Tommy’s Tarp

The tarp on Tommy’s boat has come untied from the lifelines on the port side. The wind is blowing hard from the south east and with each gust the tarp flies up crackling loudly; the noise, muffled by the hull, sounds like far-off artillery.

But Tommy isn’t going to go outside to retie it. He painted the Trophy Room at the Rowing Club today and he’s just finished the three beers he bought himself as a reward. Helluva good job but exhausting. They need the bar done for a wedding on the weekend so he’s been putting in twelve hour days.

Anyway, there’s no rain in the forecast, only wind and the promise of a high-pressure system. Nothing will hurt – the blue tarp, now slightly tattered and green with algae, is there to protect the cockpit from the rain. It’s attached to the stern lifelines and tied port and starboard just before the chimney for the diesel heater.

Tommy turns on the propane and lights one of the elements on his two-burner range. While it heats up he lifts the bilge cover and reaches in for the block of cheese he keeps there. There’s no fridge when the boat isn’t plugged into shore power so he keeps tins of milk and cheese down below the waterline where it’s cool. Tonight, like most nights, he’s having the Tommy special: grilled cheese and tomato soup.

He listens to the wind while he stirs the pot and watches the small burping bubbles form in the soup. He’s in good holding ground even if it really blows and he’s got 100 feet of rode out. The anchor has never let him down.

Tommy pours the soup into a chipped bowl he bought at Value Village, slides the grilled cheese onto a plate and settles in at the dinette table. He picks up the newspaper to keep him company while he eats supper. The weather guys got it right for once; this wind is moving the bad weather out and finally bringing some sun.

High-pressure systems have been rare this summer. They’re pretty rare most summers although that local knowledge seems to not be reaching the hordes buying up all the real estate and driving people out of their homes and boats. Home for Tommy is Corey Ann, the boat he bought ten years ago from a guy who had just moved from back east. A city guy who bought her before he knew he got seasick.

Tommy’s been living on board since Josie kicked him out of their place north of Nanaimo and bought him out. He used the money to buy Corey Ann and what little was left he used to fix her up so that she’s pretty comfortable. He even has hot water when he runs the engine. He could have hot water all the time if he plugged the boat into shore power but he gave up his moorage two years ago when the rent went up – all kinds of people moving in from Christ knows where – Hong Kong and Taiwan and maybe the States and buying expensive condos in Coal Harbour where there used to be just a railway yard and marinas for the likes of him. He hears Goldie Hawn’s got a big bastard of a boat in the marina he used to be in.

Now he’s anchored out in False Creek for free but there’s pressure to move on. There’s nowhere else to anchor in the city that’s close enough to work. He’s house painting – condo painting – when his back isn’t buggered up so bad that he needs to curl up into a ball and lay perfectly still tucked up in his v-berth. If he’s lucky he falls asleep and escapes the pain for a few hours. One time he couldn’t move for three days and just pissed into a bucket beside the bunk.

But there’s lots of work these days. There’s cranes everywhere and the old skyline is disappearing behind a new forest of towers. There’s still a cement plant on Granville Island and there’s still tugs up at the end where Corey Ann is anchored. But mostly there’s condos even up there now, thousands of new ones now that the Expo land is almost completely developed.

Tommy wonders who buys them. Lots of times he’s hired by the builder or a property management company and never meets the owners. Many of the condos he paints down in Coal Harbour don’t even have anyone living in them.

Rich people. With jobs he can’t fathom. What did they do all day in their city offices in front of their computers to make so much money? These people who couldn’t tie up a boat if their life depended on it – people who had never lifted a hammer.

A few times he has talked to them and when he told one lady he lived on his boat she asked how he could live in such a small place. He didn’t say that his 30-foot sailboat was starting to look roomy compared to some of the places he’d painted in Yaletown recently. Bedrooms so small you couldn’t fit a bed in. Like being in a box. And no outside space. Or if there was it was only a balcony so small you could just stand on it to piss over the side which of course you couldn’t do. But they still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Emily is the name of the social worker who has been to see him twice in as many months. Lately she’s been pestering him on the cell phone he got to take messages about painting jobs. Every voicemail message she’s left has been the same, reminding him, as though he was some kind of retard, that he was no longer allowed to anchor in False Creek for months at a time. She wanted to know if he’d made other arrangements for himself yet.

The first time she met him in person she’d come alongside in the zodiac piloted by some flunky from the harbour patrol and knocked on his hull. It was late afternoon and he was whacked from finishing a job in Yaletown where the couple paying him had to move in and have the place painted in the same weekend. He’d fallen fast asleep in his favourite boxer shorts, the silk ones with hearts, a silly gift from Josie when they’d briefly reconciled after a night at the legion. He’d staggered up the stairs into the cockpit.

One look at Emily and he knew it wasn’t good. She was scared of him before she even talked to him, young enough to be his daughter, dressed in jeans and a jean jacket with some kind of peace thing hanging around her neck on a leather cord. He’d joked that he didn’t want any of what she was selling and turned to go back below.

She hadn’t laughed. Somehow she knew his name and called out. “Tommy, I need to talk to you.” She looked like she was going to make him take some kind of pill she was sure was good for him but that he wasn’t going to like. She was wearing sandals with heels – on a boat. Silly little twat.

He had looked at a couple of the buildings she’d suggested – she had no answer as to what the Christ he was supposed to do with his boat but he’d gone to look anyway.

The first room in a hotel on Hastings smelled like puke. He could have fixed up the peeling paint and put down a carpet over the stained linoleum. But no way could he get used to the smell of puke. There were doors open to some of the rooms and he looked sideways into one as he passed by. Inside was a young woman, a makeshift tourniquet around her arm, sitting on a grey mattress that had no sheets.

The last room he looked at was across the street from the Ivanhoe — he drank at the Ivanhoe but he sure as hell wasn’t going to live down there with all the crack heads and meth users and their

scabby bodies. Tommy watched one through the grimy window. The poor son of a bitch had stooped to pick up a cigarette butt and almost smashed his head on an overflowing garbage can as he lurched down. He recovered and continued up the street, flailing around like a drunk on a boat but in drug-induced slow motion.

That was depressing enough to make him order another beer. Emily had reassured him she could get him some help with his back and make sure he had a place to stay if he couldn’t work. In all these years he’d never taken a hand-out and didn’t need one now if they’d just leave him the fuck alone.

He let her come aboard the second time, feeling a little sorry for her as she sat perched in the bow of the Zodiac yelling up to him, her face slightly green. He dropped the silent routine and heard her out, offering some comment this time. She looked grateful that he was saying something – like she’d finally gotten through to him.

What harm am I doing he asked her. She nodded. Her brown eyes were big. Her body bent towards him. Someone’s daughter, someone’s kid, still a kid. I understand how you feel she said. But imagine if everyone wanted to do what you’re doing, the whole of False Creek would fill up. He’d snorted and she’d looked crestfallen.

He hadn’t expected a better answer or the truth. It was a problem of appearances.
Tommy’s boat and many others, worse than his, looked like shit. He actually agreed that the abandoned boats should be towed away. But why the likes of him and a few others that lived there had to move was just a matter of the rich residents not liking to be reminded that there were poor people right in their neighbourhood.

But there was no fighting it. The people with money would always win.

Tommy is pulling up the anchor and taking Corey Ann out for a couple of days. Lately he’s been ignoring the phone calls. He can tell who it is from the call display.

It’s November and there’s no other boats moving in False Creek except the aquabus and the tugs. Like him, they go all year. All the fancy boats are tied up in front of their fancy buildings and no one is around. He’s making good time as he motors out towards the lighthouse at Point Atkinson. The tide is with him.

There’s only a few freighters out in English Bay. Tommy moves the tiller left and Corey Ann steers to starboard, closer to a big container ship that’s flying an Albanian flag. She’s in need of some paint. The ship is high in the water without any containers on board. Tommy can see rust stains that look like bloody waterfalls under each of the thru-hulls that will be under the waterline once she’s been loaded up at port.

By the time he reaches Port Graves it’s getting dark and he’s looking forward to hitting the sack. Although he’d sailed from the mouth of Howe Sound to Gambier, the engine had run enough to heat the water in the hot water tank. Tommy fills up the rubber water bottle he uses to take the damp out of his sleeping bag. But he turns on the diesel heater as well, as he has each night the last two weeks. The damp of the last few days has settled in again — the boat smells like mould and mildew. But Tommy is used to the smell and it doesn’t bother him like it did at first.

By the time Tommy climbs into the v-berth, the tarp has come undone again. This time the lines have let go port and starboard and the wind has flipped it up so that it has come to rest over the chimney.

By the time the carbon monoxide level has reached a lethal level, Tommy has been fast asleep for hours. His housing crisis is now solved.