His eyes twinkled as he eyed her bike, but she could see the doubt and hesitation in his expression. “I just bought it,” he mumbled sheepishly. “I haven’t even paid for the logo on the hood. But there’s not much room on the back there.”
“Nonsense. Overseas, we rode two to a bike all the time. You should see what the locals fit on their bikes. Whole families and all their furniture! I won’t even notice you.”
As her words hung in the air, she felt her face grow warm. Embarrassed, she looked away. After a brief deliberation, he moved his truck onto a gravel patch off the road, parked it in the shade, and together they wrestled her motorcycle and trailer down the ramp. After a few final tender swipes at the dust on the truck’s fender, he climbed aboard behind her. It was a snug fit. She felt the warmth of his body against hers, and the grip of his thighs. Heat rose within her and she was grateful that her helmet and sunglasses hid her blushing face. As she revved the engine, Chris hung his large hands awkwardly at his sides, but at the first pothole, he instinctively clutched her waist before jerking back.
She laughed. “It’s safer to hang on,” she yelled into the wind. “I promise to respect your virtue.”
His arms slid around her again as cautiously as if he were grasping a gossamer web. They bounced and jolted down the road, leaning into the rollercoaster of twists and turns. A ridge of rounded coastal mountains loomed ahead, dense with spruce and fir. The road picked a path through it, climbing and twisting. After an apparent eternity, they began to spot small fenced gardens and stacks of firewood along the roadside, sure signs that they were approaching a village. A picturesque cemetery appeared on their right, well kept and surrounded by a low picket fence. Farther on, the first modest village houses were tucked into the hills.
Amanda had read up on Croque that morning while Chris made breakfast. She knew that it had begun as a French naval station in the mid-seventeenth century to supply and protect the French fishing vessels that fished the coastal waters of western Newfoundland. Three centuries later, the government of France still maintained the small cemetery where its officers had been buried.
The village itself was small, less than two dozen houses scattered like faded children’s blocks over the hills. Despite the handful of trucks and cars parked outside, some of them and the washing hung on the lines, it had an abandoned air. As they rumbled through the village, Amanda’s heart sank. The hills were gentle, and the ocean, when they finally caught a glimpse of it through the buildings, was a small inland fjord barely wider than a river. A few small fishing boats were tied up to a weather-beaten wharf. There were no wild and rugged cliffs here, no roaring surf.
And no sign of Phil’s truck anywhere.
She parked the bike by a sign commemorating the French station, let Kaylee out, and they all waded down through the overgrown grass to the old wharf. All that was left of the grand French presence was a group of ageing wooden stages propping each other up like a row of drunken sailors. The little fjord sparkled serenely in the sun.
“Okay, that was a waste of time,” Chris muttered, surreptitiously massaging his rear. “Hard to imagine this little place was once a bustling naval station.”
She had to admit he was right. Driving in, she had seen a community centre of sorts, but no other sign of commerce or prosperity. But she heard the sound of hammering nearby and climbed the slope to find an old man repairing the front steps of his home. Quizzically, he watched her approach, as if strangers rarely ventured to this remote little relic of history.
Kaylee raced up to him and dropped a piece of old driftwood at his feet, breaking the awkward moment. The old man laughed as he threw it for her, and she was off, a flash of red through the tall fronds of grass.
“We’re looking for our friend,” Amanda said, producing her cellphone photos and repeating her story about the mix-up in meeting place. As she spoke, another old man emerged from his house and the two of them had a brief exchange. She couldn’t understand a word of it, but could hear the doubt in their voices.
“Yeah, they come by,” one of them said finally, “but there’s not much here. No place for them to stay, no boats for rent, neither. Only fifteen families here now, and most of them old-timers. The young ones are gone away to work. We told your friend to try Grandois just up the coast.”
Another gravel road, as it turned out, that branched off at Croque and led to the open ocean farther north. On the map, Grandois looked even smaller than Croque, so Amanda was delighted when they topped the hill by a little white church and saw a postcard-perfect fishing village spread out below them. Boats of all shapes and sizes lay on the pebble shore or bobbed against the wharf, and gaily painted houses were sprinkled in the meadow that curved around the cove. A few vehicles were parked in front of the houses, a woman was hanging out her laundry, and another played with her baby. Amanda spotted a man working on a fishing net on the wharf and headed down the hill toward him. This time Kaylee bounded gleefully after the sandpipers on the shore.
Chris repeated their story about searching for a friend. As he spoke, other men emerged from yards and houses. Soon a small crowd of men in blue jeans and windbreakers had gathered. Their faces were tanned and creviced by years on the open sea.
“Yes, we seen him,” said one. “The man with the young fella. He wanted a boat for a few days to go out to the Grey Islands, but we didn’t have none to spare.”
“Well now, that’s not quite right, Tom,” said another, this one older and greyer. “He didn’t seem like he knew how to skipper a boat and he had no gear, so no one wanted to rent him theirs.”
“I offered to take them out in my boat,” said a third. “Show them around the islands. Still a few whales in the bay, and lots of migrating birds. Gannets, terns, puffins. But he weren’t interested in that.”
“He has some temper on him, your friend,” Tom said. “The young fella was tugging on his arm saying it’s okay, Dad, we can go back to St. Anthony and take that boat tour. But the dad said he had something much more exciting in mind.”
“Even tried to buy my old boat over there,” said the older man, pointing to a small skiff lying in the grass. “I said she hadn’t been in the water for five years and she’d sink like a stone before she got half a mile off shore.”
Amanda shielded her eyes from the glare of the water and stared out to sea. The coastline curved and looped into points and peninsulas, with several small islands within easy view.
“Are those the islands he wanted to visit?” she asked.
“Oh no, m’ dear. Some much bigger ones way out in the ocean. You can’t see them from here.”
She followed his finger but could see nothing but shimmering silver. “How far are they?”
“Oh … a good fifteen, twenty kilometres?”
She shivered. That was a long way to travel in a sinking boat. She fetched her binoculars from her side bag and trained them on the ocean. Even with the powerful magnification, she could see nothing beyond the low-lying points and islands that cluttered the waters in between.
“Nothing but birds there now. Used to be villages on them islands,” said Tom. “Until the government shut them all down and moved everybody to the mainland back in the fifties. My father was born out there, so was Ted here. That was some rugged life, b’y.”
Kaylee had been frolicking along the water’s edge, trying to engage the sandpipers in play. One of the men hurled a stick of driftwood out into
