Life at Sea: Landlocked

By Barry Pomeroy

After washing up on the Winnipeg shore, the arid Midwestern soil kept Sam running in place. His old life behind him, he cleaned his apartment for coins as his girlfriend took away her rent-paying job. After she slammed the door, only his cousin’s offer of work kept him from his parents’ basement.
Hired without qualifications, and surrounded by suspicious and silent colleagues, Sam frantically fished through his desk and paperwork, trying to lift anything into the light which would explain where he was.
When Amy showed up at his door, his initial reluctance to take on crew softens. The mainsail could use an extra hand, and he could sail through the night. Before long he is working on parenting and keeping his head low for the storm that is sure to drive him onto the rocks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Pomeroy
• Release date: Jan 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781987922912

Barry Pomeroy

Barry Pomeroy is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, academic, essayist, travel writer, and editor. He is primarily interested in science fiction, speculative science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, although he has also written travelogues, poetry, book-length academic treatments, and more literary novels. His other interests range from astrophysics to materials science, from child-rearing to construction, from cognitive therapy to paleoanthropology.

Book preview

Life at Sea: Landlocked

by

Barry Pomeroy

The three books of the Life at Sea Series is the story of a series of gales which tear at the edges of Sam’s life. A teenager falling in love in Storms on the Atlantic he does not suspect that a squall is blowing up while he is distracted, and in Landlocked his opportunity to be a father and a career man is a storm sail put up too late to keep the bow turned into the wind. When he retires on the west coast in On the Pacific, he finally learns to relinquish control over the currents and the wind.

After washing up on the Winnipeg shore, the arid Midwestern soil kept Sam running in place. His old life behind him, he cleaned his apartment for coins as his girlfriend took away her rent-paying job. After she slammed the door, only his cousin’s offer of work kept him from his parents’ basement.

Hired without qualifications, and surrounded by suspicious and silent colleagues, Sam frantically fished through his desk and paperwork, trying to lift anything into the light which would explain where he was.

When Amy showed up at his door, his initial reluctance to take on crew softens. The mainsail could use an extra hand, and he could sail through the night. Before long he is working on parenting and keeping his head low for the storm that is sure to drive him onto the rocks.

© 2020 by Barry Pomeroy

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, although people generally do what they please.

For more information about my books, go to barrypomeroy.com

ISBN 13: 978-1987922912

ISBN 10: 1987922913

Table of Contents

Chapter One ~ Leaving Shore

Chapter Two ~ Guts

Chapter Three ~ A Suitable Car

Chapter Four ~ The Working Life

Chapter Five ~ Meeting Amy

Chapter Six ~ Then You Disappeared

Chapter Seven ~ Amy’s Care

Chapter Eight ~ Meeting Mother

Chapter Nine ~ Losing Amy

Chapter Ten ~ Agriculture and Business

Chapter Eleven ~ Hidden in Plain Sight

Chapter Twelve ~ A Ticket Getting Out of Here

Chapter One ~ Leaving Shore

His youth was a doctor’s note found in a jumbled drawer, it was a jackknife that was worn from being carried in a pocket, and checkmarks and lists he’d drawn in the margins of his favourite books. He felt like his teenage years were a flipped-over slab of concrete, and his scattered thoughts were crabs scrambling for another rock. He’d turned to TV more than once, but the tiny posturing inside the plastic frame was too far away to be relevant.

In his final years of high school he followed the herd. They promised, by their rush for the door, that he would be able to make a living from computer programming. Betrayed by their enticements, he began to set his clock twenty minutes earlier and to skip breakfast entirely. He imagined being covered in silicon in the valley, and the toys he would buy with the cash that would soon be his.

University proved to be quite different than he’d imagined, so he was shortly cast adrift. He’d spent his time in his room reading books from the library, and attended few enough classes that one of his friends said he deserved an award. He derided the professors from the back of the room, keeping his voice carefully low so what he said wouldn’t tangle with his grades, and on the night of an exam he held a party at his house. Although strangers came, enticed by the rumour of free liquor, he told them he’d be back in an hour and he biked to university to attempt his exam. Once he had pawed through questions far over his head, he went home to find two of his friends passed out on the couch and the rest in a stupor talking about Hans-Georg Gadamer and the flexibility of a pelican’s beak.

Once the rent came due and he couldn’t pay, he slammed the hollow door of his apartment for the last time, and hefted the pack which was meant to carry him into his new life.

You’ll end up homeless, his parents told him, their voices quavering as much from worry as uncertainty, but they didn’t know he had a plan.

Even though he imagined himself aboard one vessel or another when he thought about his sailor future, his frequent daydreams put him amongst the islands. Like Crusoe on his lonely isle, he thought about how he might fare if he were suddenly to become a castaway. He’d watched enough television to know that people in groups fought with one another, and he’d seen that food gathering and hunting was difficult enough that the shows’ organizers had to provide meals, but he would have different challenges.

Soon after he’d moved in with his girlfriend Karen he told her he’d be fine if he were adrift at sea, but she ridiculed the information he’d taken from a book about a man who’d spent a month on a life raft.

The real world is different, she said. You’d be in withdrawal immediately. The lack of Wi-Fi if nothing else.

He was looking for work at the time, so the conversation was shortly diverted into resumes and interviews, but her disdain still stung. He imagined what his childhood friend Paul would say, but he wasn’t even sure what Paul was doing now that they’d grown up. He went back through the life-raft book, addressing her concerns by refreshing his skills, and before long he stopped at the fish counter when they went to the grocery store. He relished the look on her face when he asked the butcher for a fish eye.

The man stood for a moment, his white coat as heavy on him as bloody streaks, and then he asked, What do you need a fish eye for?

Sam put his hands in his pockets. I read a book about this guy who was on a life raft and ate fish eyes for the moisture. So I was wondering—the man’s look was disconcerting—whether I could do that. If I was in a survival situation, I mean.

The man looked at Karen for her approval, and turned to the ice-filled trays. There are a few whole fish here. On ice. OK for you?

At his nod, the man ducked behind the counter, pulled out some thin-looking pointy-mouthed fish, and then with a flick of his knife, separated the eye from the socket. He put it on butcher’s paper, and then stood to watch as Sam rolled it around with his finger. Karen had nearly stalked away, but she also wanted to see him fail, or puke, so she grinned as he put it in his mouth. He readied his water bottle for the emergency, and then popped it with his teeth.

The sensation was indescribably horrible. The juice from the eyeball hit the inside of his mouth and a terrible fishy liquid coated his tongue. He tried to keep his face under control as his gorge rose. He swallowed quickly and then belted a few swallows of water.

The butcher had turned back to his business as soon as the water bottle came up, but Karen laughed that he’d been foolish enough to try. You’d never survive, she crowed, and claimed that he’d not really tasted it. Sam knew he’d won, however. He proved, at least in some small way, that he could do anything in an emergency.

After that he began to plan his eventual recruitment for survival shows, and he taught himself to build a fire from a flint and steel he bought online. He took any opportunity to pull out his fire-starting kit. If they were walking in the park with their friends, he would recommend they start a fire to keep warm—even on a hot evening—or cook, although they didn’t have a pan. He practiced the knots he’d learned as a child—and was surprised that he had become better at tying them—and he watched videos about axe-throwing and how to make an awl from seal bones.

His life remained stable in other ways. He still looked for work, but his taste in careers had shifted. He would start his own survival school, he announced one morning and Karen rolled her eyes.

Perhaps I’ll make my own video series, he said, and she got out of bed.

That was when his cousin Herne began to push a job in a company which used microwaves to separate ore from rock. It’s a great opportunity, Herne told him. You should apply.

But you have a science background. I don’t know anything about that. His parents’ porch felt like the backdrop to a school play. Sam recognized the strategy. His parents had set him up, trying to leverage the family influence to get their son working again. Sam thought about telling them he wanted to be a castaway, since the rip in the sleeve of his new coat didn’t seem to be delivering the message, but his father was running back and forth to the kitchen for utensils and his mother was beaming that the afternoon was going so well.

That’s the beauty. You don’t need to. I don’t know anything about it. They hired me as a consultant. Said they needed a web expert or whatever.

I don’t know that either. Sam looked at his cup and his father leapt to his feet to fill it again as though he thought a good father should show a son how to be ambitious.

You’d be a natural. ‘Fit in with the spirit of the company’ is what the rich guy said. Maybe you’ll get a chance to go offshore.

What’s that? Sam watched his father’s hands shake as he held the pitcher in one hand and steadied its pour with the other. They’re getting older. I should visit more often. He thought about hospital beds and the smell of urine. Blue gowns and johnny shirts. Bedpans and catheters.

I’m going to Peru next month. You might get a chance to ship out too.

If pressed, Sam might have been able to find Peru on a map, but the word ship had swung the tiller and he was heading into port as he thought of it. Why don’t you give me a number, and I’ll call them up. Organize something. Are they interviewing? He thought about what Karen would say if he got a job in a tech company. And I don’t need a science background?

Just try, Herne said.

The interview was confusing. The four people on the panel tag-teamed their questions. He should have felt overwhelmed, especially since he hadn’t had an interview in six months of reading and watching videos, but surprisingly, their questions put him at ease.

Do you know anything about the natural metamorphic process rock undergoes? Do you have an allergy which would prevent you from working with mercury, gallium, or lead? Imagine the largest dentist drill in the world. How would you ensure it was hitting the right rock layer?

He wasn’t sure what Herne said about his experience, but he had already decided, as he hesitated in front of the slate-grey door, that he would tell them the truth.

I learned about metamorphosis in school, although it was primarily about marble. Heat and pressure. Their eyes widened at that, as though he’d struck gold right away. He’d never heard of gallium, but he figured it was some metal so he answered in the negative about allergies. I’m one of those people who loves going to the dentist, he told them. Nothing about a drill is going to bother me.

At their nods, he told them about the fine patina on aluminum that prevented it from oxidization, and how old iron could sometimes, like the pillar of Delhi, seem not to rust. He talked about the use of flux when soldering, which he’d seen a video about, and how accuracy was important when machining or fitting precision parts. To his shock, they hired him on the spot, and left him organizing the details with Herne.

That went well, he said, once they were out of earshot.

I told them you were an engineer. They were so excited.

What the hell, Herne? I can’t do any of that.

Don’t worry. You can thank me later. Right now, take your time moving in. Don’t spend any money, but I’ll set up a tour of the operation.

I thought you were going to Peru?

That’s off the table right now. Other guy just got back. Didn’t even go to Machu Picchu, if you can believe that.

A tour for tomorrow then?

The facility was impressive, or he imagined it should have been if he’d had a technical background. There were whole rooms devoted to heavy metal doors and lead sheeting, and others where hoses seemed to be the dominant theme. The workers who showed him through their workspace were distracted, and didn’t seem to be annoyed by his rather simple-minded questions like, Where is the microwave oven?

He’d been told they had a giant microwave, but all he saw were shiny valves and locked doors, and at one end of the small building, a few offices where two men in ties were gesturing as they talked on the phone. His desk was next to an Indian man who avoided speaking English, perhaps because he was shy. He was more than friendly, however, and insisted that Sam share the spicy food he brought in re-sealable plastic containers. Two days later the man was gone, and in his place a few containers appeared, each of them so twisted from the heat that they could no longer be closed.

Sam asked, but the staff seemed more tightly wound. Even Herne, who was perennially easygoing as a child—even when Sam had sprayed him in the face during a water fight and turned his eyelids inside out—had taken to biting his pen while he talked. Herne’s eyes constantly drifted to the window closest to the parking lot.

Herne was right. No one really cared what Sam did, and before long he began to enjoy himself. He read up on the company’s stated goal, although he could see no sign of it around him, and tried to think of experiments which would prove the success of the microwave strategy. A week after he’d been hired, the office staff were scurrying and whispering, and the boss came out to make an announcement. Sam was struck by how well-dressed the man was, especially given that he’d obviously slept in his suit. The hand holding the coffee cup was steady as he spoke, however, and his hair looked like it had been pressed.

We’re closing up shop. As of today, MicroSear will no longer exist. I know—he held up his neatly manicured hands as people began to weakly protest—I should have said something earlier. But this is as much of a surprise to me as you. You’ll be paid until the end of the week, so hopefully that makes up for the suddenness of the news.

As soon as the show was over, Sam saw that nearly everyone had already packed. They knew. That’s when he realized that Herne, who hadn’t been to work in a few days, had been planning his own departure. That’s why he’d been brought in on the job. Sam would never be called upon to test his skills, but Herne had mollified his parents by giving Sam a job and when it failed it wouldn’t be blamed on him. Sam barely registered that his fellow workers were passing him carrying the cardboard boxes of their brief tenure while he thought about the flux of his own employment status. He was alone in the building by the time he thought to get his coat, and he walked through to see if the boss or anyone could set the alarm. He’d never bothered to note the number when they’d first shown him the dial pad, and he would be responsible for closing the main door unless he could find someone else.

The facility was empty, and as he looked at it with the fresh eyes of the unemployed Sam could see that it had never been a company so much as a front for attracting government funding. The hoses that festooned some of the rooms were not actually attached to anything, and similarly much of the wiring dead-ended at a junction box. The equipment’s new appearance was due to polishing and recent coats of silver paint, and in the back of the facility he found the furniture. The neatly-pressed owner was putting on a good show, but none of it was convincing when examined more closely. Even as he looked around for something he could take, Sam wondered how much money had already been drained from the public purse.

He’d given up and was on