FERRY TALES:
UNDERWAY
Dispatch #3 from an undercover Washington State Ferries deckhand
WRITTEN BY ALBERT A. SHORR
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JED JUDT
We’re on ferry time (yeah yeah, we’re late, we’re slow), so another month has passed, but as far as you all know, we’re still underway on the Spokane. I still need to call back for a work assignment tomorrow. I walk upstairs, searching for service. I’m not really supposed to be on my phone, so I hide between the pilothouse entrance and the door to the sun deck. I scroll through my contacts to “WSF Dispatch.”
I dial.
An affable lady-robot informs me that the call will be recorded, and then instead of ringing, some jazz plays while I’m on hold. I dance along a little. Finally two harsh tones sound, and the music stops. Time for business.
An Eeyore-like voice answers, “Hello, this is Cletus from dispatch.”
“Hi, Cletus, this is Albert Shorr, just returning a call from you guys.” I hear him tapping at his keys.
“Okay. Let’s see. Looks like Leslie was calling about work tomorrow. Are you available?”
“It depends, what do you have?”
“Well, no. I can’t tell you until you say you’re available.”
“Okay, fine,” I sigh. “I’m available.”
I swear I’m not usually sassy with dispatch, but I guess I’m tired. All the rules make me weary, and there’s a litany of rules. Like always having to say that I’m available even though I’m not actually allowed any other option. If I don’t want to work, I either don’t answer the phone, or I pick up and do my best impression of illness. Dispatch has to leave a voicemail and I’ve got fifteen minutes to call back. I’m allowed to pass, like I always do on graveyard shifts. Roll the dice and hope that something better comes along. But if I don’t answer when dispatch is in “assignment mode,” a flame could appear under my contract.
Dispatch has been acting up recently: They aren’t disclosing the full list of available jobs. They’re skipping employees. They’re assigning shifts out of spite. Maybe I’m just mad because they've been waking me up every morning. Maybe I’m mad because it’s impossible to have a life when you don’t know where you’re working until hours before.
I settle for a job in Bainbridge for tomorrow, and bid Cletus a fine rest of the day. That guy is such a stickler. I wish it was Tommy. His voice is so nice and he’s always patient. Maybe one day I’ll get the courage to tell him he’s wasting his life, and he should really be a jazz-radio DJ. Maybe I’ll bid for a job in the summer, then I won’t have to deal with any of Dispatch’s games.
Every two weeks or so, deck employees can bid for watches. That means some lucky on-calls may get the chance to settle into a schedule. Some jobs last a whole season, some only for a few weeks while folks are on leave. Bidding is like some kind of strange courting ritual. If you work a watch with people you like, then you put it on your bid sheet — your dance card. Would you guys want to hang out with me for a couple months or is that weird? And what if all the people that made the watch fun roll the dice too and end up working elsewhere? Seniority is everything at the ferries. If someone who enlisted later than you is awarded a job and it was on your bid sheet, you email the admin and elbow them out of the job. It’s amazing how often the bid admins fuck up. I swear they print out tiny copies of every name and shuffle them around like some CSI cork evidence board. It’s also amazing how often deck employees fuck up, and bid for something they don’t actually want. One friend recently got stuck driving around from Seattle to Vashon for a 3:45 am start. So. Put your name in the hat and hope for the best. Bid wisely, because there are no take-backsies.
I walk back into the day room and flop into a seat. Larry is really on one today. Hands flying, slamming pots and pans about, splashing grease and droning on about his weekend at the casino and some sort of official town hall meeting. Then he’s listing all the vessels he’s qualified to run, and how he’s qualified to drive them on the open ocean, and how he took the celestial navigation class, and how he’s spent years of his life sloshing around at sea… I’m nodding, but my mind is drifting. I’m wondering why, if he can do such great things, he’s still cleaning toilets. Well — acting like he’s cleaning toilets. All of a sudden, he shushes.
“Hey, Al, are you hungry?” he asks.
I’m shocked, but manage to spit out, “Uh, well, I didn’t really eat lunch I guess.”
“How about a bacon and egg sandwich?”
“Um, sure, that sounds great. Thanks Larry.”
“Butter or no butter on your toast? Butter or no butter?”
“Butter, always.”
What the hell is happening? Maybe I’m being rewarded for listening to his List of Great Achievements. He grabs a greasy plate and rushes out of the day room. “Hang on, Al, I gotta go feed the galley first.”
The chime rings out and the arrival message begins. Already? This is a quick crossing, and I’m always annoyed because it feels like I sit down, and we’re there. I sigh and stand. I passive-aggressively usher people out of the cabin with a broom and dustbin into the polished town of Edmonds. The wind is howling from the south, blasting a grimacing deckhand, Marta, guarding the plank on the pickle fork. People walk off. Cars drive off. I chat with Marta about her weekend of sailing. She’s a retired data engineer. I waltz away and wipe down tables. I stop to watch the seagulls, soaring stationary on a treadmill of wind. I try to have a conversation with Percy the pigeon, but he flees, zigzagging under seats. We load. The dock lines come off. Back and forth we go. The rain ebbs. Then the rain smashes so heavily into the water that Scary Terry calls for a lookout.
Back and forth we go. Before I know it, we’re in Kingston on our second round trip. I peel hair from the bottom of my broom into the trash. I catch the eye of Ben on the plank. Ben is someone I always look forward to seeing when I take this watch. He’s relatively new, smart, hardworking, and easy to share comfortable silence with in the day room. “North side’s clear!” I say. Then I ask, ”Hey, have you seen Nancy lately?” Nancy has been operating the Kingston plank for nearly forty years, and it shows. She’ll tell you over and over how she wants things done. She doesn’t want a thumbs up when you’re ready. She wants to see your whole hand. She’s sweet, but she has a lot to say, mostly about work. Even on her days off you’ll see her down at the terminal. What she’s up to I’m not so sure. She saunters up the walkway after the boat arrives — late — delaying the walkers from disembarking. But I haven’t worked with her in a couple weeks.
“Oh yeah, she fell in the parking lot and busted the whole left side of her face. She’ll be out for like three weeks,” Ben says.
“Oh no! That’s horrible. It’s the Kingston Curse!”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
“Well, Amy got so sick that she couldn’t go to Greece. And then Jace, well, I don’t know if you heard but he’s got pretty bad cancer. Last week they had to jump like three employee batteries in the parking lot. And Ellen. Ellen fell down her stairs at home, so she’s beached. The Puyallup lost an engine that one day. Oh and there was that thing where the boat pulled away from the dock while we were in, and that lady got stuck floating on the plank in mid-air. And now Nancy. Seems like a curse to me.”
“Oh no! That’s horrible. It’s the Kingston Curse!”
Kingston has always felt a bit off. It tends to attract Kitsap locals, because it’s convenient and less chaotic than Bainbridge. But Kitsap locals aren’t always here to make friends. That’s all well and good, but wouldn’t it make the days more fun if they were? Some people call Kingston the “Prisoner Transfer” line, because single moms and dads will cross empty-handed and return minutes later holding a Bluey suitcase and the tiny hand of a shared-custody kid. Late at night, the fluorescent lights shine on the nearly finished Michael Jackson jigsaw puzzle, missing an eye. Haunting. We take bets on the walk-on number for the last run. I always guess four, and I’m often right. But it’s too early in the day for that.
All the OSes have confirmed that there are no more souls in seats, so Ben keys the radio mic clipped to his jacket. “Spokane… cabin clear.”
“Cabin clear, thanks, Ben,” Harry repeats.
Behind Ben and me, the elevator opens. Out walks a burly man in jeans and a flannel, wearing boots and a backpack. Uh oh, we just called it clear and secure. Where did this guy come from? He steps calmly toward the plank, eyes ahead. I stare at him, confused, off-put. “Hey. Are you…?”
“Engineer,” he says, flashing his badge, and a half smile.
“Oh phew. I’m sorry.”
“All good. Have a good day, okay?”
Remember when I told you there were only three types of employees aboard? Well I lied. There are actually three more types of employees: wipers, oilers, and engineers. They work underground: Beneath the car deck lies their realm, a whole other world. Descend down the ladders and you’ll find the spaceship’s control center. The Chief Engineer lurks in a room where the walls are inlaid with screens, dials, buttons. Lights blink, levels waver, numbers roll. Another room is filled with every tool you could ever want, perfectly ordered, hung, and polished. I’m sorry, is that a lathe? Keep going and you’ll find supplies and spare parts, home-gym setups, ear protection galore, fire gear, jumpsuits, oily rags, disorienting doors, emergency escape hatches, and of course, the gray-green vintage steel, iron, diesel beasts powering the vessel. We all take the engineers for granted. And clearly we forget about them. I think most of them prefer that we stay out of their maze, and stay out of their way. There may or may not be a hot oiler I have a huge crush on, but it’ll never happen. I’ve only seen her three times.
As the shaded sun falls behind a thick layer of clouds hugging the horizon, Ben leans against the doorway of the day room. For months, I thought he was just watching the sunset, but the rain is still falling on a darkening gray sea and sky.
“See something cool out there, Ben?”
“Oh no, I’m just… waiting for a sign,” he says, taking off his hat and rubbing the back of his neck.
I laugh, “Uh… what?”
He turns around and looks at me, his hands on his hips. “So, my mom has a property on the water on Point Jefferson. On our first dark trip out of Kingston, if she’s there, she flashes her porch lights. Then she’ll text me the light-bulb emoji and say, ‘Hi!’”
Ben is in his early forties, former service industry, living a fun married life in Seattle. He’s funny, and not exactly the sentimental type.
“Wow, that’s really sweet. She loves you so much,” I say. He shrugs, turning back to the window on lookout.
“On our first dark trip out of Kingston, if my mom’s there, she flashes her porch lights. Then she’ll text me the light-bulb emoji and say, ‘Hi!’”
“Hey Ben, how’s it going?” says the voice of Harry’s tall-skinny, N95-mask-clad figure, appearing in the doorway. “Just checking in. I’m sure you all did it, but I just wanted to make sure that the floors got mopped? And I saw the signs were put away so thanks for that. And then I just wanted to make sure those doors upstairs got wiped down, and last thing real quick could someone come give the mate’s office a quick sweep and mop.”
Everyone in the day room is nodding, mumbling confirmations. Ben offers to complete our final task.
“Okay great thanks so much everyone.”
Last week, I found out that our dear Harry used to teach kindergarten. Somehow that made everything make sense.
We land in Edmonds one more time. The seagulls have paused their flights for the night and nestled into themselves atop little green islands growing on the piles of posts of the ferry landing. Sleepy passengers board and fall, horizontal, on the dingy benches. OSes fall into chairs near the open doors on the pickle fork. I scrubbed my toilets, mopped my floors, cleaned my tables, and helped my coworkers do the same. We’re done for the day. Phones come out to play. Chit-chat fills the quiet layover. Everyone begins to check out. “One more!” says the quartermaster, heading back up to the wheelhouse from who knows where.
Back in Kingston, we wrap things up. We tie up and tuck in the Spokane for the night. We gather our backpacks and lunchboxes, put radios on chargers, shut the dayroom door, and head downstairs to the bright cavern of the car deck. The deck crew musters under the artificial light. We hear a shrill electrical chirp overhead. Two tones. The familiar sounds of the boat being disabled for the night. Soon the officers shuffle down the ramp. Gold lines gleam at their shoulders and hands hide in their pockets. A few of the crew start walking toward the bridge lips, moving to disembark.
Scary Terry’s voice booms out, “Everyone huddle up. I need a word before you leave.” Uh oh. “I just walked through the cabin and I’m pretty disgusted. There were dust bunnies everywhere. The mirrors and the stainless stalls in the heads weren’t polished. I need you guys to do better.” Then Terry looks right at me and says, “This job isn’t for everyone. You gotta want it.” Why me? I’m not sure what else I could have done. And, well, it’s just ferry boating. This kind of seafaring isn’t meant for perfectionists. Scary Terry dismisses us and I walk quickly to the parking lot, embarrassed and dazed. Man, that guy really sucks. I hope he’s retiring soon. I sigh and start my car. Goodnight to all of you. A special goodnight to Ben’s mom. And definitely a bad night to Scary Terry. Until next month.
– Al A. Shorr
If you enjoyed the illustrations, check out Jed Judt’s website and Instagram.
Al A. Shorr’s identity is one secret we will never tell! But yes, Albert is a real-life employee of the Washington State Ferries.
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