Two and a half miles directly offshore from our cottage in Eastham, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, lies Billingsgate Shoal. It appears on nautical charts in a color between that of either land or sea. This is because Billingsgate is a sunken island and is visible only briefly, in all its soggy splendor, twice a day at tide's farthest ebb.
The body of water that surrounds the island in this corner of Cape Cod Bay is called Billingsgate Sound, and stretches around the sunken island from Eastham on the south to the entrance of Wellfleet Harbor on the north. The sound is a bank rich in mollusks, especially the large marine clam called quahog, which is excellent in chowder, and the small, delicate, and tasty bay scallop (not to be confused with its larger cousin and sea scallop). Besides the proper conditions to promote the growth of these mollusks, Billingsgate Sound also has a large number of spider crabs, which dine almost exclusively on starfish. Since the starfish is the primary predator of the mollusks, one can see, by following the steps of this rude syllogism, that there must be fewer starfish here and (ergo) more mollusks. This is so.
At high water the small bay trawlers, dozens of them, can be seen in the distance, crawling across the water hauling their big metal chain-link drags on the ocean floor behind them. Sometimes the wind shifts, bringing with it the faint growl and whine of their diesels. Another constant sound is the hoot of the groaner buoy at the foot of Billingsgate. It goes hoooo-ooooot! every fifteen seconds, round the clock, and is saying keep away…
To the south, on the horizon in a direct line between our cottage and the village of West Brewster, lies the wreck of the James Longstreet. It was wrecked there deliberately by the United States government. This old Liberty Ship from the Second World War was towed in and sunk in the shallow water to be used as a target for the navy and air force. Planes dive at it, pelting the ancient concrete hulk with cannon and rocket fire. It is said that the Longstreet is "a bunch of holes held together by their rims." It's an apt description. The derelict ship sits immobile, ruined, on the horizon.
Our cottage is situated on a bluff overlooking Billingsgate Sound. At low tide it is a place of frightening vastness, haunting noises, and optical tricks. No trees. Low sand hills. Miles and miles of marsh grass and water weed. And most desolate of all are the endless sand flats that grow for miles in the slow wake of the receding tides. These are absolutely flat and barren. People walk out on these vast stretches of damp sand. Some carry odd-shaped bent garden forks-these to dig out the quahogs, razor clams, and bay scallops. You could live off these flats with no problem whatsoever; the only thing not provided is the chilled chablis.
But most of the people aren't diggers-they're beachcombers, people on vacation who wander out to see what there is to find. From a mile away they look like moving specks. Tall, dark, slow-moving lines are adults. Short specks that dawdle, or run on winking legs, are children. Sometimes you can see low specks that travel with incredible speed, and leap into the air. The faint barking tells you they are dogs. Occasionally the wind will bring the sound of laughter, or a mother calling a child, from miles away. And it is weird, even unsettling, to hear the voices and laughter clearly, coming from these tiny dots that move slowly to and fro on the shimmering sand far, far away.
It is quiet when the tide is out. Gone is the crump and hiss of breaking waves. The gulls don't shriek overhead; they are out on the flats, waddling around officiously pausing, pecking, squabbling, and gobbling up the tiny hermit crabs-no bigger than garden spiders-that scamper in the shallow tide pools.
"Looming" is what Melville called it, an optical phenomenon caused by thermal inversions in the atmosphere. These thermal inversions have the effect of layering the air, and these layers, like the elements of a lens, cause light waves to bend, allowing objects beyond the horizon to seem to be visible. The object floats high over the horizon upside down and shimmers ghostlike in the dancing air currents. It happens a lot in our corner of the bay.
The far-off sounds, the wrecked ship, the ghostly and desolate flats-all of these add to the general feeling of the place. And if a vacation is a change, then Sunken Meadow Beach overlooking Billingsgate Sound is a vacation indeed from the pine forests, hills, and thick meadows of Concord.
One morning in late summer I got up a bit too early. Three hours too early. It was getting to be a habit. I couldn't sleep. Moe Abramson, my colleague, said it was only a midlife reshuffling of values and not to worry. He gave me pills to help my depression and insomnia. Mary said it was because I'm an idealist and dreamer, and wanted everything to be perfect. She gave me loving and scolding to help my depression and insomnia.
Gee, I had lots of help.
It wasn't working.
Every night for three weeks I had risen between three and four A.M. Not rested. I had awakened exhausted and irritable. The month-long vacation was supposed to cure all this.
It didn't. It seemed to intensify it. Mary, my short-suffering wife, wasn't about to put up with much more of my Weltschmerz.
"Shape up or take a hike, pal," was her comment.
Who could blame her?
So there I was at five A.M., out on the deck of our cottage gazing off over Cape Cod Bay. The tide was out; I was looking mostly at the immense expanse of tidal flats. It was so early all things were dim and blurry. Most of what I looked at was full of the fuzzy little specks of nighttime vision. I was I still half asleep. or was I asleep-fina1ly-and dreaming this? No. I was awake. I'd almost forgotten what sleep felt like. I sat and propped my feet up on the railing and stared at the vast gray emptiness before me. I waited an hour. I could either take a downer and return to the sack or have coffee and make it another early day. I decided on the coffee. When it was perking I heard the bedroom door open and Many came out in her robe. She comes to coffee like a buzzard to a bloated carcass. She can see and smell it-sense it-a mile. away.
She sat down next to me with her mug and drew the robe tight around her. In the semi-darkness she looked very dark, like a black woman. When a Calabrian spends three weeks on the beach the results are awesome.
"Again huh?"
"Uh huh."
There was a slow sigh.
"How far did you run `yesterday?"
"Seven miles."
"And you took two sauna baths. You had a split of wine with a big dinner. And you can't sleep?"
"I think the running makes you sleep less. You sleep harder or something. But that's not it. Basically, toots, I don't want to be who I am."
She absorbed this minor detail in silence.
"You what?"
"I don't want to be Dr. Charles Adams, tooth-puller."
"I'm so worried about you lately, Charlie. We thought the month down here would help you, but I think it's made things worse."
"I think you're right. And now I'm beginning to see what the problem really is."
"What?" She looked at me, searching for a ray of hope.
"Boredom. It's what you've been saying, Mary: we've got it. We've done it. So what do we do now? I think what set this whole depression off was a line I read in John Berryman's Dream Songs."
"Who? What? Never heard of him."
"John Berryman was an alcoholic poet who ended his life by doing a swan dive off a bridge at the University of Minnesota and blasting himself to pieces on the rocks a hundred feet below."
"Oh that John Berryman. Christ, no wonder you're depressed."
"No. His death was the good part. The 'funsies' at the end. It's the words he wrote, a line from Dream Songs that's got me down. It's got me down because it's so damn true."
"And the line is'?"
" 'Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.' "
Another silence.
"That's it?"
"Yep."
"Well, Charlie, I think you should go and see Moe Abramson on a regular basis."
"Nah. I already asked him about therapy and he said I don't need it. But I'll tell you, this vacation has done me no good and I don't want to return to my practice. I don't seem to want to do anything, including sleep. It's all boring, Mary. BORING!"
She snuggled her fanny down on my lap and put her arms around my neck. Thank God for her at least-
"What about Betsy Kelly?"
I luxuriated in the thought of Betsy Kelly (which is not her real name). If I want anything on my tombstone (and I suppose I'm bound to have one-another discouraging thought), it's the fact that I performed a four-hour operation on a girl that changed her appearance, personality, and her whole life.
Betsy Kelly was born, poor thing, with a prognathic jaw so pronounced it made her look like a cross between a bulldog and Tyrannosaurus Rex. Needless to say, she wasn't pretty. But four hours under the knife, bone saw, chisel, and mallet had made her emerge looking not only normal, but almost pretty. Her parents cried and wrung my hands for three hours. That wasn't pulling teeth.
"If all my patients were Betsy Kellys I'd be the happiest person on earth."
"But you're not."
"No. I'm dissatisfied and bored."
"Look: you can't keep being a dropout, Charlie. You left medicine after two years-"
"When Peter died."
"When Peter died. Then you settled on dentistry."
"That was really boring-"
"Fine. Then you compromised on oral surgery, a profession that combined medicine, surgery, and dentistry. You're good at it. You've provided for us well with it, you-What are you staring at?"
"There's something out on Billingsgate. A dark blob. See it?"
"Uh huh. But what I'm driving at is, that's two dropouts in your life, Charlie. You can't do it again. You're almost fifty. Especially when you're so good-"
"It looks small from here. But of course-it's over two miles away. It's not a tent or trailer. It's gotta be a boat-"
"I think Moe can have you squared away in no time. And I think you should read Passages. It explains a lot about these midlife crises."
"Yeah. It's a boat. Aground out there on the. sand."
"You know Moe really thinks you're very talented-"
"But why did they run her aground? Maybe they just want to get her hull up out of the water to work on it-"
"Maybe just a couple of talks with Moe… maybe he could make a few concrete suggestions?
I left the deck and retrieved my aluminum camera case from the inner depths of our bedroom closet. I keep it hidden there under piles of dirty clothes in hopes that thieves, if any, I will overlook it. I took out the Canon F-l, a 500-millimeter lens, and grabbed my tripod. I returned to the sundeck and rigged up the equipment. What I now had, besides a camera, was a telescope of sorts. Viewing through the camera I could get a close look at the boat wedged up against the toe of Billingsgate Shoal.
"Will you see Moe or not?" Mary demanded, taking little interest in the proceedings.
"Sure I'll see Moe. I always see Moe; his office is two doors down from mine, remember? Except that if I let him even think for a second it's professional the Shylock will take me for every cent we've got."
She sat back down in the chair.
"I'm assuming," she said with a deep frown, "that's meant in irony."
"Of course. The dope gives away more than he earns, and he earns plenty, believe me. The jerk doesn't even buy himself a house. Do you know that that Airstream he lives in was built in nineteen fifty-seven? Can you believe it? One of New England's finest shrinks living in a beat up old trailer in Walden Breezes Park? But you know what they say about psychiatrists: they're all nuts-"
It was low tide; the sand flats were extended to their maximum length. Billingsgate was barely visible as a low patch of tan on the horizon. I aimed the huge lens at the distant speck on the tan patch. Long lenses, even on a heavy tripod, exaggerate camera motion and cause the viewed image to shake and dance about. I draped a sand-filled sock over the end of the lens to reduce this tendency and brought the long tube into focus. I peered through the eyepiece and made the necessary adjustments. The wavy blob of green became clear and crisp. I viewed the trawler as if I were a few hundred yards away instead of on the deck of our beach cottage over two miles away. The conditions could hardly have been better. There was low cloud cover. A sky of stratocumulus clouds rolled away endlessly into the distance, like an inverted ocean. The light shone through these clouds with various stages of intensity, giving the sky a metallic, galvanized look like crumpled lead foil or hammered zinc. But as is often the case with this kind of sky cover (which usually means nasty weather coming), the level visibility was superb, causing objects on the horizontal plane to appear clearer, closer than they ordinarily would. I don't know why this is so, but it is. I could now see the stranded vessel with amazing clarity.
Naturally, I assumed the grounding had been unintentional. Had she lost power in the ebbing tide and been stranded? Was her skipper foolishly trawling near Billingsgate as the tide fell and ran her aground? Either one did not seem plausible; the weather had not been bad and all the local skippers knew about Billingsgate and the tricky Wellfleet channel in general. Didn't he have a chart?
Two men were walking around the boat. They looked calm. Of course they were in no danger. They could even have walked to Wellfleet via Jeremy Point and Great Island less than an hour if they wished. A third man appeared on deck. He was lugging at something heavy. Soon afterward he threw something over the side: a sledgehammer. One of the men on the sand picked it up and swung it low underhanded at the boat's hull. I could hear the rhythmic deep booming from across the sand flats. It sounded like a muted timpani when the wind was right. Clearly they were making some kind of repair to the hull, however crude.
Perhaps they had grounded the boat deliberately by anchoring her over the shoal in high water, then letting the ebbing tide strand her. This would be less expensive than having the vessel hauled out on a donkey. It would be the sensible, thrifty thing to do (in true Yankee fashion), if the repair was it minor.
I was losing interest in the whole project when I noticed one of the men return to the deck and enter the wheelhouse, only to re-emerge immediately with binoculars. He stationed himself behind the bows and swept the glasses to and fro. Since the early morning sun was directly behind me, I could see its reflection off the lenses as they swept by me. Now why were they doing that? Perhaps they were in difficulty after all and needed help. I stood up on the picnic table and waved my arms slowly, as a sign I'd seen them. But in all likelihood I was invisible-hidden in the rising sun as a fighter pilot is hidden when he dives out of the sun at the enemy plane below.
It grew warmer gradually. We sat on the deck and chatted and sipped coffee and watched the green boat on the sand. The faint sheen of distant water puddles that were growing ever larger told us the tide was beginning to ooze back in. Whatever those guys out there were doing, they'd better hurry; they didn't have a lot of time left. It was now after eight o'clock.
"Should we call the Coast Guard'?" she asked.
"I'll try to get their attention."
"From here? You'll look smaller than a gnat to them-"
I dragged the big beach umbrella up onto the deck and I opened it. Its panels alternated blue and yellow. Mary sat at the camera-telescope and sipped coffee while I got back up on the picnic table and waved the huge contraption back and forth like a semaphore.
"Well? Any reaction'?"
She said no, but to keep trying. Our cottage, fatuously named The Breakers after the elegant Newport mansion, sits atop a solitary steep bluff. It is the highest cottage around. Therefore, perched as I was atop the table on the deck, I was I above the horizon. After twenty seconds of signaling, Mary said the man in the bow had apparently seen me.
"He's calling the other guys, Charlie. The other men are climbing up on the deck to have a look too. Keep waving."
So I did.
"Now they're kind of scurrying around. One guy's raising his hands up and down. I think they're arguing, Charlie."
I dropped the umbrella and had a look. The deck was deserted. I said I was going to call the Coast Guard, but Mary suggested we wait because they had made no attempt to signal us back. I sat a while and watched the boat. There seemed to be no sense of alarm aboard her. Just the same, I phoned the Nauset station and said there was a stranded fishing vessel perched on the southernmost tip of Billingsgate Shoal, and that there was no apparent danger.
"Is the vessel damaged?"
"Can't see from this distance. But they're pounding on the hull with a hammer."
"Could be a repair;. we've got nothing on the distress frequency."
"The same thought occurred to me. Just thought I'd report."
"Thank you. Your name, sir?"
"Dr. Charles Adams, North Eastham."
Not long after I'd hung up, the phone rang.
"Who could that be?" asked Mary.
"The only person I know who would have the bad taste to call this early is Moe," I said.
I picked up the phone.
"Hi, it's Moe."
"Figured."
"Just thought I'd phone to see how you're getting along, Doc."
"Not so good."
"Still can't sleep?"
"Nope. Think I need to be shrunk, Moe?"
"No. You're definitely not psychotic and I don't think you're neurotic either. You're just a bit… uh… off the track is all."
"Off the track? What's that?"
"I see it a lot in our age group. Career doubts. Life doubts. Excessive self-analysis, self-pity, self-doubt. Self-obsession."
"My symptoms exactly."
"Well listen: get outside yourself. Submerge yourself in other things. Believe me, it's the best medicine. It's also the one common theme in the advice given by all the great and wise people who have ever lived."
"And you, I presume, are one of those great people?"
"No. Still learning. But passing on their advice. Listen: the more you try to make yourself happy the more miserable you'll be. To save yourself you must throw yourself away. What about your hobbies and interests? You like music. Get into some new types. You said you like Bruckner and Vaughan Williams. How about Elgar, Sibelius, Dvorak, Mahler amp;"
"Yeah I see what you mean, I could really get into it-"
"And more important, Doc, out of yourself!"
"OK."
"And you can work out some chess problems so I won't always beat you so badly. It's embarrassing gI tell you."
"Uh, right."
"And how about photography? You're a great photographer you know. Devote the next several weeks to being really great. Another Ansel Adams, who knows?"
"Exactly."
"Take pictures everywhere, and forget about yourself. Nothing makes people more miserable than worrying about I themselves. Nothing gives them more peace than finding a cause, or a devotion, outside themselves. Remember Tolstoi said that; you gave me the book-"
"Ah yes. The Kingdom of God Is Within You. By the way, I want it back."
"No such luck. I'm keeping git."
"Moe, take a hint. Lay off the hard g's. Say 'it,' not 'git.' I It sounds much more high class."
"Class? I should talk to you about class? Maybe I should talk to a penguin about life in the Sahara-".
"Do you know what a royal pain in the fanny you are?"
"You're no balm to the derriere yourself pal. Look: keep taking the Librium. Keep running, too, even though the medication may slow you down a bit. And be sure to take that lovely creature you're lucky enough to be married to into the sack as often as possible."
"Thanks, Moe," came a female voice.
"Mary! What are you doing gon the extension?"
"Doing on, not doing gon, Moe," I said.
"Thanks again, Moe," said Mary, and hung up.
"By the way, Doc, you owe me some money."
"What'? All you did was recommend Librium. Big deal. I could've done that myself."
"Yes, but not with my expertise and finesse."
"OK. How"much?"
"Four hundred?"
"What!"
"Listen, Doc, the Sea Scouts of Beverly need a boat. Now I bought one for them for two grand and I'm a little short. In fact I'm out. I thought you could help out a little, OK? Also, Mr. Empty Pockets, I happen to know you bought yourself a boat this spring. Twenty-something feet. Sleeps four… auxiliary engine…"
"So?"
"So? So give the kids a break, huh?"
"I can't stand it."
"I'm not asking for you to stand it; I'm asking gyou to send it. I, uh, sort of promised the bank you would. Now listen: you`ll never be anything but a half-assed chess player if you quit hanging garound me, so give. And take pictures. And take the medication. And take Mary. Good-bye!"
He rang off.
"That son of a bitch."
"Charlie, you love him and you know it. A lot of time he's the only thing that gives you hope in the human race. I'll get the checkbook."
Mary and I had breakfast and got ready to go sailing. As we left The Breakers at nine-thirty I took a last peek at the boat. The tide was rising; water was now lapping at her. Two men were walking knee deep in it looking down at the hull, which I could not see because of the angle at which she lay. The men stopped walking. One pointed upward. I heard the drone of the engine. Through the binoculars I could see the twin-engine plane bank steeply, beginning a tight circle. On the fuselage was the red slash that identifies all Coast Guard vehicles. I went back to the scope. The crew seemed to be excited. Then they did want help… no, they were arguing; Mary was right. No, they seemed to be deciding-
Then it began. I knew it would. Through the powerful magnification of the long lens, which compressed thousands of yards of space into what seemed less than 100 yards, the ground began to tremble. The sand flats began-ever so slightly-to shimmer and wave. Monstrous ghost puddles appeared on the nearby dry sand. Water where there was none. Then the figures, and the boat itself, began to wave and dance. Soon the men would be mere blobs of color; grotesque wriggling reflections in fun-house mirrors. Heat. The early morning heat was doing that.
As faint as it must have been in the early morning, the heat from the warm sand was sending up thermal currents-like the air over a hot wood stove-that jiggled and danced. That was it. I had been granted this brief chance to spy on these men and their boat, but no more.
"You coming? C'mon honey, I want to be back early. Remember Jack's coming."
To hell with it. Help was there if they needed it. We got into the car and headed up route 6 to Wellfleet, the next town north of Eastham. Our boat, Ella Hatton, was moored in a slip in the harbor there.
We parked in the big lot and walked over to the Hatton's slip. She rode motionless on/the quiet water, as broad as a sunflower seed. She is a sloop-rigged catboat, twenty-two feet long and over twelve feet wide. Her hull is like a tapered pie-pan. Our slip was nestled amongst those reserved for the smaller pleasure boats. The other side of the harbor, which was once the center of America's clam and scallop trade, is reserved for big commercial vessels, mostly draggers. These big, blocky boats have high steep bows to fend off the chops and troughs that develop in the North Atlantic. The freeboard is low aft: the gunwales taper smoothly down to the stem; This low freeboard (or low height of the hull above the waterline) is to facilitate the easy dumping of the iron dredges that are dragged all over the bottom of Cape Cod Bay, slurping up those bay scallops and clams. These boats are heavy-timbered and beamy, with big diesel engines to push them through the steep swells while hauling heavy trawls. The average coastal or bay trawler is between forty and sixty feet long. They are mostly deck, with a small wheelhouse usually located forward. Behind this, standing toward the middle of the wide-open afterdeck where the crew works, is the diesel engine and its stack. The short mast is here too, with the radar on top and gafflike arms and A-frames attached to it. These are the tackle that lift and lower the drags, and get their power also from the diesel.
We saw one fisherman preparing to go out. He wore a flannel shirt, bill-fisherman's canvas hat with big visor, and the huge rubber overalls that are the primary stamp of the New
England fisherman; A sticker stuck to his wheelhouse bulkhead read: BUSINESS IS SO GOOD I COULD PUKE
I shot a picture of him and the sticker. He looked up in confusion that bordered on suspicion. People don't like having their pictures taken by strangers. I shouted I was an amateur feature-story photographer for the Globe. He brightened and waved. His diesel was grinding away. A big cable-wound drum near the stack was turning slowly. He nodded at us, smiling, and cast off. His boat eased away from the pier and whined softly through the harbor.
And as he left, trailing a wispy, almost invisible plume of oily smoke, we could see another trawler heading around the breakwater. She was green, and the right size too.
We watched the boat circle the point and come chuffing and grinding into the inner harbor where we were preparing to depart. There was an aura of desperation about her as she rolled in the faint current.
She was riding low. She paused on the far side of the harbor and dropped her hawser. Quick as a wink a dory came scooting around from her side with a man hunched over in the stern, steering the little outboard. The dory zinged along, whining through the outer raft of moored sailboats, and snaked its way up to the harbormaster's dock. The man steering had scarcely finished throwing a hitch around a piling before he left the small boat and was sprinting up the ramp to the office.
The green boat, which was without doubt the same one stranded on my doorstep an hour earlier, swayed lazily around her anchor cable. But I noticed her crew had dropped another hook off her stern, so that she kept her bow toward us. A boat of almost any size is impenetrable head-on. Her engines were still working, and fast. The whine was audible even from where we stood; and the plume of smoke shot straight up from her stack. I nudged Mary.
"See why the engine's working overtime?"
I pointed to the thick stream of water gushing from the boat's bilge pipe. It came squirting out in thick, ropy geysers. Had it been red it would have resembled a severed artery.
"What's that, the cooler?" she asked.
"No." I pointed to another stream of water, this one a straight hard jet of clean spray. That was the outlet for the sea water that had just run around her engines, cooling them. No, this rust-colored water coming in torrents was bilge water. And there was a lot of it. Almost before my eyes the boat seemed to rise higher in the water.
"They're pumping her out. Did you see how low she rode as she came in? I'd say she was close to sinking. No wonder he was in a hurry."
"Who? The man in the little boat?"
"Yep. Well they've made it in all right. I bet the motion of the boat through the water was what intensified the leak. Now that she's in still water they can keep her up until she's repaired properly."
Allan Hart was ambling up the dock, clad in his scuba suit. A big strapping kid we'd known since he was six. It was Allan Hart who finally gave Jack (then called Jackie) the courage to put his head underwater and do the dead man's float. The two had been inseparable ever since: the Mutt and Jeff of our summers on Cape Cod.
"Hey Allan!" shouted Mary, waving her arm up high.
He was wearing a wetsuit top and carrying a big stainless steel tank under his arm. Across his wide shoulders were strung a yellow weight belt and a huge pair of swim fins. He grinned at us and hurried along. Allan was a native Cape Codder who lived with his mother, a widow, in Eastham. He was strong; those tanks, regulators, and weight belts weigh considerable. I know because I've tried to heft them. And yet Allan was moseying along the dock with all his gear tucked away, under his arm and on his shoulder as if he didn't even notice it. In his right hand he carried a long shiny object. Spear gun. I saw the reddish-tan pieces of surgical latex tubing bounce and flip around with each step he took. Those were the elastic ropes that drove the barbed spear through fish.
"How ya doing'?" he asked as he set his gear on the gray boards above us; He looked down approvingly at the catboat. I snapped two pictures of him.
"See you're goin' out. Is Jack back yet? Tell him to stop by-"
"Why don't you stop by? He's due up here around four or five. C'mon over to the cottage then and-"
"Thanks, Mrs. Adams, but I've got a date for dinner in Chatham."
"Well stop by anyway on your way down for a beer. Jack would be glad to see you, I'm sure."
"Good. OK I'll do that. And if I get lucky today I'll bring some fish for you."
He sat on the pier, his legs dangling over the side. He strapped on the tank and regulator and slipped the weight belt around his waist. I saw the yellow-painted steel rectangular weights spaced evenly around the nylon webbing of the belt. There were a lot of them. There was a biggish knife-with a cork handle in a red plastic sheath strapped to his right calf. Staring out at the green trawler, he put on a rubber hood that was bright gold, and had USN on it in big letters.
"You join the navy, Allan?"
"Naw. I just borrowed this from a friend. If you can keep your head and chest warm you can stay down a long time. That water out around the outer breakwater is deep and cold, but that's where the big tautog hang out. Hey she looks mighty low."
We all turned and looked back at the boat.
"Why don't you swim out there and see what you can see?" I asked. "Take a peek at her hull. Bet you see a gash somewhere."
He put on the big flippers. They made a sound- squidge, squidge -as he slipped them over his feet.
"OK. It's right on my way over to the breakwater anyway."
We mentioned seeing the boat stranded out on Billingsgate, which seemed to increase his curiosity still more. Then I noticed he also carried a small flashlight, encased in black hard rubber, which he tested, then fastened to his belt. The face mask was resting up on top of his head as he inserted the mouthpiece, then spat it out.
"Guess I'm ready."
The Ella Hatton's little diesel was grinding away nicely under the cockpit hatch. Mary had removed the sail cover from the long boom and stowed it beneath the seat. The lunch basket was tucked into the corner of the galley counter, right near the sink. We were ready too.
"Wonder why she's out in the middle of the harbor anyway?" mused Allan. "As low as she's riding you'd think she'd wanta come right up to the big pier."
"Hey how's your mom been, Allan?" Mary asked.
"She's been pretty good. She still hasn't got a boyfriend or anything yet, but you know, something'll turn up."
"Well we'll have to ask her over some evening," I said. Mary grabbed the heavy lines that Allan Flipped down to her; I put the engine into gear and we purred slowly out of the slip.
"See you at around five, Allan. Get us a fish!" yelled Mary.
He waved back, replaced the mouthpiece, drew down the mask, and pushed himself forward off the dock with his arms, turning around in midair, and fell backward into the sea. He entered the harbor water softly, quietly, for such a big guy. He surfaced again, doing a slow lazy flip-flop with his fins. As we began to thread the Hatton through the maze of moored boats toward the harbor mouth we saw a last flutter of brightness just under the water's surface, a quick glimmer of shiny tank and yellow diving hood. Then there was a little flip of motion, and he was gone, heading out to the green boat, which was riding much higher in the water now.
Still, the boat's half-submerged look intrigued me. It wasn't a sight you saw every day. I clacked away at it with my camera. The motor drive advanced the film quickly with a loud whirr in between clacks of the mirror. A man appeared on her foredeck, looking anxiously at the tiny harbormaster's shack. He had a faint beard and wore a canvas jacket. I snapped more pictures. The man didn't notice me; he was too busy gesticulating to the two figures talking near the shack.
One was Bill Larson, the harbormaster. The other was the fellow who'd just run ashore in the little dinghy. As we neared the harbor mouth we passed the boat's quarter at about thirty yards' distance. I could read her name and port on her transom: Penelope, Boston. I was snapping a final shot when the man turned and looked in our direction. When he saw me I saw a hint of a snarl start to form on his lips. But as if he thought better of it, he turned and disappeared into the wheelhouse. No doubt this had not been one of his best mornings. Still I felt the prick of curiosity, and spun off my 50-millimeter lens in exchange for a 135 and snapped a few more photos of Penelope, whoever she was, before we got out around the breakwater.
After three hours on Cape Cod Bay we headed back. Mary was at the helm, holding the teak wheel that sits at the end of the big round cockpit. Ella Hatton was close-hauled and heeled over slightly, churning her way up the outer channel into the harbor. Two sportfishermen roared by us. The men stood over the transoms laughing and drinking beer. No doubt they had been out since before dawn hunting bluefish and striped bass. I stared enviously at the big boats, with their flying bridges and long outrigger poles. The tall towers swayed far and wide as the boats rolled in the swells, their big engines growling and sputtering.
A big boat was rolling out of Wellfleet toward us. She tipped and plunged in the wake of the two sportfishermen. It was our friend the Penelope; she was hustling too. We passed each other off Jeremy Point. The big green dragger chuffed by us with nobody visible except a dim shape in the wheelhouse. Evidently the repair was satisfactory; she was riding high and quick. Seconds later her skipper opened her engines up; the dark smoke shot up out of the stack like Old Faithful and the engine's whine increased to a thunderous roar. She shook a tailfeather south around Billingsgate Shoal (now invisible but still treacherous), where she'd been stranded hours earlier, and headed off due west, toward Plymouth, with remarkable felicity.
"Geez, honey, look at her go," I murmured.
Mary turned to see the long sloping plume fast disappearing in the distant haze. We dropped sail a few minutes later, stowing the jib down the forehatch and fastening the main and its gaff along the boom with shock cords. We motored in the rest of the way and gently glided Hatton back into her berth.
The sun had been making good progress all morning, and now was halfway out. We left the harbor and hurried back to the domicile where Mary promptly changed into her swimsuit and flopped down on the deck, swatting at greenheads. I went running.
I left the cottage and began my run along Sunken Meadow Road. I ran up to the main road, then along it until I came to the old windmill (Eastham's landmark), and then back. It was slightly over six miles, and during the last part was setting a pretty good clip. I staggered into The Breakers and paced around until I cooled off, flicking on the sauna bath. I grabbed my bucket and digging fork, and an old-fashioned tin salt shaker, and strolled out onto the flats. The tide was ebbing; by 5:30 it would be out. Already though, the long tan flats stretched away for hundreds of yards. I was looking for razor clams. Half a mile from the beach, I began to see tiny ovoid depressions in the damp sand. Sprinkling salt from the shaker on these, I watched the long, rectangular creatures squirt up out of these depressions, exposing half of their delicate shells to the air. Sometimes they dove down the other way, into the sand about a foot. Then I'd pry them out with the fork. They were six to eight inches long and shaped like a folded barber's razor. In forty minutes I had filled my bucket, and started back to the cottage. I stopped at a tide pool and filled the bucket to overflowing with brine, then padded back to the beach.
Our cottage was a bluish gray rectangle on the bluff top. The American flag hung limp on the mast. I squinted and could see the three metal cups of my anemometer slowly turning. The dull, cold gray of the weathered cedar shakes belied the coziness of The Breakers. The smallish rooms with low, beamed ceilings. The library corner of the living room, where you could sit for hours, days, under the brass student lamp with the green glass shade and listen to the surf crash, or the thunder roll. The kitchen with its skylights, wineracks, copper pots, and smells of coffee, roasting meat, sizzling fish, clam chowder. I liked hunting my own food out on the flats. There was something elemental, even prehistoric, about i the act. Like sex, it was something that came to me unfiltered by modem civilization. It was animal. I was a hunter-gatherer. The damp sand felt good under my bare feet. I climbed up the bone-colored wooden steps and placed the bucket of clams in the shade on the deck. I would cook them up in butter in a big iron pot, then add the clam liquor, potatoes, onions, cracked pepper, celery, milk, and perhaps some leftover corn and little pieces of cooked bacon. I drooled at the thought.
I went into the sauna. The temperature was 190 degrees. Perfect. I baked in there three times, coming out only long enough to shower under cold water each time. Finally I showered for good. I felt so laid back I couldn't have gotten it up even if I were naked in the sack with all three of Charlie's Angels.
No, wait. I take that back.
I made the chowder. Soon the big iron pot was simmering away and I tended to it as I sipped a Gosser beer.
"Isn't that Jack, Charlie?" shouted Mary from the bathroom. The cream colored Toyota Land Cruiser swept into the gravel driveway, and number one son climbed out. On his back bumper is a sticker that reads: STOP THE WHALE KILLERS! BOYCOTT JAPANESE GOODS!
Now you don't stop to think about this until you realize that the sticker is affixed to none other than a Toyota, for Chrissake, and that we've been guilty of laying nine grand on the
"killers." Not to worry though, not to worry: there's another sticker on the other side, saying: IF I'D KNOEN ABOUT THE WHALES, I WOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT THIS CAR.
Oh, well, the kid's heart is in the right place.
Number-two son, Tony, was working a summer job as a grounds keeper at a resort in Franconia Notch, N.H. He called a few times, to say the job was crummy, it didn't pay well, and was hard work, but that he was having "a great time, especially at night," which meant, I suppose, that he was mostly getting laid. But then, what are summer jobs for? Jack was doing graduate work in biology at the oceanographic center at Woods Hole, and so was at The Breakers fairly regularly.
He sauntered, in, snagging a beer from the refrigerator. He stirred and tasted the chowder, nodding his head and grunting. I walked with him back out onto the deck, and scanned Billingsgate with the marine glasses. It stood on the horizon, a dark streak surrounded by red shiny water. We had a drink and watched the sun and listened to the gulls. We waited for Allan, then gave up on him.
"Probably forgot," said Jack, thrusting a big paw into the nut dish that sat in the middle of the picnic table. "He's got a new girlfriend down in Chatham."
"Yes, I remember him saying he had a dinner date," said Mary.
"Have you heard from Tony? How is number-two son?" I asked.
He looked up quickly and stared at me level for an instant with his turquoise eyes. He took after the Adams side of the family-the Nordic side. Tony looked like his mother: with deep olive skin and coal black eyes-eyes so dark you could never see the pupils. Jack was blond, and wore a bright yellow beard to match his hair. He had medium skin and pale blue-gray eyes. Both boy-men are enormously handsome. But then what would you expect their daddy to say?
"Huh? Why do you want to know?"
"Because he usually writes us or calls regularly," said Mary, "and he hasn't been lately. Well?"
He shrugged and munched more nuts, swigged at the mug. of beer in his left hand. He looked out over the sand flats and ocean.
"Dunno…"
"Jack, I know you pretty well," I said. "Sure there's nothing you-"
"Nope. Let's eat. I'll call Allan first thing tomorrow."
We ate on the deck: the chowder accompanied by asparagus in lemon and butter, fresh sugar-and-butter corn on the cob and chablis. Of course afterward I realized that the quarter-pound of butter that had made everything so delicious had probably more than undone the 'afternoon's running. Oh, to hell with it. I did a little writing after that, working on a paper to be presented at the next meeting of the New England Oral Surgeons. Its working title was "The Use of Epoxy Hardeners and Porcelain-Resin Compounds in the Cosmetic Capping of Peg-Lateral Incisors." It was as exciting as cold oatmeal.
I went in and nestled up against Mary's warm, soft flank, and slept. As I dozed off l heard the sound of the tide easing back in: slow cadence of crump and hiss, and wind blowing through the dune grass.