A tropical storm hit Prince Edward Island. Ninety percent of the trees in Cavendish were plucked by unrelenting winds. Unprepared islanders suffered. Unforeseen consequences carried an instance beneath the river's ice, through aluminum, through my skin—down to the bones of my hands.
The storm had rocked the mussel lines in the shallows of the bay. If you dove in to inspect them, the socks appeared normal, though we knew they were tangled. We left those battered lines for later in the season, hoping they'd prove resilient.
Dave was the wharf manager—head man under Dana, the owner of the leases. He was a typical Islander. More than that, a Rustico man. As my Grammie would say: five-foot fuck-all and has a moustache.
He wasn't tall, that's true. But he had a foundational moustache most men couldn't foster. Stronger than he looked. Humbled by youth, strengthened by duty.
The crew on Dave's boat were always the top picks. That year, he had Ian "Fish" Gallant—a man so casually cool Keith Richards would want his autograph, and Tom Waits would likely have a man crush and write him several poems. A tough son-of-a-bitch. Dave's best friend. Also a true Rustico Islander.
Next was Justine, a world-traveller from Marseille. She'd lived alone in China for two years, and now she found herself in a backpacker's inn in downtown Charlottetown, working alongside Dave and Fish like they were a trio designed that way on purpose. She was a protégé. She could drive the boat with confidence and without novelty. She shied away from no task, an accidental pioneer for women on our wharves.
Then there was me. Dutiful. Loyal. Hungry. Capable. On my way to being well-seasoned. Reckless but effective. Admired and respected.
After a mostly enjoyable but difficult season in the wake of the storm—whose name I've forgotten; it wasn't Fiona, I wasn't home for that one—the time came to harvest the battered lines.
When the HIAB boom arm surfaced the first sock, our hearts sank. As the shells of the traumatized bivalves broke the mirror of the bay, they shattered from the sock. And what became clear was the literal cost of the storm—what we'd lost, and what we might still hope to salvage.
Innovation came in the form of a ten- or twelve-foot square aluminum pole, tipped with a ring holding a basketball net—tied like a nautical hobo's bindle. A harvesting laborer would wield it, standing on the washboard or the edge of the blue mussel tanks.
The line would be pulled to the surface—but not breached. Instead of cradling a sock or two over and over to drop into the tank, we changed the method: Dip the net down past the tip of the submerged sock, much like double-socking the spat.
But while double-socking is about leaving something behind, harvesting is about taking everything you can aboard.
A single sock of mussels—what? 50, 75, 100 pounds? That, piled into a net on the end of a ten-foot aluminum gaff, was hefty, to say the least.
To say more would be to say this: I alone took up this task.
I passed it off to green leaves only for an hour or two at a time—more for demonstration than relief. I dipped, scooped, and pulled nearly every one of those socks onto the boat.
And in doing so, I wore a deep wound between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. A wound that constantly tried to heal through relentless reopening. The mesh of my inner gloves—the cotton ones beneath the rubber—became embedded in my flesh. At the end of each day, my tired, pained body had to tear those gloves away from my devastated hands.
I did it so no one else had to. This was understood by all, and respected. I was as proud as I was hurt. And silent, nonetheless.