Chapter Fifteen and 1/2: Freeze-Frame
With the winter wind in my hair, I leaned my bike through the first right after JoJo's house, at a sign for Break Island Avenue The skin on my wookie ears was cold so I pulled the rabbit fur flaps down to cover them. I pedaled gently past the 'pedestrian only' back entrance to Bone Harbor Elementary School where Mr. Cohen had taken us on biology trips in 1st grade. We had captured caterpillars and trapped them in jars until they emerged from their cocoons in flight or else died like grapes on a vine. We had canned tadpoles and had picked up trash in a tiny corner of the world I thought was boundless in 1977. In 1991, I pedaled past the Bolkos’ house, where Piper “Pipe” Skinski would stay when he returned from University of Connecticut for his vacation, and on towards Break Island.
Shipleigh Bridge connects Bone Harbor with goat island, where one small house stands surrounded by Bone Harbor. Across the river is the busy Naval Shipyard, with Christmas lights on the cranes in December. Poets earn their granola from such a vista.
North
Maine. Lobster boats pull their tie lines taut, jealous of the empty single boat wharves (vacant wombs) nearby.
East
Sea. Barnacle covered Granite causeway, shipped from mountains and covered with sticky asphalt, points east at Break Island.
Patches of green hag's hair seaweed float near bleached Styrofoam lobster buoys in Bone Harbor.
Shrouds of sea grass cling to forgotten rope leading into the cold sea.
South
Langdonville. Innumerable wounded nooks of wood and short gray cliffs hemmed by White Pines and leafless Maples on the banks of the Sagamore Creek.
Luckless fishermen stand jigging their lines on either side of a no fishing zone that protects small boats travelling under the bridge.
West
The great mouth of New Hampshire, the Chickanoosuc River, yawns.
Salt ships and sea water and fresh water from Great Bay meet violently under Bone Harbor's chin.
The river is seldom slack, never gentle, is either rushing east with the tide or struggling west laden with flushed hopes.
The river sneaking beneath these rusting bridges is a creature dominated by strange forces.
The river runs two ways as though searching for a way around some fixed barrier.
North, across the river, sits a white institutional building on a forbidden island. This was the Bone Harbor Military prison, chosen for its proximity to the Bone Harbor Naval Shipyard, which is actually in Marshford on the Maine side of the River. Criminal offenders from the shipyard needed only to be transferred to a crew boat for a five-minute trip seaward to the ominous gates of the prison. I’ve watched the prison deteriorate in the sun and weather year after year, falling apart since I first moved to Bone Harbor in 1976. Bars rust in the windows. What more is there to say about buildings that pass into ruin? No one knows what to do with it.
Elwyn Avenue ends where Bone Harbor begins. Islands and moored boats dot the harbor. A one-room cabin leans on one of the near islands. The red tile roof probably collapsed before I was born, but the walls still stand in a circle of berry shrubs. I envy the hermit who lived there in an oil skin coat, eating raw fish by candlelight and listening to the walls creak under a winter storm, waiting for a chance to check his traps. He had his own sock to warm his nights, his own sacrifices to make.
The second island is bigger than the first but still only takes about a minute to cross on a bike when the wind is blowing east. A granite causeway leads straight to Break Island. The distance is too far for an arch bridge like the others and since there is already access to the inner harbor there was no need to build another bridge. For the half-mile, I rode 10 ft above the water on a paved bed of boulders and granite fill. The Chickanoosuc, Maine and the sea lay to the north. To the south spread tree-lined Break Island inlet and Sagamore Creek and Bone Harbor. A moderate sea breeze buffeted the sailboats in the harbor and struck me like the back of hand. The remains of a stone loading dock, perhaps the hermit's profession, crumble nearby. A few remaining granite blocks point due west to Bone Harbor. The story of this ferry died with those buried at the Break Island Cemetery, which is across the street from the wooden sign announcing the end of Bone Harbor and an invitation from Break Island.
These grave dwellers had families and pets and dogs and a favorite baseball team. They had boxes of photos and old letters. They too watched the fog, set ablaze by the Fort McLeary lighthouse, roll in from the sea to the sound of horns and bells. Their eyes also stung when the beam from the lighthouse caught them full in the face. Cemeteries such as the Break Island Cemetery and the South Street cemetery only know the secrets of the past. Still, when I pass a Cemetery I feel only slightly more nostalgic than I do when pedaling my bike around Bone Harbor. The Wraiths and I have carved our own headstones in the branches and streets of our town though the names and dates fade in the sunlight. Only I possess the potions and chants needed to bring them back to life. As you will see, that was the deal I made with Toddy Bonigan. I had chiseled my own history on the fields and parks and hallways of Bone Harbor and each day was called to polish these memories. I could not grow old, but I could not enjoy a youth secured, as it was, by betrayal.
Some of the bones may have built the original causeway or even operated the flat Gundalow to and from Bone Harbor. Certainly, fishermen lost at sea or assumed dead own granite names in the Break Island Cemetery. American Flags waved near a number of graves along with small steel medals. The existence of the Naval Shipyard, and the lurking dangers of Nuclear Submarines a mile away, indicated the freedom those men had died protecting had not yet been fully secured. So if more blood needs to be sacrificed in defense of Bone Harbor, then these graves will welcome more men who have earned two dates under their names, with cotton flags to blow in the breeze.
Forgive me, but Break Island and Bone Harbor have no voice of their own. The Timewraiths taught me this lesson early on in my service to them. Without me they'd be forgotten like the deckhands on the bulky Clipper ships built from local wood in local ports to sink in distant seas like a gravestone with no name. Pictures would remain without a song. Like Bonigan once told me: Dead Men tell no tales, but the living are often just as silent. Such anonymous players do nothing to fertilize those who follow. Future tribes are forced to start again naked and ignorant. Towns like Break Island are as mute as Lorne, the kid who got hit by a car on Lincoln Avenue when I was in fifth grade, but they aren’t deaf like Shawn. Towns hear everything and their memory is hidden somewhere on the dirt paths and playgrounds for travelers to interpret. Just because I grew up in an age of information doesn’t mean the details won’t be lost. Details such as the earthy smell on Break Island and the silent flight of a sea gull, or the weathered lobster signs near the W.W.II memorial anchor are endangered. Whatever voice we lend to houses, trees, towns halls and cobblestone streets, whether it is critical or praiseful, is still a voice and preserves the stormy history of a land. On this point, the Timewraiths and I agree.
I don't stop at the graveyard on the west shore of Break Island because it sits at the bottom of a hill leading onto Break Island. I prefer to maintain my speed up the hill. Anyway, I am the crypt keeper of my own graveyard. Why dote over the uncelebrated dead? So, I rode on and up the hill and down into the main part of the island, coasting under bare trees. Once onto the isle, the town of Break Island presents herself like any other Northeast seacoast neighborhood. A primary school and a white town hall and a post office and church all hug Break Island Avenue. The road is about three feet from some flat faced houses with wooden doors that look like somebody built a box then cut a rectangle in a wall to make an entrance. Residents have to be careful not to walk out the door into an oncoming car or bicyclist. I could almost ring their doorbells as I cruised past a tall hedge and approached a crooked stone wall.
History doesn't teach itself, Oggy. The houses are mute but human lips lie.
What are you talking about?
What happened that night when you were listening to The Fat Boys?
I told you, I was listening to The Beastie Boys. And I wasn't driving that fast. It was Ray Knight. Ray Knight caused the accident.
I heard differently. History doesn't teach itself, but human lips lie.
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