thanks,” I said. “I’ve got one already.”
The man nodded and returned to chatting with his friends.
Eventually, the Marinion returned to the iceboat anchorage and gracefully coasted to a halt. Climbing out, the mother began counting out sixty cents in dimes, nickels, and pennies into Tommy’s hand. Both adults seemed grateful to be standing on ice again, but there was a mutiny on the Marinion when the four children were informed that the ride was over. Their screams of protest drowned out the seagulls competing for sausage scraps from the nearby garbage cans.
“Sorry, kids, ride’s over,” Ed said, trying to help the father lift the children out of the cockpit. The two oldest were twins, set apart only by the fact that each had identical snot trails running down their chins from opposite nostrils. When lifted out of the Marinion, they wailed in unison and kicked snow at their father and Ed. As soon as the third child’s feet touched the snow, he threw himself onto the ice and began spinning like a pinwheel as he threw a tantrum.
“Yipes!” Ed yelped.
The last child clamped both his arms and leg around Ed’s right arm. “I wanna ’nother ride!” he shrieked.
“Watch out!” the father warned, trying to pick the pinwheel kid out of the snow. “That one’s a biter.”
“A biter?” Ed repeated, genuinely frightened. “Ouch! He is biting.”
“Naw, he’s just pinching, mister,” one of the smirking twins said.
“Ouch!” Ed shouted. “I don’t care. Hey, Bertie! Get this lobster off me! Ouch!”
The other twin laughed. “Now he’s gonna bite.”
The mother was still counting out sixty cents in nickels and pennies into Tommy’s hand while I tried to pry Lobster Brat off Ed’s arm. Just as I got both hands loose, he lunged with his teeth and snagged Ed’s jacket just above the elbow. “Hey, that’s new!” Ed protested.
“Har-Arrrrrrrrrrr,” the kid snarled through clenched teeth. “Woof! Woof! Woof!”
“He’s playing woof-woof now,” one of the twins said.
“Woof-woof?” Ed questioned.
“Woof-Woof is our bulldog,” the first twin said. “He bites mailmen.”
“Har-Arrrrrrrrrrr,” the kid growled.
“And milkmen,” the other twin said. “He even bit a policeman once, and then he died.”
“Who?” Ed rasped. “The policeman?”
“No, Woof-Woof!” the twins said together.
For a little guy the kid was really strong. It was all I could do to keep him from getting more than just a piece of Ed’s coat.
“Eliot, let go of the nice man’s arm and I promise we’ll come back sometime for another ride!” the father said, struggling to stand the pinwheel child upright. But the kid kept flopping over and spinning his feet.
“Woof! Woof!”
“Eliot!” the father screamed.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
The woman finished counting the money. She glanced over at Eliot and snapped her purse shut. Suddenly, the whole bay seemed to go quiet.
“Eliot, let go of that man’s arm right now,” she said in a barely audible voice.
Eliot immediately let go of Ed’s arm. I put him down in the snow, and he stood there, spitting brown bits of coat fluff out of his mouth.
“Say thank you to the nice men for the ride,” the mother commanded.
“Thank you,” the four boys and the father said in unison.
“We hope to see you again,” the woman said sweetly as they walked away.
“Not if we see you first,” Ed said under his breath as he tried to rub the teeth marks out of his coat.
“Wow!” I said. “You get many fares like that?”
Ed scowled. “No. Some are worse.”
“Ready for your first sailing lesson?” Tommy asked me.
“Can’t wait.”
“Then your chariot awaits, m’lord,” Ed said with a bow and a wave of his arm.
We turned the Marinion around. Following Ed’s example, I stood behind the right runner while Tommy positioned himself at the back of the boat. On Tommy’s command all three of us pushed the craft forward. Once we got the boat moving, Tommy jumped in and pulled on the rope that raised the sail.
“Okay, Bertie, here we go,” Ed said, leaping in as the boat moved forward under its own power.
The sun was shining and the wind was strong, so we were able to put in two hours of sailing where I literally learned “the ropes” of iceboat racing. The first thing I found out was that ropes were called anything but ropes on an iceboat. The ropes that held up the mast from the sides were shrouds, the ones that braced the mast from the front and back were stays, the ones that ran into the rigging so that someone could climb to the top of the mast were ratlines, the one that raised the sail was a halyard, and the one that controlled the sail was a sheet.
Everything on a boat had a different name than I was used to. The front of the boat was the bow and the back was the stern. Left was port and right was starboard. When Tommy turned the boat, that was called tacking or gybing, depending on whether the wind was in front or behind us.
Both gybing and tacking involved ducking under the big swinging stick on the bottom of the sail as it lurched from one side of the boat to the other. It was appropriately named a boom because if you didn’t duck quickly enough, it hit you in the head. Boom!
Besides moving our weight from one side of the boat to the other, part of the job for the crew was to look out for bad ice, open water, and deadheads, which were logs, boards, or any big pieces of garbage frozen into the ice that stuck up high enough to do damage. If the sailing was smooth, I climbed a few rungs on the ratlines because the view was better up there.
Not surprisingly, sometimes when the boat zigged, I zagged because I didn’t grab a handhold fast enough. That sent me tumbling off the boat, though I didn’t have far to fall. Usually, I just skidded across the ice, hoping I wouldn’t hit anything until I came to a rest.
At noon there were three races staged with at least ten boats per contest. I stood on the shore and watched as Ed, Tommy, and Tommy’s father, Hector, competed in the second and third races.
The racecourse was set up like a triangle, with the starting point and finish line at the foot of York Street. There was a marker set in the ice at the Eastern Gap of Toronto harbour and another one at the Western Gap. A triangular course meant that the racers usually had one leg with the wind solidly behind them, a second leg where the wind
