Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn

by Paul Watkins

  Kelley appeared in the evening. He tried to twist the door handle and walk into my room in one movement. The door was locked and he slammed into it. He said he had something to show me.

  When he came in, I was still under the blanket, humming a song to myself. ‘What do you have to show me?’

  ‘Huh?’ He breathed rum in my face.

  ‘You said you had something to show me.’ I pulled off the blanket and blinked at him.

  Kelley smiled, remembering why he had come. He led me out of the Y and down to the State Pier. He showed me a lobster-boat painted blue. There was a light on inside and the sound of a radio playing.

  Warm wind blew across the packed earth of the parking lot.

  Kelley had Band-Aids on his forehead. The skin around the wound was stained by iodine. ‘See my boat?’

  ‘Yours?’ Spit welled up in my mouth as I got ready to tell him I had heard enough of his lies.

  ‘Soon enough.’

  ‘What do you mean? Is it yours or isn’t it?’

  ‘I put a down payment on it and I’m paying off the rest in instalments.’

  ‘Like Nelson with his car?’

  ‘No, not like Nelson.’

  ‘And where did the money come from?’ I felt my nose fizz. Then I sneezed in the dust.

  ‘I saved it. I been living at the Y or on the Ghost for months now. If you don’t believe me, ask Bucket.’

  An old man had appeared from the cabin. He wore baggy overalls and stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting for a pause in our talk so he could speak.

  ‘This is my boat, isn’t it, Bucket?’ Kelley pointed to me.

  ‘Tell this man whose boat we’re on right now.’

  ‘Mine.’ Bucket took his hands out of his pockets. He held them in a knot over his stomach.

  ‘Well, if I was to give you the rest of the money right this minute, whose would it be?’

  ‘Yours.’

  ‘See!’ Kelley laughed up at me.

  ‘Do you have the money?’ Bucket took a piece of chewing tobacco from a package with an Indian head on the front. He set the black strip in his mouth.

  I watched the stretched shadow of his face in the cabin’s light.

  ‘No, Bucket.’ Kelley stepped down onto the boat. ‘I don’t have the whole payment right yet. I got other debts to pay. I was trying to show my friend here that the boat is at least partly mine. Mostly mine.’

  ‘It isn’t yours until I get all the money.’ He looked up at me. ‘Are you the one he wants to work with on my boat?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him yet, Bucket.’ Kelley set his hand on the thin bone of Bucket’s shoulder and squeezed until I could see Bucket was in pain. ‘It was going to be a surprise.’

  Bucket picked at Kelley’s fingers until Kelley let go.

  ‘I want you to work with me on my boat.’ Kelley climbed up on to the dock, still smelling of rum.

  ‘I don’t have the money, Kelley. Either to give or to lend. I’m paying to get my teeth fixed up. It’s good of you but I don’t have the money,’

  ‘I’m not asking for money. I owe you. I said I’d pay you back.’

  ‘And I told you that was stupid.’

  ‘I know you want to work inshore. You told me as much. I need a crewman because I don’t want to run the boat by myself. You won’t be making the same money as on Gil’s boat, but I’ll take you on as an equal partner. We can split the money for lobster-pots and whatever costs come up after I’ve bought the boat. Then in time when you start your own boat, you can take half the pots with you.’

  ‘I can’t even afford the pots, Kelley.’

  ‘So owe me. Pay me when you can. I’m asking you to work with me.’

  ‘You know well enough I want to work a boat like this. You know the only reason I’m working Gil’s boat is so I can earn enough to have my own business.’

  ‘If you’d rather work by yourself, it’s all right.’

  ‘I’ll work with you, Kelley. You know that.’ I still didn’t believe what he said.

  ‘I’m old and tired.’ Bucket sat down on the deck and began cutting his nails with a clipper.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had a boat, Kelley?’

  ‘I told you I’d be quitting Gil’s ship soon enough. Besides, after what you said about the people at Gunther’s, I thought I’d better show you.’

  ‘You never even mentioned it.’

  ‘I’m all tired out.’ Bucket pulled a lunch box from one of the boat’s cabinets, took out a package of raisins and ate them, inspecting each raisin before he put it in his mouth.

  ‘I didn’t need to mention it. Wasn’t anything anybody could tell me that I didn’t already know.’

  After telling us again that he was tired, Bucket climbed out of the boat, handed Kelley the key and walked home.

  It stayed quiet for a while. A police siren sounded from across the bay. Water sucked at the dock pilings.

  ‘I’m going to hang around.’ Kelley clicked the key against his fingernail. ‘You stay too if you want.’

  I could tell from his voice that he wanted me to leave. ‘I’ll go back to the Y and sleep. How come that man’s name is Bucket?’

  ‘It’s not. His name is Burkett, but I don’t remember anyone ever calling him that.’

  *

  I thought I would be up all night.

  My teeth were aching and I didn’t want to set too much store by Kelley’s offer. I wanted far too much to believe it, and I couldn’t have stood him letting me down.

  But when I lay face down on the bed the muscles in my legs shuddered and relaxed. My breathing came level and deep. My thoughts scattered into the black.

  At five in the morning, I walked down to Kelley’s boat. I brought him a cup of coffee, but he wasn’t there to drink it.

  Sitting on the bow, I watched the lobstermen head out to check their pots.

  I stayed there until the afternoon, counting them off as they returned, making sure they reached home safely.

  Pittsley stood in front of the pinball machine at Mary’s.

  When the last ball went away behind the flippers, his face shifted from drunk to angry to raging. He gripped the sides of the machine, swung his face down and cracked the plastic cover with his forehead.

  I saw the bartender reach for a special phone he used for calling the police whenever there was trouble. He reached down slowly, in case anyone saw him and began to stampede for the door. A fight would break out in the stampede, the way it always happened at Mary’s. Men would be sent cartwheeling over tables and sometimes through windows into the street, their shouts mixed with the sound of breaking glass.

  I left through the back door and stood for a minute in the dark on the gridiron steps.

  Strong and sudden gusts of wind had been blowing through the streets all evening. The sky broke now and then into lightning but I heard no sound of thunder. Cables whipped against masts in the harbour.

  Gill had told us all to be on the boat ready to leave by ten o’clock, but Pittsley said we wouldn’t be going out in the storm. Just to be sure, I walked down to our boat, thinking I’d raid the fridge before heading back to the Y.

  Standing in the galley, I listened over the murmur of generators for a sound of anyone on board.

  I climbed up to the wheelhouse. It was dark. For a second, I thought I was alone. Then I made out the shapes of arms and legs and heads. The small room was crowded with people. The whole crew was here except for Pittsley.

  The hair stood up on my head.

  Nobody spoke.

  The ship-to-shore radio talked quietly from its place on the ceiling. They were all listening.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I breathed in the stuffy air.

  The silhouette of Gil’s hand cut in front of me and I kept quiet.

  Kelley whispered to me, his hand cupped over my ear. The words barely formed on his lips. ‘There’s a boat going down off the Cape. It’s a Fall River boat. Reynolds is on board.’

&nb
sp; ‘Reynolds the mate?’ I couldn’t help speaking.

  Again Gil’s hand sliced close to my face. He turned up the radio.

  ‘This is Coast Guard Station Holland Point. Come back.’

  ‘This is Fishing Vessel Essex. Where’ve you been? You changed channels on me. I’ve been waiting.’

  ‘What is the nature of your distress, over?’

  ‘Engine room is flooded. My boat is sinking. Crew standing by to abandon ship.’

  ‘Are you in control of the vessel, over?’

  ‘The water’s up to my shins! How much control do you want?’

  ‘Relay your coordinates, over.’

  ‘Loran coordinates five-seven-one-two and four-oh-seven-two-oh. Did you hear me? Do you want me to repeat? I am standing by to abandon ship, over.’

  ‘Wait, over.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting! I’ve been on the mike an hour already. I’m not asking you to come out here and salvage it. I’m telling you the fucker’s sinking.’

  ‘Repeat coordinates, over.’

  ‘Five-seven-one-two, four-oh-seven-two-oh. I am going to give you a telephone number and I would like you please to call that number. I would like you to get in touch with my wife. Her name is Helen and she lives in Gloucester, Mass. Reynolds, get your ass back in the Givens. Don’t be worrying about food now. All right, take the bologna too.’

  ‘Repeat, over.’

  ‘Talking to my crew. Listen, I am requesting emergency assistance. I am requesting a helicopter. Are you coming out here or not?’

  ‘Stand by, over. Release the button on your mike when you are not transmitting to us. Otherwise we can’t communicate, over.’

  ‘Standing by … hours … time.’

  ‘Keep talking, Essex. Your signal is fading. We are trying to get a fix on you, over.’

  ‘Coast Guard, I have waves fifteen to twenty. I have a wind at forty knots. My engine room is flooded and in fifteen minutes my stern will be under water. Shut the door, Reynolds and get back in the Givens. Jesus Christ, this water’s cold. I don’t know where Henry is. He’s with you. I’m on the radio. You find him. They’re trying to get a fix on me. A fix is a fix. I don’t know. I saw him! I just saw him! He’s overboard! Coast Guard, I have a man overboard! I require immediate emergency assistance, over. Do you hear me? Can you hear what I’m saying?’

  ‘Fishing Vessel Essex, we have located your position. We are unable to despatch a helicopter due to high winds. Rescue vessel is in launch procedure at this time, over.’

  ‘What’s the ETA?’

  ‘Stand by.’

  ‘Did you hear me? I asked what the ETA was. Come back.’

  ‘Fishing Vessel Essex. ETA two hours, over.’

  ‘I’m not going to be here in two hours. I’m not going to be here in one.’

  ‘Essex, stay with your vessel as long as possible. Do not launch flares until rescue vessel is in sight. Do not abandon ship until absolutely necessary, over.’

  ‘Now what the hell do you call absolutely necessary? No, Reynolds, we aren’t getting a helicopter. Stand by with the Givens. I don’t give a damn about Henry. It was his own stupid fault. Just please get in the Givens.’

  ‘Fishing Vessel Essex. Release the microphone lever when you are not communicating with us. We cannot reach you when the mike button is pressed, over.’

  ‘Coast Guard, this is the Essex. I am preparing to abandon ship. I have water covering my stern. I am about to lose all emergency power. I’m going to light up the sky with those rescue flares just so I can see my own boat go down.’

  ‘Fishing Vessel Essex. Fishing Vessel Essex.’

  Gil sat back in his chair. Then he rammed his foot against the control panel.

  Once more the Coast Guard called for the Essex.

  Gil slapped the front of the CB and turned it off. ‘They’re gone.’

  For a while nobody said anything. ‘How long do you think they can last out there?’ I blinked at the silhouettes around me. An empty beer can carried by the wind bounced across the deck planks and into the sea. Hard gusts bumped our windows, stirring up the harbour.

  Gil turned to me. I felt his breath on my face.

  ‘They can last a while. Longer than you’d think, maybe. But not long enough, unless there’s another boat nearby. And if there was, they’d have called in by now.’ Howard climbed down the ladder into the galley. Kelley followed him. Now it was just Gil and Franklin and me.

  Franklin touched Gil on the arm. ‘You can’t blame yourself for that.’

  Gil didn’t answer. He got up from his chair and took hold of the wheel. He turned it one way and then the other, steering the boat as if riding out to help the Essex. He whispered orders to himself, quietly and through clenched teeth.

  Franklin stood next to him, looking out through the wheelhouse windows.

  I stayed hidden in shadows, not daring to move. I imagined red flares arcing down into the water. I saw Reynolds floundering in the sea. His hands gripped at the rubber of the swamped survival raft. But not for long. Not in the cold water off Cape Cod. The huge waves covered him up. I felt my own breath choked out of me as the last picture rattled through my skull of Reynolds dead and falling slowly down into the pressured black.

  The storm kept up for days.

  Newport Harbour was jammed with boats.

  I stayed at the Y. In the daytime, I wandered through the blustery streets, chin tucked down against my chest.

  The rest of the crew stayed drunk at Mary’s. Everybody knew about the mate. The story spread in whispers. No one mentioned it to Gil. For him, this was worse than if they did bring up the subject. He sat with Franklin and played cards, while the bar clattered and shuffled around them.

  I remembered those days as a time of lowered voices and staring eyes quickly turned away. Many times I stood at the end of the dock. I listened to wind moan through the rigging of boats and watched the ragged waves in the harbour, wondering when this storm would end so we could leave land again.

  Kelley broke a pool cue over a man’s head at Mary’s. Then someone knocked Kelley out with a bottle of melon liqueur.

  He sat unconscious in a little red chair in the corner until the police arrived, by which time the bar was empty.

  At three in the morning, he phoned the Y and asked for me. The watchman shook me awake. He found me sleeping on the linoleum floor. I must have fallen out of bed and stayed asleep. The watchman asked me to tell my friends they shouldn’t call after ten.

  It cost me a hundred dollars, not including taxi fare, to bail him out of jail and get him back to the boat. He had a room at the Y, but I knew they wouldn’t let him in drunk. The cabby wanted me to pay extra because Kelley made the cab smell of rotten melon.

  Kelley sang all the way to the dock and held on to a lamppost while I paid the fare. When the taxi drove away, I turned around and found him lying on his back, looking up at the sky.

  ‘I’ve never seen so many stars.’

  ‘You’re lucky to have me for a friend, Kelley. I hardly have a dollar to my name, and what I do have I end up spending on you.’ I pulled at his arm but he had passed out. I couldn’t drag him to the boat. He weighed at least twice as much as I did, most of the weight in his gut.

  I used a fork lift from Sabatini’s fish house to bring Kelley from the lamppost to the Grey Ghost. I dropped him on the deck, on a pile of stuffed garbage bags. And I left him there because I was annoyed at getting hardly any sleep and because I had begun to wonder what it would be like if he got drunk like this every night while we were working together on his boat.

  It was too late to go back to the Y and I didn’t want to lie in the stuffy bunk room. The good bars had shut and only the bad ones were open. The Gatsby boys had gone away up the hill to their mansions and the streets were empty now except for drunks and punks, who used the roads all night as alleyways for their skateboards.

  I went to the refrigerator and found a live lobster lying in a pot of salt water. Red rubber
bands held its claws shut. I boiled it with garlic and cayenne pepper, thinking I could buy another one for whoever had brought it to the boat.

  I ate the lobster sitting on the bow, cracking the shell with a pair of pliers and dipping the meat in melted butter.

  The storm died away. The harbour was foggy and quiet.

  Kelley told the crew, one by one as they arrived at the dock, how he brought a girl back to the boat and how she had begged him to marry her.

  ‘She had tits out to here!’

  ‘The way I heard it, Pfeif brought you back from jail and you spent the night lying on a pile of garbage.’ Howard had gone to the police station a little while after me, since he’d heard from a friend about Kelley being arrested.

  ‘He never did! Pfeif is pulling your leg!’

  I smiled and then stopped smiling. ‘Let’s just say I have a hundred dollars coming to me and I don’t care how you think you came to owe it.’

  Kelley sat on a dredge and scowled while we made fun of his ‘tits out to here’.

  Howard’s wife drove by, rolled down the window and yelled at him for not coming home. We turned from our circle, where we squatted like children, and stared.

  ‘Howard, where was you last night?’ She screamed at him over the rumble of her car’s engine.

  Howard scratched his beard with thin fingers, pointy knees showing through holes in his jeans. ‘Up at the bar.’

  ‘You was not!’

  ‘I was. Ask Pfeif!’ He pointed to me.

  ‘That where he was at, Pfeif?’ She slapped the car door with her arms.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ I hadn’t seen Howard at all the day before and didn’t know why she would take my word over anyone else’s.

  ‘You’re all lying to me! Howard, you better come home tonight.’

  ‘Can’t. We’re going out.’

  ‘Well, good. I hope you sink on a reef!’

  Kelley stood, puffed out his chest and yelled after her not to curse the boat. Then he ordered me to get some beer from the liquor store. He said it was my turn to buy.

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘You go to the store, buy some beer and deduct it from what you owe me.’ I shooed him along. ‘Hurry now.’