Down at the Docks - Softcover

Nugent, Rory

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385720130 ISBN 13: 9780385720137

Verlag: Anchor, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

In the opening pages of Moby Dick, Herman Melville called New Bedford, Massachusetts, “the dearest place to live in, in all of New England.” But the old fishing port and manufacturing center—once one of the richest cities in New England—has withered in the modern economy. Its once-prosperous fishermen now struggle with government regulations and fished-out seas, while its empty factories now offer more work to the Fire Department than anyone else.
 
In Down at the Docks, Rory Nugent tells the “riches to rags” story of this iconic American town through beautifully told and unsentimental portraits of its residents. Their lives inform a eulogy to the distinctive ideas, traditions, and culture that is about to disappear from the waterfront.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rory Nugent is an explorer and a writer. His previous books are The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck and Drums Along the Congo. An accomplished mariner, he has sailed single-handed across the Atlantic four and a half times, his last trip ending in shipwreck.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One
Hard by the Water’s Edge

Sword curses and promises to smack the next person who enters the Harborside Cafe and says, Good morning. There’s a nor’easter moving into the neighborhood, and he calls it a freakin’ horror show sure to punish fishermen for being fishermen from here to Timbuktu. Good morning, my ass. Anyone worth saluting and still alive on the docks knows there be bad in the air. He warns: If you aren’t eyeball-to-eyeball with a nasty blow, it’ll bite you awful hard. Hell, it will eat you whole.

The weatherman on the late-night news described the storm as a minor disturbance sure to dissipate by morning. Don’t
forget the sunblock, he reminded viewers, before signing off. Sword studied the maps and radar imagery on TV and went
to bed expecting to wake a few hours later to clear skies and smooth sailing. His seabag was packed for a twelve- to fourteen- day fishing trip aboard the Ocean-C, an offshore dragger rigged for catching scallops. She had been iced, fueled and provisioned the day before, her gear checked, tweaked and greased, and her crew was prepared to leave for the fishing grounds off Georges Bank at slack tide, around five this morning.

Sword awoke at three a.m., eager to begin the hunt. But, Christ Almighty, he says, he wasn’t out of bed ten minutes before his marine radio started yapping. The unit automatically responds to storm alerts issued by the National Weather Service, and he listened to a bulletin about a major depression forming off the Jersey coast and tracking northward. The wind was expected to clock speeds over 60 knots, with waves building into twenty-five-foot monsters. The news got him swearing something fierce. After a bit, though, he remembers going all quiet-like, thinking hard, truly, wondering about how much a feller misses between one snore and his last.

He taps a forefinger on the sea-green Formica countertop and says he’s bothered, way-so, by the possibility that he could someday end up dead in bed. While others might welcome such a peacful exit, he ain’t one of them. It would deny him his right to fight. Just as bad, it’d mean betrayal. He reasons: A bunk be a feller’s hurricane hole. No matter what it be blowing or what direction shit be flying, a pillow done always put a muffler on the howl.

Sword pauses (three count) and says, Another big fact, this: there’s nothing much safe. The newspaper be full of stories about hims and hers and way-bad conclusions. You get babies smothered by their mother’s breasts. Honeymooners electrocuted in the bubble bath. And, sure-sure, there always be family dogs eating families.

He digs into what’s left of his $3.29 Harborside Cafe Breakfast Plate Special: two eggs, spuds, links or bacon, toast and coffee. I scan the eatery hoping to raise Fatima, Keeper of the Coffeepot and heiress to the cafe. The place is nearly empty today and there’s no sign of Fatima. The coffeepot is dry; dirty dishes clutter tabletops; meal checks sit untended by the register, which carries a note taped to its side: Please return the Jimmy Fund jar. Off to the left, along the north wall, decorated with dozens of pictures of local fishing boats, a fluorescent lightbulb flickers, its ballast shot and humming the problem.

Leaning backward on the stool, Sword issues a low, one-note whistle, and says, Listen to this, will-ya? He lists some reasons why: Because he just thought of it. Because it happened to him, so you know it be awful-like real. And because he loved her some way-lots.

The Magnificence, he repeats three times. That was her name, the boat, it was, and it fit her right and tight. He was one of eight aboard during her last voyage and says everyone was feeling lucky. The weather was finest-kind. Warm. Flat seas. A big sky showing more stars than anybody knows what to do with. Better yet, they were six days out and had bagged nearly six tons of scallop meat. With that treasure in the hold, and more coming up in every tow, he remembers dreaming about the payday ahead: wads of presidents ain’t nobody knows shit about, except how smooth, all silky-like, they feel slipping in and out of a pocket.

He stops to raise his coffee mug and makes a toast. To the Magnificence, he says, and swallows. Solid her, he adds, and only needing a coat of paint to look young again. Christ, her Cat always purred, never a sputter or a cough; feed her diesel and she’d go as she gulped. Every inch was built in oak or ash. Hardly a splice in her. Tell-ya, they don’t make trees like that no more and, no sir, they don’t make boats like the Magnificence no more. Look around today and it all be steel. Steel. Everywhere steel.

He twists his neck, left-right, to see if anyone’s listening. We’re the only ones at the counter, but he keeps his voice low, saying, While trouble was cooking, he was off-watch, asleep in his bunk, until the bilge alarm sounded. He says that noise is something you neverever, no, want to hear again. It cuts right through you, a knife-like ripping out gut and brain. He reckons several seconds went missing before he put one and one together and realized, holy shit, there be all sorts of twos. Maybe a false alarm. Maybe not.

Again, Sword looses a low, one-note whistle and this time says, Screw answers. At sea, only dead fellers got the time to wait for them things. He remembers running out of the fo’c’sle like some sort of big-shot king, not caring about nobody or nothing but his his own royal ass. Once he saw the emergency gear in place, his mates still aboard, he says the king-feller died and he rejoined the crew. When the skipper yelled, Launch the raft, he was all aye-aye, cap’n-boss-sir.

There was no saving her, the Magnificence, he says, and says it again. Only a million pumps could’ve kept her afloat. Her shaft be gone, along with the prop. Slid right through the stuffing box and from the amount of water coming in, the stuffing box might’ve disappeared, too-like. No sir, he can’t say how such a thing happened and can only guess it be another mystery of the sea. The place got lots of them, he adds. All he knows for certain is how speedy-like disaster arrived: from Dreamland to Mayday took less than one minute. If that bilge alarm wasn’t—

Fatima cuts him off, breezing through the kitchen doors, her voice booming: Hey, Sailor, what will it be? Without waiting, she answers, The usual, of course: Breakfast Plate Special. Scrambled. Wheat. Joe first.

As she heads to the coffee stand, she asks Sword, How’s the food, mister?

Cosmic, he replies, and bites into some cold toast.

Yous, too, the same, she says, and winks.

Sword and I watch as she prepares the Bunn-O-Matic drip coffeemaker. The instant hot water exits a nozzle she strokes the unit’s chromed dome and turns our way. Don’t-ya hate
f——ing storms?

Killers, Sword pipes. A mess of trouble. He labels himself a storm victim unjustly detained on shore. You know the saying, he adds: The lower the barometer, the taller the trouble.

Fatima wiggles a hand as if defending herself against a no-see-um and moves to the picture window set into the cafe’s south wall. It overlooks New Bedford Harbor, a working waterfront servicing fish, fishermen and America’s largest fishing fleet and is half the reason one sign outside the restaurant says, in large red letters, good food & view. With her face tight to the glass, her breath condensing on its surface, she gives the elements a piece of her mind. Damn, damn-ya, weather. Hate-ya, like-bad. Okay, she concludes, grabbing a fish tote filled with dirty dishes, and heads for the kitchen. Back soonest, she purrs in passing.

It’s dead...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Anchor
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0385720130
• ISBN 13: 9780385720137
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: SC; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/; ; CL MODESTO LAFUENTE 41; Madrid; Madrid; Spanien