Chapter 7
Spanish Garlands

William flicked a lad's head. "Stay clear of those lassy barrels," he warned them. He knew they sneaked down to the docks where puncheons from Barbados were. They waited until dark. The night-watchman was old and deaf. Small kids licked the corks. But older ones took the corks out. They tipped the barrels to catch the molasses in their mouths.

Molasses barrels, salt fish barrels, cod oil and seal oil barrels. Casks of pickled herring, and drums of pickled Labrador salmon. Barrels coming and barrels going out on schooners to Portugal, Spain, Brazil and the West Indies.

William liked to think of his barrels in those sunny lands. Schooner captains said there was a Newfoundland barrel in the middle of every fish shop in Spain. Customers wanted to see that. It proved the fish came from Newfoundland.

William liked to picture one of his own barrels in one of those Spanish shops. Sun-cured, golden Newfoundland cod all around it. Bright red hot peppers hanging in garlands from the ceiling.

He loved the colours and smells of his own port city. As he walked to Job's Bridge he saw barrels lining both sides of the harbour. Many summers he had dived off a south side dock and swum with a few girls to Fort Amherst light.

The girls wore wool swim suits that got heavy in the water. You could smell lanolin in the wool, mixed with the salt fish smell in the harbour. The fish lay in salt bulk for twenty-one days in June. In July you'd smell them, laid out in a cloak over the harbour. Then it would be steady go. The last of the fish would not go to Brazil until late February.