Читать книгу Faster Than Wind - Steve Pitt - Страница 8

It was a fine, bright winter day when I arrived at the foot of York Street where Tommy and Ed had said they parked their iceboat. The harbour ice was packed with people.

Every early December, as the temperature dropped below freezing, ice started forming on Toronto Bay. By late December, the ice was thick enough for fully loaded horse wagons to drive from shore to the Toronto Islands. Almost overnight the waterfront was transformed from a deserted wasteland into a bustling winter playground. Along the shoreline an official promenade was marked out that ran parallel to Front Street. Here warmly dressed pleasure walkers strolled arm in arm, tipping their hats to friends and acquaintances. Taxi drivers hitched up their horses to old-fashioned sleighs and offered rides to tourists. Even the occasional horseless carriage was spotted chugging along the promenade, horns honking in greeting. Food vendors quickly followed, setting up booths offering hot drinks, popcorn, sausage sandwiches, and roasted chestnuts.

A short way out young boys earned a fast nickel by shovelling snow to create curling rinks for older people or skating circles where young couples slowly skated in circles together or single young men showed off their skating skills for admiring girls to watch. Farther from shore small armies of other young men cleared off large squares of ice to play hockey games that lasted a whole day, with scores running into triple digits.

Amid all that hubbub, iceboats scudded back and forth like swordfish among small fry. When they weren’t racing, many iceboat crews earned a quarter or two giving one-way rides to and from the Toronto Islands or tours around the harbour in their craft. The islands were about a half-mile from the foot of York Street, the place where the iceboats usually parked. If the wind was right, the iceboaters wagered with their customers that they could carry them to the islands in less than a minute or the ride was free. For the family-minded, iceboats offered slower full circles around the harbour for ten cents a passenger, five passengers minimum.

The ice south of York Street was crowded with boat masts and sailing crews all waiting for fares. The sailors sat around bonfires built on scraps of iron to keep warm. I didn’t see the Marinion parked with the other boats, then I spied Tommy and Ed slowly zigzagging around the ice with four delighted, screaming children and two nervous parents onboard.

“Looking for a ride, son?” an elderly man asked hopefully.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’ve got one already.”

The man nodded and returned to chatting with his friends.

Eventually, the Marinion returned to the iceboat anchorage and gracefully coasted to a halt. Climbing out, the mother began counting out sixty cents in dimes, nickels, and pennies into Tommy’s hand. Both adults seemed grateful to be standing on ice again, but there was a mutiny on the Marinion when the four children were informed that the ride was over. Their screams of protest drowned out the seagulls competing for sausage scraps from the nearby garbage cans.

“Sorry, kids, ride’s over,” Ed said, trying to help the father lift the children out of the cockpit. The two oldest were twins, set apart only by the fact that each had identical snot trails running down their chins from opposite nostrils. When lifted out of the Marinion, they wailed in unison and kicked snow at their father and Ed. As soon as the third child’s feet touched the snow, he threw himself onto the ice and began spinning like a pinwheel as he threw a tantrum.

“Yipes!” Ed yelped.

The last child clamped both his arms and leg around Ed’s right arm. “I wanna ’nother ride!” he shrieked.

“Watch out!” the father warned, trying to pick the pinwheel kid out of the snow. “That one’s a biter.”

“A biter?” Ed repeated, genuinely frightened. “Ouch! He is biting.”

“Naw, he’s just pinching, mister,” one of the smirking twins said.

“Ouch!” Ed shouted. “I don’t care. Hey, Bertie! Get this lobster off me! Ouch!”

The other twin laughed. “Now he’s gonna bite.”

The mother was still counting out sixty cents in nickels and pennies into Tommy’s hand while I tried to pry Lobster Brat off Ed’s arm. Just as I got both hands loose, he lunged with his teeth and snagged Ed’s jacket just above the elbow. “Hey, that’s new!” Ed protested.

“Har-Arrrrrrrrrrr,” the kid snarled through clenched teeth. “Woof! Woof! Woof!”

“He’s playing woof-woof now,” one of the twins said.

“Woof-woof?” Ed questioned.

“Woof-Woof is our bulldog,” the first twin said. “He bites mailmen.”

“Har-Arrrrrrrrrrr,” the kid growled.

“And milkmen,” the other twin said. “He even bit a policeman once, and then he died.”

“Who?” Ed rasped. “The policeman?”

“No, Woof-Woof!” the twins said together.

For a little guy the kid was really strong. It was all I could do to keep him from getting more than just a piece of Ed’s coat.

“Eliot, let go of the nice man’s arm and I promise we’ll come back sometime for another ride!” the father said, struggling to stand the pinwheel child upright. But the kid kept flopping over and spinning his feet.

“Woof! Woof!”

“Eliot!” the father screamed.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!”

The woman finished counting the money. She glanced over at Eliot and snapped her purse shut. Suddenly, the whole bay seemed to go quiet.

“Eliot, let go of that man’s arm right now,” she said in a barely audible voice.

Eliot immediately let go of Ed’s arm. I put him down in the snow, and he stood there, spitting brown bits of coat fluff out of his mouth.

“Say thank you to the nice men for the ride,” the mother commanded.

“Thank you,” the four boys and the father said in unison.

“We hope to see you again,” the woman said sweetly as they walked away.

“Not if we see you first,” Ed said under his breath as he tried to rub the teeth marks out of his coat.

“Wow!” I said. “You get many fares like that?”

Ed scowled. “No. Some are worse.”

“Ready for your first sailing lesson?” Tommy asked me.

“Can’t wait.”

“Then your chariot awaits, m’lord,” Ed said with a bow and a wave of his arm.

We turned the Marinion around. Following Ed’s example, I stood behind the right runner while Tommy positioned himself at the back of the boat. On Tommy’s command all three of us pushed the craft forward. Once we got the boat moving, Tommy jumped in and pulled on the rope that raised the sail.

“Okay, Bertie, here we go,” Ed said, leaping in as the boat moved forward under its own power.

The sun was shining and the wind was strong, so we were able to put in two hours of sailing where I literally learned “the ropes” of iceboat racing. The first thing I found out was that ropes were called anything but ropes on an iceboat. The ropes that held up the mast from the sides were shrouds, the ones that braced the mast from the front and back were stays, the ones that ran into the rigging so that someone could climb to the top of the mast were ratlines, the one that raised the sail was a halyard, and the one that controlled the sail was a sheet.

Everything on a boat had a different name than I was used to. The front of the boat was the bow and the back was the stern. Left was port and right was starboard. When Tommy turned the boat, that was called tacking or gybing, depending on whether the wind was in front or behind us.

Both gybing and tacking involved ducking under the big swinging stick on the bottom of the sail as it lurched from one side of the boat to the other. It was appropriately named a boom because if you didn’t duck quickly enough, it hit you in the head. Boom!

Besides moving our weight from one side of the boat to the other, part of the job for the crew was to look out for bad ice, open water, and deadheads, which were logs, boards, or any big pieces of garbage frozen into the ice that stuck up high enough to do damage. If the sailing was smooth, I climbed a few rungs on the ratlines because the view was better up there.

Not surprisingly, sometimes when the boat zigged, I zagged because I didn’t grab a handhold fast enough. That sent me tumbling off the boat, though I didn’t have far to fall. Usually, I just skidded across the ice, hoping I wouldn’t hit anything until I came to a rest.

At noon there were three races staged with at least ten boats per contest. I stood on the shore and watched as Ed, Tommy, and Tommy’s father, Hector, competed in the second and third races.

The racecourse was set up like a triangle, with the starting point and finish line at the foot of York Street. There was a marker set in the ice at the Eastern Gap of Toronto harbour and another one at the Western Gap. A triangular course meant that the racers usually had one leg with the wind solidly behind them, a second leg where the wind was at their side, and a third leg where they had to sail into the wind. Sailing into the wind demanded the greatest skills because the boats had to tack back and forth. That was difficult enough when an iceboat was alone on the ice, but it was really challenging when there were up to a dozen boats zigzagging in a tight clump. Collisions were frequent, and sometimes boats were so badly damaged that they had to be dragged back to the finish line by a team of horses.

The Royal George won the first race, just as Tommy had predicted. In the second race the Marinion placed third, but in the last heat of the day it won and the crew collected a five-dollar prize from a purse that had been created by all the entrants contributing a dollar each.

After the races, we went out for a few more laps around the bay so I could practise standing on the runner beam. I was getting better; I only fell off once. Before we knew it we could hear the clock bells in the New City Hall ringing 4:30 p.m. Darkness came early to Toronto in December. With the sun setting in the west, we sailed back to the York Street anchorage, which was again crowded with boats. During the weekdays, less than ten boats were parked here. Most belonged to professional ice taxi drivers who made their living transporting people to and from the different islands. On the weekends as many as fifty boats crowded the ice. The majority of the weekend skippers were amateurs in clunky homemade boats, but there were also rich people with fancy custom-made craft.

When the iceboat sailors weren’t out on the ice, they sat on wooden buckets and packing crates around open campfires — millionaires rubbing shoulders with common working men. They exchanged sailing stories, relived past races, and told jokes, mostly about sailing and races. Blackened iron kettles full of melted snow continuously hissed over the fire for tea, and from a fifty-pound burlap bag sailors threw unpeeled potatoes onto the coals, which they turned with long sticks until the coals were completely black. Each boat had a small store of tea bags and tin cups, and anyone could help themselves to the kettle water or a hot potato.

Like most old hands, Tommy and Ed could pick a potato right out of the fire and hold it in their bare fingers. The first time I tried it I burned myself.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” I gasped, letting the spud land with a hiss on the snow. This earned me a loud burst of laughter from the rest of the men.

“Here, laddie,” a gruff old man said, handing me a long spruce stick he had been whittling for kindling. I stuck it in the spud and lifted it out of the snow. Steam poured off the potato, but it quickly cooled until I thought it was safe to take a bite.

“Hot! Hot!” I cried, burning my mouth. But after a full day of sailing, the spud tasted wonderful — even the burnt parts.

“Don’t forget the pepper and salt,” Ed said, producing two tiny shakers from his coat pocket.

I found an empty nail barrel and sat on it crosswise.

“How did you boys do for fares today?” a fuzzy-jawed young captain asked Tommy.

“Two one-way island runs and one round-theharbour tour,” Tommy replied.

“We had a good one,” another skipper said. “Five young lasses from the nursing school. Lots of ankle.”

A third captain jabbed his colleague’s ribs hard. “Tender lugs about, Simon. Watch your language.”

I blushed not from the comment but from the fact that some of these men obviously thought of me as a child.

“So who’s your new man there, Captain McDonell?” a silver-haired man in his forties asked Tommy.

“Fred, this is Bertie McCross,” Tommy said. “Bertie, this is Fred Phelan.”

Both Fred and I half stood so we could shake hands. As someone at another campfire started playing an accordion, Ed filled me in on who was sitting around our circle tonight.