Evening quiet at Wellfleet Harbor. I sat staring at the water. It swished and riffled languidly along the breakwater's edge. It glimmered in the soft, gold-gray light of dusk, of late mellow sunlight through clouds. The light played on the water in streaks of brightness. It was like a Monet painting. I heard a car door slam far behind me, then the quick footsteps of a woman approaching.
"Thought I'd find you here," said Mary.
I said nothing.
"You ready to come home?"
"Remember what I told Allan just before he went in? I told him to swim out to the boat."
"So? They found his body way out in the channel near Lieutenant's Island."
"The tide could have carried him out there. I think maybe if I hadn't told him to-"
"Stop it, Charlie. Stop it now. There's no way of know exactly how Allan died. Scuba divers get killed pretty frequently I think."
"Not in a shallow harbor they don't. Jack says Allan did lot of deep diving. That's when a diver gets into trouble. A big strong kid like that just doesn't die hunting fish in Wellfleet Harbor."
She sat down next to me on the old stone quay. We watched the boats sway slowly around on their mooring cables. Mary said she'd been unable to find Sarah Hart at her home even though she'd driven by several times. We decided she was with her doctor or a close friend.
"It's almost dark, Charlie."
"I just can't help thinking that if I hadn't asked him to swim out there-"
"Dammit, Charlie, stop it! You'll drive yourself crazy. Why don't you find the boat's owner and talk to him? He probably never laid eyes on Allan."
"That's what I'm thinking; that's what makes me feel so bad about it. Here's Allan swimming around underneath the boat and the guy probably started the propeller. Remember how fast that engine was revving, pumping out all that water? Well if the screw started suddenly the propwash could've sucked Allan right into it-"
"Good Christ-"
"And one of the blades could have nicked him on the head-remember the article did say there was evidence of a head injury-knocked him cold and his mouthpiece slipped out. There was a lot of air left in the tank."
She tugged at my elbow and led me back to the cars.
"I don't see Bill Larson in his shack. Tomorrow morning I'm coming back here and get the name of the boat's owner. I think if I just get a chance to phone him I'll feel better. Maybe they saw Allan swim out past the boat, in which case I'll feel a little better. Not much, but a little."
After dinner we located the funeral director who told us that Sarah Hart was temporarily in her doctor's care. Her husband had died eight years previous and Allan had been her only child. Good God. I tossed and turned far into the night thinking about the boy swimming out to the big green boat. I knew it would never leave me alone until I laid to rest at least little of the guilt that gnawed at me.
On my way to the harbor next day, weary and edgy from almost no sleep, I stopped by the Eastham police station and talked to the desk sergeant. The story was exactly as the papers had reported it. A lobsterman had seen the body in the shallows off Lieutenant's Island in early evening. The body wasn't floating because of the heavy gear and weight belt. There was a deep bruise on the head that had no doubt resulted in unconsciousness, and eventual drowning. I asked the sergeant if the diving hood had been torn, and the nature and extent of the head injuries. He replied that he didn't know; he wasn't that familiar with the details.
"Can you tell me if there are any theories as to how the injury occurred?" I asked.
"I'm not sure, but I think the assumption is that he hit his head while diving, maybe on the breakwater."
"People in scuba gear don't dive into the water headfirst. They fall backward into it to avoid damaging their equipment. Besides, I saw Allan enter the water."
He told me to leave my name and number and a certain Lieutenant Disbrow would be in touch with me. I thanked him and proceeded on to the harbor. I headed over to Bill Larson's little shack. He's the official harbormaster of Wellfleet and also operates a small emporium selling marine paints, hemp and nylon lines, caulking compound, basic marine hardware in brass, aluminum, bronze, and the like. I asked him who owned the green dragger that had pulled in two days previous.
"Didn't think to get his name, Doc. I was about to head out to her in my skiff to see what the trouble was but they beat me to it-came right up here in a little boat and asked me where the nearest weld shop was."
"Yeah I saw it. What happened to her?"
"Said an old seam had worked loose between a coupla plates. She'd been shipping water since she left Boston so they thought they'd better stop and have her sewed up. Seems to me they didn't stop any too soon either."
"Did you know they were out on Billingsgate at dawn?"
"Hmmmp! Well whaddayuh know-"
"Where was the repair made? I'd like to get the owner's name if possible."
"Right over there. Reliable. See it?"
"Oh yeah. Did they say anything else, like having seen a guy in scuba gear?" ·
"Oh you mean the Hart boy? Too bad, eh? Nope. Didn't say anything about that."
He worked at an eye splice with his big wooden fid. "I'm sure they got the owner's name because they did the repair."
I entered the barnlike structure from the street side and looked into the gloomy cavernous interior. Straight ahead of me was a set of railroad tracks that led down into the water. Winched halfway up this tracks was a big cradle, empty.
"Help you sompin?" asked the bearded old man at the workbench. He was busy fitting a new head gasket to a long marine engine that stood near the bench, hung in a frame made of giant I-beams. I counted six huge holes in the block. A straight six, and each of the cylinders seemed big enough to hold a bowling ball. That's what gave the draggers their spunk. I described the boat that had visited them.
"Oh yeah. Gash in the starboard side just forward of the beam. 'Bout as big as a cigar box, only longer."
It didn't sound like a weld seam working loose. But I decided to keep this tidbit to myself.
"Was it high up, or toward the keel?"
"Pretty high up, Just below the waterline. Wish you could talk to Sonny. He's not here now though. Sonny did the job, less than forty-five minutes."
"That seems mighty quick for a weld job that big. Sonny must a run a good bead."
The old man nodded triumphantly.
"Yup! Good bead all right. Real good bead."
He reached around behind the bench and pulled out what looked like a giant Fourth of July sparkler.
"Uses these certanium production rods. Best welding electrode made. He can run a bead three yards long without a rod freezing. He had a good teacher. Me. I'm Sonny's daddy, mister. Who in hell are you?"
I explained that I was an interested bystander.
"You seem to know welding, mister. Ever done it?"
I answered that I once worked a summer in Peoria as a welder at the Caterpillar Company. I said that welding was one of the very last Skilled Occupations. That a good welder was worth his weight in gold ingots. This seemed to please the old man, who grew talkative.
"But what was odd, mister, was this: that boat was pretty tore up, but her skipper didn't want nothing but a fix-it job. You know, enough to get her back home. All Sonny did was slap a sheet of quarter-inch plate over that hole, then run his bead around the edge. Slick as a wink, you know? We charged him ninety-nine dollars and ninety-five cents, you see?"
"No I don't see."
"Well by the law any damage to a vessel over a hundred dollars must be reported to the Coast Guard. It's just like a car accident. Well, a lot of skippers don't want the hassle, so we just charge ninety-nine ninety-five."
"That's a nice cheap fee."
"Well sure," he cackled, "but the hauling charge makes up for that. You see we charge a fee for hauling the vessel out so we can work on her; Hauling fee is a hundred bucks. But that's like a tow truck: ain't got, anything to do with the damage, you see?"
"Ah, now I see…"
"But strange thing was, mister, this boat dint want no decent job. Just what we call a jury-rig-like I said, enough to get back home on."
"Which was Boston?"
"Don't know."
"Well it said Boston under her name."
"What was her name?"
"Penelope."
"So you know her name and port, so why'd ya ask, mister?"
"I'd like to get the owner's name. Call him. You know that kid who drowned? Well I want to know if anybody on the boat saw him; I think he might have gotten swept up in the propwash. Can I have his name? Would you mind?"
"Don't have it."
"Well didn't you till out a work order'?"
"Naw. The guy showed us his money and we went to work. What makes you think the boy got in trouble with her?"
"I'm not sure. I just want to check. I want to reassure myself he didn't get in trouble under her."
He spat a thin stream of dark brown juice over the engine block. He cocked his head slightly with an amused look. Then he shook his head just a tad.
"Mister, I don't know much about you, but I'll say this on a hunch: you overthink things. Right? Am I right? Now when you take a leak, do you think about your kidneys working? Yeah, I bet you do. I don't, mister. That's the difference. This is a hard business. Somebody comes to you, you take them on. You don't have time to think. You've gotta make the buck. Savey-voose?"
"I understand. I just want to know one more thing. Did they say what caused the damage?"
"Yeah. Said they hit something."
"Well what?".
"Now there you go 0verthinkin' again, mister. It wasn't my business. Why don't you ask him?"
"Good idea. How?"
"You got the boat's name and her home port. Go to the Coast Guard and look up the registry. But he never said his name. I didn't ask either. He paid cash and left. Nice new bills… could've been ironed they were so crisp."
"Thanks for the help. I'll go to the Coast Guard. But you can't remember any other detail that might help me? Anything?"
He picked up the gasket and placed it on the engine block, then hefted up the massive head and placed it over the gasket. Sonny's daddy· was amazingly strong. He had also apparently reached the end of his hawser as far as my presence was concerned. He flung a set of engine bolts into his left hand and held a big Snap-On ratchet wrench in the other and glared at me.
"Mister, I'm a busy man. I've told you all I know about that gawdamn boat. If you want to talk to Sonny, come back on Tuesday. We're closed Mondays. Otherwise, please git. Know what a rottweiler is?"
"Uh huh."
"Good. Know what they can do when they're angry?"
"I've heard," I answered, and began to scan the place.
"Well we keep one out back. Name's Roscoe. Turn him loose in here at night to keep an eye on things, ya know? Well he likes to meet people, but usually it tums out they're not so tickled to see him-"
I thanked the man and left. I didn't dawdle. I hadn't the slightest interest in meeting Roscoe, dog lover that I am. I got in the car and cast a final glance at Reliable Marine Service. I started up and did a circle on the pavement.
"Toodle-loo Roscoe," I whispered, and headed up toward the Coast Guard station at Nauset Beach. A gash and a torn seam weren't at all the same thing. I found that interesting.
When I got there the beach parking lot was jammed. I knew it was a tiny station; there was a chance they couldn't help me. I parked and fought my way through throngs of vacationers to the tiny office at the base of the lighthouse. There was a transmitter there and a young man in uniform behind a government-issue gray metal desk. The black plastic tag on his right shirtfront said McNab.
I identified myself as the person who had reported the stranded vessel. He retrieved the report instantly.
"Here it is. Shortly after you called we diverted one of our aircraft to the site. The pilot tried to raise the skipper on the distress frequency but there was no response. Nor was there any distress call, for that matter. We sent the plane back as the tide rose, but the vessel was gone. We're assuming the grounding was intentional."
"She limped into Wellfleet all right, Just barely, but she got there. I want to get in touch with the skipper. Can I look up the boat?"
"Sure. She'll either be registered with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or another state or, if she's over five tons, she'll be in one of those big books there on the shelf. Do you know her name?" `
We. thumbed through Merchant Vessels of the United States, an enormous two-volume tome that listed every vessel in American waters engaged in commercial activity that was over five net tons. Penelope was a popular name for boats. I counted over sixty of them, arranged alphabetically by their owner's last name. There was no Penelope that listed Boston as her home port.
"Do you think she is over thirty-two feet? It's at that length usually, that a vessel approaches five-ton capacity."
"Over. Positive. I put her length at forty or maybe a bit more."
"Hmmmm. Then she could be new, just documented. Or she could be a noncommercial vessel. You can have a hundred-footer and not have to document it if it's not used for commercial purposes."
"Like a yacht?"
"Exactly. And quite a few trawlers, or trawler-type vessels, are converted into pleasure boats."
The first Penelope listed was owned by Jack Babcock of Newport, Rhode Island. The second was owned by Jesse Bullock of Galveston, Texas. Probably a shrimper. And so it went. There were Penelopes that caught salmon and crab out of Seattle, Penelopes that hunted sailfish and marlin out of Key West, Penelopes that seined for smelt from Sheboygan, that shoved coal barges down the Illinois River, etc., etc. There were seven Penelopes in New England, but none of them were from Bean Town. I copied down all the information listed after each name. This included the vessel's dimensions and tonnage, and her documentation number-which is not the one you sometimes see on the boat's bows. The documentation number is engraved or embossed into the vessel's main beam below decks.
"There's one other thing," said McNab, leafing through the book. "The boat could have listed her home port on the transom instead of her hailing port."
"What's the difference?"
The hailing port is the one that should be listed under the vessel's name. It's the place where she berths, where her skipper lives… her home. The home port may not in fact be the vessel's true home-"
This enigma was sounding more and more as if it had been created by government bureaucracy.
"-but is the port office where the vessel has filed her papers. This is technically not kosher, but some boats do it, particularly ones that tramp around the seaboard a lot."
"So you're suggesting that one of these other Penelope s could be the boat I saw?"
"It's possible. There are ten documentation offices in New England, and so ten possible home ports. But a boat can be documented in one port and show another on her transom."
"But wait a minute. Boston is a home port, right? So if a boat berthed in Boston and was also documented in Boston, then we'd see her listed in this book, right?"
"Uh, right."
"If a boat has been documented in Boston but berths in, say, Nahant, then she would still be listed here under Boston, right'?"
"Uh, yeah. Even though her transom would say Nahant."
"I'm sorry, Mr. McNab, but this is getting murkier instead of clearer."
"OK tell you what," he said. He tapped a pencil, eraser side down, on his blotter officiously, he scowled profoundly, and cleared his throat a few times. I was waiting in the wings. Pretty soon now, he was going to explain it all.
"It's uh, confusing-" he ventured.
"Do you have the slightest idea what's going on about this?"
"No."
At least it was a straight answer.
"Let's try this: supposing a vessel is documented in one of the nine New England ports other than Boston, but spends a considerable amount of time in Boston, OK? Suppose she's documented in New Bedford but hangs out around Boston. Would she then list Boston on her transom? Is that what you were thinking'?"
"Exactly, sir. Thank you."
"Fine. So my job now is to contact these New England skippers who own boats called Penelope and find out."
"What? Find out what?"
"Find out if they laid eyes on the kid, who drowned in the harbor day before last. He was a friend of mine."
"Why do you think they would have seen him?"
"Because I sent him out to look at the Penelope, and I don't like myself much for having done so. I think I might have been indirectly responsible for his death."
"Wow. No wonder you feel so bad. Who wouldn't?"
Just exactly what I wanted to hear. It made my day.
I left the tiny office with the names of the seven local boats carrying the name Penelope. According to McNab we couldn't find the name because the boat was new, was a noncommercial boat, or there was a foul-up with the port listings. The third possibility seemed the least likely to me since none of the vessels listed matched the green trawler's dimensions. To me the most likely explanation was a new boat and an inexperienced skipper. That would also explain the damaged hull-no doubt caused by faulty navigation-and the grounding on Billingsgate.
And then-I thought of poor Sarah Hart, alone now. I still had to go pay my respects. I wasn't relishing the task, and maybe that's one reason I wasn't paying attention as I headed back to the car.
It happened as I was leaving the path and entering the big parking lot at the top of the beach. Even now as I think about that instant I am wracked with pain. I was walking out between two cars (not the brightest thing to do, I'll admit when a kid on a moped hit me. More specifically, he hit my wrist. He crushed my poor wrist between the tail fin of an aging Cadillac, Eldorado and his handle bar, which was traveling at a nice clip.
I don't remember the instant of impact because I went into semiconsciouness during it or shortly afterward. I awoke to see some pendulous breasts in a scanty halter swaying over me. It probably would have been a great view under other circumstances. The spectators ohhhed and ahhhed at me. I rose into a sitting position and looked at my hand. The back was gashed open and bleeding; it looked like a slab of barbequed pork. That would heal in a few days without difficulty. It was when I tried to move the fingers that the pain got interesting. It was the deep-down, systemic pain-the kind you feel go up the very center of your arm into your I brain-that told me it was serious. The damage was not of the muscles or ligaments. Bones were broken. Of this I was certain as I tried to close my hand. The Cadillac's tail fin was badly dented. Old Knucklebrain on the moped had dealt both me and the car a good one. Except the car couldn't feel it. I moaned and was helped to my feet. Soon thereafter I came face to face with my accidental assailant, who'd also been injured-in a regrettably minor fashion-as he tumbled to the parking lot concrete after maiming me. His name turned out I to be Jeremy Knobbs. Now is it any wonder that a guy so cursed in nomenclature would run down innocent pedestrians in parking lots?
I was in frankly awful pain, but refused assistance, not out of stoicism, but because I wanted to get home to Mary fast. She is a registered nurse. I wanted Mary. I wanted to cuddle my head into that deep Calabrian bosom and get sympathy. I wanted her to kiss me and say it was going to be all right.
"It looks pretty bad, Charlie," she said after looking at the left mitt for about four seconds. "This hurt?"
I let out a scream like the charging bull elephant in the movie Ivory Hunters. Then I picked myself off the floor and wiped the thick rope of saliva from my mouth.
"Hu1t, huh? You've broken at least one bone, maybe more. Let's get back to Concord, now. I'll pack the arm in ice; then put on a sling-"
Don't remember much about the ride back to Concord. Two hours after entering Emerson Hospital's emergency room, Dr. Bryce Henshaw, noted orthopedic surgeon whom I'd never heard of (but was on call that night), was troweling a thick coat of plaster over the left wrist, now immobilized by la metal brace and insensitized by a big jolt of procaine. Colleagues and associates who know us stopped by to offer condolences. Didn't seem to help. Went home. Big drink. Felt better.
Next morning I got a call from Jeremy Knobbs's father. His name was Jeremy too. It figured. It wasn't a good way to begin the day. I was quick to realize that I could not ply my trade as oral surgeon with one arm in a cast, and stood to lose a lot of dough. I was not overly fond of Jeremy Knobbs after what he'd done to me. After arranging with the senior Knobbs to speak with various attorneys and insurance personnel, I rang off and sulked.
"Mary, I'm going down to the library and check out a book before I meet with Jeremy Knobbs. I want to do a little research so I'll know exactly how to handle this."
"That's a good idea. What's the name of the book?"
" Ancient Assyrian Tortures."
"Oh Charlie, get off it. It was an accident. Also, you weren't looking where you were going, you admitted that."
I rubbed my new cast and groaned. "If the kid had had any sense at all he wouldn't have been flying through that lot. It was an accident but it was his fault."
"You're not really going to get a book on tortures are you? Why are you going to the library really?"
"I'm going to get some fiction. God knows I'll have plenty of time on my hands-er, my hand-now that I'm unemployed. And I was thinking of researching tortures, if for no other reason than to soothe my troubled spirit."
"Speaking of tortures, I once heard that crucifixion was the worst ever."
"I've considered crucifixion for young Jeremy Knobbs. But I rejected it."
"On religious grounds?"
"Nah. Too swift."