Hidden Rivers

Hidden rivers first five or so scenes The wan, grayed wood leaned towards the Atlantic, stubborn in the face of stampeding ocean storms. Four walls of vertical planks, and a rust daubed tin roof that sloped opposite the shack’s lean, stood above the marina, a threadbare perch for the harbor master to watch all comings and goings and direct traffic as needed. When I was seven or eight they repainted it a stark white that blared like trumpets in a lullaby, untempered by navy blue trim added as a decorative touch. By the time I could vote, not that I did, further raising my father’s gall, little of that beautification project remained save a few small scrapes of sodden white and flecks of grime stained blue at the corners of the doorway. The rest had been excavated by near constant winds and swallowed by the Atlantic. "Can I help ya, pal?" Kenny Paulson had been chief resident of this five by eight rectangle for almost thirty years and was the proud owner of a coastal New England accent, matched only by my father's. I didn't know what a 'lobster' was until I left home for college. 'Lawbstah' had been on the plate since I could remember. Both Kenny and my father were lifers, as most in Gloucester were in those days, before the city folk found out there was an ocean up here, complete with waterfront real estate and a small town "charm" we locals called living.

What was the appeal found in a community of quiet people struggling to get by? I doubt it was the charm of the people the city folk cared much about. Kenny looked past me through faint hazel eyes beneath a grayed comb over, to the narrow doorway. At the other end of his question stood a young man filling the gap which stretched almost six and a half feet high. He looked to be twenty, teetering on the precipice of adulthood and just as confident that he had reached it. I was no different. Young men have the habit of growing themselves up before they’ve learned anything. “I’m looking for a boat. For work.” His voice was a quiet rasp, but resolute, like the low creak of a pine tree talking with the wind. Dark blue eyes swam beneath a hint of a widow’s peak aiming down at a narrow jawline tapered to a crabapple point. Cropped blond hair fit the times for the rest of the country when middle-America thought morals lived in a man’s hair. Gloucester didn’t disagree, but we knew the value of a thick blanket on a frigid day out on the Atlantic. “Well there’s lawts o’ those heah, son. And you picked the right time of yeah. Most of these fellas are gettin’ ready to spring off for the season tomorrah. Gawt experience on the watah?” “I know my way around a boat. And the ocean is a friend of mine.”

Kenny and I glanced at each other, eyebrows raised like window blinds. The inside of the harbor master’s shack was the color of boiled pork chop, all the natural browns and tans of wood long replaced by salt scabs and seagull droppings. The walls had absorbed decades of acrid, burnt grounds from steaming cups of instant coffee which somehow alchemized into a hint of salted caramel. Kenny’s workdays were marked by packs of Camels and the hiss of the radio interspersed by disembodied requests for weather reports, slip availability, or general shooting of the shit to help those on a soak nearby stay connected to the fog hidden coastline. Kenny’s smile was constant and effusive, accompanying him on his daily walk to and from work as he greeted all he passed, a ritual he loved only a button less than telling jokes over the dock radio. He was one of those people that can make anyone feel welcome because they knew he meant it. I bet he never would have had to pay for a beer if he wasn’t always buying a round for someone else. The sea didn’t care about Kenny’s kindness. After two failed trips as a teenager, one with my father as a pair of green deckhands, it became clear he didn’t have the legs for life on a boat. Kenny found himself apprenticing with the harbor master. The following year

the old man suffered a heart attack walking home from the pub and died in the cold sleet of a dark November sidewalk. Kenny held that post until he passed more than five decades later, hit by a drunk driver as he walked home from work. “There’s Tommy and his Lady Luck dropping lawbstah traps. Then there’s Danny going for his daily of mack’rel. Of course Mick is following his tracks, always figuring Danny knows the coast runs best so he may as well. Pisses Danny off like a bee in the shorts. ‘Steal smaht’ my dad always told me. I suppose that’s why I’m sittin’ heah and not in a captain’s chair.” Kenny smiled, at his own inside joke I suppose. “And there’s also-” “Which one goes out the farthest?” Nicotine stained fingers scratched the gray stubble of Kenny’s jawline. “The fathest, huh? What’s ya say ya name was?” “Sam.” “If you don’t mind me asking, Sam, any particular interest in distance? Maybe looking to get outta sight for a few days?” Sam’s eyes sunk soft to his feet. “No sir. I just miss being in those waters.” “Yeah?” “I tried college, but it isn’t for me. I don’t get on well if I have to sit still all day.” Kenny offered a warm smile, eyes thinned above pink cheeks. “Ain’t no shame in that, son! The world is full of smahts. Book smahts. Car smahts. Rocket smahts. All kinds of it.

‘Round here we got boat smahts, fishin’ smahts, and a healthy need for hahd work smahts, which it looks like you carry in spades. If it’s blue water you’re looking for Slick here works a boat with his fathah chasing tuna all the way out past the Grand Banks. Nothin’ but cold ocean and angry weather out those pahts.” I held out my hand. “Jimmy.” Sam took it with a single hesitant shake. A heat rose in my neck, embarrassed at how my torn and calloused hands were pocked sandpaper against the smooth, unblemished skin covering the hands of a student. I don’t know why I was embarrassed. Where Sam wanted to go tender hands would tear at the bite of a ripping line and shriek in the nighttime salt spray. Kenny was right. The Gusser always went the farthest asea. My father had made his bones as a young man willing to go harder, farther and at greater risk than any other boat, this among a community who’s captains had a habit of dying young. His friends and enemies alike called him crazy, envying his willingness to charge out in any weather, unsettled by his comfort with courting danger. The old fellas would float a nod from the corner of the bar, accepting of my father’s need, understanding the stock was being pushed further and further out each year. Old fellas always know more of the truth; whether they accept it or not is another matter.

“Your father was complaining just yesterday about a shortage of help, weren’t he. Think he could put Sam here to good use?” My father never lamented the lack of able bodies to work. There was no dearth of strong men in Gloucester. He complained instead about the shortage of cheap, able bodies, like me. Kenny knew this and sensed an opportunity in Sam’s desperation. I tilted my head and shrugged. No one but my father knew what my father would do. “Why don’t you walk Sam down to the Gusser and introduce him, see what Ty has to say?” “Can right.” While time at college may have softened Sam’s hands, a failed year at college hadn’t softened my coastal edges and ingrained colloquialisms. The few friends I had made during my year in Lewiston never missed a chance to wind me up like a doll with a thorny accent. Most of them were from Boston where even the elite of the Brahmin sounded like cartoon characters to the rest of the country. “C’mon.” I stepped past Sam and trudged down the ramp to the docks, hands in my pockets, the right grasping the loose change there. The jingling sound of coins syncopated with every other step and slapping against my thigh distracted me, kept my ears and brain buzzing, begging to be handled. Our foot falls were out of sync, thud-thudding on soaked wood. Sam’s gaze fell heavy on my heels.

He seemed fine enough, but fine enough isn’t always what’s required when you’re sharing the deck of a modest boat out of sight of land for a week at a time. The open sea is dizzying. We’re flatlanders trespassing on water and no amount of experience can remove the jolt to the head when it looks around and finds only flat water stretching to the ends of the earth. You may understand that the shore is still there, somewhere beyond, as if it had been momentarily delayed. But the part of the head that lives slower, before time, only sees a world that’s drowned and gone. The Gusser was tied up in the mid-docks past the lobstermen, tucked in with the other trawlers. The Gus was smaller than the tuna boats you see today, an older wood hull thirty feet from bow to stern with the captain’s helm forward, rising like a boxer’s deflated nose. She wore a battered gray base that had once been a brilliant white. A well attended fisher ages like a man, losing its luster but never its pride. White pox dotted where we’d filled gouges and patched snags of splintered wood. Her railing was an arresting navy, deep as the ocean itself, running the length of each side like a racing stripe that could swallow you if you surrendered. As a young boy I’d see my father off on his runs, watching the Gus skate out from behind the jetty’s safety and lope

over the endless waves hectoring New England’s rocky coasts. She had a functional beauty to her, reticent business and will as she took swells on her stoic chin, save for the profound blue rail sailing across my memories, a thick navy dash disappearing in the troughs and rising on the crests, punctuating the incessant gray sky. My grandfather had built her and used her to afford Commented [1]: Good description here Any way to have this as part of the open? Perhaps a memory roots here. My father had bought her with his Army paychecks. No Collum man ever gifted the sparked by something to get to this? important things to another. They had to be earned. Could then close back in the present as he massages where his fingers were and watches his son/grandkids walk ahead past where thehouse stood, choosing not to tell them, to connect them to thier history there…? We found Ty Collum on one knee, folded over the transom door, a can of Crisco by his “I stopped and stared at the storefront, the orange and brown feet. Dunkin’ sign that floated beneath my bedroom window. So that’s what had become of this place. I wondered when they had torn it down. Dad? Hankering for a coffee or somethign? “Greasin’ up?” The sun warmed the stone beneath our feet. The man beside me, the one who carried the memory of Ty Collum on his stubbled face, smiling with the gigling child on his “Ayuh.”

shoulders, knew nothing of this place. Let it be a nice weekend at the seaside, light and unencumbered by the mistakes of my past. I only hope somehow I was better. A rag shrouded forefinger sawed its way around the hinge. The door was raised a few inches freeing the top half of the pin from the leaves. In better years he’d have replaced the hinges altogether. These days intermittent applications of Crisco sufficed. Wrapping up the task he pressed the door down, sheathing the pin and swung the door back and forth. The hinge cried less each pass, drawing the slick fat into the knuckle. Ty Collum lived restless, needing constant motion to keep his spirit occupied. Without it he was easy to agitate and quick to fire. In the off season he avoided extended periods in the house, choosing instead to work under it on some unseen project he felt required immediate attention, or on the Gus, mending any spot on the boat that felt less than perfect. The only time he was still was at the helm, pointing east in search of his quarry. In this way he could remain still for days on end, time passing as no more than the apparent wind on his face. “Kenny sent this fella down heah to meet ya. He’s lookin’ for work and ya’d said we could use the help.” Ty Collum swung the door closed, latched it, and unfurled himself like a rusty fiddlehead,

each move taken with care, serenaded by a snap in one knee and a dense pop in his right hip. Wiping his hands with the rag he turned and looked up. Two fists reached back and burrowed into his low back, pressing his hips forward as his torso dropped back towards the deck in a stretch older folks know. My father wore the North Atlantic on his face. Like most fisherman in these parts his skin wrinkled and leathered young as a porous guard against the onslaught of frigid saltwater, pernicious winds, and the penetrating rays lounging behind the gray blanket above. His eyes were dark coffee grounds. Deep valleys cascaded down either side of his mouth, framing his chin, making it look puffed and swollen. Couldn’t grow a beard, he said, but always wore a uniform quarter inch of steel wool stubble, grayed to match the fishing season. “Easiah to groom,” he joked with my mother, elongating the vowels, when he allowed a joking mood. “This is Sam, Pop.” I withheld any color on the matter. Ty Collum preferred to pass his own judgment. Burying his hands in his rear pockets he straightened himself up and eyed the stranger above him. Ty Collum’s shoulders were solid but narrow. Two arms, all stringy muscle, hung framing a thin but muscular torso. Rough seas and cold winds had carved Ty Collum from the ancient and stubborn basalt of New England’s coastline. “Lookin’ for work, are ya?” “Yes sir.”

The pair measured each other while the small sounds of a water rocked hull spit between the Gus and its pylons. Their silence made my back stiffen. “Said he wanted to meet the boat goes out furthest.” “That so?” Ty Collum didn’t need to look at me to register the doubt in my eyes. “Well, if it’s blue water you want the Gus is the one. You work on a longliner before?” “No sir.” Sam spoke steady. If he was desperate for the money he would have lied I think. “Not much good to me then I suppose.” My father raised his eyebrows in punctuation. “I’ve worked a lot of boats. Know them well, bow to stern, and can haul a line as well as any.” Ty Collum smiled, appreciating the frank response. My father was never a man for inane decoration in his conversation. Words were a currency to save. I suppose it’s why I talk so much today. “Your haircut’s sensible enough. Runnin’ from the army, are ya?” The accusation’s jab pushed Sam’s head back. “Wouldn’t blame you, son. It’s a terrible thing over there, none of our business if LBJ asked me his self.” “No sir. That’s not it.” “Said he left school, Pop. Wasn’t for him.” My father’s eyebrows lifted again, two black woolly buggers arching like dolphins, dark slashes on a barren field. “Where were ya?” “Dart-Mouth sir.” “Dahtmuth! What the hell’s an ivy boy like you want with a tuna boat?”

“I’m not made for a classroom.” Those words warmed my father’s ears. He’d never been a fan of school. Having made it through high school himself he didn’t see the need for more. He didn’t gloat when I came home after one year of college. But it wasn’t displeasing to him either. Ty Collum stared at Sam, taking a final measure, and nodded. I expected more of an interview, more questioning of Sam’s fitness and, more important, his ability to get along with us in three hundred square feet of rolling, rocking uncertainty. But Ty Collum was satisfied and we needed the extra body. “We pay in percentage of catch, after expenses. It won’t be much, that I can promise.” “That’s fine, sir.” “Well Samuel, when the shit hits the fan out there - and without fail it will - I’ll be barking like a carny with empty pockets and need to know you’ll understand what I’m sayin’ and able to do as I say. Follow me.” Sam stepped aboard over the gunwale and my father led him around the boat, asking for names, labels, calling out commands to see if Sam knew his business. He fired rounds of clipped, clear answers when he could, and acted quicker when he had to. Sam was lean but strong, like a birch tree, always in control of his form, combining lithe movements with a flexible but brute strength hidden in his long limbs.

“Seems ya know a boat well enough at least to help out when needed and stay out of the way when not. What’d ya think, Jimmah?” My shoulders shrugged again. In matters of the Gus’ work force I deferred to my father. It was easier. I’d never be the waterman he was. Tradition didn’t guarantee ability. Or interest.

# The Gusser was the sole vessel out of Gloucester to tempt Autumn’s unpredictable moods, and the ocean’s capricious melancholy, to trade in bluefin, laying out long lines rather than trusting the randomness of a trolling rod and reel. Success rates were low. The population had dwindled, over fished, and shouts of “fish on” were an increasing rarity. Of those hooked, a third never made it on deck. Some could shake free of the mainline, others, once exhausted, became irresistible temptations for sharks looking for an easy, and filling, meal. And the run out to the bluefin hunting grounds burned loads of precious, expensive diesel. Time and empty distance wore a man’s patience in good weather, his sanity in bad. Combined this was more than enough to deter more practical captains content and able to make a decent living chasing cod, mackerel and halibut. But the invested risk was commensurate to its value. A mature bluefin commanded the highest prices at market. Ty Collum was a different kind of practical. He learned to trust his instincts earlier than most. War shapes some young men, molding them into harder and more seasoned versions. Others it breaks, tearing them away from themselves, rendered deaf to their soul’s cry. My father had been a part of D-Day, like so many, landing at Utah beach. Motoring in towards the shore as cattle on a duck boat he watched his fellow soldiers, most of whom grew up

stuck to firm ground, get sick and vomit down their fronts or dazedly aim at their terrified, nauseated neighbor in one final act of righteous brotherhood. The combination of seasickness and the hellish sounds of war leaping towards them from shore was more than enough to turn boy-men inside out. Ty Collum felt neither of these. The sea and its torments were his own, long ago woven into his fabric. As a son of Gloucester, the specter of death rode his wake every trip out of the harbor. My mother and I heard his story, once, as he told any other story - blunt and direct, a cudgel bereft of any superfluous detail. As the launch ramp of his boat lowered, the men around him began to swallow German bullets or dove into the water if God gifted them the immediate power of choice to cut through their fear. Their bodies sank like anchors. In a heartbeat moment, surrounded by the zing-crack of rifle fire, the sucking crash of mortars, and coated in saltwater, blood, and vomit, Ty Collum’s body told his brain what to do. He stripped off jacket and backpack, gripped his plastic covered rifle and threw himself over the port side into the familiar arms of a bleeding Atlantic. Surrendering most of what the US Army ordered as necessary Ty Collum shed enough weight to ride the crashing surf in without sinking to the dark sandy bottom, where thousands of

other young men rested, the life leaving their bodies through a series of soundless bubbles bursting at the surface, last declarations lost beneath the explosions stealing the air above. My father said it was God’s grace and intervention. I’ve never taken much to the belief in a divine hand. Ty Collum didn’t either. To speak the truth would have been hubris. Hubris was to declare your confidence. Ty Collum preferred to live in an assured silence. Other fishers regarded it as a stubborn man’s aloofness. I call it instinct, shaped by brutal winters and glorious summers spent trying to remain in the Atlantic’s good graces. A trust and reliance on the quietest voice inside him rode in his breast pocket across the pastoral killing fields of Europe and back home to Gloucester, to the cockpit of the Gusser. My father had been sheared, molded, and honed into a creature of intense drive and self- trust. The quiet voice became more clear, showing him the hidden currents sluicing between the peaks of the Grand Banks, able to cut a boat’s fuel use in half. The voice spoke to him in flashes of cobalt and silver slashing like lightening through the depths, illuminating the migration pathways and feeding grounds. His was a granite hardness, born into him, bequeathed by New England herself, with the knowledge, and confidence, to drop a pin in the vastness of the ocean and say ‘there.’I never once questioned his choice of destination aboard the Gus, only his

commitment to a dying profession.