EXCERPTS from "The Skunk Island Ferry"

This post contains two excerpts from Part 1 of my new comic novel, which is about a teenager growing up on the Great Lakes and working on a ferryboat. The novel is written is an unusual form, as though I am describing what you would see playing on a screen if this were a movie. Set in 1970, the story is about the Halverson family. Gene and Sylvia Halverson have bought a ferry boat and are ferrying passengers to a fictional island in north Lake Michigan I have christened North Skunk Island. His two sons, Will and Hutch (they're 18 and 16), are working as deckhands on the ferry. Because Gene doesn't have a captain's license, he has hired a captain, who has the rather common nickname "Cap." Lots will happen in the summer to come, but I hope these excerpts will give you a taste of what you can look forward to.

Ben Kilpela

+++++++++++++++++++

The scene opens with a shot in the wheelhouse of the Skunk Island Queen. There is still some fog, but it is less dense. Cap keeps looking down into the radar funnel to check the scene. Gene is steering. The Queen sounds as though she is running slower now. Cap suddenly says, “It's just so damn straight, sticking straight out.” He kept his eyes out the windows, looking into the brighter fog of midday.

Gene looks at him and says, “The pier?”

Cap says, “It sticks straight out. The radar has trouble picking it up.”

Gene says, his voice tight, “It hasn’t been a problem before.”

Cap puts his face to the funnel. “I can't see it. Can’t see a thing.”

Gene, “How far out are we?”

Cap, “Half mile.”

Gene takes the throttles and gently eases them back a bit more. The engines slow and he says, “We better slow down some more.”

Cap says, “Does Hutch see the bottom?”

The scene cuts to a shot of Hutch up on the bow again, hunched over the rail, looking straight down into the water. The fog, though thinner, still drifts in strands across the bow.

Up in the wheelhouse, Gene says, “He hasn’t given me any signal.” They both look at Hutch leaning over the rail. Then Hutch abruptly stands straight and turns around.

He puts one finger to his eye and put his hands out palm down. Gene says, “That’s the signal. He sees the bottom.”

Cap says out the window to Hutch, mouthing the words distinctly, “How deep?”
Hutch shrugs, but then puts up all ten fingers, then five more, and he follows that with a shrug to show that he’s not all that certain. Gene says, “Pretty shallow. We must be in closer than we think.”

Cap says, “Well, that's about right. Maybe we ought to turn back north or cut all way off.”

Gene says, “No, I think it's right ahead of us.” Gene leans over to the radar while keeping a hand on the wheel. Cap moves back, and then Gene takes took a brief look into the radar funnel. “Yeah, it’s straight ahead, Cap.”

Cap says, “We got to be careful. We're pretty close and I don’t have it.”

The scene cuts up to Hutch again, and we look down over the bow with him. There, dim and dark beneath the surface is the rippled sand at the bottom of Lake Michigan, passing slowly underneath the Queen. Hutch’s eyes are wide and intense.

Back in the wheelhouse, Gene says, “There's nothing along here, no reefs or anything, right? No sandbars. Right? Just that one directly north of the dock. Right?”

Cap turns away and paces around the wheelhouse once. “I'm not real sure. Dammit.” He looks at Gene as though he were accusing him: “We should've come out here with the boat when it was clear and did some radar practice. Dammit. What was I thinking? Boy, am I an idiot. A greenhorn mistake. I been out in this stuff a thousand times, could find my way around the Islands like I was blindfolded. But that was because I practiced when the weather was clear. I'm telling you, I know better.”

Gene says, “Too late now. But –”

Cap puts on his commanding voice. “We're heading north. We got to.” He reaches to take the wheel from Gene.

Gene grips the wheel slightly more tightly and looks squarely into Cap’s eyes. He speaks with forced calm, “Cap, you’ve got to stop this nonsense. You're getting all confused. Maybe you're just tired.” There was a moment of silence. Cap averts his eyes. Then Gene adds, softly, “I’ll tell you what you gotta do, you gotta stop staying out so late.”

Cap backs away and thunders, “Don't tell me what I’ve have to do and don't have to do.”

Gene says evenly, “You're putting everyone on this boat in danger.”

Cap’s eyes widen and his face begins to flush as he searches for word. Then he thunders again, “Danger?! I'm on top of everything. Everything that happened today, it's –“

Gene interrupts him, but tries to maintain an even keel while looking out into the fog: “Don't start getting yourself all worked up. We'll talk about it later, we're lost in a fog right now.”

Cap paces back and forth across the wheelhouse: “If I want to talk about it now, we pull back the damn throttles and talk about it now.”

Looking out the windows still, Gene rolls his eyes and says boldly, calmly, “Oh, cut the crap. But let me say this: it's more than just not getting enough sleep, Cap. You’re drinking way too much. You keep coming down to the boat in the morning smelling like a goddamn barroom. How late you getting home every night?” There is a slight pause before Gene plunges in: “Were you drunk this morning?”

Cap’s voice lowers into a sharp growl: “I don't have to put up with this crap.” He turns to leaves the wheelhouse, putting his hand on the doorknob, obviously in preparation for a wildcat strike.

Gene coolly takes the throttles and pulls them back. The engines fall quiet and the Queen slows further, now adrift a short distance from North Skunk Island, which is still covered in moderately heavy fog.

The scene cuts to a shot of Hutch looking back at the wheelhouse. He sees Cap standing at the port side door facing Gene, not the lake. Hutch turns and looks down into the water. We see the sandy bottom, rippled. It appears shallower. Hutch looks up and back again. From his view, he sees Gene barking at Cap.

The scene cuts to the wheelhouse, where Gene says sharply, “O perfect. Now you're going to storm out of here and leave us lost in the thickest damn soup we've ever seen.”

Cap scowls: “I’ve seen lots worse than this, Halverson – and I ain't even got any trouble with this stuff. I’m just getting my bearings on a new run. It’s what captains do. Every place is different. Hell, every radar is different. And I wasn't goddamn drunk, dammit. You go around making accusations like that and I'm packing my bags and hitting the trail.”

Gene looks out at Hutch, who quickly looks off into the distance. Hutch is uncertain what is happening. Up in the wheelhouse, Cap continues, “What would you do? Eh? You think you know everything. You don't know crap.”

Gene lets go of the wheel and turns to him, as the Queen drifts in the fog: “All I know is that you can't seem to get the elementary facts straight, all morning long. We're just about to come on that dock, and I think the radar picture is pretty good. But you want us turning north off into some damn place where you think it’s going to be safe. We know there’s a sandbar that way, though. You forget that? You got mixed up about ships that are just a couple miles away and coming straight at us. You think the one on the left is the one on the right… or… or whatever it was. You’re completely confused and you almost turn us right into the side of a ship.”

Cap mumbles, “I would have got it straight.”

Gene says, “The booze is affecting your judgment. Or the lack of sleep. But I think –”

Angrily, Cap says, “All right. All right. That's it. I ain't gonna put up with this. I don't need this. I’m almost retired. Hell, I am retired. I don’t need this kind of aggravation. I was doing you a favor coming to work up here.”

Gene is not moved. He speaks slowly, “You could do me a bigger favor by coming to work rested – and sober.”

Cap’s face flushes red. “You could do me a favor by keeping the mouth of that bitch of yours shut. She's on me every time I set foot in the house. I am goddamn sick of having to defend myself all the time.”

Gene hangs his head. “What's that got to do with what we're talking about, which is that you're coming to work half in the bag? My wife has nothing –”

Cap: “I would never come to work drunk, never!”

Gene: “Then at least liquored up. I can smell it, Cap.”

Cap says stoutly, “I am fully capable of performing my duties, and if you have doubts about me, maybe the time has come, much sooner than I thought, to get on my horse and get on out of town before the shooting starts.”

There is a pause. The Queen sits still in the calm waters near the island. Hutch keeps watching the bottom and now and again turning to look back at the wheelhouse.
Gene relents, “Can we talk about this later? We're standing here, for the third time today, wondering what to do in the fog. Can't we get this boat to the dock without you throwing a fit and going off for a long pout? Can't we? We're just drifting along as if we got all the time in the world. But goddammit, I want to get this boat in safely.”

Cap says, “I want to get my passengers on shore. Get the job done, every day, day in, day out. I’ve never shirked on my duty? I’ve never been in a condition that I couldn’t perform my duties to the fullest. You started this bullshit.”

Gene sighs.

Cap’s face suddenly brightens and he points out the windows. “Hey, Hutch says he's got something. What is it? He says it's the dock, right over there.”

From the wheelhouse, we see Hutch down on the bow motioning with one arm and pointing with the other. We see it a moment later, Peltier’s long wooden pier at North Skunk Island, looming as a very pale shape in the dense fog, no more than a hundred yards away.

+++++++

Now the scene cuts to a shot of Hutch, Will, and the three other boys walking in the dark over a low ridge of sand in the dark. We can barely see that the ridge is covered in dune grass. The boys walk down a short, sandy path cut through the grass. They come through a line of tangled dune bushes and emerge on a narrow beach leading down to Grand Traverse Bay. The dark surface of the water glitters under the stars. Far off, at a great distance, perhaps 20 miles, a few lights twinkle on the coast on the far side of the massive bay. A large group of people is gathered close to shore around a small fire made of burning driftwood.

A boy greets Hutch, “Hey, man. Glad you got here.”

Hutch nods and says, “Yeah.”

Boy 1 says, “This is a perfect night. Man, are there people here. Some I haven’t seen before. Chicks!”

Hutch looks around the crowd of teenagers, looking like faux-hippies mostly. They’re wearing rowdy, tattered dress, the usual stuff, beads and fringes and jeans. He looks over the girls, who are dressed in jeans or shorts, with T-shirts or thin halter tops. Most of them have straight, blonde or light brown hair.

Will strolls up to Hutch. He has a can of beer in his hand already. Holding up his can of Pabst, Will says, “They got a lot of booze down here, man. We shouldn’t have worried.”

We look off to the side of the crowd, and there is a rickety, sagging picnic table with lots of beer and other bottles and boxes on it.

Will takes a long pull from his can of beer, a Stroh’s. Hutch looks at him mild surprise, at the way he’s handling the beer, drinking it so quickly, so at ease with the booze.

Will says, “I gotta get started.”

Hutch chuckles: “Yeah?”

Will says, “Get yourself a beer, man.”

Hutch says, “I will.”

Will wanders away. There are some shouts, joyful outbursts. Someone starts to dance on the beach because the radio station from Traverse City is playing Three Dog Night belting out “Momma Told Me Not to Come” in the tinny sound speakers of the radio.

People start singing to the song with loud cheers and shouts – and then loud laughter at their own antics. Others start dancing along.

That ain’t the way to have fun, son...
That ain’t the way to have fun.
No! No!

Hutch watches the girls move their hips. He just watches, smiling faintly, mesmerized, but trying to keep some kind of cool look on his face.

A boy holds up the radio and says, “Anyone got anything better than this?”

A girl says, “That’s it – all we got.” She takes the large transistor radio from him and fiddles with the dial to get better reception. Another song begins.

It’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” There are groans and laughs. A boy dances foolishly to the lilting song. The girl smiles and keeps it on the station.

But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red,
Crying’s not for me, oh...
I’m never gonna stop the rain by complaining,
Because I’m free… Nothing’s worrying me.

The crowd cheers briefly at the boy doing his silly dance. The dancer slows. There are shouts for the girl to turn the station. There are more laughs, and then some of the girls try to join the boy’s silly dance to the silly tune.

Hutch stops watching all that and looks around, lost for a moment, unsure what to do. Then he sees that girl again, and his heart jumps into a pounding rhythm. He has to catch his breath. Her dark blonde hair is loose and long. She is barefoot now, dressed still in those bell bottom jeans, but now a silky green blouse that is tasteful and demur. He actually puts his hand on his chest and turns away. He looks out over the darkened surface of the water. Lights dozens of miles away across Grand Traverse Bay glimmer in a line on the far coast. Bright stars twinkle overhead. He turns back and sees that she’s over by the picnic table, and Hutch watches her amid the hubbub, as she looks over what she wants to drink. She picks up a can, but he can’t see what it is. She wanders toward the dancers, smiling, at her ease, moving her hips a bit to the bouncy beat of the B.J. Thomas song. Hutch is enthralled, as we see.

Hutch says, with a nervous swallow, to a boy standing nearby, “Hey, Randy, who is that chick?” He points her out to Randy.

Randy says, “You know... I can’t remember her name.”

Hutch says with a laugh, “Lotta good you are.”

Randy shrugs, smiles, and says, “Hey, man.”

The silly and famous raindrops song has ended, but still moving to imagined music, the girl is wandering through the crowd and getting closer to Hutch. Then she notices him and looks him right in his eyes. She turns and walks straight toward him with her arms out and a gentle swing of her hips. We see that it’s a can of Coke in her hand.

With a bright lovely smile, the girl says, “It’s you.” She cocks her head to the side.

Hutch tries to look completely at his ease – and succeeds. He hooks a thumb in his pocket and says, “It’s me?”

With an alluringly smile, the girl looks him over as she keeps on swaying slightly to the song that has come on the radio. She says, “You don’t know me?”

Hutch hesitates, obviously thinking about the best – no, the perfect thing to say.

Then he says, trying with all his might to be witty, “Well, if you want to get technical, I don’t.” He resists looking embarrassed.

The girl says, “But you remember me?”

Hutch is suppressing every emotion, trying to be coy and witty and teasing: “Yeah, well, I think I do.”

The girl is at her ease, playing the game: “If you were to be non-technical, what would your answer be?”

Hutch lets out a nervous laugh. Then he says, “I haven't seen you up here yet.” This doesn’t sound quite right. He looks down abruptly and rubs his toe in the sand. He sees her bare feet, her toes half immersed in sand, her toenails painted a shade of red.

The girl says, “I come up a lot, but I haven’t been this year. We just got into town a few days ago. Well, not a lot, but quite a bit.”

Now having something to talk about relaxes Hutch a little: “Who’s we?”

The girl says, “My family. We live out on Neegan Lake. You’re one of the new guys in town, on the new boat, right? Don’t even bother denying it, because I know who you are.”

Hutch says, still trying to be Oh so cool, “You seem pretty up on things despite being here only a few days.”

The girl smiles and sways her head to the dim music: “That’s me.”

It’s just dark enough where they stand for Hutch to look her over intensely for a moment, before he says, “So who are you? Who... I mean, Hi, I'm Hutch.”

The girl says, “Hutch? That is a very fascinating name. I've got to hear the story behind that one.”

Hutch doesn’t take the bait for now, “And yours?”

The girl takes a sip of her Coke and says, “Lois. Lois... Fricker – I know, I know, it's a really weird name. Everybody has to laugh at it, so go ahead and laugh. I don’t mind.” Hutch had appeared about to chuckle, but when she says this, he finds a way to control himself. Lois says, “It's got a story, too.” She seems proud of the name.

Keeping his head about him, Hutch says, “It's not weird, just different.”

Lois says, “Thanks, but I know otherwise. It’s hideous. It sounds like... well, you know what it sounds like. But it’s me, Fricker, Fricker, Fricker, and I’m not what it sounds like. So, come on, tell me the story of ‘Hutch,’ Hutch”

Hutch says, “You mean the name? It isn't much, really. I guess it's kind of funny. When I was a baby my Mom says I wouldn't go to sleep very well, so she tried all kinds of ways to get me to sleep, and for some reason she pulled out the drawer to a hutch in the dining room. You know? A hutch? Where you keep the good dishes.”

Lois says, “Yeah.”

Hutch says, “You get it?”

Lois smiles very coolly, “I think I got it, Hutch. A hutch.”

Hutch is thinking up witty things to say, “You interested in this kind of thing?”
Lois gives him a look with hooded eyes, “Most definitely.” She cocks her hips slightly and takes another sip from the can of soda.

Hutch draws a breath and laughs: “Anyway, it was a big wide drawer, I guess. It's gone now. She put me in there and I went to sleep better than any place else. So I guess for a few weeks she had me sleeping in a hutch. Or something like that. Get it? Someone said I was the ‘baby in the hutch,’ and that got shortened to Hutch, and they started calling me Hutch and it stuck. Been that way ever since.”

Lois says, “That is such a cool story. You still sleep in a hutch?”

Hutch has to think fast to respond to this surprise turn: “Nope, but I wouldn't mind trying if I could find one big enough. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe I’d still like it.” Hutch looks pleased with his wit.

Lois says, “Where you from, Hutch?”

Hutch: “Erie... Pennsylvania.”

Lois: “Really. I heard something like that. That doesn’t happen often.”

Hutch: “What?”

Lois: “That a rumor is about right.”

Hutch laughs: “I suppose.”

Lois says, without a hint of embarrassment, “I was just going for a walk down the beach, Hutch. You want to join me?”

Hutch marvels at her and says, “Yeah. I think so.”

Lois: “You think so?”

Hutch laughs again, this time nervously: “Yeah, it’d be cool.”

Lois: “O.K., then.”

As they turn to go, the dancing suddenly gets a little crazy as Tommy James and the Shondells wail “Mony Mony.” A boy spins out of control, stumbles away from the group and into the surf, where he falls in very shallow water.

Here she comes now, say, Mony Mony.
Shoot 'em down, turn around, come on, Mony.
Hey, she give me love and I feel all right now.
You gotta toss and turn in the middle of the night,
And I feel all right.
I say Yeah (Yeah) Yeah (Yeah)…

There are hoots and shouts, whistles and some laughter. The dancing gets wilder, and more kids join in. The scene cuts to Will laughing a little too heartily, almost foolishly. A girl near him moves away a step or two. Will winds up on his knees in the sand pointing at the boy who fell in the shallows, who looks none too happy as he rises to his feet, his clothes dripping with wet sand.

Hutch says, “Things are getting a little crazy.”

Lois says, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

The scene cuts to a short time later as Hutch and Lois walk down the narrowing beach in the darkness away from the fire. There are a couple of other sets of black shapes, couples walking up or down the flat, narrow strand. A breeze tosses strands of Lois’s hair.

As they stroll slowly on in the darkness, close to the barely moving waters of the bay, Hutch says, “Do you know my brother, Will, the one with the blonde hair... bit of a dorky guy?”

Lois says, “I met him.”

Hutch says, “Really! When?”

Lois: “Downtown. He told me about you, actually, and I figured out who you were when you were talking with him. I saw you down on the dock when the Queen came in the first night I was in town.”

Hutch pauses to absorb this. She is watching him as he is watching her: “Where are you from?”

Lois says, “Grand Rapids. Michigan. It’s a big city down south of here. My family comes up to our cabin on Neegan Lake every summer. We spend at least a month here every year.”

Hutch: “That’s cool.”

Lois: “You know the lake?”

Hutch, “Yeah. I know where it is. I’ve heard about it. But I haven’t been out there yet.”

Lois: “It’s not far from town. We've been coming up here since I was a little girl. My Dad bought our place on Neegan Lake and we’ve been coming every summer since. We just got into town on Wednesday. I heard there was supposed to be a big party tonight.”

Hutch: “Seems like it's a regular thing.”

Lois: “Pretty much – when summer starts really cooking.”
Hutch looks back at the party now in the distance behind them, back up the beach, Hutch asks slowly, “You come to these things often?”

Lois is cautious, trying to sense what would be best to say: “Yeah. I guess... Not really. I gotta admit that it isn’t that big a deal. I enjoy it all right every once in a while.”

Hutch slows down and notices that she has nothing in her hand, “You want something more to drink.”

Lois stops and says, “How about you? You don't look like you’ve had anything yet. Your brother, though, he's already had a couple cans of Blue Ribbon firmly in his grasp.”

Hutch turns to head back: “You noticed. But Stroh’s seems to be his thing. Strange as it seems, it looks like he's going to be down here often.”
Lois: “Why strange? He not a real party hound?”

Hutch: “I didn't think so, until this month. Almost until this night. But it looks like he’s really digging it. Never would’ve thought.”

Lois says, “He isn’t the kind?”

Hutch chuckles knowingly: “Not at all.”

The scene cuts to a shot of Will, back near the fire, dancing about, nearly alone, running in and out of the shallow water. He finds the can of beer he left standing in the sand, but as he goes to pick it up, he kicks it over. He laughs and slumps to his knees. A girl nearby turns to look at him kneeling in the sand. She smirks at him behind his back, showing that she thinks him ridiculous. He shakes the can and then tips it up to drink the dregs. A bit of sand sticks to his lip.