Free Saltwater Cowboys by Dayle Furlong

little eye.”
    Too much green , he thought, watching the hills in the distance, crowded with balsam fir. Too much blue , he thought and watched the vast ocean swelling before them. Rats leaving a sinking ship , he thought as he drove the car onboard. All of us, scurrying away, in desperate hope for something better.
    Once aboard the ferry they went up on deck to let the girls watch the water.
    The metallic grey steel and cranberry-red-trimmed ferry hissed in the winter air, icicles hanging off the upper deck and railways like crooked, arthritic fingers. The deep Atlantic churned and spat underneath the motor.
    Harried moms, resigned dads, and excited children lounged on deck. They watched the land recede from the heavy boat that crawled across the channel to the mainland.
    Angela had gone to the tiny café for snacks. Jack sat slumped on the upper deck, Lily in his lap, Maggie and Kate beside him. They hung over the rail to point at the great granite rock dotted with emerald trees, covered with the filaments of the first snowfall.
    Tears drifted down his face and mixed with the salty spray from the ocean, flung up by the stir of the winter wind and the force of the engine underneath him.
    Angela returned with bags of salt and vinegar chips. She avoided his eyes and gave him a few moments to stare uninterrupted at the grey block of land, shrunk to the size of a mere pebble — a stone skipped across the ocean — before it was swallowed by sky.
    The girls ate their chips quickly, clumps of salt on their fingers, eager to run and play in the open air. Lily drifted off to sleep in Angela’s arms. Angela rummaged through her bag to find one of the leftover sandwiches. She found one and tore off chunks of bread, manoeuvred the sloppy meat and lettuce into her mouth, losing the crust altogether. She was feeding the baby in her belly, which continued to swell like high tide. Strangely saddened by the prospect of this new baby, who would most likely be delivered in Alberta, not in Brighton by Dr. Nelson and his team of enthusiastic student nurses from St. John’s; who would not hear Newfoundland music on a daily basis, or smell the ocean or taste the salt cod and fresh potatoes with drawn butter or eat beet salads and pickled beets, or suck on Purity biscuits or peppermint knobs.
    Her little Albertan would eat beef, lots of it, probably, and be raised amongst strangers in a strange new land, filled with local customs that Angela would be oblivious to, and would most likely embarrass herself and her children as she tried to adapt to them. She knew, of course, what the women would be like. She’d been to town dozens of times, noticed the women in the fancy stores on Water Street and at the Avalon Mall, who spoke a little quicker, flourished about a little more dramatically. She knew she stood out as someone from “out-around-the-bay,” and she knew they’d stand out even more around Western strangers.
    A few hours later Cape Breton Island came into view, flatter than Newfoundland, humble, obedient, and peaceful, its dales shallow and round as a ripe belly. Impish and mysterious, Cape Breton Island looked warm and inviting with soft, rolling hills and gentle shores.
    One of the ferry workers, an old man with a Stephenville accent, walked slowly onto the upper deck and swept debris into the dustbin, all kinds of soiled napkins, clear plastic sandwich wrap, and discarded Styrofoam cups with used tea bags inside that huddled like a dead animal behind a clump of wet leaves.
    He was short and skinny, clean-shaven with a slack mouth, the corner of which was reserved permanently for the simple pleasure of a dangling cigarette. His lips were twisted, the lips of an old-timer who can smoke and talk at the same time, muscle habits honed from years of salted conversations with sailors and deck-men.
    He tapped Angela’s foot lightly with his broom. She opened her eyes and lifted her head heavily from