The Rattled Bones(30)

I throw the engine in gear and head to sea. I channel between Whaleback Ridge on my port side, Malaga at starboard. The island is a mere mound of rock, unprotected from the violent sea, its former residents unprotected from violent judgment. Alone in the wash of water. I slow my speed, raise my gaze to the shadow of the island’s crest. I picture the old woman in her rocking chair, rising to tend her gardens. The men at sea in their open boats, vulnerable in ways they may not have known. And was the girl there too? With her song?

“Did you know people lived on Malaga?” I ask Dad, and maybe my mother too. Because maybe they are here. With me and the sea.

I’m relieved when I don’t get an answer. I was only six when the ambulance took my mother away. I remember the sirens that screamed at the end of my mother’s last night at Fairtide, how they were loud and screeching and frightened my heartbeat. It took a lot of years for me to understand what a psychiatric hospital was, and how the Water People sent her there. Now I want to know how the hallucinations started for her, the slipping of her mind. Because maybe I am more like her than I thought.

I press against the throttle, gaining speed. I give the sea my full attention.

Sam’s on his boat when I arrive, anchored off the lee side of Malaga. Even in the predawn dark, I can see his eager wave as I approach. I cut my engine when I’m close enough to yell to him: “You wanna jump in your skiff, row to me?”

“Nah. Come closer. I can make the leap.”

My money’s on him going in the drink. But Gram says that bravado is the only thing a man can master without a woman’s help, so I let Sam have his.

“You got it.” The current is choppy and carries my boat closer to the USM craft. I worry about marking up the sides of his pristine boat. The Rilla Brae is an old, working boat and bears her share of scars. A new scratch would have plenty of company. I throw the fenders out along the side, let their Styrofoam cushion keep a few inches of distance between the crafts. “Grab the rail, but don’t bend too far. One wave can pull away your balance.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Captain. It’s the word I used for my dad when we were out on the water. A word used everywhere on the sea. But today it feels wholly mine.

Sam leaps onto the Rilla Brae, and I’m impressed.

“I didn’t think you were gonna make it.” I train the floodlight ahead of us. “Gravity and balance are entirely different animals out on the sea.”

“Lesson one, huh?” Sam joins me in the wheelhouse.

“Nope.” I thrust the Rilla Brae in gear. “Lesson one”—I give his bare legs the side eye—“is never wear shorts for lobstering.”

“What’s wrong with shorts?”

“You’ll see.”

“I didn’t bring anything else.”

I nod toward the back corner of the wheelhouse, where my dad’s rubber overalls hang. “Put those on. You’re gonna need them.”

Sam reaches for my father’s Grundens, and in this small space, Sam’s body feels too close to me. I press my pelvis into the wheel, trying to create distance between us. I’m grateful when he steps to the back deck to slide the coveralls on. But when he returns, wearing my father’s uniform, my heart flattens in my chest.

I drive hard to the first buoy and then slow. I hand Sam my extra pair of gloves and the grapple hook. I nod toward the buoy. “That one’s ours. The green stripe intersected by orange. They’re all painted the same. That exact combination lets the other fishermen know that this is the Brae line. Each one bears our license number. Never try to pull a pot that doesn’t have a buoy with our colors, our license.”

“Why not?”

“That’s the way wars start out here. Men shoot men for that treachery.”

“For real?”

“It’s about as real as it gets.”

Sam gives me a short salute. “Got it. No wars.”

“The line sits under the buoy so you have to snag it, pull it up.”

Sam follows the halogen light as it reaches over the frothing waves. He throws the hook, submerging it before he pulls back nothing but seawater. He tries again. And again. “There is a rope, right?” He’s smiling. I’ve seen other newbies begin to look nervous by now, try to convince me of their manliness. But Sam’s humble, and humble is a good passenger to have on a boat.

“There’s a line.” I wait through six more attempts before he snags its length. The morning sun drags its color into the sky.

He pulls the swollen rope up from the water, but as he turns to me in his excitement, the line slips from the hook. His smile only grows. “Let me guess, that’s not supposed to happen.”

“Not.”

He thrusts up his hand like a stop sign. “Okay, okay. I got this now. Hook the line, but don’t let it slip from the hook.”

“You catch on fast.” We should have hauled at least two strings, three pots each, in the time it takes Sam to drag up one, but my father was patient with me whenever I was learning anything new and I extend the same courtesy to Sam. “All we need is one good pot for supper, so let’s try for that.” They’re the words I tell Sam, exactly as my father said them to me when he first let me use the grapple hook. I was eight and my arm hurt from thrusting that long wooden stick into the water. I slept with a bag of frozen peas on my swollen shoulder that night, but I never told my dad how much pain my first day on the hook had caused. The pride I felt for doing the work on my own was the closest thing I’d ever felt to flying.