The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [98]
The boats tethered to the pier were shiny with primary colors — orange, blue, green, and yellow — making her think more of Portuguese vessels than of Irish ones. The boat she’d been watching maneuvered around the pier and then threw out her mooring line. Kathryn walked toward the pier. There were uniformed guards at one end, and beyond them groups of men in civilian dress. As she walked, the fisherman aboard the red boat unloaded a piece of silver metal the size of a chair and placed it on the pier, where it immediately captured the attention of the men in civilian dress, who crowded around it. One of the men stood and beckoned to the driver of a truck, which backed onto the pier. The metal shard, presumably a piece of Jack’s plane, was loaded onto the truck.
At the entrance to the pier, a guard stopped her. “Can’t go beyond this point, miss.”
Perhaps he was a soldier. A policeman. He held a machine gun. “I’m a relative,” she said, eyeing the gun.
“Sorry for your loss, Ma’am,” the guard said. “There are scheduled trips for the relatives. You can inquire about them at the hotel.”
Like a whale watch, Kathryn thought. Or a cruise.
“I just need to talk to Danny Moore for a second,” Kathryn said.
“Oh, well then. That’s him there,” the guard said, gesturing. “The blue boat.”
Kathryn murmured a thank you and walked briskly past the man.
Avoiding eye contact with the officials in civilian dress, who were beginning to notice her, Kathryn called out to the fisherman in the blue boat. She saw that he was preparing to leave the pier.
“Wait,” she cried.
He was young, with dark hair cut close to the head. He wore a gold earring in his left ear. He had on a sweater that had probably once been ivory colored.
“Are you Danny Moore?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Can you take me out to the site?”
He seemed to hesitate, perhaps also about to tell her of the scheduled trips for relatives.
“I’m the pilot’s wife,” Kathryn said quickly. “I need to see the place where my husband went down. I don’t have much time.”
The fisherman reached up and took her hand.
He gestured for her to sit on a stool in the wheelhouse. Kathryn watched as one of the men in civilian dress strode toward the boat. The fisherman untied the mooring, came into the wheelhouse, and gunned the engine.
He said a word she couldn’t understand. She leaned forward, but the noise from the engine and the wind made conversation difficult.
The boat, she saw, had been scrubbed clean and bore no signs of fishing. Why fish when there was this task to be performed, this work for which those in charge might pay good money? “I’ll pay you,” Kathryn said, being reminded.
“Ah, no,” said the man, looking shyly away. “I don’t take money from family.”
As soon as the boat rounded the pier, the wind began in earnest. The fisherman smiled slightly when she made eye contact.
“You’re from here,” Kathryn said.
“Yes,” he answered, and he again uttered a word Kathryn could not make out. She thought it must be the name of the town where he lived.
“Have you been doing this since the beginning?” she shouted. “Since the beginning,” he said and looked away. “It’s not so bad now, but at first . . .”
She didn’t want to think about what it had been like at first. “Pretty boat,” she said to change the subject.
“It’s grand.”
She heard in his accent an uncomfortable reminder of Muire Boland.
“Is it yours?” she asked.
“Ah, no. It’s my brother’s. But we fish together.”
“What do you fish for?”
The engine made a steady grinding sound through the water. “Crab and lobster,” he said.
She stood and turned, facing the bow. Beside her at the wheel, the young man shifted his weight. She teetered some in her shapeless heels. “You fish now, in this cold?” she asked, clutching her suit jacket around her.
“Yes,” he said. “All weathers.”
“You go out every day?”
“Ah, no. We’ll make away on a Sunday evening and return on the Friday.”
“Hard life,” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s fine weather we’re having now,” he said. “There’s always mist at Malin Head.”
As they drew closer to the salvage