Fall 2000 Charles River Review: Fog

The only reason I decided to write this story of Ruthie and Seth--as if I were telling it to someone sitting here with me--is because I don't know what else to do. I make it a point not to gossip. Who is there to talk to up here at the north end of the island, anyway? Except for Ruthie. And besides, what happened has already happened, and no one can do anything about fog.

A little over five years ago, Ruthie and Seth moved next door to me. Our houses are only 15 feet apart with that old snow fence between. Then there are the cedars, two white pines, the dirt road, and the Bay. I like being alone, have been for many years now, but I got used to them being here, though we've never talked much. Seth puttered in the garage and made repairs; Ruth did schoolwork, gardening, and house projects. I could hear their sounds, but they didn't bother me. She sang to the music on her stereo; he thumped on anything he could get his hands on, a drummer without a drum. Her voice was soft like a murmur, except when she got excited, then it sharpened. His sounded more like the bark of a playful dog. Both of them were friendly enough. Right off the bat she made bread for me, and he offered to help with my firewood.

They were schoolteachers on the mainland, you know, but it was summer when they moved in, so they weren't teaching. Some days I'd go out to hang the wash and I'd see Ruthie lying on her stomach with her ear to the ground, like she thought she'd hear something down there. Other times she'd be flat on her back with her eyes closed, then she'd turn over and I could see she was watching a bug. I asked her once, "What are you doing lying on the ground?" "Oh, I'm just listening to what's going on down there and I like to feel the earth next to my body. Sometimes I wish I could burrow like a vole. Does that sound silly?" I said, "No," and I didn't say anything else. I used to do quirky things like that, too. I still feel the tickles and aches of the earth, but I'd never met anyone else who did. I didn't tell her because when you're older than 70, if you tell things like that people think you're senile, but at 30, I guess you can get away with it. I might tell her now that Seth's gone.

Ruthie's a little bit like me in other ways, too, even though I'm old and she's young. She's small and strong. Actually, I'm growing smaller, I think, and I know I'm not as strong as I used to be when I rowed my skiff out to meet the draggers coming home. For five years Ruthie and Seth went out in that little boat of theirs, sun and rain, ice and snow, on their way to school. It was a fiberglass shell-fisherman's boat, open with just a console and a windshield to block the wind. One day in an awful storm they got all the way to school, and it had been canceled! Imagine! When Seth had the flu a couple of years ago, Ruthie took the boat to school alone, eight miles to the other side of the Bay, every day for a week. I said to myself, "Good for you, Ruthie."

She liked being out there on wild days. On the worst of them, I'd wait for a chance to hear a story. After dinner she always emptied kitchen scraps at the compost bin. The wind would be blowin' a gale. I'd time it just right and go out to get wood for my fire. The Smith boy down by Homestead cuts for me on the Thulen Farm. My woodpile is just on the other side of her compost bin by the back door. "How was it out there?" I'd say. "Oh, pretty blowy, but the color of the waves," and she'd drift off in the middle of her thought, "the color of the waves makes me wish I could paint--the greens and blues--and the way the colors change." She'd say it kind of dreamy like. She seemed so happy. Then she'd be back in the house doing whatever else it is that teachers do at night. Their lights went out early and their house was quiet. I love the quiet of the living at rest, so different from the quiet of the dead.

And sometimes the dead scream.

When Ruthie started teaching at the island school, Seth took the boat to work every day alone. I could tell she worried about him on bad days. She'd be out there--a little person on the hill watching a speck in the distance--till she couldn't see him any more. In snow or fog, she listened for the sound of the engine as it started up. She knew when the boat had planed off by the steady whine. It's hard when you're not the one in the boat, harder to wait.

I heard her worried voice. It was sharp like mine, that is, like mine when I used to have somebody to worry about. The morning of the accident I heard their voices outside the front door. Hers was sharp like a coyote's yip, then Seth left for work in that awful fog.

Seth grew up on the island, like his father and his grandfather Ethan, but Seth had gone away to school and hadn't been back to the island for a long time. Ethan was sweet on me when we were young, but he left the island and married a girl who left him after a couple of years. She ran off with a Newport sailor, leaving Ethan with a toddler. After the child grew up, Ethan came back to marry me. I never asked why he got sidetracked like that. The flame burned hot for both of us. That was enough for me.

And then I lost him.

When I first saw Seth, I gasped. Years and faces got all mixed up and I thought it was Ethan coming back for me. Dark hair. Wind-burned face. Handsome. He was a piece of Ethan living next door. Ruth always put out her hand to touch me when we talked--even over the fence. But Seth, when he reached out, I could never touch him, as if I'd burn to a crisp, if I did. And the look in his eye. The crinkles and the blue-green that sparkled.

Seth's whole family were fishermen, his father, his uncles, and his grandfather Ethan. They were part of the sea. They knew its danger, but none of them had what you'd call fear of the sea any more than they'd fear themselves or each other. Seth, he had a shell-fisherman's boat, but he wouldn't be a fisherman. Instead he taught children about jellyfish, about striped bass, blue crabs, and harbor seals, and about wind and tides--and fog. He told me one day he wanted to teach his students to keep the sea and its creatures safe. He didn't like the big rigs, like the draggers. Maybe--and I don't know this for sure--maybe after he heard the story of Ethan, he figured they were too dangerous.

The day of that awful fog, I knew Ruthie would beg Seth not to go to work in the boat, and I knew he would go. There's no saying who's right and who's wrong.

We don't usually have fog in February, but there it was. That morning from my bathroom window I saw Ruthie sitting on that bench over there, on the rise that runs down to the water. She had her face set toward the upper Bay, and she had her arms wrapped around in her brown shawl, hugging herself, like she was holding body and soul together. I didn't dare go out. I felt shaky and kind of sick. It was cold and you couldn't see a thing, not even the moorings in front of our houses, a couple of hundred feet out. She should have been getting ready for school. She teaches the little ones on the island. I knew she was listening for Seth's outboard. Sound travels a long way in the fog.

She told me later she heard Seth's engine roar away from Toledo's Dock, down the way. And she heard its whine in the distance. Then she said she heard a crack, like a shot from a gun. And a shout. That's all she said. And, of course, everyone knows the rest.

Last Friday night my bedroom window was open a crack and so was hers. It was four in the morning, very dark and still, and I was listening to the great horned owl in the big white pine, trying to hear whether it was the male or the female calling. Then I heard a shriek like a woman in awful labor with a child coming hard. But I knew Ruthie was not having a child.

Then Ethan's last day and my own pain came flooding back just as it has so many times before.

It is a pink and blue mirror-calm morning in late December, just before the holidays. The sun is still below the horizon. The pinks and blues reflect off the water through a haze like a gauzy blanket. Ethan hums as he finishes dressing, and he picks up his gear. He loves these trips beyond the Bay to the edge of the Atlantic, especially on such magical mornings. His sea-blue eyes sparkle. We look right at each other as he kisses me good-bye.

As in a dream he rows out in the little wooden dinghy, barely big enough for his bulk, a giant in a toy boat, pulling the oars together, creating his own rhythm. Then he loses his color in the haze and becomes a silhouette in motion. I cannot see him climb aboard the dragger, and I shiver, tremble really, thinking I'm coming down with the flu.

For me--except for feeling sick--this is a beautiful memory that plays as clearly today as it did 50 years ago. If it were only this scene, I could be at peace. If it were the sea that he loved that had taken him. But my imagination is stronger, and I hear his screams. He is caught in the dragger hoist, both arms. He goes round the hoist crushing and bleeding as the crew tries frantically to close it down, but the machine eats him up and what is left is not Ethan, but a mass of blood and flesh.

I know Ruth's shout, because I have shouted like that so many times at that desperate hour before dawn.

So when it was light and I knew she'd be up, I went around the snow fence and knocked on her door. She seemed to know I'd be there and she invited me in for tea. The little round table by the window facing the Bay was already set with two cups, just like mine used to be after Ethan's death when I hoped somebody would come in. She poured the tea from her brown porcelain pot and sat across from me, holding her cup as if her hands were cold. Her eyes were dark and ringed with pain and lack of sleep. I wasn't sure if I should say Seth's name. We talked about the ice that's moving down the Bay and about seeds. We both order seeds in the thick of winter. It's a way to bring spring home sooner.