Chapter 14 - The Bitter Salt of Honest Labor
The autumn gale season arrived in earnest four days later, turning the waters of Casco Bay into a boiling cauldron of gray froth.
On Friday morning, I drove Nile’s old pickup down to the commercial wharf to buy fresh haddock from the unloading docks.
The wind was blowing forty knots from the northeast, whipping the halyards against the aluminum masts with a deafening, metallic chatter.
At slip seven, the *Audacious*, an eighty-foot steel-hulled scallop dragger owned by George’s older brother, Frank, was preparing to cast off for Georges Bank.
On the slick, salt-coated deck, five crewmen were wrestling with heavy steel dredges, their yellow rubber aprons crusted with dried bait and fish scales.
Among them, struggling beneath the weight of a seventy-pound basket of crushed ice, was my son.
He was wearing a pair of second-hand rubber boots that were two sizes too large, held up with electrical tape around the ankles.
His hands, once smooth from handling fountain pens and leather briefcases, were covered in raw blisters and grease stains.
His face was hollow, dark circles bruised beneath his eyes, his designer jacket replaced by an oily canvas jacket donated by the seamen’s mission.
He had not slept in three days, ever since the Vance firm had officially filed the disbarment petition and seized his bank accounts.
With no credit, no references, and no money for a bus ticket back to Boston, Frank had offered him the only job available on the waterfront: greenhorn deckhand on a seven-day offshore haul.
Seventy dollars a day and a bunk in the forepeak where the bilge water sloshed against the steel ribs with every heave of the swell.
I stood near the wooden pilings by the icehouse, watching him heave the heavy basket into the open hatch.
He lost his footing on the slick deck, his knees crashing down against the diamond-plate steel with a sickening thud.
The mate, a barrel-chested man with thirty years of salt in his beard, barked a sharp command that carried over the wind.
"Get up, college boy! The tide don't wait for your dignity!"
Cullen did not answer; he wiped the sweat and salt spray from his forehead with the back of his bruised wrist, grabbed the basket handles, and hoisted it into the dark hold.
As he straightened up, his eyes caught mine across the fifty feet of open water separating the boat from the pier.
He froze for an instant, his chest heaving beneath the stained canvas jacket.
There was no arrogance left in his gaze, no sneer of superior breeding, no lecture about people with status.
There was only the absolute, bone-crushing shock of reality.
I did not wave, nor did I turn away in disgust; I simply held his gaze across the grey water, the same way Nile used to look at a man who had finally started to pay his debts.
Cullen looked down at his raw, bleeding knuckles, then looked back up at me.
He gave a slow, barely perceptible nod of his head—not a plea for rescue, but an acknowledgment of where he stood.
"Cast off the bowline!" Frank shouted from the wheelhouse, revving the massive Caterpillar diesel until black smoke poured from the stack.
The thick, slimy hawser splashed into the harbor, and the *Audacious* began to back away from the pier, rolling heavily in the harbor swell.
Cullen grabbed a deck brush and began scouring the fish blood toward the scuppers as the cold spray broke over the bow, soaking him to the skin.
He did not look back again toward the shore or the bluff that rose in the distance.
He bent his back, leaned his weight into the stiff bristles, and pushed against the tide.
George walked up beside me, carrying a cardboard coffee tray from the diner.
"Frank says he’s slow, but he hasn't quit yet," George said quietly, handing me a steaming cup of tea.
"He threw up three times before they cleared the breakwater on the test run yesterday, but he picked the shovel back up every time."
"Work is the only medicine for a fool, George," I said, watching the steel dragger clear the channel buoys.
"Nile always said that if you don't teach a boy how to pull his own weight, the sea will do it for you, and the sea doesn't care who your in-laws are."
"That’s the God's truth, Martha," George replied, watching the vessel disappear into the grey curtain of the incoming squall.
May you like
"He’ll be on the banks for nine days; he’ll come back with thirty dollars in his pocket and ten pounds of muscle he didn't have when he arrived on that airplane."
I turned back toward Nile’s truck, feeling the cold wind at my back, clean and sharp and honest.
