Chapter 39The Ebb Is at 1:52

The towers before it had all lit. This one lit on another night, after them.

At ten past five, Ioane woke.

His room was the last one upstairs, and the bed stood against the wall. On the wall was a price list the boatyard had printed ten years ago; the prices had never changed, and he had never taken it down. On the bedside table was an alarm clock he never wound. The curtains were not fully drawn, and in the gap it was dark. He lay and looked at the gap for a while before he reached for his phone.

The phone was buzzing under the pillow. He fished it out, glanced at the name and answered, his other hand pressed on his knee. His mother said three things in Samoan, pausing after each one for him to answer. He answered two of them in Samoan. One was that he was up; one was that he had eaten. What he had eaten was last night’s leftovers, and his mother did not ask which meal. The third he did not answer, and nothing more came from her end.

After he hung up, he sat on the edge of the bed and put on his socks, two pairs. They had been hanging over the back of the chair, washed yesterday, still a little damp.

Outside it was still dark. Over by the harbour, a ferry’s lights crept across the water.

Before going down, he washed his face at the sink. The first water from the tap had a tang of rust; he let it run a while before it ran clear. He washed his face, pushed a hand back through his hair, and ate a slice of bread standing at the fridge door. A calendar was stuck to the fridge door. Every day’s square was empty; he had never written on it.

On the way down, he stepped over the eleventh stair. That one creaked, and he never trod on it.

The toolbox sat at the foot of the boatyard wall, and inside the lid a sheet of paper was held by a clothes peg. The paper was a tide table, printed out, folded twice, its corners worn soft by fingers. He lit it with his phone, pressed his nail on that row, and went down it square by square. Tonight the ebb was at one fifty-two, the water at its lowest. At the water’s edge below the slipway lay a thirteen-metre catamaran; the name written on the work order was the Old Wind. The boat had to be hauled up the slipway on the ebb, and the window was between half past one and half past two. After half past two the water would come back in, and the next low tide would not be until the afternoon.

The tide came in and went out twice a day, and every day it slipped later by nearly fifty minutes. He checked yesterday’s figures against today’s: forty-seven minutes apart. It tallied.

He refolded the paper the way it had been and clipped it back into the lid. The peg held it tight; he pinched a corner and pushed it, making sure the paper would not fall out.

※

At twenty past six, he opened the boatyard door.

The door was steel, and its frame was a little out of true; when it closed, its corner dropped half a finger’s width, and it had to be lifted hard before it would shut properly. One of the pins in the lock had broken once. With the key in, you had to lift the door first, lean your body against it, press down with your wrist, and then turn twice. The first turn went smoothly. The second stuck. He braced his thumb against the corner of the door, lifted it a little, and the second turn went through.

Locking up before he knocked off was the same routine.

Lights first, then water. The tubes came on one by one; the one at the very back was always two seconds late. The compressor started, knocked a few times, and settled. He pulled out the drawers of the toolbox one by one and looked through them: spanners, callipers, a roll of insulating tape, the end of the tape facing out, the same as yesterday.

On the whiteboard inside the door was today’s work. The Old Wind, one fifty-two, trailer. The fishing boat’s porthole. Oil for the winch. The writing was his own, and after each line he had drawn a small circle, to be filled in when it was done.

He hosed down the slipway. The sand that had come down overnight was washed into the gutter; across the mouth of the gutter was an iron grate, and a strand of seaweed hung on it. He nudged the seaweed aside with his foot, and the water ran away.

The timber blocks on the slipway had to be stepped on one by one to see whether any were loose. The fourth block was loose; he knocked it twice with his heel, drove it in a little, stepped on it again, and it did not move. He set two props, one on each side of the slipway, tested them with his foot, and let go only once they were steady.

At twenty to eight, he went to the hardware shop across the water to buy screws. The shop was on the street at the foot of the tower. He did not walk along that street. He went out the back door of the boatyard and through a narrow lane. Someone had sprayed words on the walls on either side; they had been dry for many years, and the words could no longer be made out. At the end of the lane was a bus stop; the lettering on the sign was new, and the stop was empty. He went round it, walked a stretch further, and bought a box of stainless-steel screws, two-millimetre, thirty to a box.

He had been going round for eleven years.

At twenty past eight, he got back to the boatyard and checked the winch first. He unscrewed the gearbox cap, put a thin rod in, drew it out and looked at the oil level. The oil was on the line; no need to top up. He screwed the cap back on, stopped at the third turn, went back to where it had been and gave it one more turn.

The winch cable came down off the pulley, and he ran his hand along it section by section. Where he felt a broken wire, he cut it with pliers, then sanded the end smooth with fine sandpaper so it would not catch a hand.

※

At nine, a nine-metre steel-hulled fishing boat came up the slipway. The boat owner was an old man; he stood to one side with a flask in his hand and did not drink from it.

The boat owner said he had named her when he was young, the year he first went to sea, when the wind blew all the way to the shore.

He also said the boat had been hit by a wave out at sea last year, and that was when the port-side porthole cracked. Ioane did not answer. He crouched to look at the frame; it was not distorted, and the screw holes were true.

What needed replacing was the rubber seal on the middle porthole on the port side. The seal had a fine crack, and water had seeped in through it and blistered the paint at the edge of the frame, patch after patch, lifting at a finger’s touch. There was a patch of rust on the bottom of the hull; Ioane scraped it off with a scraper down to the grey steel, and the rust fell onto the concrete in a small heap. The welds along the side were old ones, bead after bead, narrow, laid in neat rows. He ran his palm along them; the welds had not cracked.

First he prised out the old seal. He worked it out of the groove in the frame bit by bit, all the way round, and with a very soft sound the whole seal came free. There was a layer of grease in the groove; he wiped it clean with a rag, then pressed along it with a finger, and there were no hard lumps at the bottom. He measured the new seal twice and cut a length; both ends had to be cut on the bevel.

A forty-five-degree bevel. The knife was one he had sharpened himself, twice. The first time it came out too blunt, and the cut was ragged. The second time he did not stop until he could see a fine line of light along the edge. He laid the seal on a board, held it down with his left hand, and brought the knife down from above with his right, one cut, and the cut was flat. He held it up to the light; the angles at both ends met.

If the angle was out by one degree, the seal would bulge in its third winter, bulge until the window would not close tight, and the water would get in again. The boat owner asked him why he had to be so fussy. Ioane said, “It has to last three winters.”

The boat owner grunted, unscrewed the lid of his flask, sniffed it, screwed it back on, and asked nothing more.

The new seal needed soapy water before it would slide into the groove. He fitted it alone, pushing with his thumb; when it stuck halfway, he levered it in from the other side with a screwdriver. Push it in an inch, lever once. At twenty to twelve, the whole seal was in the groove, and he put the window back. He stopped halfway with each screw, looked at the frame, then went on. When they were all the way in, he pressed it with his hand; the window did not move.

※

At half past twelve, he sat down on the bench by the boatyard door and ate the palusami his aunt had brought that morning. His aunt used an aluminium lunch box with a dent in the lid; it had come with her from the old country. Taro leaves wrapped round coconut milk, wrapped too full, so every mouthful had to be held up with a hand in case it leaked. Once the coconut milk had cooked, the taro leaves went soft and darkened, and when he bit in they came apart in strands. The edges of the leaves were a little burnt; he picked the burnt edges out and put them on a sheet of paper. He ate very slowly, wiping his fingers on the paper after every mouthful. His aunt had always wrapped them like this; he had never told her to wrap them thinner.

The bench faced the boatyard door, its back to the harbour. While he ate he did not need to turn his head; everything across the water was behind him.

A grey bird landed at the end of the bench and looked at his lunch box. He waved a hand once, and the bird flew up to the railing. It called twice; he did not look to see what kind it was. Another ferry pulled out across the harbour, trailing a line of white from its stern; the white spread slowly over the water and was gone by the time it reached the shore.

When he had finished, he pressed the lunch-box lid flat. The rim that had curled up along its edge he pressed back with his thumb, bit by bit, until it would snap shut. Then he put the lunch box under the bench.

※

At ten past two in the afternoon, someone walked up to the boatyard door.

The man stood in the doorway and did not come in. He wore a black leather combat jacket, and the soles of his shoes were clean, without the boatyard’s dust. He carried no tools. The wind at the door came in off the harbour with a little salt in it and blew one corner of his jacket open. The man looked at the shackle on the trailer, looked at it for a while; he did not look at the sign by the door, or at the slipway. The shackle was attached to the trailer’s cable; there was a layer of dust on the pin, with salt in the dust.

“How does this open?” the man asked.

Ioane put down his spanner and walked over. He did not touch the shackle first; he glanced at the cable, to see whether it was still taut.

Ioane said, “Take the load off first. Push the trailer forward a little so the cable slackens. Then turn it left. Right tightens.”

The man did as he was told. He put his hand on the pin and pushed forward from the wrist; the trailer moved an inch, and the cable slackened. He turned it left, one turn, then another half. On the back of his hand was a row of fine lines, violet in colour; Ioane looked at them only once. He got it open half a beat slower than Ioane.

“Half a beat late,” Ioane said. “It opens.”

The man said “Mm” and handed back the pin he had unscrewed. Ioane took it and glanced at the thread; no damage.

As the man turned to go, his right ear came into view. From it hung an earring shaped like a microphone, silver, broken off partway, the break ragged, its edges turned out, and inside the break was a line of violet light. The violet light was thin, and it flickered, moving with his steps. Ioane saw it and did not ask.

The print on the back of the jacket moved half a beat after his steps.

The man crossed the drain by the door, paused, looked down at the cover, and did not step on it.

After the man had gone some way off, a gust blew a sheet of paper across the ground to Ioane’s feet. It was an old tide table, last year’s, all the dates crossed out. Ioane trapped it under his foot, bent and picked it up, folded it, and put it in the toolbox lid, clipped together with today’s.

※

At twenty past two, Ioane was in the office. The office was the smallest room in the boatyard; its window was one big pane of glass, and outside it was the pavement.

Across from the pavement, Jo’s coffee van was parked. The van was white, its window open, a small sign hanging from its roof, the lettering unreadable. Behind the van was a generator; the ground trembled with it, and the sound was not loud, but it drowned out the traffic on the street. Jo’s van parked in this spot every day; everyone at the boatyard knew it.

The man went and stood in front of the van and waited. Jo was bent over inside; Ioane could not see what she was doing. She straightened up and set a cup on the counter. The man reached out his left hand to take it. As he did, his right ear was turned towards the van’s window, the break pointing straight at Jo.

Jo’s eyes fell on the back of that hand and stayed there a moment.

The hand rose to take the cup, and the violet on its back flashed once in the glass.

The glass reflected the street and the passing cars; Ioane could not make out the fine lines on the hand. All he saw was that Jo’s hands did not stop. She took the change out of the cash box coin by coin and laid it on the counter, in a row, largest to smallest, to the end. The man took the change, picked up the cup, turned and left.

Across the street, a woman walked past with a dog. The dog stopped, sniffed the van’s wheel, and was pulled away.

Ioane went back to the trailer and picked up the spanner. People round here did not come asking about shackles in the afternoon; if they asked, it was in the morning. What he was still thinking about was that shackle, the salt on the pin.

At three, the water had been coming back in for a while and was already some way over the third cross-groove. When the water came up, the seaweed came up with it, catching on the piles and swaying, strand by strand. Ioane glanced at his watch: ten minutes earlier than the paper said. He made a note in pencil in the margin of the tide table.

At four, he checked the trailer. He crouched and ran his hand round the hubs; they were cool. On the side of the second tyre was a scratch from the last time the trailer had been reversed into something; he measured its length with his fingernail and noted it down. He pressed the gauge onto the valve, and the needle stopped on the low side. The second tyre was two pounds lower than the other three. He hooked up the pump and pumped, stroke by stroke, until the needle was back where it belonged, pulled off the hose, and screwed the valve cap on tight, all the way. He also wiped a coat of oil onto the cable, round and round, very thin. He fitted the pin back into the shackle and screwed it all the way in. One of the lights at the back of the trailer was dead; he changed the bulb, and the bulb came on a moment late.

※

At half past five, Jo’s van was to pull up at the boatyard door to bring water for the workers on the slipway.

As the van reversed in, a back wheel ran onto the drain cover at the door. The cover was iron, with a gap round its edge; the wheel caught in the gap, and the van lurched to one side. Something slid inside, with a clang.

Ioane came out through the door, went to the back of the van, braced one hand on the tailgate, pressed the other on one edge of the cover, and pushed outward. The wheel jumped and rolled off the cover. The edge of the cover caught the index finger of his right hand and broke the skin. He pressed a tissue to it, held it a few seconds, changed to another, and held it a few seconds more.

Jo watched him from the van window. She did not ask whether he was all right; she only handed a flat white out through the window. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow.

The cup was the kind from the van, with a handle, and a plastic lid with a small notch in it. When she handed it over, the notch faced the handle side. She always handed it over like that.

Ioane took it with his uninjured left hand. He nodded once and said nothing.

In the small window at the back of the van, Jo’s daughter sat on a folding stool with her exercise book pressed on her knees. She did not look up. Jo’s daughter did her homework here every Wednesday, waiting for her mother to finish.

The van stayed at the door another ten minutes. Inside, Jo tidied the counter; cups knocked against it, once, and again. Ioane finished the coffee, took the empty cup into the boatyard, and washed it at the sink at the very back. The water was cold. He ran a finger round the rim, and wiped the lid too, the notch facing outward as he wiped.

He brought the cup out, walked to the van, and set it upside down on the van’s rail. The notch in the lid faced the handle side.

※

At six, he locked the boatyard door. The second turn stuck as usual; as usual, he braced his thumb against the corner of the door.

Of the small circles on the whiteboard, only the top one was left unfilled.

He ate supper upstairs. A bowl of rice with the fish soup his aunt had left poured over it; the soup had gone cold. When he had finished, he washed the bowl and set it upside down to drain. All the while he ate, the sound of the water downstairs went on.

It got dark slowly. He hung tomorrow’s overalls on the back of the door. Then he sat down on the chair, took a ballpoint pen out of his pocket, and wrote a few words on the back of his left hand: half past one, trailer, shackle. He wrote them very small, and when he had finished he blew on them.

The upstairs window faced the slipway. He pushed it open a crack, and the wind came in off the harbour, cooler than during the day. He did not turn on the light; he leaned against the window frame and watched the water on the slipway for a while. The water was black, hugging the edge of the slipway, drawing back down a little at a time.

At twenty to one, he lay awake in bed, listening to the water outside, counted to twenty, and only then got up and put on his shoes. He wore the other pair, with thick soles that did not slip on wet concrete.

On the way down, he stepped over the eleventh stair. The boatyard lights were not on; he felt his way in the dark to the hooks and took down the orange hi-vis vest. The vest was new, with two white stripes sewn at the cuffs. He zipped it all the way to the top.

At half past one, he was standing at the edge of the slipway.

He switched on the two lights on the slipway, both white, one on the stern, one on the keel. Jo’s van was parked by the road at the top of the slipway, its window open, the light inside on too. Jo was taking coffee to the workers on the ebb. Cup after cup went out; she pressed each lid on, pressed it down firmly, finished one, then the next.

At the top of the slipway stood the tow vehicle for the trailer, its engine still running, a low hum. Two people stood at the stern, one holding the sling, the other standing at the edge of the slipway with a radio in hand; the radio was silent.

The water went down slowly. Ioane stood at the edge of the slipway and watched the waterline move down, past a pile, past a ring of wet black weed, to the third cross-groove of the slipway, and stop. The puddles on the slipway reflected the two lights; the water drew their reflections out long, and wave after wave pushed them to pieces.

At one fifty-two, the hull dropped and the keel settled onto the slipway. The concrete gave a dull thud, and the boat stopped rocking.

The shackle pin was still biting. The weight of the boat was on the sling; the pin was held fast and would not turn. The sling was grey, every fibre in it taut. He put on his gloves, the old pair, worn thin at the fingertips; through the gloves he could still feel the steel.

He raised a hand to the people at the stern. One of them let out a length of the sling.

Ioane put his hand on the shackle pin. Take the load off first. He loosened it half a turn to the left to free up the thread a little, then turned it back to the right.

Right tightens. He turned it, one turn, then another, palm flat against the head of the pin, and felt the thread bite, notch by notch. Back when his master taught him this move, the cable had lashed the back of his hand, and it stayed swollen for a day. His master said you take the load off first so the hand does not get hit.

※

At two o’clock exactly, the tower across the water lit up.

First the base. White lights rose from the ground and climbed ring by ring, with no gaps between them. At the level of the ring they paused; the whole ring lit, evenly, not a single light late. Above that was the cone, and a stretch of the cone lit too, up to the cloud, and then no more. The cloud hung low; it cut off the upper part of the tower, and the top could not be seen.

At the tip of the tower was a beacon light that flashed every few seconds. Each time it flashed, a small patch of light showed through the cloud, and was quickly gone.

On the water across the harbour, the tower’s light fell and drew a white line in the water. The line wavered once, then held still. On the water there was only the tower’s light, and the ripples under it, ring after ring.

The people on the slipway did not look up. One worker pushed his hard hat up a little, his hand stopping on the brim, and did not lift his head. Neither did Ioane; his hand was still on the pin. Over by the van, Jo did not look up either.

He screwed the shackle pin all the way in and counted to two. He did not look up.