Wreck of the Gossamer

by Shawn McCarthy

  Nearby, a woman shouts to Amanda. She’s looking for help because she has speared a cargo net with a long stick. She appears to be trying to drag the net ashore, but it’s too heavy. Amanda sees that some loose clothing and a broken crate are tangled in its ropes. “Can you help?” she calls out.

  “Yes,” Amanda nods. “Of course.” She shouts her answer at the top of her voice, yet the words seem lost in the crashing surf. Just as she reaches the woman’s side, a huge white oak beam from the shipwreck suddenly appears at the top of a wave. The next wave topples it end over end, and it crashes to a stop right next to them.

  They give each other a nervous glance, and then together they heave and count and heave together, eventually dragging the net onto the shore.

  The woman introduces herself as Faith. She reaches under her skirt and pulls a long kitchen knife out from the top of her stocking. She laughs aloud when she sees Amanda’s surprised look.

  “Last time I came out here to a shipwreck was about five years ago,” Faith says with noticeable pride. “That experience taught me that a scavenger isn’t much good without a knife. You need some kind of pry bar too. So we remembered to bring one of those too this time.” The woman, whom Amanda judges to be about forty, nods up the beach. “My husband’s got the pry bar up there.”

  Amanda looks down at the net as Faith cuts through one rope, then another. “Is that what we are?” she asks. “Scavengers?”

  “Well, I’d have to say yes. Wouldn’t you?” Faith comments with a sly smile. “But it’s okay, dear. If it t’wernt us doing the taking, others would come along and grab it for themselves. When things like this wash up? Well, it’s all too valuable to just leave on the beach. Finders keepers, eh?”

  As the woman slices through each rope, Amanda helps strip back the pieces of the net. “But, is it okay to do this?” Amanda wonders aloud. “I mean, doesn’t the ship owner have salvage rights? Or maybe the family of the crew or something?”

  Faith laughs. “Well, I don’t know the law, dear. But I do know this beach will be picked clean by noon. All this stuff will be gone before word even makes it to the outer cape that pieces of a wrecked ship have come ashore.”

  The woman waves her knife to emphasize her point, and Amanda is struck by the absurdity of the image. Any other day, it’s likely that Faith would be the very image of a proper church-going woman, a farmer’s wife who is not much different from what Amanda herself might be in seventeen years or so. Yet this prim and proper woman is now wet to her waist, hair undone and cheeks smudged, holding a knife and looking like a she-bear huddled over a fresh kill. Amanda senses some kind of primitive survival instinct at work, and she’s surprised at how quickly such a thing can be triggered.

  “Now dear,” Faith ruminates, “you can go climb the dunes and wait for the police if you want. Or you can even wait for the lawyers and the insurance men. But I’ll tell you what … there are people far less deserving than you and I out here. Should we stand back and let them help themselves? Or do you want to work with me to help gather up whatever we can claim?”

  Faith smiles a wicked little smile. “Of course, that also means you end up helping yourself in the process.” She winks and goes back to cutting. “Far as I’m concerned, you helped me haul this out. Half of what we find in here is yours.”

  They pull a long cotton jacket out first. It looks wet but brand new. Faith speculates that it was probably part of the cargo, not something that belonged to the crew. “My husband can use this. That is, if the water hasn’t shrunk it too much.” She studies Amanda. “Is that okay with you, dear?”

  “Yes, I mean … I guess so.” If Faith wants the jacket, she can certainly have the jacket. Amanda isn’t really sure what sort of claim she has to this, or to anything else that might wash up.

  “Well, come on! You helped drag it out. See what else is in the pile!”

  Amanda reaches out and pulls a rubber-coated slicker from the tangle. It doesn’t look like anything fancy. In fact, it looks homemade, like someone just poured melted rubber over a cloth coat to make it more waterproof.

  “Now that’s interesting, dear,” the older woman said. “Doesn’t look very new. That might have belonged to one of the sailors. Check the pockets.”

  “I couldn’t ….”

  “Oh, go on, go on. It’s like gambling, dear, except that you don’t have to risk any of your own money to be a winner. Reach in. See what you find!”

  Amanda searches for a pocket opening and inserts her hand. She squeals and quickly yanks it back out. Laughing, she pours out some seawater, along with a handful of very tiny minnows. Trying again, she pulls out a handful of coins, some fishing twine wound around a sliver of wood, and a single dollar bill.

  “There you go!”

  She quickly checks the other pockets, mesmerized. She finds some more coins, a scrap of a nautical chart, and, in a large inside pocket—jackpot!—a shiny brass compass.

  Amanda smiles with delight and holds it up, but Faith pulls Amanda’s hand back down and whispers conspiratorially.

  “First rule of scavenging, dear, keep your finds to yourself. Last time out here, I saw someone claim that they dropped the thing that another person had just found. But I know that wasn’t true. I’ve seen fights break out over silly things. My advice? Just keep quiet about all things, and you’ll do fine.”

  Faith slips the compass and coins into the front pocket of Amanda’s damp house dress, giving it a pat. “You just keep that right there, you hear?”

  Soon they’re on hands and knees pawing through the rest of the cloth in the net. They find another dollar, a needle and some thread. Another coat. Not much else.

  A man on a horse rides up and fastens a rope to the large beam. He pulls it toward the path, telling Amanda and Faith that he plans to build a new barn, and this will make a nice center support.

  Faith wades out toward a tangle of planks, but a commotion down the beach makes everyone stop. They look toward the gathering crowd. Someone is wailing. People run up, look over the shoulders of others, then turn their heads away with a gasp.

  “Oh Lord,” says the man on the horse. “Looks like they found one.” He unhitches his rope and rides toward the crowd.

  “One what?” Amanda calls after him.

  “A sailor,” he shouts. “A body!”

  She sees someone reach toward the sand and flip a lifeless form over on its back. The crowd takes a step back.

  It is too terrible to think about, yet she follows the others. She looks at the backs of the people, then moves closer as first one then another turns away. Someone vomits into the water. The woman directly in front of Amanda finally steps back, hands squeezing her temples like she wants them to erase the image she’s just seen. Amanda steps up and immediately finds herself growing dizzy, hand covering her mouth.

  She looks into a bleached white face, its eyes open and empty of everything except grains of wet sand. The dead sailor faces the clouds but sees nothing. Then she notices that only part of his face is white. The edges are greenish, and the chin has been worn down to a meaty, brown, flat spot, probably from being dragged over the sand and rocks all night by the waves. His shirt is open, and the rest of his body looks shiny white too. Amanda looks away, looks back, then looks away again. She stumbles back as others push in to take her place. It’s a morbid yet irresistible sight. A freak show on the beach.

  Away from the crowd, she sits down hard, fingers finding the compass in her pocket. She feels Faith’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Nothing you can do, dear. Act of God, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Amanda closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she sees a man searching through the dead sailor’s pockets.

  “But, look at him! To just take that poor sailor’s things,” she whispers to Faith. “It doesn’t seem right. None of this does.”

  The woman sits in the sand beside her. “Well, think of it this way. Think of the dead as being able to give som
ething to the living—even after they’re gone. Does that make sense?”

  Amanda says nothing.

  “I know, I know dear. It sounds like I’m justifying all of this. But none of us farm folks are in great financial shape. Especially out here on this godforsaken spit of land. Look at this place. It’s a sandy wasteland that stretches far out into the dark cold ocean. This cape is curved like a huge arm that’s reaching for death itself.”

  Then Faith gestures toward the water. “Did you know the Pilgrims first landed out here on the cape? Yes, right out at the end, several days before they went to Plymouth. Everyone likes to say that Plymouth was where the Pilgrims reached America. They’ve got plaques there, and that silly rock and everything. But the Pilgrims first stepped onto America way out by Provincetown. But they thought the land here was bad. Too sandy. Not right for farming. So they moved on.” Faith laughs, picking up a handful of sand and letting it slide through her fingers. “Yet here we are, all of us, trying to farm this land anyway. Trying to survive off this lousy soil that even the Pilgrims didn’t want.”

  Amanda picks up some sand too. “Wayne says the soil is good where we are. He says the crops are good some years—a lot of years, really.”

  “That your husband? Wayne?”

  Amanda nods.

  “But he’s not here with you.”

  “No.” She hesitates then says, “And I’m glad of that.”

  The two women exchange knowing glances.

  “No. It’s not easy out here, dear. Not easy for any of us.”

  Gazing out over the wreck, Faith says, “These sailors were hardworking men, like our husbands mostly try to be. These sailors probably were men who took care of their own.” She kicks at the coats in front of them. “I think, in some small way, it would make them smile to know they’re still helping someone out. They have a legacy that lives on because folks like us have come down here to pull the pieces of their lives out of the water. I think it’s better if someone finds these things than to just let them wash ashore and rot.”

  It takes some coaxing, but Amanda again ventures to the water’s edge. Again she collects the flotsam of the shipwreck. There are indeed things of value bobbing here and there. She drags out a barrel of salt pork for which someone offers her three dollars, right on the spot. She agrees to the sale. She watches as a group of men pull out a section of a wooden rail with a polished plank still screwed to its side. Gold letters spell out the name Gossamer. A small blue butterfly is carved next to the letters.

  Amanda and Faith return several times to the surf, wading in to their waists, dragging out several wooden crates. Faith runs to find her husband and returns with his pry bar. It’s just an old piece of black pig iron, made straight and pounded to a point at one end. It’s strong enough though, and the women use it to force open the crates, finding more cotton coats, a nice load of full beer bottles, which they also sell for a dollar fifty, and a crate with a lumpy canvas sack that has tiny brownish-gray stains at the bottom. It looks like a laundry bag, they agree, but why would it be in a crate?

  Faith looks about nervously, then pulls the sack open. Inside are several items wrapped in tissue paper. The first is a glass plate. The second is a silver spoon. The third is a wooden picture frame with a photo of a sailor.

  “Looks like the contents of a woman’s hope chest!” Amanda says.

  “Or a man bringing things home … to help his sweetheart fill her hope chest.”

  They look at each other.

  “Former sweetheart,” Amanda whispers grimly.

  Slowly, they unwrap the other items, tucking them in pockets and under their dresses. The final tally: four of each place setting, some solid silver spoons and forks, plus some other loose pieces. There are four larger plates too, with only a few chips, and a teapot, though not a whole tea set. The tarnish is terrible, accelerated by the seawater. The stains on the bag were created from the tarnish, leeching out of the silver like dark paint.

  “Do you think these can ever be polished up again? Or are they ruined?” Amanda asks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they can be saved. They haven’t been in the water all that long.”

  The picture frame is cracked. Not just the glass, but the wood too. Cracked right through. But they keep it anyway, almost as a memento of the mystery owner of the moderately valuable items.

  After prowling around a bit more and finding very little, Faith announces that she has to go home. There’s canning to do. And her husband’s brother is due to visit in two days. There’s laundry, and house cleaning.

  She offers Amanda a ride home, but the young woman doesn’t answer.

  “Not ready to go yet, dear? So what ARE you doing out here all alone?” She studies Amanda’s eyes. “Did you even tell your husband that you were coming?”

  “I didn’t even know there was a shipwreck,” Amanda admits. “I live south of the village. I was heading out here this morning to do some thinking.”

  “Running away from something?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Avoiding things for now.”

  Faith taps the bulging pockets of Amanda’s dress. “Let me give you a bit of advice then. No one knows what you’ve found here today. It’s not much, but all these things have some value. Buy yourself something nice with it. Or save it for an emergency, whatever that emergency may be.”

  Amanda nods.

  “The sea has many secrets, dear. Your husband doesn’t need to know about this one.”

  They hug, and Faith heads back to the dunes, joining her husband and searching for the path to the road. Amanda walks north instead, along the shore … until the crowds thin out and the water starts to look like a normal ocean again, with only a few scraps of wood floating here and there.

  An emergency, she thinks. What exactly constitutes an emergency? Is an emergency what she’s experiencing right now? Not yet. She still hopes to make her marriage work if she can. She has no alternative. She can’t go back to Boston. That would seem like a big step in the wrong direction.

  Her decision, for now, is that she will go back to the farm and try again. Wayne will yell. Then they’ll make up and that will be that. There’s so very much to do on a farm in the summer. The two of them will be too occupied for any real trouble to show its face.

  Amanda kicks at the small pieces of shells as she walks. So many lives lost in this wreck. It’s sad. And that makes the scavenging seem doubly brutal. But she’s happy to keep her newfound trinkets.

  Up ahead, she spots a clump of seaweed. It sits high, like it’s bunched up on top of a small rock. She walks over, not really expecting to find anything, but half wondering what a rock is doing out here in the middle of a wide stretch of sand. Brushing the vegetation away, she sees that it isn’t a rock at all. It’s a small wooden box. Bigger than a glove box but smaller and squarer than a shoe box. Picking it up, she discovers it’s actually highly polished wood, with scrolling and inlays of lighter and darker woods. How strange.

  She turns the box over and over. It’s lovely. Perhaps it’s a jewelry box. Wouldn’t that be a find? The water beads up on the oily wood. It looks practically new. The shipwreck and the water seem to have had little effect on it, save for a small scrape on one corner. Amanda tries to open the box, only to discover it doesn’t have a handle or clasp. She looks for hinges and finds none. Yet the box seems hollow—at least partially. She can see a seam. Perhaps the top just slides off? She tries, sliding it then pivoting it, but she can’t make it budge. Several other attempts—poking, prodding, and pushing at the top and corners—also prove fruitless. Maybe it just needs to dry out. She shakes it and hears a couple distinct thumping sounds deep inside. There’s also a gravel-like rattle in the lower part of the box.

  She stares at the thing, frowning. It’s not clear what this box is, but it’s certainly worth keeping. Tucking it under her arm, she decides that it’s finally time to head for home.

  Walking slowly back down the beach, Amanda formulates a plan. Sh
e will be straightforward. She’ll tell Wayne that she traveled out to the shipwreck this morning. That will be her excuse to explain her absence. She’ll say she heard about the wreck, and then she’ll show him the compass and a couple of the smaller things she’s found. That should appease him. She’ll hide the silver for a rainy day, just like Faith suggested.

  What about the box? Should she show him that too? Wayne can be clever and he might be able to help her open it. But she decides to hide it away for now. Wayne is a man with little patience. If he’s angry, he may very well just take his hammer and crack it open. That isn’t Amanda’s way. Dealing with something like this, whatever “this” may be, will take some time and a good deal of consideration.

  Chapter 10

  Associates

  “I’ll take the wheel for the next hour or so, lad. Why don’t you take a little break?”

  The young sailor steering the mail ship looks confused. He’s been at his post since 10 a.m., and he had expected to work until midafternoon. But the sudden appearance of Captain Harkins on the bridge has brought with it a small change of plans.

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me, sailor. Be back in an hour.”

  “Okay. I mean, yes sir!”

  With Devlin Richards at his side, the captain closes the wheelhouse hatch. He takes the wheel, and Devlin leans against the back wall.

  “I do appreciate you giving me a ride north, Clayton. This is a fine way to travel.”

  “Aye, running a mail ship is good work,” his friend says. “I enjoy it. The pay’s good enough to keep the ship in top shape, and no one gives us much trouble. It’s safe too. Anyone tries to mess with a mail ship, and they’ll get the U.S. Navy jumping right down their throat.”

  Devlin nods. “Seems you’re taking a bit of a chance then, bringing me on board.”

  Captain Harkins shrugs. “Not really. It’s still my ship. I just contract to deliver the mail. Why? You’re not a wanted man, are you?”

  “Not officially. No.”