Rick Boyer: Billingsgate Shoal

"Wonder why she's out in the middle of the harbor anyway?" mused Allan. "As low as she's riding you'd think she'd wanta come right up to the big pier."

"Hey how's your mom been, Allan?" Mary asked.

"She's been pretty good. She still hasn't got a boyfriend or anything yet, but you know, something'll turn up."

"Well we'll have to ask her over some evening," I said. Mary grabbed the heavy lines that Allan Flipped down to her; I put the engine into gear and we purred slowly out of the slip.

"See you at around five, Allan. Get us a fish!" yelled Mary.

He waved back, replaced the mouthpiece, drew down the mask, and pushed himself forward off the dock with his arms, turning around in midair, and fell backward into the sea. He entered the harbor water softly, quietly, for such a big guy. He surfaced again, doing a slow lazy flip-flop with his fins. As we began to thread the Hatton through the maze of moored boats toward the harbor mouth we saw a last flutter of brightness just under the water's surface, a quick glimmer of shiny tank and yellow diving hood. Then there was a little flip of motion, and he was gone, heading out to the green boat, which was riding much higher in the water now.

Still, the boat's half-submerged look intrigued me. It wasn't a sight you saw every day. I clacked away at it with my camera. The motor drive advanced the film quickly with a loud whirr in between clacks of the mirror. A man appeared on her foredeck, looking anxiously at the tiny harbormaster's shack. He had a faint beard and wore a canvas jacket. I snapped more pictures. The man didn't notice me; he was too busy gesticulating to the two figures talking near the shack.

One was Bill Larson, the harbormaster. The other was the fellow who'd just run ashore in the little dinghy. As we neared the harbor mouth we passed the boat's quarter at about thirty yards' distance. I could read her name and port on her transom: Penelope, Boston. I was snapping a final shot when the man turned and looked in our direction. When he saw me I saw a hint of a snarl start to form on his lips. But as if he thought better of it, he turned and disappeared into the wheelhouse. No doubt this had not been one of his best mornings. Still I felt the prick of curiosity, and spun off my 50-millimeter lens in exchange for a 135 and snapped a few more photos of Penelope, whoever she was, before we got out around the breakwater.

After three hours on Cape Cod Bay we headed back. Mary was at the helm, holding the teak wheel that sits at the end of the big round cockpit. Ella Hatton was close-hauled and heeled over slightly, churning her way up the outer channel into the harbor. Two sportfishermen roared by us. The men stood over the transoms laughing and drinking beer. No doubt they had been out since before dawn hunting bluefish and striped bass. I stared enviously at the big boats, with their flying bridges and long outrigger poles. The tall towers swayed far and wide as the boats rolled in the swells, their big engines growling and sputtering.

A big boat was rolling out of Wellfleet toward us. She tipped and plunged in the wake of the two sportfishermen. It was our friend the Penelope; she was hustling too. We passed each other off Jeremy Point. The big green dragger chuffed by us with nobody visible except a dim shape in the wheelhouse. Evidently the repair was satisfactory; she was riding high and quick. Seconds later her skipper opened her engines up; the dark smoke shot up out of the stack like Old Faithful and the engine's whine increased to a thunderous roar. She shook a tailfeather south around Billingsgate Shoal (now invisible but still treacherous), where she'd been stranded hours earlier, and headed off due west, toward Plymouth, with remarkable felicity.

"Geez, honey, look at her go," I murmured.

Mary turned to see the long sloping plume fast disappearing in the distant haze. We dropped sail a few minutes later, stowing the jib down the forehatch and fastening the main and its gaff along the boom with shock cords. We motored in the rest of the way and gently glided Hatton back into her berth.

The sun had been making good progress all morning, and now was halfway out. We left the harbor and hurried back to the domicile where Mary promptly changed into her swimsuit and flopped down on the deck, swatting at greenheads. I went running.

I left the cottage and began my run along Sunken Meadow Road. I ran up to the main road, then along it until I came to the old windmill (Eastham's landmark), and then back. It was slightly over six miles, and during the last part was setting a pretty good clip. I staggered into The Breakers and paced around until I cooled off, flicking on the sauna bath. I grabbed my bucket and digging fork, and an old-fashioned tin salt shaker, and strolled out onto the flats. The tide was ebbing; by 5:30 it would be out. Already though, the long tan flats stretched away for hundreds of yards. I was looking for razor clams. Half a mile from the beach, I began to see tiny ovoid depressions in the damp sand. Sprinkling salt from the shaker on these, I watched the long, rectangular creatures squirt up out of these depressions, exposing half of their delicate shells to the air. Sometimes they dove down the other way, into the sand about a foot. Then I'd pry them out with the fork. They were six to eight inches long and shaped like a folded barber's razor. In forty minutes I had filled my bucket, and started back to the cottage. I stopped at a tide pool and filled the bucket to overflowing with brine, then padded back to the beach.

Our cottage was a bluish gray rectangle on the bluff top. The American flag hung limp on the mast. I squinted and could see the three metal cups of my anemometer slowly turning. The dull, cold gray of the weathered cedar shakes belied the coziness of The Breakers. The smallish rooms with low, beamed ceilings. The library corner of the living room, where you could sit for hours, days, under the brass student lamp with the green glass shade and listen to the surf crash, or the thunder roll. The kitchen with its skylights, wineracks, copper pots, and smells of coffee, roasting meat, sizzling fish, clam chowder. I liked hunting my own food out on the flats. There was something elemental, even prehistoric, about i the act. Like sex, it was something that came to me unfiltered by modem civilization. It was animal. I was a hunter-gatherer. The damp sand felt good under my bare feet. I climbed up the bone-colored wooden steps and placed the bucket of clams in the shade on the deck. I would cook them up in butter in a big iron pot, then add the clam liquor, potatoes, onions, cracked pepper, celery, milk, and perhaps some leftover corn and little pieces of cooked bacon. I drooled at the thought.

I went into the sauna. The temperature was 190 degrees. Perfect. I baked in there three times, coming out only long enough to shower under cold water each time. Finally I showered for good. I felt so laid back I couldn't have gotten it up even if I were naked in the sack with all three of Charlie's Angels.

No, wait. I take that back.

I made the chowder. Soon the big iron pot was simmering away and I tended to it as I sipped a Gosser beer.

"Isn't that Jack, Charlie?" shouted Mary from the bathroom. The cream colored Toyota Land Cruiser swept into the gravel driveway, and number one son climbed out. On his back bumper is a sticker that reads: STOP THE WHALE KILLERS! BOYCOTT JAPANESE GOODS!

Now you don't stop to think about this until you realize that the sticker is affixed to none other than a Toyota, for Chrissake, and that we've been guilty of laying nine grand on the

"killers." Not to worry though, not to worry: there's another sticker on the other side, saying: IF I'D KNOEN ABOUT THE WHALES, I WOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT THIS CAR.

Oh, well, the kid's heart is in the right place.