Men's Lives

by Peter Matthiessen

  We drove along the beach a ways, looking for fish sign. “Used to make our first set in the dark,” Benny said. “Now we have to hunt ’em. Can’t just slap her in anywhere no more. With four-five real calm days like this, them goddamn sand crabs move inshore so thick you get ’em strung out all along the wings and maybe eighty boxes in the bunt. Got to wait till they move off again, at daylight. Day in, day out, the daybreak set is best.” He pointed at the terns and gulls working offshore, like night spirits in the soft half-light. The horizon softened, took on color, and behind the birds, here and there on the horizon, moved the dark slow silhouettes of draggers. “Anyway, them fish is wider’n they was yesterday. Looks like them draggers pushed ’em out. That one close in, that’s Scottie Bennett’s Seafarer; Nick’s on there as crew. They done good squiddin for a while, but now the squid are fallin off, they’re down to flukin.”

  Another big dragger was working just behind the bar, and the Havenses discussed the damage done to the inshore fishing grounds in recent years by all these boats, and the pressure on fish stocks offshore from the long-range factory stern trawlers that had turned up from Europe and Japan in the 1950s. “Twenty-six draggers out here the other day, all in sight at once,” William Havens said, “and some of them foreign boats got their nets in night and day. That big one you see there, farthest off, that’s the Spanish squid boat took the place of them Japanese was here last year. For them boats there ain’t no such thing as trash fish, they don’t throw nothin back at all, save every fish, and I guess there’s nothin wrong with that. But they ain’t doin us one bit of good, tearin up the ground the way they do. And now the bass bill hangin over our heads, and all them new gill-netters, them part-timers, on Montauk, gettin the sportsmen down on us by setting net between the rocks; and all these city people hollerin like hell if one crab gets left behind after a haul. They’re squeezin us right off the beach, the way they done to Bobby Lester down Southampton.”

  The crews are beset by upset anglers and sunbathers, and also by people who come up and take fish, saying they’ll come back with the money; sometimes they just take the fish and run, knowing that busy men in heavy waders cannot chase them. (“If we get a big bunch of fish, we lose quite a few, but there’s only so much we can do,” says Danny King, a big man with a kind and open face, red cheeks, and an old-fashioned chin beard. “I don’t mind if they come up and ask for a fish, I’d more than gladly give it to them, but if they steal it, you know—I just got my principles against stealing.”)

  Two years ago Danny King’s crew was approached on Flying Point, down in Southampton, by the bay constable, who said that the village police had ordered him off the beach. As it turned out, two surfcasters had filed a complaint that the fishing trucks had no beach permit stickers. Danny ignored the order, telling the bay constable that if the village police wanted him off the beach, they had better come down and tell him so themselves. The police never came, and he fished there the rest of that autumn. But Bobby Lester, tired of the pressure, finally gave up haul-seining to go lobstering.

  “Ain’t hardly a crew down west no more,” William was saying. “Roger White and Sonny Schellinger, is all. Not even a farmer crew in Sagaponack! Poseys and Bonackers are the last fishermen on the beach, and we got no business here neither, cause there ain’t no fish—not this year, by Jesus! It ain’t just the bass. There wasn’t enough fish anywhere all spring to pay our gas, although the traps done pretty good, over on the bay; one day they come in with two truckloads of weakfish when we couldn’t scrape up one damn carton.”

  Benny recalled a nine-week period in the fall of 1981 when each man in the crew made just two hundred dollars. Long ago his father had advised him that there was no future in fishing, just as Milt Miller had advised his son, just as all their fathers had advised almost every fisherman on the beach. Today Benny was saying the same to his boy, Michael, despite his own lifelong commitment. “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t fish. Cause that’s all I’ve done. I enjoy it. I love it. It’s my life, really. It’s like huntin, I love to hunt, but it’s vanishin out here; even huntin is goin. There’s no land left, you know.”

  “Well, them bass are going to come back, just like they always done,” William said. “For the last four-five years we been gettin plenty of short bass, lots of them real little ones, just slip like spearin through the mesh. Somebody was tellin me there’s plenty of them little bass up the Peconic River, thinks maybe they’re spawnin up there, and over in Connecticut, too. Them biologists tell us all our bass come from the Chesapeake, but we don’t believe it; they been taggin bass down there for twenty years, and not one of them tagged fish has ever showed up in the thousands and thousands of fish in our nets and traps, not even one.”

  We discussed the fact that on Long Island the striped bass was scarce for over a half century, from the 1880s until the 1940s. In our own lifetimes, such common commercial species as bluefish, sea bass, weakfish, kingfish, yellowtail, fluke, porgies, butterfish, and blowfish had all declined seriously, or disappeared, for years at a time. The deepwater tilefish vanished so completely near the turn of the century that for several decades it was thought to have gone extinct: for the last five years, commercial tilefish landings have approached three million pounds, nearly twice the harvest of blues, weaks, fluke, and both black-backed and yellowtail flounders, and exceeded only by porgy and whiting.

  “Water’s chippin up there now—was slick a minute ago,” Benny Havens said, sniffing the wind. “See that black at the edge of the slick, do ya? Ain’t no fish under that bait; we’d seen ’em. Just four—five bluefish gulls2 dippin, is all; them little-gulls3 got their bellyful, comin ashore now. But all that bait is a good sign, maybe got pushed down here from the east’rd by them weakfish that must be comin round the Point, lookin for cold water. Bass will be herdin up now, too, maybe they can feel that autumn comin.” Adjusting his black cap on his balding head, Benny, a shy, sand-colored man, made a wry grin, as if surprised that he had talked so much. “Heck, I don’t know nothin any more, not a damn thing. Everythin’s changin on us, too damn fast to keep up with. Other day here, had three–four weakfish with roe, middle of July! How can that be? And them shitepokes don’t belong here neither, not in midsummer.” He pointed at four loons swimming along just behind the first wave. Classified ’em as song birds now, ain’t allowed to shoot ’em way we used to. Milton George, he’s ate them damned things, but I could never. Can’t eat striped bass neither: don’t like the taste of it.”

  His father nodded in agreement: “Bass just ain’t a eatin fish,” William Havens said. “Can’t understand the high price that they put on it. Back when you was fishin with us, there was times when bass was like bluefish is today, remember? You wouldn’t get ten cents a pound.” Apparently the public had gotten used to eating bass when they were plentiful and cheap, and as soon as they were scarce again, they became a delicacy.

  “In the days when I used to go with Milt, out around Gardiners in the sixties,” Benny said, “we’d take our ice and food, we had little huts to stay in out there, never come in much. And Milt’d eat them young gulls out of the nest; before they started in to eatin fish, Milt said, they tasted like chicken!” Milt Miller was famous for trying out everything in the natural world that might be edible; I mentioned his discovery that the roe of horseshoe crabs looked and tasted like good sturgeon caviar, and we all laughed.

  Remembering the sturgeon in Ted’s nets, I asked if sturgeon still showed up in the spring, and William said that old Cap’n Frank, who was ninety-three this year, had been the last man to set nets for sturgeon. A few were still taken by the draggers, and Cap’n Bill still liked to fix the roe, but the haul-seiners rarely saw one. “Don’t pay you to set net for ’em no more, nor codfish neither.

  “Old Bill was a good fisherman, all right, Ted and Frank, too,” William recalled. “Frank never let nothin bother him, you know, just took things as they come, and Bill always acted pretty calm, but I guess he wasn’t.
One time there, goin off in rough weather, he was hollerin at us, ‘Pull! Pull!’; he was clenchin his teeth so hard on that first sea that he bit his pipe stem off! He was always spittin, all them Lesters done that, but Bill used to actually get sick sometimes before the first set in the mornin, and he told me he never did that on days when there weren’t no fishin, so I guess you might say that Bill was nervous, too.

  “I recall one mornin it were blowin a livin gale, and Happy Lester, he were the youngest next to Ted, he spit to windward, hit me right in the face with one of them big oysters—goddamn, I was mad!” William Havens laughed, looking around for his dog, Cap, which rides with him wherever he goes. “Where’s my dog,” he muttered, genuinely uneasy; he grunted when he saw the small white dog running through the dunes. “Cap’n Slime! That fella never give a damn about nothin! Bachelor, you know, lived with his mother there in the old homestead, never had no car, I don’t believe, lost all his teeth. All he cared about was drinkin beer, which is why his brothers was so down on him. Called him Happy, and sometimes it seems to me his mother called him Harlin, somethin like that, but I believe that his real name was Harold.

  “I was there that mornin up Georgica Coast Guard when Jenny Lester come to the beach, said Happy had hung hisself; they found him on his knees there in that old shed back of where the Lester homestead used to be. And Bill and Ted looked at each other and both of ’em said at the same time, ‘Well, I expected it.’ I don’t know how a fella could bring himself to do that, hang himself on his knees! And Harry Lester, who was the oldest brother, the one turned to house paintin and moved away to the east end of Amagansett, he hung himself, too, but that was long ago. He was named Harry and Happy was Harold. Harry and Harold.”

  That morning it was too rough to set, and after a while I returned to Stuart’s Seafood. Montauk Seafood was going strong when Stuart Vorpahl, Sr., opened his own market across the highway, off Oak Street. That spring of 1955, Stuart Junior had signed up with the East Hampton high school team as pitcher, but the same afternoon, arriving home, he was told by his father to get to work digging out a foundation. The night before, Stuart Senior had arrived late at Montauk Seafood with a good catch of spearing, and Ted would not open up for him; furious, he swore then and there that he would establish his own packing house. Young Stuart spent the rest of that spring working on the new building after school—“the end of my baseball career,” he says. With one thousand dollars—borrowed with great difficulty from the bank—and credit extended by the men who brought him fish, Old Stuart got his start, and kept on going. Not long thereafter, profiting from his example, Scotty Eames opened Scotty’s Fish Market on Schellinger Road.

  These days Stuart’s, run by Billy Vorpahl, is the only fish market in Amagansett, and most of the baymen of the region pack out their fish there.4 The catch is unloaded from trucks into large tubs in which sand and blood and gurry are washed off, after which the fish are weighed, packed into the cardboard cartons that have replaced the wood boxes of thirty years ago, then iced and tagged. Every evening from Sunday to Thursday the fish are picked up by trucks from the Fulton Fish Market, and the ice, cartons, utilities, and freight (about seven cents per pound of fish) are deducted from the checks returned by the wholesale fish dealers. Because the abuse has continued for so long, the fishermen routinely expect that the dealers will deduct 10 percent of the real weight of every shipment; protest as they will, they are told their scales are wrong, and they must take what they get. And this graft is routine, not only at the Fulton Market but also in Greenport, New Bedford, and other places where their fish might be sold. The one exception in recent years has been the market in Newport, Rhode Island, famous among fishermen as the only honest market in the region.

  At Stuart’s, I ran into Frank Lester’s youngest son, Richard. “Been fishin all my life,” he told me, “and this is the worst year I ever seen—the worst!” At forty-seven, he is the same age that his Uncle Ted was when we all fished together thirty years ago, and he has the same ruddy face, pale ice-blue eyes, and big Posey nose. Richard is known as a good surfman and good fisherman, though inconsistent. “He’s always flutterin around, watchin to see how other fishermen are makin out,” one man told me. “He’s always changin, and he’s always a day late. If you want to make a livin as a fisherman, you got to stick to one thing, you got to grind it.” But Richard has always been cheerful and likable, and despite his frustration, he was cheerful still.

  A few days later I met Richard at Louse Point, at the mouth of Accabonac Creek, where he moors a small, home-rigged dragger named the Rainbow. Like many of the older baymen, he is an able carpenter and welder, and the cabin, boom, dragging frame, and drum on this thirty-six-foot one-time bunker seine boat were all of his own manufacture.

  In the late afternoon of a long summer day, we ran out of Bonac Creek into Gardiners Bay, where the Rainbow made two drags of an hour each. “Been fishin since I was twelve years old, y’know, quit school at sixteen. I can write a little but I don’t read too good. What the hell do I need with readin them old books”—Richard nudged me—“when I got this life on the water here to keep me busy?”

  Richard, born in 1935, can remember hauling seine on Frank’s one-truck crew; he also accompanied his father pin-hooking for sea bass on the wreck of the old Catherine off Amagansett Beach.5 But his first years as a haul-seiner were with his Uncle Ted “because I was havin some kind of a mix-up with my brothers back in them days.” Grinning, Richard imitated Ted: “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” He shook his head, recalling the time Ted lost his fingertip when the rope jumped on the winch; Ted had gone right on, unheeding, until the bag was on the beach. “Blood all over the truck!” Richard exclaimed, rearing his head back before squinting at me, just as his uncle might have done.

  According to Richard, the younger men who ran the crews had mostly been trained by himself and William Havens; though he started with Ted, he says he was taught fishing by his father, who had also taught many other fishermen who are still on the water. I was still with Ted when Richard returned to his father’s crew, and it was Richard and Ding-Ding (his brother Harry) and young Walter Bennett who were in Frank’s dory on that day in ’55 when we saw its backward somersault from down the beach.

  “Didn’t have no weather to go off,” Richard admitted. “Guess my dad was against it, and my brother Francis, too, but we never give them much to say about it. We was young and broke, so we tried her anyway. Ding-Ding was settin net, and he got thrown clear when she went over, but I was under that boat a while, and Walter, seemed like he was under three–four minutes before you fellas found him. Had a lot of crews there by the end, helpin get everything straightened out; that net was some hell of a mess, washin around like that! But I don’t guess old Walter ever went back in the boat again; I believe that was the last time he ever climbed into a dory, and I ain’t surprised.

  “There’s a lot of fellas that you knew ain’t around no more. On Uncle Bill’s old fifties crew, Dingie Schellinger died of a heart attack, I believe, Roney Marasca, too, and Billy Lester died of emphysema. Old Bill lost both boys from his first family; Kenny went before Billy did, tendin his gill net at Napeague in April. Water was some cold and rough that mornin, and I told him not to go setting no damn net in that old boat, she’d open up on him, but Kenny said Hell, there was only the one net, he’d just keep bailin. Well, the boat filled and he swum ashore, but then he died; had one of them fits in the shallow water. Tongue-tied, you know. He was still warm when we laid him in the truck.”

  “I remember that day,” Stewart Lester says, “cause I was goin down to get me some wood, make squirrel cages. I had found a nest of ’em, and I seen my Cousin Billy go tearin by and knew somethin was wrong. What Kenny done, he took Uncle Charlie’s old sharpie that had cedar plankin, and cedar gets dry, you know, have to soak it good for a few days to let her swell. But Kenny wanted them mackerel nets set, just wouldn’t listen, and that boat filled up on him. Got ashore, too, before he h
ad his fit; that fella died in six inches of water.”

  The Rainbow’s first drag was completely dry, not a single porgy, but Richard assured me that the first tow after sunset, when the fish on the bottom could not make out the oncoming trawl, would be much better. This second tow produced twenty pounds of porgies and a single weakfish—scarcely enough to pay his gas. Richard shrugged, uncomplaining, and headed back toward Accabonac. “Money ain’t everythin, you know. Made seven hundred dollars in April, shared up one hundred dollars on May 10, and got off the beach. They ain’t nothin I ain’t tried this year, and I ain’t done nothin; I made five hundred dollars in the past two months! My wife tells me to slow down, but what do I want to slow down for? Can’t rest anyways if there’s somethin to be done.” Shaking his head a little, Richard grinned. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken, ain’t that right?”

  Before daylight next morning, using his sharpie, we tended the gill nets that Richard sets behind Gardiners Island, in Tobacco Lot Bay. Since the days when we used to go gunning there on Cartwright Shoal, the sandbar had disappeared under the surface, but the bar is still too shoal to cross, even in a sharpie, and we had to swing way wide, out to the southward. Across the soft morning water I could see Abraham’s Landing, where Abraham Schellinger had landed cargos from his sailing ships nearly three centuries before. The Devon summer colony started here about 1910, and this sheltered corner of the bay is still the site of a private yacht club, where white sailing craft as elegant as swans turned slowly in the early summer light. Farther east stood the old rust-streaked buildings of the dead fish factory at Promised Land, and the brick stacks on which ospreys used to nest, and the stubble of black creosoted pilings where the docks of the old Edwards Brothers fish company were sagging down into the bay.