The Schooner Race and the other maritime bars are located on Main Street across from Gloucester's inner harbor. This small body of water is always jammed full with trawlers and freighters. The big boats are stuck together like cars in a crowded lot. I pulled the car up across the street from the bar right over the water just behind some collapsed piers. It was dark as I got out. I smelled fish stink. It was lobster bait. Lobstermen take fish offal, let it ripen in old tubs until you can smell it a mile away, then put it in little plastic baggies. They tie these baggies inside the trap. Just before they dump the traps overboard they punch little holes all over the baggie to let out the stink and fish slime. That brings in the lobsters, which are bottom dwelling scavengers. Anyway, you show me a lobster port and I'll show you odors that will stay in your memory a long, long time. I glanced at the dirty harbor water that oozed eight feet below me. Thank God at least for the huge tides of the Northeast; they douched the filthy place twice a day. The rotting fish guts were getting to me; I couldn't wait to get inside.
I walked across the sandy parking lot that led up to the concrete walkway where I'd parked. I heard shouting down the street, and the rumble and blast of a big Harley chopper as it tore off and away. There was a knot of men standing around the entranceway of a small bar down there. It was the infamous House of Mitch. Compared to it the Schooner Race was your regular family pub.
I thought again of the bronze statue of the fisherman, and the men who still risked their lives in the small boats out in the North Atlantic. Some boats went out for one or two weeks at a time. The men got four or five hours' sleep a day. They lived on coffee, cigarettes, beer, and candy bars. When they got back, either flushed with success or bitter with failure, they got bombed. Sometimes a man could make five or six grand in one trip as his share of the take, after the skipper's expenses. But sometimes two weeks of hell resulted in nothing. And sometimes the boat didn't come back at all. I'd heard stories of boats going out in the winter and getting so loaded up with ice that they simply turned upside down and slid under. And there's not a damn thing you can do about the icing; you just can't chip it off fast enough.
I heard a juke inside as I approached the door. I entered. It was a pine-paneled place without windows. A big S-shaped bar snaked along the far side. Tables and booths lined the other walls.
I ordered a beer and sat in the corner. The place wasn't crowded although it was past nine. I looked around. Hell, the Race wasn't so bad. In fact it was downright charming. The large mural photographs were stunning. They were pinup pictures of Gloucester's best-loved women. Then there were the rivals from the Maritimes too.
There was the Gertrude L. Thebaud, the queen of them all. She was close-hauled on a port tack, and well heeled over, her lee rail awash. The Adventure on a broad reach… and in the far distance the triangular shape of the second-place boat. Right over my head was a shot of the Bluenose, a boat from Nova Scotia notorious for dashing the hopes of the New England challengers. They lined the walls, these pictures of the Grand Banks schooners, the most graceful medium-sized sailing vessels ever built. They were built sleek because the first boats back to port could demand the highest prices for their catch.
I sipped and watched patrons dribble in. They looked young, which was Father Time's insidious way of tapping me lightly on the shoulder. I stared pensively down at the tiny stream of bubbles rising in my glass.
The jukebox was getting louder too. A song was playing that went: "You are all that I am…(bum ta bum bum bum) You know ya make me feel like a bran' nehew man…"
It was a C amp;W number, by a guy named Clyde McFritter, or something similar.
The place was filling up faster and faster now; the boats were coming in. The girl behind the bar was kept solidly busy at the spigot, drawing mugs and pitchers of Schlitz dark. It seemed to me that most of the men were between twenty-five and thirty-five, and their clothes and general appearance were remarkably similar.
To begin with, most of them had beards or moustaches. They all wore jeans, topped with hooded sweatshirts, flannel plaids, or knit sweaters. Rubber boots. It might seem to most people that they were overdressed for late summer. But many of them had been over fifty miles out at sea-some perhaps as far as Georges Bank. And it's always chilly there.
They also wore either the knitted blue wool watch caps or the truckers' hats with long bills in front to protect them from the glare. The glare on the ocean is terrible, even on cloudy days. It can wear you out. The front of these caps bore the logos of manufacturers of things very macho. Beer companies. Companies that made trucks and diesel engines, firearms and knives. It couldn't help wondering what would happen if you went into the Schooner Race wearing a hat that said Singer, or Hoover, or-God forbid-Mop 'n Glo?
Another standard item of the uniform was the folding hunter knife carried in its compact belt sheath. When unfolded with the blade locked open these are every bit as big as the regular sheath knives. All the lads in the SR were wearing them.
Bits of conversations floated past. Most concerned themselves with fishing. The names of the fish weren't attractive ones like trout or salmon. Instead they had ugly names like hake and cusk. I ask you, how'd you like to dive into a plate of cusk? And if you've ever seen a cusk, you'd know why they named it that…
It was past ten. I had better commence asking if I wanted any results concerning the whereabouts of Dan Murdock, erstwhile boatbuilder. Two fishermen came over to ask if they could borrow a chair that was sitting vacant next to me at the small table. I said sure and asked the nearest one-who was wearing a bill cap with the words Cummins Marine above the visor-if he knew where I could perchance find a boatbuilder named Daniel Murdock.
The young man, whose name was Ted, lifted his head toward the ceiling and chuckled. They were sitting on the chairs backward, leaning their forearms over the seat backs, and sipping their shots and beers.
"Murdock? Murdock? Sure he could build ya boat, if he ain't too bombed or strung out. What ya want him for?"
"I need some extensive repair work done on a boat I'm thinking of buying. I've heard Murdock is good and-well-pretty cheap too."
The men sat and swigged in silence for a few minutes as if they hadn't heard me.
"Murdock… Dan Murdock…" the other man repeated. He said the name philosophically, as if it were a special precept, syllogism, or school of metaphysical thought.
"Yes? Dan Murdock what?"
"Danny Murdock's a drunk, mister, that's what. I guess he was a pretty good builder but now he's a drunk. Spends a lotta time in here. Surprised we ain't seen him. Spends alotta time drinking in here and hidin' from his old lady."
"Do you know where I can find him? If he comes in, can you guys point him out? I'll buy you a round."
"No need to, mister. He's right behind you, and fried to the gills."
"Heah ah is…" said a warbly voice in imitation of a black minstrel singer. He came shuffling over to us, sideways like a crab in a tide pool, working his feet like Buddy Ebsen. It was a poor imitation, mainly because he, was gassed. He did a bad Cab Calloway. He did a frightful Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. He tripped and slid to his knees. I noticed he was wearing one work boot. Its mate had disappeared to God knows where.