Tommy's Choice

Salt and Crossing

Chapter 25: Tommy's Choice

Tommy Goss was twenty-eight years old and possessed a set of skills that would be useless on March 1.

He could handle dock lines in any weather, in any sea state, in any combination of wind and current and tide, the handling not a task he performed but a language he spoke, the language of rope and cleat and bollard, the language whose grammar was tension and whose syntax was sequence — stern before bow on departure, bow before stern on arrival, the sequence fixed, the sequence the protocol, the protocol the thing that stood between order and chaos on a dock in a December gale.

He could operate the ramp. The ramp was hydraulic, actuated by a pair of cylinders that raised and lowered the steel platform, and the operation was controlled by a switch on the car deck console, a simple up-down switch, but the simplicity of the control concealed the complexity of the operation, because the ramp's lowering was not merely a mechanical act but was a judgment, a reading of the dock's height and the vessel's height and the tide's state and the difference between them, the difference that determined the ramp's angle, and the angle determined the safety of the cars driving on and off, and the safety was Tommy's responsibility, and the responsibility was the skill.

He could read the weather. Not the way the Weather Service read it — not by satellite and radar and numerical models — but the way a deckhand read it, by the sky and the wind and the barometric pressure felt in the body, the body a barometer of its own, the sinuses and the joints and the inner ear responding to pressure changes that the instruments confirmed but that the body had already noted, the noting a physical awareness that preceded the intellectual, the body knowing it would rain before the mind consulted the forecast.

He could maintain a vessel. He could grease a fitting, change a filter, tighten a packing gland, replace a zincode, bleed an air lock from a fuel system, troubleshoot a hydraulic leak, paint a deck, splice a line, tie twelve different knots, and perform the hundred small acts of preservation that kept a working vessel working, the acts that were not glamorous and not visible and not celebrated but that were essential, were the difference between a vessel that ran and a vessel that didn't, between a crossing that happened and a crossing that was canceled.

He could do all of these things. He had learned them over six years, learned them from Harlan and from the Constance herself, learned them by doing, by the repetition that was not repetition but education, the hands learning what the mind could not teach them, and the learning had been slow and thorough and deep, the kind of learning that produces not competence but fluency, the difference between a person who can perform a task and a person for whom the task is an extension of the self.

On March 1, the fluency would have no language to speak. The dock lines would be coiled for the last time. The ramp would be raised for the last time. The weather would be read for no purpose. The vessel would be maintained by no one, or by someone at the Rockland yard where the Constance would be taken for decommissioning, and the someone at the Rockland yard would maintain her differently, would maintain her the way a hospice maintains a patient, with care but without expectation, the maintenance not preservation but preparation, preparation for the sale or the scrapping, and the preparation was not Tommy's work, was not the work of a deckhand who loved the vessel but the work of a yardworker who serviced the vessel, and the difference between love and service was the difference between Tommy's maintenance and the yard's maintenance.

He sat on the car deck after the last crossing on a night in mid-December, the 9:30 docked at Dunmore, the engines shut down, the wheelhouse dark, Harlan gone — Harlan had descended and walked the dock and taken the water taxi, the routine the same routine, the departure the same departure — and Tommy sat on the deck where he had worked for six years, the deck he had swept and sanded and painted, the deck he knew by its feel under his boots, the feel of the non-skid coating and the seams between the plates and the slight crown at the center that drained the water toward the scuppers, and the knowing was in his feet and the knowing was ending.

The deck was cold. The steel held the December air's temperature, the steel a conductor of cold the way it was a conductor of vibration, and the cold came through Tommy's work pants and into his thighs and the cold was the season and the season was the ending and the ending was the thing he sat with, the thing he had been sitting with since September, since the bridge construction began, since the first piling went into the channel and the first vibration traveled through the water and reached the Constance's hull and said: I am coming, I am the bridge, I am the end of the crossing.

What am I supposed to do?

He had asked the question in September, on the 7:00 crossing, through the intercom, his voice traveling from the car deck to the wheelhouse, the question traveling from nephew to uncle, from deckhand to captain, from the young man to the older man, and the older man had not answered because the older man did not have an answer, and the not-having was honest, was the honest condition of a man who had never faced the question himself, who had inherited his life's work from his father and had performed it without interruption for thirty-four years and who had no experience with the ending of a life's work, no precedent, no template.

Tommy had options. He listed them the way a person lists the contents of a room they are leaving — the inventory of what remains, the catalog of what is available.

He could work construction. The bridge construction employed forty men. The construction would continue through March, the bridge's opening date, and after the opening there would be finishing work — paving, painting, guardrail installation, landscaping — and the finishing work would employ a smaller crew for another six months, and the employment was available, was a job, was income, and the income was the practical need, the need that did not care about vocation or identity or the fluency of hands that had learned dock lines and ramp operations but that cared only about hours and wages and the deposit in the account.

He could lobster with Carl. Carl had offered, in his way, which was not an offer spoken aloud but an offer implied, the implication residing in a conversation at the dinner table in which Carl had mentioned that his sternman was thinking of leaving — the sternman, a man named Derek, was moving to the mainland, the mainland pulling another young man from the island, another subtraction — and the mentioning was the offer and the offer was genuine and the genuineness was Carl's, the quiet genuineness of a man who did not make speeches but who made spaces, who opened a space in his crew for his wife's nephew and who left the space open and let the nephew decide whether to fill it.

He could leave the island. He could move to the mainland. He could go to Rockland or Camden or Portland or beyond. He could find work on the mainland — work on the water, possibly, the skills transferable to other vessels, other docks, other crossings, the Maine coast abundant with ferry services and tour boats and fishing vessels, the waterfront economy large enough to absorb one more deckhand, one more pair of hands that knew ropes and ramps and engines.

He could leave. The leaving was the option that the mainland offered to every islander whose livelihood the island could no longer support, the option that was always available, always open, the mainland's standing invitation, the invitation that said: come, there is room, there is work, there is life beyond the island, and the beyond was real, was not an abstraction but a geography, the geography of Route 1 and the towns along it and the cities beyond them, the geography of possibility.

But the leaving was the thing he did not want. The leaving was the subtraction. The leaving was Tommy becoming another of the young people who left the island and did not return, another name on the list of departures, another subtraction from the 380 that was already declining, and the declining was the island's wound, the slow hemorrhage of its young, and Tommy did not want to be the next drop of blood.

He sat on the car deck in the cold and he looked at the dock and the water and the island.

The island was dark. The houses lit, the windows bright against the December dark, the constellation of habitation that said: here, we are here, still here. Mere's store dark, closed for the night, the shelves stocked, the floor swept. The harbor dark, the boats on their moorings, Carl's Meredith Anne among them, the boat named for his mother, the name a connection, a line from the boat to the woman to the store to the island, the line unbroken, the line the family's thread.

He was twenty-eight. He had been a deckhand for six years. Before the deckhand years he had been a boy on the island, a student at the island school, a student at the mainland high school, riding the ferry every morning, the crossing measuring his growing the way it measured every island child's growing. He had not gone to college. He had not wanted to go. He had wanted to be the deckhand and then the captain, the way Harlan had been the deckhand and then the captain, the way James had been the deckhand and then the captain, the succession the family's tradition, the tradition the crossing's perpetuation, and the perpetuation was ending.

What am I supposed to do?

The question was not one question but many. It was the question of work — what work would he do, what labor would fill his days, what task would his hands perform when the dock lines were coiled for the last time. It was the question of identity — who would he be when he was no longer Tommy-the-deckhand, Tommy who works the Constance, Tommy whose hands know the ropes. It was the question of place — where would he be, on the island or off, here or elsewhere, the geography of his future not yet determined. And it was the question beneath the questions, the question that all the other questions pointed toward, the question that was not about work or identity or place but was about purpose, about the reason for doing what you do, the reason that gets you out of bed at 5:00 in the morning and carries you to the terminal and puts your hands on the lines and your feet on the deck and your body in the weather and your life in the channel.

The purpose had been the crossing. The purpose was ending.

He thought about Carl's offer. The lobstering. The predawn mornings, the cold water, the hauling, the baiting, the setting, the daily repetition that was the same daily repetition as the ferry's but conducted on a different vessel in a different relationship to the water — the lobster boat working the water rather than crossing it, the boat staying in the water rather than passing through it, the boat's relationship to the channel possessive rather than transitive, the boat claiming territory while the ferry claimed passage.

He could lobster. His hands could learn the traps the way they had learned the ropes. The learning would take years — Carl had thirty-one years of learning and the learning was still incomplete, would always be incomplete, because the learning of the water was infinite and the learner was finite — but the learning would begin, and the beginning was the thing, the first haul the way the first crossing had been the first crossing, the start that did not know it was the start, the start that was just a day, just a morning, just a hand on a line.

But lobstering was not the crossing. Lobstering was work on the water but it was not the crossing's work, was not the passage between shores, was not the carrying of passengers, was not the scheduled, reliable, repetitive act that the crossing was, the act that said: I will be here at 6:15, I will cross at 6:15, the schedule the promise and the promise the identity and the identity the thing that Tommy would lose, because no other work on the water had the crossing's quality of service, of commitment, of the daily kept promise.

He thought about leaving. Portland. A ferry job. The Casco Bay Lines ran ferries from Portland to the bay islands — Peaks, Long, Great Diamond — and the ferries needed deckhands and the deckhands needed the skills that Tommy had, the same skills, the same ropes, the same ramps, the same choreography of docking, and the skills were transferable, were portable, were the currency that Tommy could spend in Portland the way he spent them on the Constance, the skills' value not diminished by the change of vessel but preserved, maintained, the skills' worth the same because the skills were the same.

But Portland was not Dunmore. Portland was a city. The ferries ran from a city terminal to city islands. The crossing was different — different channel, different water, different passengers, different purpose — and the different was not wrong but was not the same, and the sameness was the thing, the sameness of the Constance and the channel and the 1.4 miles and the 22 minutes and the island and the uncle in the wheelhouse and the dock lines in the hands that knew these dock lines, not other dock lines, these, the lines whose weight and texture and behavior were recorded in Tommy's palms, in his calluses, in the cracks.

He sat on the car deck. He did not decide.

He did not decide because the decision would not be decided. The decision would arrive. The decision would arrive the way the tide arrived — not by choosing but by coming, not by deliberation but by the force that moves things from where they are to where they will be, the force that is not will but circumstance, not intention but accumulation, and the accumulation was the days and the crossings and the conversations and the meals at his mother's table and the mornings on the water and the evenings on the dock and the cold and the salt and the cracked hands, and the accumulation would produce the decision the way the accumulation of water produces a tide, not by any single drop's choosing but by the collective's rising.

He would stay. He did not know this yet, sitting on the car deck in December, looking at the island's lights. He did not know that the decision was already forming, already rising, already accumulating in the same body that had accumulated the deckhand's skills, the body making the decision the way it made every other decision — by feel, by the body's knowledge, by the deep inarticulate certainty that the body produces when it knows where it belongs.

He belonged to the island. The island was his — not by ownership but by habitation, by the twenty-eight years of living on its roads and in its harbor and at its store and in its school and on its ferry, the twenty-eight years that had made him not a resident but a constituent, not a person who lived on the island but a part of the island, the way a tree is part of the land it grows on, the roots in the soil, the roots the belonging.

He would lobster with Carl. He did not know this yet either, but the knowing was forming, was the next tide, the flood that was building in the dark, the water rising unseen, the rise the decision. Carl's offer — the unspoken offer, the space in the crew — was the mooring, the place to tie, the place to belong on the water after the crossing ended, and the place was not the crossing, was not the ferry, was not the 22 minutes, but the place was the water, was the channel, was the same channel that Tommy had crossed for six years and that Carl had fished for thirty-one, and the channel was the connection, the shared water, the thing that Tommy and Carl both knew, each from a different vessel, each from a different relationship, but the same water.

The same water. The water that the ferry crossed and the lobster boat fished and the bridge would span. The same water beneath all three. The water that did not care which vessel floated on it or which structure stood above it. The water that was the constant, the permanent, the thing that would remain after the ferry ended and the bridge stood and the lobster traps were set in their new locations and Tommy's hands learned the new work.

He sat on the car deck. He put his hands on the steel. The steel was cold. The cold came through his gloves into his palms and he felt the deck, felt the Constance, felt the vessel that he had worked on and cared for and known, and the feeling was farewell, was the beginning of farewell, the first movement of the slow letting-go that would culminate on the last day, the last crossing, the last coiling of the lines.

But not yet. Not tonight. Tonight he sat on the deck and the deck was cold and the island was dark and the decision was forming and the forming was silent and the silence was the night and the night held everything — the island and the ferry and the deckhand and the decision — held it all in its dark hands, the way Mere held Carl's hand in the dark kitchen, the way the channel held the water in its granite bed, the way the Constance held the crossing in her hull.

He stood up. He walked across the car deck to the stern. He climbed down the crew ladder. He walked the dock. He walked up Island Road to the apartment above the store. He climbed the stairs. He entered the apartment. He turned on the light. The apartment was small — the apartment where his mother and his uncle had grown up, the apartment where his grandparents had lived, the apartment that was the family's island address, the address that predated Tommy and would outlast him, the apartment the family's anchor on the island.

He sat at the kitchen table. The table was wooden, round, the table that his grandparents had bought when they moved to the apartment in 1958, the table that his mother had eaten at as a girl and that Tommy ate at now, the table's surface marked by the rings of cups and the scratches of silverware and the dents of use, the marks the table's memory, the table remembering every meal, every conversation, every silence, every hand that had rested on its surface.

He put his hands on the table. The cracked hands, the deckhand's hands, the hands that would learn new work. The hands rested on the wood, on the marks, on the memory, and the resting was the decision's beginning, the body placing itself where it belonged, at the table, in the apartment, on the island, in the family, in the life that would continue after the crossing ended, the life that would be different but would be here, would be on the island, would be on the water, would be Tommy's.

The decision arrived. Not that night. Not in a single moment. Not as a revelation or a resolution. The decision arrived over days, over crossings, over the remaining crossings that December and January and February would provide, the decision accumulating like the tide, rising like the flood, the water filling the channel until the channel was full and the fullness was the decision and the decision was: stay.

Stay on the island. Lobster with Carl. Learn the traps. Learn the bottom. Learn the new work with the same hands that learned the old work. Stay.

The staying was not resignation. The staying was not the failure to leave. The staying was the choice — the choice that was not a choice but a recognition, the recognition that the island was his and he was the island's and the belonging was mutual and the mutuality was the truth and the truth did not require deliberation but only acknowledgment, the acknowledgment that the body had already made, the body already home, the body already belonging, the body's decision preceding the mind's and the mind following, the mind catching up to where the body already was.

Tommy stayed. The decision was made the way the tide was made — not by choosing but by arriving.