One Page #31

A lobsterman in worn yellow rubber coveralls walked down the pier towards his boat. The sun had not yet risen and the waters were calm, reflecting the moon that danced in the ripples. The stars still shone above and he looked up once, staring, as if he had never really looked at the sky before. He steadied himself with one hand against a weatherworn pole that had withstood many storms, floods, hurricanes, and seagulls. He heard a few other men preparing their boats, pulling lines, rearranging nets. And then silence. The lobsterman walked to the end of the pier and sat on the edge with his legs dangling over. This he had never done either. He saw his boat a hundred feet away, floating, waiting, bobbing gently up and down. But he did not move towards it. He could feel the oars of this dinghy in his hands so rough from rowing and hauling and shelling. He lifted one hand to his face and felt the salt-laden beard dripping with the early morning fog so damp against his skin and pooling in droplets on the folds of his coveralls. He rubbed his eyes, blinked, and looked again out to sea. He could see the open ocean beyond the cove and the small scattered islands and the lighthouse that stood white in the moonlight. The lobsterman breathed in and out slowly, savoring the salt air, and wondered why. His father was dead and lay in his grave a mile away and six feet down. His father had been buried wrapped in a fishing net. He smelled like rotten fish and warm salt air. He smelled like the ocean. The lobsterman had inherited his father’s boat. He had grown up on its decks, and sailed around the islands thousands of times, every morning before the sun rose. But he had never wondered why. His friends were lobsterman, and his friend’s wives were friends with his wife, and they all smelled like the ocean, the salt so deeply imbedded in the wrinkles of their skin and soaked behind their eyes and in every strand of their hair. He didn’t think that any of them wondered why. It just was. The boats came in and out with the tide and he knew the moon’s reflection better than the shadows cast by the sun and the ring on his finger turned green with the constant dunking into the sea. The lobsterman flicked an abandoned mussel shell into the gently waves and it floated a moment bobbing up and down before sinking and disappearing into the green. The weatherman said it would rain today. He looked up and saw the beginnings of clouds forming. He wondered whether the clouds were salty too. The lobsterman stood up and took off his yellow coveralls and removed the green rubber boots. He padded back down the pier in his thick wool socks and walked home to his bed and his wife.