***
The winds are strong but ill
disciplined in the spring gale. Their bickering courses buffet the
ship, mist breaking over her bow in the driving vernal rains. The
cold of that rain is worst in Anser's feet where water seeps into
every worried hole of his thick boots, but against his face the sting
of it is still potent and punishing. It is an old familiar pain, one
that he bears with gratitude like he bears the stab of the sunlight
at dawn; that pain which is the proof of another day of living.
Anser's eyes fight through the weather and blink back the rain. One
hand shelters his view against the downpour the other is gripped firm
to the rough nettle line by the forebrace as he stares over the side
seeking his quarry. The screws of the ship are a dull roar and play
rhythm to the creaking timber, clanging bell, and indeclinable shouts
of one sailor to another all around him. Yet, so focused is he that
the din is lost on him. All he hears is the rain on his coat and his
own breath as it comes cloudy from his mouth. There is the shape
below the ship that he has been looking for. First it is a shadow,
then a line of shadows, then, he shouts “Heel up and nets eleven
off the forebrace” as he recognizes his catch.
The men leap to their posts singing
out their ready, the fear, excitement, or resignation of each is
clear in his call. Gnarled, frozen hands both young and the old grip
tight 'round shafts of the capstans, net-men take up their burden and
make ready to cast off on his mark. The flocking prey comes visible
as the ship draws her course and Anser cries out the mark. Three
hands cast the net over the side, its weights spreading the web of
clever knotted line wide and then together, closing like a hand about
their quarry. The younger sailors strain the capstans, grunting,
heaving at the back breaking labor their feet struggling to find
purchase on the wet deck as the cranks rumble round and round pulling
the loaded net up to the side. The old hands guide it up the hull as
beaks snap at them and then turn the mad honking flock on-board with
one heavy sweat. Anser is first to take up his club, well oiled of
dark , heavy walnut and the bloody work begins as they set to cull
the catch. It was a fine skien, some eighty two head of Canada Geese
counted out even as the sailors bring their clubs down upon them one
by one.
Soon the deck is awash in bloodied
feathers, torrents of rainwater sloughing the gore away, out the
gunnels and down, down to the clouds and the sleeping earth a
thousand feet below. As the work finishes one and another of the
young lads begin to shout at such a haul in one go, but Anser and the
older sailors are away to the braces already and to dropping ballast
just as soon as the flock is culled. Sky-sailors as old as them know
that there will be other catches only if the weights are kept and the
ship runs true and high in the wind. There will be other takes that
day, but none so large, and the vessel will come back to the docks by
the grey cliffs of Suramore-by-Lott laden down and riding heavy on
the air. Anser will remember that one, will remember it as experience
only can recount.
That night he'll bring a small gander
to his wife – she swears the meat is finer on the ganders. He'll
kiss his first born son on the cheek as the lad falls asleep in his
wheel-chair by the fire side and he'll hug his eldest daughter as she
goes out to pour drinks at the pub. One by one the family will drift
to sleep, all but Anser. He is an older man in body than in years.
The ship sails not again until the weather clears a little, but it is
the pain of hard labor that won't let him sleep, that pain, and a
private worry. Worry for the other still awake that night.
She comes back home, his daughter,
when the moon has already left the sky. She tidies up and warms the
kettle to help them both sleep. Then she sits and talks of suitors,
of tutors, of the things of town-life she wants more of. Anser nods
to it but it is as lost on him as his life is to her. How could it be
any different? When the tea is ready that night, and she pours it for
him and gives a warm cup into his waiting hands, when she asks him
“How was your day da?”
What can he
say of the bucking air-ship, of the singing of line and pitch sealed
wood, of the frantic beating of wings and the mortal crack of club
and hand? What can this man say of a life he knows by touch?
“Cold. But a good haul. Good
enough.”
And she'll look back, his eldest
daughter, the hearth light glinting in her eyes, and touch his wrist.
And in that touch she can bridge the gap of worlds separated by gulfs
as vast as the airy depths of the clear night sky. And her smile will
warm him and she'll kiss his cheek good night. And only then will
Asner sleep and only by the kindness of the kettle be contented.
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