This morning the bay is green. Already the water has begun to stink—the yards-wide streak of the shithouse drift, the waste of a hundred incomers or more. In two days’ time the cannery will come clanking to life. There will be blood on the waves, the sky wild with smoke and reeking steam, the wheeling white bodies of gulls.

Time to be getting on. Soon enough some fisherman who has not heard the news will come thudding down the boardwalk and halt to read my handwritten sign. Death in the family.

I have left the shutters closed at the store, and here at the cot­tage too. It is not always so convenient living next door to your place of work.

I ought to light the stove, warm the old dog lying by its iron feet. Dig out a decent shirt. I wonder, Kit, will you wear a dress? You would feel easier in your work clothes, and is that not what your father would wish?

I would have had his body here, you know that, but you wanted him carried home along the headland path—Knox, Willie and myself each gripping a corner of the oilskin while you insisted on taking the fourth. It was good of Ida to help you wash and dress him. Your father was not a large man, and you have always been strong for your size, but that is no job for a girl to manage alone. Young woman, I suppose I should say. I forget you are eighteen years old.
Burial, too, will be no easy task, especially in this country where the mountains lift up out of the sea. Any open ground is cross-hatched, roots over rock—you know the trouble your mother had scraping up enough soil for her garden. You are right, though, the lookout is a fitting spot. Your father and I walked that trail often enough, clearing deadfall and replacing pipe when the waterline broke. A fair view out over the inlet. And yes, he would never have found his rest at sea.

You are angry with me for how it happened—but, Kit, he would have been in the same state or worse on his own. I will be careful today. On my honour, only one drink before we troop up the moun­tainside with Frank in his box. Just enough to steady the soul.

***

They’re halfway to the lookout before Kit realizes she hasn’t dressed for the occasion. Overalls dragged on over the shirt she slept in, boots. Not that it matters: hardly anyone has bothered to climb the waterline trail. The Pauls have come, of course, Willie and his two sons helping Uncle Anders lug the coffin. Mr. Knox walks behind them, then Ida Paul holding young Annie’s hand. Kit brings up the rear.

It’s no mean feat carving out the grave. They make a start at the base of a windthrown hemlock, the root mass torn up along with whatever foothold the great tree had managed to find. Ida stands alongside her daughter while her husband and sons take turns with Uncle Anders’ spade. Knox gets out his pipe and fills it. Kit feels his glance—sympathy or something like—and steps back out of his fruit-scented smoke.
She’s mostly quiet inside. Still, she feels something slip when Ida puts an arm around Annie and draws her close. A year ago, Kit would’ve had her own mother beside her. Who knows, if Bobbie hadn’t left them, there might’ve been no burial to attend.

Once the men have torn out a scrubby yew, the box goes in. In minutes they’ve filled the shallow trough. Everyone helps drag dead­fall to cover the grave—one fair-sized log and a dozen mossy limbs.

When the last branch has been laid, Knox looks as though he might be about to say a few words. Uncle Anders beats him to it, speaking in his old language, something he rarely does. Kit under­stands nothing beyond her father’s name.

When her uncle falls silent, Knox gives a sorry smile. “Rest in peace, Frank.” He nods to Kit and turns to head back down.

While the others linger, Kit follows the cannery manager, catch­ing up with him along the trail. Knox gives her a searching look before responding to her request. Yes, he can set her up with a fisher­man’s licence, if that will make her happy. If she’s sure.

Standing at the end of the long dock, Kit stretches her gaze to the bay’s far shore. Beyond Morden Point, the inlet opens wide. She could walk two docks over, crank up the Dogfish’s engine and steer her out over the deeps. Except that would mean standing where it happened—where she found him face down, floating between the dock and his own boat’s hull.

Her hair flies up on a gust. She tucks the home-cut bob behind her ears. Forget the Dogfish, she needs to get the feel of a company skiff again, now that she’ll be going out with the fleet. She’s had three long years of rowing nothing bigger than the Coot, keeping close to shore. I mean it, Kit, no more than a stone’s throw. Her father wasn’t a rule-maker by nature, but neither was he one to be disobeyed.

Before that, she’d taken her uncle’s rowboat out as far as she pleased. He’s up there now, Uncle Anders, standing some thirty feet above her on the headland, hands on the railing of the storefront porch. She resists the urge to lift her eyes to him, lift her hand. It’s a feeling she’s known all her life, her uncle watching over her. Shame he didn’t keep a closer eye on her dad.

Moving into the cannery’s shadow, she makes her way along the wharf. Men hunker in their skiffs, checking their nets, patch­ing their scrappy sails. A dozen or so kids roam the docks. Not a woman in sight—the fishermen’s wives packing the week’s grub boxes, the washers and packers scrubbing the cannery down. One turn of the clock until the fleet goes out, another until the collector boat steams into the bay with the season’s first catch in her hold.

It’s where Kit belongs, out there over the returning schools. Her father had long trusted her fish sense. She knows how to find them, my girl. She’s got the nose. More like the ear. It was akin to listening, reaching a thought out to where they might be.

Third dock along, Knox said, skiff number forty-four. Kit looses the painter line from the cleat and steps aboard. Already she feels calmer, drifting back from the dock, settling herself on the thwart. Taking up the oars, she pulls a line of narrow strokes until she’s clear of the other boats. Rowing lets you watch what you leave. Far Cry Cannery and its quarter mile of town strung along the bay’s eastern shore—boardwalk linking shacks to sheds, to proper little cottages with dark-green doors. Steep stairs cut up through the brush to where the cookhouse and the China House jut from the slope. Above it all, the slash of the waterline trail.

On the headland, Uncle Anders’ cottage sits alongside the store. Nothing but boardwalk and scrub from there out to the manager’s house on the point. She’s passing it now, pulling round to come level with the mouth of the bay. A surprise to see the par­lour windows open, curtains sucked out to flump on the wind. Of course—Mrs. Knox isn’t there to keep them closed. She’s stayed behind in the city this year, too sick to make the trip north.

And now another unexpected sight: the manager himself, home instead of holding forth at the wake. Stepping out his front door to stand among the flower tubs on the porch, he catches sight of her and waves. Wave back, Kitty-cat—her mother’s voice in her ear, whether Kit wants it or not. Never hurts to have a friend. Kit raises her hand briefly before closing it again on the oar. Knox waves on, as though she’s leaving for good rather than just out for a row. Shit for brains, her father would say if he could.

Kit rows out into the inlet, the mountains tipping up into view. This side of the headland is still mostly wild, her cabin just visible among the trees. She ought to be up there now, checking her gear, resting; a week of gillnetting in the skiff on your own is no joke. She could ask around for a boatpuller, but what man would agree to row for a girl? More to the point, whose company could she stand?

In open water now, she glides for a time, her oars suspended. Evening light, the sea all round her. She’ll manage on her own.