No Good Brother. Tyler Keevil

in such things as visitations I knew damn well why she’d appeared. By four thirty I was already awake, alert, waiting. I could hear Big Ben snoring in the bunk opposite. I lay there listening to that. It was a very human sound. After a few minutes I reached for my phone and texted Jake: if you really have to do this you won’t be doing it alone. I’ll see you tomorrow. Then I put the phone away. The only thing left was to break it to Albert. Evelyn and Tracy, too. But especially Albert.

      It seemed as if most of the day was spent looking for that chance. But I needed to get him alone and the opportunity didn’t present itself. We all had our end-of-season jobs, and moved about the boat in an orchestrated routine: passing to and fro, working around each other. Evelyn was wiping down all the surfaces in the galley and Sugar was inside cleaning our cabin and bunks. Big Ben was gathering any excess gear – ropes, buoys, life jackets – and loading those in the storage locker. Albert was down in his engine room, making a few final adjustments: as pernickety and mysterious as a piano tuner. The urgency of the past week was now gone. We had worked hard up until the last day, and had plenty of time to perform these tasks and we did so with a melancholy sort of reverence. The end was in sight and when it is there’s no longer such a rush to get there.

      In the morning, Albert gave me a job I’d done every other season: repainting the boat’s name across the transom. I tied a floating dock off the stern and crouched down there with the brush and bucket of marine paint. I had to use my left hand for the job, since my right was no longer good for delicate tasks. My forefinger and middle finger are the ones that are missing, making it impossible to hold a brush properly. But I’ve gotten pretty good with my left.

      I dipped the tip in the pot of white paint and gently stroked the letters, coaxing them to lustre. The boatyard was still and quiet and echoed with emptiness. Some of the other crews, skippered by captains less thorough than ours, had already battened down the hatches and locked up the cabins and headed back to their respective houses or trailers or apartments or whatever abodes they each had waiting.

      Around mid-morning my cellphone rang. I fished it out of the pocket of my coveralls. I could see by the number it was Jake.

      ‘Poncho,’ he said, right off. ‘I need you tonight.’

      Just that. He didn’t thank me for agreeing to help. I guess my involvement had been a given, for him. I put down the paint brush, balancing it precariously on the edge of the pot.

      I said, ‘You said Saturday.’

      ‘The job is Saturday. But I’m meeting them tonight.’

      ‘You’re meeting these guys?’

      ‘And they want to meet you, too.’

      I stood and stared at the water. It was lapping at my little dock, spilling over the edge nearest me, where my weight had lowered it.

      ‘But you said Saturday. I said I’d come Saturday.’

      ‘And I’m telling you, I need you tonight.’

      ‘Albert won’t let me go.’

      I could hear voices in the distance. He told me to hold on and I heard him swearing at somebody. Then he was back. He said that if I wanted to sell out there was still time and he didn’t care, but if I was going to help him I had to come tonight. That was it.

      ‘I can’t do it, Lefty.’

      ‘Whatever, then.’

      ‘I can still come tomorrow.’

      ‘That’s no good. It’s tonight or you’re not part of tomorrow.’ Again I heard the voices, and again he swore back at them. Then, to me: ‘Look, I got to go. Some horse is shitting all over itself or something. Forget about it, okay? Just forget the whole thing and forget I even asked you.’

      ‘Jake –’

      And of course he hung up. I stood and stared at the phone. I was still staring like that when Albert leaned over the stern to check up on the work I was doing. I tucked the phone away but not before he’d seen it. He didn’t ask about it, though. He eyed up the work and told me it looked good. I thanked him and he didn’t leave right away, and if there was a time to tell him it would have been then. But after Jake’s call I didn’t know what to say, so I just said I’d be done soon and up for lunch when it was ready. And then Albert was gone.

      I bent to pick up my brush but my bad hand betrayed me and I knocked the brush off the side of the pot. It bounced on the dock, splattering paint, and rolled clumsily off the edge. I lunged for it – swiping my paw through the water – and missed. I watched helplessly as it sank, slow-turning through the murk, until it vanished. I hadn’t finished the job. The ‘Y’ was fainter than the rest of the letters, and stood out.

      That night, I got up and left.

      I waited till Sugar and Big Ben were out, which didn’t take long, and from beneath the bunk pulled the duffel bag that I had filled with my belongings. Packing hadn’t seemed odd or conspicuous because all of us were doing the same, and we were due to depart the next day, anyway. There wasn’t much work left to be done but it wasn’t about the work or the hours so much as the act of leaving early and abandoning ship. Albert always said he couldn’t abide a man who shirked his responsibilities and I guess I was about to prove I was that type of man.

      In the galley I stepped into my work boots and picked my jacket off the hook. I had a letter addressed to Albert and Evelyn that explained some and I left that folded on the table. I took a final look around and eased open the door and crept out onto the deck and shut the door behind me – turning the handle before I closed it so as not to make any noise.

      ‘Sneaking off like a thief, eh?’

      Albert was up in the wheelhouse. I don’t know if he’d been waiting for me or just standing up there, on watch, like he did at sea sometimes. I stood, tense and hesitant as a jackrabbit, as he came down the stairs to deck, his big boots ringing on the metal.

      ‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’

      ‘So you did the cowardly thing, instead of the right thing.’

      ‘I guess so. I guess I did.’

      He had his arms crossed and his face looked hard and unforgiving as granite. Just this big carved figure of a man. He said, ‘And you’d also decided not to come to Squamish.’

      ‘I was thinking I could come meet you, later.’

      ‘You can forget about that, now.’

      The strap of the duffel bag was burning my collar bone. I shifted it a bit.

      ‘I’m sorry, Albert. I’m sorry as hell.’

      ‘Tell Tracy, why don’t you.’

      ‘I want to do right by her.’

      ‘She doesn’t need you to do anything for her. She’s fine. Only trouble is she likes you.’ He nodded, once, as if affirming the truth of that. ‘We all do. But you’re making a bad choice here. I know it and I think you know it too.’

      ‘He’s my brother, Albert. He’s in a bind.’

      ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

      ‘What if it was your family?’

      ‘I’m done jawing about it. Go and do what you got to do, or think you got to do. But don’t expect us all to be waiting here for you when you finish being loyal. Don’t expect a job to be here, either.’

      ‘Ah, hell, Albert.’

      ‘Get off my boat, I said.’

      His tone was furious and fearsome, and if I hadn’t gone he’d have thrown me off. So I went. I’d seen him when he got like that and all I could hope was that time would cool his rage, and that maybe my letter would help some, too. It was a simple letter but it was honest and Evelyn would have his ear. And Tracy, as well. That might be enough. If it wasn’t, I’d just given up the only home I’d had for five years.