Page 20 of On Dry Land

Isaac whistles lowly under his breath, and Lex’s eyebrows shoot upward as her eyes bounce between Dryden and me.

“Shall we go in? We’re wasting daylight,” Dryden comments, sounding annoyed with the lot of us. I step back to let him pass, leading the way into the boat shed.

I stand along the far wall, out of the way as Dryden and the rest approach the Maiden Seas and continue their conversation, voices low but echoey in the high-ceilinged room. The boat looks huge, sitting out of the water and raised up like that. It’s a little intimidating, to be honest, and I can’t help but imagine being out in the middle of the ocean on that boat. Stuck, engine dead, and a winter storm moving in. It was probably terrifying.

By the time Dryden makes his way back over to me, I’ve managed to properly freak myself out, thinking about it. I’m sure most days are fine and nothing bad happens. But shit, what if something goes wrong and you have to call for help? What if you call for help and they don’t get there in time?

“If you need to use the bathroom, there’s an outhouse on the north side,” Dryden tells me, tucking his gloves in the back pocket of his jeans so they dangle out by the fingers.

“What?”

“You look like you need an enema.”

I snort. “No, I was just…thinking about the boat breaking down while out on the ocean. I thought it sounded scary when you mentioned it before, but now…” I look at the boat, sitting peacefully. “I don’t know.”

When I meet Dryden’s eyes once more, they’re dark and contemplative. Steady. He listens to me like I’m spinning gold with my words, giving me a level of attention I’m not used to. It’s not as though I’m saying anything particularly interesting, but maybe he’s just short of conversational options, and I seem interesting by default.

“Pop the trunk,” he requests, brushing past me and out the front door. I fumble, fishing the keys out of my pocket, and click the button, hearing the beep through the metal walls of the shed. A handful of seconds later, he’s back, roll of rope looped over his arm.

“I can watch? And film?” I clarify, trailing after him as he strides toward the far side of the warehouse.

“If you’d like,” he replies flippantly, not sounding as though he cares at all.

I peek over his broad shoulders at the back corner of the shop, eyeing the stacks of what are clearly lobster traps. They appear brand-new, and if I had to estimate just by looking, I’d say there are dozens, at least. Maybe more. So many questions pop into my head, I have a hard time holding them back.

Dryden sets his rope down next to a pile of, well, a whole lot of rope. There are different colors and, I notice when I look a little closer, different sizes. There’s actually a whole lot of stuff piled back here, none of which I know a name or a use for. I turn my body as I scan it all, letting the GoPro clipped to my jacket do all the heavy lifting with filming right now. Dryden slips off his jacket, draping it over a workbench, and drops his gloves on top. Pushing the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows, he ignores me, kneeling down next to one of the bundles of cord.

“What’re you doing with that?” I ask. I’ll be quiet if he wants me to, but most people enjoy talking about their work. Most people I encounter blossom under a little attention, and I’m hoping Dryden is one of those. This all looks like a whole bunch of random crap to me, and I’m dying to know how it all fits together. He glances up at me.

“Replacing fifty of my traps out there”—he points in the direction of the ocean—“with new ones.”

“Why?” I take a step closer. Sitting back on his heels, he considers for a second. I wonder if he’s going to brush me off, ask me to be quiet and let him get this done. Sure, a lot of people like to talk, but they also like not having their time wasted. He obviously has a lot of work to do, and I doubt I’ll speed that up by making him provide commentary. I add, “If you don’t mind me asking.”

Standing, he brushes a hand over his chin. If it weren’t for the blank expression on his face, I’d think he was uncomfortable.

“It’s a constant struggle for us to keep equipment functioning,” he answers finally. I nod, understanding the “we” in that sentence to mean fishermen. “The quality of things degrades very rapidly when you leave it in the water. The traps, the boat”—he nods toward the Maiden—“all of it ages quickly.”

I nod again. That makes perfect sense.

“So, all of this is used for each trap?” I gesture vaguely toward the piles of stuff scattered about in organized chaos. One side of his mouth lifts up into a semblance of a smile.

“Traps, dog bones, float rope, flat rope, sink rope, floats, spindles, weak links.” He stops to consider, glancing around. “Sharpies,” he adds. “There’s more that I’m forgetting, but you get the idea.”

“Holy shit,” I mutter. “That’s a lot of rope.”

“Indeed.”

He kneels back down next to one coil of said rope, and I take the opportunity to pull out my other camera and affix it to the little tripod. I’ll set it up at an angle so that I can get different views and stop worrying about making sure I keep my chest facing him. I’m not sure what’s going to be more popular once this vlog is finally edited and posted, the lobster content or Dryden himself. People respond to beauty, and he has way more of it to offer than I do.

Fiddling with the tripod in my hand, I’ve almost completely forgotten about the presence of other people in the shop with us. Earlier, I’d thought maybe I’d ask Lex and her crew if it was okay for me to watch, but now I’m glad I stuck with Dryden. I can’t tell if he’s just not an enthusiastic person by nature or if he’s annoyed by my presence, but either way, he hasn’t asked me to leave him be. Even if nobody else in the world appreciates the video I’m getting now of him measuring out a length of rope, at least I’ll have it for myself.

I kneel down across from him, and he glances my way before dropping his eyes to the camera. When he turns his head to the side, once more paying attention to the rope, I notice how long his black eyelashes are.

“Making a jigger,” he tells me before I can ask. Delighted that he offered up the information on his own, I nod and stay silent, putting the tripod down and sliding it gently across the floor to try and get a different angle on him. “I have to cut up a bunch of this for bridles, and the jigger is what we use to make sure it’s all the same length.”

“Unless you cut that one wrong.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. Knees protesting the concrete, I sit back on my butt and cross my legs, palms flat on the cool floor as I watch. He doesn’t make any small talk as he works, just uncoils a length of rope, holding it against the jigger, before pressing it against the floor and cutting it. Tossing the one he just cut to a slowly growing pile, he does it again. And again. And again.