The Maine Mutiny

Table of Contents

 

 

I stepped down the stairs and pushed on the door. Why did this feel familiar? I put my shoulder to the wood, pressed as hard as I could, and managed to gain a few inches more, but not enough for easy access. Could I squeeze through the narrow opening? I pushed my arm and shoulder through first, forced my knee in, then my hips. My head was last, and there was a panicky moment when I thought I might get stuck there permanently, with my body half in the cabin and my head wedged between the frame and the door.

Once inside, I groped along the wall for a light switch but found none. After the brilliant sunshine of the deck above, it took more than a moment before my eyes became accustomed to the dim light in the small, fusty cabin. But once they had, I was not happy with what I saw. The long, dark shape I’d made out peering through the cabin portholes from above was now discernible. A man was lying diagonally across the berth that filled the triangular space of the small cabin. His head was thrown back, and his mouth gaped open; a trickle of blood had dribbled from the corner of his mouth down his cheek and pooled in the creases of his neck. He was dead.

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To all the honest and hardworking men and women of Maine who bring in the lobsters, with admiration and fondness.

I think it was the smell that woke me.

I’ve lived near the ocean my entire life, not counting the time I moved to Indiana for a semester to teach at Schoolman College, nor the time I lived in New York City as a part-time professor at Manhattan University. Even then, I’d come home to Cabot Cove on the weekends. And I don’t mind the smell of fish. If you live in a coastal village in Maine, you get used to it. When Ethan Cragg and I used to go fishing, his boat was pretty aromatic, especially when he was cleaning our catch at the end of the day. So I know the smell of a working boat, and a lobster boat definitely falls into that category.

But this was different.

I cracked my eyes open. The sun was beating down on my head. I love the mornings when its rays slant through my east-facing windows. I like to pause, turn my back to the panes, close my eyes, and luxuriate in the sun’s warm embrace, just for a moment, before the day’s work pulls me away. Had I left the shades open last night? I didn’t remember.

I’d been dreaming about a lobster boat on the water. I shut my eyes again and tried to recapture the vision. It had to do with the upcoming lobster festival. And Spencer Durkee was there. He’s something of a town eccentric, when he isn’t cuddling up to a bottle down at the beach. A lobsterman for sixty-five of his more than eighty years, he regales youngsters and oldsters alike with his colorful accounts of rumrunners during Prohibition. I suspect he’s spinning tales he’s heard but never really experienced. All the same, everyone loves to hear him tell the stories. Yes, Spencer was in my dream. What was he doing there? We were on a boat, weren’t we? I struggled to remember, but the details were fading away, the sun bleaching them out of my consciousness. Even so, I could still hear the quiet lapping of the sea on the hull, and feel the gentle rocking when the boat bobbed in the water.

What a vivid dream,
I thought.

Sometime during the night I must have kicked off my covers. A breeze was fluttering fabric against my legs. I felt it move across my body. I tried to turn over to escape the blinding light, but my bed was all lumpy and hard.

The shock of recognition made me bolt up quickly. I cringed at the pain and reached out to steady myself, my hand pressing against a hard surface. My heart was sounding a tattoo in my chest. I tried, but couldn’t take a deep breath, settling instead for shallow panting. Dizzy. Why was I so dizzy? And where was I?

I held perfectly still and squinted against the brilliant light. Gradually, my surroundings came into focus. Outside. I was outside; that’s why the sun was so intense. I shaded my eyes with a trembling hand and looked down. I was sitting on a pile of rope.
My lumpy bed,
I thought, grasping a coil of the line and holding on as if it would keep me from tumbling overboard.

Across the beam of the boat, a white buoy painted in stripes of yellow and purple—Spencer Durkee’s colors—leaned against the corner where the rail meets the washboard, a ledge that runs along the back of the boat. Two wire-and-wood lobster traps sat nearby, empty except for the three bricks in the bottom that kept them from floating along the ocean floor when the current was strong. Above me dangled the pulley of the hydraulic pot hauler, a winch used to pull lobster traps up to the surface. It was attached to the purple roof of the wheelhouse, a Spencer Durkee trademark. “Never have no trouble pickin’ out my boat in the float.”

I’m on Spencer’s boat, the
Done For
. How did I get here?

My head ached, and I squeezed my eyes closed against the throbbing. Maintaining a hold on the rope with my right hand, I gingerly probed the left side of my head, discovering a good-sized egg that was tender to the touch. I opened my eyes again and looked up. Had I hit my head against the pulley?

You’d better find out what’s going on, Jessica,
I told myself.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in pain. Something is terribly wrong. Get moving.

Every muscle in my body complained as I tried to pull myself up to a standing position. I rolled over onto my knees, but was unable to balance on the uneven surface of the rope. I crawled off the coils to the smoother planks of the platform, and slipped off my shoes. They were not appropriate for standing on a deck.
And a dress. I’d never have worn a dress if I’d known I would be on a boat.
Slowly I raised myself till I was standing, legs apart, knees flexed, and bent forward, the only way I could maintain my equilibrium. I took a few breaths and straightened up. Carefully I moved to the middle of the deck, sliding in my stocking feet. I untied the sleeves of a cotton sweater that was looped around my shoulders—how did it get so dirty? I pulled it over my head and pushed my arms through. I wasn’t cold. But the sun was high and would burn my skin to a crisp, if it hadn’t already.