Jonah Watch (21 page)

And, as ice fog began to settle over the harbor around midnight, I thought of Wert. If the sea would not forgive Wert, if, in fact, the unforgiving sea had reached ashore for Wert by using a barnacled buoy, I could still understand. He had been a kid confronted by madness, and he had no experience with madness.

Finally, as I got underway, I thought of Case. He still stood in memory as the finest man I've known. I wondered if the memory were true.

The old boat ran smoothly enough. The gasoline engine puttered as I traced the starboard shoreline. Fog lay heavy above me, and tendrils of fog began to reach toward the surface of the restless and flowing water. The tide was running. Along the coast of Maine it will rise or drop seventeen feet during winter. I searched my memories, of Case smiling, teaching a young sailor how to bend lines, and of Case coaxing the roughness from an engine, as if the engine were a living thing.

Fog clustered on the rails and deck of the workboat. It froze in whitely glowing frost. Fog glazed the silent nuns which marked the channel. Small pieces of driftwood bobbed away from my low wake as I eased from the channel and toward the cliffs. After forty years it seemed a man would forget his local knowledge of rocks and current. Yet, I had total recall of the shoreline. I arrived at the scene of my worst memories.

When the small anchor held I cut the engine. Low sounds of moving water served as background for the muffled clank of a bell. In the far distance a ship's horn hooted, and from the shore a police siren wailed faint through the frozen night. Fog covered the water so absolutely that no light from the city penetrated this dark corner. No living man could discover me here. No living man would want to.

Faint and close astern a gasoline engine puttered. It was unmistakably a lobster boat headed toward this anchorage where sheer cliff gave way to broken rock face.

Fear is an old friend. I have known fear in a thousand storms. I have heard fear, and felt it, when my vessel's radio picked up the terrified voices of doomed men; men giving last Loran positions as their ship took its final dive. Fear always stands near those who go to sea. At first you learn to bear it, then, finding its true nature and depth, you befriend it.

Somewhere in that fog a ghostly forty footer was even now being directed across the channel by radar from a ghostly cutter, a ship by now mothballed or sold for scrap. Somewhere close astern a spectral lobsterman puttered across the restless face of moving waters.

The sound of Tommy's diesels rose in the fog, as the sound of the lobsterman closed. The sounds converged, and it was then the lobster boat coasted past. It hugged the cliff.

Red light in the cabin, and red from the port running light, made a diabolic mask of the lobsterman's face. The mask blazed as true madness, not insubstantial apparition. Both man and boat seemed solid as the deck beneath my feet. If anything, it was madness that was spectral.

But, then, I have also known madness at sea. I too, have wielded a knife, if only against a corpse.

The madman cut his engine to a low mutter, then turned to face me as the lobster boat slid past. Torment distorted that face, and it was torment I had never seen. I have seen men die, and seen them live when they wished to die. I have seen victims of hideous burns, and men flayed to pieces when lines or cables parted. Yet, this torment went deeper than physical pain. Forty years were as one hour to this man who had just killed his wife. His face twisted with guilt, and I looked at a man doomed to the perpetual retelling of his story. The face rose from the depths of certain, Puritan hell.

The man laughed, his voice casting strokes of anguish through muffling fog. He motioned toward me, beckoning me to follow him. His boat began to rock. With the engine running low there was not enough power to keep the boat's head pointed toward the sea.

The bow of the forty footer appeared, sliding whitely through mist. It was as insubstantial as the lobster boat was substantial. The forty footer wavered, more ghostly than the surrounding fog. Were it not for the solid sound of engines the forty would be vague as a cloud. I watched the drama unfold; watched ghostly forms of men huddling in quick conversation as the forty swept past, made a turn toward the channel, and eased back toward the lobsterman.

The forty made its turn, then eased toward the cliffs, closing alongside the lobster boat. I could see Tommy clearly. His black hair glowed above a face only slightly less visible than darkness. For moments his face seemed only surreal as he concentrated on laying the forty alongside. Case and Wert—and a vague shape like an echo of me—stood at the rail. Two figures jumped, and to his credit, Wert tried. His shoulders moved forward, but his feet did not follow. He fumbled, fell against the low rail, regained his feet.

I watched us make mistakes, as young men in action almost always make mistakes. The few minutes of action aboard that lobster boat stretched toward timelessness. A slow motion movie.

Case fell and rolled. My own vague form hesitated, finding its feet, as the madman stepped from the wheelhouse. The madman carried no weapon, and he raised his arms. As the form ran into him, I could see he only tried to shield his face. The madman fell against the wheelhouse, then rose slowly back to his feet. My form disappeared into the wheelhouse where it would port the helm, then search for a child who was not there. Case slowly stood, his left hand holding a wrench, and his right hand clasped to his left shoulder. His wound came from falling against a spike or a tool.

The madman howled and slowly retreated to the bow. He screamed, "Stay back, stay back, stay back." Then he screamed, "Tommy, Tommy, Tommy."

Case followed him as the forty made a tight sweep away and turned back toward us. Case should have waited for help. That madman was no threat. As the madman pulled a stake from a lobster trap, Case stumbled. He was on his knees, trying to throw the wrench, when my shade appeared from the wheelhouse. The two men were so close that my dive at the madman actually carried me over Case's back; and I, watching my own ghost, saw that the madman tried to stab no one but himself. The sound of the forty's engines rose.

How much did Tommy see? He saw it all. How much did Wert see? Practically none. Wert stood in the stern beside the engines.

And so it was that madness covered Tommy's face, and that in this time of torment two madmen sacrificed themselves on the altars of their guilt.

Tommy, who had killed with depth charges, now drove toward the rocks in a last and frantic display that may—or may not—have had the least thing to do with saving Case; a man who did not need saving. The madman stood facing the huge blade that was the forty's bow, and he screamed in exaltation or expiation, waving his arms toward him as if to attract the bow against his chest.

When the forty hit rock it stumbled, then drove its bow onto the beach, the tearing of steel striking showers of sparks as it crumpled against rocks. Wert tumbled against the engine house as water flooded the stern. Tommy cut the engines, ran aft where the lobster boat lay rolled on its side in shallow water. The bow was sheared away, and beneath the hull extended legs in sea boots; legs of the lobsterman, twisted and torn. Case lay against a crumpled rail with blood draining in arterial spurts, while my faint form lay halfway in shallow water, my head resting on a rock like a young boy nestled against a pillow. Tommy did not dive in, he fell in as he hurried first toward Case, then toward me.

I do not know whether it was my voice—although I think it was-or the voice of the sea that called forth: "A sailor's pay. A sailor's pay."

═

They gathered about me, the spirits of those four men, as I drew up the anchor and began working the boat back toward moorings in the city. The pale, moon face of Wert lived faintly in the mist. It silently protested, explained, attempted to find language that would in some way speak inexpressible thoughts.

Case stood beside me at the helm—the wan form of Case, the kind face of Case—a man who had made his own young mistakes. He did not bare his chest, did not display his wounds. If anything he seemed proud that I had raised a knife to help a friend.

These were my comrades. In many ways they were closer to me than the living crew of my Alaskan vessel.

Tommy and the lobsterman seemed no more than tendrils of fog that intermixed, that somehow bonded together for the present, and perhaps for eternity. It came to me that all of us, or parts of us, are doomed to strut our roles on that obscure stage during all nights when ice fog lies across the harbor. The lobsterman will endure his earned portion of hell, and we, the crew of that forty footer, will inflict our errors on him.

I now understand that Tommy's silence was the silence of madness. When he could not speak he took action, perhaps even trying to do the right thing; but I know now that no one could protect him from the knowledge that he had killed Case. I also know that Tommy protected me, for he had to have figured out my share of our mistakes. From that weather cutter to which our Cap transferred him, he slipped overboard in search of silence. He knew that, sooner or later in his drunkenness, the story would get abroad.

Tommy was heroic in his way. Darkness reached for him twice, the first time with depth charges, the second time with the grounding of the forty. He fought against darkness in the only way he could. He sought the eternal silence of death.

Darkness tries to kill light. I pulled the old claspknife from my pocket. Wert seemed only confused, while Case smiled. The interleaving forms of the lobsterman and Tommy appeared to express only sadness. Perhaps the knife should have been thrown overboard.

But, it still rests in my pocket, to be carried until death, and perhaps carried to the grave. This knife is all I have of youth, because I know now that the part of me that remains on that cold coast is the ghost of my youth, forever tied to the rising scream of diesels.

The men disappeared into mist as I groped the final approach to moorage. There is little left to say. I will return to Alaska, and will make three more trips from Anchorage, maybe four. Then I will retire and find a small apartment near the docks. Although I will never finish my business with my comrades and the sea, I think perhaps they have finished their business with me. We, who were never really at war, have somehow still discovered peace. I think that between all of us, all has been forgiven.

You ask when I've been most afraid at sea?

It's hard to say, I don't know if you mean

afraid of death or terrified or what.

I've seen some nasty scrapes, most sailors have,

but most of them will tell you they could work,

too busy to be very much afraid.

They aren't lying either, scrapes at sea

come fast, you haven't time to start on fear,

or if your trouble's weather then you can't

do more than pray and try to stay afloat.

The terror's something else, no man who sails

is every free of feeling that a ghost,

(maybe his own) is lying at his back

about to show the thing that's always there.

It doesn't stand defining. Any name

you lay to it will not describe the feel

of madness that starts working in your head,

when you come close to looking in its eye.

You get it most in search, when someone's lost

and you're afraid you'll find them, though for that

you stay out looking longer than there's need.

A suicide will do it, or a fire;

a floater in the harbor, or a plane

that's going in, the man still on the air

yelling his position as he falls.

A death is always lonely, but at sea

it's almost like denial of the soul.

A bad one that I had was just last year.

Our coaster stood below the Portland Head.

The sea was calm, but right below its face;

a certain turbulence. Nothing to fear,

but one that sailors know and understand.

The water's in a boil, it's not a rip.

It moves in circling underwater waves

that scour the bottom. On the surface though

it's hard to tell it's there until the helm

tells you, but that's not always sure,

not even when you're full and riding low.

You learn to read the surface of the sea,

but more than that you have to feel it too.

We'd cleared the lightship forty minutes back.

There was no traffic, just one lobster boat

we didn't think or care about until

we got in close, within a mile or less

and it cut a course across our bow,

just barely making way in such a style

of ‘I don't give a damn about your size,'

that for a minute stopping her seemed wrong.

We cut the engines, threw her down to port

and cleared with maybe twenty yards to spare.

We'd started yelling ‘bastard' as she cleared.

We choked up fast, the boat kept under way

without a man aboard, she'd turned her stern

and from our bridge we had a perfect view.

He'd been pulling out traps and like a fool

he'd brought no one along. A lot of them

do that, they think they won't slip up

and can't believe that they might ever drown.

To make it worse he'd pulled them under way.

It helps to do that if you're working fast,

you don't drift on your line, the slight seaway,

will help to clear your trap, it saves some pull,

but if it's snagged you're going to get a jerk.

His trap had snagged and pulled him overboard.

His boat still under way had left him there.

We ran her down to put a man aboard

and checked her fuel, the tanks were almost full.

He couldn't have been in the water long.

We called it in, of course, a cutter came

and in the meantime we were on the search.

Our crewman took the boat and looked inshore.

We went to seaward, searching for the dead.

It's then it gets you, knowing that they're dead.

Knowing in that North Atlantic cold,

the body's warm, the life is only gone.

You wonder what he thought when he went in.

A shock at first, a fight to clear his boots

that sucked him under down into the boil.

Did he break surface? Had he seen your ship?

And had he thought, ‘C'mon now, just hang on

and clear these goddamn boots and start to swim.

Just hang on for a little, just hang on,

they're bound to get you when they see the boat.'

You stand your bridge and wonder, then you fear.

It works inside you, dragging your mind down

below the surface, down below your keel,

into the boil and tells you, makes you know,

that somewhere under you, a man like you,

does silent freezing handsprings in the sea.