FISH SHACK

We were six willing, skinny, and broke blokes gone clear up coast to Harkum to salvage us a boat. An old trawler it was, sunk just off the coast, and the plan was to get her afloat, out of the lanes and back into port, where we, this scrappy crew, would proceed to dismantle her…being the wharf rats we were, and the men we were about to become.

Oh, she could have been towed out to deep water and sunk, but the owner had personal effects, trinkets and gear and was just plain, attached after some thirty year. It’s what we do, this ragamuffin crew…stripping and scrapping, in the ‘yards back home. Besides, you go find the work, the work don’t find you. This was our big chance. We shipped out in advance and were put up in a fish shack and sat cramped…eating scant from the icebox…pot pies, odd frozen ‘steaks’ textured and packed with little butter pats, some canned stew, beans, stale bread, beer and jerky… Just passing gas, and time, while making due. It was not at all plush, rather damn bleak, but it had a pooper, a hot plate and an old wood-burner stove for heat. She nested, this crate, moaning with the wind and tide while suspended amongst the pier pilings, like a fly in a web, or a crab in a pot. It was…oh, 10 meter, or so, over the waterline below, which is none too secure with heavy seas, but we were in port and you put your trust in the break wall, which is not too reassuring, come a Nor’easter.  But it was a good job with some last-minute cash, to help us get through a long winter. So we sit, and we wait, and then the trouble begins. The trawler, was finally drained, rigged, and buoyed for balance,  but as her towing commences, so too, does the bluster. As they approached the mouth of the harbor, the swells rose and the tow lines broke, sending the lame vessel aimlessly adrift, until she washed up, and broke up, out on the jetty. Now we had us some dilemma. Do we walk away or stay and see what we can do at sea? Heading back with no scrap…the last job of the season would be a crapper. It was clear the weather wasn’t going to cooperate, it was building into a cold snap, and if it persisted we ran the risk of being stranded inside an ice-packed port and there’d be no getting out until thaw, and meanwhile We being ‘the meat in the ice-box’ in that event.

So we gave it a go. We’d take daily soirees into the unrelenting seas in a leaky little skiff, or scrambled along the battered seawall, for four days straight we lay it on the line, but once Pete went in the water, and we almost lost him, we took a vote amongst us and decided to shut her down and wait her out. Then we faced the "locals", who was startin’ to rumble ‘bout us –  and, for what? We’re just the strangers come to take your scrap, livin' under the pier... 'wharf rats'...we didn’t cause this, didn’t sink the old girl, didn’t obstruct the lane, didn’t bring winter in a month early. Nothin'.  We did no harm to your economy or ruin your friggin’ Holidays! Hell, our personal economy was about to be absolute squat after this gig! So we haggled a bit with the towners, a few days at least, then the hammer came down as the final nor’easter comes in like a beast and smack…we’re all stuck. So we hunkered down in our bunks. Six bloody blokes stuck in this drafty box with waves this-close to lickin’ the friggin’ floorboards, groanin’ beneath our feet.

We passed the time playin’ cards for matchsticks, and swapping tales, but a few days of that and it all goes stale...all goes flat  – the air, the food, the attitude. When the front did break, for a short time there, we got out, got some sun, and just hung around. The locals had calmed, their frustration resigned by the weather, but not all that much resolved to us, as some surly pockets remained - fishermen mostly, so we knew, and continued to avoid trouble by being invisible as could be, in this tight little town.

Then the boy showed up…washed up, wrapped up in ropes, netting, and floats, entangled in the pilings, directly beneath our suspended shed. Poor lad. We all looked down as he floated face up, staring back at us. He was a cherubic little school-boy, pale and so very innocent, drifting gently now in calm waters, as if an angel floating overhead, but now just below, down in the drink, instead.

Well that caused a stir on the docks of this small port, as people poured out of their houses for the first time in days, only to find the dead child, a local boy, who’s mother wailed and father railed, and suspicious eyes stared at the six of us, strangers in their midst, huddled against the railing and now in a bit of a fix. Wasn’t us that brought this, but it was Us, now in their nets.