Something in the Water

by Peter Scott

  Amos and Gus started setting out their traps at the end of the week. He found that the strings he had tied off had been moved out of his waters. He had bluffed them successfully.

  They set Gus’s first string among the rocks beneath the cliffs.

  “Didn’t Sam Witherspoon have a string along here?” Gus asked.

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Richard Snell was talking about it in the store the other day.”

  “He would, that son of a bitch,” said Amos, thinking that now Richard would have to eat the smirk he was wearing when he said it.

  “Why’d he move? You didn’t tie him off, did you?”

  “Sure I did. Sure, what’d you expect? I tied off the ones in the Turnip Yard too, and I bet they’re gone.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you take me with you? Some of these are my traps. Those are my colors up on the bow with yours. How am 1 supposed to learn how to tie somebody off?”

  “I’ll teach you. You’re going to need to learn how to use that Enfield, too.”

  The Barters lived in town on the west side of the island, in one of the two yellow houses across the road from the post office and Cecil’s store; theirs was the one with the fresh coat of paint and the flagpole. On the days when he and Amos went fishing, Gus got up at 4:30, an hour before his father. He ate breakfast, packed a lunch in his dinner pail, and walked over to the cove in the cool of the morning to meet Amos at the wharf at 5:30.

  Since his father had started getting after him for staying up till all hours with his books, he had been reading under the blankets with a flashlight, as he had learned to do while staying with his cousins in Jonesport. There he had read all of the Leather-stocking Tales and all of the Kenneth Roberts novels about the rabble who fought the revolution. Maggie had sent him the books in Stonington, and he had brought them home with him. Now he was reading the Hornblower series. In the morning, Gus would walk around to the east side of the island on the road, all alone, when the only sound was the deedling trill of the hermit thrush in the woods. Then, he would relive his adventures from the night before: dining with Cornwallis in his cabin, consoling Cobart for the horrible splintering of his arm, escaping in a French lobsterboat from a raid on a semaphore station. He wondered if he could ever be as hard-hearted as Horn-blower, as cold and controlled.

  When he got to the cove, Amos was already on the wharf fussing with a bait barrel. Gus had to squint into the peeking sun to see his figure against the horizon. Out on her mooring, the Tuna rolled slightly, her stern piled high with the pyramid of traps that they had loaded the night before. Twenty of them were his, stacked to go out second. When he sat down at the fish shack to pull on his high rubber boots, he had the feeling that all the dreaming that he had done about fishing as a man out of the cove was now fulfilled. In his humble cabin, Horatio Hornblower sat just that way to pull on his boots before going up on deck.

  Amos had seen Gus coming, of course, because he had been watching for the boy. Still he acted surprised, and irritated.

  “Well look who’s here. I thought you’d given it up. I figured you were staying home with a tummyache or maybe still sleeping with your nose in a book.”

  “Yes, yes.” Gus thumped down the wharf in his big boots. “And don’t even bother with the next line; I already know it. You’re going to say ‘Years ago we would of been out for two hours by now and had thirty traps set. Back then we—’ ”

  “That’s right.” Amos acted his part: indignant and slightly wounded. “It’s true, goddamn you. Which is why I say it a lot. Years ago things were different. We were out to haul before you saw the sun. We ...”

  Gus walked by him and started down the ladder to the skiff, his dinner pail dangling from his thumb as he descended.

  “Well, come on then,” said the boy. “If we didn’t have to wait so long for you to get warmed up we would get out on time.”

  “Me? Goddamn you,” said Amos, who wouldn’t let on that he was pleased.

  He had not felt so good in years, or at least not since the boy had gone out with him on occasion the summer before. This time it was different; it was fuller. They were going together as partners just as he and Walter had. The night before, when they were loading traps in the vague light, Amos thought for a minute that the boy was him and he was Uncle Walter. He had almost told Gus then about the feeling but decided the boy might not understand—or, worse, might not be interested.

  He followed Gus down into the skiff, then had to go back up for his own dinner pail, which he had left on the wharf.

  “You’re getting old,” Gus said from the skiff below. “You’d forget your teapot if it wasn’t stuck on.”

  “You go straight to hell,” Amos answered lovingly.

  People who were fond of Gus called him “belt strong” or “big-boned”; to others he was a “hog body,” or simply overweight. Nobody ever called him agile, especially on land, but aboard a boat like the Tuna, with little deck space to get clumsy in, he handled himself well enough. Even so, Amos liked to call him a damn farmer when he got the lines fouled or dropped the gaff overboard.

  Off to the southeast, where Amos had seen the U-boat, a bank of clouds was making up, something to keep an eye on. As they passed the Seal Ledges, Amos shouted at the basking harbor seals to send them slithering into the water. He gave Gus the wheel and relieved himself over the washboard. Up in the woods on the mountainside, the maples and poplars were leafed out with the first, light blush of green.

  “I hope some poor doe doesn’t see that thing of yours,” Gus teased. “It’ll send her into heat. She’ll curl her lip back and throw herself overboard trying to get to it.”

  Amos shook it and crouched over to tuck it back in.

  “I want to set this first string here in the ledges, then we’ll put yours along the Battery.”

  The Battery was a high ledge in deep water, one of the best places for lobsters in all of the Coombs territory—and the most dangerous to fish. Amos had not set traps along the Battery for years because it scared him to come so close to the rocks. Now, however, he would risk it again to make more money for the boy.

  Traveling south and away from land, he took it slow to avoid losing the top traps on the tippy pyramid in some sudden roll. They drank tea from their thermoses in silence, watching the morning open up on the ocean around them. Occasionally a gull swept down to follow for a while, until he saw that they were not cleaning fish or emptying traps; then he’d fly off, resigned to thinner fishing elsewhere.

  Gus made up for his clumsiness with strength; handling traps filled with ballast stones was nothing for him. He set each one on the washboard, baited it, and watched Amos. When Amos raised a crooked finger, Gus pushed the trap overboard and kept an eye on the line as it played out. He thought several times to watch where they set each trap, meaning to ask Amos later why he chose one spot over another. Amos knew the bottom as well as he knew his own dooryard, as well as his uncles had.

  By the time they got to the Battery the wind had picked up, bringing with it a sea feeling of wet and cold from the dark bank of clouds on the horizon. It could be either fog or a line squall making up outside. It being early spring the best guess would be fog, but the wind was quite strong and the chop was picking up on the water, so they could not be sure.

  Amos made one pass along the jagged wall of the Battery, riding a low swell and watching for the best spots, testing his resolve to risk the rocks to provide better fishing for Gus, who stood by his first trap on the washboard, awaiting the signal. The tide was low, adding ten fearful feet to the height of the Battery, exposing its watery skirt of rockweed and, beneath, the rocky crevices where the lobsters liked to shed.

  “You ready?”

  “Don’t I look it?”

  Amos again turned the Tuna in toward the rocks, knowing that closer was better. He cut her engine back, gave the signal, then as the traps struck the water, gunned the boat back out and away before the wind could draw h
er on and smash her to toothpicks, grinding the two of them into meatloaf.

  Gus hefted two more traps into place, speared the knitted bags of rancid herring with the long needle to run the string through, and tied each trap shut, ready for the second pass.

  “You ought to drizzle some of that bait oil on the trap,” Amos said. “It advertises.”

  “Who is it that says ‘Leave the boat to the captain and the gear to the sternman?’ You watch out, or you’re going to scrape your planking.”

  “Dump it.”

  They turned out and Gus baited two more, this time slathering both with oily gurry.

  “What do the lobsters eat when they’re not eating this herring?” Gus wondered out loud.

  Amos looked at him, slack-jawed, his agitation overcome by utter amazement. In all his life he had never heard a more ridiculous question.

  “Something in the water, you goddamned fool.” He stared for a second, then tilted the first trap overboard himself, shaking his head sadly.

  On the third pass the engine sputtered once—a little cough that weakened Amos’s knees, a sound that Gus either did not hear or chose to ignore.

  “I don’t know,” Amos said. “Maybe we better wait till this wind lets go before we set any more in here.”

  “We can do another,” answered Gus. “We only have two more for here. You did that last run perfect.”

  Amos cut her around sharply to avoid coming side to the wind, and turned back in for another run, thinking the boy was right. He was handling the boat pretty well this morning.

  He took her right into the edge of the ragged wall for the next pair, and as the traps struck the water, the engine backfired, then quit. Dead. At once the wind began to turn the Tuna back into the rocks.

  Amos danced at the wheel. He knew exactly what it would look like: she would pound against the sharp rocks; pound, smashing barnacles; then begin to break up. They would grab for pieces of her or for the rocks themselves, and they would be smashed senseless and dragged to the bottom, bleeding and gasping for breath, beaten to a pulp and pulled under forever.

  “Get the oar!” he yelled. “Get up on the bow and turn her into the wind. Oh, shit; she won’t start. Oh, God; where’s that grapple?”

  Without a word Gus scurried onto the bow pulling the oar with him. He paddled furiously to try to turn the Tuna but was helpless with so much boat lying across the wind.

  “Here!” Amos stretched out along the gunwale holding out the grapple hook and a coil of line. “Skulk it and throw it to windward as far as you can and pull us off when it grabs. Hurry up dammit, we’re about to strike!”

  Gus knelt on the bow, pinning the free end of the line, and swung the grapple over his head.

  “No, you fool! Skulk it. Cleat it first.”

  The boy did as he was told and threw the grapple sidearm into the face of the wind. The coil failed, then snarled, and Gus started to haul it back in. Amos screamed at him to leave it alone and take up the slack.

  “Did it catch?” he cried. Amos was back at the wheel turning the starter over and over, leaning out through the window, his face as red as a raspberry.

  Gus hauled on the line, felt it give, then catch, then give again. Finally it held.

  “It’s holding!” he shouted, and scrambled back with the oar to try to push them off.

  Amos ducked below with a wrench and screwdriver; as he disappeared, the hook lost its purchase, and the starboard side struck the rocks with a bang and a groan. Gus screamed that the grapple was slipping and scampered back to the bow.

  Down below Amos was crouched with his tools between the engine and the hull. The Tuna was rolling so badly that he could not stay bent over the engine, working with both hands, but was pitched back against the hull, then thrown forward onto the engine. He tried to catch hold of the ceiling, but went flopping backward, swearing, howling in pain as his back struck the hull or he burned his hand on the manifold.

  “Why’s she rolling so? Aren’t we into the wind?” He saw over Gus’s shoulder that the wind was driving them back into the rocks.

  “God!” he yelled. “We’re going to strike again. I knew it wouldn’t hold. Oh, damn this thing.”

  Gus stood staring, amazed that they were about to die, even more amazed that he thought Amos looked funny flopping back and forth down below—helpless, bent over like a question mark. Maybe this was the detachment that Hornblower felt when he was in danger.

  Amos threw out a lifejacket; Gus grabbed for it, but it glanced off his arm and went overboard, splashed, and sank out of sight.

  “It sank!” cried Gus. “It sank like a christly stone!”

  Amos didn’t answer. This time when he crossed the solenoid with the screwdriver the engine growled and turned over.

  “Quick, pull out the throttle!”

  The engine caught and roared, but as Amos scurried up to take the wheel, the starboard side struck the rock again, scraping horribly as they pulled away.

  Neither of them spoke as he took her around in the lee of the high ledge and sat idling in the calm water, catching his breath, holding his wrist. His oilskin apron, which had softened in the heat of the engine room, lay hardening in his lap.

  “I guess if that don’t call for a drink, nothing does,” he said.

  Gus nodded. He started to shut down the engine but Amos stopped him, saying it might not start again. Somehow, Amos knew that he had seen this ahead of time—or something a lot like it. He had, in a way, but not a failed engine and not at the Battery.

  Gus fetched his cup, the rum, and his thermos, too, in case he wanted to cut the Demerara with tea. He was surprised that Amos was so quiet; he expected him to be swearing and vowing never to go near the Battery again. What had just happened was exactly why he didn’t fish there any more.

  “How’s your hand?” Gus felt that Amos had gotten burned for him.

  “It’s fine. Look, no blisters. Here, let’s both of us have a drink if you can promise not to tell your parents, or Maggie.”

  Gus tried not to act too eager. He held their cups while Amos poured the dark rum and water and stirred it with the filet knife.

  A one-legged gull landed on the topmost trap and watched them drink.

  “I guess we shouldn’t fish in so close,” said Gus.

  “Not until we tune this engine. We’ll put your last bridle over this morning, though; tonight I’ll adjust that carburetor.”

  “Look at that.” Gus pointed out to sea. “You can see two of them at once.”

  Two freighters sat on the distant horizon, seemingly motionless.

  “Do you suppose they’ll make it across?”

  “God only knows. The U-boats are out there somewhere. I can vouch for that.” He shook his head sadly. “You know what we’re doing, don’t you? We’re acting as if the worst thing that’s happening anywhere is an engine going out in the rocks. We’re as bad as the rest of them. German submarines are driving in and out of this bay to sink our ships, and we’re acting like there’s nothing going on.”

  “What can we do?” Gus’s cheeks were plum colored; the rope burns in his palms throbbed painfully, but he would not mention them.

  “They’re using this bay for a safe harbor,” said Amos. “They even have a working light to guide them in and out.”

  “As father says we just don’t have the planes or ships to stop them,” replied Gus. “God I wish we could do something; it feels so helpless. I wish I was eighteen.”

  Amos had been planning this conversation for a week, and now he had the boy where he wanted him. He had not counted on the extra edge of the burned hand, only on Gus’s feeling beholden to him for risking the boat in the rocks. He was too proud to ask Maggie himself, but if Gus did, it would be all right.

  “What the Coast Guard needs is people to be spotters, like the home guard in England and the guys on the west coast. They need men who can help them keep a lookout and report in; not plane spotters here, but sub spotters.”

 
; “That’s what we’ll do then.” Gus was resolved; he stood up to show it.

  Amos acted forlorn. He threw the dregs of his drink overboard. “But we can’t. We can’t go offshore in this boat. It’s too small, too slow.”

  “That doesn’t matter. We can handle it. We can—”

  Amos shook his head. “I wasn’t going to tell you this because it’ll just discourage you the way it did me, but we’ve got to be realistic.” He paused to add weight to what he was going to say.

  “Jake Gardiner, who’s not just a keeper but Coast Guard now, told me that if I could get a seaworthy boat, he could have a radio mounted in it, a Coast Guard radio like the one they have at the lighthouse, only smaller.”

  “What’s discouraging about that? God, we could—”

  “You didn’t listen. You didn’t hear me say if I got a seaworthy boat. Where do you suggest I get six thousand dollars— from the cookie jar?”

  “Why couldn’t we borrow it? Wouldn’t a bank loan it to us? They did for father. It wouldn’t be that much, if you sold this one.”

  “I’ve thought of that, sure. Don’t think I haven’t. There’s a way all right, but up to now I’ve been avoiding it. I can borrow against our property. But it scares me. I could have a bad season—miss some payments—then some bank would take everything.”

  “I get paid for working in the store. I’ll help with the money from my traps, too. We can do it.”

  Amos paused, as if he were making up his mind just then.

  “You’re right. Sure we can. No, I won’t take your money. Hell, if things keep going as badly as they have been, there won’t be any banks to foreclose on me; some damn Hun will own the cove anyway. By Jesus, we’ll do it.”

  “You and me,” said Gus, flushed with enthusiasm. “Let’s have another drink on it.”

  “No, let’s go home. After one drink I was considering going offshore in this boat. If I have another we’ll be attacking submarines. Let’s see if we can’t get this engine to run without it conking out again.”