The Last Night Crossing

Salt and Crossing

Chapter 26: The Last Night Crossing

The last 9:30 crossed on the twenty-eighth of February, a Friday, and the night was clear and cold — eleven degrees, the air still, the stars hard and bright in the way that stars are hard and bright when the cold has scoured the atmosphere of the moisture and the particulate that ordinarily diffuse the starlight, the scoured atmosphere transparent, the transparency the cold's gift, the gift that costs you your warmth.

Three cars on the deck. A red pickup that belonged to Frank Webber, who was returning from a meeting in Port Clement about the summer season — the bridge would be open by summer, the bridge would bring visitors, the B&B would be full, and Frank had been meeting with the tourism board about marketing Dunmore as a destination, a drive-to destination, a destination that no longer required the ferry, and the irony of Frank riding the ferry to a meeting about the post-ferry future was the kind of irony that the island did not comment on because the island was full of such ironies, the ironies of transition, the ironies of a thing ending while the thing that would replace it was being discussed.

A gray sedan driven by a woman Harlan did not know. A visitor, a stranger, a person whose business on the island Harlan did not know and did not ask about because the ferry did not ask, the ferry carried, the carrying was the ferry's function and the function was blind, was indiscriminate, was the public service's essential quality — the service serving everyone, the service not choosing, the service carrying the lobsterman and the tourist and the stranger with the same twenty-two minutes, the same channel, the same passage.

And a white van from Maine Island Electric, the utility contractor, on the island for the bridge's electrical connections — the bridge would carry power lines, the bridge would carry fiber-optic cable, the bridge would carry the island's infrastructure across the channel in its structure, the infrastructure that currently traveled on the ferry in the form of fuel deliveries and supply trucks now integrated into the bridge's design, the design incorporating the carrying that the ferry had done, the bridge not only spanning the channel but absorbing the ferry's functions, consuming them, the bridge a predator and the ferry the prey.

Tommy stood at the bow. The dock lines were in his hands for the second-to-last time. Tomorrow morning there would be a last time. Tomorrow morning, February twenty-ninth — the calendar had given the crossing a leap day, an extra day, a day that existed only because the mathematics of the earth's orbit required it, the extra day a gift of hours, twenty-four additional hours of crossing that the ordinary year would not have provided — tomorrow morning the last crossings would begin. But tonight was the last night crossing. Tonight was the last time the Constance would cross the channel in the dark. Tonight was the last 9:30.

Harlan stood in the wheelhouse. The instruments glowed — the radar's green sweep, the GPS's white digits, the compass's luminous card, the engine gauges' steady needles — the instruments the wheelhouse's own constellation, the lights that said: the systems are working, the vessel is alive, the crossing is under way. The instruments were the same instruments that had glowed on ten thousand night crossings before this one, the same green and white and amber, the same information displayed on the same screens, and the sameness was the constancy, the reliability, the instruments saying what they had always said: here is the channel, here is the position, here is the heading, here is the engine's condition, here is the truth of the crossing rendered in light on glass.

He did not need the instruments. Not for navigation. Not for this channel. He could have crossed in the dark without the radar, without the GPS, without the compass, could have held the course by feel, by the body's knowledge of the channel's shape, by the inner ear's calibration to the hull's motion, by the hands' memory of the wheel's corrections at each stage of the crossing — the initial correction for the current, the adjustment at the halfway point, the fine correction on the approach, each one a specific angle, a specific pressure, a specific holding that the hands knew without consulting the instruments, the hands having performed the holding ten thousand times.

But he used the instruments. He used them because the using was the protocol and the protocol was the professionalism and the professionalism was the standard he held himself to, the standard that said: you do not navigate by feel alone, you navigate by feel confirmed by instruments, the feel the primary and the instruments the secondary, the two in agreement, the agreement the safety, the safety the covenant.

The horn sounded. The one long blast. The sound went out over the dark harbor and the dark water and the dark channel and the sound was the same sound it had always been, the horn's frequency unchanged, the horn's voice unchanged, the horn saying what it had said at every departure for thirty-four years: we are leaving, we are crossing, we are under way. The sound traveled across the water and reached the shores — both shores, Port Clement behind and Dunmore ahead — and the shores received the sound the way the shores had always received it, with the indifference of geography, the granite and the spruce and the clapboard buildings absorbing the sound and returning nothing, the horn's note a statement rather than a question, the statement not requiring a response.

The Constance moved into the channel. The dark closed around her. This was the night crossing's particular quality — the enclosure, the dark's embrace, the vessel moving through a space that was defined not by vision but by instruments and knowledge, the space's dimensions known but not seen, the channel present but invisible, the invisibility the dark's condition, the condition that the night crossing accepted and worked within, the way a blind person accepts and works within the condition of blindness, the acceptance not resignation but adaptation, the senses recalibrated, the body's reliance shifted from the eyes to the other instruments — the ears hearing the engine's note, the feet feeling the deck's vibration, the hands holding the wheel's correction, the inner ear sensing the hull's roll and pitch.

The markers blinked. Green to starboard, red to port. The markers' lights the channel's edge made visible, the edge that separated the navigable from the non-navigable, the deep from the shallow, the safe from the dangerous. The markers had been there for decades, the lights maintained by the Coast Guard, the lights reliable in the way that government-maintained lights are reliable — mostly, usually, with the occasional failure that the captain must navigate around, the failure a test of the knowledge that the instruments confirmed but that the instruments could not replace.

All markers were lit tonight. The channel's edges fully defined, the lights blinking their slow binary — on, off, on, off — the binary the simplest language, the language of presence and absence, the language that said: here is the edge, here is the edge, here is the edge, the repetition the emphasis, the emphasis the safety, the safety the blinking's purpose.

Harlan held the wheel. The wheel was cold — the steel conducting the December air through the wheelhouse walls, the conduction the same physics that made the deck plates cold, the steel a medium for the cold the way it was a medium for the vibration — and the cold in the wheel was in his hands and the cold in his hands was the night crossing's sensation, the feeling that accompanied the seeing of the instruments and the hearing of the engine and the feeling of the deck, the cold the night crossing's signature, its way of saying: this is the hard crossing, this is the crossing that requires everything, and the everything is what you have given for thirty-four years and the everything is what you are giving now, tonight, on the last night crossing, the last time the cold will be in the wheel and the wheel will be in your hands and the hands will be the crossing's instruments, the instruments that no technology can replace.

Seven minutes. The halfway point approached. Harlan felt it coming — the change in the deck plates, the equilibrium, the moment when the currents balanced and the hull was still in its particular way, the stillness that he had described to Tommy, the stillness that the tide table could not capture, the stillness that existed only in the body's knowledge.

The stillness arrived. He was at the center. The center of the channel, the center of the crossing, the center of the distance between Port Clement and Dunmore, the center where he belonged to neither shore and both shores, the center that was the crossing's heart, the crossing's meaning, the place where the crossing was most fully itself, most purely a passage, most honestly between.

He stood in the center for forty-five seconds. The forty-five seconds that the stillness lasted, the equilibrium's duration, the time that the competing currents held each other in check before the dominant current — the ebb tonight, southwest, one and a half knots — reasserted itself and the hull's stillness gave way to the hull's motion, the motion the current's claim, the current saying: I will carry you now, I will move you, and the carrying was the channel's work and the channel's work was the crossing's context and the context was the water, always the water.

The dark was complete. The dark was December dark, February dark, the dark of the months when the light leaves early and returns late and the interval of darkness is long, fourteen hours, fifteen, the darkness the dominant condition, the light the exception, and the dark was the condition that the night crossing inhabited, the condition that the night crossing was, the crossing not in the dark but of the dark, the dark the crossing's medium the way the water was the crossing's surface.

Three cars on the deck below. Three sets of headlights off, three vehicles sitting in the dark on the dark deck, the vehicles' occupants inside — Frank in his truck, the woman in her sedan, the electrician in his van — the occupants riding the crossing the way all passengers ride the crossing, by entrusting themselves to the vessel and the captain and the channel, the trust the covenant, the covenant the crossing's contract, the contract that said: I will carry you safely for twenty-two minutes across 1.4 miles of water and the carrying is my responsibility and the trusting is yours.

The island appeared. Not appeared — the island did not appear in the dark the way it appeared in the fog, by materializing, by resolving from the haze. In the dark the island appeared by its lights, by the windows of the houses that faced the water, the windows' glow the island's signal, the signal that said: we are here, we are waiting, we are the destination, and the destination was visible as light against dark, the light the island's assertion of its existence, its presence, its refusal to be invisible, its insistence on being seen.

The harbor lights appeared next — the terminal's lights, the dock lights, the lights that marked the harbor entrance and the channel markers and the breakwater's end — and the lights' arrangement was the harbor's map, the map readable by anyone who knew the harbor, which was Harlan, which was thirty-four years of reading the lights' arrangement and knowing from the arrangement whether the approach was clear, whether the dock was occupied, whether the conditions at the harbor entrance were consistent with a safe approach.

The approach was clear. The dock was empty. The conditions were consistent.

Harlan began the approach. The approach at night was the approach that required the most of the knowledge and the least of the vision, the approach that was conducted by the instruments and the feel and the lights and the memory of ten thousand previous approaches, the memory providing the template that the current conditions filled, the template saying: at this point you begin the turn, at this point you reduce speed, at this point you reverse the port engine, at this point the fenders meet the dock, and the template was the same template that the daylight approach used but the template was more essential at night because the daylight approach had visual confirmation — the dock visible, the pilings visible, the distance measurable by eye — and the night approach had only the lights and the instruments and the feel, and the feel was the knowledge, and the knowledge was the thirty-four years.

He turned. He reduced speed. He reversed the port engine. The Constance swung. The fenders met the dock. The sound was the same sound — the hull's greeting, the fenders' compression — and Tommy was on the dock with the lines, the lines in his hands in the dark, the hands finding the cleats by touch, by memory, the cleats' positions known not by sight but by the body's map of the dock, the map drawn by six years of repetition, the map accurate to the inch, the hands going where the cleats were because the hands knew where the cleats were, and the knowing was the skill, and the skill was in the dark.

The ramp lowered. The hydraulics groaned. The cars drove off — Frank first, then the sedan, then the van, the headlights coming on as they drove up the ramp, the headlights cutting the dark, the dark cut briefly and healing immediately behind the cars, the dark's resilience total, the dark closing behind each vehicle the way water closes behind a hull, without memory, without mark.

The terminal was quiet. The cars were gone. The dock was empty. The Constance sat at the dock with her engine off, the silence the same silence that followed every shutdown, the silence that was the engine's absence, the absence louder than the presence.

Harlan stood in the wheelhouse. The instruments were off — the radar dark, the GPS dark, the compass's light extinguished — and the wheelhouse was dark, the wheelhouse's darkness joining the channel's darkness and the island's darkness and the night's darkness, the darkness total, unbroken, the darkness of a place without light, which was the darkness of a thing without function, which was the darkness that the wheelhouse would inhabit after March 1, the permanent darkness of a wheelhouse that no one stood in, that no one steered from, that no one watched the channel from.

He stood in the permanent darkness's preview, the preview that tonight provided, the preview that the last night crossing gave to the man who had made the last night crossing — the preview of what the ending would look like, what the ending would feel like, what the ending would be.

The ending would be dark. The ending would be silent. The ending would be the absence of the instruments' glow and the engine's hum and the horn's note and the wheel's cold steel in the hands. The ending would be the wheelhouse empty, the car deck empty, the dock lines coiled, the ramp raised, the Constance still, the stillness not the equilibrium of the channel's center but the stillness of a vessel that has stopped, that has ceased, that has crossed for the last time and will not cross again.

He stood in the dark wheelhouse and he did not move. He did not descend the stairs. He did not walk the dock. He did not take the water taxi. He stood, and the standing was the staying, the refusal to leave, the holding-on that was not denial but was love, the love that does not want to leave the place where the love was lived, the love that stands in the dark and holds the wheel even though the engine is off and the channel is not being crossed and the crossing is over, the love that holds the wheel because the holding is the act, the holding is the crossing, the holding is the thing itself, and the letting go is the ending, and the ending is coming, and the ending will come tomorrow, tomorrow morning, the last day, the last crossing.

But not yet. Not yet. Tonight the holding continued. Tonight the hands held the wheel in the dark, the cold steel in the cracked palms, the holding the love's last act of the day, the day's last act of the crossing, the crossing's last night.

He held the wheel for ten minutes. He held it without moving, without turning, without correcting, the holding static, the holding not steering but being, not navigating but occupying, the hands in contact with the wheel the way a person's hands are in contact with a face they love, the contact not functional but devotional, the touch not doing anything but being everything.

Then he let go. He let go of the wheel. The letting go was physical — the fingers opening, the palms lifting, the hands separating from the steel — and the letting go was not physical at all, was not about the hands but about the self, the self that had been the crossing and the crossing that had been the self, and the separation was the beginning of the ending, the first moment of the letting go that would continue tomorrow and the day after and the week after and the year after, the letting go that was not a single act but a process, a slow uncoupling, a gradual releasing, the way a tide releases the shore, not all at once but gradually, the water leaving the rocks and the mud and the sand, the water pulling back, the pulling back the letting go.

He descended the stairs. He walked the car deck. He walked the dock. The water taxi was waiting — Eddie Crane at the helm, the skiff's engine idling, the idle the small sound of the small vessel's readiness. Tommy was already aboard, seated in the bow, his hands in his pockets, his face turned toward the island.

Harlan boarded the water taxi. Eddie pushed off. The skiff crossed the dark channel — eight minutes, the skiff's crossing, faster than the ferry's, the speed the skiff's advantage and the speed the skiff's diminishment, the eight minutes not the twenty-two minutes, the eight minutes not the crossing but the transit, the transit not the same as the crossing the way a flight is not the same as a journey, the speed eliminating the experience that the slowness provided.

The skiff reached Dunmore. Harlan stepped onto the dock. Tommy stepped onto the dock. They walked up Island Road together, the uncle and the nephew, the captain and the deckhand, two men walking in the dark on an island in February, the cold on their faces, the stars above them, the road beneath their boots, the road the same road, the dark the same dark, the island the same island.

They parted at the store. Tommy went upstairs. Harlan continued walking — not to the water taxi dock, not to Port Clement tonight. Tonight Harlan walked to Mere's house, the house on Harbor Road. He had called Mere earlier, had told her he would sleep in the guest room, had told her without explaining because the explaining would have been the saying and the saying would have been the admitting and the admitting was that tomorrow was the last day and the last day should begin on the island, should begin at home, should begin at the place that the crossing was for.

The crossing was for the island. The crossing existed because the island existed. The crossing's purpose was the island's accessibility. And the captain who crossed should begin his last day on the island, at the island, of the island, so that the last crossing would begin where the crossing's purpose began — on the shore that needed to be reached.

He walked to Mere's house. Mere opened the door. Carl was asleep. The house was warm. The guest room was ready — Mere had made the bed, the bed that Tommy had slept in as a boy, the bed that Harlan had slept in as a boy, the bed in the room that was the family's spare room, the room that held the family's guests and the family's overflow and the family's returning members, the room that was always ready because Mere kept it ready because Mere was the family's keeper, the family's organizer, the family's Constance.

He lay in the bed. He did not sleep. He lay in the dark and listened to the house and the island and the harbor and the water, the water's sound coming through the walls, the soft lapping at the shore, the tide doing what the tide did, rising, falling, the water moving, the water the same water, the water that did not know about tomorrow, the water that knew only the tide and the current and the channel, the water that would be the same water tomorrow as it was tonight, the same water that the Constance would cross for the last time, the same water that the bridge would stand above, the same water, the same water, the same.

He lay in the dark and waited for the morning. The morning was coming. The morning was the last morning. The morning would come the way all mornings came, gradually, then completely, the dark giving way to the light the way the fog gave way to the island, and the morning would be the last morning and the last morning would hold the last crossing and the last crossing would be twenty-two minutes long and 1.4 miles wide and the last crossing would be the crossing, the same crossing, the same act, the same 22 minutes, the same channel, the same Constance, the same captain.

The same.

He waited. The morning came.