Chapter 17: The Dock

Eben's POV

My father was standing on the wharf at twenty to four in the morning in his good oilskins and a knit cap, holding a thermos.

"Absolutely not," I said.

"I'm coming," Linwood said.

"You had a stent two weeks ago."

"In my wrist, not my back," he said.

"The cardiologist said nothing heavier than a gallon of milk."

"I'll sit on a bucket," said Linwood. "I'll band claws. A man can band claws."

He stepped off the wharf and onto the Dorcas Jean before I could stop him, light as a boy, and settled himself on the bait bucket by the rail.

I stood on the dock with the rope in my hand.

The harbor was black and still, with a skin of ice at the edges and the stars very hard overhead.

It was the day after Thanksgiving, and every boat in Spruce Head was dark but mine.

I could have called Bernie's mother.

I didn't.

I cast off.

We ran out of the harbor on the last of the dark, the diesel loud under the deck and the cold coming through my gloves.

I put the boat on the first string of traps and cut the engine to a mutter.

For a while I just worked.

Gaff the buoy, run the line through the hauler, bring the trap up streaming, flip the lid.

Lobsters, crabs, weed, a skate.

My father banded the keepers and said nothing at all.

It got light slowly, from behind the islands, gray and then pink.

My hand was still stiff from the needle, and every time I closed it I thought: ninety-two.

Her pulse.

She had counted mine on the porch, and I had counted hers in the ER.

Neither of us had said one true thing about it.

I'd built her a window seat and told her I wanted her to have somewhere to sit.

She'd stood up at her mother's table and asked me for one sentence, in a language I didn't speak.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was Gordie.

The message said: Parade Dec 5. The Dorcas Jean is the lead boat. We're all aboard. Paulie says no excuses.

I put the phone away.

"You haven't said a word since Thanksgiving," my father said, from the bucket.

"You were there."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.