The Oyster Cages We Floated Back Out

The First Cage

The first cage went in at a quarter to eleven.

I got my hands on the frame, Kinsey got hers on the other end, and we slid it down the last ten feet of sand and into the creek.

It floated. The black frame came up and held, and the cage settled low in the water the way it was made to, and I stood there waist-deep in green water with my hand on it and breathed.

“One,” Kinsey said.

“One,” I said. “A hundred and ninety-nine to go.”

After that we did not talk much. We worked. Drag it to the edge, push it out, hand Kinsey the line, go back for the next one.

She would tow three or four in a string out toward the buoys, then come back for more.

I had my old red cap on, the one the sun has faded to a soft barn red, and a white T-shirt that was not white for long.

The olive waders kept the water off but not the sweat. My hair was stuck to my neck.

Kinsey stood in the skiff in her teal shirt with the tow line in her hands and the motor idling, and I want to tell you I have never been prouder of anybody in my life. She did not complain once.

By eleven thirty we had thirty cages back in the water, tied loose to each other in a raft out by the lease.

But the line was still lying in a heap on the sand, and the line was the hard part.

The Line

A longline is a heavy rope that runs the length of the lease, anchored at both ends, with the cages clipped along it every few feet.

Ours was a little over six hundred feet. Without it, the cages are just floating loose.

Clayton had cut it at both anchor buoys. The anchors were still down there in the mud, which was a mercy. The buoys were still marking them.

I would only have to run new line from each buoy down to the anchor chain and splice it back to the longline.

But somebody had to hold the longline in place out there while I clipped two hundred cages back onto it, one by one.

Kinsey could not run the skiff and hold six hundred feet of rope in a falling wind at the same time. Nobody could.

I was standing on the beach trying to figure it when I heard a diesel come around the point from the mouth of the creek. A low, steady knock I would have known anywhere.

It was Booker Hudgins in his workboat.