“I love you.”
I force my teeth to unclench. “You too.”
Only after I’ve disconnected the call do I realize my hands are curled into fists at my sides, so tight my knuckles have gone white.
TWO
archer
I chasethe dawn out to sea, already well beyond the outer reaches of Gloucester Harbor by the time the sun makes an appearance on the eastern horizon. The ocean’s surface is stained red as blood; the western sky still blanketed by a dense gray cloud cover. We chug northward along the craggy Cape Ann coast, headed toward Rockport and Ipswich. The steady hum of the boat engine buzzes between my ears.
Most people ashore are still sound asleep in their beds, but I’ve been awake for hours — loading barrels of fresh bait from the supply docks, refueling the diesel tank, repairing a few busted traps. The Ebenezer — the mustard yellow lobster boat rumbling beneath me — is older than I am, and her age is apparent in every fiberglass crack and paint-chipped plank. Even after all these months, I haven’t fully sorted out her many idiosyncrasies.
“Put a little speed on, kid,” a gruff voice orders from my left. “I’m not paying you to take me on a cocktail cruise.”
“Wasn’t aware you were paying me at all, seeing as my last two checks mysteriously got lost in the mail,” I mutter under my breath. My left hand tightens its grip on the wooden steering wheel as my right punches the throttle into higher gear.
“What was that?” Tommy growls.
“Nothing.”
“Hmph.” He settles into the lofted seat on the port side of the wheelhouse, glaring through the salt-stained glass at the stretch of Atlantic ahead of us. “Got a big haul today. A hundred traps to check. No time to waste.”
“I know.”
“Glad to hear something permeates that thick skull of yours.”
I mash my teeth together, trying not to snap at my boss. Not that he doesn’t deserve it. Tommy Mahoney is as curmudgeonly as they come. A lifelong lobsterman, he’s been catching sea-bugs longer than I’ve been on this earth. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn his veins run with briny ocean water instead of blood. He’s not quite sixty but after decades of grueling work, his body is that of a much older man — his back curved in a perpetual hunch, hands arthritic from overuse, hair white as salt.
You take from the sea, she takes back.
Tommy treats me like an imbecile half the time and ignores me completely the other half. I try not to take it personally. He’s equally unpleasant to everyone who crosses his path. Most captains prefer to work with a stern-man — a grunt worker to order around, passing on the tricks of the trade in exchange for a menial wage. Hauling as a two-person team lightens the load; makes the backbreaking task of checking traps somewhat easier to bear.
Not Tommy Mahoney.
Word on the dock is that he’s always toiled solo rather than subject himself to the pain of human company. He took me on last fall only out of pure necessity, when he finally found himself unable to keep up with the demands of the job. Most of the time we exist in grudging silence, carrying out our respective tasks without exchanging more than the most basic of words.
Slow up on the throttle.
Buoy off the port side.
This trap needs fresh bait.
Gulping from a warm thermos of coffee, my breath fogs the air. This early in the day, it’s still cold out on the water — even in June. Lobstering does not favor night-owls. My alarm goes off at 4AM. I’m at the dock long before the sun has begun to creep over the horizon. Despite the dismal hour, Gloucester Harbor is a ceaseless hive of activity, especially in the summer months. As one of the busiest commercial fishing ports in Massachusetts, it’s home base for hundreds of lobstermen.
Our comrades.
Our competition.
After all, lobsters are a limited commodity. There are only so many buyers willing to purchase at market price, and so many bib-wearing tourists willing to pay it. Some days the Atlantic coastline feels more like the Wild West — a lawless land of maritime desperados staking claims to tracts of sea.
Alongside us, a handful of familiar boats motor out the channel, each eventually branching off toward their favored fishing spots. A massive offshore trawler emits a foul cloud of exhaust as it chugs for the horizon, headed for deeper waters, its dragger-nets coiled at the ready on dual booms. Back at port, the first ferry of the day rumbles to life with a throaty roar, a lion shaking awake after a deep sleep.
We’re circling the coast of Straistmouth Island when I spot one of the Ebenezer’s buoys — solid black with a mustard yellow X on either side — bobbing off the starboard bow. Every working vessel uses a unique paint pattern to distinguish their buoys from others. A blue-collar coat-of-arms, so to speak.
I gradually ease up on our throttle and feel the boat slow in response. Wordlessly, Tommy takes my place behind the wheel. I pretend not to notice the stiffness in his hands as he adjusts his grip; the slight wince he looses as he settles his hunched frame into the captain’s chair. Chugging the last sip of coffee from my thermos, I grab a pair of thick neoprene gloves from the gear box. Lobsters are feisty; you don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of their crusher claws. And let’s face it, after the accident last summer, my hands have enough damage already. The last thing I need is another broken bone.
Tommy steers us slowly beside the black and yellow buoy. Leaning over the rail, I use a long gaff hook to grab the submerged line and tug it aboard. My hands move on autopilot, feeding the saturated line into the electric pulley, flipping the switch to reel it in. The engine moans, straining to bring the string of traps up from the bottom. It doesn’t take long — most of our traps are laid in the rocky shallows, about twenty or thirty feet down, where lobsters are plentiful.