Billingsgate Shoal (2 page)

"Yeah. It's a boat. Aground out there on the
.sand."

"You know Moe really thinks you're very
talented—"

"But why did they run her aground? Maybe they
just want to get her hull up out of the water to work on it—"

"Maybe just a couple of talks with Moe. . .maybe
he could make a few concrete suggestions?

I left the deck and retrieved my aluminum camera case
from the inner depths of our bedroom closet. I keep it hidden there
under piles of dirty clothes in hopes that thieves, if any, I will
overlook it. I took out the Canon F-l, a 500-millimeter lens, and
grabbed my tripod. I returned to the sundeck and rigged up the
equipment. What I now had, besides a camera, was a telescope of
sorts. Viewing through the camera I could get a close look at the
boat wedged up against the toe of Billingsgate Shoal.

"Will you see Moe or not?" Mary demanded,
taking little interest in the proceedings.

"Sure I'll see Moe. I always see Moe; his office
is two doors down from mine, remember? Except that if I let him even
think for a second it's professional the Shylock will take me for
every cent we've got."

She sat back down in the chair.

"I'm assuming," she said with a deep frown,
"that's meant in irony."

"Of course. The dope gives away more than he
earns, and he earns plenty, believe me. The jerk doesn't even buy
himself a house. Do you know that that Airstream he lives in was
built in nineteen fifty-seven? Can you believe it? One of New
England's finest shrinks living in a beat up old trailer in Walden
Breezes Park? But you know what they say about psychiatrists: they're
all nuts—"

It was low tide; the sand flats were extended to
their maximum length. Billingsgate was barely visible as a low patch
of tan on the horizon. I aimed the huge lens at the distant speck on
the tan patch. Long lenses, even on a heavy tripod, exaggerate camera
motion and cause the viewed image to shake and dance about. I draped
a sand-filled sock over the end of the lens to reduce this tendency
and brought the long tube into focus. I peered through the eyepiece
and made the necessary adjustments. The wavy blob of green became
clear and crisp. I viewed the trawler as if I were a few hundred
yards away instead of on the deck of our beach cottage over two miles
away. The conditions could hardly have been better. There was low
cloud cover. A sky of stratocumulus clouds rolled away endlessly into
the distance, like an inverted ocean. The light shone through these
clouds with various stages of intensity, giving the sky a metallic,
galvanized look like crumpled lead foil or hammered zinc. But as is
often the case with this kind of sky cover (which usually means nasty
weather coming), the level visibility was superb, causing objects on
the horizontal plane to appear clearer, closer than they ordinarily
would. I don't know why this is so, but it is. I could now see the
stranded vessel with amazing clarity.

Naturally, I assumed the grounding had been
unintentional. Had she lost power in the ebbing tide and been
stranded? Was her skipper foolishly trawling near Billingsgate as the
tide fell and ran her aground? Either one did not seem plausible; the
weather had not been bad and all the local skippers knew about
Billingsgate and the tricky Wellfleet channel in general. Didn't he
have a chart?

Two men were walking around the boat. They looked
calm. Of course they were in no danger. They could even have walked
to Wellfleet via Jeremy Point and Great Island less than an hour if
they wished. A third man appeared on deck. He was lugging at
something heavy. Soon afterward he threw something over the side: a
sledgehammer. One of the men on the sand picked it up and swung it
low underhanded at the boat's hull. I could hear the rhythmic deep
booming from across the sand flats. It sounded like a muted timpani
when the wind was right. Clearly they were making some kind of repair
to the hull, however crude.

Perhaps they had grounded the boat deliberately by
anchoring her over the shoal in high water, then letting the ebbing
tide strand her. This would be less expensive than having the vessel
hauled out on a donkey. It would be the sensible, thrifty thing to do
(in true Yankee fashion), if the repair was it minor.

I was losing interest in the whole project when I
noticed one of the men return to the deck and enter the wheelhouse,
only to re-emerge immediately with binoculars. He stationed himself
behind the bows and swept the glasses to and fro. Since the early
morning sun was directly behind me, I could see its reflection off
the lenses as they swept by me. Now why were they doing that? Perhaps
they were in difficulty after all and needed help. I stood up on the
picnic table and waved my arms slowly, as a sign I'd seen them. But
in all likelihood I was invisible—hidden in the rising sun as a
fighter pilot is hidden when he dives out of the sun at the enemy
plane below.

It grew warmer gradually. We sat on the deck and
chatted and sipped coffee and watched the green boat on the sand. The
faint sheen of distant water puddles that were growing ever larger
told us the tide was beginning to ooze back in. Whatever those guys
out there were doing, they'd better hurry; they didn't have a lot of
time left. It was now after eight o'clock.

"Should we call the Coast Guard'?" she
asked.

"I'll try to get their attention."

"From here? You'll look smaller than a gnat to
them—"

I dragged the big beach umbrella up onto the deck and
I opened it. Its panels alternated blue and yellow. Mary sat at the
camera-telescope and sipped coffee while I got back up on the picnic
table and waved the huge contraption back and forth like a semaphore.

"Well? Any reaction'?"

She said no, but to keep trying. Our cottage,
fatuously named The Breakers after the elegant Newport mansion, sits
atop a solitary steep bluff. It is the highest cottage around.
Therefore, perched as I was atop the table on the deck, I was I above
the horizon. After twenty seconds of signaling, Mary said the man in
the bow had apparently seen me.

"He's calling the other guys, Charlie. The other
men are climbing up on the deck to have a look too. Keep waving."

So I did.

"Now they're kind of scurrying around. One guy's
raising his hands up and down. I think they're arguing, Charlie."

I dropped the umbrella and had a look. The deck was
deserted. I said I was going to call the Coast Guard, but Mary
suggested we wait because they had made no attempt to signal us back.
I sat a while and watched the boat. There seemed to be no sense of
alarm aboard her. Just the same, I phoned the Nauset station and said
there was a stranded fishing vessel perched on the southernmost tip
of Billingsgate Shoal, and that there was no apparent danger.

"Is the vessel damaged?"

"Can't see from this distance. But they're
pounding on the hull with a hammer."

"Could be a repair;. we've got nothing on the
distress frequency."

"The same thought occurred to me. Just thought
I'd report."

"Thank you. Your name, sir?"

"Dr. Charles Adams, North Eastham."

Not long after I'd hung up, the phone rang.

"Who could that be?" asked Mary.

"The only person I know who would have the bad
taste to call this early is Moe," I said.

I picked up the phone.

"Hi, it's Moe."

"Figured."

"Just thought I'd phone to see how you're
getting along, Doc."

"Not so good."

"Still can't sleep?"

"Nope. Think I need to be shrunk, Moe?"

"No. You're definitely not psychotic and I don't
think you're neurotic either. You're just a bit. . . uh. . .off the
track is all."

"Off the track? What's that?"

"I see it a lot in our age group. Career doubts.
Life doubts. Excessive self-analysis, self-pity, self-doubt.
Self-obsession."

"My symptoms exactly."

"Well listen: get outside yourself. Submerge
yourself in other things. Believe me, it's the best medicine. It's
also the one common theme in the advice given by all the great and
wise people who have ever lived."

"And you, I presume, are one of those great
people?"

"No. Still learning. But passing on their
advice. Listen: the more you try to make yourself happy the more
miserable you'll be. To save yourself you must throw yourself away.
What about your hobbies and interests? You like music. Get into some
new types. You said you like Bruckner and Vaughan Williams. How about
Elgar, Sibelius, Dvorak, Mahler &"

"Yeah I see what you mean, I could really get
into it—"

"And more important, Doc, out of yourself!"

"OK."

"And you can work out some chess problems so I
won't always beat you so badly. It's embarrassing gI tell you."

"Uh, right."

"And how about photography? You're a great
photographer you know. Devote the next several weeks to being really
great. Another Ansel Adams, who knows?"

"Exactly."

"Take pictures everywhere, and forget about
yourself. Nothing makes people more miserable than worrying about I
themselves. Nothing gives them more peace than finding a cause, or a
devotion, outside themselves. Remember Tolstoi said that; you gave me
the book—"

"Ah yes. The Kingdom of God Is Within You. By
the way, I want it back."

"No such luck. I'm keeping git."

"Moe, take a hint. Lay off the hard g's. Say
'it,' not 'git.' I It sounds much more high class."

"Class? I should talk to you about class? Maybe
I should talk to a penguin about life in the Sahara—" .

"Do you know what a royal pain in the fanny you
are?"

"You're no balm to the derriere yourself pal.
Look: keep taking the Librium. Keep running, too, even though the
medication may slow you down a bit. And be sure to take that lovely
creature you're lucky enough to be married to into the sack as often
as possible."

"Thanks, Moe," came a female voice.

"Mary! What are you doing gon the extension?"

"Doing on, not doing gon, Moe," I said.

"Thanks again, Moe," said Mary, and hung
up.

"By the way, Doc, you owe me some money."

"What'? All you did was recommend Librium. Big
deal. I could've done that myself."

"Yes, but not with my expertise and finesse."

"OK. How"much?"

"Four hundred?"

"What!"

"Listen, Doc, the Sea Scouts of Beverly need a
boat. Now I bought one for them for two grand and I'm a little short.
In fact I'm out. I thought you could help out a little, OK? Also, Mr.
Empty Pockets, I happen to know you bought yourself a boat this
spring. Twenty-something feet. Sleeps four. . .auxiliary engine. . ."

"So?"

"So? So give the kids a break, huh?"

"I can't stand it."

"I'm not asking for you to stand it; I'm asking
gyou to send it. I, uh, sort of promised the bank you would. Now
listen: you`ll never be anything but a half-assed chess player if you
quit hanging garound me, so give. And take pictures. And take the
medication. And take Mary. Good-bye!"

He rang off.

"That son of a bitch."

"Charlie, you love him and you know it. A lot of
time he's the only thing that gives you hope in the human race. I'll
get the checkbook."

Mary and I had breakfast and got ready to go sailing.
As we left The Breakers at nine-thirty I took a last peek at the
boat. The tide was rising; water was now lapping at her. Two men were
walking knee deep in it looking down at the hull, which I could not
see because of the angle at which she lay. The men stopped walking.
One pointed upward. I heard the drone of the engine. Through the
binoculars I could see the twin-engine plane bank steeply, beginning
a tight circle. On the fuselage was the red slash that identifies all
Coast Guard vehicles. I went back to the scope. The crew seemed to be
excited. Then they did want help. . .no, they were arguing; Mary was
right. No, they seemed to be deciding—

Then it began. I knew it would. Through the powerful
magnification of the long lens, which compressed thousands of yards
of space into what seemed less than 100 yards, the ground began to
tremble. The sand flats began—ever so slightly—to shimmer and
wave. Monstrous ghost puddles appeared on the nearby dry sand. Water
where there was none. Then the figures, and the boat itself, began to
wave and dance. Soon the men would be mere blobs of color; grotesque
wriggling reflections in fun-house mirrors. Heat. The early morning
heat was doing that.

As faint as it must have been in the early morning,
the heat from the warm sand was sending up thermal currents—like
the air over a hot wood stove—that jiggled and danced. That was it.
I had been granted this brief chance to spy on these men and their
boat, but no more.

"You coming? C'mon honey, I want to be back
early. Remember Jack's coming."