CHAPTER TEN
When I step aboard the Rilla Brae, my legs remember how they steadied against the rolling waves as the dead girl crept toward me. The girl bringing death the same way the universe brought Dad’s. Dark. Horrible. Unexpected. The sea spreads its secrets around me, its depths another world.
Today is the first time I hesitate at the Rilla Brae’s ignition. I can’t remember ever pausing before bringing the engine to life, but now I fear what I’ll pull from the sea, as if the dream were a premonition. And it’s the second time in as many weeks that I’ve feared the water.
But I hear Gram’s advice about never setting a place for fear at your table. I turn the key and calm with the familiar vibration of the boat. I slip into my rubber coveralls and focus only on fishing. The ocean refuses to accommodate doubt. “All it takes is one wave, Rilla. One wave and one moment when you aren’t paying attention. Survival on the ocean is fragile.” Even then Dad warned me of the slip of time between life and death. In those days I never imagined we’d exist on opposite sides of the divide.
I throw the engine in gear and head to sea. I channel between Whaleback Ridge on my port side, Malaga at starboard. The island is a mere mound of rock, unprotected from the violent sea, its former residents unprotected from violent judgment. Alone in the wash of water. I slow my speed, raise my gaze to the shadow of the island’s crest. I picture the old woman in her rocking chair, rising to tend her gardens. The men at sea in their open boats, vulnerable in ways they may not have known. And was the girl there too? With her song?
“Did you know people lived on Malaga?” I ask Dad, and maybe my mother too. Because maybe they are here. With me and the sea.
I’m relieved when I don’t get an answer. I was only six when the ambulance took my mother away. I remember the sirens that screamed at the end of my mother’s last night at Fairtide, how they were loud and screeching and frightened my heartbeat. It took a lot of years for me to understand what a psychiatric hospital was, and how the Water People sent her there. Now I want to know how the hallucinations started for her, the slipping of her mind. Because maybe I am more like her than I thought.
I press against the throttle, gaining speed. I give the sea my full attention.
Sam’s on his boat when I arrive, anchored off the lee side of Malaga. Even in the predawn dark, I can see his eager wave as I approach. I cut my engine when I’m close enough to yell to him: “You wanna jump in your skiff, row to me?”
“Nah. Come closer. I can make the leap.”
My money’s on him going in the drink. But Gram says that bravado is the only thing a man can master without a woman’s help, so I let Sam have his.
“You got it.” The current is choppy and carries my boat closer to the USM craft. I worry about marking up the sides of his pristine boat. The Rilla Brae is an old, working boat and bears her share of scars. A new scratch would have plenty of company. I throw the fenders out along the side, let their Styrofoam cushion keep a few inches of distance between the crafts. “Grab the rail, but don’t bend too far. One wave can pull away your balance.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Captain. It’s the word I used for my dad when we were out on the water. A word used everywhere on the sea. But today it feels wholly mine.
Sam leaps onto the Rilla Brae, and I’m impressed.
“I didn’t think you were gonna make it.” I train the floodlight ahead of us. “Gravity and balance are entirely different animals out on the sea.”
“Lesson one, huh?” Sam joins me in the wheelhouse.
“Nope.” I thrust the Rilla Brae in gear. “Lesson one”—I give his bare legs the side eye—“is never wear shorts for lobstering.”
“What’s wrong with shorts?”
“You’ll see.”
“I didn’t bring anything else.”
I nod toward the back corner of the wheelhouse, where my dad’s rubber overalls hang. “Put those on. You’re gonna need them.”
Sam reaches for my father’s Grundens, and in this small space, Sam’s body feels too close to me. I press my pelvis into the wheel, trying to create distance between us. I’m grateful when he steps to the back deck to slide the coveralls on. But when he returns, wearing my father’s uniform, my heart flattens in my chest.
I drive hard to the first buoy and then slow. I hand Sam my extra pair of gloves and the grapple hook. I nod toward the buoy. “That one’s ours. The green stripe intersected by orange. They’re all painted the same. That exact combination lets the other fishermen know that this is the Brae line. Each one bears our license number. Never try to pull a pot that doesn’t have a buoy with our colors, our license.”
“Why not?”
“That’s the way wars start out here. Men shoot men for that treachery.”
“For real?”
“It’s about as real as it gets.”
Sam gives me a short salute. “Got it. No wars.”
“The line sits under the buoy so you have to snag it, pull it up.”
Sam follows the halogen light as it reaches over the frothing waves. He throws the hook, submerging it before he pulls back nothing but seawater. He tries again. And again. “There is a rope, right?” He’s smiling. I’ve seen other newbies begin to look nervous by now, try to convince me of their manliness. But Sam’s humble, and humble is a good passenger to have on a boat.
“There’s a line.” I wait through six more attempts before he snags its length. The morning sun drags its color into the sky.
He pulls the swollen rope up from the water, but as he turns to me in his excitement, the line slips from the hook. His smile only grows. “Let me guess, that’s not supposed to happen.”
“Not.”
He thrusts up his hand like a stop sign. “Okay, okay. I got this now. Hook the line, but don’t let it slip from the hook.”
“You catch on fast.” We should have hauled at least two strings, three pots each, in the time it takes Sam to drag up one, but my father was patient with me whenever I was learning anything new and I extend the same courtesy to Sam. “All we need is one good pot for supper, so let’s try for that.” They’re the words I tell Sam, exactly as my father said them to me when he first let me use the grapple hook. I was eight and my arm hurt from thrusting that long wooden stick into the water. I slept with a bag of frozen peas on my swollen shoulder that night, but I never told my dad how much pain my first day on the hook had caused. The pride I felt for doing the work on my own was the closest thing I’d ever felt to flying.
“Where’d you go?” Sam asks.
I shake the memory from my head. “I’m here.”
“Check it.” Sam shows me the hook, the thick rope tucked into its steel claw.
“Well done.” I tie the rope to a metal cleat at the rail. “Normally, we’d set the line into the pulley, but your first pot is a special one. All first pots are pulled by hand on this boat.”
“Like this?” He works the line through his gloves, hand over hand.
“Just like that.”
His back struggles against the weight as the trap nears the surface. His stance widens with the strain of the task. Then the surface of the water changes, pops.
“Holy crap. Is that it?”
“It is.” My breathing waits on its contents, like always.
The corner of the trap peeks out from under the waves, sloughing off water as it rises. Sam pulls the line closer to the boat, and the way the wire cage creeps through the swells reminds me of the one that crawled to me in my dream. My vision. I squint my eyes to the sun, reminding my brain that this trap is real. Being out here is real. “Pull it all the way to the boat,” I instruct.
He does. The metal pot bangs against Rilla’s side, and Sam looks guilty.
“It’s all good. Now bring it up. But don’t bend too far. Remember that balance isn’t the same on a boat.” I stand behind him, ready to yank the back straps of his overalls if he loses his footing on the wet deck.
But he lifts the cage flawlessly. He holds it above his head like a prize. His smile beams as water cascades down his arms. “Christ, this is heavy!”
“You don’t actually have to hoist it over your head.”
“Sure I do. A kid from the desert gets to pull his first lobster trap exactly once.”
I grab at the opposite side, help him carry the cage to the top of the cooler. “Desert’s a long way away.”
“That is kind of the point.”
Something in his response startles me, makes me wonder what he’s running from. Or to.
I want to ask Sam more—know more—but how can I ask that of anyone when I’m not ready to share pieces of my own story? I return to instruction, the concrete and fixed language of hauling. Something I can control. Something that I’ve mastered. “Normally, we’d unload this on the rail. Saves time. But since it’s your first trap, we can do it here.” I tap the cooler. “I’ll walk you through the steps.”
“I appreciate that.” Then he bends to see eye level into the trap. “Holy shit. There are lobsters in there.”
I smile. “That’s a good thing.”
“No, I mean. Real. Lobsters. And they’re all brown and creepy.”
“They are.”
“I’ve only seen them on a”—he looks around and lowers his voice—“a plate before, ya know?”
I laugh. “I do.”
He stares into the trap again, like he’s at an exotic zoo. “Do we take them out?”
“They won’t venture out on their own.”
Sam takes a step back, gestures toward the trap. “Ladies first.”
I unhook the corner ties and throw up the hatch door. I pull out the first lobster and she’s small. I nod to the gauge hanging outside the wheelhouse. “Grab the ruler there.” He does. I turn the lobster so that her hard shell steadies on my palm. Her front claws search for anything to grab hold of. “A legal lobster has to be larger than three and a quarter inches but smaller than five. You measure from the top of the head here”—I point to the beginning of her shell, the part that actually starts just below her head—“to here.” I move my thumb along the bottom of her shell, that place just above her tail. I tuck the metal gauge against her side. “This girl’s too small, so we throw her back.”
“In the trap?”
“No. She goes overboard.”
“Her lucky day.”
“You wanna do the honors?”
Sam reaches for her belly.
“That’s a great way to get your thumb chomped.”
His hand retreats.
I turn my free palm. “Like this. Hold her upside down; it’ll put her to sleep. So her pincher claws can’t reach your fingers.”
I respect Sam’s confidence, how he slides his gloved hand under mine, grabs hold of this creature that must feel so foreign to him. He holds the lobster at arm’s distance, but his smile broadens across every inch of his face. “I am holding a lobster, Rilla Brae.”
“You are.”
“Like, a lobster. Straight from the sea.”
“Not like a lobster, a real live, living lobster.” At this rate it will take us a hundred times longer to haul. “You need to set her back to the deep.”
“Right. So, like face-first? Tail-first?”
“Any way is fine. Just chuck her overboard.”
“Rilla!”
“What?”
“I will not ‘just chuck her overboard’ ”—he makes awkward air quotes that pulls the lobster too close to his face. He thrust her out to arm’s length again. “I didn’t take you for being so callous.”
“It’s actually callous to keep her out of the water this long.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” Sam leans over the edge of the boat and suspends the lobster above the surface. The dawn sky is still too dark to see her descent, but I’ve seen enough lobsters returned to the sea to know that she dives skillfully, reunited with a world she can understand. I pretend I don’t hear him say, “So long, little lobstery.”
I try to hide my smile. “Six more.” Sam watches as I measure the remaining bugs, all legal length. We band their claws and place them in the cooler that circulates fresh seawater. “Now we rebait the trap.” I pull the small bag of netting from the trap’s kitchen and hand it to him.
He looks around the boat. “What do I fill it with?”
I kick at a five-gallon bucket. “Throw in a scoop of bait and hang it in the front of the trap. Then we set it back with its buoy and do it all over again.”
“Sounds easy enough.”
Sam pops the plastic lid off the bait bucket, and the whiff of rotten fish pushes him back so hard he falls on his ass. I extend a hand, which he takes.
“Always gotta watch your step.”
“Good God, woman. What is in there?”
“Chum.”
“Chum actually sounds a thousand times better than the way that smells.”
“Chum is dead, chopped-up fish.”
“That would be a precisely accurate description for the aroma emanating from this tub.” He scoops the fish and aims it toward the bait bag, but a wave heaves us and the chum slams into his thigh, blood and fish bits dripping down his leg.
“Chum is also one of the many reasons we don’t wear shorts when fishing.”
Bloody fish parts slither down his overalls. “That is a brilliant rule.” He nods. “No shorts. Never shorts.” He takes another scoop, fills the bag. “I might never wear shorts again.”
“Maaaaybe a bit extreme,” I say as I show him how to hang the bait bag within the trap’s kitchen. “Okay. Now just close and latch the door and you’re all set.”
He hoists the empty cage to the side of the boat. “Do I just throw it back?”
“Make sure the buoy line is free first.”
“So it doesn’t snag my foot?”
“You’re a fast learner.”
“You’re a good teacher.” He steps outside the coil of rope and drops the pot overboard. The line runs to follow the trap, slithering out over the boat’s edge. Then, finally, it snaps the buoy over the edge. The painted buoy bobs at the water’s surface, waiting. “Can I ask you something?”
I write the coordinates of the trap into my logbook. It would be easier, faster maybe, to set them into the GPS system. But Dad was old-school, so I am too. “About fishing?”
“Yes.”
“Ask away.”
“How do you know if a lobster is female?”
I put down the pencil, turn to him. “It’s illegal to harvest egg-bearing females. That’s why you check their bellies. If you see eggs, you need to notch their tail with a V and throw them back. Sometimes you won’t see eggs, just the notched tail. It means she’s a breeder. We throw them back to help sustain the lobster population.”
“But that one’s tail wasn’t notched.”
“Nope.”
“And she didn’t have eggs?”
“She didn’t.” I head toward the next buoy in our string.
“But you called the lobster a her. Why?”
I know the reason, but I’ve never told anyone, not even Dad. Sam sees me hesitate.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
And maybe that’s why I tell him. Because I don’t have to. Because he gives me the space in which to make my choice about what I share and what I don’t. “I’ve been fishing for lobster all my life.”
“I kinda got that.”
“I was taught at a really young age that lobsters take care of us out here. They feed us. Nurture our stomachs and our economy. I guess that always seemed like a maternal thing to me. As if lobsters were like really good mothers and grandmothers. Taking care of their own, taking care of others.”
“Damn.”
I pull my eyes from my water course. “What?”
Sam rights the grapple hook so it stands next to him like a staff. “You sound more like a poet than a fisherman.”
I like the way he gives my words back to me. I return his gift with a smile.
At the final string, my buoys are entangled. I see the blue-and-white markings of the crowding buoys long before I reach the string. Old Man Benner’s colors.
I take the gaff hook and pull the last string to untangle my line from his. My anger grows with every second lost to this task.
“Does this happen a lot?” Sam asks.
“Buoy lines can get tangled in the currents, but this is a whole line.” Three traps in a row. “Old Man Benner set over my traps.”
“On purpose?”
“Yep. It’s a way for fishermen to send a message.” Benner wants me gone. And he’s telling me that he’s willing to crowd me out.
“What kind of message?”
“That this particular fisherman is an asshole.” I pull Benner’s pot, a complete violation under any circumstances. I open the hatch, take the keepers.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to fish another person’s line?”
“You aren’t.” I stack his three traps on my deck and hide his blue-and-white buoys under a tarp so no one will see my treachery.
We head to the co-op to offload at the wharf. I introduce Sam to Hoopah, who shakes his hand. “Glad to meet you,” Sam says.
Hoopah eyes him. “Not from these parts, are ya?” Hoopah’s “parts” is distinctly missing an R and sounds like “pahts.” Dad used to joke that a hard R was as endangered as some of the fisheries in this part of the country.
“Southern Arizona,” Sam tells him. Most of our tourists come from Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. Arizona is exotic in comparison.
“Ya far from home.”
“Farthest I’ve ever been,” Sam says. I almost expect him to tell Hoopah about the dusty book that started his journey to Maine.
“Rill!” I recognize Reed’s voice, and I cringe.
I’m aware of how exhausted I look after staying up too late to study Malaga’s past and how sleep didn’t come easily after learning of the island’s fate. The stress of my dream can’t be helping my overall look of wellness. And I don’t want Reed to sense my rage at his grandfather’s bullshit antics. We never talk about our hauls; it’s a pact we made when we started dating. Lobstering is competitive enough without having to keep score against your boyfriend.
Reed comes to me with his long strides, his smile that pushes everything else off his face. He plucks at one of the black elastic straps of my orange overalls as he approaches, gives me a kiss on the cheek. My hand drops to find his, like always.
I link my fingers through his and whisper, “Hey, good-lookin’.”
“Get a room!” a deep voice calls from over near the huge container of bait. Stanley Wyatt is a likely suspect. The bait shack is where the retired fishermen sit and smoke and gossip.
“And a condom!” another fisherman calls. Probably Holm Stegner, Stanley’s sidekick.
All the men crack right up, most stroking their thick beards while they laugh.
I turn to Sam with an apology in my eyes. “The wharf’s a little . . . rough.”
Sam shoots me an it-doesn’t-bother-me look, and I realize I know Sam’s expressions—only a few, but still. “It’s all good.”
Reed nods toward Sam but asks me, “Who’s this?”
“Ah.” I throw a short wave between the two of them. “Sam, Reed. Reed, Sam.”
Sam extends his hand. “Sam Taylor, Rilla Brae’s resident sternman.”
“Reed Benner, Rilla Brae’s resident boyfriend.” Reed drops my hand, shakes Sam’s.
Sam throws me a look that says Benner?
I nod. “Sam’s in town for the summer.”
Reed looks him up and down. “Summer jerk, huh?” Except he says “summah jerk.”
“Summah not,” Hoopah answers automatically from where he weighs my catch behind Sam.
Sam looks between Reed and Hoopah. “I’m lost.”
“Don’t listen to them,” I say. “It’s a local thing.”
Reed moves closer to him, too close to Sam’s face. He waves his hand in the general direction of the village. “Summah people flood this place every year.” His “year” sounds like “yee-ah.” He’s laying his accent on thick. “Summah jerks.”
“And summah not,” I say.
A smile pops across Sam’s face. “Summah jerks and summah not. Ha! That’s good stuff.” His smile broadens.
Hoopah slaps Sam on the back, like he’s just passed some brotherhood test. He pulls Sam over to his station, starts schooling him on the mechanized belt that hauls each catch to the lobster pound.
“Can’t get fresher seafood than that,” Hoopah’s saying as Reed invites me to the side.
“What happened to your wrist?” Reed grabs at the space above my bandage.
“Burned it on the engine.”
Reed leans in but doesn’t drop his voice. “Jesus, Rilla. Was it because of him?” He nods in Sam’s direction. “Does he even know what he’s doing out there?” Fishing the deep is the last place people from away are welcome.
“He’s fine.”
I can tell Reed doesn’t like my answer, but he doesn’t push. Instead, he tucks a stray curl behind my ear and I tilt my face to his tender touch.
“Just ask her to marry you already!” Jimmy McKnight taunts from across the wharf. I know it’s him because he’s lapping up a round of high fives from the equally ridiculous men surrounding him.
“Did Hattie stop by last night?”
“She did.”
“Things cool between you two?”
“Totally.”
“Good. She’s seemed miserable lately without you.”
I wait for him to acknowledge my misery, my loss, but he only asks if I can go to the quarry with him tonight. Ugh, that quarry.
“I can’t. We’re having company for dinner. I’m actually running really late. Long day on the water.” I thumb toward Sam. “Training . . . you know.”
“After dinner? Come by then.”
“I’m beat. I really need sleep.”
He takes my hand, rubs the skin along my knuckles, conjures up his best puppy-dog face. “That’s not a no.”
“It’s not a yes. How about tomorrow?”
“Okay. Tomorrow.” He kisses me on the forehead, which gets a construction-site whistle from the Wharf of Immaturity.
I turn toward my boat, but Reed pulls at my good wrist. He’s looking at Sam as he asks, “Who’s your company?”
“What?”
“For supper. Who’s coming over?”
“Garden Club ladies.” I don’t know why I lie to Reed now. I never used to lie to Reed, and the guilt it brings makes me never want to do it again. I’ve been lying too much. Small ones, but they still feel wrong. Like me trying to protect myself—or hiding the way my mind is slipping—is hurting others.
“Have fun.” Reed kisses me good-bye with a little too much pressure. The cackling calls rise from the peanut gallery as soon as his lips reach mine. Still, I like it. His lips, his taste. It’s familiar and safe at a time when I need familiar and safe. A not-so-small part of me wants to cancel plans with Sam and Gram and be with Reed instead. I want to be the girl who can go to the quarry, watch the bonfire flames shoot long, spitting embers into the sky, laugh with my friends because laughter is good. But Gram won’t allow me to fish with Sam again until I bring him home to meet her, and fishing has to come first.
I pull away, with effort. “See you tomorrow.”
“Counting the minutes.”
After we make our way out of the harbor, I toss open the doors to Benner’s traps and drag them onto a nearby shore. I throw a scoop of dead herring into a plastic bag and leave it inside the top trap to rot in the sun. I cut his buoys from their rope, plant their shafts into the soil so that they stand upright, like soldiers.
“A warning?” Sam asks when I return to the boat.
“Just telling him to back off. He’ll know what it means.” Every lobsterman knows what it means.