Owen's Confession

Salt and Crossing

Chapter 17: Owen's Confession

The 9:30 crossing on a Thursday in late November carried four vehicles and seven passengers, and one of the passengers was Owen Delaney, who usually rode the 7:00, the evening crossing, back to Port Clement after the day's work at the construction site, but who had stayed late this evening, stayed past the 7:00, stayed because the concrete pour for the second tower's base had run long, the pumping taking two hours more than the schedule had allowed because the cold had thickened the mix and the thickened mix moved more slowly through the pump's lines and the pump's lines were long, reaching from the mixing truck on the barge to the form at the tower's base, and the length and the cold and the thickness had conspired to extend the pour from afternoon into evening and from evening into night.

Owen boarded on foot. His truck was on the island — he would leave it overnight and walk from the Port Clement terminal to the motel where he was staying, the Harbor View, a two-story building on Route 1 that did not, despite its name, have a view of the harbor but that had a view of the parking lot of the Rite Aid next door, and Owen did not mind because the room was clean and the price was reasonable and the location was six minutes from the ferry terminal and six minutes was the commute, the mainland end of the commute, the mirror of the island end, and the two ends bracketed the crossing the way the two shores bracketed the channel.

He climbed to the wheelhouse. Harlan heard him on the stairs — the boots on the steel treads, a different cadence from Tommy's boots, heavier, slower, the cadence of a man who is tired, who has stood on a barge all day in November cold supervising a concrete pour and who is carrying in his legs and his back the particular fatigue of that kind of standing, the standing that is not rest but work, the standing that requires attention, vigilance, the body upright and the mind engaged for hours, and the hours are in the legs now, in the back, in the body's account of the day's expenditure.

Owen entered the wheelhouse. He stood beside the console, not sitting — there was only one chair and the chair was Harlan's — and he looked through the windows at the channel, the channel in the dark, the channel lit only by the marker lights and the construction lights at the tower sites, the construction lights casting their white glare on the water, the glare a circle of artificial day in the middle of the natural night.

"Late pour," Owen said.

"I saw the lights," Harlan said.

They stood in the wheelhouse together. The Constance moved through the channel, the engine's hum steady, the deck plates vibrating, the familiar vibration that was the crossing's pulse, and the two men stood in the vibration and looked at the dark water and the dark shore and the towers' lights and did not speak for four minutes, five, the not-speaking comfortable, the comfort of two men who had shared this space many times and who did not need to fill it with words because the space was already full, full of the engine and the water and the dark and the channel's presence, and the fullness was sufficient.

"I grew up on an island," Owen said.

Harlan looked at him. Owen was looking at the water, not at Harlan, his face lit from below by the console's instruments, the green glow of the radar and the white glow of the GPS giving his features a spectral quality, the quality of a face seen in non-standard light, a face that looks different from the face seen in daylight because the shadows fall from below rather than from above and the shadows change the face the way shadows change any landscape, revealing what the ordinary light conceals.

"Peaks Island," Owen said. "Casco Bay. Portland."

Harlan knew Peaks Island. He knew it as a ferry destination, as a place served by the Casco Bay Lines, the ferry service that ran from Portland to the bay islands — Peaks, Long, Great Diamond, Little Diamond, Chebeague, Cliff — and that operated a fleet of ferries that made the Constance seem small, the Casco Bay ferries larger, faster, more urban, serving a population that was closer to Portland and more connected to Portland and more dependent on Portland than Dunmore was dependent on Port Clement.

"Peaks has a bridge?" Harlan said.

"No," Owen said. "Peaks has a ferry. Peaks is still a ferry island. I misspoke. I grew up on Long Island. Long Island had a bridge discussion in the nineties. The bridge was never built. But the discussion — the discussion was the thing. The discussion changed the island before the bridge could."

Harlan waited. Owen was speaking in the particular cadence of a man who is telling a story he has not told before, or has not told in this way, in this setting, the telling shaped by the wheelhouse and the channel and the dark and the crossing, the telling a confession in the literal sense, a speaking of something held inside, something carried, and the carrying has been long and the releasing is careful.

"My parents moved to Long Island in 1983," Owen said. "I was two. My father was a carpenter. He built houses on the island, on the mainland, wherever the work was. He rode the ferry to Portland every morning. The ferry took forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes each way. An hour and a half a day on the water. He did this for twenty years."

"That's a commute," Harlan said.

"That's a life," Owen said. "That's a life organized around the crossing. Everything followed from the ferry schedule. When he ate dinner. When he went to bed. When he woke up. The ferry's schedule was his schedule, the way your schedule is the Constance's schedule, and the Constance's schedule is the channel's schedule, and the channel's schedule is the tide's schedule, and the whole thing goes back to the moon. My father's dinner time was set by the moon. He didn't know this. He didn't think about it. But it was true."

The Constance crossed the halfway point. Harlan felt the equilibrium, the stillness, the moment of balance. Owen did not feel it — or did not show that he felt it — but the moment passed through both of them, through the deck plates into their feet, the channel's center marking itself in their bodies.

"In 1994 the state floated the idea of a bridge to Long Island," Owen said. "A short bridge, eight hundred feet, from the mainland to the island's north end. The idea was in the newspaper. It was discussed at town meeting. It was studied. The study said it was feasible. The bridge would cost fourteen million dollars. The bridge would eliminate the ferry. The discussion lasted three years."

"What happened?" Harlan said.

"The discussion happened," Owen said. "The discussion is what happened. The bridge was never built. The money was never allocated. The political will was never sufficient. But the discussion — the three years of discussion — changed the island. The discussion divided the island into the for and the against, the way your island is divided, and the division was not along lines that anyone expected. It was not old versus young or rich versus poor or year-round versus summer. It was — " He paused. He looked at the water. "It was people who saw the island as a place to live versus people who saw the island as a place to be. And the difference between living and being is the difference between convenience and identity. The people who wanted the bridge wanted to live more conveniently. The people who opposed the bridge wanted to be what they were. And both wants were legitimate. Both were real. Both were right."

"Both were right," Harlan said.

"Both were right," Owen said. "And the rightness of both was the problem. Because you can't build half a bridge. You can't connect half an island. The bridge is or it isn't. The binary is the cruelty. The all-or-nothing is the injustice. Because the people who want to be what they are deserve to be what they are, and the people who want to live more conveniently deserve to live more conveniently, and the bridge satisfies one and destroys the other and there is no compromise, no middle ground, no bridge that crosses half the channel and leaves the other half uncrossed."

Harlan held the wheel. The Constance was in the construction zone now, the yellow buoys passing to starboard, the tower lights bright, the crane silhouetted against the glare, the crane at rest, its boom pointed at the sky, at the stars that were visible tonight, the stars hard and close in the cold November air.

"What happened to your father?" Harlan said.

"He kept riding the ferry. The bridge was never built. He rode the ferry for twenty years and then he retired and then he died. He died on the island. He died in the house he built with his own hands. He died three hundred feet from the ferry terminal. He died — " Owen stopped. He was quiet for a moment. The engine hummed. The water moved. The dark sat on the channel. "He died a ferry rider. He died a man whose life was organized by the crossing. And the organization was not a burden. The organization was the structure. The structure was the meaning. The crossing gave his life its shape, its rhythm, its daily proof that he was doing something, going somewhere, crossing something, and the crossing was not just transportation but was work, was effort, was the daily labor of getting from the island to the mainland and back, and the labor was part of the living, was inseparable from the living."

Owen was quiet again. The Constance moved through the dark. Dunmore was ahead, the island's lights visible, the scattering of house lights that said inhabited, alive, home.

"I know what the bridge does," Owen said. "I know what it brings and what it takes. I know that it brings convenience and access and economic development and emergency response and property values and all of the things that the feasibility study measures. And I know that it takes the crossing. It takes the crossing and everything the crossing carries, which is the identity, the rhythm, the daily proof of effort, the knowledge that you are an islander because you cross water to be where you are, and the crossing is the price and the crossing is the proof and the bridge eliminates both."

"Then why are you building it?" Harlan said.

The question was not hostile. The question was curious. The question was the question of a man who wanted to understand, who had been trying to understand since Owen first boarded the Constance with his cardboard tube, who had been observing Owen's decency and his competence and his respect for the channel and who wanted to know how a man who understood what the bridge took could be the man who built it.

"Because the state says to build it," Owen said. "Because the engineering is sound. Because the access matters. Because the emergency response matters — your island's ambulance response time is twenty-two minutes plus the drive from Port Clement to the hospital, which is another fifteen, and the total is thirty-seven minutes, and the bridge reduces that to fifteen, and the reduction saves lives, will save lives, will save a life that would have been lost in the twenty-two minutes of the crossing, and the saved life is the argument, is the unanswerable argument, the argument that no amount of identity and rhythm and daily proof of effort can counter, because a life is a life and the saving of it is the saving of it and the bridge saves it and the ferry does not."

Harlan was quiet. The argument was the argument. He had heard it before, at the public hearing, in the newspaper, in the conversations at Mere's store, and the argument was sound, was correct, was true, and the truth of it was the weight, the heaviness, the thing that pressed against his objection — which was not an objection but a feeling, a body-knowledge, a thing that lived in his hands and his feet and his thirty-four years — and the pressing was relentless, was the argument's force, the force of logic applied to a feeling, and logic always wins when the contest is conducted in logic's language.

"But I am not building it without knowing what it costs," Owen said. "I am not building it with the ignorance that some builders bring to their buildings, the ignorance that says: this is progress, this is improvement, this is better, and the better justifies the cost. I know the cost. I know the cost because I grew up with the crossing. I know the cost because my father's life was the crossing. I know the cost because I stand in this wheelhouse and I watch you navigate this channel and I see in your hands the same thing I saw in my father's hands when he built a house, the same knowledge, the same earned skill, the same body-wisdom that cannot be taught but can only be accumulated, and the accumulation is the life, and the bridge ends the life, and I know this."

"Knowing does not stop you," Harlan said.

"No," Owen said. "Knowing does not stop me. Knowing has never stopped anyone from doing what they are employed to do. Knowing is not an obstacle. Knowing is a companion. Knowing walks beside the doing and says: look, look at what you are doing, look at what it costs, and the looking is the knowing's gift, the knowing's only gift, because the knowing cannot prevent and cannot reverse and cannot undo, but the knowing can witness, can see, can refuse to be ignorant, and the refusal of ignorance is the only decency available to a person who is building a thing that will destroy another thing."

They stood in the wheelhouse. The island approached. The harbor lights appeared. The markers blinked. The channel narrowed toward the entrance.

"My father never flew," Owen said. "In his whole life. He never flew in an airplane. He traveled by boat and by car and by foot. He built thirty houses. He rode the ferry ten thousand times. He knew Casco Bay the way you know this channel — by feel, by the body's accumulated experience, by the knowledge that cannot be extracted from the knower and placed in a manual or a model. And when he died, the knowledge died with him. The ten thousand crossings, the forty-five minutes each way, the twenty years of daily passage — all of it ended when he ended. And the ending was not recorded. The ending was not preserved. The ending was just the ending, the stopping, the last crossing followed by no crossing, and the no-crossing was the silence and the silence was permanent."

Harlan docked the Constance at Port Clement. The docking was smooth — the wind had died, the harbor was calm, the late-night harbor quiet and still, the terminal lights reflected in the water, the reflections wavering with the Constance's wake, the wake disturbing the stillness and the stillness returning, the way stillness always returns, the way silence always returns, the way the absence always reasserts itself after the presence has passed.

Owen stood at the wheelhouse door. He had his coat on, his hardhat in his hand, his boots dirty with the day's concrete dust, the dust gray on the brown leather, the gray the color of the bridge being built, the bridge's raw material visible on the builder's boots.

"Thank you," Owen said.

"For what?" Harlan said.

"For the crossings," Owen said. "For letting me stand here. For the channel."

He descended the stairs. He walked across the car deck and down the ramp and across the parking lot. Harlan watched him go. He watched Owen walk to Route 1 and turn north toward the Harbor View motel, and he watched until Owen disappeared into the dark, the builder disappearing, the confession still in the wheelhouse, the words still in the air, the words about the father and the ferry and the knowing and the cost, the words that were not an apology and not a justification but were a witnessing, a testimony, the bridge-builder's testimony that the bridge was being built with open eyes, with full knowledge, with the awareness that the building was a destruction and the destruction was a necessity and the necessity did not excuse the destruction but only explained it, and the explanation was not comfort but was honesty, and honesty was what Owen had offered, standing in the wheelhouse in the dark, the green glow of the radar on his face, his father's ghost beside him.

Harlan stood in the wheelhouse alone. The Constance was at the dock, engines off, the silence complete. The silence that Owen had described — the permanent silence that follows the last crossing — was not here yet, was not now, was still future, but the silence was closer than it had been that morning, closer by one day, one day's crossings subtracted from the total, the account declining, and the declining was the fact, was the arithmetic, was the math that November conducted and that December would complete.

He picked up the thermos. It was empty. He had drunk the last of the coffee hours ago, on the 7:00, and the thermos had been empty since, and the emptiness was a small thing, a trivial thing, a thing that did not matter, but the thermos's emptiness registered in his hand as a lightness, an insufficiency, the thermos too light, the absence of coffee's weight a physical fact that his hand noticed the way his feet noticed the tide's change in the deck plates.

Janet's thermos. Twenty years of coffee. The coffee black, no sugar, the preference that had been hers and had become his and had become theirs and had persisted after the hers had ended, the preference outliving the person, the daily habit outliving the daily life, and the outliving was a form of memory, the most physical form, the form that did not require thought or intention but only the hand reaching for the thermos and the thermos being there and the coffee being black and the blackness being the blackness that Janet had drunk and that Harlan drank because Janet had drunk it and because the drinking was the remembering and the remembering was the drinking and the two were inseparable, fused, the way the crossing and the man were fused.

He set the thermos on its shelf. The ring in the wood. The indentation made by years of thermoses. The mark that said: here, this is where the thermos goes, this is where the coffee lives, this is the place that the daily act has worn into the surface, the way the daily act wears into every surface it touches — the wheel, the dock lines, the cleats, the ramp, the deck plates, the hands, the body, the life.

He closed the wheelhouse. He descended. He walked the dock. He crossed to the water taxi. Eddie Crane took him across the dark channel to Dunmore, eight minutes, the skiff bouncing on the small chop, the cold air on his face, the island ahead, the lights, the home.

Owen's words rode with him. The words about the father and the ferry and the knowing. The words about the cost. The words that said: I know what I am doing and I am doing it anyway, and the anyway is not callousness but is the human condition, the condition of people who must act in a world where every action has consequences and the consequences cannot all be good, cannot all be just, cannot all preserve what deserves to be preserved, because the world is not large enough to hold every good thing simultaneously, and the bridge and the ferry cannot both exist, and the bridge has been chosen, and the choosing is the cost.

The cost. Owen had used the word and the word was right. The cost was not money, was not the bridge's construction budget, was not the millions that the state had allocated. The cost was the crossing. The cost was the twenty-two minutes. The cost was the channel known by feel. The cost was the captain at the wheel and the deckhand on the ropes and the horn at 6:15 and the coffee in the thermos and the salt on the windows and the tide in the deck plates and the cello through the floor and the schoolchildren in the back row and the lobstermen in the morning dark and the bread arriving at Mere's store at 8:15 and the island appearing from the fog gradually and then completely.

The cost was everything. The cost was the crossing. And the crossing was the cost.

Harlan walked up Island Road from the harbor. The night was cold. The stars were hard. The island was quiet. The bridge's construction lights glowed to the north, visible from everywhere on the island, the lights the bridge's insomnia, the bridge's refusal to be dark, to be invisible, to let the island forget, even at night, even in the cold, even in the quiet, that the bridge was coming, was being built, was the future, and the future was lit, and the lit future cast its glow on the island's present, and the present was the crossing, and the crossing was ending, and the ending was the cost.

He walked. The cold was in his hands. The hands that had held the wheel all day, that had corrected for wind and current and tide, that had docked the Constance eight times, that had gripped and held and turned and released, the hands were cold and they were his and they were the crossing's, and the crossing was giving them back, was in the process of giving them back, and the giving-back was not yet complete but was under way, the way the ebb is under way before the harbor notices, the water leaving before the leaving is visible, the departure beginning before the departure is announced.