LEAVING MAINE

Jimmy Pullen looked across the stern of the muscular boat, past the wild white plumes of sea spray created by the twin engines below, and discovered his brother’s face. Although only two years separated them, they looked quite different, apart from clan features. Mace’s had become a Maine face, seasoned and ruddy. Jimmy considered his own budding tan, his careful clothes and dark body hair. By comparison Mace, with his balding head, deep facial lines and chest full of white hair looked easily the older of the two.
The water was indigo, like an old glass bottle shimmering in the late August sun as the boat now lurched, and slowed to a trolling speed. Mechanically the two brothers began casting lines out in hopes of finding a school of horse mackerel, or possibly an errant striped bass. It had been an exceptionally wet summer and the water was still too cold. Nothing much had grown in people’s gardens all summer long. Nobody doing outdoor work like Mace had been busy much, and the cloudless day out on the water felt somehow like a wasted opportunity. Jimmy cast his line out into the craggy rusted iron colored rocks of Dyce’s Head and began the slow jerking motions with his rod tip. He looked at his brother again, happy, whistling an old do-wop tune, inscrutable.
Big Chief, the owner of the boat re-lit a joint he had been saving for just such a convergence as this: a stolen sunny day on cerulean seas, fishing lazily along the coast with his childhood friends, the reassuring sound of the Oakum Bay bell buoy gently bonging in the background. A huge man, he was as nimble as a barn cat, and despite his size displayed the easy motions of lifelong athleticism. He took a puff of the skunky smelling weed and pointed it at Mace as he tried to hold in the contents of his lungs. ‘Here ya go Macie boy’ he gasped. Mace shook him off with a quick look, and Jimmy noticed a little cloud of sadness cross his brother’s brow, supplanted in succession by, pride, shame, and finally relief. It was all so complex thought Jimmy. Why? The joints were never passed his way anymore, not for a long time. He wanted to say to Mace ‘Go ahead if you want to, I’m not my brother’s keeper’. This would have been said half in jest, but the weight of it would have been aimed right at Mace’s heart, and it would have been a cheap shot, so he let it go. There had been enough cheap shots already.
Finding himself smoking alone, the Chief looked initially sullen, and then considering the boon to himself, laughed and said ‘Ahhh, I remember the time when I wouldn’t have gotten this thing back if Jimmy got a hold of it’ and he erupted in deep laughter that shattered the mood, and then it was gone, with all three laughing and taking the easy way out. Jimmy looked out towards the looming shards of rock and the glittering waves crashing against them endlessly and eternally, thinking; nostalgia gets us into these situations and just as often it gets us out.
Suddenly, as the Chief was navigating the boat through a minefield of lobster pots, Jimmy felt a tug at his line. Assuming he had snagged one of the pots he released the drag and reeled backwards. But then the line jerked crazily and his pole bent down almost into the water and he knew he had a fish on. ‘Got one!’ he yelled, and quickly pulled back on the rod cautiously to set the hook. By the gravity he felt at the other end of his line he knew it was a striper, and he also knew it was big, at least a keeper. The excitement spread quickly; Chief slammed the boat into neutral, sending up a gurgling spew of smoke and fumes, while Mace quickly reeled in his own line. The three men had been doing this their whole lives, and reactions were ritual, automatic and unquestioned – everyone knew their part, and all other matters became irrelevant.
With the molten sun smiting his neck, Jimmy steadily let line out to the big fish until he saw the salty black of his spool through the last of his mono filament line. The fish was too big for his tackle, this they all understood by now. Chief began reversing the boat to buy time for Jimmy, who cautiously tried to pull back and gain some ground, but it was impossible and he was just holding even. If the fish decided to dive down he would lose it.
The initial excitement of hooking a big fish turned into workman-like reality for all three; Chief with the boat controls, Mace ready with the gaff, and Jimmy, who felt like he had a Volkswagen bus on the end of his line. After an initial series of runs the large fish was playing possum now, sitting thirty feet below the boat annoyed and disoriented. Any small movement at all sent electric currents up through the line and into Jimmy’s hands. Fifteen minutes had gone by and it was a stalemate.
Jimmy looked up at Mace, who smiled nervously but genuinely and kept up a constant stream of chatter, ‘Try to get some line back” he said, ‘See what he’s doing’. But they both knew that the fish was in control. Jimmy was using a medium action rod with eight pound test line. Then, just as Jimmy was starting to get annoyed with all the free advice, he thought he felt a little give and looked up to see if Chief was still reversing the boat. He wasn’t. Jimmy gave a cautionary pull on the rod and it gave back just enough to let him feel the fish’s weight on the other end. ‘Jesus’ he said, ‘this thing must weight fifty pounds at least’.
But the line was giving way, and he started to take it back slowly, pulling the rod up and then reeling in the reclaimed line. By now a half hour had gone by and Jimmy was getting tired, but the excitement overrode his fatigue. Mace came in closer and poised the gaff over the stern. Jimmy had reeled in at least twenty feet of line now. The big fish wasn’t fighting any more, but just being slowly pulled up through the varying hues of blue green. It was also tired of this game.
Worrying about all the things that could go wrong – was the line old, had he tied the knot well, would the small reel stand the pressure, would the hooks bend from the strain – Jimmy momentarily forgot how much line he had taken back, and just at that moment he and Mace looked down intuitively, and saw a great silvergreen flash in the water as the fish rolled over on its side. It was no more than ten feet below, and it was huge.
Once they saw the psychedelic reflection of it shimmering below, they both knew it was the biggest striped bass they’d ever seen in these waters. ‘Oh my god!’ whispered Mace, ‘Jesus, be careful Jim!’ The Chief came over to look, and the picture below them still wasn’t entirely clear - it could have been fifty pounds or a hundred. ‘That’s the biggest striper I’ve ever seen’ proclaimed the Chief in awe.
‘Maybe it’s not a striper’ offered Mace.
‘It’s a striper all right’ said the Chief. As the only true Mainer in the boat he would have the ultimate authority, and the two brothers deferred automatically.
Gaining line by increments of a few inches every few minutes, the fish was now almost within gaffing range, and Mace was hanging halfway off the stern with the Chief holding him by the waist. All three knew that their only chance of landing it was to get it through the gill and hang on. The fish was now only a few feet beneath the surface, breathing deeply and on its side. It was massive. It looked to be at least four feet long, and Mace was almost within reach of it with the gaff. In a moment of total clarity that Jimmy would remember the rest of his life, he looked down and saw his tiny Phoebe silver minnow gently, precariously hooked at the hinge of the great bass’ jaw. It was hardly even hooked.
Looking down into the glassy water Jimmy saw the aluminum shiver of the gaff as it moved down. He saw Mace lower it close to the bass’s black bullet head, its gills opening and closing with great laboring and movement of water. The gaff was below the fish now and it was a matter of catching the open gills just right and then pulling. The line was taught, and Jimmy kept wondering about how the lure looked on the fish’s mouth – he could see the whole lure perfectly…
Then a flash, a splash of boiling water, and the fish was gone. The gaff, already through the gills, jerked cleanly out of Mace’s hands, was flashing down, a flickering lazer sinking behind the phantom shadow into the depths: A fantastic rocket with one last power booster. Jimmy looked at his pole hoping for another answer and there was the snapped line flapping in the beautiful breeze.

II

The story still gets told every summer, as the greens of June and July morph into August’s deep blues, browns and tans. I hope I’ve stayed true to it - being the one with the pole in my hands, it might be easiest for me. Yes, it’s a fish story; the one that got away, and the one that three friends witnessed and lived and never will forget, the one that belittled all petty ideas for an hour one sunny, breezy afternoon in Maine.

CENTRAL PARK ZOO

Recently I have started writing a few vignettes


It was a Sunday, and we had just been to the Zoo. When we came out it was suddenly dusk; what film directors call magic time. Alex was in charge of Mace and me for the afternoon, and we’d had hot dogs and ice cream earlier, but this didn’t stop me from lobbying for a soda when I saw the Sabrett’s cart. Mace wanted candy. We had eaten enough junk food said Alex, and he would be in big trouble with our mother if we’d ruined our appetites.
Just then two black kids who looked a few years older than me walked up and said to Alex, ‘Yo mister, can you spare a quarter?’ The kid who asked had a sneering smile on his face and a small afro, with a red and green pick sticking out of the back. His green T-shirt said Kung Fu Fighter in Olde English style lettering. His partner was wearing a brand new jean jacket, pressed khakis and a pair of maroon suede Pumas with black laces.
Alex brushed past them saying, ‘No, sorry guys’ and the kid with the Pumas said,‘What’s up with that?’ Then the kid with the afro pick said, ‘Yeah mister, what’s up with that?’ I turned to Alex shyly and said, ‘Why don’t you give them a quarter?’ But Alex just kept walking and tugging Mace along with him by the hood of his sweatshirt, so I had no choice but to follow. Looking back I saw the two kids make faces at us and then move on to some other people. I turned the phrase over in my mind a few times, ‘What’s up with that?’ It was like magic.
I couldn’t understand why Alex, a lawyer, couldn’t give them a quarter when they were clearly poorer than him.
‘You can’t just go around giving money to everybody who asks you for a quarter…nobody gets a free lunch’. He said.
We came up the steps in front of the Armory, and I was trying to understand the part about the free lunch when suddenly Alex became Alex again and said, ‘Let’s stage a fight, ok guys?’ I started to say that nobody had asked him for lunch, and it was only a lousy quarter they wanted, when he started the old routine again. ‘C’mon guys, you know what to do…Jimmy, you and Mace start fighting and I’ll break it up…wait until we get in front of that lady first…’
And it was funny. Mace ran ahead saying, ‘He’s bigger than me…lay off’ and I pushed him into the lady, and then we were both pushing and had each other by our sweatshirts, when Alex jumped in and said, ‘OK now boys, break it up! I’m sorry ma’am…I don’t know what to do with them, they’re like cats and dogs’. The lady had full red lips and was very pretty; she wore black sun glasses and little Chinese slippers. She put her hand on Mace’s head and said, ‘You boys are brothers aren’t you? You shouldn’t be fighting, now should you?’ She looked at Alex and smiled. I said, ‘Well he started it! ’And I gave Mace a shove, and then she said ‘Well you’re his big brother, so you should set the example’. Alex said ‘I’m sorry to bother you, I don’t know what to do with them anymore’ and then he started scolding us as we walked away.
Then we were running up Fifth Avenue along the park and laughing, and we didn’t stop until we got to the big steps in front of the Met. Alex said ‘C’mon now let’s get across the park before it gets dark’ and we started hustling our way across to his place on Central park West.

PADDY MAC

In my adolescent years my best friend was a tall, rangy kid named Patrick MacIntyre. He was a year younger, wore cloudy thick glasses and stood a good five inches taller than me, so people always assumed that we were in the same grade. But there were other differences too. Paddy Mac said ‘ain’t’ and ‘don’t’ instead of the longer versions that had been drilled into me, along with other terms that were part of folklore I didn’t fully understand. We knew each other through our fathers; Big Mac was a cop, while my own father was often busy exploring the other side of the law. But they had come up together in Irishtown, and on the rare occasions when my old man appeared in my life to take my brother and me for the weekend, we sometimes went to their house.
Pat and I were fast friends, as he had an affable way about him that appealed to me, and his humorous simplicity was a nice break from the chess match of my own mind. Simply put he was easy to get along with. His own mother had died of cancer a few years before, and I also identified with his sense of life being less than fair.
Spending time at his house, which I did more and more of as the years went by before High School, was like a vacation. Whereas my house was tainted by privations like powdered milk, government cheese and food stamps, the MacIntyre house was solidly middle class, and we would get things like scrambled eggs and bacon sandwiches for breakfast, and Tropicana orange juice. In my house we drank Tang, which was just another powdered drink, whether the astronauts drank it or not.
It was an Irish American home, and all the kids went to Catholic School, something I didn’t really understand, but which felt exotic. It was palpably different from the vaguely Presbyterian upbringing I had known, and my mother’s Scottish kilts and hymns. If I spent the night at Pat’s on a Friday we would usually be allowed to ‘sneak’ a beer or two from his old man’s well stocked refrigerator, something unimaginable in my house. So we would sip our golden Michelobs (‘the good stuff’) and talk about sports and girls while Big Mac silently drank his vodka in front of the flickering TV – even at that young age I could see he would never get over the loss of his young wife.
Another plus was his older brother Robbie and his gang, who were a constant source of new and provocative information. It was Robbie Mac who told me about a couple of St. Paul’s girls in my grade who were ‘easy’ and ‘gave it up’. If I could only meet them! I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but I was more than ready to find out, and the name Lizzie Myers had me in an almost yearlong trance. If they were there having a party down in the basement Pat and I were sure to be allowed a few beers, and one night I drank some Jack Daniels and got drunk, dancing to Kool and the Gang’s ‘Funky Stuff’ and J. Giels Band’s ‘You Got to Give it to Me’ with the older girls at the party. I had too much and threw up into the bushes off the front porch, and when I tried to get to sleep the bed was heaving and rolling and to this day my gut quakes at the smell of bourbon.
Pat and I used to peep through a small hole he’d carved in the bathroom door when his older sister Jody would take a long bath on Sunday. She was seventeen and in High School; her long, lissome body seemed invariably sun-kissed, her breasts like perfect upturned champagne glasses. Her anointment of lotions and sprays was the focus of much of my early masturbatory experimenting. She would sometimes give me special attention, calling me a ‘fox’ or ‘heartbreaker’, and it felt like heaven. I was warmly accepted by that clan, and it meant a lot to me – a hybrid from both sides of the tracks who didn’t know who to identify with yet in life.
My own house paled in comparison; small, untidy, cluttered with shelves full of dusty novels and well-worn furniture from my grandmother’s home - all miss matched. Even our old cotton sheets and pink wool blankets were from another era, and I often longed for a matching set of anything. My brother and I were forced to wear blue blazers and grey flannel slacks if we went to a family function, and eating with your mouth open, or with elbows on the table was cause to be sent to your room hungry.
On weekends my mother used to play opera records and sing along with them in her piping soprano. If Pat or any other friends were over I would die of shame, and eventually she only did it while vacuuming the house, so we wouldn’t hear (but I always could). She also had me reading novels by the time I was ten, and this was something I could never share with Pat. By the time I was thirteen I was living in the ether-world of fiction, and bubbling over with wonder and discovery one day I tried to explain that The Old Man and the Sea wasn’t only about a man and a fish to my bemused friends. Since nobody had read the book anyway it ended up devolving into a discussion about fishing, something we all loved anyway. I was writing poetry too, and when the teacher in sixth grade asked all the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up, and all the astronauts, doctors, housewives and future presidents finished and it was my turn, I said ‘writer’.

***

The last summer before High School we all hung out in the park daily, playing stickball, softball, caroms and horseshoes. We drank sodas by day, and sometimes beer by night under the tall pine trees; riding around on our bikes, spitting, cursing and anguishing over girls or the Mets. This was a time of great anticipation. It was clear that High School was going to change us, but we had no idea how. A lot of the Catholic school kids would be going to the High School, and this worried me because they freely used terms like ‘nigger’ and had in fact called me a ‘nigger lover’ on more than one occasion because I had black friends and loved the Jackson 5. This baffled me, and I couldn’t make peace with it. Were these the same friends who danced to Ohio Players and loved Tommie Agee and Cleon Jones?
As I prepared to take my annual vacation to my grandmother’s summer place in Maine, I began to sense how the social lines would be drawn, and why. Pat said ‘nigger’ and ‘coon’ because his old man said ‘nigger’ and ‘coon’ (so did mine for that matter). But I still had a stinging memory of the only time my mother ever washed my mouth out with soap, as a result of me innocently calling my brother a nigger when I was six years old. It was a lesson that stuck. I had friends who read books, and friends who didn’t; friends who thought about civil rights and world events, and friends who thought about cars and getting part time jobs (to pay for gas). Of course we all bonded over girls, the Mets or the Yankees and music, but I could see the sides being drawn up as easily as if we were starting a pick-up game.

***

In the winter of my Junior year I had just gotten my own first car, a canary yellow Plymouth Barracuda that had one blue door on the passenger side. Some of the brothers from Brown Town I got high with dubbed it the ‘Proper Bomb’. And it was a bomb. My mother had bought for me as a birthday present, from a graduate student at the University for two hundred bucks. I was unwisely driving it with a learner’s permit, from party to party on a Saturday night when I eventually found myself outside the house of an Italian kid named Moochie Mangone, who was a Senior and part of a crew that took classes that were inscrutable to me, like metal shop and mechanics. I was with my oldest friend Jake, who was part of the old gang and who had kept his ties with them, while I had not. He wanted to go inside, but I had my reservations. It looked like a big party though, and we were both feeling ‘nice’, so he convinced me pretty easily.
Just as we were walking up to the front door, who should come sliding out but Paddy Mac, and I was never so happy to see him. We had gone to the same school for three years, and even played sports together, but we rarely spoke much besides a cordial ‘hello’ when we passed in the hallways. But for some reason I was really glad to see him, and not just because I wanted him to ease us into the party. I was suddenly struck with nostalgia, and we ended up sitting down on the front steps and talking over a few cold Shaefer’s. We were both tipsy and feeling expansive, and eventually I proposed taking him for a spin in my new ‘Cuda’. He laughed, guessing how little I knew about cars, but off we went – leaving his girlfriend and Jake inside to negotiate the rest of the night on their own.
We ended up back at my house, where I had a joint saved for some late night headphone communing with The Wailers’ ‘Catch a Fire’. As we started to smoke, with the music wafting through our conversation, Pat became melancholy and I wondered if he was thinking of our lost friendship. I felt unsure of myself (as I often did when I was stoned) and didn’t dare ask, but mumbled something stupid that died in the air. Then he said, ‘You don’t know what it was like growing up with no mother!’ and his eyes were glassy with tears. I suddenly had a picture of his mom; a funny, vibrant woman standing next to their above ground pool with a drink in her hand, and in my grasping way found the words ‘She was a great lady’. He started to sob in low halting gasps, and it wasn’t pretty. Then I thought about my own mother and her long illness – feelings kept strictly under lock and key. But Pat knew it all, and had seen her have a couple bad seizures before, so there was no reason to act now. Then we both were crying, confidantes after all these years. I put my arm around him and told him I was always jealous of his home, mom or no mom. And then he surprised me and told me he had also been jealous of my ‘cool classy’ mother too – maybe simply because I’d had one. And in that moment I saw how lucky I was.