The Line Tender

by Kate Allen

  I knocked on Sookie and Mr. Patterson’s door.

  “It’s open,” Mr. Patterson said.

  The room was identical to ours, but I lingered to watch the old man unpack. He was the only one in our group who thought to bring an overnight bag. Mr. Patterson arranged his toiletry kit, clothes for tomorrow, and pajamas on the bed. Everything looked ironed. He sifted through a plastic bag of pill bottles, lining up cylinders on the bedside. This was my neighbor, who had sat on his porch in his undershirt for most of my life. I imagined him wearing the same pajamas for weeks, if he even cared to wear them at all. Yet he was as deliberate about setting up his motel room as a military ritual.

  “I wish I’d brought the scanner,” he said, placing a pair of slippers on the bedspread.

  “What kind of reception would you get? We’re in a freaking pine forest.”

  “Lucy, watch your mouth.” Then he got quiet. “You are in the presence of a lady,” he said, lifting a wooden box out of the suitcase. He held it flat in his palms. It looked like a fancy cover for a tissue box.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

  We locked eyes and he said, “Mrs. Patterson.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an urn.”

  “Like for ashes?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why didn’t you bury her in a coffin?”

  “She didn’t want to take up so much space.”

  “What is she doing here?” I was clearly not the only one with a plan.

  He sat down on the foot of the bed with the box on his lap. “After the funeral home gave me the urn, I walked it up to the Headlands. I climbed out on the rocks and tossed half of her into the sea. Then I got cold feet. Maybe I didn’t want to get rid of the whole thing just yet. I brought the rest home and put her on my dresser.”

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow morning we could get a boat. Go out to French’s Island,” he said in a calm voice, as though it were as simple as going to lunch. But then he looked me in the eye and his brow wrinkled. “You think your dad would go for it?”

  Would he go for it? No. But French’s Island was the spot in Maine where Mr. Patterson used to drink Moxie and sit on the beach with his wife when they were young. He probably wasn’t going to make it to Maine ever again.

  “I’ll talk to Dad,” I said.

  Sookie walked back into the room. “I’m goin’ to the front desk to get a cup of coffee. Anybody want anything?”

  “I’ll come,” I said.

  My eyes wandered around the motel lobby. There were odd things for sale in baskets on the counter. Sailors’ rope bracelets—the kind that shrink to the wrist. Embroidered sachet pillows that smelled like pine, probably handmade. And key ring flashlights. Beside the cash register was a spinning kiosk of postcards—ten for $1.00. A bargain. I realized I was already the owner of nine blank postcards featuring photos of loons and lighthouses, but I had the urge to hoard.

  “Hey, Sookie, can I borrow a buck?”

  He pulled a single out of his billfold.

  The choices were moose, loons, and lobster. I took three of each and grabbed an extra moose. Back in the room, I wrote a note to Fred and I stuffed the rest in the field guide.

  I thought about giving the note to the man at the front desk to mail, but when I tried to explain the missing stamp and address in my head, I sounded like a lunatic. So I tucked the postcard into my back pocket, in case we saw a mailbox.

  Later that night, Dad and I burrowed into our matching twin beds.

  “How’s your foot?” I asked.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I wish I had Vern Devine’s recliner.”

  “Hey, Dad?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can we rent a boat?”

  “Here?” he said. “Or at home?”

  “Here.”

  “I don’t think I’m up for boating yet,” he said. “And we need to get home.”

  “You can stay on land,” I said. “Sookie can drive.”

  “Why do you want a boat?” he asked. It was a good question, seeing that being near water was traumatic.

  “I need to do a favor for Mr. Patterson,” I said. “He needs to scatter Mrs. Patterson’s ashes on French’s Island.”

  “Wait, what?” Dad said. I heard him roll over in the dark.

  “She’s been sitting on his dresser for years. He said it’s time,” I said. “I think we should help.”

  “He brought her ashes?”

  “I know. It’s weird. But, Dad, he never asks us for anything.”

  He sighed. “Luuuucy. Where the heck is French’s Island?”

  “Somewhere in Casco Bay.”

  “It’s a big bay!” he said, raising his voice.

  “Why don’t we look at a map and then we can decide?” I said.

  “Where are we going to get a boat?” he asked.

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  26. Interconnected

  In the morning, i remembered that Vern Devine had a boat, but Sookie remembered it was a sixteen-foot Boston Whaler Eastport with a four-stroke seventy-horsepower outboard. Marion told us we could take it out, so long as we paid attention to the tides.

  Sookie and Dad read the charts and determined that French Island, or “French’s Island” as Mr. Patterson called it, was a reasonable ride for a small boat. In fact, it was eerie how close it was to Lower Flying Point, where Vern lived.

  We went out for breakfast, where I ate a bowl of oatmeal with a heap of brown sugar that melted into syrup over the hot mush. In small spoonfuls, it went down smooth with a glass of milk and it made me feel full, which had become a foreign concept. We stopped at a gas station on the way and picked up a six-pack of Moxie at Mr. Patterson’s request. And on the way back to Vern Devine’s house, I spotted a mailbox, so I dropped my postcard to Fred inside.

  Near high tide, we walked down the wooden staircase to the rocky shoreline. I wasn’t crazy about cruising around the bay, and setting foot in the boat made me regret the idea of heading out to the island. But when I looked at Mr. Patterson, who was trying to get a good foothold in the rocks with the urn tucked under his arm, I just kept walking down the stairs one foot in front of the next. We waved to Marion and Dad as they watched us from the deck.

  Mr. Patterson read a chart of Casco Bay, and Sookie steered us closer to a scatter of islands covered in tall pine trees. My chest was tight underneath the life vest, like the way it had felt at mealtimes lately when I was staring down a plate of food. I thought about what Vern’s boat looked like from below, imagining the growing distance between the floor of the bay and the boat’s hull. The water was dark and, in my mind, as bottomless as the quarry.

  I imagined a long, dark shadow passing by our little boat.

  “What’s wrong?” Mr. Patterson said to me. “You look nervous.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, but I was wishing I hadn’t dropped that postcard in the mailbox. What if Fred sent me another one of his white sharks while we were floating in this bathtub-size boat?

  “Can great whites come into Casco Bay?” I asked, hoping the sharks avoided swimming in bays.

  “They could,” Sookie said.

  We rose and fell over the swells of a larger boat, but I kept my eyes on the trees. Mr. Patterson, dressed in pressed pants and a button-down shirt, held the urn tightly to his life jacket while we pushed on into the bay.

  After the swells died down, I pulled my hands into the sleeves of Marion’s sweatshirt and looked around. I thought I saw a yellow lab in the waters ahead.

  “Is that a dog?” I asked.

  “Seal,” yelled Sookie.

  Two of them bobbed in the water, not far from the Whaler. Seals were all over Cape Cod, but I had never seen one in Rockport.

  “Holy fish,” I said,
eyeing the seals with their sleek heads and black noses. I looked for dorsal fins in the water, as Mr. Patterson directed Sookie around the islands.

  * * *

  ° ° ° °

  On the beach of French Island, Mr. Patterson took the urn in two hands and shook it up a little. He flung Mrs. Patterson in an arc at the water’s edge. The white-gray cloud settled into the Atlantic, becoming part of the silt and rocks below. Sookie cracked open a Moxie and we sat on a slab of rock while Mr. Patterson looked over the sea. Sookie offered me a can and I accepted.

  “I’m getting used to this junk,” said Sookie, resting the orange can on his knee.

  “Not me.” I shivered.

  “Why did we bring it out here?” Sookie asked, taking a sip.

  “In honor of Mrs. Patterson,” I said. “She and Mr. P used to bring it with them when they had picnics out here.”

  Mr. Patterson looked over his shoulder to see what we were up to.

  “Should we go check on him?” I asked.

  Sookie said, “He probably wants to be alone.”

  “Nah. I’ll go see if he’s okay,” I said.

  When I stood beside Mr. Patterson, I saw his wet cheeks. The toes of his loafers pointed so close to the tide, they turned dark brown. I took his hand.

  * * *

  ° ° ° °

  When we returned to the cove, Vern was sitting on the deck with a blanket over his lap. Marion was reading a magazine on a chaise lounge.

  “Vern, could I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Of course, dear.”

  “What happens if great whites become extinct?”

  Marion looked up from her magazine.

  “All life is interconnected. If one species moves away or becomes extinct, the order shifts,” said Vern. “What happens in the ocean, affects the life on land. It’s Darwin’s theory.”

  There was a pause again and then Vern said quietly, “Remind me who you are.”

  “I’m Lucy, Helen’s daughter,” I said.

  “You’re looking after the sharks,” he said.

  “That’s right,” I replied.

  “Sharks have few offspring, which makes it easy for them to become extinct. But maybe we can still reverse what we’ve done to them.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Stop eating them. Learn about their behavior. Respect that they have been here far longer than any of our human relatives,” he said.

  I nodded, though I had no idea what to do with this information.

  “Would you like to go for a ride on the boat?” Sookie asked Vern and Marion as he walked up the steps to the deck.

  Marion lowered her magazine and looked at Vern. “What do you think, Vern? You up for a boat ride today?”

  “I could do a short ride. Yes, that would be nice,” said Vern, squinting in the light, as he looked up at Sookie and took his offered hand.

  Vern and Marion took their life jackets from Mr. Patterson and me and piled into the boat with Sookie. I watched them cruise in and around the cove in the Whaler, with Vern wrapped in a blanket as if he had already fallen in.

  Mr. Patterson sat on the deck beside me.

  “If I drink any more Moxie, I think I’m going to develop an ulcer.”

  “I told you that stuff was no good,” I said.

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t good.”

  “That’s a double negative,” I said. “I’m gonna go inside.”

  I had been wanting to look at the photos of Mom again. I opened the slider and walked into the kitchen. The wood floors creaked as I moved to the study, where I found Dad, leaning on his crutches, looking at the photos on the wall.

  “Hi,” he said.

  I walked over to the spot where he was standing.

  “Which one were you looking at?” I asked.

  He pointed to the one where Mom was speaking to the students in Vern’s class.

  “I took that photo,” he said.

  “Really?” I looked closer.

  Mom had her hair in a ponytail, her mouth was open like she was talking, and she was making a weird two-handed gesture, like she was cradling an imaginary volleyball. I’d seen that geeky excitement before from a few of my teachers at school. She was aiming that volleyball at one of Vern’s students and she was either congratulating him on his brilliance, or coaxing him to push one of his ideas to the next level. The funny thing was, she didn’t look much older than the kids in the class.

  With his camera, Dad had caught her being real. She was frozen in that strange position, with her mouth open, in the middle of a word, but it was a piece of truth. I wondered what the word was.

  “When did she become interested in science?” I asked.

  “Maybe junior high? High school?” he said.

  “Was she like Fred? I mean, did she always keep aquariums and hang out in gross places?”

  He squinted. “Not when she was really young, like Fred did. We had a good science teacher in junior high. That might have been the turning point.”

  I nodded.

  “Weird to see her picture in somebody else’s house. Your picture,” I said.

  “Definitely,” he said, moving his eyes to another photo. “But good, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He thinks she was special.”

  Dad looked at me and smiled. “Exactly.”

  That was the crazy thing. Vern was losing his mind, but he still remembered my mom. She was that good.

  “Did you take a lot of pictures of her?” I asked Dad.

  “Tons,” he said.

  “Where are they?”

  “On the walls. In the closet. Look around the house,” he said.

  While I felt proud that my mother was brave enough to swim with sharks, teach sharkology to college kids, and track shark movement and behavior to fill books and classrooms with new information, I also felt frustrated. What happened to the idea of tagging the sharks? Did her work just stop after she died? Or did it keep moving ahead?

  * * *

  ° ° ° °

  When Marion, Sookie, and Vern returned, Vern hung on to Marion’s arm and moved slowly, but his eyes were wild like he’d just come off the Zipper at the Topsfield Fair.

  “I love the smell of mud,” he said.

  I smiled. The bay reeked like farts, but okay.

  “Hey, Vern, can I ask you something?” I said.

  “Of course, dear.”

  I wondered if he knew I was me, or if he thought I was Mom. “Has anyone tagged the sharks yet?”

  “I should think not. Not without you.”

  I looked at Vern’s wide eyes behind his big glasses.

  “What did you mean when you said, ‘Wait for the seals’?”

  Vern extended his hand from under the blanket and touched my arm. “They’re coming back. That island is going to be full of them,” he said, spitting on my shirt. I didn’t mind.

  “Which island?” I asked.

  “The one in your paper.”

  I nodded.

  “Keep collecting your data,” he said, patting my arm.

  * * *

  ° ° ° °

  It was getting dark outside by the time we got on the highway to head back home. Dad and Sookie were up front again and Mr. Patterson and I were in the back seat. I pulled out a postcard of a moose against an autumn leaf backdrop and used the field guide as a table.

  “You need better light than that,” Mr. Patterson said. He tapped my dad’s shoulder and said, “Tom, there’s a flashlight in the glovebox. Would you mind?”

  Dad fished around in the glove compartment and passed a small light behind his headrest.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I pulled Fred’s license plate CD case out of my backpack. I flipped through the pages of liner not
es and CDs, shining the light on the album covers. There were his favorite classic-rock albums, but near the end was the Miles Davis album that Fred bought in Harvard Square, with the storm brewing on the cover. On the next page, there was an album called Head Hunters by Herbie Hancock. The cover art showed a yellow robot-like character playing a keyboard with his band behind him. I had no idea when or where Fred had bought it.

  I popped the Miles Davis CD into my Discman and leaned against the door. It sounded like the same music that Fred had been playing along with, the night I watched him from my window. I tried to listen for what Fred had heard, but by the time the trumpet came in, I was done.

  I sat up and looked at Mr. Patterson.

  “You like jazz,” I said.

  “What?” He seemed a little dazed, like he’d been half asleep. “Yes. Yes, I do like jazz.”

  “Do you like this?” I said, stretching the earphones over his head. I restarted the first track and watched his face for clues—the wrinkles in his brow, his squinty eyes.

  “No, I can’t say that I care for it,” he said loudly. Sookie looked in the rearview mirror. “Who is it?”

  “Miles Davis.”

  “Yes, his work got a little strange in the seventies.”

  I took back the earphones.

  “Do you like it?” Mr. Patterson asked.

  I shook my head. “Fred liked it . . . I think.”

  “Maybe you have to see it performed live to appreciate it.” Mr. Patterson shrugged. “And maybe you don’t have to like it, but you keep your mind open to it. You trust that Mr. Davis knows what he’s doing.”

  I nodded.

  I switched the CDs and put the yellow robot in the Discman. The farty bass filled my brain. I liked the rhythm right away, and I knew that it was the song that Fred had danced to in his bug-eyed glasses. I could see his ridiculous moves and the smile on his face. My chest began to feel tight and tears leaked down my cheeks.