Burrard Inlet by Tyler Keevil

Author:Tyler Keevil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2014-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

The Art of Shipbuilding

I ease forward on the throttle and spin the wheel, steering one-handed. Real lazy. My bow swings from port to starboard and back again, like a wayward weathervane trying to suss the wind. I’m chugging around the Westco marina in my garbage tug, going from boat to boat in the hope that the union guys will have a job for me – some junk or scrap to clear. There’s not much. A couple of dead batteries on the Western Tomahawk, some cabinets from the galley in the Cape Breton. That’s not even a full load. But there’s nothing else to do today so I keep making my slow circuit of the shipyard, sometimes actually going in circles, pretending I’m in search of something. And maybe I am.

I drift on over to the east side of the marina, where Frank’s working. He’s the contractor who’s been hired to fix up the Chief Seattle, one of Westco’s fishing boats, before the start of salmon season in August. In the lunchroom there’s always a lot of talk about Frank. The union guys, they say he lives up near Grand Forks, in a cabin he built by hand. It’s totally off the grid. Powered by a generator, with a gray water system and septic tank. He’s got a cabinet full of hunting rifles, a shed packed with snares and leg-traps. He kills and grows his own food, up there. He claims the Russians are still a threat and thinks the internet is alive. The guys, they make jokes about all this stuff. They say Frank’s gonna go postal one day. They say he murdered his wife. They say he’s crazy as a shithouse rat. But they don’t say any of it to his face, and so far me and Frank have gotten along just fine. Just fine.

As I approach, I see him working on the dock next to the Seattle. He’s a lean, limber guy who can’t weigh more than one-fifty or one-sixty, soaking wet. His grey coveralls hang off him in these big baggy folds, like some kind of smock. He’s hunched over a couple of sawhorses. I putt to within twenty feet and holler to him across the water.

‘You got anything needs doing, Frank?’

The way I ask, it sounds a bit desperate. Pathetic, even.

Frank looks up. ‘What do you know? It’s Liam, the scholar. Got more dead strakes. That’s a job, if you want it, scholar.’

‘I want it, all right.’

I steer closer and Frank shuffles down the dock to meet me. His coveralls are all spattered with pitch and glue and tar and paint. He’s even got gobs of the stuff in his hair. He looks like Pollock or Picasso, some kind of eccentric artist.

I loop my tie line into a lasso and toss it to him, letting it uncoil in the air. He snags it deftly and lashes it to a cleat. As I step on dock he nods at me, but he doesn’t say anything, and I don’t either.

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