December 29, 1996
The bathroom walls are pink ceramic tile. On one wall several tiles are missing. Green and white wallpaper is taped (with scotch tape) over the missing tiles. We make our ablutions. The cat is still caterwauling wherever it is. I swear it's inside the walls. Or in the ceiling. Whatever. It needs to get laid bad... real bad..
I go to check out and return the video. The office door is locked. Nobody there except the golden who charges the door, growls, bares its teeth at me and barks like crazy. We are not talking friendly welcome barks. We're talking "touch that door and you're dead meat barks". I ring the doorbell. No answer from anyone but the golden.
Nancy comes over to see what's taking me so long. I'm standing on
the porch a safe distance from the door. The dog is up against the
door with teeth bared and a wild expression. If I so much as lean
toward the office, he positions himself to leap through the bottom
panel of the door. I reach to put the video and the key in the
mailbox. He presses himself against the door with fangs bared. I step
back. He steps back. Nancy suggests it might not be a good idea to
leave the video and the room key where just anybody could get them
and they could get wet in the intense drizzle that seems to have
engulfed us. I go forward a step to retrieve them. The golden presses
his bared teeth against the door. I leap off the porch.
Nancy, who loves goldens, says: "Golden retrievers aren't usually
guard dogs. This dog is acting strange."
Me:"This motel is strange."
Nancy:"It's the Hotel California - you can check out but you can
never leave."
Me: "You can leave but you can never check out"
I put the key back in my pocket and the video back in the room and we head off to Hearth and Kettle for breakfast. The apple walnut French toast , a house speciality, is superb. The coffee is adequate. We walk down to Caffe e Dolci and ask the guy if he can make sandwiches for us to take with us on the boat. He says no. We check out a few other places, which are not open, and decide we'll just bring snacks and worry about lunch when we get back.
Back to the room. The place is still there. That's encouraging. We use the bathroom and make another pass through the room to make sure we have all our stuff.
There's a 6 foot long red,blue, and gray wool scarf in the parking lot. A car runs over it. I pick it up and hang it over the railing on the porch. The golden barks at me.
Nancy goes with me to the office to check out this time. The guy is there. A woman in sweats in explaining in convoluted incomprehensible detail her trouble with dialing AT&T; long distance from the room. The manager explains how to do it. The woman tells her same story over again more complexly. The dog sprawls on the floor emitting a low growl, not as primal or frightening as yesterday's but still not exactly comforting. I'm wedged uncomfortably into the tiny office between the golden and the AT&T; lady who is getting weirder by the minute. Any second now the numbers to dial for long distance will become the formula for world destruction. She keeps explaining, increasing the length of the digit string and the complexity of her story every time. The dog is still growling softly, barely audible but definitely hostile. I give up waiting for AT&T; lady to finish and I slide the video and the key onto the counter under her elbow, mutter thanks to the manager and leave - quickly.
I keep expecting the golden retriever or the guy with the head wound to show up in my rearview mirror. Neither does.
Getting to the Tiger Shark is a relief. It's a bright red wooden research vessel tied up at the Hyannis town dock. When we arrive birders and seal aficionados are already boarding. Before we even leave the dock we've spotted a red-throated loon in the harbor. Remarkably un-shy and remarkably close to the boat. Cool.
Our naturalist, Rich, reports that Captain Mike has taken the Tiger Shark out already this morning and determined that the seas are smooth and the fog isn't too bad. The continuous drizzle hasn't dampened anyone's spirits. After a briefing by Captain Mike we're on our way out into Nantucket Sound to look for seals at Great Island and birds wherever we find them.
It's cold on the boat but our spirits are still high. We encounter more red throated loons, a common loon who comes really close to the boat - no binoculars needed for that one -, common eiders, surf scoters, buffleheads, and oldsquaws. All in winter plumage of course. Rich is really knowledgeable and can answer bird biology questions as well as bird identity questions.
When we finally arrive at the seal area, the fog is so thick we can't see much of anything, let alone the harbor seals. A few seals pop their heads out of the water and look at the boat only to dive again. In the fog, it's hard not to think we imagine them. The whole thing develops a dreamlike quality. A small green boat full of people looking for seals appears out of the mists. Rich correctly identifies "homo sapiens in green boat". Scott, our marine mammal expert, is not having much to do. People are exchanging stories about other trips and other encounters with marine mammals.
The lady from the natural history museum, who organized the trip, tells a story about how people react to a seal skull with teeth in the museum far differently than to a cute seal sunning on a rock. This reminds her of another story about her son's encounter with a seal while diving. It came right up at his face mask. I laugh and recount my encounter with a sea lion in the Galapagos. There I am snorkeling along among sea lions and fish and beauty, and a sea lion comes right at me, teeth bared, staring me right in the face just inches from my mask. Let's just say I violated the rules about not peeing in the national park. :-) Everybody loves this story and we get a good natural history lecture about seals, sea lions, how big their teeth are, what they eat, what eats them. We finally give up on seeing any more than the three little heads we've seen already and Captain Mike decides to take us out to the Hyannisport breakwater to look for birds.
At the breakwater, someone hears the distinctive peeping of purple sandpipers. They're rare on the Cape. Rich has been looking for them for 5 years. Everybody rushes to the side with their binoculars. Finally somebody locates the purple sandpipers. Much excitement and cheering. There are three of them on the breakwater. In winter they are a dark gray on top, light on the bottom. They're kind of round. Rich is ecstatic. The birders are thrilled. The people who came to see seals are disappointed. I watch the sandpipers for awhile and write down the sighting in my notebook. I feel high!
Back at Nancy's apartment after a fine late lunch at Caffe e Dolci, a hot vanilla for the road, and a leisurely ride home we commence searching her bookcases, book piles, book boxes for Moby Dick. We're on the waiting list to read at this coming weekend's 24-hour marathon Moby Dick reading at the New Bedford Whaling Museum commemorating the anniversary of Melville's leaving New Bedford. Nancy thinks it would be a good idea to dig out the book now and brush up. We don't find it.
We do find a bound collection of 1855 Harper's magazines. The real 1855 thing. Crumbling in my hand. Apparently she acquired it from someone who was going to throw it away some years ago. Flipping through it we find stories by Thackery and Dickens, an unattributed personal account of the Romanovs (which devotes more space to the four false Dmitri's than The Traveller's History of Russia, which I read this summer), and other stuff.
My favorite is a hilarious account of how Catholicism accounts for the lack of prosperity in certain European countries, particularly Italy. This is extremely well written bigotry. Totally bigoted, totally faulty reasoning, yet a "good read". I was reading it aloud to Nancy and we were laughing out loud at the absurd conclusions and admiring the turns of phrase. Finally the dust of the crumbling pages started to get to me and I had to stop reading aloud.
Nancy started leafing through to see if maybe there was a review of Moby Dick, which there wasn't because it came out in 1851 and this collection was from 1855. But what should she find but "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids", one of Melville's tales of the 50's. Nancy recognizes it. I wouldn't have, not being a Melville scholar. The magazine doesn't attribute it. There's no author listed. But it's definitely Melville. Definitely the first publication of this story.
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