Chapter Five
In the scattering of boats at their moorings, one inboard was larger than the rest. It was a Rhode Island Marine Design forty-footer, two-thirds scale of the lobster boats he had worked out of Newport when he was eighteen. The bigger boats went offshore for three or four days at a time and dropped strings of lobster traps a mile long at the edge of the Continental Shelf. He had been a rail man, swinging the traps up onto the gunwale as they rose out of water to the winch. He flipped open the wire door to the pot, tossed whatever lobster back onto the banding table, rebaited the trap, and slid it down to the stern man. He loved the work maybe more than he had loved any job since. It was high-pressure speed work, paced by the relentless turning of the winch, which rarely paused—the next trap would breach the surface, shedding water, and spin on its leash just as he slid the one on the rail away—and the days often stretched late into night, the repetitive dance colder under the acid lights, the seas often rougher, and he loved it with a wildness of heart he never found again. Maybe he did—in the first months of love with Jan, when the possibility of sharing a life with a partner so game and beautiful dawned on him like the prospect of a strange sea seen from a trackless height.
As much as the strenuous work in big swells, in wind, in rain, he loved the nights cruising between sets. If there was a four-hour night watch, he took it. Because there was nothing better than chugging ten knots on a clear autumn night when the stars turned all together like vast schools of minnows and the bioluminescence left a glowing green wake a mile long. He’d set the wheel on autopilot and walk back to the open stern and steady himself and pee a stream that sparkled when it hit, and he’d imagine what it would be like to lose balance and tip overboard. They were in the Gulf Stream and the water was pretty warm, and he could probably tread water for hours as he watched the running lights slip away and blink out over the curve of earth. His skipper, Dave, told him that 80 percent of the bodies they found floating at sea had their flies unzipped.
What the open-stern vessel was doing here, turning slowly against its mooring buoy, he wouldn’t know. The lake was big, sure—twenty miles at least in length, and here maybe four miles across. Big. But. No lobster and no commercial fishery, he was certain. And it would be an odd boat for tours, unless you wanted to hold a dance on the stern deck. Maybe they did.
Storey was already in the doorway of the marina shack, which had been riddled like the lighthouse. Jess read the name on the stern of the big boat and called out: “Hey! Find the keys to Clawdette. Should be fast.”
“Got it!” Storey was already running to the dock. They’d start one of the outboards to get out to the mooring.
“Hey!” Jess called. Storey did not break stride. “Hey, Store, stop!”
Storey nearly skidded on the planks. Pulled himself up, impatient.
“What about the packs?” Jess said. “We can trot right up the road now, right across the field, retrieve it all. Nothing stopping us.”
“Fuck ’em,” Storey said. He turned away.
“Wait! No!”
Storey never got pissed at Jess, but now he did. Jess could tell, because Storey waited a beat before turning back around. He spat, crossed his arms.
“We could starve on the other side,” Jess said. “We don’t know. It’ll take us half an hour, tops, to get the packs and the wagon. We can catch up. This boat is bigger, faster.”
“In half an hour it’ll be close to full dark and they will be on the far shore and gone. We can come back for the food.”
“No.”
Storey closed his eyes. “Jess, fuck! They’re getting away. We catch ’em, make them tell us what the heck is going on, and come back. Okay?”
“No. They can’t move easily in the dark, either. We can track them.”
“I’m going. Suit yourself.” Storey showed Jess his back and trotted on.
“Fuck you, too,” Jess murmured, and trotted after him.
But he jumped into the first outboard, squeezed the bulb on the gas line, primed the motor, and yanked the cord. He had more experience than Storey with boats. Storey tossed the lines and jumped in and Jess throttled hard so that Storey missed his seat and had to grab the gunwale with both hands. “Damn!” Storey yelled.
“Sorry!” Jess called over the motor.
“No you’re not!”
“No!”
Jess turned to starboard sharply and water sprayed back over the bow into Storey’s face, and when Storey whipped around they caught each other’s eye. If there was a shred of laughter in the look, no one uttered a sound. Jess throttled back just as abruptly and Storey lurched forward and they bumped the hull of Clawdette. “You should never make a guy skip his afternoon snack,” Jess said and cut the engine.
They just shoved the skiff off, let it drift, and Jess slipped into the wheelhouse with the keys and started the big diesel, and Storey cast off the mooring, and they gunned out of the shallow bay.