105 Degrees

It was not official, but The Cape Ann Bank’s time and temperature registered 105 degrees at 3 p.m. yesterday. Only those who had no good reason to be out were. It wasn’t nearly as hot this morning, but it was brutal sitting in the sun for three hours during my book signing at Bookends. Attendance at the Sidewalk Bizarre was about a quarter of what it normally draws. Since the store front faced east, the sun beat down with little mercy offered in a puff of a breeze. At 10:40 a.m. I sold my first book and did not sell another until twenty minutes before the end of my three hour tour of duty. Lesson learned: bring sun screen to a book signing?

While there were a number of people who mentioned they had just read something about the book, few could recall where. I loved watching them put the pieces together as they remembered the newspaper article in the Gloucester Daily Times, and then embarrassed when they finally put me with the book, they would laugh.

I took a bus into town, waiting ten minutes in the early morning sun that rose over the salt water marshes (this explains the mosquitoes) across the street from the Cape Ann Campground. The air was still, as if it too waited for the sun to heat it before it would move. Immediately, I was under a relentless attack of deer flies—those big green-headed monsters with a vicious bite. I swished a bandana through the air to deter the flies from landing on my exposed flesh. Any skin was game including my face. My lucky to show up at a book signing with a huge red insect bite on my cheek. Before the bus came I killed three, but got a nasty bite on my ankle.

Although the bizarre did not officially begin until 10 AM, most vendors were already set up on Main Street which was closed to traffic. I stopped in at a deli to get a bottle of water before I walked to Bookends. Barbara Govney, the owner, was already set up for the sale, displaying books for a dollar on the table where I was to sell and sign mine.

Books such as the Unofficial Biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a novel called Planets, and a book about the myth of the Dallas Cowboys and their legendary coach Tom Landry were enough to depress me. There was a time that someone wrote these books fully believing these subjects would make great reading. Now, sixteen years later for the person who wrote the Tom Landry book anyway, his book is being sold for a dollar (he’ll get no royalty check) next to The Last Voyage of the Cosmic Muffin for $18.99. It made me think that just last year on this day I was on day thirteen of my thirty-day cruise across the Pacific contemplating the roundness of the earth, and feeding the captain pudding. Little did I realize I would be in Gloucester selling a book I wrote. Well, trying to sell a book I wrote. It is depressing.

I walked down to the harbor before the signing. Here was the beginning of the sea. I missed it. A few days ago, Dad asked me what I liked about Shep, the captain of the Cosmic Muffin. Now a more definitive answer stirred inside me and it had little to do with the captain. Yet, he was of the sea. I remembered sitting on the Muffin moored in Pohnpei. The quiet, solitude of the harbor, isolated from land, a self-imposed solitude and a refuge from my Peace Corps life floated back to me this morning. It was the wrong thing that I loved. The stillness of the air, with a hint of raw stall salt stirred these memories. I loved being on the boat. It had potential.

My peace is greater now, but I confess there still lingers a feeling of something lost, or maybe still undiscovered. Of something I once knew. I miss the sea.

I am asked if I would sail again. My answer is yes. Sick, sick, sick.

By 3 p.m. a front stretched over the land and a breeze ushered in a refreshing new mass of air from Canada. Relief. The bank’s thermometer read 84. I returned to the campsite, the smell of burnt wood and two hungry cats. It took ten minutes to peel my underwear off my soaked butt.

Now let’s get some work done. I am going to go broke selling six books in six weeks.