*
Since I met Captain Dawson I’ve been living from hand to mouth; Sal Paradise would be proud of me. I go out on the Mary-Lou – that’s Captain Dawson’s scallop boat – four times a week. He borrows me a wetsuit and his tanks and takes half the scallops I catch. It’s lucky I learned to dive, otherwise I’d be starving by now, or shucking at the loading point. I like the diving now but at first I found it really spooky. For one, you’re always hearing the sound of your own breathing, like in a cheap horror flick. And then it’s pretty murky too, especially down where the scallops are. They like to hide in the shadows and the mud around the bottom of rocks. Sometimes you won’t see them and you’ll be swimming over them and the little ones will leap up all around you like fireworks on the fourth of July – with their hundred blue eyes they see you coming before you see them. They can move pretty fast too, opening and closing their little shells and propelling themselves through the water. They look kind of funny, like animated dentures. The big ones don’t move so fast so I just pick them up and drop them into my bag. Occasionally I’ll catch a lobster but the claws look even bigger through the magnification of the mask and it can be pretty hard to get them out if they’re hidden under a rock. Sea urchins and sea cucumbers are good business; they get exported straight to Korea.
The loading point is just down from the motel; I drop my catch off there on the way home. I’d be working there too if I didn’t dive. I’m lucky because it’s miserable work. You spend your whole day scooping the living insides out of the spiky shells. The slimy part is a delicacy in Korea; it’ll be served in a restaurant within twenty-four hours. Working there would depress the hell out of me. I mean, catching scallops is one thing, pulling living things out of their own shells is another. It’s eviscerating work, literally. The people who shuck there say it takes weeks to get the smell out of your skin.
There are some pretty weird creatures in the sea around here, I swear. I borrowed a book from the Machias Public Library and I look them up when I get home. The other day I saw a wolffish; it was fat and grey with wrinkled skin and mean snarling lips and evil teeth as thin and as pointed as the filed teeth of the Gambian hunters in the book back at Belmont. It was about the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. If people looked like what they actually are, then that’s what Ray would look like. The wolffish actually eats scallops, I mean it crunches the shells between its jaws, grinding them down and swallowing the whole thing.
I’ve seen a couple of sharks too. I think they were a type of mackerel shark called a porbeagle. At least, there’s a photo of a porbeagle in my book that looks similar. I guess these two were about six feet long. The really scary thing was that most of the time I could only see their shadows because the water was so murky. On windy days visibility goes down to about 15 feet. A couple of times they came closer but mostly it was just the outlines I could see. I was about to go up to the boat when I saw that they weren’t interested in me so much as the wall of pollock fifteen feet away on my other side. I was between them and the biggest chow of their lives, which is why they were hassling me. I got out the way and I didn’t see them again.
What I really like about diving is coming up to the surface. Down where the scallops are it’s green and muddy and murky. As you swim up you’ve got to stop every ten feet so you don’t get the bends. The bends scare the hell out of me, more than the sharks. Just imagine, all your blood fizzing like sparkling water. It’s insane. I’m pretty conscientious about stopping at the right depths. In fact, I enjoy it. Each stop is a little bit brighter, visibility a little bit better. When I get to the surface it’s like a new world – the sunlight and the air and the sounds. I guess it’s like being born again, except without the trauma. It’s pretty cold when you get out the water, but breathing real air and seeing the big emptiness of the sea and the sky, that’s a great feeling. I guess that’s what I like so much about Maine – it’s a place where you can breathe.
*
Like I said, half the scallops I catch go to Captain Dawson, the other half I sell at the loading point. I make just about enough to pay for the cabin and to eat, then I come home and write until I fall asleep. A couple of nights back Captain Dawson invited me to his house to have dinner. He lives by himself in a yellow painted wooden house a short walk from the port. I’d been home to change after a day on the water. When I arrived at Captain Dawson’s house he was sitting outside on the low rocky outcrop in front of his porch, peeling potatoes and throwing the peel into the sea. He went in to get me a beer and then we sat outside peeling until it got too dark to see. It looked to me like we’d peeled a lot more potatoes than we needed but Captain Dawson said he always made a big seafood stew at the beginning of the week and that lasted him until the weekend. I was glad he’d invited me round on a Monday.
We went inside and I put some more wood on the fire and Captain Dawson picked a live blue lobster out of a bucket and dropped it into a pot of boiling water. After a few seconds there was a screaming noise but that’s just the air expanding and escaping through the joints in the lobster’s armour. I feel sorry for them being boiled like that, but I guess they die pretty fast.
Captain Dawson let the lobster cook for a while, then he took it out of the pot and cracked the bright orange shell and scraped the meat into the stew. He started cooking the scallops while I walked round the sitting room looking at the old framed photos. Captain Dawson had been with the Marines during the war. There was a photo of him looking young and handsome in white uniform on the deck of a destroyer.
Seeing me examining the photo he called out, ‘That’s the Yorktown. I was with her from ’43 to ’45. After that I was stationed in Naples, right up until ’49. Didn’t come home once. Wonderful place, Naples.’
‘Really? My mother was from Naples,’ I shouted back.
‘Huh?’
Captain Dawson’s hearing wasn’t so hot, so I shouted again, ‘My mother was from Naples.’
‘Wonderful place, Naples. Loved it there. We all did. Happiest time of my life.’
Captain Dawson placed the stew on the table and we started eating. It’s tiring to have to shout the whole time so we ate in silence but Captain Dawson didn’t seem to mind. Also I’d gotten to thinking of Naples and running around on the whitewashed roof, between the fluttering sheets, with the islands like spaceships in the distance. It was a happy memory.
‘So Charlie, what yer writing?’
‘Actually I wanted to talk to you about that,’ I said. I had decided to ask Captain Dawson to do me a favour, but it was important that he didn’t misunderstand what I wanted him to do, or why I wanted him to do it. And it was an odd request. So I said: ‘I’ve been writing a true story, except there are some people who might not believe it. So I wanted to ask you, if I gave you a copy of the story, and if something happened to me – if I disappeared or whatever – do you think you could mail it to a publisher? I’ll give you the money and all. It’s something I want people to know about.’
‘You want me to mail your story to a publisher?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mean, only if it’s not too much trouble. Maybe send one copy to a publisher in New York and one to a publisher in London. But I don’t think you’ll have to mail it – it’s only if something happens to me.’
‘What’s gonna happen to you?’
‘Nothing. I don’t think anything will happen to me. It’s just a back-up, that’s all. You know, just in case.’
‘If you’re in trouble Charlie, if you need help, then you just have to say. I’ll help.’ Captain Dawson looked at me and his eyes in that gnarled old head were bright and concerned and I realized that maybe he understood more about me than I had thought. Maybe he’d known all along that I just needed some time and some space to work things out, and that’s what he’d given me. I felt very fond of him at that moment. Then he said, ‘But if you just need me to mail a manuscript, then sure I can do that.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It means a lot to me.’
> And it’s true, I really was grateful to Captain Dawson. He was the only person I could have asked.
*
I guess I’m about at the end of my story now. I know I’ve gone beyond the facts a bit, but facts by themselves don’t tell the whole story. Tomorrow I’m going to hitch a lift to Machias, then I’m going to make a couple of photocopies of everything I’ve written since I’ve been here and I’ll mail both copies to Captain Dawson. After that I’ll go to the police and tell them everything and hand over this account. I guess they’ll want to keep hold of me for a bit, while they inform the FBI and contact LAPD and all. Maybe Ray has already been caught and has confessed to everything and my bank accounts have been unfrozen and debts have been cancelled and I just get a caution for letting him sell blow in my house. That’s the best that could happen.
The worst is that the police don’t believe anything I say and they think this account is fictitious and that I’m responsible for the drug smuggling and for Jeanine’s disappearance and all. I get arrested and taken back to LA where I can’t pay bail. There’s a court case which I lose and I end up in the State Penitentiary without a cent to my name, or even a name to my name. That’s the worst that could happen.
There’s a third possibility too. Maybe the police don’t bring any charges against me, but they still don’t believe that I am Charlie Conti. Maybe they think I am a fantasist or a liar, and they won’t think otherwise until Ray is caught and confesses. In that case I guess I’ll have to go back to LA to look for Ray myself. The thought scares me, scares me a lot in fact. But still, it may be what I have to do. There must be people who know where he is, his friends like Sammy or like the sketchy characters at the Hog’s Back. And if something happens to me, at least I know that Captain Dawson will mail my story to a publisher and maybe it’ll get published and then people will realize that this kind of stuff really goes on.
So, I guess if you’re reading this, and if you don’t know me, and you’re not in the FBI, well, then I guess things didn’t turn out as I’d hoped. If you’re reading this and you’re rich and you want to do a good thing, then maybe you’d send a Sopranos DVD box set to Izzy Conti at Happy Lives in Paradise, Maryland. It would be a very kind thing to do and I’d really appreciate it. I’d hate her to think that I’m the kind of person who doesn’t keep a promise.
Charlie Conti
Machiasport, Maine
Copyright
First published in 2008
by Old Street Publishing Ltd
Trebinshun House, Brecon LD3 7PX
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Claus von Bohlen, 2008
The right of Claus von Bohlen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–908699–48–0
Who is Charlie Conti? Page 20
