John Casey - Spartina

Dick thought that there were days in these waters he wouldn’t trade for anything. Even December, fair days after a gale, the sea still shaggy with white crests, the sky a blue as pale and hard as a Portuguese glass float. He’d still be going out no matter what kind of mess his life was onshore.

They came in through the breakwater, dropped Parker off at his boat. One of the smaller fishing boats was being hauled. When he got to the top end of the salt pond, he saw that one of the larger sailboats was being hauled too. It was after six in the evening.

When he passed the office the yard manager called out to him, asked him when he was going to move Spartina down the harbor.

“Another day or two. What’s the rush?”

“There may be some bad weather. I don’t want your boat swinging around here in a storm.”

“I’ll be out of here tomorrow. I’m going out. When I get back, I’ll tie up down in Galilee.”

“You may not be going out. There’s a hurricane coming out of the Caribbean.”

“They usually pass out to sea,” Dick said. “Is that why you’re hauling boats so late at night? Every year everyone gets all edgy about hurricanes. We haven’t had one hit hard since ’54.”

“Maybe we’re due.”

“No such thing as due. Of all the hundreds of hurricanes that have started up in my life, only four have hit shore: ’38, ’54, and then those two little ones in 1955. Nothing since, and that’s more than twenty years. I’m not saying we won’t get one. I’m just saying there’s no such thing as due. ”

Dick realized in mid-speech that he himself was working on an even dumber theory than due. He was figuring on not due.

He drove down to Joxer’s plant. He’d noticed on his way in that Captain Texeira’s Lydia P. was tied up at Joxer’s pier. The Lydia P. received satellite weather-pictures, flashed them on her computer screen.

Dick ran into Joxer at the foot of the pier. Joxer was supervising his plant crew as they nailed up shutters over the windows and piled up sandbags along the cinderblock walls.

Dick said, “You’re taking this pretty serious.”

“I talked to Captain Texeira,” Joxer said. “He’s pretty serious.”

Dick asked the Lydia P. ’s first mate if he could come aboard to talk to the captain. The mate sent him up to the wheelhouse.

Captain Texeira laid it out for him.

There were two storms. The second one, Elvira, was moving faster than the first, Donald. If Elvira caught up with Donald, the combined storm might pick up speed. Usually hurricanes moving up the coast followed the Gulf Stream and moved out to sea before they hit New England. But if a hurricane was moving fast, over thirty-five miles an hour, it could override this tendency to move toward warmer water. There was also a weak Arctic trough over central New England, and that tended to invite a storm in. The winds at twenty thousand feet over the storms, which, according to one theory, steered a hurricane, were out of the south. Captain Texeira had ordered his bigger boat, Bom Sonho , to head southeast from Georges Bank. She was fast enough to get to mid-Atlantic.

Captain Texeira said, “Even if the hurricane does curve out to sea, in two days she’ll be safe to the southeast.”

“What about the Lydia P.? ”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I won’t stay in this harbor. The breakwater may prevent a hurricane wave from coming up the harbor full-force. You remember ’54—boats thrown up across Route One, right up the hill, forty feet above the water.

“If the hurricane tide goes up twenty feet, all those yachts back there will yank their moorings right up. The harbor of refuge just out here will be for Coast Guard and Navy ships. Perhaps other ships. That’ll be up to the Coast Guard. They may let the Lydia P. lie to, there. There may be room, it’s almost a square mile inside the breakwater. But even there you have to depend on the other ships’ not breaking loose, or dragging their anchors. I don’t like to depend on people I don’t know.”

Dick was sobered by Captain Texeira.

Captain Texeira said, “My wife wants me to stay at home. My nephew is competent to take the Lydia P. out to sea, he’s been the acting skipper half the time for the last five years. But what if something happens? How do I face his mother — my sister? The Lydia P. is insured. She’s my second boat. But if she stays here and she goes down, my nephew and all the crew are out of work for a year while I have a new boat built. I think I can take her east of the storm. But the storm may move east. And then she’ll be in the worst quadrant.”

Dick said, “Why not go out and if the storm moves east then you move back to the west, into the easier half. You have plenty of speed.”

Captain Texeira shook his head. “A storm this size, the swells go far ahead of her, several hundred miles. They can be so big you can only go half-speed, maybe less. And they may be spread out two hundred miles across.”

“So you think we may get hit this time.”

“I don’t know. NOAA doesn’t know. Nobody knows. If the storms link up, if the big storm is moving forty miles an hour when she passes Cape Hatteras … if, if, if. I’ll know more tomorrow, but tomorrow may be too late to take the Lydia out to sea.”

Dick thanked him. He drove back to the yard. There was a crowd now around the office. Dick peered over the shoulders of the people in front of the door. He saw that the phone on the manager’s desk was off the hook, the manager was trying to get out the door. When he finally popped through he went by Dick but turned after a few steps. “You going to move Spartina? ”

Dick said, “Look. I feel like a damn fool — after we just put her in. I’ll get Eddie’s flatbed, rig my old cradle on it, and if you haul her, we’ll take her out of here.”

The manager shook his head.

“I got twenty-five, maybe thirty boats ahead of you. They’ve been customers for years. They’ve all heard the news. I can’t haul Spartina. No way.”

The manager turned toward a man who began to speak to him. The man got in one word, the manager said, “I’m sorry — I’m talking to Captain Pierce.”

The man said, “I’ve been waiting—”

“I’m talking to Captain Pierce.”

The man made a show of keeping the lid on. He said, “Very well. I’ll phone you at home.”

“I’m not going home. I’m not answering the phone here. You want your boat hauled, write her name on a piece of paper, sign it, put the time which is now eighteen forty hours and have it on my desk. No promises.”

The man left.

Dick said, “I owe you near to a thousand bucks. For that I get to see a yacht owner go away pissed off, and I get to be called Captain Pierce. Life is full of satisfactions.”

The manager said, “Look, Dick. I’m sorry. That guy’s an asshole. If it was him or you I’d haul you. But I got to go by rules, I got to have a system for the whole crowd. I’ll put you on the list, that’s all I can do. I got to be fair.”

“Can I use your phone?”

“Sure. Just leave it off the hook when you’re done.”

Dick called his insurance agent at home. Busy. Called his office. Busy. He got in his truck and drove to the guy’s house in Wakefield. The guy’s car was there so Dick kept knocking till the door opened.

Dick told him he’d like to up the coverage on Spartina. “Sure,” the guy said, “I’ll see what I can do. But you remember how I explained it to you. There’s a little lead time. It’ll be easier once your interim policy is in effect.”

Dick said, “You told me Spartina ’s covered with an interim policy. I wouldn’t have gone out today without that. So just up the interim policy.”