WOMEN ON THE ROCKS

WOMEN ON THE ROCKS.

One winter, many years ago, we, as usual, had a few off-season visitors.  It’s an odd group that visits the island during those dark months. The island has no features sufficiently redeeming to warrant people from away being here; that is, we’re unwilling to credit them with enough savvy to appreciate those subtle qualities that are only in evidence during that quiet time of year.  The most striking of these is their own absence, for while we do really enjoy having them here during the summer, the fact they are elsewhere when the time comes is not lost on us.  Still, we don’t call it the off-season for nothing and those who do visit us during that bleak period often contribute to that oblique characterization.  “That winter we had a young anthropology student from away, far away, visit with us.  We could see right off that Sadie was a quick study.  She zeroed in cunningly on the early morning crowd at the restaurant.   The town’s many lobstermen, idle during these dawn and pre-dawn winter hours, but incapable of staying in bed, start coming in around 4 and they cycle through the morning with regularity for several hours. 

Along about late fall, when gear and most boats are hauled ashore to await spring, thoughts turn to what winter might hold in store.  Hardly a-one passes without something worthwhile being offered up for entertainment.  Sadie showed up just in time, ready to spend some of her second semester working on her thesis.  When she revealed that she was working on a paper and had chosen the people of these islands as subjects a few glances were exchanged.  These guys had been round the bend before and her intended two week stay dragged on, not unlike Margaret Mead's in Samoa.  Of course, Mead’s subjects really were virgin territory.  Over time Sadie seemed to draw these reticent fishermen skillfully into her confidence, and they gradually revealed more about themselves, about their neighbors and about the rituals and social fabric of island life.  It’s the cultivation of just this sort of thing, things like Sadie’s thoughtful inquisition, which give the winters here a particular richness. 

Sadie quickly secured a regular seat in the thick of the 4am - 7am crowd.  She sat with them, drank too many coffees with them, used rough language with them and became, in her mind, one with them.  She had told them right off, she had to be up front about this, that she had a little tape recorder in her shirt pocket.  At night, she explained, she transcribed useful information from the day’s recordings as she worked on her paper.  Everyone was to ignore the existence of the little recorder, she instructed them, and behave and carry on just as they would under normal circumstances, an admonition soberly acknowledged.  She didn’t keep it out on the table but in her pocket, precisely to make it easier for them to ignore its presence.  Every now and then though, it not being digital back then, she’d have to take it out and put in a new tape and if that happened at a critical juncture in the dialog, she’d have to ask them to suspend conversation while she changed the tape.  These were awkward moments and she tried to put everyone at ease by apologizing for the interruption and reminding them that they should just ignore it.

Gradually Sadie felt she was gaining their trust and that her effort was beginning to bear real fruit, and one day Argyle McFadden casually remarked that 'his woman' had spent an unusually long time outdoors the night before settin’ on the rock. 

“What? What’s this? What?” Sadie sputtered excitedly, trying to remain calm as she unzipped her vest to expose her shirt pocket to greater effect. 

“What’s what?” queried another conspirator casually. 

“That stuff about sitting on a rock” she responded eagerly, stifling the impulse to criticize her subject for referring, as did so many of them, to his companion as ‘the woman’ and, worse, for using the particularly jarring possessive tense. 

“Well, you know, “offered Stubby Ames, generally regarded as the philosopher among them, “island women, northern females generally for that matter, go out, particularly in deep winter, and set on a cold rock for a spell before coming to bed.” 

“What on earth for?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know now, do I,” he asked rhetorically and waxed on.  “How much of what women do, after all, is a mystery to us.  Just the way it’s always been, is all.   They’ve always set, not just here either. It’s more widespread up in the county.’

“The county?”

“Up to Roostik,” he leaned forward suggesting exactly the intimate relationship and confidence Sadie felt she’d encouraged these long weeks, “any man who’s spent a Maine winter in the company of one of these women knows they 'set'.  That’s why their buns are so cold.  A person couldn’t live if their buns was that cold all the time.  Nope, it’s just at night and it’s from settin’ on them cold rocks.  I also think it’s true that the farther back a woman can trace her island roots the longer she is likely to 'set' and the less clothing is likely to come between her and the rock.  Now my own woman is a direct descendant of Rueben Carver and she sets on a rock just down back of the house, same one her mother and all her womenfolk set on.  They was all partial to it and had handed it down so to speak even though it ain’t even on our property, kind of like squatter’s rights 'cept it’s settin.’  Anyways, judging from the temperature of them buns when she finally climbs in she must set damn near barearssed.” 

Wrinkle Warren took up the patter, “You see, the way it works is---.”  A little click alerted Sadie that the tape had run out.  “Wait, wait, oh dear, wait, this will only take a moment”.  Fumbling with urgency, she took a few moments longer than usual as sober glances lobbed themselves back and forth around the table.  “Ok, where, what?” 

“I forget where I was.” said Wrinkle thoughtfully. 

“You were going to tell me the way it works, the way it works please,” said Sadie doing her best to conceal her excitement but sensing she was about to unearth the missing link. 

“Oh yes, well, a woman customarily sends her man off to warm up the bed and says she’ll be along after she’s put out the cat and stuff.  But, make no mistake about it; while he is warming the bed she is outside settin’ on a cold rock.”

“As I was sayin”, resumed Stubby authoritatively, “mystery attends women regularly and the only thing that’s required of us is that we not try to understand why they do what they do but simply accept that they do it.  It makes atoning for our own behavior a might easier.” 

“One night,” confessed Winny Coombs, “as I was about to go up to bed, I fabricated an excuse to leave the house.  Women, settin’ on rocks, was everywhere.  You have to look for them but they’re there.  Seems they each have a favorite rock and these have some things in common. They are, for instance, usually on the north side of the house where they’ve been in shadow all day and are sure to be the coldest.  They’re also almost always near bushes or the back door or something into which the women can quickly vanish if need be and usually at a comfortable settin’ height.  I admit that the women were alert enough so that I never really saw them plainly.  Most often I would catch a movement as they vanished into the nearby cover.  Once I run up and felt the rock and, sure enough, there was a warm place same size as the arse of the woman I knew lived there.  I was kind of smug knowing that the man in that house would be a little less uncomfortable that night because his woman had not had time to chill out.”