108 |
Jody was his name, I think. I remember his Popeye forearms and the constant lump of Skoal in his lower lip. Deckhand on the Captain John fishing boats. Filleting a fresh caught cod for a passenger one trip, he cut with a long, brine-bitten knife the fish’s heart out—pink, somewhat pyramidal, beating—and swallowed it. Then, digging knuckle deep in the fish’s skull, he said all cod over 25 pounds have a pearly stone between their eyes. I see him pulling out lumps of brain and finally, finding nothing, throwing the carcass into the wake, wiping his gristly hands on rip-kneed jeans, and lighting a Marlborough. A quarter mile off the tip of Fort Point, a pier stands about 15 feet from the water. Jutting out was what looked from the beach like a telephone pole. A dozen teenagers swarmed around the pier, huddling on top, scaling the
side or floating in the water below. One at a time they walked the plank to see who could get out farthest, and one at a time they fell to the tide. Balancing and heaving they walked, arms spread, grasping air before slipping, to hang a moment, silhouetted against the sun, and splash into the cobalt tide. I set out now in a box upon the sea
The memorial for drowned fishermen lists the names of hundreds of Gloucester men who have been lost at sea since 1623. The current memorial was built long after Olson was shuttled off Fort Point in an ambulance and Olson, The Maximus Poems, 373.