relatives?" '
"Yes. She's flying to Pasadena day after
tomorrow to visit her sister for a week or two."
"Thank heaven for that at least."
I grabbed a hiking staff and walked out onto the
flats, following the ebbing tide. It can be an unsettling feeling
going out there with nothing with you. It's hard to explain. It's
being too alone. I feel much better with other people, or just an
object like a cane or staff to take with me. Far out there I looked
back toward shore. Squinting, I could just barely see the tiny gray
square speck of The Breakers that jutted up over the low horizon.
Squinting still more, I could see a very faint motion above it. The
American flag. Then I pictured myself on the deck of the grounded
trawler with 7x50 marine binoculars a mile and a half farther out, on
Billingsgate. I could see plenty of The Breakers then. Plenty.
Especially if the owner happened to be prancing around on deck waving
a gaudy beach umbrella trying to get my attention. I could see him
just fine. Had they seen me? Did they remember me? Did it matter?
There were a lot of unanswered questions, and I didn't like any of
them. I walked around awhile, then went back to the beach at a slow
jog. I took a sauna with Mary and then a cold shower. During all
these maneuvers it was a constant hassle trying to keep my cast dry.
We changed into beachy things and ambled out onto the deck and
watched the tide move out, slow puddles of water-sheen beginning to
leave the lower pockets of the flats.
Distant gulls cried, a faint plaintive eeeyonk,
eyonk, yonk-yank-yank . The groaner buoy
bleeped. The dune grass hissed, gray-green as it bent to the wind. It
would have been a lovely evening under ordinary circumstances.
"Charlie, the water's ready. Time to put them
in."
She had stopped at the lobster pool and bought two
gigantic specimens for dinner, no doubt to cheer me up. But it
didn't.
The thought of the two big
crustaceans scurrying and crawling their way into oblivion in the
scalding water did not appeal to me at all. As one who worked on
people's teeth and I mouths I was acutely aware of pain. If death
must be done, then best do it quickly, cleanly, with the proper
equipment. I fetched an ice pick from the back entry and then took
the lobsters from the refrigerator. I grabbed them by their middles;
they flung their arms out and backward in a futile attempt to take my
hands off. Their big claws were immobilized by the pegs and thick
rubber bands, and I was glad. I inserted the steel point quickly and
forcefully down between each animal's head and thorax. It made a
noise like a stapler. They didn't say or do a damn thing; when I
picked them up their bodies dangled like latex. I dropped the limp
corpses into the boiling water and put the butter on to melt. The
dinner helped some; we sat outside and watched the sun go down. It
hit bottom just when the bottle of chablis did.
* * *
The next morning at eleven they buried Allan Hart.
The funeral was bad enough, but to watch Jack and five other young
men carry the casket down the church aisle and out of the hearse to
the grave was unbearable. It was that first shovelful of dirt that
got me, and his mother. She wept openly, I silently, with little
convulsive shudders and throat squeals.
My fault. .. my fault. ..
We had Sarah and the rest over to the cottage
afterward. Extremely glum. Boy was I glad when it was over. Then I
sat and stared out across the water for the rest of the day. Life is
boring and death is terrifying. And here we are dangling on spider
silk, caught right in the middle.
The next day Mary went to a local art fair. When she
returned we sat at the kitchen table eating two small chef salads.
She had brought a copy of the Globe with her that somebody had left
behind at the fair. She flipped through it absently, and I saw a
picture flash by that I wanted to retrieve. I found it. It was a
picture of a boat. White and low-slung with a small cabin, it was a
lobster boat. I read the story.
"Yes. She's flying to Pasadena day after
tomorrow to visit her sister for a week or two."
"Thank heaven for that at least."
I grabbed a hiking staff and walked out onto the
flats, following the ebbing tide. It can be an unsettling feeling
going out there with nothing with you. It's hard to explain. It's
being too alone. I feel much better with other people, or just an
object like a cane or staff to take with me. Far out there I looked
back toward shore. Squinting, I could just barely see the tiny gray
square speck of The Breakers that jutted up over the low horizon.
Squinting still more, I could see a very faint motion above it. The
American flag. Then I pictured myself on the deck of the grounded
trawler with 7x50 marine binoculars a mile and a half farther out, on
Billingsgate. I could see plenty of The Breakers then. Plenty.
Especially if the owner happened to be prancing around on deck waving
a gaudy beach umbrella trying to get my attention. I could see him
just fine. Had they seen me? Did they remember me? Did it matter?
There were a lot of unanswered questions, and I didn't like any of
them. I walked around awhile, then went back to the beach at a slow
jog. I took a sauna with Mary and then a cold shower. During all
these maneuvers it was a constant hassle trying to keep my cast dry.
We changed into beachy things and ambled out onto the deck and
watched the tide move out, slow puddles of water-sheen beginning to
leave the lower pockets of the flats.
Distant gulls cried, a faint plaintive eeeyonk,
eyonk, yonk-yank-yank . The groaner buoy
bleeped. The dune grass hissed, gray-green as it bent to the wind. It
would have been a lovely evening under ordinary circumstances.
"Charlie, the water's ready. Time to put them
in."
She had stopped at the lobster pool and bought two
gigantic specimens for dinner, no doubt to cheer me up. But it
didn't.
The thought of the two big
crustaceans scurrying and crawling their way into oblivion in the
scalding water did not appeal to me at all. As one who worked on
people's teeth and I mouths I was acutely aware of pain. If death
must be done, then best do it quickly, cleanly, with the proper
equipment. I fetched an ice pick from the back entry and then took
the lobsters from the refrigerator. I grabbed them by their middles;
they flung their arms out and backward in a futile attempt to take my
hands off. Their big claws were immobilized by the pegs and thick
rubber bands, and I was glad. I inserted the steel point quickly and
forcefully down between each animal's head and thorax. It made a
noise like a stapler. They didn't say or do a damn thing; when I
picked them up their bodies dangled like latex. I dropped the limp
corpses into the boiling water and put the butter on to melt. The
dinner helped some; we sat outside and watched the sun go down. It
hit bottom just when the bottle of chablis did.
* * *
The next morning at eleven they buried Allan Hart.
The funeral was bad enough, but to watch Jack and five other young
men carry the casket down the church aisle and out of the hearse to
the grave was unbearable. It was that first shovelful of dirt that
got me, and his mother. She wept openly, I silently, with little
convulsive shudders and throat squeals.
My fault. .. my fault. ..
We had Sarah and the rest over to the cottage
afterward. Extremely glum. Boy was I glad when it was over. Then I
sat and stared out across the water for the rest of the day. Life is
boring and death is terrifying. And here we are dangling on spider
silk, caught right in the middle.
The next day Mary went to a local art fair. When she
returned we sat at the kitchen table eating two small chef salads.
She had brought a copy of the Globe with her that somebody had left
behind at the fair. She flipped through it absently, and I saw a
picture flash by that I wanted to retrieve. I found it. It was a
picture of a boat. White and low-slung with a small cabin, it was a
lobster boat. I read the story.
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