of the last jobs we did each year was to offload the supplies that Albert and Evelyn had brought from their house and didn’t leave on the boat during the off-season. It included a mix of cutlery and crockery, pots and pans, sheets and bedding, dry goods and perishables, and also Albert’s power tools, which were top-of-the-line and worth a pretty penny, as he liked to say. Security at the boatyard wasn’t great and there had been a couple of break-ins over the years.
Thursday Tracy came to help with the unloading. She drove Albert’s truck down to the plant: a big Ford Ranger with a tonneau cover. With Albert and Evelyn, she and I began loading all the supplies into a wheeled skip alongside the Western Lady. Evelyn and Albert carried the boxes onto the deck and I lowered them over the gunnel to Tracy, who arranged them in the skip. She did this in a practised and specific way, so that all the different items fitted together, snug and intricate as a jigsaw.
‘You haven’t forgotten,’ I said.
‘Heck,’ she said, dropping a box of frozen fish into place, ‘it ain’t been that long.’
‘You miss it?’
‘I’ll be back, once I’m qualified.’
Evelyn, who was coming on deck with a sack of flour, overheard and said, ‘She’ll be skipper some day, if I can ever convince that man of mine to retire.’
‘Hope there’ll still be room for me,’ I said, and took the flour from her.
‘There’ll always be a place here for you, Timothy.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ I said. ‘Don’t know what I’d do without your cooking.’
‘Lose some pounds, I reckon,’ Tracy said.
I patted my belly, which was getting substantial. ‘It’s all muscle.’
Albert emerged from the galley, his boots clomping loud on the deck, a box of pots and pans in his arms. He must have overheard us, because he added, ‘Boy’s still a rake, compared to me.’
We laughed at that, politely, and continued handing boxes and bags to one another, like a game of pass-the-parcel. There was a familiar rhythm to it all, and to the dialogue, too.
The morning air carried a frosty, refreshing sting, and behind the clouds the sun glowed like an opal, and everything felt just fine while the four of us worked together. But eventually Evelyn stepped out of the galley and made a criss-cross motion with her hands: no more.
Tracy said, ‘I’ll wheel the skip up to the truck.’
‘Leave that to me and the greenhorn, princess,’ Albert said.
‘I been with you for years,’ I said, ‘and I’m still a greenhorn.’
‘You’ll always be a greenhorn,’ he said. ‘Leastways till you grow up.’
He stepped down from the boat, moving heavy, and we both leaned into the skip, pushing it on rusty wheels down the dock, up the gangplank, and then along the wharf.
‘You thought any about coming up to the cabin?’
‘I thought plenty about it. It sounds real nice.’
In two days they would be locking up the boat and heading out to Squamish. I still hadn’t given any clear indication one way or the other whether I’d be going with them.
‘I could use some help up there. Got a copse of spruce to cut down.’
‘It’s just my mother is the only thing.’
‘Your mother or your brother?’
I didn’t answer immediately, and I guess that was answer enough.
‘You two had a good time the other night, I gather.’
We’d reached the parking lot, and turned the skip towards his Ranger. We positioned the skip at the back, and then Albert locked its wheel brakes and dropped the truck’s tailgate.
I said, ‘He’s a hard fellow to say no to.’
‘His type often are.’
‘He ain’t a type.’
‘I know that.’
Albert shielded his eyes, gazing back down at the boat. Tracy was on the aft deck, waving to get his attention. She held an imaginary phone to her ear, and motioned for him.
‘I’ll send Tracy up,’ he said, ‘to help you load.’
He headed back. He moved slowly – Albert never rushed – but each stride was solid, deliberate, purposeful. As I waited I massaged the fingers of my bad hand, feeling the little nubs that had healed over. A few minutes later Tracy came down the wharf. She clambered into the back of the truck, hunching beneath the tonneau, and I lifted boxes up to her, one by one. As we worked we chatted about her night job, and the training she was doing.
‘It’s just a piece of paper. I know all I need to know about boats.’
‘I’ll say.’
‘But it’s got to be done, if I’m gonna take over.’
‘You ready for a life at sea?’
‘For two fisheries a year, anyway.’
‘I can think of worse ways to earn a living.’
I said it the way Albert might have, which got her laughing. When we finished with the unloading we stood leaning against the truck, jawing for a time. She asked – as casually as possible – about the cabin. I looked down at a coil of rope in the skip, really considering it. I mentioned my brother, and him maybe needing my help. It sounded about as vague and suspect as it no doubt was.
‘But I’m not sure yet,’ I said. ‘I haven’t heard from him since the other night. If I do have to stay around here, though, I could always come meet you up there a couple days later.’
She nodded, but I couldn’t really tell what she thought, of any of it.
‘You don’t talk much about your brother.’
I pushed away from the truck, and picked up the rope. I started knotting a bowline – just to be doing something. ‘You remember how bad off I was, when I first started working with your dad?’
‘No shame in that. You’d lost your sister.’
‘Well, Jake took it even harder than me. He was younger. Our pa died when we were kids and our ma didn’t always have it together. Sandy, well, she was like a parent to the both of us. And after what happened, Jake just got on the wrong track, if you know what I mean.’
‘He went to jail.’
I nodded.
‘Is he getting back on track, now?’
I grunted, snugging up the bowline, and then held it at eye level, checking my work. Through the loop, I could see gulls circling above the cannery, lured by the stench of roe. They went around and around, white scraps in a whirlpool, slowly going down.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t reckon so.’
The night Sandy died Jake got to the hospital first. I don’t remember much of my own drive over there, or finding the emergency room where they were operating on her. It’s all just impressions, really. The glare of those fluorescent tube lights. A hallway lined with white tiles, shiny as a sheet of ice. At that time I didn’t know much. Just that she had been in an accident and had been rushed to Vancouver General, which was the closest hospital to the scene of the crash. They hadn’t told me it was bad or that she was not likely to survive, and I suppose those are the kinds of things they don’t tell you over the phone. She had both our numbers and the home phone number in her emergency contact details on her cellphone and that was how they reached me at work, and Jake, who was with Maria. Our mother had her phone off – she was at a movie with a friend – and so they couldn’t get a hold of her. She had a few more hours before she found out,