That Sitka dock dweller who disappeared was a friend

The other day in the grocery store, while my daughter Haley eyed the gumball machine by the doors, a headline in the Daily Sitka Sentinel caught my eye: "Search for Missing Boater Suspended," or something like that.

When the Coast Guard or Mountain Search & Rescue say someone is missing and they've suspended the search, that's CG or Search and Rescue-speak for dead. I can think of no time when it didn't mean this. The body usually shows up a few weeks later, though sometimes never, like the kayaker I knew who went out one night and never came back, just his kayak washed up on the beach. Or the Green Beret who went up the Verstovia trail last year. A few days later, they found his body at the bottom of a scree field, neck broken.

As I stood there, paper in hand, Haley repeated her request for a quarter, looking through the Plexiglas at the circus-colored gumballs. I scanned the lede for a name. And there it was in the second graf: 45-year-old Sean Poffenbarger.

I knew Sean. I knew him as well as anyone in town knew him, I imagined. Though maybe that wasn't true. It couldn't be Sean; Sean was smarter than that. No one in their right mind takes a skiff that far north; it made no sense. None at all.

I took out my phone and texted Caven. A year or two back, Caven lost a deckhand and I suggested Sean. Since then, they had trolled and fished halibut together. They worked well. Sean worked well with good people.

Even as I thumbed out my question, I started to know it was him. In that heart way you know things, that old bone sort of way that feels like it's getting more common as I grow older. By the time Caven texted "Yes, a shame," I was already thinking of Thom Nelson on the Kenai Peninsula, an ex-Navy guy who lived on a decrepit Bayliner just down from Sean on the transient float. We all lived there for three years — Thom with his dog Lucy, Sean getting Bailey through his buddy Robert, who lived on a sailboat. Robert had a number of hounds, three or four. I had Colorado, a husky mutt. We all lived out there through the howling westerlies and snows that weighed down our boats. Sean helped me work on the wheelhouse of my tugboat, put cedar caprail he milled himself on the stern, bolt bulwarks to the stanchions. He was an artist, one of these rare people whose hands do exactly what the brain tells them. He carved paddles for the skiff. We sometimes drank together sitting on the bullrail or after work. He told me stories, sometimes.

Sean was what people here in town call a dock rat. Living an existence here on the transient float without electricity. Making the half-mile walk from the parking lot each night from town. Spending more time in a skiff than a vehicle. In fact, when I think about it now, Sean never drove — he didn't see the need for a vehicle. When we repaired Judge Devenney's drywall out Halibut Point Road, I always drove him. He lived in a wooden sailboat that appeared inside like you were stepping back into the 18th century. Iron tools and come-alongs, a narrow bunk, a wood stove. Generator grumbling in the cockpit. It was his own world in there. He had an electric guitar and an amp that he'd occasionally plug in when a yacht tied up on the other side of the transient dock — musical accompaniment for their Sitka visit.

Here in town, the term "dock rat" is uttered occasionally with a note of nostalgia, or appreciation for the hard-scrabble culture of the town, where — aside from the woods — the docks are the last affordable place to live. More generally, it's derisive. One step above homeless. Associated with meth and opiates and beer. Police pulling onto the workfloat and taking the long, cold walk out to the transient dock to respond to some call or another.

But here's the thing: Sean chose to live the way he did. He drank, he'd admit as much; we all did. Maybe it was the winters, or the darkness. Or the things we were running from. Me, an absent father. Thom, broken relationships. If you asked Sean about his past, he'd go on a bender for a couple days, so I didn't ask. But you know about things, that's how it goes out there. Beneath his big knuckles in Gothic script was tattooed H-O-L-D F-A-S-T. I think this was a message to the world, though now that I think about it – especially thinking about it in the context of his death – I wonder. Maybe the letters were pointing inward, telling him not to let go. I can't remember. I wish I could.

Sean charged $20 an hour for his work. When he picked up a hammer, he swung hard, though slowly. He drove a 16-penny 3 1/2 inch galvy in two swings, his hands like bludgeons. If you gave him money in advance, he didn't seem happy about it. I wonder now if he knew he'd spend it on a suitcase of Rainier, and so he'd forego. It makes me sad to think about it that way, makes me miss him more and wish I'd pushed harder to hear his stories. He read heavily, books he garnered from the free bench at the top of the dock ramp. He read mysteries, and books on philosophy and, most of all, books about seafaring. He loved the sea, and this – in a roundabout way – is comforting. After he finished a book, he'd want to discuss it, though he rarely hung onto it. Any number of those books that he originally found on the free bench are now on my shelf on the tugboat. When I'd see him on the docks, he'd generally be carrying a paperback or his chainsaw or a suitcase of Rainier up the docks, his dog Bailey following a few steps behind him. Sometimes all three.

We worked together on a number of jobs over the years — once, as I mentioned, on Judge Devenney's house out the road repairing drywall with a fiberglass patch. I got the sense he didn't like finish carpentry, or drywall work, not because he didn't have the patience for it or wasn't good at it but just because he didn't see the need for it. Drywall was messy and stupid. And if you're keeping the water out, wood did this just fine – why bother? I don't mean to say Sean didn't have an eye for things. He did. When we built that woodshed together, I do believe it was his idea to take the hemlock that had crushed the structure and buck it up for posts. Brilliant. And poetic. We used a peavey to roll that heavy log, then a come-along to raise it vertical into a post.

When we lived on the docks, Sean gave my daughter Haley her first king salmon. Haley must have been 8 months. You'd think he'd avoid kids, but with Haley, he always stopped and smiled down at her. One day, he was passing our boat and he had a fresh king — rare on the docks, like gold. And he knocked on the door and said he wanted her to have the fish. This photo is of her touching the scales shortly before eating it. It must have been one of her first solids:

My kid loved it down there at the end of the transient dock, which sometimes felt like the literal end of the line. A yellow fiberglass box out there with a hose to put out the worst of fires, which always seemed funny, surrounded by so much water. Haley loved Sean's dog Bailey, who was a spaz but of mild temperament. Sean sitting on the bull rail with his legs crossed, wearing a sweatshirt with the cuffs lopped off. I'll say this, too. Sean did not like his photo taken. I have a few, from when we were using his Alaska mill to slice up some yellow cedar, wood that I made into bookshelves for the house. It came out nicely.

I also have video of Sean, a video I made to convince a girlfriend from Tennessee to move to Alaska. We were on my tugboat singing "Wagon Wheel," making a panorama of the galley and salon, and I wanted to show her all these wonderful happy people out on the docks. It was a great shot, people smiling and singing arm-in-arm. At the end of the wheel around the room there was Sean, white bristle, shaved head, Rainier in one hand, extending up a large middle finger to the screen.

My first skiff was a "leaky Lund" with a 9.9 outboard that worked every other time. Sean I do believe put that 9.9 on his own 16-foot Lund. Until Robert convinced him to get a new four-stroke Yamaha 70. How often did I look with envy on that motor, which he got new at Gary's Outboard. I can't believe that thing would die on him.

When I think of his boat, which still sits tied to the transient, I think of that particular type of frontier neatness, where his boat and the dock around it appear askew, but everything's ready to go. I mean, his hooks are sharpened and his shrimp pot is mended and his chain for his saw is sharp. Still. Soiled orange chaps dry and ready. His hatchet wrapped in string. I remember when we went out and cut wood he was always telling me to get chaps, that my insulated Carhartts wouldn't do. He didn't take chances. Which, again, makes me think: Why that long trip in bad weather?

Sean lent me a Stihl CD on how to sharpen a chain saw, probably after using my Husqvarna 455. It's funny how when someone leaves you, you begin to see things they meant when they said something, or intentions when they did something like pass on a CD on how to sharpen a chain saw. Gestures you never would have thought much about, but now I see it, and I wish I had actually watched the CD and spent time with Sean speaking about it.

He was pigeon-toed, always wore Xtratuf boots that appeared too big for him, the insulated kind. He told me he wanted to get out of the wood-cutting business and start milling cedar and hemlock. We spent a couple days out milling up a yellow cedar that is now shelves in my home — shelves where my kids have their books and I have my books and where, at the end of each day, I set my wallet and knife. And on the highest shelf, a wooden carving of an elephant and a rhinoceros that peer out over our living room, keeping the world beneath safe — though not sane, I can tell you that.

We are in the store. I didn't have a quarter for the gumball. In fact, I didn't have cash for the paper. So Haley and I went outside into the sunlight. We loaded into the truck. She asked if she could sit behind me at the wheel. I said yes, and held her tight as I turned the key. She gripped the wheel, doing her best to turn in the direction I pointed and we headed for home.

Since writing this, I have discovered that Sean had a daughter. Her name is Hailey.

Brendan Jones fishes and writes from Sitka. A version of this essay originally appeared on his blog, Alaskan Laundry.