Sole Survivor. Derek Hansen

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СКАЧАТЬ time. I told her, though, told her every time she came in that I’d remember her in my will.”

      “Reckon she’ll come?”

      “If she does, she does.”

      “Wish you hadn’t done that, Bernie.”

      “Aw, ya never know. Ya might thank me one day, a pretty woman and a good-looking bloke like you.” He started laughing again. “Never know, do ya?”

      “I’ll get your things from the bathroom.”

      “Not yet.” Bernie coughed and gestured to Red to sit down. “Something else. I want to be cremated.”

      “Why?”

      “I want you to toss my ashes into the ocean, out past Aiguilles Island where I used to fish. Used to dive there a bit, too. My secret possie, my secret spot. On the rise where the shells are.”

      “What shells? Paper nautilus?”

      “Nuh. Army shells.” The old man was cut off by another bout of coughing. Red handed him the toilet paper just in time. “Where they dumped the old munitions after the war.” Bernie’s face had gone from wax to scarlet beneath a sickly sheen of sweat. All the talking was taking its toll. “Christ! I just might decide to kick the bucket today. Nobody’s supposed to know about dumping the shells, but they used to take me out with them when they wanted to do a spot of fishing on the sly.” He began to laugh, but his laughter quickly turned to a rattling cough that snapped his breath. Red rolled him over and stuffed some more toilet paper in his hand. Bernie coughed and hawked and sank back exhausted on his bed. The smell of his sweat rose bitter and pungent. That was what had stunk the room out. Still, Red had smelled worse, a lot worse.

      “Tell me later.”

      “Might not be a later.” Bernie slowly drew in deep breaths until his breathing was back to normal. Red noticed tears in Bernie’s eyes, but that could just have been from the effort of talking. “I’ll give you the markers. Line ’em up and you’re right over the rise.”

      “I didn’t know there was a rise.”

      “Neither did the army. It’s like a small island that never quite made it to the surface. I got them to drop the shells on it because I thought I might go back later and salvage some for scrap. Now listen carefully.”

      Red listened until Bernie had finished.

      “Now you can give me a wash, if it makes you happy. And Red, when you go to Fitzroy, do you think you could leave Archie here?”

      A normal man might have welcomed the prospect of an attractive young woman coming to share his lonely neck of the woods, but all Red could see was disruption to his daily life. Women didn’t belong. They didn’t belong in the camps and they didn’t belong at Wreck Bay. His day had begun like any other, yet suddenly Bernie had pulled the rug from under him. His whole world hung in the balance. Bernie’s letter threatened change, the thing Red feared most. Change brought risk, the risk that he’d no longer be able to cope. The Japanese fishermen threatened change, challenged his existence by stealing his fish and by destroying the ocean bottom so no fish would ever return. He could fight them but he couldn’t fight Bernie’s letter. There was nothing he could do about it, nothing at all. He was powerless and bound by duty. He could not deny a dying man the right to leave his few possessions to whomever he chose. The wishes of a dying man were also sacrosanct.

      Red couldn’t get Bernie’s letter out of his mind. He thought about it constantly as he stopped off at his shack to grab a pair of shorts and a sweater, and made his way down to the beach. He thought about it as he fitted his forty-four-gallon drum onto the jib arm at the end of the jetty and loaded it onto his boat. He worked hard to stop himself thinking, but still the thoughts persisted. What would a woman do at Wreck Bay?

      The double-prowed lifeboat was immaculate, its clinker hull kept brilliantly white. According to hearsay, it had once swung from davits on the ocean liner Oronsay, though some claimed it was from the Orsova. Somehow it had ended up in the hands of the whaling company, and Red had taken it over when the station closed down. It had been fitted out with a Cummins diesel that was more powerful than need be and something of a glutton for fuel. But Red could squeeze economy out of it, never feeding it more revs than the hull or conditions could use. Diesel was expensive.

      Each resident of Wreck Bay kept a drum at the jetty and another at their house. They drew diesel off into four-gallon tins for the long haul up the hill to fuel their generators, and used hoses and gravity to refuel their boats. Red filled a four-gallon jerry can from the Scotsman’s drum and funneled the contents into his fuel tank. He repeated the process twice to be on the safe side, then filled his emergency can. That was sixteen gallons he owed, and a debt he’d pay in full. Red was good to the grain in all his dealings. He checked to see that his freshwater tank was full and his life jacket where it should be, and cast off. It was strange motoring out of the bay without Archie standing up on the bow, telling the gulls where they were headed. It didn’t feel right. It was not how things were done.

      Red was always cautious before putting to sea because there was little chance of hailing another vessel if he got into difficulties. Although Great Barrier Island was only fifty-five miles by sea from Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city and main port, it might just as well have been five hundred and fifty. Only twenty-five miles long north to south and ten miles at its widest, there was little reason for anyone to visit or live there once the logging had finished, the mines had petered out and the whaling station had closed. There were few roads and few guest houses to encourage visitors. The locals either worked farms or caught fish and crayfish for a living. Nobody got rich.

      Red was fortunate that the land around Wreck Bay on the northeast coast was too rugged and too poor for commercial cultivation and had proved too inaccessible for the loggers. The forbidding cliffs that lined the coast did not encourage visitors, either. As a result the entire northern end was left to the seagulls, terns and gannets. Only Wreck Bay provided shelter, and the three bachs were well sited to avoid the worst of the storms. It was possible to live there if you were sufficiently bloody-minded.

      Red motored due north toward Aiguilles Island off the northern tip. With the tide almost full and the seas slight, he decided to take the narrow channel south of the island. Normally, even on a moderate swell, the surf pounded in on Aiguilles Island and Needles Point like heavy artillery, which was fair warning for all to give it a wide berth. He slipped through the channel and increased speed, swept around past Miners Head and across the mouth of Katherine Bay. Seagulls and gannets began diving on a school of kahawai. Even though a catch was guaranteed, Red was far too preoccupied to throw out a lure. Leaving Archie behind had unsettled him, but even worse was the prospect of a woman coming to live at Wreck Bay. It had taken him long enough to adjust to the Scotsman’s arrival.

      His keen eyes picked out the dorsals of two mako sharks, circling around the periphery of the feeding school. He knew what the predators were waiting for and it wasn’t for kahawai. They were just a sideshow. The sharks were patrolling, waiting for the massive schools of migrating snapper, part of a never-changing cycle. Red had the utmost respect for never-changing cycles. He glanced up to the bow compartment where he’d stowed Bernie’s letter, carefully protected inside his oilskins. Red also had the utmost respect for letters. He’d seen dying men survive because of them. He found it hard to reconcile the fact that letters, which could do so much good, could also do so much harm. He tried to imagine what would happen if the woman came. But why would any woman, perhaps even a beautiful one, want to come to Wreck Bay? Red didn’t know much about women, but he knew enough about Wreck Bay to know that it held nothing for them. Even the hardy Barrier women couldn’t imagine why СКАЧАТЬ