Trawlers: A Novel Excerpt by Mollie Wohlforth ’15

The following novel-in-progress was begun by Mollie Wohlforth ’15 during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November 2013. Keep going, Mollie!

For the record, this isn’t a story where things get found. Some things just fall through the cracks never to surface again. And I’m not going to make something up just so this story might have a better ending, cause that’s not really how real life works. It’s messy, and you lose things.

CHAPTER 1

            We all live in Michiasport, Maine, right on the coast. There’s one main street that snakes its way up the hill from the harbor where everybody lives, and another that goes to the next hill, where the town is. Everything looks like it stepped right out of a Robert McCloskey book – the tiny school, the people who have known each other for generations, and the entire town that revolves around our main industry. Lobstering.

            Every lobstering family has at least one person up by three am who slips into their waders and boots and goes out to check on their pots, all while the rest of the town lays snug in their beds until the sun starts to rise. In families with teenagers, they are the ones who sacrifice their morning to scour the ocean floor for crustaceans before they go to school, in hopes of furthering their attempts to move out of this place. Our class has had the same 152 people since fetal development, so there’s really no way, or place to hide. Our high school is in an old, converted fish warehouse, ‘cause ten years ago some kids thought it would be fun to burn down the old school building, and the only standing structure large enough for the five hundred high school aged kids to move into was the old warehouse. The entire thing smells like old lobster shells and new paint, but we do have a view of the harbor through the window-covered eastern wall, which would be amazing, if I hadn’t seen it every day of my damn life. Luckily, I had Sylvia for sixteen glorious years of my life. She was my best friend, the kind who wiggles their way underneath your skin and into the very make up of your heart, and lives there forever.

            Sylvia lived two blocks away from me, and every morning at 3:35, she rang my doorbell and we walked five minutes down to the harbor together, our boots and waders slapping the pavement. We customized our waders as a way to dispel the darkness of 3:30 am that inevitably sullied one’s positivity. Sylvia’s were covered with jingling pins that always got stuck in her mouse brown hair; mine covered with swirls of colorful paint. We clamored through the misty darkness over the slippery docks that creaked and slapped the water with every footstep, our laughs and chatter punctuating the early morning calm. We checked all the lines, the oil, and the hauling equipment, fixed what needed fixing, and then started up our families’ boats, the Zephyr and the Magnolia. After however many tries the engines needed that day to turnover, we would help each other push off from the dock and I would putter out in Magnolia to our fishing ground, Sylvia in the Zephyr, right on my tail.

            Both of our fathers, friends since high school, fished in northwest finger of Larrabee Cove, which really meant that Sylvia and I fished in the northwest finger of Larrabee Cove. It was our place; nobody was ever there except us, and nobody was ever there to find us. I don’t think anybody even knew that the cove existed, as its opening was masked by a tiny spit of land that acted almost as a breakwater. When we were there, it was like we were lost to the real world, in a complete disconnect. When we got to the cove, we cut the engines, listening to their vibrations bounce across the rocky beaches to be absorbed by the wall of green pine that blanketed the entire Maine coast. Sylvia drifted over to her father’s orange and yellow buoys and I drifted over to our purple and magenta ones and started to haul.

            We pulled up the pots till our shoulders ached, and sometimes found them filled with glistening blue and orange bodies of clamoring lobsters, sometimes filled with disappointment and maybe a few taunting fragments of seaweed. As soon as the first pot of the day was up, gulls started to flutter around our boats, cackling, pooping, and swooping, trying to snatch up a lobster. Once a gull actually got one off of my deck, but Sylvia thought fast, and, sticking her fish net up in the air, snagged the utterly baffled bird. I’ve never laughed harder than at the sight of miniscule Sylvia trying to keep a handle on the net, which contained a gull flying up at full force in a panicked haze, practically taking Sylvia with it.

            During the summer, our days went on forever, and we lived in Larrabee Cove. We declared it our kingdom, and everyday, after the afternoon check was over, we spent hours upon hours doing absolutely nothing. Then, we would return to the real world, where we then spent the rest of our days living at each other’s houses, sewing the dresses we wore everyday, talking till our voices went numb, singing and painting together, running around in the woods that stretched out far behind the main road, having adventures in between the trees, wandering. Summers were made for adventures, Sylvia always said, so adventure onwards we did, breaking probably every rule and causing both of our mothers at least a dozen gray hairs every week. Every day was finished with a milkshake at the diner around the corner, where we recapped, and decided whose house we were sleeping at that night. Then we would do it again. Lobster, adventure, repeat.    

            However, September always loomed on the horizon, and with it brought the brutally early mornings we were all used to, but they were now followed by a day’s worth of classes. Around 7:15, the sun would start to rise over the pine trees of Larrabee Cove, staining the sky robin’s egg blue, which was our cue to start back. By that point, the rest of the older, childless lobster men would be out, gathering their own pots, and as Sylvia and I passed, giggling and chatting over the thrum of the engines, they laughed to themselves in that salty old manner sea-hardened men often have. “Sylvia and Phoebe give the gulls a run for their money,” they would say.

            When we returned to the harbor and unloaded all of the rubber-banded lobsters (Sylvia was the fastest bander in the state of Maine, she liked to say), we changed quickly and then walked to our standing 8:00am breakfast reservation at Pamela’s diner, where we grabbed the bagels and coffees that always stood waiting on the counter. With a smile and a “Good morning honeys” from Pamela herself, we trudged to the school building, and joined all of our other classmates in the rush for the locker rooms to shower off the fish scent and change into non-waterproof clothing. Our school was accustomed to this; they had special hooks in the showers to hang wet waders that by first period were as decorated with the various shades of brown and green rubber. However, our waders stuck out – not only were they decorated, I was also about a good six inches taller than every other girl in our school. Coupled with my fire engine red hair, Sylvia’s five foot one inch frame, and our odd style of home-made vintage and fishing boots, we were quite the pair walking down the hallway to first period. 

            Classes began at 8:35, and then Sylvia and I were parted for the next six hours, as we didn’t have a single class together. Sylvia was a math person, whereas I was staunchly allergic to numbers, which meant that I didn’t have anybody to talk too for the majority of my day. Sylvia and I had been friends for so long, it hadn’t even crossed my mind to talk to new people as other people grew their own cliques, so as everybody developed networks of friends and acquaintances as high school progressed, I had slowly become the quiet girl who sat at the back of the class, thinking of things to tell Sylvia later, when we would go out for the afternoon lobster runs. Those afternoon runs were our gossip session for all the dirt we gathered throughout the day. After the afternoon’s fishing was over, Sylvia walked me to my door and said, “Tomorrow, Red?”

            I replied, “What else would I do?” Sylvia chuckled each time, without fail, and walked away.

            Then, almost out of the blue, the police found Hannah Staedler’s body in a ditch on the side of the road. A junior, just like us, she had been raped and beaten to death. “This type of thing just doesn’t happen here,” everybody said, but as the story leaked out into the town, it became clear that yes, in this case, that type of thing did happen here. The entire town balked and practically shut down, crippled by grief, but it took a backburner in my mind as something started to change in Sylvia.

            I started to know something was wrong when she stopped chuckling, and I really knew something was wrong when she stopped calling me Red for my genetically confusing mass of naturally sanguine hair.  She started to come late to get me every morning, wearing her black waders, if she came at all. Some days she missed school, and our afternoon pot checks were silent as I worked, often alone. She would never laugh with me when she did show up, and she always seemed drained and tired. She ignored my calls. Then, she stopped going to school.

            I had at first passed it off as her being shaken up by Hannah’s death, but I couldn’t ignore that a week went by without me seeing her. Finally, I walked up the hill and rang the doorbell of her wooden, gray-shingled house that was consumed by the wildflower garden we planted in middle school. We considered ourselves old souls, with normal activities consisting of gardening, quilting together, vintage shopping, and making our own clothes, Sylvia painting and me reading, all usually to the soundtrack of me singing. Ever since Sylvia discovered that I had a “talent” (her word, not mine), she forced me to sing wherever we were. She always joked that Larrabee Cove gulls knew as many songs as the top forty radio, which was probably true, given the amount of time I had sung out there. There was just something about that place, maybe it was the wall of rock on either side, or maybe it was the trees pressed right up to the edge of the pebbly beach, but music echoed around the cove, surrounding you in first and second rounds of echoes. It was like singing to an opera house of trees with an audience of only Sylvia.

            Opening the door only a crack, her mother greeted me, subdued, face creased with worry.

            “Sylvia isn’t feeling well, honey,” Ms. Layman murmured, clearly trying to keep her voice lowered.

            “Can I just come in to see her for a minute?” I pleaded. Mrs. Layman’s face softened as she saw my genuine concern.

            “She hasn’t gotten out of bed today. Do you have any idea what could be wrong with her?” Now it was her turn to ask something of me. I could tell that she was just as baffled by her daughter as I was.

            “Nothing. Nobody’s saying anything about her at school, and she didn’t tell me anything.” I felt tears start to well up in my eyes. Sylvia tells me everything.

            “Phoebe honey, I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you see her like this. She’s lost a lot of weight; she’s really not doing well. Maybe try back later in the week or so, or I’ll call you if she asks for you, but right now really isn’t a good time. Sorry sweetheart.”

            Kindhearted Mrs. Layman shut the door in my face, and I started to cry. I stepped back through the flower-lined pathway and looked up at Sylvia’s purple curtains. They fluttered, as if she had just let them go, and I could have sworn that I saw her peering through the crack in between the pieces of fabric.

            I walked home, utterly confused and hurt. Why didn’t my best friend want to see me? What the hell was even going on with her? Was it something I did? Why wouldn’t she let me see her? What could be so bad that her own mother wouldn’t let me in the house?