Roxanne Bouchard - We Were the Salt of the Sea

They willed Pilar to me and the sea was my oyster.

I went back to Guylaine’s early, said a quick hello, and went up to bed. For the first time in a long time, I was looking forward to something. Looking forward to the morning. Looking forward to going to sea, on a fishing boat with Cyrille, to entering the seascape and meeting Marie Garant.

They willed Pilar to me. In spite of the dues we must pay to the sea, we will set sail – you, me and all of our own.

‘Heee… Hello there, love! You came!’

‘Course I did!’

‘We’re not setting off straight away, though.’

‘How come?’ What’s up?’

‘It’s Vital. Heee… You like your fishing stories, don’t you? Well, you’re in for quite the tale!’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Apparently he’s caught a body in his nets… Heee… He said so on his marine radio.’

The dues we must pay to the sea.

‘Who is it – the body?’

‘Not one of us lot, we’re all here! Nah, I’m just kidding, love, we don’t know yet. If Vital didn’t say, it can’t be someone he knows. Must be a tourist from New Brunswick who went kayaking and got lost. Or a swimming champ who got caught out by the tide. Heee… It’s always something like that.’

Cyrille’s deckhand, Gérard, was leaning against the side of the pickup truck. There were two unfamiliar boats moored up at the wharf. Further along, a man was struggling to speak into a radio.

‘Who are all these folks?’

‘Guys from New Richmond. They’ve come down for a look. With something like this going on, the lobster can wait for an hour or two, eh? Heee… Dead bodies, they drift in circles around the bay, you know, so chances are it’s someone from up their way… And that’s Robichaud, the coroner. I don’t talk to him. He rubs me up the wrong way.’

He seemed friendly enough to me, though. He even winked a distracted hello to me, hollowing a formidable dimple below his left eye. Cyrille rolled himself a joint, even though it was barely six in the morning. Coroner Robichaud turned a blind eye. A few men were gathered casually around the truck where Cyrille was blustering on.

‘In any case, heee… I want them to bury me upright – I want to be standing up. Not stuffed, mind you, but facing out to sea.’

‘Dream on, Cyrille, any taxidermist around here would only tell you to get stuffed anyway!’

‘On my land, with my eyes open. That’s what I told my sister. Heee… I said to her, “When I die, I want you to bury me upright, wrapped in the sheet from my death bed, in front of the chalet.” I want to be able to see the sea long after I die so I can make sure the lobster traps are filling up in May and check the mackerel are biting in August.’

‘Not one to miss a day’s fishing, are you, Cyrille?’

‘No, sir! Heee… I want to see the autumn high tides salt the wharf. And the sunrise. I don’t want to miss a thing!’

He took a drag. The men chuckled, taking it easy.

There was no hurry.

Through the smoke from the joint emerged the outline of the salt-and-pepper hair that was gradually deserting that wrinkled forehead of his, which harboured a deep scar from long ago. He had a hard time breathing in, but he never stopped talking.

‘Cyrille,’ I said, ‘I don’t mean to be difficult, but I don’t think you’re allowed to be buried anywhere other than the cemetery.’

‘That’s what my sister thinks, too. Whims like that – that’s what she calls it, a whim! – get on her nerves. Heee… I’ve no time for the cemetery, love. Too many people in there for me! It’s not that they’re a nuisance or anything, they’re a calmer bunch than plenty of living people I know! But that’s just the point… heee… there’s just no life to the place!’

‘Why don’t you get yourself cremated, Cyrille? Then your sister can scatter your ashes at sea.’

‘Don’t be so daft, love! Heee… I’ve never liked the heat.’

Everybody laughed, except for Gérard, Cyrille’s deckhand, as silent as the shore after the rain. He barely said a word anymore, not since he sold his fishing quota. He thought he was onto a good thing, taking the two hundred thousand dollars, but two years away from early retirement, he’d had to cast the net out again and join Cyrille’s crew.

‘That reminds me, last month I saw some will-o’-the-wisps… You ever seen a will-o’-the-wisp, love?’

‘No.’

Fingers pointed and chins jutted as Vital’s boat suddenly emerged as a faint blemish on the horizon.

‘They’re not hard to see. You just have to go to a cemetery where they bury people. Heee… Not too dead a place, though! A real cemetery where there’s a bit of life. Best to go in the spring, especially if lots of folk have passed away over the winter. Heee… Are we supposed to say passed away or passed over? You must know that, love, don’t you?’

‘You can say either, Cyrille.’

‘Heee… Anyway, in the spring, the big freezer’s full to bursting and at some point, when the ground thaws, they decide to start burying the bodies. That’s when the will-o’-the-wisps come out to play. So, in the nights that follow, you cross your fingers the moon won’t be too full… heee… and you keep your eyes peeled. As the dead bodies thaw, it’s like they start to sigh from the bottom of their lungs, and then the gases catch fire, I think, when they come to the surface. Heee… They come up from the ground and when the wind sweeps them away, up that little mound they go and off into the woods, up by Fourth Lane. Heee…’

The boat shifted into focus as it drew nearer. Cyrille still had an audience, but everyone was now looking out to sea.

‘Anyway, my place is right next to the cemetery, and I see them all, every year. I don’t want to be buried with that lot. Heee… Honestly, why would I want to be buried with a bunch of old farts I don’t know from Adam who are going to spend the rest of their days huffing and puffing at me behind my back?’

Cyrille fell silent. The boat entered the marina, came alongside and moored at the wharf. Vital looked incensed and Victor looked like he had his heart in his boots. Downcast, he barely acknowledged anyone on the wharf and avoided Cyrille’s gaze. Beneath a tarp on the flat bottom of the big fishing boat, in between the bins and buckets, lay a body.

The coroner stepped aboard.

‘Heee… Robichaud’s the doctor as well. He’s the one who’s going to certify the death.’

The fishermen lifted the tarp. From the wharf, you could only vaguely see the body, tangled in a great green net patched with yellow-and-pink thread.

‘They‘re going to have to bring it ashore all swaddled up like that…’

The coroner addressed the crowd with the official air of an actor stepping into character. ‘We’re supposed to wait for an investigator from the Sûreté du Québec, but nobody’s free this morning down at the SQ. So, we ought to get some men together to help carry the body in the net up to the Langevin brothers’ funeral home.’

‘On foot?’

‘The Langevin brothers are out fishing. They won’t be back for another two or three hours. I’ve got the key to the mortuary. We ought to take the body up to their fridge. Cyrille, you ought to back your truck up here.’

Cyrille flinched at the sound of his name. ‘Heee… Why me?’

‘Because your cargo bed’s empty.’

‘Well, that’s just charming, isn’t it! Just minding my own business and I end up carting off the bloody body. Brings bad luck, that does! Heee… People’s cars weren’t made to cart death around, you know!’