Safe Harbor

7 - Kathleen-1

7 - Kathleen

My hands were clamped on the wheel of Stan’s Ford 150. I had had to swerve twice around a double-parked car, and once for a distracted lady checking her make-up while jaywalking. Each small turn of the wheel rattled the tools on the flatbed, and the passengers on the back seat.

It was bad enough that I had decided to walk from home to check the beach today. I had vinegar and a good first aid kit in my own 1995 Chevy. The Chev’ was high on its tires, excellent to roll on sand and mud.

The Dr. Salim’s Family Clinic would have what it needed to treat a jellyfish sting. I barely noticed the gaudy façades of the B&Bs, expensive shops and bistros lining the aptly named Ocean View Street.

I turned right on Safe Harbor main road, creatively called Main Street. I passed branching streets of the pioneer village with its big mature elms and maple trees and proud fishermen’s cottages. I was tempted to cast a glance at the end of Elderberry Street where my house sat, but not while driving.

My old neighborhood dwindled off at an abandoned field slowly reverting to wilderness, an old farm stand that Main Street sliced in two. The field provided a tampon zone separating the touristic area near the sea from the Safe Harbor town center.

On the left side of Main Street, a still-standing house was invaded by wines. Sometimes hardy children explored the crumbling structure that waited for a new owner. (There was a high barbed wire fence, mind you, but teens always found a way in.) On the right side, a field of wild grass stretched until it met the limit of the National Acadia Park, forested hills crisscrossed with trails like the one Maeve had followed.

A squat silhouette rose from the grassy landscape, surrounded by the gray patch of a parking lot where nothing was parked. Puddles of muddy water had congregated on the unequal asphalt. Most of the windows gracing the concrete building were broken.

My stomach knotted with acid resentment at the abandoned factory. The fish transformation plant, erected with dollars and enthusiasm, had closed four years ago, when it became clear that the bountiful catches of the past would not return.

Years before that, I had warned the town council about the fish population crash, about the new invasive species migrating north. The rising sea temperatures linked to climate change had contributed to jellyfish blooms, the worst of it occurring in the southern Maine coast in 2014. I recalled those floating mattresses of bulbous translucent bells of the Moon jellyfish, and golden hairy Lion’s manes clogging water ducts. Per chance, most of the deadly species of jellyfish, like the translucent blue box medusa, lived around Australia.

We might get more toxic species, I had told the Council, standing next to a colored cardboard poster showing pictures of those flimsy but deadly creatures.

They were too busy to listen. It did not help that half of the elected councilors were climate skeptics. My pleas crashed on their polite wall. Or on their polite commiseration with my personal losses. I was exaggerating the danger.

My one-woman (unpaid) safety committee had met with more rejections than I could count: refusal to fund a study on water quality, refusal to sample the fish farm wastewater, refusal to look into the pier structural supports…

The council, which had, over ten years, spent thousands and thousands keeping the fish canning factory out of bankruptcy (not counting the State’s help), did not want to subsidize more studies. Too costly, they had said.

(But when the mayor’s younger brother had proposed to build a new shopping mall, the money flowed in like water. De-zoning? Expropriating long-time residents? No problem.)

Even my practical, low-cost propositions, like installing a floating barrier around a shallow water area where families could swim in safety, met with skepticism. The nice Dr. Salim had helped me draw a plan of the protected swimming area (I’m lousy with pencils and Stan is worse).

The proposal was turned down. Decades after the 9–11 terrorist attack, resentment endured. Despite being American-born and a resident of Safe Harbor for almost thirty years, Ziad Salim bore the burden of an Arabic name.

Condemning the beach had been a no-brainer.

“Couz.”

Stan’s voice held a tinge of disquiet. A look in the cracked rear mirror showed only his big head of hair. I turned back for a lightning-fast look. Maeve was slumped against Stan, so tiny beside him. A red soccer ball had replaced her knee, pushing up the rolled pants leg.

I managed to get my eyes back front.