Boar Island

BOAR ISLAND

Published by Will Berkeley

Copyright 2015 Will Berkeley

Chapter

Boar Island, Bob Parks said and pushed a map across the table. It’s one of the Elizabeth Islands.

We were in the conference room of Penn Construction on the waterfront in Boston. We fixed infrastructure. Or we’ll be back next week to try to fix it. At some point we just give up.

Okay, I said and looked at the map.

The Elizabeth Island stretched from Falmouth into the middle of Buzzard’s Bay. Boar Island was the outermost island. It had to be the worst island in the Atlantic if we were getting it.

Six of the Elizabeth Islands are owned by the Forbes family. Cuttyhunk is public. We got Boar Island. What do you think of that Jack?

The whole conversation was geared around the fact that I was a midlevel Project Manager at Penn Construction whose opinion did not matter.

It looks like a unique opportunity, I said. Boar Island looked like a miniature planet Mars. The Forbes family doesn’t want another private island?

Boar Island has got environmental issues, Bob Parks said and tapped on the map like isolation clarified everything. It’s a nightmare even by our standards.

How did we get this opportunity? I practically gasped.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bob Parks said and snapped his capped teeth at me.

Is this an Abandoned Property? I asked and Bob Parks bristled up.

You think the Governor would need The Massachusetts Turnpike if he could make first class islands in Buzzard’s Bay? Nobody wants this. Not even the Park Service. It’s impossible to get on. Bob Parks laughed. The first building that I bought had a tree growing in the basement. Bob Parks slapped the table. And I thought that was bad?

I laughed unconvincingly.

All of my projects were the cumulative failures of others. The plans were not followed. The concrete was not mixed properly. The rebar never made it into the walls. The beams were too short. The piers were hollow. The land was inferior. The whole project was unfixable but knocking it down was never feasible. Apparently I was doing a barren rock in the Atlantic that looked like a bucket with a mop in it. The symbolism was not lost on me.

I asked, What’s the history of occupation?

Perhaps there was an abandoned asylum with a few leftover straightjackets that I could put on when resolving the problems of Boar Island became too much for me. A derelict padded room that I could claim as my office. Some lobotomy needles to tap up my nose with a wooden mallet.

It’s right up your alley, Bob Parks laughed. The first white man to set foot on the island set it on fire. The Indians scalped the daylights out of him. Pirates, murderers and thieves couldn’t civilize the place. A granite quarry and a leper hospital failed out there. The Navy dropped bombs on it from World War II up until Korea. There has been no human occupation for over a hundred years. There is no electricity or running water.

I asked, How bad is the environmental?

We had to waive it, Bob Parks said.

What did the inspection find? I asked. Is there unexploded ordinance?

The State wouldn’t allow us to inspect the island, Bob Parks said. The quarry is full of rainwater. The cliffs are sheer. Bob Parks laughed. This is all you.

How did the aerial reconnaissance look? I asked.

We didn’t want to upset the neighbors by flying helicopters over their heads, Bob Parks said. The Forbes family is an excitable crowd. You got the Kennedy compound right around the corner if you need to use the bathroom.

Bob Parks winked.

We were pretty cute on this one, he said.

How are we going in? I asked. Maybe this was my big opportunity. The dimensions of this job were enormous.

We’re going in light, Bob Parks said.

We’re going in light? I asked.

You got your climbing partner, Big Pete, and two girls, Bob Parks said. I got your broad right, the big tit one. But I don’t know about the other one. She vexes me.

I wanted to punch Bob Parks in the face.

What’s the intended use? I asked.

Wind farm, Bob Parks said.

Chapter

Big Pete and I were sitting on a cliff. Above us was a ten foot overhang that was preventing us from getting on Boar Island. It was blazing hot. The air was still. The humidity was pushing the temperature over a hundred.

We’re in a bit of a conundrum as we often are in this business, I said. It’s a good thing that we’re trained professionals. Otherwise I’d be nervous.

I looked down at Rebecca and Emily. They were sitting on a boulder thirty feet below. They were reading magazines. We had not even gotten on the island and everybody had already given up?

You’re not in heavy civil construction if you haven’t got any heavy equipment, Big Pete observed.

Do they expect us to build on this island using the powers of our imaginations? I asked.

That’s the only tool we’ve got, Big Pete said.

We’re not on a construction job, I said. We’re on a camping trip.

Penn Construction can go to hell, Big Pete said and readjusted himself on the cliff.

How is the Boar Island project coming along? I asked. Jack is imagining it into existence. He’s building an entire universe on a theoretical plane because we didn’t give him any fucking equipment.

Big Pete said, This has to be the worst property the company has ever bought.

I can’t imagine why nobody else wants it, I said. It’s impossible to get on.

We haven’t even started, Big Pete said. And we’re already in that unpleasant reappraisal mode.

Usually we can’t finish, I said. This time we can’t even begin.

How long is it going to take to get the permits to actually build a wind farm? Big Pete asked.

We’ll be out here until the Apocalypse, I said. You want me to climb the overhang?

Do we have another option here? Big Pete asked.

We call the trawler, I said.

Big Pete got a handhold into the cliff. He pulled himself up like he was doing a chin up. He had his fingers jammed into the cracks. He was hanging in front of me like a man on the rack. The symbolism was not lost on me.

Do you think we’ll get fired for lack of job performance? Big Pete asked.

There are a thousand employees on the payroll and they aren’t here, I said. I think it’s pretty clear that we’re expendable.

Maybe Penn wants us to populate this island, Big Pete said. Have babies with our female colleagues while we wait on the permits.

We can be the savages of Boar Island, I said.

We can sell gravel to tourists, Big Pete said and took his right hand out. He supported his entire body with his left hand until he jammed his right hand into a suitable crack. There is nothing else out here.

A gravel plant isn’t a bad idea, I said. Getting customers to show up might be tough.

Bring your own barge, Big Pete suggested.

Big Pete took his left hand out of the crack and hung from his right hand until he jammed his left hand into a crack that was farther away from me. There was an invisible tentacle connecting our bellybuttons for safety purposes. I would have foreshadowed a fall by now.

I think it’s time to get our resumes together, I said.

Big Pete said, Where would we go?

I can swing us into Cashman, I said. Do you want to build a highway across in the Middle East in hundred and forty heat? Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves: open sesame.

How did we end up in this racket? Big Pete asked dangling from his left hand.

I started out as a night watchman, I said. Sleeping in my truck was the highlight of my career.

There has to be something else that I can do with my math skills. Big Pete put his right hand into another crack. He had it. I’m too offensive for anything but heavy civil construction.

Grow a mustache and teach high school math, I said. Have sex with your students. Get on the news.

I’m not kidding about making sure I get hurt. Step on my fingers if you have to. I want a decent lawsuit.

Don’t worry, I said. The tentacle will pull me down after you.

Big Pete was dangling off the end of the overhang like an anvil hanging out a four story window. He was ten feet away from me and ten vertical feet above me. He was hanging on the edge of the overhang with both hands like he was on a chin up bar. It wasn’t an enormous feat in the annals of rock climbing but we preferred to take the construction elevator up whenever possible.

Here we go, Big Pete said.

He started swinging himself back and forth with his legs. He swung his right leg up. He hooked it on something out of view. He disappeared up the overhang like a three headed dog had eaten him. Big Pete let out a shout. A cloud of white birds exploded off the cliff. Emily started yelling that the birds were an endangered species. We had to find a more suitable location to get on the island. I ignored her.

I had spent plenty of harrowing evenings roped to cliff walls while climbing mountains recreationally. I had ceased mountaineering for this very reason. And there was no way that I was going to attempt a higher cliff on the island after swimming to it.

I glanced down at Rebecca. She didn’t even look up from her magazine. I could have been persuaded to rope myself to her for the evening. Maybe we could stumble across a cave to breed in. I had been invited into her sleeping bag for survival intercourse during a blizzard when the temperature dipped below freezing and perhaps it would happen again. Unfortunately Rebecca appeared to be more interested in the outcome of the magazine article that she was reading.

The article was presumably less predictable than what Big Pete and I were doing. Rebecca knew that we were not going to swim to another pitch. Big Pete popped his head back down from the overhang. He must have killed the three headed dog. He was laughing.

What’s so funny about killing a three headed dog?

Chapter

Wait until you see all the birds we’ve got up here, Big Pete said. Penn Construction should open a wing joint to feed all the gravel workers.

Those are endangered wings, I said.

Big Pete’s entire waist was bent over the overhang. He had anchored himself somehow. Perhaps he had tied his tentacle to the three headed dog. The birds were settling down. They were getting accustomed to his crude way of handling things. He had probably urinated on them to establish the pecking order. Emily was shouting that we were lucky it wasn’t mating season because the birds would have attacked us by now.

Does Emily know you have several guns? Big Pete asked. She will have you prosecuted.

She will be lucky to get off this island, I said.

Big Pete said, Apparently the birds are cannibals. There are skeletons everywhere.

Was there some sort of symbolic significance here? What was the meaning of these birds? Where they harbingers of doom? How to read all these symbols flying past me?

The quarry is one hundred acres, Big Pete said.

A hundred acres, I practically shouted. The island is only six hundred and forty acres.

It’s separating us from the main island, Pete said. Two thirds of it is full of water.

The entrance of the island was underwater. At least it was only a hundred and sixty feet wide. It was a long but narrow problem. I never liked it in the first place. They should have quarried it all. I was stuck with this stick of stone in Buzzard’s Bay and now it was underwater? Who is in charge of this catastrophe?

It’s pretty bad to begin with, I said, regaining my Project Manager composure. Are you sure it’s full of water?

I’m positive, Pete said.

Maybe with the correct explosives I could fix it.

How deep is it? I asked.

Deep, Big Pete said.

Is it really that long? I asked.

It’s about ninety football fields long, Big Pete said.

I’m not going to wiggle out of this one apparently, I surmised.

Emily was shouting at Big Pete to stop disturbing the birds. Human disturbance was a major factor that influenced their breeding. Emily told Big Pete to shoo off any seagulls that might be up there because they preyed on the little birds. Do you see any seagulls up there? She was going to have to be dealt with.

You’re going to have to lend me one of your guns to shoot Emily, Big Pete said.

I have the .50 caliber, I said.

Swing my gear bag up here, Big Pete said. That gun was a bad idea.

I needed an elephant gun, I explained.

I swung the gear bag up to Big Pete. He caught it.

Rebecca was still buried in her magazine.

The quarry is a nightmare, Big Pete said.

It can hold, I said. It’s been a nightmare for a hundred years.

It’s your nightmare now, Big Pete said and stuck his head around the overhang.

To hell with that quarry, I said. I’ve real problems to face this week.

What could be worse than the quarry? Big Pete asked. We have to cross it.

What’s troubling me, I said trying to articulate my romantic confusion. "Why doesn’t Rebecca want