Inside our cottage, there’s room for two beds, two chairs, and a small table. “You’re not supposed to take the glass,” he whispers, “but I let my daughter take it, I let her fill a bucket. Take off your shoes, let the baby crabs nibble your toes.” Then he tells of another place-a hidden cove where we can find sea glass. “Tomorrow, you two should walk down to Thompson Island. As my son and I hoist our bags, the first drops begin to fall. The wind has picked up, gray clouds closing in. “These still here? I remember them from when I was a kid.” We step out from the car. We find a line of tiny cottages, painted blue.
The GPS directs us down a thin gravel drive. She knew better! Damn well knew the dangers, but she did it anyway.” He explains he’s trying to get his daughter some intervention, some therapy. Her frickin’ mother did drugs while she was pregnant. “Turns out she has a learning disability. “Light of my life!” He tells me about how she loves music, how she sings and dances, how she teases him mercilessly. “They nest somewhere over there, I think.” While my son studies the tree line, Jason turns to me, his voice low: “How old is your son?” He’s twelve, I say. “You like raptors?” My son musters a nod. I tilt my head to gaze at the soaring bird. Silently, he nudges me and points to an osprey flying far above the horizon. My son sits next to me, his long hair hiding his thin face and shoulders. Quietly he adds, “I appreciate your business. Plus, the water’s too warm they’re harder to trap.” I shake my head sympathetically. How he’d fished in the lakes for smallmouth bass, dropped out of high school, worked in a quarry. In the forty-minute drive to Trenton, Jason tells us about growing up in Down East Maine.
#Burly men at sea into the deepening darkness free#
Would you rather be strapped in, helpless? Or swim free and try to make it to shore?” Though I nod my head, assenting, I glance down at the buckle stretched tight against my jeans, grateful for its presence. “Imagine if your car falls off a cliff into the ocean. “Basically,” he laughs, “this whole thing’s held together by duct tape.” As we jolt out of the Bangor bus depot, he catches my eye in the rearview mirror. We scoot across the torn upholstery, and he points to the exposed metal ceiling. “Personally, I don’t believe in them.” He waves us into his sand-colored hatchback.
“Don’t wear your seatbelts if you don’t want to,” our driver, Jason, says as he stands by the car and tosses magazines and food wrappers from the back seat into the trunk.