Relay: The Last Day of Summer

Summer ended late this year — a whole month late, this week’s high temperatures notwithstanding. It wasn’t until October 21 that the summer sun delivered its last, loving rays as we unloaded a good few thousand lobsters and crabs from the Kim & Jake. 

The phone had chimed its text-message chime a few minutes before 7 a.m.: The Kim & Jake would tie up at 8. With a meeting in East Hampton at 11, I could work two hours at most, but there was enough time to stop for coffee on the way, and that was reason enough to head east, into the rising sun. 

I gulped the last, sugary gulp on the dock a few minutes before 8, and it was on with the boots, the apron, the gloves. The sun resplendent, I glanced north-northeast and wondered if that was Watch Hill across the gentle Sound, the breeze light and soothing — sensual like Blossom Dearie hitting the highest notes in a bouncy ragtime workout. “And you, you come from Rhode Island, and little old Rhode Island is famous for you.” 

Sometimes I am on the dock, a long steel hook in hand, and as the crew fill plastic crates with their catch and heave them from the boat, I drag them inside, one after another, where they are hoisted onto the culling table. Other times I am inside, where the lobsters, sorted by weight into larger crates, are carried to a scale and then to one of many tanks where they await the end. Here’s hoping for an auspicious rebirth, I think, as crate after tightly packed crate is dropped into the cold, cold water. 

The last couple of times, I’ve taken a turn on the boat’s deck and, once, climbed into the hold, crouching and surrounded by innumerable sullen and forlorn Jonah crabs, many hundreds of dagger eyes on me as I toss them into a tall bucket that, when filled, is lifted to the deck and poured into a crate. 

If there is one thing I know almost nothing about, it is fishing. But a few minutes of this and I do know one thing: I am not cut out for this work. Shouldn’t I be lying on an ocean beach, blissfully absorbing the last rays of summer? Yes, but no: The winter is long and I must earn what I can while the summer lasts. 

My short unhappy career concluded, I return to the deck and the captain takes a turn below as the crew work another hold. I raise the bucket, dump it into the crate, and turn the crabs upright. A claw closed on a finger will make a man cry, I’m told. For now, I must take their word for it. Fortunately, the beasts move slowly. 

Back on the dock, I gaze eastward toward Shagwong Point, site of so much, so-long-ago sunshine and merriment, and beyond. Summer. Endless Summer. The Endless Summer, like that old surf movie, or that Beach Boys compilation, multipart harmonies pouring forth like the midmorning sun on the last day of summer. 

The love of my life

She left me one day

I cried when she said

I don’t feel the same way

Still I have the warmth of the sun

Summer ended in the afternoon. Famished and unable to wait for a promised clam pie, I sipped lukewarm soup in the car, the rain starting quickly and then pouring down, the cover haphazardly thrown across the broken, leaking convertible top, me inside, drenched and in near darkness as an old man shouted angrily on the radio. Time to kill and nowhere to go. 

Go east, not-so-young man, go east, a voice whispered. Toward the rising sun. 

Or south, maybe. To the endless summer. 

But just go. 

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.