Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn

by Paul Watkins

  To avoid infection in my mouth, I gargled with the iodine, careful not to swallow. It stained my lips yellow and left behind a taste of steel.

  Sometimes I bit down in my sleep and woke up fast and in pain.

  It was the sharpest and the worst pain I had ever felt. As long as I didn’t bite down, there was barely any discomfort. But I felt tired all the time, and was miserable whenever I ran my tongue over the wreckage of my teeth.

  By the third haul-back on each watch, I was exhausted. Sometimes I fell over after knocking out the pelican clips. The force of the hammer swing carried me off my feet and set me down hard on the deck.

  Then Kelley or Howard would move to help, but I always made sure I was standing before they reached me.

  Once as I swung the hammer against a pin, the hammer sailed up over my head and into the water. I stood looking at my empty hands.

  Kelley grabbed a spare hammer from the tool chest and gave it to me without a word.

  We stayed out another seven days, and might have stayed out longer if the dredges hadn’t started flipping. They turned upside down before reaching the sea floor and dragged along, catching nothing.

  The first couple of times, Gil yelled at me. He climbed down on deck and shook his fist in my face, saying he didn’t make allowances for the dredges flipping no matter how bad I felt.

  I watched bug-eyed and panicked as each dredge climbed from the water, trying to make out whether the dredge bag was empty.

  Gil told me I didn’t knock out the pins on time.

  I became so tired from worry and the ache in my jaw that I could barely stand.

  Gil stamped across the deck as another flipped dredge came on board. He snatched the hammer from me and knocked out the next set of pins by himself. Then he drew the hammer down and stamped away again.

  When we hauled back an hour later, I was praying for the dredges to be flipped.

  I cackled when a dredge bag rose empty from the water.

  Now he couldn’t say it was my fault. I shuffled over to my block of whalebone and sat down, grateful for the rest the flipped dredge would bring us. I had stopped caring about money. I only wanted to sleep and have my teeth fixed.

  Gil decided it must be Kelley and Howard’s fault for letting the cables pay out too fast. ‘I’ll show you!’ He jerked his head at each of us in turn. ‘Do I have to run this ship by myself?’

  But the dredges flipped again.

  Gil went purple in the face. He swung himself back and forth on the ladder which led up to the bridge. ‘God damn it to hell! Aaaaraafuck!’

  It became impossible to sit at the galley table when Gil was there. If any of us said anything, he told us to shut up. If we stayed silent, he sighed and tapped his spoon on the table, then asked in a loud voice if we were keeping secrets from him.

  The three of us hunched over our scallop pen, cutting out a few baskets of shells that came up in a dredge that somehow didn’t flip.

  Out of instinct I looked up.

  Gil stood close by.

  He raised his head from staring at his shoes. His face looked blotchy. ‘Did one of you jinx my boat?’

  Kelley set down his scallop knife. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Oh.’ Gil breathed out for a long time. ‘You know. Said something to jinx the boat. Did something, maybe. There’s things a person can do. You got to tell me if you did. I won’t be mad.’ He chopped the air with his hand, cutting down the thought of being angry that we might have jinxed his boat.

  ‘We wouldn’t do a thing like that, Gil.’ Howard looked over at his pile of old boots, stacked neatly by the stern.

  I could tell Howard was wondering for a moment whether to believe what Kelley said about how a person could do only bad luck things on a boat.

  ‘I just had to be sure.’ Gil looked down at his shoes again. ‘I had it on my mind.’ Then he shuffled back up to the wheelhouse. His head shuddered now and then, as if a strange electric charge was running through him.

  As I lay in my bunk trying to sleep, a picture of the dredge, like a photographic negative, swung out of the dark of my closed eyes.

  It seemed only a matter of time before the thing nailed me again.

  I moved more cautiously around the machinery now, unable to work as quickly as before.

  Kelley and Howard were losing patience with me. Gil stayed in the wheelhouse sulking at his bad luck.

  That afternoon, I moved like a drunk from one end of the deck to the other, hooking and unhooking the dredges.

  A shadow appeared over my head. Kelley. He held me by the shoulders, an angry look on his face, and shoved me over toward the ice hatch. ‘I’ll do it. You quit farting around and sit there for a while.’

  ‘I can work.’

  He turned his back and spoke facing away from me. ‘Well, then work decently. None of this pussying around like you never handled a dredge before.’ Then he called for Howard to run the winches and began hooking up both dredges by himself.

  He set the port side working as fast as he could, and as he moved across to the starboard dredge, he glanced at me to see if I was watching how quickly he worked.

  He fixed the winch hook in the bull ring and stepped back, slapping dirt off his hands.

  Howard raised the dredge.

  Then suddenly the hook popped out and swung back.

  It struck Kelley in the head just as he reached the stern, ready to knock out the pins when Gil gave the word.

  The hook wasn’t sharp but it was big and heavy. Added to that was the weight of the cable.

  Kelley cried out once and tripped back, arms raised, out through the gap at the back of our deck.

  He disappeared into the boil of the props.

  I ran across to the dredge, stood on it and looked over the side. ‘Kelley?’ I said very quietly. Then I dived over the side.

  Only when I was in the air did I become afraid of the sharks, and realise that Kelley had probably been sucked into the propellers which would mean there was no point in trying to save him.

  I began to yell and continued yelling when I hit the waves, the scream filling my mouth with salt water.

  The sea was warm on the top but cool and dark at the depth of my dive.

  I rose to the surface still howling, spat water from my mouth and looked around for Kelley.

  The hull of the Grey Ghost looked vast as it heaved up in my face. Rust stains trickled from the scuppers. The rigging rose up tall and black like a dead tree.

  Then it was past me and the gasoline-tasting wake butted me away in a series of waves growing smaller.

  I kicked off my boots and wriggled out of my oilers.

  I caught sight of Howard climbing the ladder to the bridge. He disappeared into the wheelhouse.

  Gil ran out onto the bridge and pointed at me.

  I shivered, feeling my legs dangle down in the cool water beneath the surface. I waited for the grey shapes to rise up and pull me down.

  Then I saw Kelley off to one side, screaming and thrashing. I swam to him, slow moving and heavy in my jeans, the plastic bread bags I’d been using for socks still clinging to my feet.

  Kelley punched at the water, trying to stay afloat.

  ‘Take off your boots and your oilers!’ I treaded water in front of him.

  He stopped thrashing suddenly and looked at me. He seemed surprised that I was there. A gash ran half the length of his forehead at the hairline. It bled and the sea washed it clean and it bled again.

  I waved to him, spitting out another mouthful of water. He sank under the next wave.

  I swam to where I’d last seen him, getting ready to dive. In the distance I heard the boat’s engines change pitch as it wheeled around.

  Kelley popped up right in front of me, still screaming and thrashing.

  I thought he was a shark.

  He grabbed hold of my neck and bellowed for me to save him. We sank under and he started trying to climb on top of me as if I were some kind of raft. His boots were gone but he
still wallowed in his oilers. I tried to get loose but he wouldn’t let go, so I bit him on the hand.

  I choked for my breath, swimming a few strokes away from him.

  ‘Don’t leave me!’ His eyes were open wide.

  I had a pressure in my throat from swallowing too much water. ‘If you don’t calm down, you’re going to drown and I’m going to let you!’

  ‘I don’t think I can swim!’

  ‘Well, either you can or you can’t. If you took your oilers off, you’d be all right.’

  ‘Save me, Pfeif!’ His face was crumpled and afraid.

  I tried to hold his head above water so he could breathe. The only way I could keep him from thrashing was by saying I’d let go if he didn’t stay calm.

  The Grey Ghost idled as it pulled near. The whole crew stood on deck. They threw me a rope that had been tied in a loop at the end. When I tried to get it around Kelley’s waist, he panicked again and shoved me under, yelling that the sharks were here.

  I came up spluttering and shaking. I pounded on his head a few times to settle him down, then slipped the rope around his waist. Pittsley winched him on deck. In the air, he looked like an inflated balloon in the shape of a man, the kind used in parades.

  In the last seconds of waiting, I was most afraid, feeling what I thought were the bodies of fish brushing past my legs.

  I held on to the hook and it lifted me from the water, straining the muscles in my arms. For a moment, as I dangled above the boat, I looked down on the crew as they tended to Kelley. Water dripped from my jeans onto their backs. I settled my feet on the warm iron deck.

  Franklin tore apart a scallop bag and used it as a bandage for Kelley’s head.

  Kelley breathed in a way that I knew he was crying, even though his face didn’t show it.

  Gil didn’t seem angry. He said we might as well go into port before the whole idiot pack of us killed ourselves.

  Kelley sat on the floor of the bunk room, clumsily trying to pull off his shirt. He looked like a clown in his scallop bag hat.

  He made a few more swipes at the buttons on his shirt, then burst into tears.

  I sat on my bunk and pretended not to see him cry.

  He said he owed me and he’d pay me back. He leaned over and tried to hug me, but I pushed him away. ‘It was only a stupid thing, Kelley. It’s not something to be crying about in front of everybody.’

  ‘I owe you, Pfeif. I’ll make it up to you for saving me.’

  ‘If you hadn’t freaked, you wouldn’t have needed saving.’

  He cried for a while longer, then crawled into his bunk still wet, and fell asleep.

  I climbed up to the bow and sat in the late afternoon sun.

  Franklin came out with a bowl of chocolate pudding and whipped cream. He said it was Gil’s private stock and Gil wanted me to have some.

  Gil nodded to me from the wheelhouse where he sat in his chair.

  I tried to enjoy the pudding and the time of sitting on the bow as we rode home, but it was spoiled by the thought of Kelley panicked and crying. I never wanted to see him that way.

  Eleven

  The doctor opened my mouth and said, ‘Jesus.’

  I had gone to the Newport General Hospital as Soon as we reached land. The nurse there said the wound on my chin was already starting to heal. There’d be no sense in cutting it open again in order to try and make the scar any smaller.

  The doctor felt along the rim of my jaw to see if the bone was broken. He told me there didn’t seem to be any infection and that the bone appeared only to be dented. ‘Like a piece of wood!’ He chopped the edge of one hand into the palm of his other. Then he handed me a small tube of antibacterial cream and walked out.

  I sat in the little examining room, looking at glass jars of tongue depressors and long sticks with cotton swabs at the end. On the wall was a diagram of a man’s body with the flesh peeled away, showing the twine of muscles around his bones. He stood with his weight shifted on to one hip, hands open as if waiting for an explanation for why someone had torn off his flesh.

  When the doctor didn’t return, I swung back the curtain and walked across to a nurse. I asked her the name of a good dentist in town and she looked surprised that I was still waiting around. ‘Try Dr Bailey up on Bellvue. I go to him. He’ll fix you right up.’

  So I nodded and smiled and left.

  I checked the balance in my savings account at the bank on my way up to Bellvue. Then I called Dr Bailey’s office from a phone booth. His assistant said to come right over.

  I sat for a while in the waiting room reading the cover of a magazine. The inside part had been taken out. I stared at the cover so as not to have to watch other people in the room. Their eyes shifted back and forth, twisting painfully around in their sockets, spying on whoever sat next to them.

  A girl about my age walked into the room and said, ‘James!’ She wore a stiff white dress with white stockings and shoes. From the way she spoke, I thought for a moment she might be an old friend whose face I had forgotten.

  Dr Bailey had a crew cut and big hands.

  I didn’t think a dentist could work with hands that big.

  After looking at the damage, he whispered to the girl and she left.

  I peered at her as she walked out, still not sure whether I’d seen her before.

  ‘She’s pretty, isn’t she!’ He sat on a padded stool next to my chair.

  The pressure and taste of his fingers in my mouth remained. I started to speak and he cut me off.

  ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘I thought maybe I knew her from someplace.’

  The girl came back with a tray. We didn’t speak of her again. The doctor lowered my chair and turned on an overhead light, which blinded me. He injected the roof of my mouth. Bitter liquid poured down the sides of my tongue. Then he injected me in the gums and in my cheek.

  He said I had damaged five teeth. All of them would require surgery.

  He said he’d work on them now or I wouldn’t be able to eat.

  I didn’t tell him they had been this way almost a week already.

  With two of the teeth, he said, it was possible I had cracked them all the way up to the jawbone, and they would require root canals. He asked me how I did it and I told him.

  ‘I’ve worked on fishermen before, but never any as young as you. How’s your insurance? Does it cover this? Where are your parents?’

  My mouth felt heavy, as if my cheeks had turned to canvas. I told him it was my responsibility to pay for the damage. I said there was no insurance. I had gone out to sea against my parents’ wishes and would not be asking them to bail me out.

  I made up my mind about this when I was still at sea. It didn’t seem right that they should pay. If I asked my father for help, I knew he’d change his mind about letting me work on a boat. Then my mother would use his change of mood to try and talk me out of it again.

  I reached for the wallet in my back pocket, ready to tell Dr Bailey the balance in my bank account.

  He set his hand on my shoulder. The overhead light made his spiked hair shine like copper wire. ‘I’ll get you a figure soon enough on what this will cost. It has to be done in several stages, anyway, which spreads out the expense. But you should know that it will be several thousand dollars.’

  I imagined myself rising up from the novocaine slump, grabbing him by his sterilised shirt and yelling, ‘What the hell are you talking about? Franklin told me fifty bucks!’

  But I stayed slumped in the chair. The numbness stretched my face out of shape and left me floating in bubbles.

  I had the strange and ugly feeling of being dependent, as if I would be coming back here for the rest of my life while he slowly put me together again.

  I vaguely felt the scrape of bone on broken bone as he took hold of a tooth and snapped it in half.

  Then things became even more vague as he rattled around my gums with stainless steel spikes, breaking off chips of tooth and clicking his tongue.


  By the time he got to the root canal, I barely knew what was happening. I felt heat and something rubber in my mouth and a suction pipe the assistant used to drain my spit.

  I fell away into darkness inside me, walked up and down grey corridors in my head, realising that by the time I’d paid for the damage, the money I’d earned on the boats so far would be gone.

  The picture of my lobster-boat went blank. I thought about the energy I’d stored away, like rations, for the difficult time of getting started. It was energy built into walls against the criticism I knew would keep trickling in from people until I had succeeded, until the same people would suddenly no longer criticise and would act as if they’d always been behind me. All of it shot out of focus and seemed suddenly unreachable as I lay in the chair hearing the dentist pick at my teeth.

  It took all afternoon.

  When it was over, Dr Bailey said he had put in some temporary fillings. I could eat and drink what I wanted, except things like peanut brittle and extremely hot or cold liquids. ‘You’ll have to come back and get the temporaries removed. Then I’ll grind down the original teeth into little pegs.’ He held a tiny space between his thumb and index finger to show how small the pegs would be. ‘These will be anchors for the permanent caps. I estimate a total cost of twenty-five hundred dollars. Are you sure you don’t want to get in touch with your parents about this?’

  ‘No. No, thank you.’ The blur of words still pushed clumsily from my mouth. ‘Thanks for seeing to me right away.’

  I took a room at the Y, not yet ready to go home. I wanted to wait until the anaesthetic wore off and I no longer smelled of chemicals. Since the damage was all at the back of my mouth and didn’t show, I decided not to tell my parents about it.

  In the same room as before, I opened my window and sat on the bed. Then I pulled the blanket over my head and thought about having no money.