Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

  "Is the vessel damaged?"

  "Can't see from this distance. But they're pounding on the hull with a hammer."

  "Could be a repair;. we've got nothing on the distress frequency."

  "The same thought occurred to me. Just thought I'd report."

  "Thank you. Your name, sir?"

  "Dr. Charles Adams, North Eastham."

  Not long after I'd hung up, the phone rang.

  "Who could that be?" asked Mary.

  "The only person I know who would have the bad taste to call this early is Moe," I said.

  I picked up the phone.

  "Hi, it's Moe."

  "Figured."

  "Just thought I'd phone to see how you're getting along, Doc."

  "Not so good."

  "Still can't sleep?"

  "Nope. Think I need to be shrunk, Moe?"

  "No. You're definitely not psychotic and I don't think you're neurotic either. You're just a bit. . . uh. . .off the track is all."

  "Off the track? What's that?"

  "I see it a lot in our age group. Career doubts. Life doubts. Excessive self-analysis, self-pity, self-doubt. Self-obsession."

  "My symptoms exactly."

  "Well listen: get outside yourself. Submerge yourself in other things. Believe me, it's the best medicine. It's also the one common theme in the advice given by all the great and wise people who have ever lived."

  "And you, I presume, are one of those great people?"

  "No. Still learning. But passing on their advice. Listen: the more you try to make yourself happy the more miserable you'll be. To save yourself you must throw yourself away. What about your hobbies and interests? You like music. Get into some new types. You said you like Bruckner and Vaughan Williams. How about Elgar, Sibelius, Dvorak, Mahler &"

  "Yeah I see what you mean, I could really get into it—"

  "And more important, Doc, out of yourself!"

  "OK."

  "And you can work out some chess problems so I won't always beat you so badly. It's embarrassing gI tell you."

  "Uh, right."

  "And how about photography? You're a great photographer you know. Devote the next several weeks to being really great. Another Ansel Adams, who knows?"

  "Exactly."

  "Take pictures everywhere, and forget about yourself. Nothing makes people more miserable than worrying about I themselves. Nothing gives them more peace than finding a cause, or a devotion, outside themselves. Remember Tolstoi said that; you gave me the book—"

  "Ah yes. The Kingdom of God Is Within You. By the way, I want it back."

  "No such luck. I'm keeping git."

  "Moe, take a hint. Lay off the hard g's. Say 'it,' not 'git.' I It sounds much more high class."

  "Class? I should talk to you about class? Maybe I should talk to a penguin about life in the Sahara—" .

  "Do you know what a royal pain in the fanny you are?"

  "You're no balm to the derriere yourself pal. Look: keep taking the Librium. Keep running, too, even though the medication may slow you down a bit. And be sure to take that lovely creature you're lucky enough to be married to into the sack as often as possible."

  "Thanks, Moe," came a female voice.

  "Mary! What are you doing gon the extension?"

  "Doing on, not doing gon, Moe," I said.

  "Thanks again, Moe," said Mary, and hung up.

  "By the way, Doc, you owe me some money."

  "What'? All you did was recommend Librium. Big deal. I could've done that myself."

  "Yes, but not with my expertise and finesse."

  "OK. How"much?"

  "Four hundred?"

  "What!"

  "Listen, Doc, the Sea Scouts of Beverly need a boat. Now I bought one for them for two grand and I'm a little short. In fact I'm out. I thought you could help out a little, OK? Also, Mr. Empty Pockets, I happen to know you bought yourself a boat this spring. Twenty-something feet. Sleeps four. . .auxiliary engine. . ."

  "So?"

  "So? So give the kids a break, huh?"

  "I can't stand it."

  "I'm not asking for you to stand it; I'm asking gyou to send it. I, uh, sort of promised the bank you would. Now listen: you`ll never be anything but a half-assed chess player if you quit hanging garound me, so give. And take pictures. And take the medication. And take Mary. Good-bye!"

  He rang off.

  "That son of a bitch."

  "Charlie, you love him and you know it. A lot of time he's the only thing that gives you hope in the human race. I'll get the checkbook."

  Mary and I had breakfast and got ready to go sailing. As we left The Breakers at nine-thirty I took a last peek at the boat. The tide was rising; water was now lapping at her. Two men were walking knee deep in it looking down at the hull, which I could not see because of the angle at which she lay. The men stopped walking. One pointed upward. I heard the drone of the engine. Through the binoculars I could see the twin-engine plane bank steeply, beginning a tight circle. On the fuselage was the red slash that identifies all Coast Guard vehicles. I went back to the scope. The crew seemed to be excited. Then they did want help. . .no, they were arguing; Mary was right. No, they seemed to be deciding—

  Then it began. I knew it would. Through the powerful magnification of the long lens, which compressed thousands of yards of space into what seemed less than 100 yards, the ground began to tremble. The sand flats began—ever so slightly—to shimmer and wave. Monstrous ghost puddles appeared on the nearby dry sand. Water where there was none. Then the figures, and the boat itself, began to wave and dance. Soon the men would be mere blobs of color; grotesque wriggling reflections in fun-house mirrors. Heat. The early morning heat was doing that.

  As faint as it must have been in the early morning, the heat from the warm sand was sending up thermal currents—like the air over a hot wood stove—that jiggled and danced. That was it. I had been granted this brief chance to spy on these men and their boat, but no more.

  "You coming? C'mon honey, I want to be back early. Remember Jack's coming."

  To hell with it. Help was there if they needed it. We got into the car and headed up route 6 to Wellfleet, the next town north of Eastham. Our boat, Ella Hatton, was moored in a slip in the harbor there.

  * * *

  We parked in the big lot and walked over to the Hatton's slip. She rode motionless on/the quiet water, as broad as a sunflower seed. She is a sloop-rigged catboat, twenty-two feet long and over twelve feet wide. Her hull is like a tapered pie-pan. Our slip was nestled amongst those reserved for the smaller pleasure boats. The other side of the harbor, which was once the center of America's clam and scallop trade, is reserved for big commercial vessels, mostly draggers. These big, blocky boats have high steep bows to fend off the chops and troughs that develop in the North Atlantic. The freeboard is low aft: the gunwales taper smoothly down to the stem; This low freeboard (or low height of the hull above the waterline) is to facilitate the easy dumping of the iron dredges that are dragged all over the bottom of Cape Cod Bay, slurping up those bay scallops and clams. These boats are heavy-timbered and beamy, with big diesel engines to push them through the steep swells while hauling heavy trawls. The average coastal or bay trawler is between forty and sixty feet long. They are mostly deck, with a small wheelhouse usually located forward. Behind this, standing toward the middle of the wide-open afterdeck where the crew works, is the diesel engine and its stack. The short mast is here too, with the radar on top and gafflike arms and A-frames attached to it. These are the tackle that lift and lower the drags, and get their power also from the diesel.

  * * *

  We saw one fisherman preparing to go out. He wore a flannel shirt, bill-fisherman's canvas hat with big visor, and the huge rubber overalls that are the primary stamp of the New England fisherman; A sticker stuck to his wheelhouse bulkhead read:

  BUSINESS IS SO GOOD I COULD PUKE

  I shot a picture of him and the sticker. He looked up in confusion that bordered on
suspicion. People don't like having their pictures taken by strangers. I shouted I was an amateur feature-story photographer for the Globe. He brightened and waved. His diesel was grinding away. A big cable-wound drum near the stack was turning slowly. He nodded at us, smiling, and cast off. His boat eased away from the pier and whined softly through the harbor.

  And as he left, trailing a wispy, almost invisible plume of oily smoke, we could see another trawler heading around the breakwater. She was green, and the right size too.

  We watched the boat circle the point and come chuffing and grinding into the inner harbor where we were preparing to depart. There was an aura of desperation about her as she rolled in the faint current.

  She was riding low. She paused on the far side of the harbor and dropped her hawser. Quick as a wink a dory came scooting around from her side with a man hunched over in the stern, steering the little outboard. The dory zinged along, whining through the outer raft of moored sailboats, and snaked its way up to the harbormaster's dock. The man steering had scarcely finished throwing a hitch around a piling before he left the small boat and was sprinting up the ramp to the office.

  The green boat, which was without doubt the same one stranded on my doorstep an hour earlier, swayed lazily around her anchor cable. But I noticed her crew had dropped another hook off her stern, so that she kept her bow toward us. A boat of almost any size is impenetrable head-on. Her engines were still working, and fast. The whine was audible even from where we stood; and the plume of smoke shot straight up from her stack. I nudged Mary.

  "See why the engine's working overtime?"

  I pointed to the thick stream of water gushing from the boat's bilge pipe. It came squirting out in thick, ropy geysers. Had it been red it would have resembled a severed artery.

  "What's that, the cooler?" she asked.

  "No." I pointed to another stream of water, this one a straight hard jet of clean spray. That was the outlet for the sea water that had just run around her engines, cooling them. No, this rust-colored water coming in torrents was bilge water. And there was a lot of it. Almost before my eyes the boat seemed to rise higher in the water.

  "They're pumping her out. Did you see how low she rode as she came in? I'd say she was close to sinking. No wonder he was in a hurry."

  "Who? The man in the little boat?"

  "Yep. Well they've made it in all right. I bet the motion of the boat through the water was what intensified the leak. Now that she's in still water they can keep her up until she's repaired properly."

  Allan Hart was ambling up the dock, clad in his scuba suit. A big strapping kid we'd known since he was six. It was Allan Hart who finally gave Jack (then called Jackie) the courage to put his head underwater and do the dead man's float. The two had been inseparable ever since: the Mutt and Jeff of our summers on Cape Cod.

  "Hey Allan!" shouted Mary, waving her arm up high.

  He was wearing a wetsuit top and carrying a big stainless steel tank under his arm. Across his wide shoulders were strung a yellow weight belt and a huge pair of swim fins. He grinned at us and hurried along. Allan was a native Cape Codder who lived with his mother, a widow, in Eastham. He was strong; those tanks, regulators, and weight belts weigh considerable. I know because I've tried to heft them. And yet Allan was moseying along the dock with all his gear tucked away, under his arm and on his shoulder as if he didn't even notice it. In his right hand he carried a long shiny object. Spear gun. I saw the reddish-tan pieces of surgical latex tubing bounce and flip around with each step he took. Those were the elastic ropes that drove the barbed spear through fish.

  "How ya doing'?" he asked as he set his gear on the gray boards above us; He looked down approvingly at the catboat. I snapped two pictures of him.

  "See you're goin' out. Is Jack back yet? Tell him to stop by—"

  "Why don't you stop by? He's due up here around four or five. C'mon over to the cottage then and—"

  "Thanks, Mrs. Adams, but I've got a date for dinner in Chatham."

  "Well stop by anyway on your way down for a beer. Jack would be glad to see you, I'm sure."

  "Good. OK I'll do that. And if I get lucky today I'll bring some fish for you."

  He sat on the pier, his legs dangling over the side. He strapped on the tank and regulator and slipped the weight belt around his waist. I saw the yellow-painted steel rectangular weights spaced evenly around the nylon webbing of the belt. There were a lot of them. There was a biggish knife—with a cork handle in a red plastic sheath strapped to his right calf. Staring out at the green trawler, he put on a rubber hood that was bright gold, and had USN on it in big letters.

  "You join the navy, Allan?"

  "Naw. I just borrowed this from a friend. If you can keep your head and chest warm you can stay down a long time. That water out around the outer breakwater is deep and cold, but that's where the big tautog hang out. Hey she looks mighty low."

  We all turned and looked back at the boat.

  "Why don't you swim out there and see what you can see?" I asked. "Take a peek at her hull. Bet you see a gash somewhere."

  He put on the big flippers. They made a sound—squidge, squidge—as he slipped them over his feet.

  "OK. It's right on my way over to the breakwater anyway."

  We mentioned seeing the boat stranded out on Billingsgate, which seemed to increase his curiosity still more. Then I noticed he also carried a small flashlight, encased in black hard rubber, which he tested, then fastened to his belt. The face mask was resting up on top of his head as he inserted the mouthpiece, then spat it out.

  "Guess I'm ready."

  The Ella Hatton's little diesel was grinding away nicely under the cockpit hatch. Mary had removed the sail cover from the long boom and stowed it beneath the seat. The lunch basket was tucked into the corner of the galley counter, right near the sink. We were ready too.

  "Wonder why she's out in the middle of the harbor anyway?" mused Allan. "As low as she's riding you'd think she'd wanta come right up to the big pier."

  "Hey how's your mom been, Allan?" Mary asked.

  "She's been pretty good. She still hasn't got a boyfriend or anything yet, but you know, something'll turn up."

  "Well we'll have to ask her over some evening," I said. Mary grabbed the heavy lines that Allan Flipped down to her; I put the engine into gear and we purred slowly out of the slip.

  "See you at around five, Allan. Get us a fish!" yelled Mary.

  He waved back, replaced the mouthpiece, drew down the mask, and pushed himself forward off the dock with his arms, turning around in midair, and fell backward into the sea. He entered the harbor water softly, quietly, for such a big guy. He surfaced again, doing a slow lazy flip-flop with his fins. As we began to thread the Hatton through the maze of moored boats toward the harbor mouth we saw a last flutter of brightness just under the water's surface, a quick glimmer of shiny tank and yellow diving hood. Then there was a little flip of motion, and he was gone, heading out to the green boat, which was riding much higher in the water now.

  Still, the boat's half-submerged look intrigued me. It wasn't a sight you saw every day. I clacked away at it with my camera. The motor drive advanced the film quickly with a loud whirr in between clacks of the mirror. A man appeared on her foredeck, looking anxiously at the tiny harbormaster's shack. He had a faint beard and wore a canvas jacket. I snapped more pictures. The man didn't notice me; he was too busy gesticulating to the two figures talking near the shack.

  One was Bill Larson, the harbormaster. The other was the fellow who'd just run ashore in the little dinghy. As we neared the harbor mouth we passed the boat's quarter at about thirty yards' distance. I could read her name and port on her transom: Penelope, Boston. I was snapping a final shot when the man turned and looked in our direction. When he saw me I saw a hint of a snarl start to form on his lips. But as if he thought better of it, he turned and disappeared into the wheelhouse. No doubt this had not been one of his best mornings. Still I felt the prick
of curiosity, and spun off my 50-millimeter lens in exchange for a 135 and snapped a few more photos of Penelope, whoever she was, before we got out around the breakwater.

  After three hours on Cape Cod Bay we headed back. Mary was at the helm, holding the teak wheel that sits at the end of the big round cockpit. Ella Hatton was close-hauled and heeled over slightly, churning her way up the outer channel into the harbor. Two sportfishermen roared by us. The men stood over the transoms laughing and drinking beer. No doubt they had been out since before dawn hunting bluefish and striped bass. I stared enviously at the big boats, with their flying bridges and long outrigger poles. The tall towers swayed far and wide as the boats rolled in the swells, their big engines growling and sputtering.

  A big boat was rolling out of Wellfleet toward us. She tipped and plunged in the wake of the two sportfishermen. It was our friend the Penelope; she was hustling too. We passed each other off Jeremy Point. The big green dragger chuffed by us with nobody visible except a dim shape in the wheelhouse. Evidently the repair was satisfactory; she was riding high and quick. Seconds later her skipper opened her engines up; the dark smoke shot up out of the stack like Old Faithful and the engine's whine increased to a thunderous roar. She shook a tailfeather south around Billingsgate Shoal (now invisible but still treacherous), where she'd been stranded hours earlier, and headed off due west, toward Plymouth, with remarkable felicity.

  "Geez, honey, look at her go," I murmured.

  Mary turned to see the long sloping plume fast disappearing in the distant haze. We dropped sail a few minutes later, stowing the jib down the forehatch and fastening the main and its gaff along the boom with shock cords. We motored in the rest of the way and gently glided Hatton back into her berth.

  The sun had been making good progress all morning, and now was halfway out. We left the harbor and hurried back to the domicile where Mary promptly changed into her swimsuit and flopped down on the deck, swatting at greenheads. I went running.

  I left the cottage and began my run along Sunken Meadow Road. I ran up to the main road, then along it until I came to the old windmill (Eastham's landmark), and then back. It was slightly over six miles, and during the last part was setting a pretty good clip. I staggered into The Breakers and paced around until I cooled off, flicking on the sauna bath. I grabbed my bucket and digging fork, and an old-fashioned tin salt shaker, and strolled out onto the flats. The tide was ebbing; by 5:30 it would be out. Already though, the long tan flats stretched away for hundreds of yards. I was looking for razor clams. Half a mile from the beach, I began to see tiny ovoid depressions in the damp sand. Sprinkling salt from the shaker on these, I watched the long, rectangular creatures squirt up out of these depressions, exposing half of their delicate shells to the air. Sometimes they dove down the other way, into the sand about a foot. Then I'd pry them out with the fork. They were six to eight inches long and shaped like a folded barber's razor. In forty minutes I had filled my bucket, and started back to the cottage. I stopped at a tide pool and filled the bucket to overflowing with brine, then padded back to the beach.