“Bullshit. Nice try. You don’t go offshore this time of year anyway.” Nobody did. The best time for offshore fishing was October through December. Everybody knew that.
“Fair enough,” he said. They passed the channel marker and not too far away Eliza could see Grindstone lighthouse, automated now but still functional, thirty-nine feet high, flashing every eight seconds, as steady and reliable as anything in Eliza’s life had ever been.
“We’ll do my traps first, then we’ll head over to Charlie’s.” He was yelling more than he was talking, to be heard over the noise of the motor, and she just nodded because it was easier than trying to yell back.
Russell’s buoys were red and white and bright yellow, same as they’d been when he first got his license, before they’d graduated from high school. Eliza had painted many of those buoys with him, in his father’s shop, over that long winter during their senior year, dozens and dozens of them, the dark coming on so early in the beginning of January that they needed their headlights to drive home from school.
It was really odd now to think about the fact that she had had time to sit around painting lobster buoys while she was finishing up high school, while she was getting accepted to Brown, of all places. Her children would never, not in a million years, have time to paint lobster buoys, not when they had tennis and swimming and sundry after-school activities and pounds of homework every night.
She remembered how relaxing it had been, though, how simple and satisfying, almost therapeutic, just the two of them, crowded near the electric heater in the otherwise unheated shop, scraping and painting, scraping and painting, electric heat coming from their bodies too. She felt warm, thinking about it, about their bodies, eager and young, attached to each other more often than not, and for a minute she had to keep herself from standing too close to Russell. Another life, she reminded herself. A lifetime ago.
“Shedders are starting to come on,” said Russell. “Heard it on the VHF day before yesterday. You want to keep an eye out for them when you’re banding.”
“That’s good,” said Eliza. “I will.” Lobsters that had shed their old shells, moving out of their cramped living quarters, were shedders; they gained weight and length when they shed, so their appearance made for more keepers in the batch. But they were fragile, with their soft jelly bodies, and you had to take care with them. “You want me to double-band them if I see them?”
“Yep,” said Russell.
Russell had brought a Thermos of coffee for each of them, and he handed one to Eliza. If she didn’t look at or smell the herring, if she concentrated on the blue-black water and the stunning sky, if she ignored the fact that her hand was shaking with cold and it was hard to keep the coffee from splashing out, she could almost pretend she was on a scenic cruise.
Soon enough they’d arrived at the buoys and Russell pulled up alongside the first one and cut the motor.
“Ready?”
“Ready.” Russell reached over the starboard side with his gaff and his hook, grabbed the pot warp, then pulled the line from the water to run it through the hauling block and into the hydraulic hauler. The line coiled itself on the deck below the hauler. The line strained, and they both looked respectfully into the inscrutable dark water until the trap broke the surface. Eliza was at first so mesmerized by the waiting that she forgot she was there to do a job until Russell said, “Grab it, Liza,” mildly aggravated, and Eliza broke the trap.
“Nothing,” he said. Sometimes you had to pry a crab off the trap’s walls, but this trap was empty.
The second trap in the string had four keepers, and the third had two lobsters that looked promising until Eliza flipped them over and saw that the undersides of both were berried with eggs. “Check ’em,” said Russell. In Maine you had to V-notch an egg-carrying female to mark her as a breeder; once she was V-notched you couldn’t trap her even if you caught her at a time when she had no eggs. These were notched already.
Russell’s jawline tightened. “Let’s rebait.”
She grabbed a bait bag, saying nothing.
“Watch yourself,” said Russell, and Eliza obeyed, making sure her feet were clear of the line.
“Ready to go again?” Russell asked, and he started the motor to go out to the next set of buoys.
“Yep,” she said. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Same motion, over and over and over: pull the traps over the rail, check, empty. Measure the lobsters, toss back the small ones, mark the ones with eggs and toss those back, toss back the big ones, band the ones that were left. Take care with the shedders.
Rebait, lower it back down, same thing again and again. Sometimes they would pass another boat, or another boat them: the man or woman on the other boat would lift a hand, and Russell would lift one in return.
The day wore on. Eliza realized too late that she’d forgotten sunscreen. In the predawn darkness, dark enough that they had needed the lights on the bow, she hadn’t thought about it. She was going to fry. Russell found her an extra cap, and she put it on. The cap said MAINE in big black letters and below it were the words EST 1820. Total tourist wear; she didn’t know why Russell had it on his boat, but she was glad he did.
Time passed. Another trap over the gunwale. She was getting tired. As it turned out, barre class and gentle three-mile runs by the water in Barton were ineffectual training for honest manual labor. She’d been stronger the summer she was fifteen, hauling with Charlie on the Joanie B. She’d been sinewy, with visible muscles in her forearms and a fisherman’s tan that started three inches below her shoulder. Not that that was a good look, necessarily, but when you were fishing six days a week you didn’t think too much about how you looked.
She emptied the trap, prying a crab off the side and tossing it over. She rebaited. Her back hurt. And she had to go to the bathroom. She should have gone easier on the coffee. How many traps did Russell have, anyway? She knew most of the fishermen fished in a three-or four-day rotation, but it felt to her like they were checking every single trap he’d ever owned.
She wouldn’t admit it, though, no sir. She wouldn’t cry uncle, whatever happened. She tried to channel the medical school Eliza, who’d once stayed up for thirty-six hours and then had nailed her pharmacology exam, highest grade in the class.
“One more string and we’ll head over to Charlie’s,” said Russell finally, and Eliza tried not to let the relief show on her scorched face.
Charlie’s buoys were red and black and bright blue, and when Russell cut the motor near the first one she felt the strangest sense of disorientation, like she was walking on her hands, underwater, in a dream. She started to sway a little bit, confused. Russell had to come up and catch her by the elbow so she didn’t tip over.