PART 2 — THE LIFE JACKET
When the presents were opened, the young man by the Christmas tree pulled an old orange life jacket out of a gift bag and laid it at Spencers feet. Mr. Spencer, he said, I have worked for you for two years, and I have been trying to find the right time to tell you that the night that skiff flipped, I was in the water.
In 2019, in a nor easter, he said, he and a friend were out in a small skiff when it flipped and dumped them into the freezing Atlantic. In that water, a person has only minutes.
A lobsterman out hauling traps in the storm turned his boat around, found two teenagers in the black water, and pulled them both out before the cold could finish them.
The man Spencer called the fish guy had turned his boat around in a nor easter and pulled two drowning teenagers out of the freezing Atlantic.
This is the life jacket he threw to me, the young man said, before he hauled me over the side. I kept it. I became a lawyer, I came to work at your firm, and I had no idea until this Christmas that the fish guy you keep mocking is the man who saved my life.
Spencer, the corporate attorney who bills more in an hour than Sam makes in a week, who called his own wifes brother the fish guy, set down his scotch.
Sam just stirred the chowder and said he only did what any man on the water would do. But the young associate shook his head. The storm was bad enough that everyone else stayed in, he said. You came out.
Twenty-nine years on the cold Atlantic, gloves frozen to the rope, and my son also, one nor easter night, turned back into the storm and pulled two kids out of water that was trying to kill them.
Somebody has got to catch the lobster, Spencer had laughed. Somebody also has to turn the boat around in a nor easter for two strangers in the sea. That somebody was my son.