Free Sea of Tranquility by Lesley Choyce Page A

junkyard. Bruce should not have been attracted to anything involving guns but something about this caught his fancy. He was hoping there would be something else on the island — after the whale boat tour — to attract Elise and the kids and keep them occupied. Poverty might work after all. If there was poverty, Elise would detect it and go to work studying it and he’d have some time to himself. Todd could go with him, maybe, while Angie tagged along with her mom for a look at island poverty. Bruce hoped he was wrong aboutpoverty in Canada, after all. If there was a big junkyard, there must be poor people nearby, Bruce reasoned, but he knew he was far out of his familiar territory.
    Familiar territory to Bruce Sanger was his office at Small, Smith and McCall Investments. He had an important job as a stock analyst and advisor for a currently fashionable mutual fund called the Earth First Fund. It was an “ethical” fund, at least as far as anything could be ethical in the investment patch. Right before the trip, he pumped ten million dollars into an environmentally friendly ceramic roofing tile plant in Chile that was reported to be labour friendly. He’d also brought about a big push of the fund’s money into a geothermal power source in California and a super blue-green algae health food product company in Oregon. He wondered if there was something in a place like Nova Scotia that the ethical investing world had ignored. Something that did not diminish the ozone layer or rile Greenpeace and yet returned an 8 percent dividend each year. He wondered.
    The island grew upon the horizon ever so slowly as they steamed on. “We must be travelling at thirty knots,” Todd announced to his sister.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” In her mind, a knot involved a piece of rope.“How do you know?”
    â€œI just do. It’s a nautical term. Nobody ever says ‘miles per hour’ at sea. You’re always travelling at so many knots.”
    â€œAnd we have thirty of them, right?”
    â€œRight. I bet the water’s over twelve fathoms deep here.”
    â€œIt is?”
    â€œCould be deeper. You could tell if you had sonar.”
    â€œWho is that?”
    â€œIt’s not a who, it’s an it. Tells distance from an object, underwater. Pretty cool for old technology, when you think about it.”
    Todd had his doubts about old technology, though. He pondered how his father’s generation could have grown up without remotes for TVs. No laptops, no Internet. He was thankful he had been born when he had been and often suffered disbelief over the undeniable fact that people had lived in his parents’ time without the basics.
    Todd was looking forward to the whales, of course. He’d read a book on cetology and considered a future in research at sea. Diatoms glowing at night. Lots of high-tech equipment. Maybe go down in a submersible and see really ugly creatures on the bottom of the sea. This boat ride was a good start — give him the feel for life at sea. And he liked what he found so far: on a boat (old nautical technology, but that had already been factored in and was to be expected), travelling at about thirty knots in twelve fathoms of clean salt water. If you fell overboard you’d drown if no one scooped you up right away. That added an element of danger, which he liked. Todd leaned far over the side of the railing and peered into the frothing water by the hull of the metal boat.
    â€œCareful,Todd,” his sister chastised him.
    He ignored her but suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder. For a split second he imagined it was someone about to push him overboard. He’d heard about that happening on the Staten Island Ferry. Instead, the hand gently tugged him back, and he turned around to see a young man in greasy overalls, a small blond mustache and a curious kind of smile on his face. “Wouldn’t lean over like that, lad, if I’s you.