Billingsgate Shoal

by Rick Boyer

  Our cottage was a bluish gray rectangle on the bluff top. The American flag hung limp on the mast. I squinted and could see the three metal cups of my anemometer slowly turning. The dull, cold gray of the weathered cedar shakes belied the coziness of The Breakers. The smallish rooms with low, beamed ceilings. The library corner of the living room, where you could sit for hours, days, under the brass student lamp with the green glass shade and listen to the surf crash, or the thunder roll. The kitchen with its skylights, wineracks, copper pots, and smells of coffee, roasting meat, sizzling fish, clam chowder. I liked hunting my own food out on the flats. There was something elemental, even prehistoric, about i the act. Like sex, it was something that came to me unfiltered by modem civilization. It was animal. I was a hunter-gatherer. The damp sand felt good under my bare feet. I climbed up the bone-colored wooden steps and placed the bucket of clams in the shade on the deck. I would cook them up in butter in a big iron pot, then add the clam liquor, potatoes, onions, cracked pepper, celery, milk, and perhaps some leftover corn and little pieces of cooked bacon. I drooled at the thought.

  I went into the sauna. The temperature was 190 degrees. Perfect. I baked in there three times, coming out only long enough to shower under cold water each time. Finally I showered for good. I felt so laid back I couldn't have gotten it up even if I were naked in the sack with all three of Charlie's Angels.

  No, wait. I take that back.

  I made the chowder. Soon the big iron pot was simmering away and I tended to it as I sipped a Gosser beer.

  "Isn't that Jack, Charlie?" shouted Mary from the bathroom. The cream colored Toyota Land Cruiser swept into the gravel driveway, and number one son climbed out. On his back bumper is a sticker that reads: STOP THE WHALE KILLERS! BOYCOTT JAPANESE GOODS!

  Now you don't stop to think about this until you realize that the sticker is affixed to none other than a Toyota, for Chrissake, and that we've been guilty of laying nine grand on the "killers." Not to worry though, not to worry: there's another sticker on the other side, saying: IF I'D KNOEN ABOUT THE WHALES, I WOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT THIS CAR.

  Oh, well, the kid's heart is in the right place.

  Number-two son, Tony, was working a summer job as a grounds keeper at a resort in Franconia Notch, N.H. He called a few times, to say the job was crummy, it didn't pay well, and was hard work, but that he was having "a great time, especially at night," which meant, I suppose, that he was mostly getting laid. But then, what are summer jobs for? Jack was doing graduate work in biology at the oceanographic center at Woods Hole, and so was at The Breakers fairly regularly.

  He sauntered, in, snagging a beer from the refrigerator. He stirred and tasted the chowder, nodding his head and grunting. I walked with him back out onto the deck, and scanned Billingsgate with the marine glasses. It stood on the horizon, a dark streak surrounded by red shiny water. We had a drink and watched the sun and listened to the gulls. We waited for Allan, then gave up on him.

  "Probably forgot," said Jack, thrusting a big paw into the nut dish that sat in the middle of the picnic table. "He's got a new girlfriend down in Chatham."

  "Yes, I remember him saying he had a dinner date," said Mary.

  "Have you heard from Tony? How is number-two son?" I asked.

  He looked up quickly and stared at me level for an instant with his turquoise eyes. He took after the Adams side of the family—the Nordic side. Tony looked like his mother: with deep olive skin and coal black eyes—eyes so dark you could never see the pupils. Jack was blond, and wore a bright yellow beard to match his hair. He had medium skin and pale blue-gray eyes. Both boy-men are enormously handsome. But then what would you expect their daddy to say?

  "Huh? Why do you want to know?"

  "Because he usually writes us or calls regularly," said Mary, "and he hasn't been lately. Well?"

  He shrugged and munched more nuts, swigged at the mug. of beer in his left hand. He looked out over the sand flats and ocean.

  "Dunno. . ."

  "Jack, I know you pretty well," I said. "Sure there's nothing you—"

  "Nope. Let's eat. I'll call Allan first thing tomorrow."

  We ate on the deck: the chowder accompanied by asparagus in lemon and butter, fresh sugar-and-butter corn on the cob and chablis. Of course afterward I realized that the quarter-pound of butter that had made everything so delicious had probably more than undone the 'afternoon's running. Oh, to hell with it. I did a little writing after that, working on a paper to be presented at the next meeting of the New England Oral Surgeons. Its working title was "The Use of Epoxy Hardeners and Porcelain—Resin Compounds in the Cosmetic Capping of Peg—Lateral Incisors." It was as exciting as cold oatmeal.

  I went in and nestled up against Mary's warm, soft flank, and slept. As I dozed off l heard the sound of the tide easing back in: slow cadence of crump and hiss, and wind blowing through the dune grass.

  CHAPTER TWO

  TIME: 5:45 A.M. Low ceiling. Wind: north-northeast, 12 knots and freshening. Barometer: 29.8 and falling. Temperature: 68°. Sky: leaden and darkening.

  It did not look promising. The scattered rows of stratocumulus clouds of the previous day that had almost cleared had regrouped into an ominous thick gray goop. The barometer and wind gauges also foretold unpleasant weather. The wind was turning eastward by the minute, and an east wind almost always is "an ill wind that blows no good."

  Over after-breakfast coffee Mary and I decided to flee the Cape and head back to the main domicile in Concord for the a day. There were assorted bits of house husbandry that needed taking care of, and Mary had a batch of pots and ceramic sculpture that needed glazing and fixing. So we went. I mowed the lawn, collected mail and magazines, and developed the film I'd shot over·the.past two weeks. I didn't make prints; just left the celluloid strips hanging in the dust-free dryer until I had more time. Mary busied herself in her workshop annex. She does this thing called rock salt glazing which takes immense heat and long periods in the kiln. We built specially constructed kilns for the process in the backyard, beehive-shaped domes that draw their heat from bottled gas. When the temperature reaches some astronomical figure, and certain clay cones inside the structures bend and dissolve,

  Mary throws in handfuls of coarse kosher rock salt, which promptly vaporize and affix themselves., in the form of a slick finish, to the pots on the racks above. It is an ancient glazing process, she tells me, but produces pots and vases with a finish that is distinctive, simple, and very handsome.

  After lunch we headed back and picked up our three dogs who had just been dipped to prevent ticks, which are common on the Cape. They attack Angel and Flack, the two wire-haired dachshunds, especially, since they are low-slung and furry. Danny, the yellow Lab, is more immune. Anyway we gathered them in the car, all smelling like new telephone poles, and headed for the cottage.

  Call it intuition, a hunch, or clairvoyance. Whatever it is, I sensed it as we swung into the driveway at half past three.

  Something wasn't right.

  Sure enough, Jack was pacing the deck when we showed up. He didn't wave as usual. Instead he waved his arm backward, motioning us to hurry. He met us in the front hallway.

  'Allan Hart's dead," he said. "He drowned in the harbor."

  I was hearing him but I wasn't; his voice was coming to me from far, far away, as if he were speaking into one end of the Alaskan pipeline up in Barrow and I was sticking my head in the other end down in the Lower Forty-Eight. I remember looking at the lampshade and thinking how nicely they'd rendered the nautical chart on it, and that I had some tobacco ash still left in my pewter ashtray. I realized everything but what was actually told me. Like a time-delay fuse, my mind had stopped momentarily to absorb the jolt. Then Jack handed me a paper.

  Then I was looking at the article—at the picture of Allan. But I wasn't at the cottage when I found myself reading it; I was half a mile down the beach. My three dogs were staring up at me, concerned. They whined and wagged their tails slowly, tentatively, as i
f in fear of rebuke.

  I shooed them away and walked, read, walked again,

  I sometimes slapping the paper against my thigh. The gulls were low, diving and wheeling about. The dogs scampered after them, barking. It was all a dream. I returned to the wooden stairs, and suddenly was up them, all thirty-nine of them, without doing it.

  Then the two of them were sitting in the living room staring at me.

  Mary's crying brought me back to the real world for good. I sat next to her on the couch and we read the article together, overland over again. But no matter how many times we read it, it stayed the same.

  CHAPTER THREE

  EVENING QUIET at Wellfleet Harbor. I sat staring at the water. It swished and riffled languidly along the breakwater's edge. It glimmered in the soft, gold-gray light of dusk, of late mellow sunlight through clouds. The light played on the water in streaks of brightness. It was like a Monet painting. I heard a car door slam far behind me, then the quick footsteps of a woman approaching.

  "Thought I'd find you here," said Mary.

  I said nothing.

  "You ready to come home?"

  "Remember what I told Allan just before he went in? I told him to swim out to the boat."

  "So? They found his body way out in the channel near Lieutenant's Island."

  "The tide could have carried him out there. I think maybe if I hadn't told him to—"

  "Stop it, Charlie. Stop it now. There's no way of know exactly how Allan died. Scuba divers get killed pretty frequently I think."

  "Not in a shallow harbor they don't. Jack says Allan did lot of deep diving. That's when a diver gets into trouble. A big strong kid like that just doesn't die hunting fish in Wellfleet Harbor."

  She sat down next to me on the old stone quay. We watched the boats sway slowly around on their mooring cables. Mary said she'd been unable to find Sarah Hart at her home even though she'd driven by several times. We decided she was with her doctor or a close friend.

  "It's almost dark, Charlie."

  "I just can't help thinking that if I hadn't asked him to swim out there—"

  "Dammit, Charlie, stop it! You'll drive yourself crazy. Why don't you find the boat's owner and talk to him? He probably never laid eyes on Allan."

  "That's what I'm thinking; that's what makes me feel so bad about it. Here's Allan swimming around underneath the boat and the guy probably started the propeller. Remember how fast that engine was revving, pumping out all that water? Well if the screw started suddenly the propwash could've sucked Allan right into it—"

  "Good Christ—"

  "And one of the blades could have nicked him on the head—remember the article did say there was evidence of a head injury—knocked him cold and his mouthpiece slipped out. There was a lot of air left in the tank."

  She tugged at my elbow and led me back to the cars.

  "I don't see Bill Larson in his shack. Tomorrow morning I'm coming back here and get the name of the boat's owner. I think if I just get a chance to phone him I'll feel better. Maybe they saw Allan swim out past the boat, in which case I'll feel a little better. Not much, but a little."

  After dinner we located the funeral director who told us that Sarah Hart was temporarily in her doctor's care. Her husband had died eight years previous and Allan had been her only child. Good God. I tossed and turned far into the night thinking about the boy swimming out to the big green boat. I knew it would never leave me alone until I laid to rest at least little of the guilt that gnawed at me.

  On my way to the harbor next day, weary and edgy from almost no sleep, I stopped by the Eastham police station and talked to the desk sergeant. The story was exactly as the papers had reported it. A lobsterman had seen the body in the shallows off Lieutenant's Island in early evening. The body wasn't floating because of the heavy gear and weight belt. There was a deep bruise on the head that had no doubt resulted in unconsciousness, and eventual drowning. I asked the sergeant if the diving hood had been torn, and the nature and extent of the head injuries. He replied that he didn't know; he wasn't that familiar with the details.

  "Can you tell me if there are any theories as to how the injury occurred?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure, but I think the assumption is that he hit his head while diving, maybe on the breakwater."

  "People in scuba gear don't dive into the water headfirst. They fall backward into it to avoid damaging their equipment. Besides, I saw Allan enter the water."

  He told me to leave my name and number and a certain Lieutenant Disbrow would be in touch with me. I thanked him and proceeded on to the harbor. I headed over to Bill Larson's little shack. He's the official harbormaster of Wellfleet and also operates a small emporium selling marine paints, hemp and nylon lines, caulking compound, basic marine hardware in brass, aluminum, bronze, and the like. I asked him who owned the green dragger that had pulled in two days previous.

  "Didn't think to get his name, Doc. I was about to head out to her in my skiff to see what the trouble was but they beat me to it—came right up here in a little boat and asked me where the nearest weld shop was."

  "Yeah I saw it. What happened to her?"

  "Said an old seam had worked loose between a coupla plates. She'd been shipping water since she left Boston so they thought they'd better stop and have her sewed up. Seems to me they didn't stop any too soon either."

  "Did you know they were out on Billingsgate at dawn?"

  "Hmmmp! Well whaddayuh know—"

  "Where was the repair made? I'd like to get the owner's name if possible."

  "Right over there. Reliable. See it?"

  "Oh yeah. Did they say anything else, like having seen a guy in scuba gear?" ·

  "Oh you mean the Hart boy? Too bad, eh? Nope. Didn't say anything about that."

  He worked at an eye splice with his big wooden fid. "I'm sure they got the owner's name because they did the repair."

  I entered the barnlike structure from the street side and looked into the gloomy cavernous interior. Straight ahead of me was a set of railroad tracks that led down into the water. Winched halfway up this tracks was a big cradle, empty.

  "Help you sompin?" asked the bearded old man at the workbench. He was busy fitting a new head gasket to a long marine engine that stood near the bench, hung in a frame made of giant I-beams. I counted six huge holes in the block. A straight six, and each of the cylinders seemed big enough to hold a bowling ball. That's what gave the draggers their spunk. I described the boat that had visited them.

  "Oh yeah. Gash in the starboard side just forward of the beam. 'Bout as big as a cigar box, only longer."

  It didn't sound like a weld seam working loose. But I decided to keep this tidbit to myself.

  "Was it high up, or toward the keel?"

  "Pretty high up, Just below the waterline. Wish you could talk to Sonny. He's not here now though. Sonny did the job, less than forty-five minutes."

  "That seems mighty quick for a weld job that big. Sonny must a run a good bead."

  The old man nodded triumphantly.

  "Yup! Good bead all right. Real good bead."

  He reached around behind the bench and pulled out what looked like a giant Fourth of July sparkler.

  "Uses these certanium production rods. Best welding electrode made. He can run a bead three yards long without a rod freezing. He had a good teacher. Me. I'm Sonny's daddy, mister. Who in hell are you?"

  I explained that I was an interested bystander.

  "You seem to know welding, mister. Ever done it?"

  I answered that I once worked a summer in Peoria as a welder at the Caterpillar Company. I said that welding was one of the very last Skilled Occupations. That a good welder was worth his weight in gold ingots. This seemed to please the old man, who grew talkative.

  "But what was odd, mister, was this: that boat was pretty tore up, but her skipper didn't want nothing but a fix-it job. You know, enough to get her back home. All Sonny did was slap a sheet of quarter-inch plate over that hole, th
en run his bead around the edge. Slick as a wink, you know? We charged him ninety-nine dollars and ninety-five cents, you see?"

  "No I don't see."

  "Well by the law any damage to a vessel over a hundred dollars must be reported to the Coast Guard. It's just like a car accident. Well, a lot of skippers don't want the hassle, so we just charge ninety-nine ninety-five."

  "That's a nice cheap fee."

  "Well sure," he cackled, "but the hauling charge makes up for that. You see we charge a fee for hauling the vessel out so we can work on her; Hauling fee is a hundred bucks. But that's like a tow truck: ain't got, anything to do with the damage, you see?"

  "Ah, now I see. . ."

  "But strange thing was, mister, this boat dint want no decent job. Just what we call a jury-rig—like I said, enough to get back home on."

  "Which was Boston?"

  "Don't know."

  "Well it said Boston under her name."

  "What was her name?"