that much, but it ought to be a fair piece, since she’d be smashed to shit if you hadn’t hauled her off the rocks.”
Scarnum grinned at him, but his eyes weren’t smiling.
“You want to, you could get a bigger boat to live on,” said Charlie. “Christ, you could buy a fucking house with that kind of money, if you wanted, use Orion the way most people use their boats — take it out for a sail on a nice day, week or two of holidays out the bay. You could settle down some if you want. Christ, you’re not too old to start a family.”
Charlie stopped his little speech when he looked up at Scarnum’s face and saw that his smile had turned into a scowl. His jaw was set and his eyes were cold.
“I told Mayor that I’d rather haul the fucking thing back out to where I found it than talk to Falkenham,” he said.
Charlie laughed and Scarnum took a gulp of whisky. “I told him seven years ago that if he ever showed his fucking face down here I’d cut him open like a flounder,” he said. “And I haven’t changed my mind on that.”
“As I recall,” said Charlie, “we haven’t seen him down here since.”
“No,” said Scarnum, “and every time I see him in town, he turns around and walks the other way. That’s the way I fucking like it.”
“I’d say he got the message,” said Charlie. “So what are you going to do with the money? Mayor give you any idea how much it might be?”
Scarnum was gazing out the porthole. “You have no idea,” he said, and he turned to look at Charlie. “You have no idea how much I regret not killing him when I caught him with Karen.”
His hands knotted into fists on the table in front of him. “I could have smashed his fucking face in, and I don’t think a jury’d a convicted me. Hard to convict someone of beating a man when he catches him fucking his woman. Maybe they’d a got me on manslaughter, put me inside for a year or two. But I’d a got out, he’d still be dead and Karen would be back in Toronto, and I’d be able to walk down the street without the risk of running into either of them.” He drained his whisky and looked out at the bay.
Charlie looked down at his glass. “Phillip, old buddy,” he said. “I’m no Doctor Phil, but I’m not sure that you’re demonstrating the, uh, healthiest mental outlook here, me son.”
Scarnum fixed him with a hard look, then broke into a grin. Then he started laughing hard. Charlie joined him, giggling.
“No b’y,” said Scarnum. “I believe you might be right.”
He held up his glass, toasted Charlie, and knocked it back. “That’s what the whisky’s for,” he said and winked.
The sun hadn’t quite set when Charlie climbed out of Orion and made his way up to the house, where Annabelle was waiting for him.
Alone on the boat, Scarnum drank the rest of the whisky, until he was in a stupor. He vomited in the head and fell asleep fully dressed on his V-berth.
Scarnum was awake, with a terrible headache, a mouth like sandpaper, and a bursting bladder at 4:00 a.m.
He emptied his bladder in the cramped head, grabbed a cup of water and a smoke, and went on deck.
Hunched over in the cockpit, drinking his water and smoking his cigarette, he looked out over the inky waters of the Back Harbour — the black silhouettes of the moored boats against the dark grey of the water, which dimly reflected the porch lights from the houses along the other shore of the bay.
All in all, he thought, things could be worse. A few Tylenol, a few quarts of water, and another few hours of sleep, and he’d probably feel all right by the time the sun came up. And what did he care if he’d salvaged Falkenham’s boat? His money was as good as anyone’s.
Scarnum was spending the money in his head when he saw the fellow in the canoe.
He was paddling straight up the bay, toward the Kelly Lynn, paddling very carefully, using what they called the “Indian stroke,” the quietest way of moving a canoe, without even lifting the paddle out of the water.
Without thinking about it, Scarnum found himself cupping his cigarette in his hand to hide the glow. He pinched the heater between his fingers and dropped the smoke in the water. Careful to keep his silhouette low, he crept off his boat and onto the dock. He moved, bent at the waist, along the dock to the corner nearest the Kelly Lynn. He stepped onto Charlie’s old wooden Cape Islander and crouched behind the wheelhouse and peeked up through the window and watched the canoeist paddle up the bay. Scarnum couldn’t see the man’s face, but he could see that he was wearing dark clothes, and he could see that he knew how to paddle a canoe.
The man steered the canoe on the far side of the Kelly Lynn and then behind the boat. Scarnum could see the man looking along the docks before he paddled the canoe toward the stern.
Scarnum ducked his head down and looked around. At his feet was an old marine battery — the size of a car battery. It had a plastic carry strap on top and a tangle of wires coming from its terminals. Scarnum yanked the wires loose. He hefted the battery, jumped up onto the dock, and swung it back and forth in his arm. He ran a few steps back down the dock, then turned and ran to the end, swinging the battery back behind him like a bowling ball as he ran. At the end of the dock he let it fly, aiming it at the canoeist, who was holding on to the stern of the Kelly Lynn and getting up, ready to board.
The man in the canoe turned at the noise just as the battery glanced off the stern of the canoe and hit the water with a splash. The canoe turned in the water and the man was knocked on his arse to the bottom of the canoe.
“Get off my fucking boat, you cocksucker,” Scarnum bellowed. He looked around for something else to throw and spied an old plastic bucket filled with rusty nuts and bolts. He dug in and whiffed one at the canoeist, who was now scrambling for his paddle.
The bolt hit him in the back as he started to paddle hard down the bay.
“You like that, you cocksucker?” bellowed Scarnum. “What do you want with my fucking boat?”
Scarnum’s next throws missed, and the canoeist was soon behind the Kelly Lynn and out of sight.
The light in Charlie’s house went on and Scarnum knew the old man would soon be out.
By then, though, the canoeist would be long gone. Scarnum jumped into Charlie’s twelve-foot aluminum runabout and cranked on the little two-horsepower outboard. It was a temperamental old two-stroke Evinrude, and he had to fiddle with the mixture knob and choke and crank it a few dozen times before it coughed to life.
By the time he headed off down the bay after the canoeist, he could see Charlie walking down to the dock, wearing his pajamas and rubber boots, with his flashlight in one hand and a shotgun cradled over his forearm.
Scarnum gave him a wave and opened up the Evinrude and took off down the bay. The canoeist was hammering the water now, paddling hard, switching from side to side, aimed for a rocky beach near the mouth of the little bay. Scarnum might have caught him but the damn Evinrude sputtered out after a few minutes and Scarnum had to fiddle with the mixture knob again before it would start.
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