Making Bail

We were in Waterville when the calls came from the Cumberland County Correctional Center. I couldn't accept the collect calls because I didn't have an inmate connection account established and try as I might, the telephone and internet system would not let me set one up. But the brief messages that were allowed through went like this.

"It's Ricky..."

"Need $2500 bail money..."

"My truck and climbing gear as collateral..."

I called the bait shop and let them know Ricky was in jail and when I got back in town headed for the docks. The Boss put up the additional money to spring him and I headed for the jail to see if we could make it happen.

When you enter the receiving area, past the surveillance cameras and the double doors, the tile floor and lime green walls look like any other institutional waiting area... except for the guards in brown uniforms and the heavy metal, locked doors. The woman behind the counter had dark hair, glasses and a loud voice. I stood in line behind a Somali woman and a 40ish man who talked nonstop to anyone listening. "Just want to bail my daughter out. This is bullshit. Hey, they've got an ATM machine here. Good to know for next time..." A little ADD.

The flow of people in and out of the locked door was constant. Guards, social workers, a black pastor dressed in black with a white collar, blond women in scrubs appearing to be medical personnel, administrators in ties. Some were wanded for metal before entering.

When it was my turn, I announced I had bail money for my friend. "Do you have $600 in cash?" she asked. Yes. "I'll call the Bail Commissioner. Go take a seat" The 24 gray seats were surprisingly comfortable and I hunkered down for the next hour to wait near the wall of coin operated pay lockers

There were pictures on the wall of the detention area. White walls, two stories of of prison cells surrounding a large open room with a glassed in, observation area overlooking. Gray metal railings, tables and chairs bolted to the floors. It looked fairly pleasant, but, no doubt, was the last place on earth anyone would want to spend time.

People came and went dealing with the issues of incarceration. "I need to pick up my boyfriends wallet and keys"... "When are visiting hours?"... "What are the charges this time?". Telephones rang and radios squalked . "I've got one from C and one from B2. Bring them down."... "No, I don't want to release my wallet to my mother. I want to talk to my case worker."

A man came out through the locked door shaking his head and walked up to the officer behind the desk. "'I don't deserve to be here...' how many times have I heard that." The officer said "I don't deserve to be here either. They all have the same story, year after year after year. It never changes." After he left I walked up to the counter and struck up a conversation with her. How long have you worked here? "22 years. Used to work out back but hurt my shoulder. 12 years out front now. I've seen it all. People wouldn't believe the way things are. It's not like on TV that's for sure." How do you keep from getting depressed, I asked. She thought for a moment. "The way I see it, you get what you give. Sure, there are some jerks, but most of them are decent. But it all boils down to, you get what you give".

We sat waiting. A lull in the activity, the only sound was the ventilation system and the hum and buzz of electronically activated doors being opened and closed... opened and closed. The sounds of incarceration. Out the window, the trees were brown and red and gold, the last of the autumns glory.

The bail commissioner appeared in the lobby. "Who is here for Ricky D.?" he called. I raised my hand and he pointed down the hall to a closed door right next to another locked door that said "Non-contact Visitations". I counted out the 6 $100 dollar bills and he pointed to a bench outside. "Wait there. He'll be out when I get the paper work done."

Half an hour later, Ricky walked out through the metal door wearing jeans and a tee shirt. He looked over and saw me and said "I should have known it would be you...". First stop was the corner store for cigarettes . He started making calls on my cell phone and I heard the story several times. "The only thing wrong I did was get out of bed. The baby was crying. She had been drinking. I hadn't even finished my cigarette when she had called the police on me. She said I threatened her, but I didn't. The girls were all there. They saw it. That's it. It's 100% phony and it's over. I just need to figure out how to get my clothes, my truck and my trailer, but the terms of my bail don't allow me to got near her. I don't know where I will live or what I will do for money, but I can't go back there."

We drove around while Ricky chained smoked and thought through his next steps. "Want a beer?" I asked knowing the answer before I asked it. "He looked at me with his piercing blue eyes and said "I need some beers, but it would violate my bail." Are you hungry I asked? "Yeah, didn't eat today. Traded my breakfast and lunch for a sleeping pill from a guy inside. But not now."Finally he said, "I'll just go to the docks." We drove down the wharf just as the crew was finishing up from a cold day of unloading herring trucks. They all milled around Ricky. "What they get you for? "Domestic". Oh yeah! Did you hit her? "No, I shoulda. "Yeah that happened to me once. Women just can't take a punch".

The conversation turned to me. "Hey, I read your blog and I'm not happy. You're gonna cost me my job and I can't afford that right now." "Yeah, and you mentioned my warrants. The last thing I need is to be tracked down." I apologized and promised to take down the offending remarks. I somehow knew this was going to happen. I'll have to find another way to write about this past summer while protecting the guys. Sorry boys.

The Boss and the Foreman came out of the shop and Ricky approached them to thank them for bailing him. The Foreman's comment was "I want to see you at 4:00AM tomorrow. You have $600 to work off." The Boss said "Go punch in. I've got a couple trucks coming." Ricky turned to me and extended his hand. "I'll call you", he said. "Maybe I'll come down to Georgia. Nothing holding me here now."

As I drove away, he was walking up the wharf looking for a hot cup of coffee and a coat against the frigid wind before he began his shift on the docks.

Parting Thoughts

My internal clock is still set on 'dock time', waking up at 4:00. Some mornings I can manage to fall back to sleep for awhile, but never past 7:00. I sneak out of bed and the apartment so as to not disturb those who can sleep. This morning I walked onto the street with the dogs at 6:30. Cold and gray, the bite of winter in the air.

The van warmed up slowly and Sam n' Lu shivered in the passenger seat. I found myself driving around the deserted city streets aimlessly. As I woke up, I began to notice that those streets weren't really deserted at all. The man with the shopping cart half filled with cans and bottles was dressed in a dirty snowmobile suit, his thick gray beard covering all of his face not covered by the wool hat pulled down over his eyes. He waved at me as I drove by and I wondered if he was someone I had met this summer on the waterfront, when the days were warm and the living was easier.

The elderly woman with a cane walking painfully down an empty Congress Street poorly dressed in a thin red windbreaker, the dark, black man with a hood standing on the curb watching. The old man who struggled stiffly to his feet from behind a brick wall dragging his thin blanket behind him.

The van seemed to guide itself to the soup kitchen on Oxford Street where dozens of people lined up waiting for seats to become available inside. Some were dressed heavily, with layers upon layers, and had spent the night outside sleeping in alleys and vacant lots. Others had left unheated boarding house rooms drawn to the warm soup kitchen and the hot coffee. I was too much a coward to park the van and stand in line with them, felt too conspicuous with my clean clothes and fleece coat.

Last friday afternoon I stopped down to Bubba's Sulky Lounge hoping to run into Charlie. My excuse was that he owed me $20, but in truth, I just wanted to see him again before we head South. He was standing outside smoking with a short, black eyed woman with 4 missing front teeth. She was drunk and laughing at he own jokes." You ever hear a chain saw? Runnn-nigga-nigga-nigga.... runnn-nigga-nigga-nigga... Hahahahahaha!"She told the "joke" over and over until I heard a voice from behind me on the street. "I no nigga" the shawled Somali woman said. She stood firm for a moment then turned and walked away.

"Chain saw woman" then turned to me. Her eyes were bleary as she looked me over. "You a cop?" she asked, " cause you got a cops face." Charlie jumped in, "That's Glen. He works down at the bait shop with me... where I'm the fork truck guy..." At this point words failed him and he started making noises and motions like he was driving his big, brakeless Clark Hyster around the shop. " Brrrrooooommm, Errrch, Werrwerrr, Gittygittygitty, Ma-HaHaha!" He went on and on and I laughed until long after he stopped.

We moved inside and stood beside the roaring fireplace, warm, safe. Charlie tried to repay the money he owed me, but I offered to settle if he would buy a round of "Jimmy Specials", Allens Coffee Brandy with a splash of milk. Charlie racked up the balls at the pool table and Jimmy told a story about how he was living with his first wife in the back of a Humpty Dumpty Potato Chip truck cutting fish with Charlie and had once seen him open a lock with an bent old square nail.

I finished my drink and walked over to the pool table. "I'm heading out now Chuck, going south for the winter." I put my arm around his shoulder. "You stay warm and out of jail". His face got serious and he wrapped his arms around me. "You comin' back next summah right? Workin' on the docks again?" "Maybe" I said and he gave me a toothless grin from ear to ear, hugged me hard and said "You come see old Charlie." Four years my junior, I squeezed him back "I will, young fella."

As I headed for the door, it all happend at once. "Chain saw woman" called out, "You got a good lookin face, cop. You can come back again." Jimmy started to dance a lick to the music on the juke box "See you next summer!" he called. Charlie lifted his pool cue above his head and began to hoot. "See ya, Glen! Gittygittygitty... Ma Hahaha!!" I stopped a second and enjoyed the remarkable moment, warm and happy in a waterfront bar surrounded by poverty, alcoholics, the homeless, before heading back out into the cold and gray.

A warm little dysfunctional oasis in the gloom...

The Dock Chronicles - The New Guy

My time working on the waterfront is over. It has been an experience of extremes of which I have written in previous blogs. But much was not written or, if so, not posted, so that I might continue to work unencumbered(and unscathed ) among the men on the docks whom I have grown to admire and who's friendship I value.

I kept notes in my trusty note pad of the goings-on over the summer and fall, a rich record of the experience, and hope to find a quiet place over the coming months to write the stories. My intention is not to, in any way, exploit these experiences. God knows these men have been, and continue to be, exploited by the system and hammered upon by society. They hold my deepest respect. I am proud to have worked among them.

Early in the summer, I wrote this short story and shared it with a number of friends and family.

The New Guy

He showed up at the bait shop at 4:00 AM looking cautious, on guard, as if he expected to be sucker punched at any moment. And a sucker punch is probably the only way anyone would ever get the draw him. New Guy was a brawler, six foot, solid with scared square fists and jaw. He spoke between tight lips, perhaps self conscious of his mouth of broken, missing teeth, an occupational hazard of a previous job as a waterfront bar manager/bouncer.

Three weeks had passed since my turn as the new guy. As the bosses’ cousin, I had been held at arms length by the seven man crew for the first few days. They watched and waited to see what the hell I was. At 58, I was the oldest man among them; Skully, the fork truck driver, with his tattoos, his off duty, black leather vest and dew rag was the only other 50 something on the crew, the rest in their 20’s and 30’s, maybe early 40’s. It was hard to tell. The working waterfront in Maine is a harsh environment and men don’t age well in it.

I shamelessly bought coffee and after work beers to crack the ice with these guys. That, and worked my ass off… silently. There was no job too wet and slimy that I didn’t jump into. And these guys do an incredible amount of hard, dirty work. Shoveling dead fish, spraying out totes of guts and blood, rolling 300 pound barrels of bait, slime and viscera pouring down your skins and boots, immersed in lobster bait, smelling like something only a codfish could love.

After a few days, they began to open up a bit. The first questions were “What do you think about legalizing marijuana?’ and “What do you drink?” They laughed when I told them I rode the “Silver Bullet” (Coors Light) and enjoyed an occasional medicinal brownie. The real test was whether I would keep my mouth shut when they lit up out back on the loading dock at 6:30 AM or found twisted tea in a coffee cup. In full skins and boots, I doubted I would float long off the end of the dock. Keeping my mouth shut was more than just wanting to be “one of the guys”.

By the second week, they worked me into their system. My primary value to them was to do the paperwork filling out bait slips tracking the barrels and totes of poggies, herring, redfish and mackerel winched down onto the decks of the boats, collecting the money. And in between shoveling fish off the floor, reefing on barrels and forking bait into totes.

By the third week, I watched in fascination as the waist of my pants became loose and the flab in my neck and face dissolved. My hands, soft from two years of driving around the country, calloused and toughened from daily exposure to the salt brine and manual labor. The pain in my muscles dullened; constant but tolerable as I cut back on the tylenol. Every now and then, I would tell a story from the road or from my years in the paper industry, another difficult work place. They listened, laughed, added another piece to the puzzle of the “old guy” in their midst.

Only 2 in 7 had a drivers license. Most make a choice at some point to give up driving.. and to continue to drink. At 4:00 AM the smell of alcohol is strong on their breath, even among the all pervasive stink of fish. Bleary eyed and hacking, the crew ramped up slowly as the boats and trucks lined up for loading and unloading. These early hours were the most onerous where the potential for getting hurt was most present. Conveyors clanging, people cussing, weaving their way across the shop floor dodging fork trucks carrying over-filled pallets of blue and white plastic barrels, a dangerous ballet of orange slickers in the morning dawn.

The “boss” is a yeller. It’s how he is heard above the clamor. And it’s how he runs the job. All those lectures at the MIT business school about participative management and an empowered workforce go right out the window here. From long years, the boss has learned how to keep this crew on their toes and as safe as possible. And in spite of the verbal barrage, they take ownership of their work, anticipating, backfilling, keeping things running at a frantic pace.

There is a hierarchy, a pecking order among them as there are with all groups of men. A few of the guys are only expected to accept abuse from the boss and they do it with a low grumble. Other guys take flack from all directions and the New Guy is among them.

The days are long and often hard. It is cool in the shop where hoses flow constantly, hosing the totes, flushing the conveyors, washing the blood and guts down the holes in the floors. On the docks, the weather prevails. Some days the sun is hot and uncomfortable and we fry in our skins. Other days we have to suit up in full gear against the wind and driving rain. Favorite days are gray and overcast when the crew will gather on a break to watch the sky, the boats and ferries maneuvering around the piers, sitting on barrels smoking hand rolled cigarettes, often in silence.

There is a resignation among then. Life has not turned out as they had hoped. But they don’t often complain. They know there are much worse places they could be. They have been to those places.

New Guy looked like he would fit in with the crew, but he is slow to jump in when work needs to be done. He’s not lazy, just cautious, watching the crew and the work flow. He worked as a tree climber, swinging high in the air with a chain saw, learned caution from experience. He’s nobodies fool.

Still, the crew ethic has no tolerance for hangers-back. Yesterday Dave looked at him and said “If you’re not going to do anything, go back inside”… and he did. It stuck in his craw and he repeated the insult facetiously several times during the morning. His mind is sharp as is his tongue. Had his family of origin been different, he could have easily been the CEO of some company. One day he said, “I wish I could just do it all again. I would have paid more attention.”

He looked rough this morning at 4:00, hung-over or still drunk, and they gave him the dirtiest job, standing under the huge bins of slimy fish as they dumped into the hopper, covering him with gore as he hosed out the totes. He walked out onto the dock after an hour, cigarette in his mouth, eyes glazed and hard, his face set in a dark scowl. “What’s up, Rick.” I said. “Just living the dream”, he answered. I chuckled at his dark sarcasm. He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt into the ebbing tide as the sun rose in spectacular pinks and reds down the bay.

As he turned to walk back inside he stared straight ahead into space with distant eyes and spoke low, more of a growl.

“The dream is dead…” he said.

Last Days

Uncle Bob died yesterday, the last of his line. Ryan and I drove up to Old Town to say good bye. Bob told me he read this blog every day Hope you read this one. You were one of a kind. We love you and we'll miss you.

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference


Robert Frost

And now there are two.

"props"

"Props" (respect) are not given lightly on the docks. Props are earned through hard work, demonstrated skills and, to some extent, through the reputation of past deeds. Of course, reputation is a subjective thing, but that doesn't diminish the appreciation of a good story, true or not.

The "Kid" is 23 years old, 6 ft 4", 240 pounds. He's not an outstanding worker, has no discernible skills, but he tells some of the most outrageous stories I have ever heard. Both sides of his head are shaved, the remaining hair, long and black. He is Native American, Sioux and Blackfoot. The crew calls him "How". When he smiles, which is often, his eyes smile, too. He suffers the verbal abuse silently, stoically.

He was born on a train in a boxcar somewhere in New Mexico. His birth certificate says he was born in a field. His mother and father were druggies, his mother shot and killed his father and then shot herself. as did his brother. He says it did not affect him much. What affected him most was the death of his dog, "the best friend I ever had...". He still grieves.

At the age of 16, he joined the Marine Corp and was sent to Iraq where he was severely wounded, losing the vision in his right eye, double knee replacement to his left knee and shot through the chest/spine. The doctors told him he would never walk again, so he got out of bed and walked from California to Maine. He was trying to reach North Carolina, but ended up here. The crew says it is because he must have been dragging that left leg and got him off course.

He owns 800 acres in Montana with 1000 wild mustangs and was offered $9 million dollars, which he refused. His medical disability of $2,000/month goes to his daughter who lives in Russia. He can no longer see her because the last time he was there he beat up 8 cops in a bar, was placed in a Russian prison and charged with "crimes against humanity".

Once he was without food for several weeks, went to an animal shelter to get food for his dog and lived off the 50 pound bag they provided him for a month. The other morning, it was 40 degrees and he was wearing a tank top, shivering. I gave him my rain coat. Later he told me, "Thanks. It's really warm, like sleeping in a trash bag."

He is fascinated by the various animal marine life that he digs out of the fish hoppers and keeps a mental list of the different jellyfish, butterfish, skate, haddock, monkfish, eels, dogfish, crabs which he collects in a bucket and brings to me with a big smile on his face. He is always hungry and I share my sandwiches with him, buy him coffee.

He smokes handrolled cigarettes clumsily. We were discussing the Bible one day and his comment was "I smoked the Old Testament once..."... used the thin parchment paper for rolling stock. One of the guys once said, "I always thought I might like to be a college history professor... or an English professor". He said "I always wanted to be a dinosaur"...

The other day the topic of discussion during coffee was scars. Charlie showed his 56 stitches in his scalp and told of the idiot who hit him with a beer bottle for asking for a cigarette. Another guy showed his 26 stitches from a pool cue, another 6 stitches from a fist in his eye lid. They looked at me and the medical scar I have down my neck from parotid surgery in 2006. I turned my head, pointed at the scar and said "knife fight".

Major props... couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.