The Seiners' Prologue, Chapter One - Graduation Day and Chapter Two - The Rescue

The prologue will lead you into the excitement of this book. Chapter One describes why Johnny Cavelli comes to the decision that he wants to remain in his small fishing community and not go to college. To what ends will Johnny go to achieve this?

 

PROLOGUE

 

Heavy seas had announced the incoming gale the previous afternoon and the Maria, no matter how sea worthy, would have had to hole up in the lee of an island or tried to make it back across the treacherous reach. Panic clutched him.  If they’d stayed in a cover overnight, they’d have radioed for someone to come let him know so he wouldn’t worry.  He hadn’t heard a word.

Throwing on some clothes, he picked up his boots and skinned down the ladder to the room below.  A huge bed dominated this room.  When Johnny’s mother had been alive she’d lived in this room with his father.  She’d borne Tony here, and later Johnny.  She’d lain in this bed sick and tired for almost a year before she finally called them all in, kissed them goodbye and died with dignity in her own bed, her own house, with her man and her sons around her.  There was a sweet smile on her face as she closed her eyes and turned her head on the pillow as though she was going to take a nap.

After her death Tony had moved down from the loft so that Johnny could have seclusion for his studies. Sleeping with his father the two could get up early and quietly to go to work without waking Johnny, who was usually up until midnight with his studies.

Johnny crabbed past the bed thinking sadly of his mother, who’d been all good things to him, and in a moments panic realized that if his father and Tony were gone he was alone.  The only other room was the kitchen, and he crossed quickly to the coat rack.

He grabbed his oil coat from a nail behind the door, and his so’wester cap and plunked it onto the back of his head. He pulled open the inside door and pushed the storm door open against the wind which billowed into the house, blowing down the tide calendar and scattering a stack of bills and papers from the top of the tall cupboard across the room. He stepped out into the howling blast of the wind and let the door shut to with a slam. The latch clicked, but he turned the wooden button to hold it even more securely.

The wind buffeted him as he headed down the footpath toward the road below.  The head high alders waved and sighed in the wind, and the rain drove against his oil coat, hat and boots in a steady drumming.

As he reached the road he saw Lem Small’s pickup coming and waved it down. There were three of the women who worked at Lem’s clam shed piled in with Lem in the cab of the truck.  He jumped into the cluttered bed of the truck and thumped on the roof.  Lem started ahead again.  Johnny crouched as close as he could to the cab, but it was no help against the drenching downpour.

The truck bumped through the most thickly settled part of town, and allowed itself near Eastern Fisheries pier as it negotiated a right turn toward the clam shed.  Johnny thumped on the cab and as the truck stopped, landed running and waved a gesture of thanks over his shoulder as he ran for the buyers shack at the head of the pier.

He pushed through the door along with a gust of wet wind that rattled the big calendar on the wall.  He pushed the door closed with difficulty and turned his back against it.  Frank Miller, fat hands holding down the riffled papers on his desk, greeted Johnny as the young man entered.

“Hello Johnny, b***h of a day.”

“Yessuh, heard anything from my pa or Tony?”

“No. See the boat’s out.”

“Went yesterday mornin’; shoulda been back last night.”

Miller’s eyebrows went up and looked out the window at the choppy water meaningfully; “Where they gone?”

Johnny looked at the fat man; “Where they gone? They’ve gone to haul the trawls.  Where’d ya think?”

“Shame, I’m all done buying this week. They musta gone early.  I posted ‘NO FISH’ bout nine o’clock yesterday mornin’ musta been.”

“Nine o’clock! What fisherman goes out that late? You mean they out in this for nothing?”

“Fraid so,” He saw the look in the boy’s eyes and looked away. “I’m sorry Johnny, got to do as they tell me in the office.”

“Got all they want?”

“Got all they want.”

“That’s the trouble ‘round here.” Johnny’s voice was rising.  “They buy from ya till they get what they want, then ta hell with ya.  What’s a fisherman supposed ta do?  Sit around waitin’ on you damn guys ta feel like buyin’?”

  

        CHAPTER ONE

GRADUATION DAY

 

Unlike the dependable daytime summer gales that made frequent landfall on this remote section of the Maine coast with clear blue skies and inky blue waters smashing themselves to frothy beer foam white on the granite ledges, this storm came in the black night with roaring winds and a tear hell out of everything rain.

            First light came late this morning.  Old fishermen, rolled in their blankets, and unconsciously reset their mental alarm clocks.  There’d be no fishing today.

            Johnny Cavelli awoke slowly, listened to the wind a moment, and then snuggled deeper into his body warmed quilt.  On his soft mattress under the eaves of the tiny house, his face was only a foot or two below the slope of the spruce plank roof.  He had slept in this homely loft for most of his nineteen years; since he had been able to toddle up the rugged rustic stairs of two by sixes and odd planks.  Every rough axe hewn rafter, and every splintery dried out board that formed the roof was as familiar to him as his own body. It was in fact a part of him.

            He lay quietly for several minutes listening to the southwest wind driven rain pelting the shingled roof over head.  Turning his head on the thick feather pillow, he gazed across at the single small window set in the far wall of the tiny attic.  The rain seemed to be trying to bust the window, sending sheets of water down the wavy glass in uneven patterns.  The heavier gusts of wind at odd spaced intervals buffeted the building, causing the weathered structure to creak and groan like an old three mast vessel fighting heavy seas.

            Although the house was sound and weather tight, the tremendous force of the gale found tiny chinks and cracks here and there, so that there was a barely perceptible current of moving air in the loft.  The breeze caused Johnny’s new graduation suit, on its wooden hanger, to swing rhythmically from the nail in the rafter at the center of the roof.

            Johnny smiled with pride when he thought of the black suit.  The first one he’d ever owned.  Today, his nineteenth birthday, he’d wear that suit to his high school graduation.  That was something to be proud of. A young man getting a high school education on this remote island, where most of the boys left school in the sixth grade to follow in their father’s footsteps as lobster fishermen, seiners, or clam diggers, which was about equal to Abraham Lincoln’s struggle from log cabin to the White House.  But he had done it.

            What had gone into the acquisition of that suit.  The long clam tides, and digging from ebb to flood on the sharp reef.  The clams were scarce there on that strip of gravelly clay, but you had to dig amongst the boulders; a strip here and a strip there.  But it was the only place within lugging distance of the clam buyer’s shed, and he had no boat to get to the surrounding islands where the clams were more plentiful and then haul them back to the buyer. The way tides shifted ahead almost an hour a day, it had taken a lot of planning to get school work done and still make the tide.

            One thing about being this far north was in his favor though; it got early light and dark late in summers.  Digging with a headlight was alright, but batteries for the lights were only good for a couple of tides and cost almost as much to buy as you could earn.  At four dollars a bushel, the going price of claims this summer of 1955, you were better off getting your sleep at night than trying to make a profit at that price.

            Johnny sat up, pushing aside the quilt and hunching his shoulders at the damp chilly air.  He swung both feet onto the cold floor and stood, stretching his six foot frame so that his head almost touched the peak of the roof.

            Wrapping the quilt over his shoulders, he crossed to the clouded window.  The house, or more properly described, tarpaper shack, stood on a high granite ledge.  This ledge was in fact the highest point on Granite Island. From this vantage point Johnny had an unobstructed view of what had been his whole world for nineteen years.  He’d seldom traveled more than eighty miles from home, and that had only been on rare trips to Bangor.

            Granite Village, named for the island, was a collection of varied architectures, consisting of weather beaten tarpaper fishermen’s homes interspersed with huge old mansion type relics from the days when old sea captains has made their fortunes in slave trading, rum running, and even legitimate coastal hauling of lumber.  Some of the larger homes boasted beflowered lawns and well kept shrubbery, while their neighbors displayed junk cars and all stilt outhouses.  Along the shore, everywhere an outcropping of rock ledge made a natural breakwater, or the coastline dipped inland to create a quiet cover, were rickety homemade piers with tiny shacks clinging precariously to them.  It was in these little shacks that lobster fishermen ‘paired up their old traps’ or built their new ones and drank their beer or booze, and spun yarns when the spit crackling winter winds blew down the reach. Winter cold made the vapor fly and froze the boats into their moorings, so the coast guard’s eighty-three footer had to steam in and bust the ice before the expanding white mass crushed the little wooden boats of the fishing fleet.

            The social status of everyone on the island could be determined by their homes as seen from Johnny’s window in the little building where it crouched there on the ledge holding on against the wind and rain. The smallest houses belonged to the clam diggers; they’d never had anything and their fathers hadn’t, and their sons surely wouldn’t.  The neat, small, well painted houses with the one or two year old cars and pickups in the driveway belonged to the lobstermen. These were the ones who could tell you from year to year what they’d earn.  They were the steadies:  hard work, damn hard work; big investment in gear, damn big investment in gear; and small but steady incomes, year in and year out.  They showed small but steady growth as the years went by, so that every once in awhile one was able to get his boy up in the business or to team up with some others and maybe build a lobster pound so that they could hoard up a whole mess of lobsters until an upturn in the market, unless red tide or some other disease, or a bad storm, or something didn’t wipe them out so that they spent the rest of their lives getting out from under. The best houses though, belonged to the gamblers; for what was a seiner but a gambler?

The seiner mortgaged everything he owned, borrowed on friendship, promised percentages of his catch, and if slavery weren’t outlawed would have sold his wife, kids, and mother-in-law, for enough to gear up and run west’rd after the tiny elusive herring that could make you rich, or ruin you in three short months of summer.  Still, the big secret the seiner knew was that five bad seasons could be wiped out with one good one.

Like the horse player, the more he lost the more he gambled.  The only difference being that a horse player would always lose and the seiner would win once in a while.  Not often, but enough to wipe the slate clean and start again.  That elusive big catch dangled just beyond the fingertips. There’s a legend among the seiners along the coast of Maine that the best credit references a man can have is herring scales on his clothes when he goes to a bank, creditor, or a new car lot.  It’s true.

Scattered among the houses stood three large churches, each built in an almost triangular relation to one another.  They were well kept and sparkled whitely, spires reaching high above the homes of their parishioners.  One, the Baptist church by the cemetery, boasted a huge clock in its towering belfry which had been known to strike as many as twenty-seven times on a particularly cold Maine winter night.

These massive tributes to the Almighty, along with the fact that there were no movie halls, dancing places, or beer joints on the island gave evidence to the strong religious fervor of the older people who controlled the vote of the town. Some of the younger fishermen, and even a few of the older ones, however, did noticeably wobble when returning from their little workshops in the backyards and on the piers.  Cars returning form Machias, the nearest town that boasted a state liquor store, after the weekly grocery trip, was more often than not unloaded twice. First, in broad daylight, with boxes of groceries from the supermarket, and again later in the dead of night with brown paper bags that emitted a glassy clink a they were stealthily sneaked into workshops, attics and garages.

To the eastward from the loft window stretched fourteen other islands of various sizes; all uninhabited.  They were for the most part heavily wooded, and it was here that the men of Granite Island hunted the deer and sea birds in the fall of the year.  Here also were kept small camps from which they tended their lobster traps in the summer and fall.

Looking south, the Gulf of Maine, that vast, deep, beautiful graveyard of fishermen, stretched in the unbroken splendor of the Atlantic Ocean.

To the westward, but not visible from Johnny’s window stretched the Western bay.  It held as many or more islands, but fewer deer, although the bare rocky islands to the seaward side of the bay were a favorite spot for hunting the myriad seabirds that called the island home.  In the spring, grassy Smith’s Island, devoid of trees, was the nesting place of the seagulls.  The islanders made regular tips there to collect the speckled eggs from their grassy nests in the weeds while the irate gulls, in the hundreds, soared overhead in an umbrella of screaming white fathered indignity at the spoilers that ravaged their unborn young.

Johnny studied the anchorage in the cover in the eastern bay, mentally ticking off the names of the owners of the boats dancing on their moorings.

With a sick feeling of sudden fear, he saw that the buoy of the Maria’s mooring was bobbing bare in the frothing seas.  His father and Tony were still out.

He looked to seaward, but the rain filled gloom closed the distances.  There was no sign of the Maria.

His brother, Tony, and his father had gone out early the previous day to haul and reset the trawls, hoping for at least one good set.  Johnny heard his father’s deep voice as he spoke Italian to Tony. 

“Johnny’s different than you and me Tony.  He’s going to amount to something someday. He’s got brains. Next week he graduates from high school.  We’re going to get him something nice, a watch, a nice wristwatch.” 

The old man’s voice was deep with emotions.

“Some day Johnny’ll be a big lawyer, maybe a doctor, just like his mama wanted.  You know that I promised her before she died.  She, knowing it was all over said ‘Guiseppe, you make Johnny go to school. He’s smart and someday he’ll be rich.’ Well, we got him through high school, now next year we’ll work hard and Johnny’ll go to college.”

“That’s for sure pop.  Johnny ain’t gonna be no fisherman can we help it.”  Tony’s deep booming voice with its down east accent was in strange contrast to his father’s warm southern Italian voice.

“We’ll get him a watch alright. The best solid gold wristwatch they got in Machias, and then we’ll get him the best education that friggin’ ocean can supply.”

Guiseppe switched to his adopted language.  “Okay, here’s what we can do. Next week we set trawl out by Spruce Island.  Maybe do pretty good.  Whatever we get the day before graduation, that’s Johnny’s watch; we come in early, take the truck and go to Machias, buy the watch and be back by night time.”

“Good enough Pop, we’ll do it.  One set just for Johnny’s graduation present.”

Johnny had been choked with emotion to think these two rugged fishermen of the same blood, bur far different in every way from him, would put that kind of hard work into getting him a graduation present.  After all they’d done over the years working to feed and clothe him so that he could get an education, and then committing themselves to at least four years of even greater expense to put him through college.

Then yesterday, one day before his graduation, they’d gone out at first light.  Johnny’s sense of guilt couldn’t let him lay there in his warm bed, especially with small craft warnings forecast for late afternoon.

He scrambled from the loft in Levi’s, a wool shirt and stocking feet, hip boots in hand.  “I’m going with ya today.”

“Not very bad,” Tony behind his father was halfway out the door.  “Today and tomorrow’s big days fer you, you got the dance tonight.”

“I don’t want to go to no dance.  I’m going with ya.”

Johnny’s father heard and came back in, “And how about Claire?  You promised to take her to the dance. You gonna stand her up?”

“I’ll stop by and tell her I got to work.  She won’t mind.”

Tony glared at him “Not very bad, she won’t she been chasin’ ya all year to go ta this dance.  You promised and you ain’t gonna disappoint her.” Tony stared him down.  “You’re goin’ ta school today. It’s only for an hour, but you ain’t missed a day all year.  You finish up like you’re supposed ta.  We’re comin’ in early today any way; we got to go to Machias for some parts.”

Eyes sheepish, downcast, Johnny knew there’d be no arguing against both of them.  Separately he could usually get round either; together they shored each other like stakes in a weir.  “What time you be back from Machias?”

“Real late, don’t wait up.  That is if you get back from the dance before dawn.”  Tony and Guiseppe both laughed, waved their hands farewell, and stepped out into the early morning sunshine.

Only now, after checking the empty mooring did he realize they hadn’t even gotten in last night.  He cursed himself for not checking for the boat before he’d picked up Claire for the dance last night.  He’d assumed they were still in Machias as he had left the house and taken the shortcut across the marsh. It hadn’t even entered his mind to check if the Maria was on the mooring. He hadn’t even glanced out the window while dressing.

Heavy seas had announced the incoming gale the previous afternoon and the Maria, no matter how sea worthy, would have had to hole up in the lee of an island or tried to make it back across the treacherous reach. Panic clutched him.  If they’d stayed in a cover overnight, they’d have radioed for someone to come let him know so he wouldn’t worry.  He hadn’t heard a word.

Throwing on some clothes, he picked up his boots and skinned down the ladder to the room below.  A huge bed dominated this room.  When Johnny’s mother had been alive she’d lived in this room with his father.  She’d borne Tony here, and later Johnny.  She’d lain in this bed sick and tired for almost a year before she finally called them all in, kissed them goodbye and died with dignity in her own bed, her own house, with her man and her sons around here.  There was a sweet smile on her face as she closed her eyes and turned her head on the pillow as though she was going to take a nap.

After her death Tony had moved down from the loft so that Johnny could have seclusion for his studies. Sleeping with his father the two could get up early and quietly to go to work without waking Johnny, who was usually up until midnight with his studies.

Johnny crabbed past the bed thinking sadly of his mother, who’d been all good things to him, and in a moments panic realized that if his father and Tony were gone he was alone.  The only other room was the kitchen, and he crossed quickly to the coat rack.

He grabbed his oil coat from a nail behind the door, and his so’wester cap and plunked it onto the back of his head. He pulled open the inside door and pushed the storm door open against the wind which billowed into the house, blowing down the tide calendar and scattering a stack of bills and papers from the top of the tall cupboard across the room. He stepped out into the howling blast of the wind and let the door shut to with a slam. The latch clicked, but he turned the wooden button to hold it even more securely.

The wind buffeted him as he headed down the footpath toward the road below.  The head high alders waved and sighed in the wind, and the rain drove against his oil coat, hat and boots in a steady drumming.

As he reached the road he saw Lem Small’s pickup coming and waved it down. There were three of the women who worked at Lem’s clam shed piled in with Lem in the cab of the truck.  He jumped into the cluttered bed of the truck and thumped on the roof.  Lem started ahead again.  Johnny crouched as close as he could to the cab, but it was no help against the drenching downpour.

The truck bumped through the most thickly settled part of town, and followed near Eastern Fisheries pier as it negotiated a right turn toward the clam shed.  Johnny thumped on the cab and as the truck stopped, landed running and waved a gesture of thanks over his shoulder as he ran for the buyers shack at the head of the pier.

He pushed through the door along with a gust of wet wind that rattled the big calendar on the wall.  He pushed the door closed with difficulty and turned his back against it.  Frank Miller, fat hands holding down the riffled papers on his desk, greeted Johnny as the young man entered.

“Hello Johnny, b***h of a day.”

“Yessuh, heard anything from my pa or Tony?”

“No. See the boat’s out.”

“Went yesterday mornin’, shoulda been back last night.”

Miller’s eyebrows went up and looked out the window at the choppy water meaningfully, “Where they gone?”

Johnny looked at the fat man, “Where they gone? They’ve gone to haul the trawls.  Where’d ya think?”

“Shame, I’m all done buying this week. They musta gone early.  I posted ‘NO FISH’ bout nine o’clock yesterday mornin’ musta been.”

“Nine o’clock! What fisherman goes out that late? You mean they out in this for nothing?”

“Fraid so.” He saw the look in the boy’s eyes and looked away. “I’m sorry Johnny, got to do as they tell me in the office.”

“Got all they want?”

“Got all they want.”

“That’s the trouble ‘round here.” Johnny’s voice was rising.  “They buy from ya till they get what they want, then ta hell with ya.  What’s a fisherman supposed ta do?  Sit around waitin’ on you damn guys ta feel like buyin’?”

“Now wait a minute boy.”  The fat man half rose behind the desk.  “We doin’ you people a favor. Pay a good price.”

“Bullshit! Pay what ya kin get away with, screw ya the rest of the time.”  He reached behind him for the knob and swung the door open, letting in the rain.  He stepped into the weather letting the door shut.  Now oblivious to the rain he walked slowly to the pier.  They’re only buying small, or if ya got small, they’re only buying big.  Ya got number five herring, they want eights.  Get eights they want fives; but they’re always willing ta do ya a favor and take them off yer hands for ‘good measure’ and half price.   A sudden blast of wind and rain jarred him and he broke into a trot.  Reaching the road, he ran till he came to Roy Wolfe’s pier.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

THE RESCUE

 

Roy Wolfe’s store was built at the head of his massive wharf.  In its cavernous interior could be found any item in quantity needed to work and sustain life on the remote Maine Island.  Once inside the huge double doors a hodgepodge of smells caressed, rather than assailed, the senses.  Fish, rope, oil, breads, clothing, all blended into a smell of Friday night shopping.

Dried cod hung in thick clusters from the beamed ceiling, swinging lazily in the breeze each time one of the huge doors swung open to admit a customer.  Canned goods of every description filled the long shelves along one whole wall. Here could be selected anything from potted meats to fruits and vegetables.  Against the rear wall were coils of rope of every size and texture; their long leaders going up over pulleys on the bare wood rafters and back down through the automatic measures and cutters.  Baked goods brought over from the mainland three times a week by scow ferries dominated the corner by the cash register.  Flanking the register and counter on the opposite side, were long shelves groaning under a profusion of assorted nuts, bolts, tools, spare engine parts, spark plugs, tires and everything else that was necessary to keep any boat or auto on the island running the next three hundred years.

The dried fish swayed in the onshore breeze.  Johnny stepped in and secured the door behind him.  Roy Wolfe glanced up, recognized the boy and went back to whittling the always present lobster plugs.  Some men chewed their nails of tobacco.  Some men drank, took snuff or cheated on their wives.  Roy Wolfe, one of the richest men in the State of Maine, whittled lobster plugs.  The plugs used to peg the claws of lobsters, were all hand carved and were a source of pocket change to the older folks on the island who sold them to their younger neighbors.  They were worth one dollar a thousand.

Roy was a long, thin man who always wore his billed wool cap, except when he removed it to scratch his close cropped, graying blond hair.  One would have thought that a man that carried the poorer of the fishermen on credit through the winter, that held a Christmas party every year for the children of the island, who paid fair prices to the fishermen and their wives who worked in his clam shed and sardine cannery, a man who gave unsparingly to every charity and church by whom he was approached, would have a face as beautiful as his soul.  Such was not the case with Roy Wolfe.  His long hooked nose arced disrespectfully toward his jutting, upturned chin giving him the appearance of a hawk.  His mild grey eyes rarely looked into the eyes of another human being, but danced about the floor or about the second button on a wool shirt, when addressed.  He wore what all the island men wore, winter and summer:  a heavy wool shirt, wool pants or dungarees, and hip boots rolled down and double folded to the knee.  He was a difficult man to talk to.  It was not that he didn’t listen, but that he listened too well.  Whenever addressed, be it by the smallest tot on the island with a penny to spend for candy, or one of the luckier seiners with herring to sell, he stood quietly, knife and whittling wood buried in his pocket, staring at the toe of his boot or into the distance, his overly large ears seemed to be tensed to every word and in complete concentration.  When Roy Wolfe listened to you, you knew he was listening and not merely hearing.  This often caused the speaker to reappraise, self consciously, the importance of what he was saying.

Perhaps that was the secret of his success, absorbing one hundred percent of what he hears, not the forty percent others heard while their minds ran ahead of the speaker.

“Hi, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Doin’ Johnny.”

“Ain’t heard nothing; a popper or Tony, wha’?”

“Nope.”

“Could I use the radio? Maybe hear ‘em if they’re on.”

“Help yourself, rough outside the island.  They shouldn’t a gone out.”

“Been out since yesterday, said they’d be back last night.”  Johnny felt so empty.

Roy’s eyes flickered up briefly sharing Johnny’s concern.  Johnny stepped behind the counter and hit the switch of the radio.  A steady hum of dead air issued from the set.  Johnny walked around to the front of the counter and sat on a wooden chair near the stove.

“Nobody’s on.”

“Listen fer while.” Roy studied Johnny’s boots.  “Probably come on.”

Johnny sat quietly, scared and trembling.  “Suppose I oughta call the Coast Guard?”

“Gone since yesterday, might be a good idea. You listen to the set; I’ll call them on the phone.” Roy walked over toward his office in the back of the store.

Johnny’s mind drifted to the previous night while he sat, ears tuned to any sound from the radio.

The dance had ended early, about eleven and Claire suggested they go for a ride down the island.  Thought it smelled of old bait, fish and gasoline, it was a luxury for most of the younger island people to have any kind of vehicle.  Johnny was proud to be behind the wheel of the old truck as if it were this year’s model.

Granite Island was really two islands lying close together with a narrow causeway, a hundred feet long, joining them.  The other island was called Simpson’s island on the map, but more often called Engle’s Bay by the town’s people.  Johnny headed the truck toward the sparsely populated Engle’s Bay.

The old pickup seemed to purr through the windy night, which eve then was getting cooler in the way it always did just before a gale.  Claire snuggled up next to him and he felt ten feet tall as he lighted a pair of cigarettes and gave her one.  They smoked quietly as the truck moved over the unlighted clamshell paved road through the closely packed little houses.

Claire lived on the island with her Aunt Mattie, who had never married. Mattie was Claire’s paternal aunt, and had taken the girl in when she was five years old.  Claire’s father and mother had been killed in a boating accident and Aunt Mattie had raised her the best she could, being a spinster with no child rearing experience.  Claire, however, had grown free and wild.  Mattie didn’t believe in too much discipline, feeling the child had suffered enough losing both parents so early in life.   As a result, Claire did about as she pleased, and this had given her an undeserved reputation on the island as being ‘fast’.  Now at eighteen, knowing what others thought of her, she had decided to play the game for which she had the name.

She’d pursued the scholarly Johnny and had finally gotten an invitation to the graduation dance.

They hit the rise at the edge of the little village, passed the solemn grey Pentecostal Church and dipped toward the unpopulated lower end of the island.

When he’d picked her up earlier in the evening, Claire had carried a small, brown paper bag out to the truck and placed it behind the seat.  Now she fumbled behind her for a moment and produced the bag. She rattled it open and pulled out a bottle of cheap rye.  She split the seal with an experienced long painted thumbnail and spun the cap off. She took a long swallow, and then passed it to Johnny.

“I figured you might not think of it so I kifed one of my Aunt’s.”

Johnny started to shake his head no, but the challenging look on her face stopped him.  He knew that a refusal on his part would earn her contempt.  He raised the bottle to his lips and took a long pull.  He held the liquor in his mouth as long as he could under the girl’s steady gaze and then, swallowed it hoping that he wouldn’t gag.  Past experiments with whiskey had convinced him that he would never be a drinking man.  Strangely enough, the liquor went down smoothly.  Full of bravado, he tilted the bottle once again and took a longer swallow drinking it like water.  This time he almost gagged.  He swallowed and it burned all the way down.  His eyes watered and his face screwed up.  After he finished his facial contortions, he grinned at her.

“Smooth.”

She laughed, not at him for him.

“You’re nice Johnny.”

The truck was passing the little knoll top cemetery overlooking the bay on the left.  Just ahead to the right was the narrow gravel road that led to the gravel hole.

By day the sand pit was used by the islanders to obtain the sand for mixing cement.  By night it was used for courting purposes.

As the truck moved along, Claire suddenly grabbed the wheel and pulled it sharply to the right.  The old truck careened into the road leading into the gravel hole, almost tipping but righting itself precariously, as Johnny fought the wheel.  He straightened the truck out and hit the brakes as it rolled down the bumpy incline.  He stared at the girl.

“Are you craz…?”

Her grin and bolding flashing eyes silenced him.  She turned to look at the darkened area under the huge overhanging spruces at the far end of the gravel hole, then turned back toward him smiling.

“Wanna park?”

Silently he threw the truck out of gear and took his foot off the brake.  The truck rolled down the incline and across the level area and slowed to a stop at the edge of the woods.

Johnny’s experience with women until now had consisted of mild innocent petting and some not so mild, not so innocent fumbling.  But here in the little gravel hole on this remote island in late June, with a  storm brewing in the tops of the big spruces that spread their canopy over the truck, Claire of the black hair and emerald green eyes, on the eve of what was to be his last day of formal schooling, completed his education.

The crackle of the radio brought him back to the present.  The Coast Guard radioman started calling for the Maria within minutes of Roy’s call but, it was over an hour before Johnny heard the answering call.  He breathed a sigh of relief as he heard his brother’s voice, muffled by the sounds of wind and sea in the background. 

“Maria calling Shell Island Coast Guard. Come back.”

Almost instantly the alert radio operator at the light station answered.

“Shell Island to the Maria, come in.”

“This is the Maria, Shell Island. We’re approximately three miles to the east’rd of you in the lee side of Seaduck Island; wheel’s fouled with a trap warp, been tryin’ ta clear it since yesterday afternoon.  Just got the radio fixed.

Johnny sat forward in his chair listening to his brother’s voice.  Roy Wolfe looked vacantly at the ceiling, almost seeming to flex his overlarge ears.  Tony’s next words sent a chill through Johnny and caused Roy to send a shocked glance across the room.

“My father’s been injured.  We need some help right now.”

“Shell Island to the Maria, we’re on our way, you in Duck Cove? Come back.”

“Yes, Duck Cove.  Hurry up.”

“Right, the Maria. What’s the condition of the injured man?”

“Maria back, he’s unconscious.  He was leanin’ over the washboard with a gaff and went overboard with a swell.  Boat came down on him. He’s got a bad cut on the head, but I stopped it up.  He keeps passin’ out.  I got him in the cabin, but he needs a doctor bad.”

Johnny felt numb.  The sounds of the storm outside dulled and he almost slipped from his seat.  Roy came over and put his hand on his shoulders.

“Steady on son.  Steady on.”

Johnny composed himself, nodded and strained forward listening to the radio.

“Shell Island to the Maria, the cutter will have to take him to the mainland.  I’ll alert Dr. Clark and have him standing by.  Then the boat’ll come back and tow you in, unless there’s a fishing vessel in the area. Come back.”

“Shell Island, Shell Island, this is the Sea Hawk. Come back.”

“This is Shell Island.  Come in Sea Hawk.”

“This is the Sea Hawk.  I’m on the mooring at Granite.  I can make it out there in twenty five minutes.”

“Shell Island to the Sea Hawk, good enough, let ‘er go. Shell Island to the Maria, did you read the Sea Hawk? Come back.”

“Maria to Shell Island, I heard and many thanks to Jerome.  Appreciate it if you could get word to my brother, but don’t tell ‘im about popper. Johnny’s graduatin’ ta day and I don’t want it messed up.”

“Sea Hawk to the Maria, Les is over on the pier.  I’ll sail by on the way out and tell ‘im. Sea Hawk out.”

“Thank you Sea Hawk, and the Maria out.”

“Shell Island Coast Guard Station out.”

Johnny ran for the door.

“Thanks Mr. Wolfe.”

As he ran through the buffeting wind and drenching rain, his boots sending up spray from the puddled gravel road leading to the pier.  Johnny saw the Sea Hawk drop her mooring and dinghy and head in for the gas pier.  He arrived at the pier only minutes later.

Jerome Adams and Les Norton looked up as he arrived puffing, out of breath and clambered down the ladder onto the Sea Hawk.

“Goin’ with ya Mr. Adams.”

Jerome Adams pulled his billed wool cap over his grey eyes, rubbed a huge wool sleeved arm across his graying stubble of beard and gave a grunting nod.  He handed the gas hose back to Les.

“Take holt on that rail then.”

Johnny locked on to the steel bar on the inside bulkhead of the cabin.  Jerome shoved the throttle forward and the boat seemed to leap from the shadow of the pier out into the rain soaked gloom of the reach in a boil of white foam.  Johnny hung on for all he was worth, his feet threatening to fly out from under him.

The powerful thirty-five foot Sea Hawk made time down the reach and within minutes they were outside Shell Island steaming to the eastward.

“There goes the Coast Guard boat,” Jerome Adams yelled over the roar of the engines. 

Johnny squinted through the haze.  Directly over the bow, the small Coast Guard boat was chopping toward them through the storm tossed seas.  A wall of white frothing water followed her wake in a vain attempt to catch the fast little steel boat.

The Coast Guard boat passed close abeam to the Sea Hawk. The man at the helm threw an arm back in the direction from which he’d come, as a signal towards the Maria’s location.

Then on the radio came:  “We got the injured man.  Other fella’s still on aboard.  You’re right on course. Over.”

Jerome snatched the mike, quickly fighting the tiller with one hand.  “Ya, gotcha, I’m out.”

He flicked the mike back onto its hook.

Within two minutes the men on the Sea Hawk could make out the Maria trailing a sea anchor from her bows as the sea buffeted her.  In the lee of the cabin, Tony’s form alternately appeared and disappeared in the rain splattered gloom.  Johnny wished the cutter had picked him up to be with his father, but realized they had no way of knowing he was aboard.

They wouldn’t have stopped in any case in these heavy seas; the important thing being to get Guiseppe to the doctor as soon as possible.

Jerome put the Sea Hawk expertly close to the Maria’s bow and Johnny gaffed the line of the trailing sea anchor.  The Maria had drifted quite aways from the lee of the island and was climbing the high seas, then smashing down in a trough in a spray of water that frothed the surrounding sea.  He hauled the funnel shaped sea anchor aboard, and then snubbed a bite of the line to a cleat in the stern of the Sea Hawk.  He hauled steadily on the line, almost being pulled overboard every time the Maria rose and fell.  Slowly he closed the gap between the two boats.  Just as it seemed the two would collide, he leaped for the fore deck of the Maria, letting go the line.  The boats started to drift apart immediately. But Johnny was aboard.  He worked his way aft slowly as the Maria rolled in the chop, spray breaking all over him. He rounded the gunwale into the wheelhouse, and a pitch of the sea almost catapulted him into the partitioned off section of the cockpit full of fish.  His brother’s huge hand snaked out and encircled his forearm, helping him safely out of the gale and into the lee of the pilothouse.

Tony’s face was a dark scowl, “What in hell you doin’ out here?”

Johnny’s voice rose above the roar of the storm.  “Come out to see could I help you and popper.”

“You supposed ta be at yer graduation.  Pop’s gonna be real mad.”

A sudden surge of anger welled up in Johnny’s throat.  “D****t! What’re you and popper, both nuts? Here ya almost got yerselfs killed and your worried ‘bout the damn graduation.  Popper bein’ stove up and all, and fer what? Fer nothin’, that’s what.”

“Whata ya mean?”

“That fat b*****d Miller ain’t buyin’ yer catch’s what I mean.”

Tony stepped closer and grabbed his brother’s arm, causing the boy to wince, “Why not? Why ain’t he buyin’?”

“Got all he wants.  Ain’t buyin’ no more is what he said.”

The boat lurched as Adams eased the Sea Hawk ahead, taking a strain to the tow line. Soon the Maria was plowing along behind the powerful boat as the Sea Hawk headed back in.

Tony moved to the tiller and tied it amidship to hold the rudder straight for the tow, then leaned against the wheelhouse window looking ahead to the wave tossed sea.  After a moment he started to speak.  Johnny leaned forward to her the strangely soft voice over the roar of the tempest.

“Its allus the same.  Allus the same. Allus the same.”

He repeated the phrase over and over again.  His big hand, gnarled into a fist, beat softly but with increasing loudness on the narrow ledge on the front of the wheelhouse in tempo to his voice.  Suddenly he turned savage as Johnny had ever seen him.

“By the red roarin’, its allus been like this.”  Louder, he went on.  “No matter what a man does, it ain’t enough. Me and popper’s busted our butts: clammin’, wormin’, seinin’, lobsterin’, even workin’ in the woods cuttin’ pulp.  What in the hell we ever got outta it sides a busted back and calluses?  And you look what you hadda go do.  Tryin’ ta git a education on that foresaken island and work at the same time ‘cause two able bodied men couldn’t make enough to feed the family.”

Tony’s eyes were red now with disgust of their lot and worry for his father.  He said with finality “I’m all done with this life.  Soon’s pop’s better, I’m getting’ outta it.”

There was a trace of hope in his eyes now and he gazed out of the windshield as though through the storm he could see past the sea to the mainland and across the miles and endless miles of spruce forests.

“I’m goin’ ta Boston or New York, or any place where a man don’t have ta starve in the winter and break his back in the summer.  I’m gettin’ a factory job.  I don’t care how much I make, but d****t I’m never gonna starve no more, nor I ain’t gonna be cold no more.  I’m a man thirty years old.  I want a bit more than what I got, not a lot, but some.”  As if trying to justify his abandonment of the island he added “I’ll be able to send ya some money ta help ya out with yer college.”

Johnny stood silently for a long moment and then braced himself.  He looked at his brother’s broad back.

“Ain’t going ta college.”

It was out.  Johnny steeled himself for the onslaught.  He had been planning for more than a year to tell his brother and father of his decision.  This was perhaps the worst possibly time to break the news, but something of Tony’s seemingly complete surrender now spurred him to it. He’s always been in complete awe of Tony, but now he seemed a defeated hulk. This last blow had been too much. Tony had surrendered in the battle of man against the elements.

Johnny, slim and just touching six feet tall and had soft and timid brown eyes.  His long black hair curled about his head giving him, along with his slenderness, a peaceful look.  To a stranger, it was more of an air of softness.  Tony, by contrast, had steely green eyes, close cropped hair and a bull neck.  Tony’s shoulders were half again the width of Johnny’s, yet at this minute Johnny felt the bigger of the two.

Tony turned and looked at him for a full minute. “What?”

“All done, I got a high school diploma and that’s something no more’n two or three other guys ever had on the island.  I’m smart enough to make a livin’ here.  I don’t want ta go away anywhere’s else.”

“But me and pop figured…” he broke off.  Johnny had that familiar, stubborn look in his eyes.  When the kid got that expression it was impossible to change his mind.  “Well, we’ll talk about it after we find out how pa is, okay?”

Johnny nodded, knowing in his heart that now that it was out he would never change his mind.

The two brothers remained silent, as the Maria, towed by the Sea Hawk, sailed though the narrow passage between Shell Island and Sheep Island into the somewhat calmer waters of the more sheltered reach.  Jerome turned to port and sped up.  The two boats ran swiftly for the moorings at Granite Island.

 

 

Author's Note

Ignore dialect as it is tried and true to the region. Constructive criticism only. Wanting to see if my father's and my writing style will fly as it was a book he and I were writing back in the 70s. I am now author of eight books myself and his writing style flourishes in this source. Appreciate this. Thank you.