“A reason? Mr. Hornton said it gives him a reason?”
“A reason to go on. Mr. Hornton says when you get to be his age and you’ve got one good-for-nothing son, an old wreck of a lobster boat, and your best friend’s cheated you out of the only other thing you ever owned, you’ve got to have something to get up in the morning for. Once you lose that something, whatever it is, well...” I looked over at Jake, and he gave me a funny smile. We were coming up on the ridge behind Deadman’s Bluff, a popular “naturalists’ ” beach, and heading on towards Long Point Lighthouse.
“Well, I told him I thought I understood,” I went on, “just as I later understood Mr. Hacker’s impatience with me. I didn’t have the right gear, just my denim jacket and my knapsack with my breakfast and school stuff in it. So Mr. Hacker, he gave me a sweatshirt and some gloves and told me where to stow my stuff. Then he said I was to give him a hand when he pulled the pots in, steady them when they came up. He said he’d handle the lobsters — if there were any, and if Gussie Murphy wasn’t stealing from his traps again.” I gave Jake a meaningful look, waited for a reaction.
“Ned Hacker’s been complaining about Gussie for years. But there’s never been any proof of it.”
I shrugged. “Then he said he’d maybe show me how to peg their claws. Crushers and cutters, Mr. Hacker told me; crushers and cutters and do you know what a full-grown ten pound lobster can do to a boy’s hand? Snap his fingers like a pencil — right in two! Then he snapped his fingers in my face and made me jump.”
Jake gave me a quick frown. I ignored it.
“But me, I just kept cool. I jumped, sure, but I kept a steady look on my face. He was testing me, and I didn’t want him to think I was some kind of wimp.”
Jake’s attention returned to the road. We both looked as we passed Deadman’s Bluff, but it was too late in the season for any “naturalists”; what a shame.
“So I told him I’d do my best, helped him untie the boat from the mooring. It was rolling under my feet a little — the boat, I mean — and I realized I’d forgotten my seasickness pills. I figured if I put my mind off of it, I’d be okay. I told him I was going to do my best, and I called him sir. It made him laugh, and he clapped me on the shoulder so hard I jumped again.”
“You are one damned polite kid,” Jake interjected.
“Then we were off. I never saw fog so thick, Jake. Like they say in books, you could have cut it with a knife. It was real eerie, but kind of pretty, too. Mr. Hacker had his lights on, and you could hear foghorns and bells over on the point and out on Smiley’s Landing. There wasn’t anybody out but us, and we just kind of chugged along, like we weren’t in any hurry. Mr. Hacker was quiet for a while, just whistling to himself. I think he looked kind of sad; even when he grinned at me, he looked sad. I started to think about what Mr. Hornton said about needing something to get up in the morning for, and I wondered if... if lobster pots and an old boat could be enough. Do you know what I mean? I never thought about life like that. But when you’re in a boat and there’s fog all around you and the sea is black underneath you, you start to think — about the animals all around you and under you and if there’s going to be anything in those traps today.”
“You’re really a deep thinker, aren’t you?” Jake said.
“Guess I’m kind of off the subject, aren’t I?”
“You keep talking, Herbie. I like to listen to you.” And strangely enough, Jake seemed to be just like Mr. Hacker had been earlier that morning, quiet, almost wistful. “Go on. You and Neddie talk about anything?”
“After a while we did. He had one old wooden trap stacked with his metal ones, and I asked him about it. He told me it had been a ghost trap. He said that ghost traps are ones that get lost under the water; their lines have been cut or snapped, but they’re still down there catching and killing animals — lobsters, crabs, fish, whatever. Whenever he pulls one up he keeps it, or if it’s in real bad shape, he tosses it out.”
“Ghost traps,” Jake murmured, but his mind, and his attention, seemed to be somewhere else.
“Yeah. He told me there’s part of an old wharf over on the north side of Smiley’s Island. It hasn’t been used in over sixty years. He said he’d show it to me someday, said it was destroyed when they built the canal back in the thirties. You can even see some of the old pilings, at low tide. Some rich man had a house out there on the island, and he had a deep channel dug out so his friends could tie up their sailboats and yachts when they came to visit. He built the wharf, too, but when they dredged for the canal, they tore down most of it. I’ve never heard of it, have you, Jake?”
But Jake didn’t seem to be listening just then; he was in another world. I shrugged. “Mr. Hacker said the guy was a runner. Made a lot of money and then just up and disappeared. I guess we were just passing the time, not talking about very much. He said that’s where he found the wooden trap, right near where the old wharf used to be.”
Jake was still quiet, frowning just a little. I figured I might as well go on.
“So, that’s how it went for a while. Then he told me to be looking for his colors... of his buoys? He had some there on the deck, tied to his traps. Yellow and blue — top is yellow and bottom blue. He pointed out some other colors as we went by them: red and white, those were Miltie Sheer’s, and orange and white, those were Berry Brubaker’s. Then there’s Gussie Murphy’s; we didn’t see any of his, but Mr. Hacker said his were yellow and green. He spit over the side when he talked about him. Then he told me he’d found a good spot for his traps, a new place that hadn’t been over-fished yet. It was off a little shelf just south of Smiley’s Island. I didn’t bother to correct him.”
“Correct him?” So Jake was still with me.
“Isn’t any shelf off Smiley’s Island,” I explained. “The shelf is actually all around us. The whole bay sits right on the shelf. It goes out about a hundred miles, and we were barely half a mile off the island. Mr. Hacker must have meant a drop, or a little trough, maybe. Anyhow, he said it was good deep water and cool and quiet, full of dead things lobsters like to eat. I didn’t correct him on that either, tell him lobsters are only scavengers, but—” I shrugged. Actually I was getting tired of listening to myself talk. I looked into the bag, wondering if I should start on the third doughnut.
“I’m listening, Herbie,” Jake said. “This trough, is that where you found the pot with the arm in it?”
“But, Jake, what does it matter? Maybe somebody had it in for Mr. O’Reilly and was just trying to get rid of the body.”
“As lobster bait?”
“Mr. Hacker uses whelk for lobster bait,” I said with a sigh. “He had a couple of buckets of them in the hold. They stink something awful.” Then I shrugged. I figured I’d taken this “investigation” about as far as I could. It seemed both Jake and I had no jurisdiction in this one. What I really wanted to say was this: what’s the point? Take me back to the institute, and I’ll hunt down Oscar and get on with my math. Instead I wearily went on.
“Neddie... Mr. Hacker... told me to start looking for his colors. The fog was letting up, but just a little. You could feel the sun more than you could see it. Then we found the first buoy marking some of his pots. Even in that fog he knew right where to go. He was real excited, too, and so was I, but the traps were all empty. Six traps and nothing in them, not even bait. Mr. Hacker got real quiet again and we rebaited them, lowered them back in. But he was different, not sad really, not any more. He was mad, and I remembered what Mr. Horn-ton said about his temper.”