On Whale Island

by Daniel Hays

  Peter brings the Defiance to the wharf, Aaron and I handling bow and stern lines. Peter begins tossing the traps onto the dock, and Aaron and I pick them up—Aaron two at a time—and carry them ashore and stack them six high. Getting traps five and six on top is difficult for me. I do it only when Aaron is immediately at hand to be impressed, testosterone supplying my needed strength.

  With the first boatload ashore, we sit down for one of Peter’s amazing breakfasts. Steak, bacon, eggs, potatoes, cold lobster, fried fish, and strong tea.

  We make two more trips, busy until about four in the afternoon. We collect 120 pounds of lobster, three lobsters over ten pounds each. We also catch a three-foot catfish, which Peter says is good eating. I’ve never seen anything like it. It has fangs and an attitude.

  By the end of the day, 247 traps are piled high in the grass by the wharf. Only three have been lost this year. (I’ll find one of those washed up on our island a week later.) Some years a single storm may take a hundred traps.

  My fingers are so swollen that I can barely work my zipper. Peter gives me three good-sized lobsters, and I head home happy that I have earned no more than my dinner.

  DAY 73

  Final work on the slipway now, and the big question is, Will it work? After years of insane projects I’ve learned not to assume that even gravity will work. Wendy and I boat ashore to take the winch off my truck. It’s a heavy thing that inevitably falls on my foot. It runs on 12-volt, like everything else on the island, and it draws a lot of power—using it can stall my truck. So we also grab an extra 12-volt battery, and I’m proud to be enough of a redneck to have forty pounds of extra battery in my truck. Back on the island Stephan has finished building the two wide ladders we’ll use to drag the boat over the sand at low tide. The slipway is about forty feet long, reaching the ocean only at midtide and higher. The sandy beach slopes evenly for another forty feet. The ladders, or “runners,” hold the boat off the sand and can be placed end to end at low tides.

  I carry, drop, and finally drag the winch to a boulder and secure it with cable to the steel eyebolt I put in last week. Stephan attaches jumper cables between the battery and the winch. Wendy clips the winch’s cable into the boat’s bow eye. I flip the switch, and with a slow grinding and an unusual electric sound, the boat reluctantly begins to move. Then I remember the grease. Stephan and I happily plunge our hands into a big tub of white slipperiness, and goo the stuff all over every piece of wood the boat might touch.

  The fun begins with Stephan tricking me into looking down at “something really gross!” as he points to my shirt. His hand fwaps up, and I have a white grease beard. He shrieks in joy and runs off into the trees. I am frozen for a moment as a flood of memories wells up. This was my absolute favorite thing to do to my father. Suddenly I am the victim and not the victor! I let out a Tarzan yell and try to pursue Stephan, only to slip on the slipway, crashing to the rocks with my usual raw-liver-like aplomb. When Stephan taunts from the forest, I am laughing too hard to get up.

  Chaos follows: picture two slightly chubby humans pursuing one another and trying to smear globs of grease on each other. Add two hysterical dogs.

  Eventually we run out of grease and calm down. Wendy stands about fifty feet away, ready to run off if either Stephan or I move in her direction. She returns only after supervising, in a strict voice, the cleanup. Finally I coax her back by offering her the honor of working the electric switch. Our small boat gently glides uphill until she’s high and dry ten feet above the tides. Wendy cheers, I raise my arms in victory, and Stephan runs in circles until he slips on one of his ladders. The dogs don’t seem especially impressed, but they enjoy our enthusiasm and are clearly happy. I set up one of our solar panels to charge the battery, because one long pull from low tide practically drains it. Another big job done.

  DAY 74

  Stephan has his first phallic symbol moment. After making sure Mom can’t see, he holds up a tree he’s carrying like a giant penis and whispers, “Daniel, look!” And then falls over giggling uncontrollably.

  • • •

  DAY 76

  Right now is such a perfect moment. We’re eating fresh-from-the-mail chocolate, the wind is north, and the water is sparkling. Wendy is reading some girl-furniture magazine, lost in a world of perfect window arrangements. Bear’s on the landing farting. Abby is at my feet bleeding a little from when she attacked Wendy’s machete. Again, it’s not that she is stupid exactly, it’s just that her mind has no RAM. If what needs to be thought of is not coincidentally already on the screen when it is needed, well then . . .

  DAY 77

  We’re up at five-thirty and watch the sunrise. Ripples of red with orange ribbons and a big yellow ball. Wendy and I spoon, snuggle bliss.

  Wendy and I may fight a lot, but it’s usually only half serious. I think the ability to laugh at ourselves is what keeps us together.

  DAY 78

  Parts of Wendy’s lawn blew away last night, and I can see sections snagged up on the woodpile.

  Great walk around the island; collected rocks and finally visited the bog on the the north side of the island. It has grown up quite a bit since I fell in it years ago . . .

  Stephan is definitely absorbing some of my cynical mannerisms. Wendy is fastidiously neat, and she comes upstairs to see Stephan “cooking.” He has somehow exploded an egg—it’s on his elbow, the counter, his shirt, and outlines where Bear was sitting. In a voice quivering with suppressed anger she asks, “Why is there egg all over?” to which Stephan instantly replies, “Bad genetic material?” I am secretly proud.

  DAY 80

  Do the planets actually align themselves in certain ways that cause shitty days for us on the earth? Today it seems so; we are all on edge. Even Abby gets smacked for biting Wendy on the ass. Bear and I get disgusted (as much at ourselves) and go for a green-boat ride around the island, making Wendy even more mad. Then I come back to do the upstairs porch and I just don’t have any ideas what to do with it. It is six feet deep and runs along the ocean side of the house, just level with the treetops. A small door takes you out to it (another leaky spot just over Stephan’s bunk). I want to figure out a way to build a table, deck, and chairs, some whale-vertebrae stools, a big piece of driftwood, and an elephant-tusk-shaped piece of tree I saved from the woodpile . . . but my muse has left the building, and I stand dumbly scratching myself. The only thing I feel good about right now is that after I threw one of the chairs into a tree, it stuck nicely, about ten feet off the ground. It looks like a tree-elf throne. This pisses Wendy off. She sees it as a mean comment on the style of chair she bought. I see it as the only art I am capable of today.

  • • •

  DAY 91—OCTOBER

  Stephan

  I got yelled at first thing in the morning. Today was a really bad day. At least we had borscht for lunch.

  DAY 92

  Wendy tells me that sometimes I don’t treat Stephan as a son, and I cannot deny it. It’s like I have no idea how to do that, or maybe just enough idea to know how lost I am at it. I assume it involves unconditional love. When Stephan gets angry it feels like there is hatred for me in his whole being. How can I love that?

  When my dad got that angry, and he did, the whole family had to tiptoe around, and I hated being dominated that way, like none of my feelings were relevant. Here I am thirty years later, only it’s not my dad but my kid! According to a psychic whose book I am reading, I must have designed this into my life for a very specific reason.

  There is a Hitler in our midst, and it is me. Maybe regular parents have a whole support system I don’t know about, but I don’t. It’s not natural.

  Here are the simple things I do to earn my place ahead of Hitler in line for Judgment Day:

  I don’t let him eat chocolate for breakfast.

  I ask him to pick up his clothes off the floor.

  I make him do schoolwork.

  I won’t always play cards with him.

  I don’t
make him macaroni and cheese after he doesn’t eat what I already cooked him.

  I ask him to chew with his mouth closed.

  And about a hundred other things I suspect a well-adjusted mom or dad puts up with daily. Is it because they are so thrilled that what has sprung from their loins has progressed beyond the initial stage of resembling a zucchini? Yes, I imagine that is something to be proud of, but is that all that is required to initiate unconditional love, that it used to look like a zucchini and my, my, look at the improvement!

  Or is my problem that I am going against the will of nature? Male lions do not tolerate stepchildren. The first thing a guy lion does after beating up the older boss is to kill any cubs. He is not about to waste his energy raising some other guy’s DNA, so he kills the kids and then humps all the lady lions and thus fathers only his own.

  Sometimes late at night I hear Steph nightmaring with grunts of “Okay, okay! . . . I know . . . I didn’t!” and I know these are all the defenses he is building as a result of me. I remember how utterly miserable I was in sixth grade. I heard anything my father said to me as criticism. I could never be as perfect as he was. Stephan seems optimistic in comparison.

  DAY 93

  Clear sky (outside anyway). I did some waterproofing, Wendy painted chairs. I went for another island circle in the green boat with Bear. I stand amidships and can steer the 1.5-horsepowered dingy just by leaning. Bear stands forward like a happy hood ornament. Later Wendy makes whole-wheat bread and peanut-butter cookies. Then we play progressive rummy.

  I think the key is that I lack the genetic disposition to allow Stephan to win at card games. The problem is that if I do begin winning, Stephan begins to sulk. His shoulders drop, he frowns, and every card he picks up is the wrong one. He gets into this mind-set where he really believes that God has dropped everything else on the planet so as to fully concentrate on making his life miserable. As any game that he is not winning progresses, his personal thundercloud darkens and rumbles. The air becomes electric. A storm is imminent.

  Wendy plays into this, saying, “Oh, Stephan, it’s just chance, anything can happen.” I counter with, “No, honey, Stephan is convinced he’ll lose. And lose he will.”

  I deal the next hand. Progressive rummy is a series of gin rummy–like hands where you keep score, and each new hand is progressively more difficult. When it’s Stephan’s turn, he doesn’t want to discard.

  “I can’t decide, it isn’t fair!”

  “Stephan, you have to discard—pick one. Come on,” Wendy says, trying to calm him.

  “No, I don’t have to. I can just take a penalty card instead!”

  I say, “Stephan, I won’t play with you if you make up rules as you go.”

  Stephan says, “My dad taught me, its true!” Naturally, mention of his father puts me at my emotional best, DEFCON 1.

  “Great,” I say. “I have a rule too. It’s called you can’t add a rule to the game when it happens to be really convenient. You have to wait till it does you no good before adding it!”

  “Fine, I quit!!” He throws his cards at me. They flutter over my head like the first big raindrops.

  “Stop it, both of you, just stop it!” Wendy says.

  “You cheat, you always do this!” I say, my voice stony cold.

  Stephan can yell quite loud when he wants to, and he wants to now. “NO, I DON’T! You always say that and it isn’t true.”

  I’m shocked. This is not a simple “no” sort of event, but defiance, pure and simple. Why this causes me to launch all my missiles at once, I don’t know. I feel like I’m in a Eugene O’Neill play, me the cranky bastard of a father being usurped by his children.

  “Out. Get out. Now.”

  “No, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I WONT!!!”

  I cannot remember ever being angrier. It seems that my entire being has just been mocked, pointed at, and laughed at. By an eleven-year-old boy.

  I jump up. Stephan stands defiantly. I reach around him, enclosing his arms, and squeeze him into a tight bear hug. I lean back until his feet are off the ground. I carry him toward the stairs, ready to carry him down and put him out the door.

  Then something screams inside and I let him go. I back away from the stairs, from the abysmal darkness before me. What am I doing?

  I breathe. Silence.

  Something important has just happened, something that I know I will never forget. But whatever it was that had me, I stopped it.

  I just stand there—horrified, numb, tingling, afraid. Stephan runs down the stairs and then outside, slamming the door. Another pane of glass falls to the floor. Wendy continues to cry, and then she won’t let me hug her. She runs downstairs and out of the house.

  I experience a hollow satisfaction in finally getting my way. I am king of the house, my house, me alone.

  WHEN I AM LIVING among my species, I feel a lot like the character in the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry. Robin Williams plays an actor who, during a film shoot, begins to appear “a little soft.” The cameraman is unable to get him in focus, and the director calls it a day, telling the distressed actor, “Go home, get it together, you know, focus.” As time goes on the affliction gets worse. His wife explains to the children that “Daddy isn’t feeling very well,” and eventually the whole family puts on thick glasses that keep Daddy in focus. The glasses also happen to make the rest of the world appear blurry, the price paid for a preferred clarity.

  . . . And so I wonder about isolation and what that will do to me and my family. How much socialization is required to keep one in focus?

  • • •

  DAY 94

  Grumpy morning with yesterday’s scene floating about like the smell of rotting squid. Thanks to Stephan’s ability to apologize, and Wendy’s to smooth things over, all of our moods are okay by the afternoon. It seems I just do the asshole part, and they do the rest.

  Sometimes I thought my dad was a jerk. Now I’m the jerk. I thought I’d be different, a different kind of dad with only the good qualities of my own choosing. That’s the kind of parent I expected myself to be: a generation improved. Instead I’ve stepped off a cliff and feel like I am having a stupid argument with gravity. I remember all that my dad put up with from me, and I am so many miles away from having that kind of capacity to endure Stephan.

  It is getting colder now. The days can be brilliantly crisp, the view from our windows unlimited. We collect all the tree branches and cuttings from around where we built the dock and make a big fire on the beach at low tide. I chain-saw a small woodpile for the fishing shack, which burns wood too hot and fast in the small stove. Still, it’s somewhere I can escape to.

  DAY 95

  A big herd of great blue herons flew over the house as the sun rose this morning. Wendy almost fell off the bed looking after them. Bear watches Wendy make breakfast and his big wet drools spill out onto his fur, and then the floor.

  Today there are eleven tuna-fishing boats within sight. They fish with their lines connected to kites and then connected to live bait. Peter explains that the kites’ erratic movements entice the big fish. A few years ago one of these boats caught a thirteen-hundred-pound tuna, which, because of its quality and the market price at that moment, sold for $33,000. By noon I count thirty-eight boats.

  DAY 98

  Stephan

  Daniel set up a target for me hanging from the trees and I shot it all day. It’s awesome.

  7. Boys

  We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.

  —THOREAU

  DAY 105

  It is wonderful to see the Lise and Kathleen come bounding around the south side of the island, around three in the afternoon. Mike and Aaron show up with beer. Mike is Peter’s older brother, tough, like rawhide. He is definitely not someone you’d want to be stranded with on a deserted island. He’d be real stringy eating.

  Mike also brings some dead ducks, the currency of
a good neighbor.

  After a bit all the guys pile into the Lise and Kathleen for a ride to Mike’s nearby camp. A camp refers to a hut or shed that is 1) hard to get to, 2) where you store your lobster traps, nets, bait, and so on, 3) where your wife almost never visits—and can’t without you bringing her anyway, and 4) where you and nobody else set the standard for exactly what constitutes a clean dish.

  On the way Aaron falls overboard. He had been quiet until then, but suddenly becomes wonderfully animated. “Holy shit, goddamn! I’m fuckin’ dying here, give me a hand up, would ya?” I’ve always enjoyed how sudden and unexpected immersion brings a wonderful dose of screaming authenticity to a person.

  At the camp Mike brings out the gun and shoots with Stephan. The woodstove crackles as some duck stew boils away. Stephan drives our boat home with me mumbling suggestions from the bow.

  ALL OF THE MEN here are bound to one another through the ocean. I know we could not talk about this directly; it is too poetic and close to who we are for words. The ocean is what flows through our veins. It is that deeply in us, so unconscious and powerful. The beer and the guns are merely safe ways for us to share it with one another, get our feet wet, a convenient distraction from that which we cannot speak of. I am glad that Stephan is being exposed to this.

  DAY 106

  Sometimes I get bleary of paying attention to now, of matters that are “important,” like are Wendy and I having a fight? I reach over and put a hand on her sleeping shoulder. With groggy animation my hand is removed. So I guess we are fighting about something.