Still Young

Bannon called from the water. I was just about to go meet Eileen. She’s been big with my son’s baby boy and I was finally going to see him. Then Bannon calls. Said Hutch Danson’s rig was spotted stuck up on Brimbles. Prop spinning and all. Said he was on his way out with the Sea-Tow. Hearing that just snuck the air right out of me. But these things happen from time to time. Hutchie. Highliner Hutchie. Always working on a Sunday. I taught that boy better, but so help me if he’s a little like my son. I check the time. I can’t call just yet. My son’s still home, so that dear woman of his will just have to wait and worry. Thank God though, because the one decent thing my son did was marry a woman who understands.

It’s a weather breeder, through and through. Billowed up blue with a hole of light. I walk these bluebirders, but Hutchie’s boat is up on Brimbles, so I take the pick-up. I park in Fauws’ boatyard. He’s got two lifted for a scrub but I don’t see him around. Only Sams is down in the launch booth and he doesn’t see me for the busy of his phone. I slap the doorframe, hear it strike hard. Sams jolts, saying, “Christ.”

“Mind stawtin’ up the launch?” I ask and the kid straightens.

“Jesus. Thought you were Fauws. Him and his damn pranks.” I watch the kid fumble around for the launch keys. The booth is a mess and he finds them in his pocket. He tries to chew up the quiet: “No rowin’ today?”

“I don’t work Sundays,” I say. The kid gives me a look but I don’t answer it. I just go down the gangway. I sit in the launch while he works the loops off the cleats. It feels a sin looking at this bluebird day and I wonder what in Hell Hutchie did wrong. I remember too many times, telling that boy: A place for everything and everything in its place. Keep it like that. Just as father did, told it.

Sams flops the stern and bow lines in and hops up to the steering perch. The gunnels quiver with engine start, settle into a buzz that I feel all over. Sams pulls the steering lever back and forth, throttling each way with it to ease us off the float.

All around us, this water pulls brightness from the sky. Later it will shed, I know. But on a bluebirder like this, she can’t help but nick it for looks.

Abaft, I watch the wake and remember why I’m going out. I listen to the soft splicket of the water-ruffle as it sweeps away, sinking. Again, I know for sure she’s a woman. Only a woman can smile like this and fiddle something bad at the small of her back.

Sams plows the launch between moorings and their tall glitzy keeps. Freeboards like mirrors. Their halyards edge out and slap back. I think how nuts people are to spend that kind of money. Just so they can feel wind and think they know the old torrent they cut around on. There’s a lifetime to spend learning her ways. Hutchie knew it too. But these thoughts are old habit.

A slip of wind cups around me, pushes the limp club flag on the back of Fauws’ launch. I look north with its wag and point and wonder what Hutchie might know about her now.

Between mooring warp I see my Tarrantine with the scuffed up metal plate below the davit arm. Dirty old mouth to my life and ways. Rust streaks stretch down in a few long plumes from the gunnel line. I’ll pull for a week between seasons while I rerig for trawling. Repaint for woodworms, check the skeg and clear up those streaks. But looking at her now, I have to say, there’s something about that rust and scuff around all these shiny hulls that I like.

Sams pulls up so the fenders squeeze to port with the metal plate. I climb up but Sams keeps hold of the davit arm.

“Want me to wait?”

“Hutch Danson’s rig was spotted wrecked up on the back of Brimblecomb. I won’t be back for a while.”

The kid’s poor face drops. I just nod and wave him off. He stumbles to start and I crouch down, pull up a hatch, listen as Sams’ throttle grows and thins. Down between the holding tanks I can see the bilge and I kneel to glance at the big Caterpillar engine. It’s strange to be on Tarrantine without the work ahead, but there’s routine built up for a reason and I follow. I remember telling Hutchie that as I’m quick with my check: wiggling the belts, wiping and sheathing and pulling the dipstick, eyeing the coolant, the wet exhaust strainer, the fuel. I get up, go into the pilothouse.

I start my darling and hear the Caterpillar cough dry guts and then settle wet and happy.

I pull myself up around the pilothouse for the mooring lines thinking of the time I heard Hildreth’s engine skipping clicks. He was pulling out of Harwichport. Engine quit seven miles out. Saved his damn life. The Guard towed him in before the weather got bad and Hutchie and I saw the worst of it. Hutch stuck it out with me though, watching from valleys of that sea, the bow rising again and again for a sky of water. Whether God was hearing my prayers or that bitch and mother of a sea, I don’t know.

The mooring lines are gummed up with sea-snot. I toss them off. They clap the water, settle and slip under. No punt to loop lines with today.

I take the wheel, throttle up. My rig gurgles rev and I point her a line through and out the harbor. It’s a fine day and I almost wish I were working, but there would have been Eileen and my son’s new baby boy. But, it’s for Hutchie I’m out here.

On each side, the close land falls away and then it’s just the coast to starboard and craggy islands to poke up and break the horizon. The white sharps of day-sailors scatter around, tilting. I set the pilot and flip on the VHF. A static puff comes out and then the drone voice of the weather report. High pressure south-east. I know Bannon’s probably on 22 with the Guard and the Guard probably has a recording doing loops on 16. I reach up to switch it. But I figure: I’ll find out either way, soon enough. I turn the volume low, sit back. The pilot lights blink green and red. The wheel tilts with each flash, keeps me on course.

Seagull squawk grows close but fades. My rig just doesn’t stink like usual.

I try to keep my mind stale but the hope eats at me because it happened to me and I know I told Hutchie—taught him so he’d never swallow anchor like that. Lord, it tripped me up fast—that damned line. And if it’d happened any different I’d have been underwater before I’d figured out what had happened. What it took father to turn and see his boy scrabble and scream like I was, and turn back with his hand steady on the wheel, I’ll never know.

It was way back when all we had was a one-lunger. I was young, trying as I was, but there were things I hadn’t learned yet, so I was all slop. The traps were wooden and we sunk them with extra bricks till they got logged up and heavy. I had this one baited, slid it on the runners and tossed it while father kept us steady to gaff the next. But the line wasn’t right. It jumped up and took me by the ankle and pulled me back into the transom. I was just a boy, holding on to keep from going over, screaming, but father didn’t kill the throttle and he didn’t help me either.

The second time he turned around he said, “I gave you a knife b’foah I evah let you on heah and it was fah a reason. Now if you don’t have it, youah gonna stay righ’ theah till we git home or you go ovah.”

I stopped my squabble. I had a good hold and my other hand was free. I reached down for what I hoped was still in my pocket, feeling more and more my foot bloat from the squeeze.

“Bristol Fashion, son,” I heard him say as Manila fray grew from my knife, “Bristol Fashion.”

A couple years later when I asked father why he didn’t just pull the line and save the pot, he shook his head like I was right back up against that transom. He looked back into his newspaper, said, “S’worth more than a pot ta have a son git a little less stupid than he was day b’foah.” But I was still young when I asked that too.

Tillie’s island swells as it nears coming abeam. I can see black packs of mussels clitched up on the float pilings, the colors darkening in rings till the sea licks them with shine. Only one old salt still lives on that rock and I see him row up to Fauws’ every now and again to get groceries. That man is past seventy and my son has gotten fat at a desk. Eileen told me that. I tried to tell him that no matter what, there will always be fish in the sea. Can eat, feed a family, and get capital. He just didn’t take to it. That boy. Getting fat and lazy away from the ways of his father. And then Hutchie came along. But I feel lousy thinking this way.

Tillie’s is aft and all that is before me curves two kinds of blue. The sky pales at the seam and the feel of air tells me heat will smear it soon. Ahead, Brimblecomb is just a dot and I pretend I can see Bannon’s rig and the Sea-Tow. I will have to watch them get bigger as I go and I find myself wishing I never get there.

It’s the going out that’s best. When the day is cracking new, and there is a hunger for what’s under the ripply skin. Just the breath swell of sea and the Caterpillar chug and maybe a good deckhand if you’re lucky. With a little galley fry of fish still kicking—even when she’s cold, crabby, and throwing up every kind of chop she’s got, she’ll still give from that deep and green wombelly of hers.

I make the yellow hull of the Sea-Tow pulling away and Bannon’s dull steel. The Sea-Tow’s got nothing behind it.

“Hutchie,” I say, “you bettah be drunk an’ droolin’ in that pilothouse, I swahr ta lawd in Heaven.”

But the thing I’ve pictured many times before catches me again: the struggle against a line caught round the ankle, pulling down into this deep drink.

“Be drunk an’ droolin’ ’cause yeh Muthah trusted me teachin’ you when theah was no one else ta do it.”

The Sea-Tow passes me empty and I keep from thinking it’s a good sign.

Brimblecomb’s top is whited with seagull shit. They move in a column of circles, howling for their nests below. I wheel out round and come up along Bannon’s rig. We nod and look up at the white transom. It sticks out from the rock, above the water, the hard chines meeting sharp aft corners and Jack Watt’s brushstroke spelling out in last season’s paint: RAGPICKER.

I flip to Bannon’s station, unclip the mic, click it and say, “Well?”

I see Bannon lean forward and take his mic. The static puff cuts.

“I’m sorry ol’friend, but he ain’t in theah. Wen’on boahd while the Sea-Tow was heah. Engine burnt out. Wedged in jus’ right though, so looks like she’ll hold when the tide comes up again. Tow’ll be back out this aftahnoon.” He unclicks, clicks again, “tried ta hail yeh.”

My eyes trace transom letters. I turn to look at Bannon and then back out at the open sea. My old friend doesn’t look at me and I’m grateful. It’s still between tides though. Hutchie could be treading water. Bannon’s voice pops in the static.

“Told the Coasties just what ya told me.”

Salts don’t share their grounds or tell their catches. But I taught that boy.

“Stellwagen’s Swell and Middle Ridge,” he says. I click again, “D’ja check the tanks?”

“Some in one, but not much. Fackahs already stink with nothin’ fah the seacock ta get at.”

I smell it, seeing the horizon blur with heat haze. The sea’s places are named for what’s under, and I know the lay of water for what rock or mud or craggy canyon holds it up. There are wrecks too, rotting into every part of the sea bowl and sometimes we name for them. But this one before me is wedged in above.

Static puff cuts again.

“He have someone?”

I click again, “was livin’ with a gurl, but she took off couplah weeks ’go.”

“Well,” Bannon says.

I click back, “I know his pots. It’ll be a good five houas b’foah I’m out, so I’ll stawt off now.”

“Coasties awh out theah already. And if he’s theah, thea’ll find ’im,” Bannon says, but I doubt it.

“Aight.”

“Keep in touch, I’ll be on all day.”

I nod at Bannon and hook the mic back on the VHF. I hear him faint, flipping stations and hailing the Guard, but Tarrantine’s rev deepens as I throttle the stern back. Sea lilt catches the sun. It speckles before the smudge of sea smoke and I study the water. But, there’s nothing to see. “No,” I say to myself, “this rig shot long and steady on ’er own.”

I set the pilot only to go below for my extra pair of oil skins. Maybe a dragger picked him up. But we would have heard on the VHF. Draggers and dogfish. Probably one or the other by now. I take the pilot off and keep my eye on the water. It ripples echo from all this land behind me.

Still, he could have cut loose and shot up from that awful drink, back up to this bluebirder. But I see myself hauling pots, gaffing colors strange to my Tarrantine.

Now, sighting a trap from that waver of dark will always make a salt grin. Though, today, it makes me crimmy thinking about it and I feel cold in June for what I might haul up. Highliner Hutchie. I thought I taught you better. But I’ll find out soon enough.

Eileen’s probably done waiting by now, back home along with that baby boy. Maybe she thinks I’ve taken up my old wet habit. I can hear the phone ringing to no one at home. I think about that baby boy and wonder if he’ll have any call to my ways: hauling traps, baiting, cartwheeling ganglings and slatting off fish—the gold and gift of the only woman that kept me. There’s Hutchie though, and all that is just so far off. I’ll probably be ragpicking soon anyway.

I keep the VHF on Bannon’s line. The Caterpillar chugs and I squint to know the water, listening to the swash curl and spread from the bow of my Tarrantine.