Nobody wears watches. Why would you when the only signifier that matters is the sun? If it’s out, you work. If it ain’t, you don’t. Well, you might...it depends on how ain’t it is. In rain, you probably work. In fog or wind, maybe not.
And everybody works. All are lobstermen: captains, sternmen, and the occasional third man. Third man is the least amount of pay, but also the least amount of work and responsibility. Smelliest, though. The big tank is full of fermenting herring, maggots, pokey, rockfish, sheep bait (which comes in big frozen blocks...that slowly unfreezes and rots over time), and maggots. Third man fishes through that soup with rubber gloves that get holes in them easily and collects the ingredient to fill a bait bag, as per the captain’s orders. (“I’ve been out fishing with dozens of captains over the years, all of whom had different methods for baiting their traps, all of whom swore that it was the best and/or only way to do it. And you know what all of them had in common? They all caught lobsters.” said June) Sternman pulls the trap aboard - or traps, sometimes twos and threes (doubles and triples) - third man flies to attention and empties the rotting old bait bag overboard to the psychotic ecstasy of flocking seagulls, then sews in the newly filled bags while the sternman sorts the lobsters, throwing back the vast majority of them: too small, too big, female with a notched tail signifying an egg layer, female with eggs, in which case you have to notch her tail, then throw her back. The keepers are kept in a keeping spot where, when the action dies down, the sternman and the third man band the keepers (rubberbands on their pincers), double band the hard shells and selects (double the price), then send them through the tube to the tank like an airlocked transport that launches off the news. And so the day goes. From dawn until one third or half of the legal allotment of 800 traps have been checked and emptied and rebaited and thrown back down to the bottom of the sea. Three days on, one day off. Pretty standard. All season. Sometimes through February where the numbers are pathetic but the prices are not.
It’s the market that keeps many of these men above comfortable six-figure incomes. Walking home with thousands of dollars a day. Before expenses, of course. If there were no expenses, then every hillbilly with an inclination to the sea could grab his cut. Licensing is pricey, but then of course there is the boat and upkeep and bait and fuel and your sternman and third man and new traps and buoys and paying those tourist kids from Alaska and Colorado to paint them. Etc.
Then you have to stake your territory, which is about as easy as joining a clan, mid-war in the Highlands of Scotland. A tribal council of the locals gather to determine how worthy you are of laying your traps around the sacred formation. The qualifications are birthright, family ties, length of time on the island, property owned, favorability with those whose grand-grandpappies are buried in the cemetery, etc. They vote and probably not in your favor, but next time it might go through.
And all this money pours in. The kids who dropped out of high school and spend a fair amount of time with a can in hand, or playing with needles and fire, are the richest bosses around. Three months out of the year, the brutal ones, they’ll probably go to Florida or somewhere warm where they can live a high life (whatever they choose to define that way) without work and enjoying the sun, before the new season begins in March and all are hard shell, though if everything’s the same, then prices rarely reflect the elite.
It’s the only industry around here that the corporate model has not overthrown. Maybe it’s because there’s a real limit on what heavy machinery can do, maybe it’s because the laws keep an individual’s yield to a minimum, maybe it’s because it’s the last real thread of ancient local culture in the region, the death of which would spell the death of so many identities and lead to rootlessness, poverty, abandonment, the complete loss of self. Who knows, but for the moment it clings on. The great islands - Monhegan, Matinicus, Criehaven, Vinalhaven, North Haven – full of historical houses and fiercely defensive locals. Maybe the most organized lot you’ll ever see. Life depends on it. Whether it’s saving your worst enemy in his time of true need, or showing up to town meetings or discussions of regulation changes, life depends on organization. Perhaps because of it, this remains the only sea-based industry that has not declined in recent decades: lobster numbers, apparently, are as strong as they’ve ever been.
But life maintains its fair share of bureaucratic nightmares. The environmentalists, bleeding heart whale watchers, who’ve mostly never spent a day of their lives doing real man’s work on the sea, keep changing restrictions of rope type, buoy breakability, distance from shore for trap placement, doing what they can to drive the lobstermen out of business. And then there’s the land management people. When Craig’s house burned down, he moved into the shop, which the LM folks told him he couldn’t legally do for it wasn’t considered sound. Where else was he going to go? Then he got a letter demanding he clean up all evidence of the burnt house in 30 days as it was a liability to the public safety. The guys got together and cleared it and when they were done, he got another letter from the government demanding he leave the fallen house exactly as it was for appraisal by the historical building association to defend it as a monument to local history. He sent the first letter to the source of the second letter, then went and got drunk.
For what else is there to do on an island two miles by maybe a half mile? Ride your 4-wheelers around when it’s warm, walk through the snow, drunk, when it’s not. Visit your neighbors, read, fish, watch TV, cook, fight tooth and nail against the inevitabilities of nature. Get in line when the fuel tanker comes for it won’t be back for months and if you run out of propane or kerosene in the meantime, put on a sweater and start praying.
Build. Your house, a garden, a shop, a new boat with every part imported from the mainland. Invent projects to keep yourself busy. Sit on the porch and sip your Canadian whiskey. Watch life come and go. Fight the never-ending battle against clouds of highly trained attack mosquitoes. Watch a spruce tree topple off in the distance as they are liable to do in mature adolescence. Watch birds from a rocking chair with a aviary encyclopedia in your hands. Talk to the cats. Go to church - but only when it’s open (when the minister is on the island; the summertime) and not on Sunday mornings because everyone else is out hauling. They’ll snicker at your piety while you’re gone. Listen instead to the harbor bell, ringing all day and night as the waves rock it back and forth; ringing like a church bell and playing the same role, calling all the fishermen to God’s great cathedral to start another day of work, pre-dawn. Perhaps work on green innovations. Bring the island into the 21st Century, even if high-speed, wireless Internet has already been here for awhile.
But be careful, for that too can get you eaten alive by your fellow men. Them, who call the land sacred then throw their Bud Light cans into the water after hauling. Them, who burn their trash and tires or else take it out, early in the morning, before the hauling really heats up and dump it overboard. Them, who can’t conceive of waters needing respect, though this high life of millionaire rednecks is entirely dependent on it. Watch out for them, for if they can’t respect their own source of livelihood, or their own bodies (have you seen what they stock their refrigerators with in bulk from Walmart?), then you can be damn-sure-certain that they have no respect for your pussy assed green technology bullshit that only flocks the island with reporters like greedy gulls to stroke your back and look to them with cameras and expectations to tow the story line in quotes. But they aren’t like that. They don’t crumble in that way. They say what they want, what they think, and they aren’t law school graduates like you. Most didn’t graduate high school because there was no money in a diploma for a reckneck (and proud of it). They dismiss you to your face (and to the reporters’ as well), but they turn you into sheep bait when you’re not around.
And the days go by. Life moves on. If you need supplies you can ask a neighbor to pick them up if they’ll be in the neighborhood, but probably they won’t be so you’ll have to charter a plane for $50 to $100, which obviously flies only when weather permits. You could be stranded out here a long time. Luckily there are blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and apples to keep you fed, and all the lobsters and crab claws you could ever dream to eat. An old law permitted a land owner or warden to feed his slaves or prisoners lobsters a maximum of three times per week. But what else do you do with this infestation of giant sea bugs just swarming the water floor on all sides of the island? Eating lobster too often may just be a sign of poverty in these parts.
And now it’s time to go. The season is starting to turn nasty. The mosquitoes are fading out and the yellow and black spiders with the massive, perfectly symmetrical webs are appearing in every corner, every morning, constantly fixing the sabotage that bored hands exact upon them whenever they pass by. Eva’s bakery closed in the first few days of September and now there is no longer a single establishment open that sells sustenance of any kind (except for Donna’s gallery, which sells art: harbor scenes sculpted out of driftwood). Jobs have come and gone and now all we’re doing is reading books in the shop. The time has come to get our bodies back in motion; so sadly, our island resort vacation has come to a close. We’ll send you a postcard and see you next year.
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