The Wooden Nickel Read online

  “It’s got the sixteen-valve overhead-cam six,” he reminds her. “Ain’t a big engine but she torques up.”

  “I’m sure she does. I walked right over and leaned on her car roof so she couldn’t just drive off. I said if she’s working for you, I’d like to get to know her a little better. It’s almost like she’s in the family, spending all that time on the Wooden Nickel, which as you well know is legally half my boat. So I said, ‘Why don’t you stop off for supper one of these days after hauling, and get acquainted?’”

  “You did, huh? And what’d Ronette say?”

  “She said something like, ‘Me and him’s already acquainted.’ You know her grammar, it’s worse than yours. I said, ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’ and she said it could mean whatever I want. She looked at her watch and said something about going home to feed her dog. Lucas, I felt as if I’d been condescended to.”

  He can’t quite look her in the face at this point, so his glance drifts towards the plate glass window behind her. His eyes would like to check out the vehicles in the parking lot, but the view is blocked by the June forsythias in violent yellow bloom under the mercury-vapor lamps. He can just make out the twilight sky and the first star, on which he makes a wish to be the fuck out of there and not going through this, when suddenly a brand-new forty-five-foot fishing boat pulls right in front of the window, ten miles from the nearest shore. He can’t see its lower half because of the shrubbery, and the thing’s so big it looks like the Big Stop restaurant’s moving and the boat is standing still. He’s caught off guard for a moment.

  “What the hell, Sarah, take a look at that.”

  His wife turns around and says, “Heaven’s sake, Lucas, it’s just someone with a trailer hauling a boat. Try to pay attention. I’m doing my best to talk with you.”

  “But the trailer don’t show, so it looks like she’s steaming right through the parking lot. Ain’t that the optical illusion?”

  She’s got a stainless steel tuna pulpit up front, full controls on the wheelhouse roof, cabin closed on both sides so she’ll never haul a lobster trap. The boat stops right there in front of the Irving door, so new he can see the mold wax clinging to the sides. He hears the idling diesel of the hauling truck but he can’t see it, so it appears like the boat has docked up in the Irving parking lot to unload the catch.

  In a moment the door swings open and in struts Wilfred Beal with his arm around Clyde Hannaford’s brother Arvid, both of them with big cigars. Sarah’s got her back to them, but right away they spot Lucky in the booth. “Hey Lunt, which way’s the smoking section?”

  “It ain’t here,” he says, his nose hairs trembling from the whiff of smoke. “Don’t wave them god damn cigars over the salad bar.”

  The two men wheel around to view the new boat through the window. “What do you think?” Wilfred Beal asks. “Trucked her up from Point Judith, Rhode Island. Pequod Boat Corporation.”

  “No need to buy local,” Lucky says. “How come you didn’t get a Mexican one?”

  “They ain’t got the technology around here. This one’s an offshore rig, turbocharged diesel, refrigeration, Satcom, monel tanks, sixty-four-mile Furuno radar.”

  “She don’t have no pot hauler,” Lucky observes.

  “Ain’t going for lobster. Four, five years, lobstering’s going to be dead. Government’s going to move in, start the trap-limit squeeze, guys like me and you won’t haul ten christly lobsters in a week. That there boat’s for the twenty-first century. The good old days has peaked. They ain’t coming back neither. She’s full tuna. Total refrigeration, right to the airport: Sushi Express.”

  “You going to drag with her in the winter?”

  “Ain’t going to be here winters. No more iced-up fuel lines, no fucking frostbite. You know my brother lost a toe off of his right foot.”

  “Still got five left, don’t he?”

  “Lucas.”

  “No, that’s all right, ma’am,” Wilfred Beal says. “Your husband’s got a right to be jealous. This thing’s going to get me a condo in West Palm Beach.”

  “No investment like local talent,” Arvid Hannaford says. He’s got those same little pig eyes like his brother, fat cheeks and a tight wrinkly little pursed-up mouth like putting a pair of glasses over someone’s asshole. Arvid looks at the boat again, takes out a calculator, pokes in some numbers with a soft pudgy jointless finger that looks like a dick. It’s pretty clear Wilfred Beal won’t be seeing any Florida condos, but Arvid and Yvonne Hannaford might buy afew.

  “My man,” Wilfred Beal says, laying his arm on Arvid’s shoulder.

  As the two of them head for the smoking section, Sarah turns around and flashes a quick smile, not for domestic consumption. “Arvid, say hello to Yvonne for me. Tell her I’ll call her tomorrow about the fabric.”

  “Finest kind,” Arvid Hannaford says.

  “We’re getting real cozy with the Hannafords,” he observes.

  “I’m helping Yvonne redecorate her gallery. She might hire me part-time when it gets busy.”

  “Wait a minute. You wasn’t available when it came to lobstering. Take too much time from the studio.”

  “Things have changed, Lucas. I might need the money. In case I find myself one day supporting a household.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She leans forward across their uneaten salads, speaks low so Yvonne’s husband won’t hear. “Lucas, just because I’m finally getting a life of my own does not mean our marriage is over and anything goes. That afternoon in Burnt Neck I asked Rhonda Hannaford right out if there was anything she wanted to tell me about your working arrangement, and you know what she said?”

  “No.”

  “She said, ‘Why don’t you ask around back home?’ Which is what I’m doing. I want to hear it one way or the other straight from the horse’s mouth, not whispers and rumors and certainly not from a woman who is practically young enough to be your daughter. Ourdaughter, if we’d married like the Astburys, right out of high school.”

  The Irving Musak system is playing a Vince Gill song and he goes to look in the direction of the speaker, but she reaches for his cheek and turns his face towards her, looks him right in the eye without blinking with her face so thin and solemn and hurt-looking that it can’t be lied to and he starts to forget everything but the truth.

  “Ain’t nothing happening,” he says. Then, after a long pause, “Anyways, not anymore. Maybe one time early on...”

  “Lucas, I don’t need the details. I understand that woman is going through a divorce, I know what things can be like for someone under that strain. With your size, and the age difference, you must be a refuge for her in a stormy time. And I can only guess what it must be for a man, exposed to temptation out on the solitude of the ocean. I even take partial responsibility because I know you asked me to work for you and I refused. But Lucas, for twenty years I’ve submerged myself in your life, and the children’s lives, and now I’m determined to find my own. Do you know what this means to someone like me, who never got a day of education beyond high school, and has never traveled more than a few miles from home?”

  “It ain’t what it used to be,” he says. “You been away a lot.”

  She starts crying when he says that. He looks over at Wilfred and Arvid’s table. At the first sob the two of them stopped talking, and now they’re staring over at the Lunts, Wilfred’s blowing a smoke ring and Arvid Hannaford has his cigar stuck straight in his mouth like a turd in a dog’s ass. Sarah’s saying, “I have been away. I’m trying to cope with an empty nest, in my own way, and maybe take some of the financial burden off your shoulders. But it’s not worth all the money on earth if it tears down what I wanted to support.”

  The tears are crusting on her cheeks, as if a damp easterly fog blew over and salted them down. She looks younger than when she was knocked up with Kyle and he proposed to her that summer evening in the cab of the ’68 Dodge Power Wagon with the old small-block 318, toughe
st truck he ever owned, and despite its carburetor icing problems he can’t separate it from his memories of early love. He has the impulse to lean forward over their salad bowls and take her face in his hands the way he did twenty-one years ago, but there’s Ronette’s brother-in-law staring right at them with a fried clam dangling from his tight little asshole mouth and the impulse to kiss anyone is lost.

  “I’ll fire her tomorrow,” he says, “if that’s what you want.”

  “Lucas, you’ve already claimed whatever was happening is over and I will take your word for it. I don’t want you out there all alone. If you continue to keep it strictly business you can give her two weeks’ notice, but meanwhile, for everyone’s sake, I want you to be looking for someone else.”

  “That’s pretty white of you,” he says. “Don’t know’s I would of done that if it was me.”

  “There are women who wouldn’t let you back in the house, but I believe in a second chance. Just this week Dr. Nichols’s sermon was on the Prodigal Son.”

  “Speak of the devil.”

  “I will. I’m going to try and get Kyle home too.”

  “Jesus, Mother. Don’t go overboard.”

  “I am going overboard. You know, I’ve been thinking of Hillary Clinton. She is a role model for all of us on turning the other cheek.”

  “Hope she don’t turn it too fast,” he says. “She’s liable to rip his nose off.”

  “Lucas. We can start off by talking like civil human beings. Hillary Clinton is an admirable woman, and she’s been a source of strength in my working through this. What she’s had to put up with — that Jones person, who I must say does look a bit like Rhonda Hannaford on first glance.”

  “Nose is different,” he points out.

  She looks at him with her eyes angled up after this remark, like he’s not her husband but a vinyl siding salesman she’s never laid eyes on in her life.

  “The nose is different,” she says. “And I’m different from the first lady too. Because she seems to put up with repeat offenses. But you better listen carefully, Lucas Lunt, because you are not the president and you can’t expect your wife to be part of a harem. If you have not completely separated yourself from the Hannaford woman, and hired a new sternman, two weeks from today, June fifteenth, which will be Kristen’s graduation, I’ll have no choice but to open our rainy-day fund and retain a lawyer.”

  She turns up the volume on those last words, like she’s dragging in Arvid Hannaford as a witness.

  “Ain’t no need to,” he says. “We’ll get her straightened out.”

  The waitress refills their coffee to the halfway point and shoves the check under his saucer like she wants them to get out now before they cause a scene. The overhead speaker’s still playing the Vince Gill tape.

  Why can’t I forget it

  Why can’t I admit it

  There ain’t no future in the past

  Arvid and Wilfred are sitting on the same side of their table poring over a list of figures when they leave. He swings out of the way to avoid them but Wilfred yells, “Hey Lunt. Check out the tuna rig on your way out, you may want to order one. Japanese pay nine thousand for a single fish.”

  Outside, he studies the big hull on its Brownell trailer. “Miss Butterfly, what kind of fairy name is that?”

  “It’s a nice name, Lucas, I think it’s a Japanese opera.”

  “They ain’t going to catch no fish with a name like that.”

  Then he sees the shafts. The props are five-bladed Michigan HiTorqs on three-inch stainless shafts. Behind each screw, halfway up the exposed shaft, something else glistens in the orange mall lot light: spurs. That son of a whore has put razor-sharp stainless steel cutting blades on each shaft. When he plows his way through a trap zone on the way to the tuna grounds he’ll just slice off any pot warp he happens to encounter. Wilfred is going to leave lobstering with a vengeance.

  “Got your eye on a new one?” Sarah asks. “Thought you were going to be loyal to Wooden Nickel right to the end.”

  He turns his head and spits in the direction of the tuna boat. “Wouldn’t take one of them things if the government gave it to me.”

  He gets into the loaner and turns her over. Battery’s so weak it’s got about one flip left to it before it catches. His wife’s looking up at him from the little Lynx. “Till death do us part,” she says. “Remember.”

  Then she pulls out and leads him back to Orphan Point. He’s still stuck in low-range four-wheel drive, however, and before too long the navy blue Lynx is out of sight.

  When he reaches his house there’s a red Mazda Miata in the drive, top up, Maryland plates, blocking his way to the garage. It would be a beautiful act to drive the big bald thirty-one-inch Wranglers right up and over the back of it just like the way they do it at Ben Schmidt’s Monster Truck Show. Society, however, has a visegrip on his nuts just like everybody else’s, and he stops short with one front tire about a half inch from the Miata’s plastic bumper, the bow of the F-150 hanging like an aircraft carrier over its little trunk. Whoever it is, they’ll need his permission to get out.

  Sarah’s waiting in the doorway with a grim tight-lipped whisper. “For heaven’s sake, Lucas, at least try and be nice.”

  Inside, Kristen stands proudly in the door of the den with some classical thing playing behind her on his stereo, which is wired for country music and nothing else. “Thought you was only going to play that stuff upstairs,” he reminds her. “It’s bad for the speakers.”

  “Daddy, I’m entertaining. I want you to meet Nathan Hummerman. Nathan’s from the family I’m working for.”

  Behind her is a red-haired little college boy with thick-lensed glasses that pop his eyes out like a haddock. The kid jumps from his own chair, looks up at Lucky, who’s a head taller, then gropes for his hand like a blind man. Lucky plants both arms behind his back so the kid can’t get at them. “Only shake hands when I buy something,” he says.

  “That’s a good principle,” the kid says. “I’ll have to think about that. I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Lunt. Kristen says you’re totally unique. Believe me, I wanted to be a fisherman till I was twelve or thirteen.”

  “Oh yeah? What made you change your mind?”

  Kristen steps between them same as she does with Kyle. “Nathan goes to Brandeis,” she says. “He’s premed.”

  “That your car out there, Nathan?”

  “Yes, it is, sir.” He stands straight, pushes the glasses right up against the meat of his eyes.

  “How come you didn’t get a Corvette?”

  “I thought of a Corvette, but they get about ten miles to the gallon.”

  “What the hell,” Lucky says, “there’s plenty of oil down there. Ain’t you heard? The whole fucking center of the earth is filled with oil, making more of it every day.”

  “It’s OK, Daddy. We’ll take the Brahms upstairs and finish listening. You can have your den back.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Lunt, I’ll remember what you said about shaking hands. About the oil reserves too. It’s reassuring to know we’ll never run out.”

  When Kristen leads him across the dining room towards the stairs the kid’s arm jerks out and snakes itself around her waist. Lucky was just turning the Sox game on, but when he sees that move his spine freezes in place. “Just a minute, Kris. I got to go to bed anyway. Why don’t you two stay down here.”

  The ball game is the Sox and the Orioles. The kid takes his arm off of Kristen’s body and stands next to Lucky as Tim Wakefield shakes off a call and winds up. “Hey, there’s Cal Ripken,” the kid says. “I have a ball signed by him.”

  “What was you, in the stands?”

  “No, my dad’s one of the team’s consulting physicians. He’s their heart man. Cal Ripken came to dinner once, that’s when he gave me the ball.”

  Both males are intent on the game now, with Kristen standing in the doorway saying, “Nathan, I’ll be outside.”

  “Guess we’re going to go, Mr.
Lunt. Sorry I couldn’t watch the whole game with you. I know some of the other players too.”

  “No shit,” Lucky says. “Guess I’ll go outside and move my truck.”

  He wakes for no reason at half past one. The house feels empty. Kristen’s not home yet, her absence is like an open window. He lies there listening to Sarah’s asthma, every spring it gets worse with all the pollen around. A truck passes on the road, Dodge Ramcharger with twin pipes, probably Stevie Latete weaving home from the RoundUp at closing time. A boat leaves the harbor, way too early for lobstering; that would be Noah Parker’s pilot boat heading out to meet an offshore tanker bound up the Tarratine River to offload at the Exxon dock. He hears the sheriff’s cruiser, a Chevy Caprice with a well-muffled 350 V-8 under the hood, snow studs still whining cause the town didn’t vote any money for summer tires. His ears are silenced for the next two minutes by a deep-throated Harley twin coming down the hill from Norumbega, downshifting when it meets the cruiser, then racing off towards Burnt Neck, making sure nobody’s going to hear anything for a while. He hears Bobby Whelan’s Mercedes reefer truck, heavy with shellfish, starting off on the Boston clam run.

  Then he hears the Miata accelerating out of the village and downshifting as it gets near, four little cylinders but he has to admit they’ve got them tuned. It turns into the driveway and stops and he can relax. But then the doors don’t open. What the hell. They must be talking, and he hears some kind of rock and roll filtering his way. He thinks of the old pickup he had in high school, not his really but his old man Walter’s, ’61 Chevy stepside with a bench seat you could lie right down and fuck somebody on if she was short enough. The night he took Dolores Thurston to the Riceville Fair, it was the first time he ever saw a girl’s tits in real life, she was smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke down across her chest so the nipples stuck out in the saltwater moonlight like a couple of brand-new pencil erasers. Just a blink of time’s gone by and now she’s a wrinkly Mormon grandmother with snow-white hair.