There was a notation that the Coast Guard had been notified, but there was no indication of any report back from them. There were two Coast Guard Stations near North Harbor, at Rockland and Southwest Harbor. A few calls confirmed that the matter was being handled by Rockland.
“We found some wreckage two days ago, sir,” a young Ensign told him. “We’ve calculated that it started maybe fifteen to twenty miles off North Harbor and drifted east with the wind. It was burned down to the waterline, with only parts of the hull and superstructure still standing.”
Finley frowned. “Wait, you said two days ago?”
“Yes, sir. We sent notices out to all the coastal police departments, inquiring about any ships reported missing or overdue.”
“I see.” Finley didn’t see at all, but it was something to say. “Could you please just check to see who you sent the notice to in North Harbor?”
“Certainly, sir.” There was a clatter of a keyboard. “Sir, I’ve got it here. We sent an email to Chief Corcoran at 6:13 p.m. on Tuesday.”
Huh, so Corcoran sat on it for two days. Finley couldn’t tell whether that meant anything or not. “Did you inspect the burnt-out ship?”
“Yes, sir, but you will have to speak to Commander Mello to get a copy of that report.”
Finley thought about his schedule for the next few days. “Listen, Ensign, I have to transport a prisoner to Portland later today. Could I stop by late this afternoon? I’ll need a secure room where I could leave the prisoner while I speak with Commander Mello.”
The Ensign chuckled. “No problem with that, sir. We can babysit him for a few minutes.”
“Okay, but fair warning, I could be there as late as 5 or 6 p.m. Does that work?”
This time the Ensign’s chuckle was a little rueful. “Commander Mello works long hours, sir, and as long as he’s here, I’m here.”
They hung up and Finley thought about the time schedule. If he spent an hour with the Coast Guard, he wouldn’t get to Portland until after eight. He’d be lucky to get home by midnight. He rubbed his chin in thought, then made a phone call.
______________
Calvin Finley rounded the entrance into North Harbor and headed for the docks, as fast as his little lobstering skiff would go. Right after school he had taken the She’s Mine out to collect his twenty-two pots, the amount dictated by the number of traps he could carry on the She’s Mine. Now he was going to stop at the docks and sell his catch – seventeen hard-shelled lobsters that should go for $5.23 per pound. With a little luck, he’d get $133 or so for the batch of them. Course, he’d paid almost fifty cents per trap for the herring he used as bait, plus the cost of gas for the outboard. He’d net about $100. Still, not bad for a high school kid hustling around the islands for two hours after school. Whistling to himself, he piloted the She’s Mine straight at the dock. Hot, engine screaming.
Standing on the dock, the Harbor Master stood, unmoving, arms folded, slowly shaking his head. Calvin waited until just the right moment, then spun the wheel to the right, then abruptly reversed course to the left and threw the engine into reverse. The little gasoline engine screamed in protest, but the propeller clawed determinedly at the water. As the skiff neared the heavy wooden pillars, it lurched sideways until it was parallel to the dock, then drifted to the right…and stopped a mere five inches from the ladder.
The Harbor Master stood on the dock five feet above him, gazing somberly. “Young Finley,” he said gravely, “there will come the day when you misjudge that approach and reduce that little toy boat of yours to matchsticks. And I hope I am standing here to see it.”
Calvin grinned, white teeth flashing. “Hi, Uncle Paul! Got a pretty good haul today, but I think some weather’s coming in. Late tonight or tomorrow, I’d guess. After I sell my catch, I’m going to stop by and see Pépé Dumas.”
Paul Dumas felt a twinge of guilt; he hadn’t seen his parents in a few days. He’d have to stop by on the way home. “Tell you what, I’ll send you with some lobsters and steamers. Tell them I’ll stop by after work and we can have dinner together.” Then he thought about what the boy had said and looked up at the sky. It was blue, but there was just the faintest touch of a milky haze creeping in from the northeast. Over the horizon there was a storm brewing.
Calvin followed his gaze. “Waves are startin’ to come in from two or three directions, Uncle Paul, that’s what keyed me in. Slapped me around in the skiff somethin’ fierce.”
“Yep,” the Harbor Master agreed. “I think you’re right. Wind always blows a little harder in North Harbor. Hand me up some of your catch and we’ll get you off to Cadot’s while they’re still buying.” Cadot’s was the big lobster wholesaler that bought most of the lobstermen’s catch at the “Boat Price” and sold it at a markup to retailers, grocery stores, lobster pounds and restaurants. It was part of Cadot Fisheries, which moved most of the fish and seafood caught in this part of Maine.
Calvin readily complied, then scrambled up onto the dock himself and tied off the She’s Mine. Twenty minutes later, $100 in his pocket, a cold bottle of Coke in his hand and a bag of lobsters and steamers under his arm, he was back at the skiff, waving goodbye to his uncle and turning northeast, cutting across the harbor towards his Grandfather’s dock. Pépé Dumas’ dock was handcrafted wood, built just two years ago to replace a dilapidated metal dock that had come with the house. It was a dock befitting an artist, with figurines hand carved into the support piles and the railing, gargoyles squatting moodily on top of the pilings, and an eight-foot tall wooden statue of a warrior seagull, holding a spear and a shield, guarding the ramp that led down to the dock itself.
When he reached the dock, Calvin carefully tied up his skiff, putting two extra bumpers out to protect it when the storm hit that night. Then he jumped onto the dock and walked to his Grandfather’s studio.
Luc Dumas sat in his favorite easy chair, staring intently at a twelve-foot-high block of marble that was sitting on a low car trailer. It had arrived a week earlier from a quarry high in the hills of Tuscany. The marble block was easily twenty feet long and the entire thing filled much of the workshop. Mounted on bulletin boards around the marble were a dozen black-and-white drawings of an Indian warrior on a galloping horse, spear raised high, ready to throw. On a large, flat table behind the easy chair, a variety of mallets, chisels, electric drills and saws lay in orderly rows, waiting.
Pépé Dumas looked like he stepped out of the Old Testament. Six-foot-four, he topped two hundred and fifty pounds, had a shaggy mane of white hair and an unruly beard that grew halfway down his chest. His face was weathered from thousands of hours on the ocean and served mostly as the launching pad for a large, bulbous nose, which jutted out aggressively and bespoke of Dumas’ deep appreciation for wine. His hands, though, were his most arresting feature, thick and scarred from long years of swinging a mallet and holding an iron chisel. The fingers were calloused and lumpy, covered with countless white scars, each a reminder that he did not merely create art, but wrestled it out of living rock that sometimes fought back.
Strongly built, with a jutting jaw and huge shoulders, he radiated the physical presence of a bear and was marked by one obvious flaw: a four-inch scar that shone pale white against the back of his left hand. A reminder, he told his grandson, that one should never drink and sculpt at the same time.
Everyone in North Harbor knew Luc Dumas. He had an international reputation as a sculptor specializing in very large pieces. He was a prized possession of the little fishing town, recognized on sight by everyone over the age of ten. Famous for his artistic talent, his boyish sense of joy, his drinking binges, his politeness to everyone he met, the many sculptures he had created…and for the fact that he was believed to be the richest resident of North Harbor.
And for his legendary temper. One pissed off Luc Dumas at one’s peril. One story recounted how Dumas had worked six months on a sculpture when three teenagers, drunk and hyped up on testosterone and crystal meth, broke int
o his studio and vandalized the art work. The statue was a half-finished winged Valkyrie destined for an athletic stadium in Sweden. They broke off the wings and spray-painted swastikas on the rest, apparently in the mistaken belief that Valkyries were of Jewish origin. (Calvin’s grandmother had shaken her head in disgust and muttered, “There is no cure for stupid.”)
The three young men were hangers-on of a local motorcycle gang that cruised around the central Maine coast. Pépé Dumas tracked them to a seedy bar in Belfast and, using two large rock hammers, reduced their motorcycles to scrap. When the three young men sought to intervene in this display of artistic deconstruction, he had smashed their knee caps and their collar bones and left them writhing on the pavement. The police had shown up, but when they found that all three of the men were illegally carrying pistols and heard the story of the destroyed Valkyrie, they determined on the spot that it was a clear case of self-defense. No charges were pressed. Threats were made by the motorcycle gang, but Pépé Dumas bought two shotguns, one for his studio and one for his house, and nothing more ever happened.
The Town of North Harbor could not have been prouder of its artist-in-residence.
Now the seventy-three-year-old Dumas sat in his easy chair, staring intently at the marble block. Calvin slipped in behind him and put the lobsters and steamers in the refrigerator, then sat down and waited. While he waited, he pulled out a book on Arabic and found where he had left off. There was a girl in his class, Gabrielle Poulin, and she liked to read Rumi’s poems in the original Arabic. How she had learned it, Calvin had no idea, but if she liked Rumi in the original Arabic, then he would learn enough to recite them. Languages, fortunately, came easy to him, and he never doubted that he would be able to learn this one. It was tough at first, getting his mind around the different letters used in Arabic, but he’d gotten some help and found some books and it was coming along.
After several minutes, Pépé Dumas stood up, grunting, and stretched. “Calvin, get me some wine from the counter, would you, please?”
When Calvin returned, he found his grandfather glancing over his Arabic study guide.
“Have you seen it yet, Pépé?” Calvin asked as he handed him the glass. They both knew what the “it” was. Dumas was of the firm belief that the sculpture he planned was already part of the stone, already in position. Once he “saw” its position in the stone, he could start cutting away rock, but if he cut too early, without seeing the position of the finished object, he would ruin it.
Dumas shook his head. “It’s in there, I can feel it moving around, but I can’t see it yet. Don’t know where to start.”
“It will come, Pépé,” Calvin reassured him. “It always does.”
Dumas grunted again, taking a sip of his wine. “The casino insisted on a deadline, so it’s not a question of whether I get this thing started, but if I can get it started in time.”
Before Calvin could reply, the door to the studio opened and a tall, gangly man lurched into the room, arms swinging akimbo, legs and knees unnaturally bent. Stanley “Stan-the-Man” Curtis walked unevenly across the floor, carefully dodging bulletin boards, tools and tables. He was a forty-year-old man with the mind of a six-year-old, and the neurological disaster that had ruined his mind had ruined much of his body as well.
He was one of the happiest people Calvin had ever met.
“Hi, Mr. Dumas!” he shouted excitedly. He turned, eyeing Calvin. “Hi, hi, Calvin!”
Luc Dumas stood up and formally shook Stanley’s hand. “Stanley, thank God you’re here. There is so much work to be done. But I can’t work until this place is properly cleaned up.”
Stanley laughed and nodded, his whole head bobbing up and down. “Oh, oh, I can help you, Mr. Dumas! Let me get started.” And with that he walked to the little closet in the corner and took out a broom and dustpan and began to meticulously sweep the work area.
It was the same thing – word for word – both men said every day Stanley came to the Dumas studio.
He had been coming for twenty-five years.
He couldn’t drive, of course, and walking was exhausting for him, so he rode everywhere on an adult-sized Columbia tricycle – his “Big Moose,” the love of his life – which he painted fire-engine red and polished obsessively. In the last few years, he was always accompanied by his brown and white beagle, Huckleberry, who rode in the basket with his tongue hanging out and a canine smile on his face. Jacob had once sniggered that Huckleberry was the smarter of the two. Pépé Dumas had picked Jacob up, carried him squawking and protesting to the end of the dock and tossed him into the ocean. When Jacob sputtered to the surface, Dumas had said, very softly, “Stanley would kill for half the gifts you were born with. Sometimes, Jacob, if you don’t have anything nice to say, it is best to remain silent.”
Now Huckleberry yawned, walked in a tight circle and lay down, his head on his paws, keeping one eye protectively on Stanley.
“I put some lobsters and steamers in the fridge from Uncle Paul. He said he’d try to stop by tonight,” Calvin told him. Pépé Dumas was still walking around the marble block, which was huge.
His grandfather went to the counter and poured himself another glass of red wine. “Want a small glass?” he asked Calvin, waving the bottle.
“Thank you, Pépé, yes,” Calvin replied. An offer of wine usually meant that Pépé Dumas wanted to talk for a while. It could be anything. Art, history, stories about Calvin’s mother when she was a girl growing up in North Harbor. Whatever it was, it was always worth it…and Calvin liked the wine. Dumas sat back down in his easy chair and Calvin dragged a stool over to sit near him. They sipped their wine and stared at the huge block of marble, both of them willing the Indian warrior inside to reveal himself.
“Calvin, how many languages do you know?” his Grandfather asked.
Calvin frowned. “Three, Pépé, you know that.”
His Grandfather sipped his wine. He had a fondness for California Pinot Noirs, Chilean Syrahs, French cabernets and…well, he liked wine. “English, of course, and French, of course, you learned those at your parent’s knee. And German, right?”
“German, too,” Calvin nodded.
“You take German in school?”
“No, Pépé, I taught myself because I wanted to be able to read the math journals.”
“When did you do that?” His Grandfather’s bushy eyebrows knitted together as he stared at Calvin.
Calvin squirmed. Where was this going? “I don’t know; a while ago, I guess.”
“I seem to remember getting you a book on German for Christmas when you were still in middle school,” Dumas said matter-of-factly. “So, you would have been what, twelve years old?”
“I guess.” Calvin gulped some of the wine.
“Sprichst du fließend deutsch?”
“Fluent? I wouldn’t say fluent, but I can talk to Paul Schmidt’s grandmother okay. I mean, she doesn’t laugh at me or anything, but she says I have the weirdest accent she’s ever heard.”
They both sat for a moment, contemplating German spoken with a Downeast accent.
“And now Arabic?”
“What about Arabic?” Calvin frowned.
“You’re teaching yourself Arabic, aren’t you?” Dumas gestured to the Arabic guide Calvin had been studying.
Calvin shifted in his seat. “Yeah. I mean, Mr. Waterhouse is helping me at school. He learned Arabic in the Peace Corps. He gave me some books and stuff, and Mom bought me the Babbel app.”
Pépé Dumas nodded. “Okay, why learn Arabic?”
“Well, mostly to learn how to read Rumi in the original Arabic.”
“Rumi was Persian. He wrote in Persian,” Pépé Dumas corrected him.
Calvin shrugged. “I know, but a ton of his stuff was translated into Arabic, and Gabrielle speaks Arabic a little and keeps saying how good Rumi is when you read it in Arabic, so…” his voice trailed off.
Pépé Dumas smiled broadly, delighted at this unexpected revelation. �
�Ah, now I understand. Gabrielle is a girl at school you’re…friendly with?”
Calvin grinned, a little abashed, but not giving any ground. “I’d like to be more friendly with her.”
“And you hope to impress her by learning Arabic. Perhaps so you can read her poems by Rumi?” Dumas teased.
“Well…” Now he did look embarrassed.
Dumas nodded. “So, how is the Arabic coming?”
Calvin brightened. “Oh, good, really good! Mr. Waterhouse says I’ve learned a bunch of vocabulary and syntax. We can talk together and everything.” He smiled ruefully. “But I guess my accent sorta sucks.”
Dumas tried to imagine someone reading Rumi in Arabic with a distinct Maine accent, but the image utterly defeated him. “Is this Gabrielle of yours a senior, too?”
“Yeah, she is,” Calvin said proudly. “She’ll be going to a little college outside of Philadelphia, Swarthmore. It’s a school for real eggheads.”
Dumas was impressed – Swarthmore was a school for real eggheads, one of those small treasures not very well known outside of academic circles. There was a lot more Dumas wanted to say to his grandson about college, but perhaps he had already said enough today. “Why don’t you take the lobsters and steamers up to the house, Calvin,” he told the boy. “Tell your Mémè I’ll be along shortly, I just want to make sure Stanley is all set and on his way.” Then he turned back to the block of marble.
After Calvin had collected the lobsters and steamers and left, Luc Dumas solemnly raised his wineglass in a toast. “To my grandson, who is learning Arabic so he can enchant some young lady with Rumi,” he said, then boomed with laughter. Learning to read Rumi in Arabic for a chance to get laid. Maybe there was hope for this younger generation after all.
North Harbor Page 3