Sylvanus Now Read Free Page A

himself out of their mother’s gate, heading along the pathway toward him.
    “Come on over to Jake’s,” called Manny. “Ambrose just got back from St. John’s. He went and bought himself a new boat, a longliner.”
    “Ambrose? Where’d he get the guts to do that?”
    “What, buy a liner?” Manny huffed. “Try sitting aboard a schooner for weeks on end. Not hard to find courage then, you got piles and splinters rotting your arse. Nice boat, too, she is, buddy. Sixty-footer, half the size of a schooner.”
    “Liners, schooners—all the same to me,” Sylvanus replied, jiggling the door to ensure it was latched.
    “Sure, b’ye, all the same—big old clumsy schooners, sitting on the water for days sometimes, waiting for a gust of wind for her sails. We’ll be seeing the last of them soon enough, now we got diesel.”
    “Still don’t see the difference in them.”
    “Difference, jeezes, Syllie, schooners got sails, liners got diesel. How’s that for a difference? One sits on the water for days with dories doing her fishing for her, and the other nets straight from her decks; one salts, the other sells fresh fish straight to the plants; one got twelve men, the other got eight—”
    “All right, all right,” interrupted Sylvanus loudly, “like I said, no difference in them. Bunch of men crowding the one deck, hawking and hollering for days on end.”
    “Diesel, you young fool, diesel, I just said. She’ll be motoring home every evening, and full of fish to her gunnels with them nice big nets. Cripes, Father spawned you, all right—you hears nothing but what you wants to.” Manny stood before his younger brother, the baby down that had once softened his chin now coarsened into a thick, grizzled beard that opened onto the same heartening grin as when he used to toss Sylvanus aboard his boat as a youngster, wrapped in oilskins. “Come on,” he commanded, walloping his little brother’s arm with such a punch that it drew a look of pain, “before Jake drinks all the brew—and watch your mouth, the trawlers tore up our nets agin and he’s a bit spiteful.”
    “A bit! Jeezes, he’s full of it.”
    “Ye-es, floats off him like smoke when he moves,” said Manny, starting down the well-scuffed lane. “You coming?” he hollered, as Sylvanus lagged behind, not wanting company just now. “Cripes, why don’t you ask Am for a spot on his liner? You’re getting like Father, bandied at the knees from straddling a boat.”
    Sylvanus grinned, giving his door one last jiggle, then trotted after his brother, skirting youngsters and hens squabbling about the door places.
    “How’re ye all doing?” Manny hailed, rounding the corner of Jake’s house. Their eldest brother, along with their buddy Ambrose, was lifting a barrel that lay sideways atop two sawhorses that stood side by side inside the wide opening of a canvased wood-house. Sylvanus kicked a junk of wood upright and sat back on it, watching as Manny hurried forward, helping with the lifting. Built onto the side of the house as it was, the wood-house made a good break from the wind, and with the wide flap that had been ripped out for the opening, fastened overhead for a canopy, a good shelter from any weather being dumped from above. Despite there being no fire lit on this sunny afternoon, Sylvanus rested his elbows on his knees, leaning toward an old, overflowing ashpan that was sunk into the ground, serving as a firepit. The barrel in place, Manny and Ambrose seated themselves around the pit, exclaiming eagerly over the foam capping the mugs of brew Jake poured out of the barrel and passed around.
    “By cripes, that’s one thing Father taught you, old cock,” said Manny, supping back the foam, “how to make a good brew. Here’s to your new boat, Am,” he toasted, raising his mug.
    Jake reluctantly raised his, his mother’s grey eyes appearing more aged upon his sunken cheeks with their thorny sideburns. “Something else to rip up our