” I knew it was “Sniffer” wanting the entire couch and I clung to the red plush like a limpet. By and by however, we came to open water and began to toss, and then I was glad to be led away by the most curious little creature. Doubtless he had a middle because there was a shrivelled little voice pickled away somewhere in his vitals, but his sou’wester came so low and his sea-boots so high, the rest of him seemed negligible.
This kind little person navigated me successfully over the deck gear, holding a lantern and giving little inarticulate clucks continuously, but my heart struck bottom when he slid back a small hatch and sank into the pit by jerks till he was all gone but the crown of his sou’wester.
“Come you please, lady,” piped the queer little voice. There was barely room for our four feet on the floor between the two pair of short narrow bunks which tapered to a point in the stern of the boat. To get into a berth you must first horizontal yourself then tip and roll. “Sou’wester-Boots” steadied me and held aside fishermen’s gear while I tipped, rolled, and scraped my nose on the underneath of the top bunk.
“I do wish you good sleep, lady.”
My escort and the light were gone. The blackness was intense and heavy with the smell of fish and tar.
I was under the sea, could feel it rushing by on the other side of the thin boards, kissing, kissing the boat as it passed. Surely at any moment it would gush into my ears. At the back of the narrow berth some live-seeming thing grizzled up my spine, the engine bell rang and it scuttled back again; then the rudder groaned, and I knew what the thing was. Soon the mechanics of the boat seemed to be part of myself. I waited for the sequence— bell, grizzle, groan—bell, grizzle, groan; they had become part of me.
Several times during the night the hatch slid back, a lantern swung into my den and shadow hands too enormous for this tiny place reached for some article.
“I am afraid I am holding up all the sleeping quarters,” I said.
“Please, lady, nobody do sleep when at night we go.”
I floated in and out of consciousness, and dream fish swam into my one ear and out of the other.
At three a.m. the rudder cable stopped playing scales on my vertebrae. The boat still breathed but she did not go. Sou’wester opened my lid and called, “Please, lady, the Cannery.”
I rolled, righted, climbed, followed. He carried my sketch sack and Ginger’s box. We took a few steps and then the pulse of the engine was no longer under our feet. We stood on some grounded thing that had such a tilt it pushed against our walking. We