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Reverend Tom has a big favour to ask of Gil. One that carries the potential for great reward —some might even say salvation, depending on how you look at it. But with every reward comes risk, one that may not be worth the chance unless a hard case like Melvin gets wind of it.   

Transcript

Reverend Tom dropped over to my house one night out of the blue. I figured he was taking pity on me again and my God-awful cooking, and bringing over leftovers from a meal his lovely wife had made. But no, he had a favour to ask me. I forgot that he already mentioned this at Church, but the last thing I expected was what he said. Which was why I said yes before he even got a chance to ask. 

“But you don’t even know what it is yet,” he said. 

“You’ve been there for me and Amy for everything we needed,” I said. “You were there for her when she got sick, and you were there for me when she passed. Whatever it is, the answer is yes. How could I say no?”

“Well…I think you should hear what I have—"

“I’m sure you’re not asking me to break the law,” I said, laughing, but he didn’t laugh, he just smiled.  

“Anything electronic out here?” he said, looking around the property. 

“Nothing. All inside.”

“Anything in your pocket?” 

“Palm’s inside.”   

“Good, I left mine in the car. I need help rescuing some people.” He was leaning on the rail on my back patio and turned to stare out the bay. It was a windy day, and you could see the white foam on every wave.  

               “Rescue them from what?” I said. 

               “That,” he said, pointing out at the ocean, and what was on the other side. Well, technically not the other side, that was Africa. Europe? Anyway, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t America. “I need help rescuing some American refugees.”

               “Help how?” I asked. 

               “Well, you have a boat,” he said.  

               “A twenty-three-foot speedboat, that’s what I got. Put it this way, if it was a mother and father and two kids, I wouldn’t be able to take their cat. What would I be rescuing them from?”

               “Tyranny. That and another boat.”

“So it is a family?” 

“I think so.” 

“You think so?” 

 “It must be a family. Yes, I’m sure it’s a family. I’m sure you could squeeze in four people, Gilbert, if two of them were children.”  

               “Another boat? Where?”

               “We would have to meet up with them at a predetermined location.”

               “Like GPS coordinates or something?” 

               “Yeah, that would work. I never thought about that.” 

               “Well…there’s not much else that would work on the open ocean, unless we went by the moon or stars.”

               “Could we do that?” 

               “That’s how they did it years ago.” 

               “Good point. Then we wouldn’t have to rely on all this fancy electronic stuff. Anyway, I don’t know who else to turn to. If I had a boat I’d do it myself. I mean if I had a boat and knew how to use it, and I wasn’t afraid of the ocean. I never operated a boat in my life. Maybe I could rent one?” 

               “There’s more to operating a boat than the throttle and the tiller,” I said. “Especially if there’s any sea on.”

               “Isn’t yours autonomous?” 

               “Yeah, but I don’t trust that in bad weather. Not the brand I got anyway. It’s one of those cheap American brands. It’s old too. How far off would it be?”

               “I don’t know. It’s a big boat though.”

               “How big?”

               “Really big.” 

“Like a passenger boat…a freighter…a fishing trawler…what?” 

“I’m not sure.” 

“No offense, Reverend, but I think you need to get some of them details before you starts thinking about rescue missions.” 

“True. I think it’s some kind of freighter or something.” 

               “A freighter! Them things is huge. And they don’t come very close to shore either.”

               “It wouldn’t be for free you know,” he said. “They offered me money, but I wouldn’t take it. For one thing, I’m a man of God, and another, I don’t want to go to jail. I figure if I got caught the judge might be more lenient if he knew I wasn’t in it for the money.”

               “You mean if we got caught.”

               “You can have the money if you want. I know you need it. You haven’t sold this place yet.” 

               “If I don’t sell this place I don’t have a prayer of getting the shot anyway. How much was they going to give you?”

               “I think they said a hundred thousand.” 

               “A hundred thousand!”

               “It’s their life savings.” 

               “Oh…”   

               “So would you do it?” 

               “How much jail time is it for smuggling immigrants?” 

               “Four years, but you’d be out in two. Time served. Obviously you wouldn’t go to jail for a nonviolent crime. You’d serve it here.” 

               I stared at him. 

               “Okay,” he said. “I hauled that out of my arse. I have no idea what the sentence would be. I know there’s a treaty but it’s just political. They just don’t want to anger the Republic.”

               “The Republic?” 

               “That’s what the media call it now. Can we honestly call it the ‘United States’ anymore?”

               “I guess not. We’ve been deporting them a lot too, if you can believe what you sees online.”  

               “I have to do something. I haven’t even said this to my wife, but I feel like I can trust you. I’m going through some kind of crisis, Gilbert. I need to do something with meaning. I need to serve. I need to help people. It’s my job, isn’t it? I feel like I took the easy road. You ever feel that way?” 

               “Sure you helps people every Sunday, don’t you? You helps me.” 

               “It’s not enough. I didn’t even want to be a minister. Don’t get me wrong, there’s things about it I love —the plays and the singing and whatnot, but I need to do more. I want to make real change. Real change. The world is falling apart.  Will you help me save these Americans from tyranny? Because that’s what it is now down there. They won't even let them leave. And Canada should be taking as many as we can, but the fools on the right think they’re bringing all their problems with them, and taking our jobs, and all the stupid cliches that the bigots have been saying about immigrants since the beginning of recorded history.”

               Reverend Tom was more excited than I ever saw him. Even more excited than his last sermon when all those magas showed up at church. 

               “Was it them magas at church that asked you about this?” 

               “Please don’t call them that,” he said. 

               “Oh I’m sorry, is that a BAD word now?” 

               “No, but it’s certainly a bad word.”

               “Was it them at church that asked you, though?”

               “Yes. It’s their relatives.”

               I had to wonder then if that was the only reason they went to the service.  

               “Where would they stay?”

                He smiled sheepishly. “See, that’s the second favour.” 

               “Stay here?” I said. “Sure I’m selling this place! It could be gone any day.” 

               “The manse is too small as it is. With two kids and the wife we barely have enough personal space. I converted one of the closets into an office so I could write my sermons in silence.” 

               “I saw it. It is a bit cramped.”

               “A bit cramped? I have to crawl in over the desk to get to the other side of the room. There’s no way I can take more people. I don’t trust anyone else enough to ask them to do this. But…well, you’re alone now, and your place is close to town, but private enough that no one will know.” 

               “I haves the kids over all the time lately.” 

               “It would just be for a few weeks until we gets things straightened away.”

               “Why don’t they go to the places where those Americans are staying?” 

               “They’re all in town, renting small apartments. It would be too obvious. Too dangerous. Not until they get things straightened away. Maybe you could take your house off the market for a few weeks? A hundred thousand is a lot of money.” 

               “I’d like to help you, but I don’t have the nerve.”

               “So is that a yes?”

               “It is —what? No, that’s a no.”

               “It would be Sunday night. And we would have to leave at around midnight.”

               “But I didn’t say yes, Reverend. I said no.” 

               “So you won't do it?” 

               “I’m too old to be going to jail.”  

                “One hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money.” 

               “It is, but the answer is still no. I just don’t have the nerve for that kind of stuff. I’m getting cramps now just thinking about it.” 

               “And you won’t even let them stay at your place either?” 

               “I imagine that’s not much better in the eyes of the law.” 

               “It’s not smuggling. You just have to pretend that you didn’t know.” 

               “I’m sorry, Reverend, I can’t take a chance on something like that. And I think that it is considered smuggling ain’t it?” 

               “Do you know anyone who would?” 

               “For a hundred thousand I dare say Melvin would,” I said for a joke, “He’s foolish enough to do anything.”

               “Bingo!” 

               “He don’t live in Newfoundland now,” I said, but I knew if he found out about it, he would fly home in a heartbeat. I wished I had not said his name. I was nervous and not thinking clearly. And I didn’t think the Reverend would jump on it like that. 

                “I bet he would fly home though,” he said, almost like he was talking to himself more than me now. 

               “Look, Melvin is foolish enough to do anything. He’s my son and I’d give him my heart if he needed it. But he haven’t got a clue. He never did. He turns after my brother Scott. He even looks like him.”  

                “It’s for a really good cause though.”

               “He wouldn’t care about the cause. All he would care about is the money.”

               “‘But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine…’”

“Well someone needs to tell God that this instrument is missing a few strings.” 

“This isn’t the mainland, Gilbert. The chances of getting caught are one in a million.” 

               “Didn’t half a dozen coyotes already get caught in Newfoundland this year?”

               “Yeah. But those people were trying to smuggle people across the gulf from the mainland. That’s just dumb.” 

               “What’s the difference?”

               “We’d be getting them off a boat.” 

               “I knows that, but…anyway, please don’t ask Melvin. I’m asking you as a friend. Please don’t ask him. Because I knows he’ll say yes.”

               “But that’s the very reason I have to ask him. You’re not going to do it. He’s my only hope. Look, I know that Melvin is a free spirit, but I’m sure he’s matured. I’m sure he knows to be careful.” 

               “Judas, Tom!” I heard myself shouting, “I’m telling you not to ask him!” My voice came out louder than I intended. To tell the truth, I think it might be the first time I ever raised my voice at anyone outside of my family in anger. But it worked. Reverend Tom was even more surprised at my yelling than I was. It wasn’t long after that he left.

               So I decided to look up what the actual law was on smuggling refugees into Canada. The problem was that I couldn’t do it directly without risk of Big G noticing. I had to search for something related and hopefully find it in the same area. So I looked through the local news about Coyotes caught around Canada. There was a story at least once a week about smugglers getting caught. I read article after article, but I had to keep it from being obvious by reading all the other articles for those days too. I was about to give up when I finally found the law stated in an article about a Coyote who was caught in a smuggling ring in Vancouver. He had been bringing in old Hollywood celebrities from Los Angeles for years. Stars back in my day, like Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margo Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and plenty more. It said that the “A-list internet stars” had long gotten out of the country when they realized what was going down, but I guess those poor Hollywood actors had stuck around a little too long. It was said that Matt Damon had an underground bunker where he was growing bananas out of his own shit. But this didn’t work out because the genetically modified bananas he was growing caused severe constipation (I know because I used to deliberately eat bananas to help with my issues) I was a big fan of his pal, Ben Affleck. It was hard to watch the video with him in handcuffs, being handed back to the American authorities. When they handed him across the border he shouted, “You can’t do this to me you fuckin assholes. I was in Pearl Harba. Pearl Harba!” 

He was right as far as I was concerned. I loved Pearl Harba. The best war movie I saw. 

Anyway, my point was the law about smuggling refugees. Here’s what it said:     

“Recent treaties between Canada and the United States declare that any illegal immigrant caught on the Canadian side of the border must be deported back into the United States immediately. Any trafficking that involves violence or death can include a life sentence, but the minimum sentence for human trafficking is five years. If there is material or financial gain, this is also considered in sentencing. Severe monetary fines can also be incurred.”

               Melvin called me the next day. 

               “What are you at?” 

               “Nothing.” 

               “You sell the house yet?” 

               “Not yet.” 

               “Told you she was full—"

               “If you says ‘full of shit’ again I’m going to hang up the phone.” 

               “What are you going to hang the phone on?” 

               “What?” 

               “Nothing. Can you pick me up at the airport tomorrow?”

               Obviously then I knew that the Reverend had lied to me. I guess my shouting had not bothered him so much after all. Or maybe our friendship didn’t mean as much as he said it did. 

               “Awful quick notice,” I said. 

               “I want a lend of your boat too.” 

               “What for?” 

               “No reason. Just wants to dart out for a joy ride sometime probably. Haven’t been on the water now in over a year. Haven’t seen Park in a while either.” 

               “I knows what you’re up to Melvin. And I’m not giving you the boat.”

               “What are you talking about?” 

               “You knows darn well what I’m talking about. You’re not going at it.” 

               “No? You’ll see what I’m going at.” 

               “I will see.” 

               “Yeah, you will.”

               “I know you will.” 

               “That’s what I said.”

               “You’re as nervous as a goddamn cat, that’s your problem. Frightened to death you’d be implicated and have to go to the whale’s tail.” 

               “What?” 

               “I said you’re afraid you’d end up in the whale’s tail.” 

               “What in the name of God is the whale’s tail?” 

               “Don’t tell me you don’t know new cockney.” 

               “Who’s that?” 

               “No, Dad. New cockney. 

               “I don’t have a sweet clue what you’re talking about.” 

               Then he went on to explain how now that Big G is listening to everything we say, if we were going to talk about something “private” we should use new cockney. It’s where you substitute a word that you don’t want AI to pick up on with another word that rhymes with it. I felt like a fool talking like it, but if it meant not going to jail then I would do whatever it takes. I had to wonder sometimes if he was being paranoid, and I also had to wonder what he was doing that he would ever know about this in the first place. Boy my son was a hard case. Where did I go wrong? 

               “Don’t you think if you’re telling me about new cockney over the phone that it will give it away anyway?” I asked. 

               “It’s not a person listening, Dad. The AI just picks up on words. So if we don’t use those words we won’t draw attention. It’s listening to millions of conversations at once.” 

               To this day I don’t know if it helped any, but I went along with it anyway. 

               “You’re not going at that in my…float?” Not because I wouldn’t give her to you, but because I don’t want to see you go to the…blue whale. This is foolish. I can’t do this.”  

               “If you don’t I’m hanging up,” he said. “So why would I go to the blue whale? I only want the…moat for a high tide.” 

               “float.” 

               “Whatever.”

               “High tide?” I said. I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be new-cockney or the truth.  

               “Joy ride goddamn it.”

               “You know what? I’m not going to pick you up from the airport. Neither is my car.”  

“I dare say I can get someone else’s car to pick me up from the airport. It doesn’t have to be yours.” 

               Then he said, “You know what them…Jezus…them…shakers, is going through?” 

               “Shakers? I’m not getting that one.” 

               “Magas, Dad.” 

               “Sure that don’t rhyme with Magas.” 

               “It’s close enough. Stop saying it!” 

               “Since when did you care about shakers? Last time I was talking to you it was all about how they was taking our slobs.” 

               “They are, but that don’t mean we shouldn’t help them.” 

               “Oh give it up my son, I knows you’re only it for the…for the honey. Do you realize that if you gets caught and they knows you were getting laid that they’ll put you in the blue whale even longer?” 

               “Sure the ornament is letting people in left, right and center. I can’t see why I’d go to the blue whale.”

               “Snuggling is illegal, Melvin! It’s a big deal. The ornament is not fooling around with this stuff.” 

               “Go on, they just say that Dad, so the American ornament won't get mad. Everyone knows they’re letting thousands come across the hoarder.” 

               “Coy…Chloe on the Northern Peninsula have already went to the blue whale! It’s no joke buddy. You’ll do lime if they catches you, especially considering the honey you’ll make.” 

               “Chloe?” 

               “Zoe. Human smugglers. Judas! Coyotes! I’m talking about coyotes.”  

“Coyotes,” he said, “what a dumb name.”

               “Coyotes is supposed to be as keen as a fox.” 

               “Well why didn’t they call them foxes?” 

               “I don’t know, I guess coyotes are…whatever, anyway, I’m not picking you up at the airport, and I’m not giving you the boat…coat….I can’t do this cockeye stuff. It’s stupid.” 

               I picked him up at the airport at seven o’clock in the morning. When he was landing in St. John’s he sent me a text: 

      Yat

     Just got out of bed

     Needs you to pick me up. Be landing in half hour

     Told you I wasn’t going to do that

     I got no ride. You can’t leave me here Taxi cost me a fortune

     Big deal with all the money youre gonna make

     Don’t know what you’re talking about 

I shouldn’t have said anything about money. 

      Rent a car

     None left

That was a lie.

      I’m going to strangle you one of these days

     I’m at terminal B

     You got a long wait

     I’ll take a nap

     You better have gas money

Gas for what?

You know what I mean 

That’s the thing with Melvin that I always envied. He could sleep anywhere at any time. Whereas I never got no more than six hours sleep in my life. I kept telling him to get tested for sleep apnea, but he never did. He was overweight and his snoring was like something you never heard in your life. The closest I can come to a comparison is when the last bit of water is draining down a sink. You know, that wet, sucking sound? But unlike the sink, the sound he makes lasts for hours. My brother Scott? Same thing. 

The whole drive out I kept telling myself that I was going to turn around, but I never did. All I did was brood over Reverend Tom lying to me. He promised me that he wouldn’t get my son involved, and then went right behind my back and did the opposite. Boys oh boys did I ever give him a piece of my mind. Not in person, but in my mind. I kept thinking up better and better ways to tell him off when I saw him again. I was doing it out loud too, even pointing my finger at him in the passenger seat, like he was really sitting there. I was so involved in my rant that I almost ran into a car when I pulled into Irving for charging. 

When I got to the airport, I tried to call Melvin, but he didn’t answer. He was asleep of course. So now I had to park the damn car and go inside. Which meant I had to pay some ungodly price per minute while I went in and looked for him. And, it was just as I was entering the doors and saw Terminal B over my head, that I remembered he was in Terminal A. Judas! 

Needless to say, when I got to the right airport I was in a sour mood. Still no answer. Still had to go inside. He wasn’t anywhere near Baggage Pickup so I made my way up through the airport listening for a sucking sink. And then I heard it, about a thousand feet ahead of me, echoing off one of the giant windows that lined the front of the airport next to the Arrival pickup area. There was no one around him of course. Who in the name of God would want to sit next to that? 

I crept up to him, sat in the seat that joined behind him, leaned down in his ear, and shouted, “Border Patrol!” 

He jumped off the seat and piled on top of his luggage that was in front of his legs. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Dad?” he said. “Give me a goddamn heart attack why don’t you!” 

“You deserves that,” I said and headed back to the car. He followed behind me, still cursing and rubbing his eyes. 

“I’m driving,” he said when we got to the car. That saltwater air must have woken him up. 

“Why is you driving?” I said. 

“It’ll wake me up. And you can’t drive to save your life.” 

“Our insurance companies might have a different opinion on that,” I said, grinning. 

“All that was when I was young and reckless,” he said. “I haven’t had an accident in…a while.”

Truth be told, I was hoping he wanted to drive. I hated driving around the city. I know I could have let the car do it, but he would never stop poking fun at me. It took me long enough to get used to traffic lights when they first came to our little town, and then they changed every big intersection in St. John’s to those darn roundabouts. People can’t ever be happy with anything. Melvin said the reason they called them roundabouts was because every bayman from my generation only roundabout knew how to use them. 

We had to stop for a charge first, and when he filled her up he came to the door for money. 

“Money?” I said. “You got to pay for the charge, if you wants to get in out of this today. You’re lucky I even came out here.” 

He grunted and closed the door. 

“You must think I’m made of money,” he said when he got back in the car. It’s hard to believe anyone could be that selfish. But it wasn’t my fault. Truth be told, every time I ever tried to lay down the law when he was growing up, Amy would hold in with him. After a while I just gave up. 

“So have Reverend Tom got it all figured out or what?” I said, after a good half hour of silence. 

“Got what figured out?” 

“Is you seriously going to keep this up?” I said. “You already pretty much admitted it.” 

“If I was going to do what you’re thinking —which I’m not, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to talk about it here.” 

“Sure we already was,” I said, talking about our new-cockey conversation on the phone. 

“And that was too much.” He slammed on the brakes, driving me into the dashboard, swerved the car to the right into a gravel pit that we just came upon, and jumped out of the car. I sat there in shock, staring at him through the windshield like he had just gone off his palm. He stared back at me, and held his two arms out like, “Well?” 

I got out of the car, we walked a couple hundred feet away, and he started into me. 

“What makes you think you got the goddamn right to tell me, a grown-ass man, what I can or can’t do?” 

“Listen. Calm down. You got to think about the consequences. Did you really think about what would happen if you got caught? How would you pay your mortgage? How would you pay your bills? You got that big ol’ gas engine car and them toys. How would you pay for that if you was in jail? You’d lose all of it.” 

“The chances of me getting caught are one in a million, Dad. Just because you haven’t got the nerve, don’t take it out on me. Sometimes you got to take risks in life if you wants to be successful. This is a risk I’m willing to take.” 

“With my boat. And what do you mean, ‘successful?’ You’d be a coyote for heaven’s sake.” 

“Well goddamn it I’ll rent a boat if that’s what I got to do.” 

I sat on a big rock and sighed. “You’ve had a lot of close calls, but this one is the one that’s going to get you. I can feel it in my bones. What can I do to keep you from going ahead with it?” 

“Nothing. I made up my mind. And it’s for a good cause anyway, regardless if you thinks I’m just doing it for the money.” 

“Maybe I’ll do it after all.” 

“No you will not. I never flew across this country for nothing. Those plane tickets cost me a fortune.” 

“Do your girlfriend know what you’re up to?”

“Yes.”

“You’re telling me the truth now. If I called her and asked her she would know exactly what you’re doing here.” 

“Don’t you dare do that. Big G is listening, new-cockney or not.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that.” 

“You don’t believe in Big G?”

“I’m not half-cracked. Of course I believe in Big G. Why do you think I’m talking to you here and not in the car? So to get back to the original question, before you piled me into the dashboard, what is the Reverend’s plan?” 

Melvin sighed and looked up at the sky. “He’s going to tell me tonight.” 

“That last time I talked to him he didn’t seem to have much worked out.” 

“Well he does now.” 

“I hope so. There’s more than one danger in this. There’s the water too. It might be a bad night. What are you going to do if it’s blowing a storm? Could be the biggest kind of swell on, let alone the waves. You’re only going to get one shot.” 

“I won't go out if it’s a bad night. That’s a chance they got to take. If they’re on the boat but I’m not there, well, that’s not my fault. I’m not going to get myself drowned over some money.” 

“How are you going to get the money?” 

“Twenty-five percent before, and the rest after. I already got the first part, so I got no other choice but to go ahead.” 

“You already got the first part?” I said, and my voice choked, because I knew now there was no turning back. “You could give it back,” I said, trying to control my emotions.  

“I already got—” 

“half of it spent,” I finished. I put my head in my hands. I should have known. 

“I got bills like everyone else you know.” 

“Oh, you don’t need to tell me that you got bills. What are you going to do with the rest of the money?” 

“Maybe you’re not the only one who wants to live forever,” he said. “Did you ever think about that? I need to save money too if I want to live to be a thousand. You’re selling off the house that I thought I would live in someday, so I got to get money somewhere.” 

I laughed. “Yeah, like you’ll have a cent of any of that money a year from now.”

“Sure what have you got, besides that house? That you inherited.” 

“I might have more than you thinks. I might have been a janitor all my life, but I knows how to save a dollar. Unlike you.” 

“Like how much?” he said.

“Never you mind how much.” 

“Sure Mom was making more money than you at the fish plant.” 

“And the poor thing never got a chance to spend what she saved up.”

We were silent for a few minutes, and finally, he said, “Do you miss her?” 

“What kind of a question is that? I thinks about her every day. Do you?”

“I dreamt I was talking to her on the phone last week. If I was home I think I’d find it harder. Being up in Ontario it’s almost like she’s still alive, but I just haven’t seen her in a while.” 

“What do you think she’d say if she knew you was doing this?” I said. 

He smiled. “First I’d tell her how much money it was. Then I’d tell her that you wouldn’t let me have the boat.”

I shook my head and smiled. That would have worked.