Carl's Traps

Salt and Crossing

Chapter 18: Carl's Traps

Carl Goss hauled traps the way he had hauled traps for thirty-one years, which was early and alone, the boat leaving the harbor before dawn, the engine's sound the first human sound of the morning on the water, the sound preceding the light the way cause precedes effect, the sound announcing that the day's work had begun before the day itself had fully arrived.

His boat was the Meredith Anne, a thirty-six-foot Duffy, fiberglass hull, built in 2003 by H.E. Duffy in Brooklin, a builder who no longer built because the builder had died and his sons had not taken up the trade and the trade had moved to other yards, and the Meredith Anne was one of the last Duffys built, one of the last boats to carry the Duffy name on her transom, and the name was there, in gold leaf on blue paint — MEREDITH ANNE, DUNMORE ISLAND — and the name was Mere's name because that was the convention, the lobsterman's convention, the naming of the boat for the wife or the daughter or the mother, the name a tether between the man on the water and the woman on the shore, the tether not physical but nominal, the name doing the work of connection that the water's separation undid.

He had named her in 2003, twenty-three years ago, when Mere was thirty-five and Tommy was five and Carl was thirty-four and the world was a world in which a lobsterman bought a new boat and named it for his wife and set his traps in the channel and hauled them every day and sold his catch at the co-op and went home and ate dinner and went to bed and did it again, and the doing-again was the life, the repetition the structure, and the structure was sound, was reliable, was the kind of structure that a man could build a life on because the structure did not change, because the lobsters were in the water and the traps were on the bottom and the hauling was the work and the work was the life.

Carl was fifty-seven. His hands were the hands of a lobsterman, which is to say they were not hands in the ordinary sense but were tools, instruments, devices that had been shaped by their use the way a tool is shaped by its use, the calluses and the scars and the missing tip of the left index finger — lost in 1998 to a bait needle, the needle driven through the fingertip by a wave that hit the boat at the wrong moment, the moment when Carl's hand was in the wrong place, which was the place where the bait needle was, and the needle went through the fingertip and the fingertip never recovered its full length, the tip shortened by a quarter inch, the shortening a permanent record of a single moment's intersection between the hand and the needle and the wave — these features were the hands' biography, the story of thirty-one years told in skin and scar tissue and the particular roughness that comes from handling rope and wire and bait and the hard edges of lobster traps hauled from cold water in all weather.

His traps were in the channel. This was the problem. This had been the problem since the bridge construction began, since the construction barges moved into the channel and the exclusion zones were established and the channel's eastern side — where Carl had set his traps for twenty years, along the edge of Halsey Ledge, in the productive ground between twelve feet of water and forty feet of water where the lobsters moved with the seasons, inshore in summer and offshore in winter, following the temperature gradient that their biology required — the eastern side was closed, was off-limits, was inside the exclusion zone, and the closing had forced Carl to relocate.

Thirty traps. He had moved thirty traps from the channel's eastern side to the western side, from the ground he knew to ground he did not know as well, and the not-knowing was the cost, because lobstering is a knowledge business, a business in which the fisherman's understanding of the bottom — its composition, its contour, its relationship to the current and the tide and the temperature and the season — determines the catch, and the catch determines the income, and the income determines the life, and the life is the chain, and the chain's weakest link is the knowledge, and the knowledge had been disrupted by the bridge's exclusion zone.

He did not complain. Lobstermen do not complain about the sea. This is a generalization and like all generalizations it is both true and insufficient, true in the sense that the culture of lobstering does not encourage complaint, does not reward the voicing of grievance, does not regard the sea's difficulties as subjects for discussion but regards them as conditions for endurance, and insufficient in the sense that lobstermen are human beings and human beings complain, do voice their grievances, do discuss their difficulties, but the complaining is done differently, is done privately, is done at home in kitchens and at the store in asides and at the harbor in the oblique language that fishermen use to describe misfortune, the language that says "bit of a day" when the day was terrible and "she's fishing some" when the boat is barely covering expenses and "moved some gear" when the moving was forced and costly and felt, in the body and in the account.

Carl moved some gear.

He moved it in September, before the exclusion zone was formally established, moving preemptively because the survey boats were already working the eastern side and the survey work — the sonar, the bottom-profiling, the core sampling — was disturbing the bottom, was sending vibrations through the substrate that the lobsters felt and responded to by leaving, by moving to quieter ground, and the leaving was the first displacement, the lobsters' displacement, and the lobsters' displacement caused Carl's displacement, and Carl's displacement was the bridge's first tax on the lobster fishery, the first deduction from the account that the channel's eastern side had been paying into for twenty years.

The western side was different ground. The bottom was muddier, deeper, the contour less defined, the relationship between depth and current less predictable, and the less-predictable meant fewer lobsters, meant the traps coming up lighter, meant the daily haul declining from the numbers that the eastern side had provided, and the decline was measurable — Carl kept records, handwritten, in a spiral notebook that he stored in the wheelhouse of the Meredith Anne, the notebook water-stained and salt-crusted and filled with numbers, the numbers the haul's diary, the catch recorded by date and by trap and by location, and the recording was the fisherman's discipline, the record-keeping that allowed the fisherman to know, with precision, how the fishing was, how the ground was producing, whether the move had been good or bad.

The move had been bad. Not catastrophic — the western side was not barren, was not empty, was not unfishable — but bad in the sense of reduced, diminished, less, the catch down eleven percent from the previous year's corresponding period, and the eleven percent was real, was felt in the income, was felt in the account at the co-op where Carl sold his catch and where the accounting was precise, the lobsters weighed and graded and paid for by the pound, the payment deposited in Carl's account, the account a number that Carl checked every Thursday, the checking a ritual as regular as the hauling, as essential as the hauling, the number the haul's translation into the language of money, and the language of money was the language that the rest of the world spoke, the language in which the decline was expressed not as fewer lobsters in the trap but as fewer dollars in the account.

Mere knew the numbers. Mere knew everything — this was established, this was the store's function, the counter's gift — and Mere knew Carl's numbers because Carl came home every evening and sat at the kitchen table and did not talk about the numbers but the not-talking was its own telling, the silence speaking the decline the way the silence between musical notes speaks the rhythm, and Mere heard the silence and knew its meaning and did not ask because the asking would require the answering and the answering would require the saying and the saying would make the decline real in a way that the silence did not, and the not-real was a kindness, was the kindness that long marriages provide, the kindness of knowing without requiring the known to be spoken.

Carl hauled on a Tuesday in late November. The morning was cold — twenty-eight degrees, the temperature dropping into winter's territory, the cold that changed the work from hard to harder, the cold that made the rope stiffer and the bait harder and the hands slower, the cold that added a surcharge to every task, the surcharge of numbness, of stiffness, of the body's reduced capacity in low temperatures, and the surcharge was paid in time, each trap taking longer to haul and longer to bait and longer to set, the time the cold's tax, the cold's tithe, the cold extracting its percentage from every operation.

He hauled thirty traps. The thirty that had been moved. He hauled them one at a time, the hydraulic hauler on the Meredith Anne's starboard gunwale pulling the warp — the vertical line connecting the trap on the bottom to the buoy on the surface — the hauler's drum turning, the rope winding, the trap rising from the bottom through forty feet of water, the rising a journey of sixty seconds, the sixty seconds a suspension, a waiting, the fisherman standing at the hauler with his hands ready to receive the trap, the hands waiting to know what the trap contains.

The trap broke the surface. It came up streaming water, the wire mesh draining, the contents visible through the mesh — lobsters if there were lobsters, crabs if there were crabs, nothing if there was nothing, and the nothing was the possibility, the daily possibility, the trap coming up empty the way a sentence comes up empty when the words do not arrive, the emptiness not failure exactly but absence, the absence of the thing you were looking for, the thing the trap was set to catch.

This trap had two. Two lobsters. Both legal — the carapace measuring above the minimum, 3.25 inches, the measurement taken with the brass gauge that every lobsterman carries, the gauge a tool so familiar that its use was automatic, the measuring a reflex rather than a deliberation, the hand bringing the gauge to the lobster and the gauge saying legal or short the way a thermometer says hot or cold, by comparison, by the relationship between the thing measured and the standard, and the standard was the law, was the state's regulation, was the line between what could be kept and what must be returned, and the line was observed, was respected, was the fishery's discipline, the self-regulation that sustained the resource, and the sustaining was the culture, was the agreement that the lobstermen had made with the sea, the agreement that said: we will take what is legal and return what is not and the returning is the future, the returning is the next season, the returning is the perpetuation.

Carl banded the two lobsters — the rubber bands on the claws, the bands preventing the lobsters from damaging each other in the hold, the banding a minor cruelty in service of a larger commerce — and dropped them into the tank and rebaited the trap and set it, the trap going over the side, the warp paying out, the buoy following, the buoy hitting the water with a small splash, the splash the trap's departure, and the departure was routine, was one of thirty, was one of the thirty repetitions that constituted the morning's work.

Thirty traps hauled. Forty-one lobsters. The count was lower than the eastern side would have produced — the eastern side, in November, would have given him fifty-five or sixty, the difference between forty-one and fifty-five the eleven percent, the decline, the cost — and Carl recorded the number in his notebook and stowed the notebook in the wheelhouse and pointed the Meredith Anne toward the harbor.

He passed the construction site. The barges were working, the crane lifting, the forms rising, the towers growing, and Carl passed them the way he passed any obstacle on the water, with attention and with clearance and without commentary, because the commentary would be wasted, would be words spoken to a barge that did not hear and a crane that did not care and a bridge that was being built regardless of what the lobsterman in the passing boat thought about the building.

But a bridge is not the sea.

This was the thing. This was Carl's thing, the thing that he carried and did not speak and that Mere heard in his silence and that Harlan saw in his face when Carl occasionally rode the ferry, the thing that was not complaint but was distinction, the distinction between the sea's authority and the bridge's authority, between the natural force and the human decision, between the thing that the lobsterman accepted because it was the world and the thing that the lobsterman endured because it was imposed.

The sea imposed its conditions — the tides, the storms, the cold, the fog, the scarcity of lobsters in some seasons and the abundance in others — and the imposition was accepted because the sea was the sea, was the given, was the condition of the work, and a lobsterman who complained about the sea's conditions was a lobsterman who did not understand the job, who had entered the wrong profession, who should have stayed on the mainland and worked in a building where the conditions were controlled and the temperature was set and the weather was visible through windows but not felt on the skin.

But the bridge was not the sea. The bridge was a decision. The bridge was made by people — by legislators in Augusta, by engineers in offices, by a project manager in a motel on Route 1 — and the decision could have been different, could have been no bridge, could have been a better ferry, could have been a tunnel, could have been nothing, could have been the leaving-alone that the channel had enjoyed for ten thousand years, and the could-have-been-different was the thing, was the distinction, was the line between the sea's authority, which was absolute and unchallengeable, and the bridge's authority, which was contingent and chosen and, therefore, resistible.

But Carl did not resist. Carl adapted. Lobstermen adapt. This is what they do. This is the profession's essential skill — not the hauling, not the baiting, not the navigation, but the adaptation, the adjustment to changed conditions, the flexibility that the sea demands and that the lobsterman provides, the flexibility that is not weakness but strength, not submission but intelligence, the intelligence of a person who understands that the conditions will change and that the changing cannot be prevented and that the response to the changing must be practical rather than emotional, must be a moving of traps rather than a filing of grievances.

Carl adapted. He moved his traps. He fished the western side. He accepted the eleven percent decline. He adapted the way he had adapted to every previous change — to the new minimum size in 2007, to the bait regulations in 2012, to the whale-safe gear requirements in 2018, each regulation a constraint on his practice, each constraint accepted and absorbed and integrated into the routine, the routine flexible enough to accommodate the constraints and rigid enough to maintain the discipline, and the flexibility and the rigidity were not contradictions but were the lobsterman's two hands, the left hand adapting and the right hand persisting, and the two hands worked together the way Carl's two hands worked together on the boat, the left on the hauler and the right on the trap, each one doing its part, each one essential.

But the adaptation cost him. The cost was not only the eleven percent — the eleven percent was the measurable cost, the number in the notebook, the figure in the co-op account — the cost was also the knowledge, the twenty years of knowledge about the eastern side that was now useless, now irrelevant, now the knowledge of a place he could not fish, the way a language you cannot speak is a language you know, technically, but cannot use, and the inability to use it is a form of loss, a diminishment, the knowledge still in the body but disconnected from the practice, the practice having moved to the western side where different knowledge was needed, knowledge that Carl was acquiring but that twenty years of eastern-side experience could not accelerate, because knowledge of the bottom is local, is specific, is the knowledge of this particular ground and not that particular ground, and the this and the that are not interchangeable.

He came into the harbor. He tied the Meredith Anne to the mooring — mooring twenty-three now, not seventeen, seventeen having been reassigned to Owen's survey boat, the reassignment another displacement, another moving, another adaptation — and he loaded the catch into the skiff and rowed the skiff to the co-op float and unloaded the catch and weighed it and recorded it and received the receipt and folded the receipt and put it in the chest pocket of his oil jacket, the pocket where all the receipts went, the pocket's accumulation of paper the season's accumulation of income, the papers growing thicker through the months, September's thin stack becoming October's thicker stack becoming November's thicker still, the thickness the season's progress measured in paper, in receipts, in the documentation of the work.

He walked up the hill to the house. The house was on Harbor Road, a quarter mile from the harbor, a Cape, white, built in 1952 by a man named Lowell whose daughter had sold it to Carl and Mere in 1996, the year before Tommy was born, the year that Carl and Mere had decided to stay on the island permanently, the deciding a thing that was not decided in a single moment but was accumulated over years, the accumulation of mornings on the water and evenings at the store and the gradual solidifying of the temporary into the permanent, the way ice solidifies from water — not all at once but from the edges in, the edges hardening first and the center last, and the center was the decision and the edges were the habits and the habits hardened first and the decision followed.

Mere was at the store. Mere was always at the store. The store was Mere's boat, was Mere's channel, was the thing that Mere did the way Carl hauled and Harlan crossed, and the doing was the identity and the identity was the life and the three of them — Carl and Mere and Harlan — were three versions of the same story, the story of a person whose work is their definition, whose daily act is their meaning, and the meaning was specific, was local, was attached to a particular place and a particular practice, and the attachment was the strength and the attachment was the vulnerability, because when the place changes or the practice ends the meaning must be rebuilt, must be found again, must be recovered from the rubble of the previous meaning.

Carl sat at the kitchen table. He did not turn on the lights. The kitchen was dim, the November afternoon light coming through the windows, the light gray, the gray of the sky and the water and the season, and Carl sat in the gray light and looked at his hands on the table, the hands with their calluses and their scars and their shortened finger, the hands that had hauled thirty traps that morning and that would haul thirty traps tomorrow and that would continue to haul thirty traps every day until the season closed or the weather closed or the body closed, the closing the eventual endpoint, the terminus that every lobsterman approaches and that every lobsterman defers, the deferral the stubbornness, the persistence, the refusal to stop that is the lobsterman's defining trait, the trait that makes the profession possible, because the profession is not possible for people who stop, who give up, who let the conditions defeat them, the profession is only possible for people who adapt and persist and return to the water every morning regardless of the catch and the weather and the cold and the bridge and the displacement and the eleven percent decline.

Carl adapted. Carl persisted. Carl would return to the water tomorrow.

But the adaptation had a taste. The taste was not bitterness — bitterness was too simple, too dramatic, too much the word that a person who did not fish would use — the taste was something else, something more specific, the taste of a thing that is wrong but cannot be corrected, a thing that is unjust but cannot be redressed, the taste of a lobsterman who has been moved from his ground by a decision made by people who do not fish, who do not know the bottom, who do not know the difference between the eastern side and the western side, who do not know that the difference is eleven percent and that the eleven percent is traps and the traps are lobsters and the lobsters are income and the income is the life and the life is the thing that the decision affects, the life lived on the water, the life organized around the hauling, the life that asks only to be left alone to do its work in its place, and the place has been changed, and the changing was not the sea's doing but the bridge's doing, and the bridge is not the sea.

The bridge is not the sea. The bridge is a decision. The decision could have been different. The different-could-have-been is the taste.

Carl sat at the table. The light faded. Mere came home. She came through the door and set her bag on the counter and looked at Carl sitting in the dark and did not turn on the lights because the dark was what Carl needed, the dark was Carl's silence, the dark was the space in which Carl carried the thing he did not speak, and Mere knew the thing and knew the silence and knew the dark and sat down across from him and put her hands on the table near his hands, not touching, near, the nearness a statement, a presence, the physical fact of another person's hands near your hands in the dark.

They sat. They did not speak. Outside, the harbor was dark, the boats on their moorings, the water lapping at the shore, the sound of the water the sound that had accompanied their entire life together, the sound of the sea that was not the bridge, that was the given, that was the condition they had chosen when they chose the island, the sound that said: I am here, I am the sea, I am not a decision, I am the world, and the world is what it is, and what it is includes the bridge now, includes the exclusion zone, includes the displacement, includes the eleven percent, includes the taste in the lobsterman's mouth, and the including is not justice and is not injustice but is the fact, the simple irreducible fact of a channel that is being changed by a decision that was not the sea's.

Mere put her hand on Carl's hand. The touch was brief, was light, was the weight of a hand on a hand, the weight of thirty-one years of marriage in a single gesture.

Carl turned his hand over. Palm up. The calluses and the scars facing the ceiling, the ceiling they could not see in the dark. Mere's hand rested in his, her hand smaller, smoother — not smooth, not after thirty years of stocking shelves and sweeping floors, but smoother than his, the relative smoothness the difference between indoor work and outdoor work, between the store and the boat, between the land and the sea.

They sat in the dark holding hands and not speaking, and the not-speaking was the conversation, and the conversation was about the bridge and the traps and the eleven percent and the taste and the adaptation and the persistence and the fact that the sea is the sea and the bridge is not the sea, and the fact was the fact, and the fact sat between them on the table like a stone, heavy, cold, undeniable, and they held it between their hands, between the calluses and the smoothness, between the lobsterman and the storekeeper, between the two people who had chosen this island and this life and who had been chosen in return, the island choosing them the way the sea chooses the fisherman — not by invitation but by acceptance, by the willingness to let them stay, to let them work, to let them build a life on its shore, in its harbor, across its channel, and the building was the life, and the life was the hands, and the hands were touching in the dark, and the dark was the season, and the season was ending.