Fisherman's Bend Read online

  I turned away from the Quest and joined Cal at the helm, where he navigated a twisted path heavily studded with the multicolored bullet floats that marked lobster traps. Buoys bowed and curtsied as they were swept aside by the water cleaved at the bow. Cal piloted and I talked. I told him about what I’d found on the Quest and what I’d learned from Quasar, leaving no opportunity for my hired water chauffeur to reply or comment. I talked knowing that Cal was less than a sounding board, as I’d learned that he seldom gives any indication of what he’s absorbing and what he’s deflecting. Cal’s concentration seemed to be split between the cigarette he was enjoying and the avoidance of lobster gear while maintaining a westward course. So my talking became more like thinking aloud in the presence of someone barely paying attention.

  A white speck on the horizon was the only evidence of anyone working in this hotly contested area of Cobscook Bay. This late in the afternoon, I imagined that all of the other lobster fishermen had given up work for the day. I took comfort in the solitude while rehashing facts and formulating theories. I’m often considered the queen of “mountains from molehills,” I know. But I’m right at least some of the time. When I stumbled across the town drunk’s body on the shore back in June, everyone else thought his death had just been an accident, but I thought there was more to it than that. After a couple instances of insurance fraud, an act of arson that took out Green Haven’s primary employer, and several attempts on my life, it turned out I was right. Since then, things have been a little on the dull side.

  The white speck on the horizon gradually took shape: a lone lobster boat circling around and around.

  At our present speed I had assumed we would arrive back in Green Haven before dark. That meant I would have time to get home to my apartment, transcribe today’s work into the computer, and send my completed report along to the insurance company. That was one nice thing about my new career, I thought. Most of the time, I could complete an assignment in one day. It was great to have such a sense of accomplishment and be able to measure success in a quantitative way each evening and wake up the following morning with a whole new perspective. Very seldom does anything linger. I was already wondering what tomorrow would bring. This work was less than exciting, but hell, hadn’t I had my fill of excitement in Miami? I hoped that I would be able to hire Cal in the future. I wondered whether he’d be interested in driving me to assignments via land. Maybe I would ask him. Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the slowing of the Sea Pigeon’s engine.

  I turned to face forward again and noticed that we were getting fairly close to the lobster boat I had seen on the horizon. The clean, white boat was in the perpetual, lazy, starboard circle identical to that of any boat hauling lobster traps. Cal slowed the engine down to an idle as we approached the boat, whose bow now bent away from ours. Maybe Cal knew this boat or was a friend of its captain, I thought. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cal knew everyone on the bay. He’d certainly spent enough time out here in the past. Now the port side faced us as Cal threw the Sea Pigeon’s engine out of gear. Oh, I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to surprise my landlords with lobster for dinner? I wondered how much cash I had in my pocket. Now the stern came gracefully into view—Eva B. Beautiful boat, I thought. And a pretty name. I wondered if the “B” stood for Beal. I felt some paper money in my pocket and figured I had enough for three lobsters as long as they weren’t too big. I glanced at Cal. His face was ashen. “What?” I asked.

  Cal swallowed hard and never took his eyes off the Eva B. I looked over the bow and directly into the cockpit of the lobster boat. A numbing of my limbs and sickness in my gut grew stronger as Cal confirmed what I saw.

  “There’s no one aboard her.”

  2

  THE ABSENCE OF LIFE aboard the Eva B. evoked a dark image that quickly overshadowed my other thoughts and doused my hunger for lobster. The scene was numbing in what it suggested. An abandoned boat running in a dizzying and endless loop was something I had heard about during my years working the coast of South Florida. But until now, I had never personally encountered one. Floridian stone crabbers and bandit fishermen who worked inshore would cut expenses in times of slow harvests by laying off deckhands and fishing single-handedly. Maine lobstermen often did the same. Of all their expenses—bait, fuel, gear, etc.—help was the only one a captain could leave at the dock and still be able to produce. Although fishing alone was generally considered to be unwise to the point of foolhardy, a lot of small-boat operators did it; many claimed to prefer solitude at sea. By the looks of what was unfolding in front of me, this was also the case in Cobscook Bay.

  Cal pulled the throttle back to an idle as we watched the Eva B. complete another full circle. I prayed, as I knew Cal did, that a baseball-capped head would suddenly appear in the small rectangular doorway that led to the cutty cabin between the helm bulkhead and stem. “Maybe someone’s down forward,” I suggested, verbalizing our shared hope.

  “It’s possible,” Cal said as he brushed by me and opened the half-size door that led to the small triangular storage area of our boat’s cabin. Cal stepped down into the fiberglass cave, vanished into relative darkness, and then reappeared with an air horn in one hand and a rusty shotgun in the other. Cal placed the gun in the corner formed by the meeting of bulkhead and gunwale, setting its butt on the deck firmly. In answer to what I suppose was a surprised look from me, Cal stated that he never boarded another man’s vessel unannounced or uninvited. “Consider this my announcement,” he said as he placed the air horn on the dash, reengaged the transmission, and maneuvered to draw us nearer the Eva B.

  “Is that thing loaded?” I asked, not yet sure whether the presence of a firearm made me feel more or less anxious.

  “Should be,” Cal said, grabbing the horn and giving the can of compressed air a brisk shake. “I ain’t used it since the Blessing of the Fleet—Fourth of July.” I understood that Cal knew full well that my question had not been in regard to the horn, so I assumed the shotgun was loaded. Of course it was, I thought. What good was an empty gun?

  As we passed the Eva B.’s stern, Cal pressed the red plastic button, releasing a long whistle of air from the can through the six-inch, trumpet-shaped, polished aluminum horn, resulting in a very impressive ear-splitting blast. He removed his index finger from the button, cutting the blaring noise like a meat cleaver would a wet noodle. We waited and watched for several anxious seconds for a startled and embarrassed captain to scramble out and into view, perhaps waving a wrench to signal he was okay and thanking us for our concern. But no one showed. Cal gave the horn a couple of short squirts, the volume of each of which made me flinch. Sadly, my flinching was the only reaction to Cal’s “announcement.”

  “One of us has to go aboard her,” Cal said.

  “I’ll go,” I said without hesitation, and moved behind Cal to the starboard gunwale. Of the two of us, I knew I was more able physically to perform the boat hop if calisthenics should be required. Cal nodded his consent and turned his attention to driving the Sea Pigeon. I briefly wondered what the temperature of the water was. I’d always heard that, all things considered, death from hypothermia wasn’t a bad way to go.

  As the gap narrowed between the Sea Pigeon and the Eva B., Cal gave me last-minute instructions over his right shoulder. “Don’t climb onto the rail until we’re ahead of her wake. And don’t jump. I’ll put you right alongside her. Just knock her out of gear, and we’ll raft up.” The Eva B. had been circling long enough to have built up quite a confused chop all around her. Death as a result of being crushed between the boats would be on the more unpleasant end of the scale. And to think that just a few minutes ago this day offered nothing more than a routine inspection of vandalized equipment aboard a research vessel. Cal increased the throttle and brought the Sea Pigeon’s starboard bow against the Eva B.’s port beam just aft of her house. Both boats were bouncing enough to make the transfer hairy. I climbed onto the rail and grabbed the edge of the overhead for stability. The few sec
onds that passed as I waited for Cal to close the V-shaped opening between the rails were filled not with fear, but with a classic clip from an old Western racing through my mind. Cowboy movies always had a scene like this with our hero jumping from one horse to another, I thought. The movie in my head was interrupted when Cal yelled, “Now!”

  At this instant, the boats were pressed together from beam to stern. The step I made was an easy one; rail to rail. I released my grip from the Sea Pigeon’s roof and hopped down into the cockpit of the Eva B. Once both of my feet were planted safely on deck, Cal peeled away to port, signaling a reminder for me to pull the Eva B.’s gear shift into the neutral position. I hustled to the helm, eased the throttle control back to an idle, and jerked the gear shift toward me so it was vertical. With her engine disengaged, the Eva B. slowed from a hearty jog to a peaceful drift as the waves created by the two wakes moved away in circles of growing circumference and shrinking height. Cal was now about a hundred feet off my starboard side. He tied fenders at Sea Pigeon’s stern and midship in preparation for securing to the Eva B., or “rafting up” as he had said. I kept my attention focused on the old man and my back purposefully to the door that led to the only compartment of the Eva B. that was unexposed. I couldn’t help but think that compartment was large enough to hold a person. Yes, I was anxious.

  Cal was lucky I am so comfortable on boats. Much of my childhood leisure time was spent crawling around the commercial docks of Miami—crawling, like a wharf rat. I was like the proverbial bad penny in my persistence against the advice and even scolding I received from nearly everyone I encountered. Merchant seamen, longshoremen, fishermen, sailors … Men of the sea in general all advised me to stay away. It took a while, but I was eventually able to convince all concerned that I was safer on the waterfront than I was on the city streets. Or at least I was as safe. When ships’ cooks started slipping me treats and deckhands shared trinkets and stories in broken English of faraway ports, I knew I was in. But it wasn’t until I won over Archie that I really belonged to this salty extended family.

  Archie, a lifelong commercial fisherman whom I now considered my best friend and mentor, gave me my most cherished gift—an education in all things related to the sea. In return, Archie got cheap labor. Cal reminded me of Archie, which explained my immediate fondness and trust in him. Of course, I had never explained my boat savvy to Cal. I didn’t need to. On the water, ability is displayed in action and reaction. Words don’t cut it. So, when Cal eased the Sea Pigeon alongside Eva B., he didn’t tell me when or how to take a couple of wraps of a line around a cleat. I just did it.

  Now that we were rafted up and drifting in the slight southwesterly breeze, I imagined we looked like an awkward catamaran. “What next?” I asked, as Cal sat on the rail of his boat, shotgun in hand, and slung a leg over the rail and into the Eva B.’s cockpit.

  Once aboard, Cal smoothed his clothes with a sweep of an open palm and then patted a loose strand of white hair back into place. Cal was always neatly groomed. “We should check down forward before calling the Coast Guard.”

  “Check for what? Bodies?”

  “Well, I don’t know about you. But I’d be embarrassed if the Coasties came all the way from Southwest Harbor to find a tired old fisherman down there taking a nap.” Cal motioned at the door in the bulkhead with the barrel of his gun, indicating to me that he expected ladies to go first. “You’re the deputy.” I knew as well as Cal did that if anyone was aboard the Eva B., they were not likely to wake up from their “nap.”

  I approached the door with the apprehension of someone turning the crank on the side of a jack-in-the-box. The pounding in my chest was strangely comforting and exhilarating. I took one last look at Cal’s decrepit weapon. I thought about how far a cry this was from the Homeland Security boardings I had been part of off the coast of Key West. Overcoming fear in the face of danger was perhaps the only aspect of my former life that I missed. I took a deep breath and willed myself to be brave the way I always had; then I threw the door open with a bang. The setting sun spilled enough light into the small cabin for me to see that all it contained were spare coils of line, buoys, buckets of oil, belts, hoses, life jackets, and cleaning supplies. “See?” I said, standing to the side of the doorway so that Cal could look, too. “Nobody home. Let’s call the Coast Guard.”

  Cal was already straddling the crease between the boats when I turned to discuss our course of action. I followed him back over the gunwales, feeling more at ease aboard the Sea Pigeon. The likelihood that a man had been lost at sea from the deck of the Eva B. gave the boat a certain shiver factor; a creepy aura difficult to ignore. Cal hailed the Coast Guard on channel 16 of his VHF radio, switched to a working frequency at their request, and relayed our predicament. As a rule (and this episode was no exception), government agencies have strict protocols from which they will not stray—no matter how ridiculous. Like the silly frequency-switching business. I was relieved that Cal was manning the radio. While the Coast Guard dispatcher ran Cal through the usual hoops of seemingly unrelated questions, I scanned the horizon and considered different scenarios of varying plausibility.

  Weather, it seemed to me, could not have been a contributing factor to the situation we had happened upon. “Are you in any immediate danger, Captain?” I detected an accent—not local—in the voice of the young Coast Guardsman I now heard over the radio. Cal gave the low-down again, quickly and with more urgency this time. Although it wasn’t impossible that a freak sea or rogue wave had swept the Eva B.’s captain overboard, I thought it was highly unlikely. “How many persons are onboard the vessel, Captain?” Neither Cal nor I knew which vessel the dispatcher was asking about. I suspected that he didn’t either. “How many persons are onboard your vessel, Captain?” Yes, an accent, I thought—definitely Midwestern.

  Falling overboard while taking a leak was a risk, I supposed. I had heard and had stored in my memory that when lost bodies were recovered from the ocean, a high percentage of the victims’ flies were open. “Are you taking on water at this time, Captain? Captain, we request that you don your personal flotation devices at this time.” Cal was getting annoyed with the boy from Kansas with whom he was trying to communicate. I was amused when the veteran mariner lied by assuring the Coastie that we had indeed donned our life jackets. Cal asked again when we could expect a Coast Guard vessel to arrive on the scene and suggested that an aircraft be deployed to begin a search of the vicinity.

  Cal tried valiantly to explain the situation again—that we weren’t in any danger, but a man was missing at sea. I continued to ponder what might have happened. It didn’t seem possible that a man of average height could accidentally fall overboard from the Eva B. The gunwales along the length of her work space were high enough to meet anyone at mid-thigh. No, I couldn’t see an accidental falling overboard, fly down or not. The missing fisherman most probably had been dragged over the side or stern by his own lobster gear. It wasn’t unusual for rescuers to recover a drowned fisherman by hauling his gear and finding the corpse entangled in the line. Judging from the size and number of masonry bricks built into the lobster traps I’d seen all over Green Haven, Mark Spitz himself wouldn’t have been able to stay on the surface if he were attached to one as it dove for the bottom. “Roger, Captain. Please relay your present position in lat/long. Over.”

  Cal looked at me and shook his head, raising his hands in surrender before keying the radio’s microphone for what I believed would be his last transmission: “Our present position is approximately ten feet northeast of our last position given to you at precisely sixteen hundred hours. Is there a boat under way? Has a plane been deployed? There may be a man treading water out here, damn it! Over.”

  “Roger, Captain. Stand by.”

  Cal left the microphone dangling from its cord from the overhead and joined me where I sat, resting on the starboard rail. A freshly lit cigarette soothed what the inexperienced Coast Guardsman and red tape had rubbed the wrong way. While Cal s
moked, I pulled a pad from my tote bag and jotted some notes, including our latitude and longitude, which were displayed in large black digits on the face of the GPS. “Not you, too,” Cal said, lightly enough to be interpreted as a tease.

  “I just thought it would be wise to calculate our drift,” I answered without taking my eyes off the screen. “It might help narrow the field for the search.”

  “Point six knots to the northeast.” I should have known Cal would be ahead of me in this game, but continued to go through the motions of calculating. I knew it might be quite some time before the Coast Guard arrived and took the Eva B. off our hands, so I climbed back aboard her and looked around more closely than I had initially. I started below in the cabin, where I saw nothing out of the ordinary except for an abundance of shipping supplies. It was like a little warehouse. There was a stack of cardboard boxes printed with LIVE LOBSTERS—HANDLE WITH CARE, a tape gun and a folder with preprinted shipping labels. The return address on the labels read COBSCOOK LOBSTER COMPANY, which did nothing to help ID the missing fisherman. Everything else in storage was either for maintenance and repair, or they were the usual supplies one would find aboard any lobster boat, such as lobster bands, spare banding tools, a lobster measure, a short gaff, and half a dozen blue cotton work gloves. The gloves were size large. So for all of my poking around, the size of his hands was all I learned of the missing fisherman.

  Two steps up and out of the cabin I was back beside the helm. I removed the top of a small cooler, ignoring Cal’s comment about the man’s lunch. The cooler was filled with frozen gel packs, so it seemed obvious that the man had intended to box his catch aboard and ship the boxes as soon as he got back to port.