Chapter 23: The Catch

The trap was wedged in the rocks below the southeast ledge, where the tide ran hard on the ebb and the current pushed everything that was loose toward the point, the buoys and the rockweed and the driftwood and the occasional trap torn from its warp by a boat propeller or a heavy sea, the trap rolling along the bottom until the rocks caught it the way the rocks caught everything, the granite indiscriminate, accepting whatever the current delivered, holding what it was given with the patience of a substance that had been holding things for four hundred million years.

Eamon saw it from the gallery. He had been checking the ventilation louvers, the brass slats that he had adjusted for summer three weeks ago and that he checked weekly because the salt air corroded the adjustment screws and the corrosion shifted the angle and the angle determined the airflow and the airflow determined the condensation and the condensation determined the clarity of the lens, the chain of causation that linked the louver to the light, the small thing to the large thing, the maintenance of the part to the function of the whole.

From the gallery, a hundred and three feet above the water, the trap was a shape on the rocks, a rectangle of wire and oak that did not belong there, that was not part of the ledge's natural architecture, and the not-belonging was visible the way any anomaly was visible to a person whose job was to look, whose life was organized around the act of observation, the noting of what was there and what was not there and what was there that should not be.

He descended the tower. He went to the shed and got the boat hook, a ten-foot pole with a brass hook at the end, the same boat hook that had been in the shed since before Eamon's tenure, the hook tarnished but sound, the pole ash, the wood gray with age but still flexible, still strong, and he carried it down the granite slope to the southeast ledge, to the rocks where the water was, where the tide was ebbing, the water pulling back from the shore the way the light pulled back from the sky in the evening, revealing what had been hidden, the rocks emerging dark and wet and barnacled, the seaweed draped over them in sheets.

The trap was a standard Maine lobster trap. Wire mesh over a wooden frame, oak laths, the construction he had seen a thousand times on Colleen's boat, on every lobster boat in Penobscot Bay. The heads were intact, the funnels that guided the lobsters in and prevented them from finding their way out, the one-way passages, the architecture of capture, and the bait bag was empty, the bait consumed by whatever had found the trap before the current took it, the crabs and the sculpin and the sea lice, the scavengers that cleaned a trap the way time cleaned a life, consuming what was consumable, leaving only the structure.

He hooked the trap and dragged it up the rocks. The wire was bent but not broken. The frame was cracked at one joint, the oak split along the grain where the current had slammed the trap against the granite, but the split was repairable, was a clamp and some marine epoxy, was an afternoon's work, and the trap was salvageable. He turned it over and looked at the buoy still attached to the warp, the rope coiled and tangled with kelp, and the buoy was red and white.

Colleen's colors.

He carried the trap to the yard. He set it on the granite path and went to the house and called Colleen from the kitchen phone, the phone mounted on the wall by the door, the same phone that had been there since they moved to the point, the phone that was not a cell phone but a landline, a thing that stayed where it was put, that did not travel, that existed in one place and could be found in that place and used from that place, the fixedness of the phone a quality that Eamon valued the way he valued the fixedness of the lighthouse, the known location, the reliable presence.

Colleen answered on the second ring. She always answered on the second ring. She had once explained this — the first ring was for locating the phone, the second was for answering it, and any ring after the second was laziness, and Colleen Drury was not lazy, had never been lazy, would be the last person in Knox County to be called lazy.

"Found one of your traps," Eamon said.

"Where?"

"Southeast ledge. Current brought it in."

"How bad?"

"Frame's cracked. One joint. The wire's bent but it'll straighten."

"I'll come get it."

"I'll fix it."

"You don't have to fix it."

"I know I don't have to. I want to."

There was a pause on the line. The pause was not silence but consideration, Colleen weighing the offer the way she weighed bait in the barrel, estimating the amount, judging whether it was enough or too much, the calculation of a woman who had spent forty years measuring things by hand and by eye and by the accumulated knowledge of forty years of measuring.

"All right," she said. "I'll come by this afternoon. Bring you some mackerel."

"You don't have to bring anything."

"You fixed my trap. I bring mackerel. That's how it works."

She hung up. He stood in the kitchen with the phone in his hand and looked through the window at the trap on the path and the tower beyond it and the bay beyond the tower, the July bay, the bright bay, the bay dotted with boats and buoys and the white shapes of sails, and the morning was the morning and the work was the work and the trap needed fixing.

He fixed the trap in the yard, on the granite, in the sun. The sun was high and hot — seventy-four degrees, a temperature that constituted midsummer on the coast of Maine — and he worked in the shade of the tower, the shadow falling across the yard from the east, the tower clock-handing its shadow across the granite as the sun moved, and the shadow was the coolest place on the point and the coolest place was where the work happened.

He clamped the cracked joint. He mixed the epoxy, the two-part marine epoxy that he kept in the shed, the same epoxy he used for repairs on the tower and the house and the fog signal building, the adhesive that bonded wood to wood and wood to metal and metal to metal, the universal fixer, the substance that filled gaps and joined surfaces and held things together that wanted to come apart, and the epoxy was useful and the usefulness was the point.

He straightened the wire. He used the pliers from the shop, the heavy pliers, the pliers that could bend wire and pull nails and grip bolts, the pliers that were an extension of his hands the way the chamois was an extension of his hands, the tool that did what the fingers could not, and the wire straightened, the mesh returning to its grid, the pattern restored, the trap becoming a trap again rather than a tangle.

Nora came out at noon. She came to the yard with sandwiches and water and she set them on the granite beside the trap and she looked at the trap and she looked at Eamon and she said, "Colleen's?"

"Red and white."

"She'll be grateful."

"She'll bring mackerel."

"Of course she'll bring mackerel. Colleen can't accept a favor without returning it. She's allergic to debt."

"She's not allergic. She's principled."

"Same thing, in Colleen."

They ate the sandwiches in the shadow of the tower. The sandwiches were ham and cheese on the bread from the new starter, the bread that was a month old now, the culture established, the flavor developing, the bread still different from the old bread but becoming itself, becoming the bread of this house, this windowsill, this air, and the bread was good and the ham was good and the cheese was good and the eating was the noon pause, the midday rest, the moment between the morning's work and the afternoon's work when the body refueled and the mind wandered.

"Patrick called," Nora said.

"When?"

"This morning. While you were on the rocks."

"It's not Sunday."

"He doesn't only call on Sunday."

"He mostly calls on Sunday."

"He called today. He wanted to know how I was."

Eamon ate his sandwich. He chewed and he looked at the bay and he thought about Patrick calling on a Wednesday, the mid-week call that was not the scheduled call, the call that was the son inserting an additional measurement into the monitoring, an extra reading, a supplementary data point, and the supplementary data point said: I am worried, I am watching, the Sunday readings are not sufficient, I need more data.

"What did you tell him?" Eamon said.

"I told him I was in the garden."

"Were you?"

"I was in the garden. I was weeding the beans. And then I was in the kitchen. And then I was in the garden again."

"You went back to the garden?"

"I went back to the garden because I forgot I had already been to the garden."

She said this with the evenness of a teacher reporting a grade, the information delivered without editorializing, the fact presented as fact, and the fact was: she had gone to the garden, come inside, forgotten the going, and gone again, the loop, the circuit, the repetition that was not intentional but neurological, the mind losing the record of the recent past the way a log lost its entries when the pages were torn out, the act done but the record of the act deleted, and the next act proceeding as though the first had not occurred.

"It doesn't matter," Eamon said.

"It matters to me. It matters that I weeded the same row twice. It matters that I didn't know I had already weeded it. The beans don't care. But I care."

He looked at her. She was sitting on the granite in the shade of the tower, her legs crossed, her sandwich in her hands, and the sun was on the bay behind her and the light was the July light, bright and high and generous, and her face was in the shade and her face was clear and her face was the face of a woman who was reporting a condition, who was describing a symptom, who was doing what Eamon did when he wrote in the log — noting the data, recording the reading, writing down the weather of her own mind with the precision and the honesty that the weather demanded.

"I care too," he said.

"I know you care. You care about everything. You care about the trap and the lens and the paint and the drains and the log and the garden and the bread and me. You care about all of it the same way."

"Not the same way."

"The same way. With the same attention. The same vigilance. The same refusal to let anything deteriorate. And I am grateful for it. But Eamon — the trap can be fixed. The lens can be cleaned. The paint can be applied. And I — I am not a trap. I am not a lens."

"I know that."

"Do you?"

The question sat between them on the granite, in the shade, in the July noon, and the question was not an accusation but an inquiry, a genuine asking, a woman asking a man whether he understood the distinction between the things he maintained and the person he loved, whether the love and the maintenance were the same thing or different things, whether the chamois and the epoxy and the pliers were the tools of the love or the substitutes for it.

"I do," he said. "I know the difference."

"Then stop fixing the trap and eat your sandwich."

He ate his sandwich. She ate hers. The trap sat on the granite between them, clamped and drying, the epoxy curing in the July heat, the repair setting, the trap becoming functional again, and the functionality was the point, the functionality was what the repair produced, and the production was satisfying in the way that all completed repairs were satisfying, the way the log entry was satisfying when it read all systems satisfactory, the confirmation that the work had been done and the doing had produced the result.

Colleen came at three. The truck pulled into the yard with the mackerel in a bucket on the passenger seat, the fish silver and iridescent, the colors of the mackerel shifting in the light the way the colors in the Fresnel lens shifted, the blue and the green and the silver and the black, the fish beautiful in the way that functional things were beautiful, the streamlining of the body evolved over millions of years to move through water with minimum resistance, the form following the function, the beauty a consequence of the efficiency.

She looked at the trap. She knelt beside it and examined the joint, the clamp, the epoxy, the straightened wire, the way a mechanic examines a repair done by someone else, the professional eye evaluating the work, assessing the quality, judging whether the repair would hold.

"Good work," she said.

"It'll hold."

"I know it'll hold. You don't do work that doesn't hold."

She stood. She looked at the bay. She looked at the lighthouse. She looked at the keeper's house, at the kitchen window where Nora was visible, moving in the kitchen, the shape of her behind the glass, the motion of a woman doing the things that a woman did in a kitchen on a July afternoon.

"She's weeding the same rows," Colleen said.

"She told me."

"She told me too. She tells me things she doesn't tell you. She tells me because telling you would make you worry and she doesn't want you to worry because your worrying is a weight and she's already carrying a weight and two weights are too many."

"What things?"

"She loses time. Not minutes. Hours. She'll be in the garden at ten and then she'll be in the kitchen at noon and the two hours between are gone, not forgotten but gone, the time simply absent, no record of it, no memory of what happened between the garden and the kitchen, the two hours a blank, a void, a stretch of fog in the middle of a clear day."

Eamon looked at Colleen. She was standing in the yard in the sun, her face in the full light, the forty years of the water in the lines of her face, the squint permanent, the jaw set, and she was telling him this the way she told him the weather — directly, without softening, without the cushioning that polite people used to deliver difficult information, because Colleen was not polite, Colleen was honest, and the honesty was the thing he needed, the honesty was the reading, the honesty was the barometer tap that freed the stuck needle and showed the actual pressure.

"How often?" he said.

"Every few days. Maybe more. She doesn't always know. That's the thing — she doesn't always know she's lost the time. She only knows when she finds herself somewhere she doesn't remember going, doing something she doesn't remember starting. The garden twice today. The sitting room yesterday — she was in the sitting room reading and then she was in the sitting room reading and she didn't know she had been there before. The book was at the same page."

"She reads the same book."

"She reads the same book. She starts it and she finishes it and she starts it again and each time is the first time. I've watched her read the same chapter three times in a week. And each time she reacts the same way — the same surprise at the twist, the same laugh at the joke, the same turning of the page with the same expression. And the sameness is — the sameness is the thing, Eamon. The sameness is the disease. Because a person without the disease reads a book once and carries the book with them, carries the knowledge of the book, the experience of the book, and the carrying changes them, and the change is the evidence of the living. And Nora reads the book and does not carry it and is not changed by it and the not-carrying is the loss, the loss of the accumulation, the loss of the layering that makes a life a life."

She stopped. She looked at the mackerel in the bucket, the fish silver, the eyes flat, the death recent, the transition from living to matter still in progress, the flesh still firm, the colors still bright, and she said, "I talk too much."

"You talk the right amount."

"I talk too much when I'm scared."

"Are you scared?"

"I'm terrified. I've been terrified since March. Since the bread. Since the starter died. Because the starter dying was — the starter dying was the first thing I could see. The word-finding, the name confusion, those were inside her, those were invisible unless you were looking, and I was looking but I couldn't measure what I was seeing. But the starter dying — that was outside. That was visible. That was a thing in the world that died because the maintenance failed, and the maintenance failed because the mind failed, and the mind failing was the disease, and the disease was real, and the real was terrifying."

She picked up the bucket. She handed it to him. The mackerel were cold, the ice melting in the bucket, the water sloshing, and the fish were beautiful and dead and useful and he held the bucket and Colleen picked up the trap and carried it to the truck and set it in the bed and the trap was in the truck and the truck was in the yard and the afternoon was the afternoon.

"Grill those tonight," she said. "With lemon. Nora likes mackerel."

"I know what Nora likes."

"I know you know. I'm telling you anyway because telling is what I do when I'm scared. I tell people things they already know because the telling is the signal, the telling is the fog horn, the telling is the sound that says: I'm here, I'm paying attention, I see what you see, and you are not alone in the seeing."

She got in the truck. She backed out. The taillights went down the road, the trap visible in the bed, the frame repaired, the wire straightened, the trap functional, the trap going back to the water where it would sit on the bottom and catch lobsters and the catching was the purpose and the purpose was the life and the life continued.

Eamon grilled the mackerel. He grilled it on the charcoal in the evening, the July evening, the long evening, the sky still bright at eight o'clock, the bay golden, the islands dark against the gold, and the mackerel was on the grill and the lemon was on the mackerel and the smell of it filled the yard, the smell of fish and charcoal and the sea, and Nora was on the porch in the Adirondack chair and she was watching him grill and her face was in the evening light and the light was the golden hour light and the light was kind.

"Colleen's mackerel," she said.

"From this morning."

"She caught it this morning?"

"She brought it this afternoon. From this morning's catch."

"She's a good woman."

"She is."

"She worries about me."

"She does."

"Tell her not to worry."

"She wouldn't listen."

"No. She wouldn't. She's like you that way. You both worry and neither of you listens when someone tells you not to."

He turned the mackerel. The flesh was cooking, the skin crisping, the oils running, and the grill hissed and the charcoal glowed and the evening was the evening and the mackerel was the mackerel and the wife on the porch was the wife on the porch and the moment was the moment, specific, unrepeatable, a moment that would not be recorded in any log because the log did not record moments, the log recorded conditions, and the conditions were: clear, SW 5-8, temp 68, barometer 30.11, visibility unlimited, mackerel on the grill, wife on the porch, evening light on the bay, all systems satisfactory.

All systems satisfactory.

They ate on the porch. They ate the mackerel with lemon and bread and a salad from the garden, the lettuce that Nora had grown, the tomatoes that were not ripe yet but would be soon, the garden producing, the garden functioning, the garden the system that Nora maintained, that Nora kept, and the keeping was evident in the salad, the keeping was the crisp lettuce and the fresh herbs, the keeping was the taste of things grown by hands that knew how to grow them.

After dinner, he went to the tower. He climbed the seventy-two steps. He lit the brass lamp. He sat at the desk and opened the log.

2015. Clear. SW 5-8. Temp 64. Barometer 30.09, steady. Visibility unlimited. Lobster trap recovered, southeast ledge — C. Drury's, repaired, returned. Lens cleaned. Gallery satisfactory. All systems satisfactory.

He set the pencil in the groove. He looked at the entry. He thought about what Colleen had said — the lost hours, the blank stretches, the time that disappeared between the garden and the kitchen, the book that was read and read again, the sameness that was the disease. He thought about the mackerel and the bread and the salad and the evening and the porch and the light, the moment that was the moment, unrepeatable, unrecordable, the thing the log could not hold.

He closed the log. He blew out the lamp. He went down. He went to the house. Nora was in the sitting room, in her chair, reading the book. She was fifty pages from the end. She would finish it tomorrow, or the day after. And then she would begin again, and the beginning would be new, and the newness was the cruelty and the newness was the mercy, the two things the same thing, the disease giving with one hand what it took with the other, the perpetual freshness of a world without accumulation, the world of the always-new that was also the world of the always-lost.

He sat in his chair. He looked at the bay through the window. The bay was going dark, the July dark, the late dark, the dark that came after nine and lasted until five, the shortest darkness, the most the light could give, and the darkness was coming and the light was going and the mackerel was eaten and the trap was fixed and the bread was baked and the log was written and the wife was reading and the husband was watching and the watching was the keeping and the keeping was the love and the July night settled on the point and the lighthouse was dark and the house was lit and the light in the house was the light of the reading lamp and the light was enough.