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.
When I reached the Woodland Hotel I stood outside in the dribble of rain, with the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. It was a four-storey beige brick building, with two shops built into the ground floor: a paint and hardware store, all shuttered up for the night, and some kind of Christian mission with pictures of Jesus and a crooked cross in the window display. Above that the hotel sign jutted out on an awning, green-on-white, only half illuminated. I had a notion Jake had chosen the Woodland deliberately, to accentuate his sense of hardship and destitution. Or maybe he really was that down on his luck. With him it was hard to tell.
A black security gate barred the entrance, but somebody had left the gate ajar, so I could walk right in. The hotel had no lobby or reception, and no employees on duty, and in that way it wasn’t really a hotel at all, but more of a flophouse. I pressed the button for the elevator (Jake’s room was on the second floor) but when no elevator appeared I took the fire stairs, which stank of piss and beer. Up there some of the doors had numbers on them, in the form of black stickers, and others didn’t. Jake’s did: twenty-two. I stopped in front of it and considered knocking but then I just reached for the handle and pushed it open.
Jake was sitting on his bed with his elbows resting on his knees, dressed in jeans and a tank top. His hair was wet and stringy as if he’d just come in from the rain. Something about his expression really got to me. A lot of his performance had been planned, I’m sure, and put on – but not that look: a look of surprise and relief and gratitude. He stood and came over to me and pulled me into a hug, holding me fiercely and clapping my back with his palm.
‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ he said, ‘I thought you’d cut me loose.’
What do you say to that – when your brother tells you something like that? I stepped into his room and dropped my duffel bag on the floor, like an anchor I was laying down.
‘What about the boat?’ he asked.
‘I left the boat.’
‘You mean you left it?’
‘I mean I left it.’
‘Ah, hell.’
He reached into his back pocket and fished out a rumpled pack of Du Mauriers and withdrew a bent cigarette. He lit it and took a drag and held in the smoke as he crossed to the window, which was open: an old sash window with rotten wooden trim. I could feel the cold wind blowing in. He exhaled in a thin stream and stood for a time looking out. I don’t know what he was looking at. Nothing, maybe. Then he nodded, as if I had said something else.
‘I appreciate it, Poncho,’ he said, ‘I really do.’
The room was a ten-by-ten-foot box, not much bigger than a prison cell. It didn’t have a toilet or shower but it had a sink. Above the sink was a mirror with a jagged crack running diagonally across the centre. I could see a divided version of myself in there, and he looked like a damned fool. Next to the mirror an old medicine cabinet stuck out from the wall at a lopsided angle. Then there was the bed: a steel cot with a thin foam mattress. At the foot of the bed lay Jake’s battered leather suitcase, open and overflowing with dirty clothes.
Draped atop the pile was a white
