Fisherman's Bend

by Linda Greenlaw

  The color sounder mounted on the dash showed the ocean floor beneath us in a medium red horizontal line; yellow numbers illuminated the depth at twelve fathoms. In over seventy feet of water, the missing fisherman had certainly not walked home. A GPS track plotter displayed an array of colorful event marks that I assumed represented exact locations of the lobster traps. A lime green track like an endless doodle ran across the monitor in curlicues that terminated at the white blinking boat-shaped symbol; this showed our position in relation to traps and landmass. I found the button that controlled the scale of the picture on the monitor, and zoomed out until I found the far end of the corkscrewed wake. Somewhat of an electronics geek, I admired the top-of-the-line equipment aboard the Eva B.

  “Wow,” I said as I roughly estimated the time and distance the Eva B. had traveled since wandering off the well-beaten, lime green track. “We’re more than three miles northeast of where it appears the boat strayed from the line of traps he was fishing. At point six knots, that’s way too long to hope for a miracle. No one can hold their breath that long.”

  “Where’s the goddamned plane?” Cal stood, shielded his eyes with a hand, and searched the sky. “It’ll be pitch-black here in three hours. There’ll be no chance to save him if he has to wait until morning.”

  “But a plane won’t help much if he’s on the bottom tangled in his own gear,” I added.

  “He ain’t.”

  “Ain’t what?”

  “Ain’t snarled in his own gear. He wasn’t hauling traps. The bottom in this part of the bay is all mud. Look at that boat,” Cal said and motioned toward the Eva B. “She’s clean as a whistle. If he had just hauled and set, there’d be a mess along the rail. And where’s the bait? Everything’s all tucked away nice and neat. I’d bet he went overboard cleaning her up. Most fellas put the boat in a hard circle while they tidy up after hauling, and most fellas dip a five-gallon bucket over the side for wash-down water. Maybe he lost his balance and got pulled over by the bucket. There’re lobsters in the tank, so we know he had been hauling. But…” Cal stopped his rant and cocked his head to one side. Squinting toward the east he said, “Boats.”

  Sure enough, there were boats coming from the east. They were approaching quickly, and as they cut the distance I counted eleven. Soon the lead boat, Ardency, was rafting to our free side. The two men aboard Ardency were dressed in dark orange Grundéns, the waterproof bib overalls worn by most Green Haven fishermen. Almond-shaped black eyes peered from under visors salt-stained from adjusting with wet gloves. The captain, who appeared to be the father of the man in the stern, wasted no time with questions or small talk. He was crossing our deck before his son finished securing the stern line and then hopped from us onto the Eva B. Both men were slight of stature, yet had forearms beneath rolled-up flannel sleeves that looked hard enough to drive spikes. What I guessed was half of the Cobble Harbor fleet—either the Hatfields or the McCoys—soon coasted to relative stops all around us. With the circling of wagons came the odd comfort of knowing that Cal and I were not in this probable tragedy alone.

  Each of the ten boats on the perimeter was manned in twos by fishermen who stood with arms crossed at chests and stared, waiting for direction. As the seconds ticked by, the younger men began to fidget a bit with what I took as anxiety and disbelief while the more weathered members of the group were stilled by a common resolve that I understood as maturity in the face of almost certainly bad news about the fate of a fellow fraternity member. I wanted to know the missing man’s name and ask his age, but it seemed I would have to wait to read it in the newspaper. The man who had jumped aboard the Eva B. grabbed the VHF mic and began organizing what I thought would be a search party, but sounded more like a cleanup crew. No one had said a word to either Cal or me.

  “All right, boys,” he began in a voice deeper than what I imagined his thin frame would produce. “If we each haul between fifty and sixty traps, we can get the bulk of them to the harbor before dark. Keep the gear aboard until I find out what Lillian wants done with it. Let’s all meet at the dock tomorrow after the funeral.” Funeral! Tomorrow! This was too bizarre, I thought. They hadn’t even looked for a body. How could they possibly have a service so soon? I glanced at Cal, who shot me a look that had “shut up” all over it. The muscle at the jaw on the side of the captain’s face worked in and out as he gave each boat instructions over the radio while he stared at the plotter. “Greg, southeast part of Forsaken Ground. Dan, you take the stuff on Three Fathoms. Phil, looks like there’s a full load along the twenty-six line between the Tetons.…” And he continued until all ten boats had steamed off. Placing the microphone back into its bracket, he began shutting off all of the Eva B.’s electronics and then turned the key to kill the engine.

  On his way back across the Sea Pigeon, the captain stopped, shook Cal’s hand solemnly, and nodded to me. “We heard you call the Coast Guard and came out as fast as we could. Most of us were just getting in from hauling, so we were still aboard our boats. I can’t thank you enough. I guess the Coast Guard expects you to stand by with his boat until they get here to tow her in. I have to hustle along now to get a load of his traps before dark. Thanks again.” And with that, the man joined his son back aboard Ardency and began casting off the lines.

  “Shouldn’t some of you be searching for him?” I asked as politely as I could. “I mean, what if he’s still alive and waiting for someone to pick him out of the water?”

  “With all due respect, ma’am, he’s not.” Both men pushed against the side of Sea Pigeon to separate the two boats.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “He can’t swim.”

  “Maybe he’s wearing a life jacket.” My voice was louder now to cover the growing distance and two diesel engines.

  “He never did.”

  “What if he’s clinging to a buoy or piece of driftwood?” I insisted.

  “He wouldn’t.” His hand reached for the gear shift.

  “Wouldn’t? Why wouldn’t he?” I pleaded. “You seem to know him quite well.”

  “I knew him quite well. He was my brother, Parker Alley.”

  3

  ALTHOUGH IT SEEMED to take forever, I’m certain that the Coast Guard vessel was in sight within an hour of the Ardency’s casting off. Vigilance, a large and stately-looking ship with her telltale Coast Guard stripe—a wide red slash on either side of the bow—seemed overkill for the task at hand. As she drew near enough for Cal and me to read the name on her bow, the man on the radio finally gave up his futile attempts to hail the Sea Pigeon. I didn’t question Cal’s ignoring the many calls from the Coast Guard ship, as it was clearly getting closer with each transmission. I had learned long ago how captains feel about unsolicited input from subordinates.

  Men in blue uniforms scrambled to place fat bumpers along the ship’s hull and flaked lines hand over hand onto the deck, resulting in neat coils ready to heave. A man on the open flybridge called down at us through a megaphone as they drifted at a fifty-foot distance by our starboard beam. “We are preparing to come alongside, Captain.”

  Cal flashed a thumbs-up toward the megaphone and said softly, “I can see that, dumbass.”

  There was a little more scrambling before the captain finally engaged the engines and began an awkward maneuvering; first away from us, then back toward us. As it looked like Vigilance was coming in for a landing, the man with the megaphone ordered us to stand away from the rail they were now quickly approaching. Cal moved to the helm, where he grasped the wheel with both hands and advised me calmly, “Brace yourself.” I did as I was told, joining Cal at the helm and holding on to the edge of the dash tightly. The first attempt by the Coast Guard to come alongside was a glancing blow that caused Sea Pigeon and Eva B. to careen against the inflated rubber fenders between them, designed and intended for this purpose. The cooler fell from the Eva B.’s engine hatch with a loud crash, sending frozen gel packs skittering on the deck. No damage. As the Coast Guard ship pulle
d away for another try I could hear the usual noise from the bridge to the men on deck, not really blaming them for the miss, but indicating to anyone within hearing range that it was because something had not been executed properly that the captain was not able to stick the landing. His second approach was much slower. The ship eased into our starboard rail, and two young men hopped aboard and secured lines.

  The next thirty minutes or so were painful. Cal relayed all of the information he had about what had transpired prior to the Coast Guard’s arrival on the scene, while an electronics expert examined the Eva B.’s plotter, finally coming to the conclusion that the missing fisherman must have fallen overboard. The men were dressed in dark blue jumpsuits and orange life vests from which dangled whistles and safety strobe lights. Each man sported a holstered firearm. The legs of their pants were tucked into black lace-up combat-style boots. It appeared to me that the Coast Guard was currently better suited to respond to breaches of Homeland Security than search and rescue. The Coasties were young and polite and appeared to be embarrassed by their own inexperience. I was relieved that Cal took it easy on them when they asked their silly questions. They had protocol, checklists, and superior officers. It was understood that the young men were doing their jobs as they had been trained. They showed Cal all the respect due to an ancient mariner. Unsure of my jurisdiction as deputy sheriff, I didn’t volunteer any information, which I imagined pleased Cal as he began to fidget with impatience. The crew of Vigilance was either unwilling to make a decision or unable to move without permission from higher-ups, something they were finally given reluctantly over the VHF radio after what I perceived as an ungodly amount of time between requests.

  At last, the captain of the ship was told to take the Eva B. in tow, and he quickly ordered his men to do so. When I asked, I was told that they would tow the small boat to their home port and Coast Guard base in Southwest Harbor, where they would investigate and notify family. Neither Cal nor I mentioned that the family needn’t be notified. The captain thanked us for being good Samaritans and gave us permission to get under way. When Cal made a move toward freeing a line, he was asked to stand back to allow the Coast Guard to do it. It wasn’t a particularly pretty or smooth operation, but eventually we watched Vigilance turn toward the northeast with Eva B. tethered securely and closely behind.

  I pulled the fenders aboard and stowed the small lines that had once held the Eva B. at our side as Cal put the engine in gear and headed toward Green Haven. Cal took one last look over his shoulder and pointed at the sky behind us with two fingers that squeezed a smoldering cigarette. “There,” he said. “They’ve got an air search going. Nothing more we can do.” The sight of the helicopter flying low over the water seemed to give Cal permission to leave the scene that trumped any from the Coast Guard. He pushed the throttle up to near full and concentrated on the landmass in the distance. Weird, I reflected, how thoughts of the missing man, Parker Alley, affected me. I was no stranger to missing, or even dead, people. But this was different. We had stumbled upon this without warning. Normally, I was the one to question witnesses. I was the one who would unravel the mystery. And leaving the scene with no answers weighed particularly heavy—like the leaded apron the dentist drapes over your torso before X-raying your teeth. Something said “foul play” to me. But I’d have to shake that thought, as there was no reason for any suspicion. A fisherman had been lost at sea. It happens. His body would wash up on the shore somewhere, and there would be closure. Perhaps the gnawing in my gut was hunger, I thought, as I pulled half a sandwich from my tote bag.

  “Want half?” I asked Cal.

  “Half of what? Half of half of a peanut butter sandwich I watched you eat the first half of three days ago?” Cal teased, trying to lighten my mood. “Is that all you eat? You must have been raised in an orphanage or something. You’re too young to have experienced the Depression. This food rationing thing must have come from your childhood, right?”

  “No,” I laughed. “I just don’t like waste”—I hesitated—“of any kind.”

  “Well, you go ahead and enjoy it. Betty will have dinner ready by the time I get home.” Cal’s wife, Betty, is a great home cook. Cal chuckled a bit before adding, “I’ll bet you walked to school barefoot, too. Never met such a penny-pincher in my life. Must be something planted deep in your head from childhood. You were taught the value of every dime, right?” My answer was a slow and silent savoring of the stale sandwich. Peanut butter and honey—the honey was a splurge I would not confess to Cal. Amused that he thought of my predilection for cutting financial corners as some sort of effect of trauma or a psychosis, I did nothing to deny either. I was tempted to explain to Cal how the thrift all my friends chided me for was indeed a result of my raising, but not in the way he assumed. My frugality was more of a rebellion to, rather than consequence of, the way I was raised. I relaxed and nibbled the edges of crust, putting on a display for Cal, who watched in disbelief as I nursed what anyone other than a prisoner of war would consume in two bites. The truth about my childhood financial situation was actually pretty funny, I thought, as the entrance to the channel leading to Green Haven Harbor came into view. I must have been all of seven or eight when my mother first taught me the value of money.

  It began when I was in the second grade. I asked my mother if “we were rich.” “Rich,” it seemed at that age, was perhaps the greatest adjective that one could use to describe oneself. And I was absolutely delighted when she answered in the affirmative. Yes, we were rich. We were very rich. She could have left it at that, and I would have been happy. But my mother went on to define our particular kind of wealth. She explained that we were rich in health, happiness, and family love. And, she asked rhetorically, weren’t we lucky to have all that? I didn’t want to burst my mother’s bubble, but I wanted to see bank statements. Money, it seemed, was of no consequence. We had happiness. I think it’s fair to say that my personal obsession with financial security and extreme sense of thrift were shaped largely by my mother’s “warped” perception of wealth. Still, I have been guided by it, I guess—as I haven’t made the most lucrative career choices. For example, Mom’s primer on wealth came back to haunt her when I began working for Archie for what she considered slave wages at the age of eleven. I could, she reminded me almost daily, make more money collecting cans and bottles. But, I argued, I was happy working on the dock and occasionally aboard the boat. And other than those few times Archie compensated me, I remained unemployed throughout high school—living on love, sustained by happiness, bolstered by kinship.

  When my mother did have money, a check from the State of Florida, which she acted surprised to find in her mail on or around the first of every month for as far back as I could remember, she spent like the legendary drunken sailor. She’d tear open the envelope and fan the long yellow check in the air, yelling, “Pay dirt!” It always bothered me that she never saved a nickel for the rest of the month. It was a ritual. “Pay dirt! Come on, Janie! Let’s get your brother cleaned up and go out on the town. What do you say?” We never returned home until we had spent the entire check. The remainder of the month we ate meals bought on food stamps, except for my school lunches, which Archie subsidized so that I could avoid the “free line.” Oh, and fish. We ate a lot of fish that I brought home from work. Although my mother loved fresh seafood of any kind and referred to it as “brain food,” she’d sometimes joke about wishing I’d find a job on a cattle ranch.

  All of this reminiscence went down with the last swallow of sandwich, which I had chewed the mandatory thirty-two times. Suddenly the VHF radio came to life with, “Motor vessel Asprella calling the Eva B. Come in, Captain.” The name of Parker Alley’s boat brought me quickly back to the scene at hand. I looked at Cal for his reaction, but his eyes remained on the horizon. After a pause, the ship called again. “Eva B., Eva B., the Asprella on channel sixteen. Channel one six, Captain. Come in, please.”

  Again, there was no visible sign that Cal was moved in any
way by this new boat calling the Eva B., but he must have sensed my anxiety as he finally said, “I thought the Coasties might respond. Guess not.” Grabbing the microphone, Cal hesitated another few seconds to give the Coast Guard opportunity to answer the call. When they didn’t, Cal keyed the mic and said, “Asprella, Sea Pigeon. Come in.”

  “Asprella back to the Sea Pigeon. Want to shift to channel seventy-three, Captain?”

  “Roger.” Cal pushed a button on the VHF, changing the channel to 73, and then hailed the Asprella again. When the ship’s captain answered, Cal relayed that the Eva B. was “on the wrong end of a tow line.” There was a short pause while this information was digested or discussed, and then the Asprella’s captain explained that the Eva B. had been hired as their pilot boat and was to meet them to pick up the ship’s pilot after they were out of the shipping zone. I was unfamiliar with Maine state law, but knew that the federal government requires all ships to take on an additional captain licensed as a pilot to guide the ship through all hazards to navigation. The pilot would be delivered to the ship offshore of any area the ship must transit and outside of any headlands of navigational hazards. The pilot would be someone with “local knowledge” of the area. In this remote area of light shipping, I assumed there were no official pilot boats, so a lobster boat was used. The Asprella was now out of the danger zone, so the man piloting her needed a ride ashore. The pause was now on Cal’s end of the conversation. “Are you in any hurry to get home?” he asked me. When I responded that I was not, Cal keyed the mic and offered his services to the Asprella. “But I’m going to Green Haven. The pilot will have to make arrangements to get home from there,” Cal added.

  “Roger, Captain. He’ll be happier in Green Haven than he would be in Nova Scotia, which is our next stop. We’re coming out of Mussel Ridge Channel now and will be heading due east.”