4. He takes his first tugboat ride.

After the power cable was wound up and stowed, the two lit another cigarette and stood around waiting for James to show up. The lad looked around some more and peered into the companionway to get a look at the space below. It was a little dark, with only the glow of incandescent bulbs to light it but he made out piles of line and boxes of parts. There was a small chest freezer on one side and he could see the end of a workbench.

“Is that the forepeak?” he asked.

“That’s what that is. We keep just about everything in there. I’ll show you later.”

The lad nodded and continued inspecting the small tug. As he was looking up at the pilothouse he could see the reflection of a Ford truck pulling up to the edge of the dock. He turned and joined Bobby in watching the edge of the dock. Soon a man appeared. It was the skipper, James Graff. He looked young, maybe in his thirties. He was well dressed compared to the two aboard, wearing khaki pants, a colorful polo shirt, and clean deck shoes.

“Good mornin’, jemma-nems,” he called out in his best local accent. He was smiling and made the hops easily down to the deck carrying a duffle bag over his shoulder. He went straight to the lad and extended his hand. “You’re our new hand. Follow the skinny guy’s lead and you’ll do all right. Then to Bobby, “OK. Let’s get going’.”

Bobby started walking down the deck. James started climbing the forward ladder to get to the pilothouse. The lad suddenly realized he needed to follow Bobby. When Bobby saw him he made a motion that indicated that he was going up to the dock. “Take off that stern line, I’ll toss it in.” He climbed up and was quickly at the cleat holding the eye of the stern line. The lad took the turns from the bitts and Bobby lifted the eyes off. “Just give it a good sharp tug when I toss it.” The lad did just that and the line flew into the boats and landed in a heap in front of him. A neat trick he thought of it. “Get the head line next,” he called down to the lad. Figuring that a head line must be the same as a bow line he headed forward. The same technique was used to remove it and then the spring line was taken in.

James held the bow of the tug against the dock for a second or two longer to allow the skinny to board again. They backed out of the berth, turned slowly, and when the bow was pointed across the river, the engines eased up to speed and they were underway. The tug pushed its way to the middle of the river and took a left to head under the big bridge. The city was getting closer now. He had been on the water long enough to have sailed this harbor but he had never been this far up the river. Now he could see the other side of the city. He remembered viewing the tugs from the concrete shoreline and now he knew what he had looked like to the crew of those boats. The tug stopped and the engines were idling. They were sitting still in the water so he could continue looking at the city scene.

He realized he was alone and looked around a bit till he saw Bobby and James talking in the pilothouse. There wasn’t much animation. The two would occasionally motion toward a nearby shipyard so it became obvious that the job was going to be over there. The shipyard sat across from the city and was full of people moving about on the ships and docks. There were countless barges with such a wide variety of equipment and ship part on them; he couldn’t imagine how anyone kept track of it all.

Bobby tapping him on the shoulder and waving him in to follow as he hurried to the stern interrupted the lad’s thoughts.

“We have to get the pushing gear ready. It’s going to be a bunch of barge shifting for these guys”, he said jerking his thumb toward the shipyard.

Without a clue as to what was to be done, the lad followed.