Roxanne Bouchard: We Were the Salt of the Sea

The moment O’Neil Poirier glanced out of his porthole and saw the hull of the sailboat moored alongside, he figured the day was off to a very bad start. From the Magdalen Islands, was Poirier. His personality too, and his two deckhands. They had motored into Mont-Louis two days prior to stock up on their way to Anticosti Island, where the cod and the herring were waiting. Wanting to leave at dawn, they had hit the sack early the night before, and hadn’t heard the sailboat dock beside them. The hum of their generator must have covered the sound of the neighbouring crew’s footsteps.

O’Neil Poirier barked at his men to get up and clambered out on deck, intent on making a bit of racket to show these fair-weather sailors they were far from welcome. When a man gets up at half past three in the morning for a hard day’s work in the frigid waters of the Saint Lawrence Estuary, he does not want to have to shift a boat out of his way, especially not one that’s full of sleeping tourists who’ll grumble about being woken up early and fret about fishermen not retying their mooring lines properly.

Poirier sniffed around outside. Talk about nerve. The owner of the sailboat had had the gall to hook his power directly to the fishing boat instead of running the cable across to the wharf! The fisherman yanked the plug out of the socket, leaned over the monohull and rapped firmly on the deck.

‘Out of there, you heathen! I’ve got a bone to pick with you!’

That was when he heard the sound of a woman groaning from below deck, a long, harrowing wail. Poirier felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, since these were sounds unlike anything the fisherman had ever heard. But O’Neil Poirier, who had tackled seventy-five-knot winds off the coast of Anticosti before, wasn’t afraid of a thing. He grabbed the long knife he used for gutting cod and jumped aboard the sailboat just as another scream sounded out, more breathless than the first. Poirier yanked the hatch open and scrambled down the five steps in a split second.

‘Hey, give it a rest!’ he growled.

No response. It was hot and humid inside the cabin. All he could hear in the darkness was heavy breathing and something moving, but not in any controlled sort of way. It was such a mess down there, it took Poirier a while to ascertain what was happening. Still on his guard, he slowly approached the berth where she lay. When he saw what was going on, he acted without hesitation and plunged in headfirst with the kind of determination he had always been known for. He slit the umbilical cord with his own knife, bathed the baby in warm water and tossed the placenta to the fish.

Then he mopped the young mother’s brow and placed the carefully swaddled newborn in her arms, before wrapping them both in a warm blanket and leaving the sloop without a sound.

That day, the men aboard the Alberto ever so gently moved the sailboat belonging to the woman who had been forced to emergency dock alongside them. They double-checked that her mooring lines were tight and plugged her power cord into the outlet on the wharf themselves. They were a little late setting out to sea and looked over their shoulders for a long, long time.

Cyrille said the sea was like a patchwork quilt. Fragments of waves joined together by strands of sunlight. He said the sea would swallow the stories of the world and digest them at its leisure in its cobalt belly before regurgitating only distorted reflections. He said the events of the last few weeks would sink into the darkness of memory.

Before, I used to think of myself as white and translucent. Flawless. An empty glass. Even my doctor thought I looked pale. Too pale.

‘You don’t have much colour in your cheeks.’

‘This is my natural skin tone.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Well, I’ve maxed out my quota of bad days and I’ve stopped adding up the hours.’

‘Adding up the hours?’

‘Yes. For a while, when I woke up, I would count how many hours I had to live through before I could go back to sleep again. I stopped two months ago. I think it must mean something.’

‘It means a lot, actually. Are you seeing a psychologist?’

‘No, I don’t think that’s really my cup of tea. That’s what my friends are for. I don’t want to have to pay just to have a chat.’

He took off his rectangular glasses, put them down on the desk. Over the years, this man had given me my vaccines and saved me from measles, appendicitis and countless colds, bouts of the flu and other tissue-box ailments. He had known me for so long that he was entitled to his opinion about me.

‘Why do I get the impression, Catherine, that you’re not doing so well?’

‘I’m OK, doc. It’s just… It’s like I’ve lost the manual for having fun. For getting excited about anything. I feel empty. Transparent.’

‘Do you ever feel like the world is turning without you? Like you’ve got off the train and are standing by the side of the tracks and watching the party from a soundproof box?’

‘Well, I’m nowhere right now. I’m not at the party and I’m not watching from the sidelines. I’m just a pane of glass, doc. No feelings, nothing.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-three, but there are days when I’m way older than that.’

‘You need to take care of yourself, Catherine. You’re a pretty girl, you’re in good health—’

‘Sometimes my heart feels, well, tight. I get all dizzy and everything goes black. I end up flat out on the floor, waiting for the hand of death to move out of the way so I can get up again.’

‘That’s your blood pressure dropping. Does this happen to you often?’

‘No, but I worry it might happen more. It’s weighing on my mind.’

‘Well, next time it happens you can try lying down on the floor with your legs up against a wall. That’ll make you feel better.’

‘And what do I do about the rest?’

‘The rest?’

‘Yes – the horror stories on the TV news, the death of my mother, plants that don’t flower in the winter, the crappy weather, comedians who just aren’t funny, ads you can’t fast-forward, films that shoot themselves in the foot, housework that doesn’t get done, the dust of our days, bedsheets with creases in them, and reheated leftovers that stick to the bottom of the pan – what am I supposed to do with all that?’

He sighed. He must be sick and tired of troublemakers like me who don’t know what to do with their lives and waste the miracles he prescribes. What good are antibiotics to a man with a bad cold who ends up hanging himself the very next week?

‘How long has your mother been dead now, Catherine?’

‘Fifteen months.’

I had told myself that, when my parents died, I would leave. I had been sailing around lakes for years, and I had set my sails to the wind everywhere along the west side of Montreal proper, yet it was the sea I saw in my dreams. I wanted to see how the Gaspé Peninsula opened the way to the river, to take refuge in the Baie-des-Chaleurs and scream into the Atlantic. I had every reason to leave. Recently I had even received a letter, mailed from Key West, summoning me to a small fishing village in the Gaspé. I knew that, to get to the bottom of my story, I would have to start there. But I lacked the courage, and racked up the seasons in layers of grey on the bookshelves of my oh-so-Zen condo. What good would come of wanting? Dreaming? Loving? I didn’t know anymore. In spite of myself, I felt an uncertain freedom as I stood watching the sidewalks, cracks threading their way beneath the feet of the passers-by. I was a landlocked sailor, stranded in dry dock without a sail. With lead for ballast.