Chapter 14
Cold Storage

Now no smoke came from Mr. O'Neill's chimney. There was no path in the snow at his door. William turned down Buchanan Street and onto Water Street. As he passed by Clift's Cove he saw a stack of long boxes outside the merchants Thistle and Company. Each box had a label on it. He looked closer.

The labels said, "FRESH COD FISH—Home orders delivered Wednesdays and Fridays from our cold storage plant."

William saw there was no one behind him. He lifted a box lid. Inside, wrapped in paper, lay a whole fish. He covered the box. Snow fell on the boxes and on him.

Cold storage. Boxes and boxes of fish. Fresh. Taken right to people's doors.

He thought, there is no need for barrel makers like me now. Coopering is on its way out for sure. He looked down the lane to the harbour. Across it he saw his own South Side Hills. He could see the merchants' docks. Bowrings. Goodfellows. Jobs.

You want cheap barrels, he thought. No barrels would be better. You merchants think too much of your money leaks out to coopers and our families. A dollar fifty a day we were paid. A dollar fifty a day leaking out of your life into ours.

He looked past the South Side docks at the seal oil factories. He might get work there once the seals came in. He'd done it before. He was pretty good at it. You had to be. One slip of your knife and the skin was no good.

Skin of old seals for book binding. Whitecoats for clothes. Oil for soap factories. The oil stank worse than cod oil. Come March and April the South Side would reek of rancid seal fat.