Lifesaving Lessons (2 page)

Mariah was a serious kid who rarely laughed. I imagine this was due mostly to the seasickness. The only fun she seemed to have with me that season was when we retaliated for some lighthearted teasing she endured at the hands of a couple of island fishermen who enjoyed taunting her on the radio when they knew Mariah could hear them and they could see her. She had been tagged with the nickname “Pork Chop.” She detested the name—what weight-conscious adolescent girl wouldn't?—but liked the attention of the men well enough. When they spoke of a “Pork Chop sighting in Moore's Harbor,” she'd throw her hands in the air and stomp her feet, much to the delight of the men who watched her antics and then commented, bringing on the next flailing of arms and stomping. It became a ritual on our fishing days. I promised Mariah we would get back at them before the end of the season, and we did.

One day, after having been off island for a shopping trip the day before, Mariah coasted down to the dock with a rubber pork chop she'd bought at a pet store. As we hauled traps that day we saved the garbage that comes up in them that is usually discarded. On our way back to the mooring, we sneakily hauled a trap belonging to the biggest instigator of the teasing and stuffed it full of sea cucumbers, sea urchins, crabs, seaweed, even a broken pump that we found aboard the
Mattie Belle.
When we couldn't fit another piece of bycatch into the trap, we topped it with the plastic pork chop that Mariah had placed in the man's bait bag. We forced the trap closed, and it took both of us pushing as hard as we could to get it back overboard. The trap splashed, and Mariah had a look of satisfaction as she cleaned the
Mattie
Belle
all the way to the mooring. The sabotaged trap was directly in front of my house, so I was able to watch it being hauled and give Mariah a play-by-play account over the phone. It was great—we were both laughing hysterically. And that was the one and only time I heard Mariah laugh all summer.

And it was, I thought, a shame that Mariah wasn't more of a happy-go-lucky sort. There were times when I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, and tell her to look around. It was summer! All the other island kids were elated at that time of year, along with everyone else. Summer is idyllic on our island. Summers on Isle au Haut are like those you read about: romantic and fantastic. The year-rounders are out of hibernation with the exuberance of daffodils proudly pushing through newly thawed ground as if sprung from tight coils. The youngest kids, year-round and seasonal alike, scramble from tidal pool to tidal pool, delighted with shelled treasures and undaunted by wet sneakers. The time line of growing painlessly is measured from those tidal pools and periwinkles to outboard motors and mackerel. For children the island is a paradise where their safety is checked at the high-water mark with life jackets worn below and helmets above. It's a free and special existence where parents worry only about bruises and barnacle scrapes in a place that harbors no other threats to children.

Not just a paradise for kids, the island has the ability to bring out the kid in all of us. Sun-filled days end with colorful sunsets crowned by starry nights, eliciting contented sighs accompanied by goose bumps that rise in answer to the breeze cooled by its travel across Penobscot Bay. Vacationers are somehow lighter in the absence of cell phones (which rarely work here) and e-mail and responsibility. The Island Store (the only grocery game in town) is bursting at the seams all summer long with people and conversation and laughter. The absolute hub of activity, the store is quirky in its shelving of goods (baked beans next to the duck confit). An island that isn't high on regulations or standards knows nothing of exceeding legal or even practical occupancy. This is obvious not only in the store but also at Sunday service in the only church, potluck dinners at the Town Hall, dances with “island music,” or the annual pie auction where people are ridiculously happy to pay three hundred dollars for whatever Pat Marks has concocted with peaches to pay for whatever the schoolteacher has in mind for the next field trip. Seemingly responsible adults are enthusiastically and unapologetically childish in summer. Even so, the kids always come first.

The entire island took interest in each and every kid's well-being. While I had always been aware of this characteristic, it grew stronger with each day that passed while Mariah and I fished together. Friends and neighbors thanked me for giving her the opportunity to spend time with me. I thought it was odd that people would actually thank me for doing such an obviously right thing (however reluctantly I had done it). But I did appreciate the sentiment, and her uncle had been right—she was indeed a great worker. Even the summer people took notice of the beautiful young girl who seemed to be blossoming and flourishing before their eyes. I took it upon myself to urge Mariah to apply to a private boarding school on the mainland. She did, and was accepted and granted full scholarship money. The island school only goes through the eighth grade, and the option other than a boarding school is the forty-minute boat ride and twenty-minute bus trip back and forth every day to attend the closest public high school—not a good schedule for a girl who clearly craved a bit of extracurricular life. We started to think of other ways to help out. A friend split the cost of a much needed orthodontist, and Mariah was soon in full braces. When it came time for new school clothes, summer people pitched in generously. “Our” little girl was thriving and we all took great pride in sending her off to school. Nobody was prouder than Ken. He paced nervously back and forth across the deck of the mail boat while the entire island community wished Mariah well and prepared to wave good-bye to the beaming girl in the stern of the boat.

Some of us had even shed tears as we watched her step aboard the mail boat with suitcase and uncle, not to return to what had certainly become her home until Thanksgiving. When it was my turn for a hug, she had whispered, “You lied to me.” I backed up to arm's length. “I never grew to love it.”

“You'll beg me for your job back next summer,” I said smiling.

“Not a chance.”

Restless Waters

T
here is a certain look in a person's eyes when he or she says something that will never be retracted. “Never say never” is well and good, but there are exceptions. And I knew without a doubt that Mariah would
never
work in the stern of the
Mattie Belle
with me again. She had, I supposed, learned enough about the meaning of hard work to know that she wanted no part of it. That is as valuable a lesson as any for a young girl headed off to school. She was now armed with the knowledge that she did not want to be like so many island kids who know hard work to the exclusion of higher education. For some, fishing is their life's work, and love. For others, it is a rut they fall into that family ties keep them from ever climbing out of. And yet here I am, someone most people consider an anomaly—educated, and still working like an idiot, much to my nonfishing family's dismay.

All in all, I felt good bidding Mariah farewell, as I knew I had at least provided her with a real-life example of gender being a nonissue as well as the merits of finding work you can love. I do like what I do. Well, most of the time. I was in the midst of making a few changes in my life—both personally and professionally—mostly in the spirit of remaining a rolling stone. (So much for the notion of settling down.) I deeply regretted not figuring out that I wanted no part of moss gathering in the decade that I'd tried it. But that's me for you. Ten years seemed like a real mark, a decade in which a line graph would indicate a straight line, marked on either end by acute angles. I had changed my life quite dramatically ten years before when I moved to the rock longing for the stability of family from the more fluid, nearly twenty years of blue water fishing. In the period of living and breathing salt water and swordfish, I had always been accused of being irresponsible because all I owned fit nicely into a garbage bag that was easily flung from back of truck to deck of boat while my contemporaries practiced capitalism and consumerism. In the decade that I tried to fit in, accumulating all the requisite household bills and chores, I had a long-standing (if mostly long-distance) relationship with a really good guy, Simon; had built a house; and bought my own boat and fishing gear. Mortgaged to the hilt, and seemingly settled down with a nice guy, I learned that responsibility didn't hold a candle to what I had given up to try it out. Now, at the far end of the decade, I once again longed for real change, change that looked more like total irresponsibility. I knew the impetus for change was the calendar. A decade had been long enough. A decade had been ample time for Simon to propose marriage, which he had chosen to not do. We shared a fun, healthy relationship. But I wanted more. Simon is more of the “If it ain't broke, don't fix it” type. So had I wasted ten years? Wasted seemed too harsh, I thought. But I sure wish it hadn't taken so long to eliminate Simon as a possibility. Yup, my future would look different.

I would be fishing even fewer lobster traps in the future. I certainly would not have enough work to employ anyone in that business even if Mariah did an about-face and wanted to go. I had recently been purposefully navigating toward a future less about lobster and more toward other things. I would write and promote my books, get my herring-seining business up and running, and spend the fall at sea in the blue water chasing swordfish. I figured that Mariah, in time, would steer her future in some direction, and I'd hear about that through the usual island chain of communication when it happened. But for now, she had four years of high school to complete before the next big decision. She would be guided by her uncle, her guidance counselors and advisers at school, and of course her huge island family.

The island kids were all back in school—some away and some staying close to home. The summer residents all trickled off the island—those with schoolkids leaving as early as August, and retirees hanging on until Columbus Day weekend. I got thirdhand reports of Mariah's exploits at boarding school, all of which sounded absolutely normal. She was back on the island for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I ran into her both times briefly, exchanged hugs, and offered work, the latter of which she politely refused. From our short conversations, I gathered that she hadn't found her niche yet at school. She didn't have anything she was very enthusiastic about (unless boys count). I understand that endless questions of a fifteen-year-old high school freshman from so many caring adults must certainly be tedious at best, so Mariah's lack of animation was not surprising, seeing as I was likely the umpteenth person to quiz her. I continued in our few chance encounters to be upbeat about work—still being as good a role model as I could. Not that she noticed.

.   .  .

It wasn't until midwinter that I also fell into a slight funk and once again pondered whether I was on the right path. Most people my age were settled and staid, and change was the last thing on their minds. Although it may seem strange to some that I would question my what and why while gaining on the half-century mark, it may in part be a tendency that goes along with being single and childless. Think about it: I had nobody else to consider. I had too much time to dwell on myself. Teenagers do not corner that market! With Mariah long out of sight and mind, the role model was put to bed, and I was able to fully indulge in selfishness without worrying who might be influenced by my negativity. I remember well my low point.

One midwinter morning, on the shore not far from my parents' house, I found myself in quite a predicament. The float on which I had stored all my herring gear had broken free of its mooring in a storm and had been left high and dry on the rocks. Crawling on hands and knees under the float over the seaweed-covered ledges, I crouched to avoid the beam I'd found earlier. I slowly made my way to the last elliptical piece of daylight that streamed through the gap between two of the newly secured pieces of Styrofoam I had pilfered from a float even more derelict than the one I was now under and trying so hard to resurrect. Come to think of it, I had more or less borrowed without permission this entire raft onto which my herring crew and I had hastily bailed nearly four hundred fathoms of seine gear last fall. I had been in a hurry to wrap up the business of catching herring for lobster bait (or not catching, as it turned out) to jump aboard a sword boat and head east for a quick trip. I'd declared the abandoned float on the beach next to the town landing “mine,” launched it, piled it full of twine, and secured it to a summer person's mooring. Now I was paying for my haste. And now it was February. The float full of my investment had chaffed its bridle and swum with wind and current under the cover of darkness right out of the thoroughfare and onto the rocky shore below the Dices' summer cottage where the tide had left it high and dry four nights ago.

Barnacles had taken their toll on my hands. Thin, crooked lines of blood were much like reflections of the crow's-feet at the corners of my eyes that were most noticeable at 5:30 that morning when I'd rushed by the bathroom mirror in a yank to reach the shore while the tide was out. My hands were too cold to feel the sting. I imagine I looked somewhat seallike, slithering on the slippery ledges out from beneath the float on my belly. The tiniest snowflakes drifted in on the northwest breeze, adding a note of chill to the already frigid scene. A distinct, white stripe of frozen salt water ringed the shore at the high-water mark, and lily pad ice dallied on the surface of the cove north of us. The “us” I refer to wasn't the group I would have expected. My herring crew, or Omega Four, as we had named ourselves last spring when we were all so proud and excited to launch the new business, were now as scattered as the fish had been all season. Dave Hiltz and Bill Clark and his son Nate were nowhere to be found. The “us” present here now and assisting with labor and advice in this potential disaster consisted of perhaps the most unlikely group of guys to band together, even in the face of adversity. But that's the island way. Bad things happen. The results are sometimes good. Good and bad actions and what lies in their wake do a dance of fleeting and lingering here on the island. Grudges are held dear and hatchets are seldom buried. That said, there's an overlying sentiment of “love the one you're with.”

And those whom I was with right now included Howard Blatchford, fellow island fisherman, and Simon and his son Todd, who had come from their permanent homes in Vermont for a winter weekend of torching burn piles they had stacked up in the drier, unsafe burning months. Simon is the guy with whom I had been in a more or less romantic relationship over the last eight years. Little did father and son (retired orthopedic surgeon and brand-new dermatologist) know that they would end up helping me with the disaster that had been left by a particularly high tide. Whether Simon and Todd had come to offer assistance out of loyalty or pity, I wasn't sure. My uncertainty about my future with Simon was on my mind, but my current time of need was hardly the moment to sever my relationship with him, I reasoned with myself.

Howard extended a calloused hand to help me to my feet. I stretched out straight, both hands on my lower back, and groaned a little. “I don't know what more we can do. That's all the Styrofoam,” I said to the three men who shifted uneasily on weed-covered rocks and looked as cold as I felt. “I'll wait for the tide to come in and see if she floats.”

“It went ashore on a nine-point-six tide, and this afternoon is just a nine-footer,” Howard said softly, almost apologetically, as if he were embarrassed to have to tell me what the tide was doing. “Friday morning, eight-thirty. We'll have eleven feet. The moon, well, you know.” He diverted his eyes to the toes of his boots as his voice trailed off. The fact that he had a graying, kinked ponytail protruding from beneath his wool watch cap bothered me. I don't know why.

“I hope it doesn't take until Friday. I'm worried sick that this rickety, old float will break apart and leave the Dices with a lawn ornament,” I said, nearly praying and not mentioning my financial investment that would be a total loss if the raft collapsed or was beaten to pieces in the surf should a storm come along. I also had in mind the monumental sweat equity of the other 75 percent of Omega Four when I decided to remain on the beach and keep a fretful watch while the three men who had been here to help left to do other things, promising to return at high tide. Simon and Todd's presence, and help, made me feel even gloomier as it amplified the fact that I had no such relationship of my own, and that I had been in this seemingly go-nowhere romance forever, and now felt that I was using Simon. I had, I reasoned, agreed to feed the men all weekend. But somehow “Will work for food” not being on the doctors' agendas made me feel a little sleazy. As already stated, my disposition was unusually down, allowing me to wallow in selfish thoughts of how desperate my situation was both personally and professionally in the immediate predicament in spite of the fact that if I had examined my life at all, I would have noticed that I had little to complain about. So I would focus on how the float teetering on the brink of disaster might be a microcosm for my life in general. When friends had voiced similar complaints, I hadn't had much patience and always advised that they change something. “You are solely responsible for your own happiness” was something I needn't hear now in echo.

Two trucks started on the hill behind me—Simon and Todd in one, and Howard in the other. I never turned to wave good-bye or to thank them, but instead stood staring at the incoming tide as it teasingly lapped the lower corner of the stranded float. As soon as the noise of the trucks had dissipated to a distance that I knew would prohibit the men from seeing me, I made my way to a perfect and natural seat in the ledges and sat sheltered from the nipping breeze. Soon the sun poked through the clouds still spitting light snow and lent enough warmth to penetrate the layers of oilskins, sweater, and wool shirt I had carefully chosen this morning knowing that I had a long day ahead of me. Waiting for the tide to rise or fall, which is something islanders spend a lot of time doing, is much like watching the proverbial pot that never boils. But today I didn't mind this seemingly do-nothing time as I managed to convince myself that I was actually engaged in the activity of figuring things out. Not that I expected any real revelations in the next two hours. But the truth was, I hadn't taken much time to just sit and think lately—about the stuck float and about a lot of other things in my life that seemed to be stuck, too.

My first thoughts were about the actual situation at hand. What if Howard was right, and the tide wouldn't rise to a height that would float my gear off these ledges until Friday? This was only Sunday. What were the chances of the float's holding together through five more days and nights of rising and falling and surging up and down, on and off this unforgiving, rocky shore? The ledges in this particular area were steep and jagged. The float had landed on a sharp, peaked ledge that was now gnawing through a major cross member that if broken would be the end of any hope of recovering my seine gear. When the raft half floated, it looked good. When it was hard aground, it appeared to be bent in the middle and threatening to snap in two. A tiny voice deep in my mind whispered, “That might be a blessing in disguise.” Stifling the voice, I went back to figuring a way out of this, short of giving up and letting nature run its course, which is how my gear ended up here in the first place. Or, at least, that was the story I was buying as opposed to the conspiracy theory that rumbled through the island's rumor mill. Winter is rough out here, I knew. But who would be bored or hateful enough to sabotage me?

Even at high tide there wasn't enough depth of water to pull a boat alongside the offshore edge of the float in an attempt to rescue the netting or twine from it. The twine itself—I couldn't venture a guess at how much it weighed. Four hundred fathoms long, ten fathoms deep, with a leaded line on the bottom edge and corks to float the top edge, allowing the net to hang vertically in the water like a fence—just the twenty-four thousand square feet of webbing was enough to squat the float low into the water prior to hitting the beach. Half of my gear was configured into a purse seine, which has big brass rings along the bottom through which a rope or purse line runs that can be cinched to gather the bottom of the net together to capture whatever fish are encircled. The purse also sports extra-heavy mesh on the bunting end to reinforce the twine when a great weight of fish is lifted through the water. It was quite a mountain of gear, for sure. And right now the inexperienced eye might describe it as a mess. But it was actually quite organized with the end of the top piece of twine clearly marked for ease of loading into dories (double-ended, nonpowered boats designed to carry fishing gear). If the float broke apart, there would be no ease of anything. I hoped the extra Styrofoam flotation we had just spent hours securing under and all around the bottom lip of the deck would add enough buoyancy to the raft to allow it to be pulled off the rocks. At this point, scuttling the whole works would be more of an embarrassment than any significant loss. But I had to admit that this herring adventure, not unlike many of my bright, salty ideas, had been a bust. Just because you call yourself a fisherman doesn't mean you catch fish. Not a natural at anything, like everything else in my experience, I had a fairly flat learning curve for herring seining.