The Wooden Nickel Read online

Sarah turns over and says, “Lucas, are you all right? What time is it?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You were breathing like you were going to die.”

  “Dreaming, I guess.”

  “Are Kristen and Nathan back?” She sits up, draws the blanket over her chest and listens. The cruiser goes by again.

  “I heard the car,” he says, “but she ain’t come in.”

  “Well call her in, Lucas, it’s a school night and that girl has final exams. Besides, aren’t you worried? You didn’t even want them to go upstairs.”

  “What the hell?” he says. “They ain’t going to do nothing in a Miata.” He goes to the window and looks down. Sarah gets up and draws the top blanket off and joins him, wrapping the cover around her thin shoulders like a nun.

  “Cold,” she says, “for this time of year.”

  They both gaze down on the foreign vehicle that looks too small to contain two grown human beings. It’s not rocking, at least. He can see one of their arms on one side, one on the other. “Just talking,” he says.

  She lets one side of the blanket fall and puts an arm gently on his back. “They do a lot of talking, Lucas.”

  “They ain’t like us.” He lets himself put an arm around her shoulders, looking down at the little car.

  “You had me pregnant before we had a conversation.”

  They hear the door close as they’re getting back in bed. Downstairs the refrigerator opens, closes. The lights snap off, Kristen’s footsteps climb the stairs. With the sound of a furious Chinese locust the Miata heads off for the head of the harbor, and pretty soon he hears it on Summer Street, all the way down the Money shore till it comes to the Hummermans’ house on the point directly across from them. There it dies and the night is quiet again. In an hour and a half he’ll be rowing out to his mooring in the fog.

  6

  BACK AT THE STERN, Ronette looks like she’s yelling at something halfway to the horizon but no sound’s coming out of her mouth, then come these little squeaks, then, “Holy shit, Lucky, it’s a WHALE!”

  She’s got an unbanded lobster flapping in one hand and Ginger’s collar in the other to hold her back, looks like the dog wants to jump in and retrieve the fucking thing. With her rubber bib down and no bra and a snapping lobster in hand, his sternperson stands a very good chance of losing a tit. Now she’s climbed up on the washboard with the dog beside her, and she’s pointing straight at the horizon so he can see right down the armhole of her top, a nice-looking woman he’s not allowed to fuck. He hasn’t told her yet, but for the next few days she’s just a sternman, then she’s gone. “This ain’t a nature cruise, Ronette. See one of them things, you’ve seen them all.” He pulls the Wooden Nickel up to another trapline, in four fathoms, gaffs the buoy and slings the warp over the davit. Ronette’s saying something, though, so he pauses before throwing her in gear.

  “Yeah? Well, I never seen one. When I went with Reggie, he never let me look at nothing. Hope it comes up again, they get me right in the stomach.”

  “Scared?”

  “No, scared ain’t it. Something else. I used to get that stomach feeling when I was a kid in church. Only other time, might of been right here on this boat . . .” Her tanned face turns a little red, she walks over to the trap hauler and leans on him. “Church and you, Mr. Lucky Lunt, them’s the only other times.”

  “Well, it ain’t Sunday, and we ain’t after whales. Take a good look, then get back to work.”

  “Ain’t you the crab today? You biting?” She takes his hand and moves the thumb in and out like a lobster claw. He pulls away, kicks in the pot hoist and grinds up a double. The first one’s full of rock crabs and a big green eel that he tries to grab but it squirms off and over the side. The second one has a clawless pistol and two culls. He slides the traps back to her on the side deck, she baits them and wipes her hands on the oilskin bib, grabs the two bandits and slips the elastics on. The pistols always disgust him a bit, like a girl with no legs. He throws it to a big blackback seagull following behind. Funny thing, that bloody wing on the antenna keeps the regular gulls off but not the blackbacks, though it came off one of their own.

  It’s hot. Lucky’s got his shirt off under the Grundens oilpants, his flesh is bulging out through the side openings between bib and suspenders. Ronette can’t resist giving him a squeeze like she’s kneading a loaf of fresh white hairy bread. He knows there’s nothing but a pair of cutoffs under her orange Grundens, which are hanging down in front with the straps astray. Her purple tank top’s soaked from the salt water and herring guts. High Country 104’s playing Tracy Byrd’s “Don’t Love Make a Diamond Shine,” only song on the airwaves this week. Howard Thurston’s hauling maybe half a mile off to starboard in the big calm seas, his boat going mostly under a swell when Ronette yells, “Whale! There it is again!”

  He thinks of the shotgun under the wheelhouse deck, his hand trembles a bit like whenever he sees a moose feeding alongside the road, old itch goes back to when men were hunters at the start of time.

  “Wonder what would happen,” he says, “if you shot one of them son of a whores?”

  “Jesus, Lucky, they wouldn’t even feel it. They got skin a foot thick. You know what I heard? A whale’s heart weighs more than a Volkswagen. Think of it, Luck, just the heart. How could you shoot something with a heart that big? They ain’t bothering you.”

  “I don’t trust them bastards. One of them things could cruise through a trapline and eat the whole fucking business, pots and all. That guy Moby Dick was on the right track, stick a harpoon in every fucking one of them.”

  “Lucky, I think Moby Dick was the whale.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ronette, didn’t you learn nothing over in Split Cove? Moby Dick was this one-legged skipper out of New Bedford, he killed so many whales the government shut down the fishery. And them bastards was just warming up. Few more years and we won’t be able to catch a god damn thing, we’ll all be working for Bill Gates. The Japs have a good thing going with whales.”

  “What’s that, Lucky?” She’s baiting traps fast now, not even looking up.

  “They grind them into cat food.”

  “One of them things would feed a lot of god damn cats.”

  “They eat them in sushi too, that’s what I heard. They just don’t talk about it, they’re scared them Greenpiss hippies will drop another atom bomb on them.”

  “Lucky, did you ever think of going back and finishing up high school?”

  “What for? A lobster don’t ask if you got a fucking diploma.”

  “I was just wondering, that’s all. I mean, you got all this knowledge, you ought to have something to show for it.”

  “I know one thing. One of them cocksucking whales will take more lobsters than a herd of seals.”

  “That ain’t what I heard, I heard their mouths was so small they can’t even swallow a sardine. If that’s true they sure as hell ain’t going to eat any lobsters.”

  “Shows all you know. Some of them has small mouths, some of them don’t. How the fuck are they supposed to know they got small mouths? They don’t give a shit, they trash your gear anyway. One of them things goes through your gear, you’re fucked. It’s them or us. Survival of the fittest.” He reaches into the cuddy door and feels for the familiar oiled wood of his shotgun stock, just to be sure it’s there. He’s got a twelve-gauge slug that would stop a rhinoceros. “Son of a whore comes up again, I’m going to shoot it. Millionaire Greenpiss activists fuck the little guy every time.”

  “Lucky, you ain’t the little guy. What are you, six-two, twofifty?”

  “That ain’t what I meant. The world ain’t physical no more, Ronette. That kind of size don’t mean nothing.”

  “Means something to me.” She quivers her tits like blueberry Jell-o under the purple tank top, gives him a little smile that harpoons down his spinal column almost to the dicktip before it runs into a voice saying, Lucas, look but don’t touch. All of a sudden the whale’s in clo
ser and it sticks its fin up again like some government bureaucrat giving you the finger. The dog goes crazy, leaping up and barking like she’s about to swim out and bite it. Ronette says, “You got one on your side, anyway.”

  “You ain’t exempt,” he says to Ginger. “We’ll eat a few of you too while we’re at it.”

  After a couple more strings Ronette steps right out of her oil-skins from the heat and shakes her hair out from under the red kerchief she uses to keep it out of the winch. Everything’s in motion under the tank top. “Like what you see, don’t you?”

  “I might but I ain’t looking.”

  “Ain’t for you anyhow. Cruelty to animals don’t get to first base with me.”

  “I didn’t do nothing, did I? Let’s haul some traps.”

  “It’s wicked hot, Lucky. How about cooling off below instead?” He turns to her with a big rock crab in one hand, the other on the bronze spoke of the wheel. “Ronette, there’s something I got to tell you.”

  “There’s something I got to tell you too, Lucky, but it can wait till we been below. It’s been a week at least, ain’t it? I lose track of time out in the sun.”

  He hoists a trap over the rail and slides it aft to Ronette. Right when she’s got her hand in the parlor end pulling the culls and starfish out, he tells her. “The arrangement don’t seem to be working out. I got to get somebody else as sternman, after today.”

  She finishes pulling a big two-pounder out of the hole and turns to face him, her kelp-colored eyes wide open and the lobster snapping away in her right hand. “What the hell, Lucky. Ain’t I been good enough?”

  “It ain’t that, Ronette. You’re a good worker and I’ll tell anyone you want to go sternman for. Finest kind. But I ain’t had no peace since you went and told Sarah out at Kyle’s.”

  “I didn’t say nothing to your wife.”

  “She thinks you did.”

  “Thinks I said what?”

  “‘Go ask your husband,’ something like that. Anyway, it got her full of piss and I got to let you go.”

  “She’s a smart one,” Ronette says, going for another lobster.

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t say nothing like that. I never even talked to her. She got suspicious and she trapped you. You’re like a god damn pea-brained lobster, you crawled right into it.”

  “Maybe she trapped me, maybe not.”

  From one hand she’s dangling a small green cull that’s not even struggling. It hangs there limp as if it’s dead. “Don’t I mean nothing to you, Lucky?”

  He lights a Marlboro but the first puff tastes like creosote and he spits over the rail. The sky’s graying over with high fog. A big black rusty Shag Island trawler crosses their path, close enough to read the name off her stern: Black Angel. He lets the warp slack over the winch drum and braces for the wake. “I can’t leave Sarah,” he says. “She ain’t up to taking care of herself. Other day, her right-hand wiper blade come off and she couldn’t even fix it, she let the wiper arm carve a groove into the windshield.”

  The trawler’s wake comes through and kicks up the port quarter so high that Ginger slides off into the saltwater tank and leaps out vibrating and spraying. Ronette has to grab Lucky’s apron and hang on, the cull coming to life and snapping at her hand.

  On High Country 104, Garth Brooks sings “It’s Midnight, Cinderella.”

  I gotta few new magic tricks

  Your godmother can’t do

  Ronette stands there holding the lobster with Ginger beside her and says, “Lucky, it ain’t going to be that easy. I been sick the last three mornings in a row.”

  “What do you mean, sick?”

  “I mean sick, that’s what I mean. What does it mean when a woman takes her first sip of coffee and throws up? I ain’t been this late since I was twelve years old. Three weeks.”

  “I thought you said Clyde couldn’t have no kids.”

  “It ain’t Clyde.”

  “What do you mean, it ain’t Clyde?”

  “I ain’t even seen Clyde except to swap off Ginger and at the lawyer’s office. I ain’t seen no one, Lucky. Outside of you.”

  He turns away and puts the pot warp around the davit and hauls a deep one up from seven fathoms. It’s got two nice keepers in there and a bonus of three or four fat-clawed crabs hanging from the bait bag. She stands there waiting for some kind of answer, not laying a hand on the trap, so he does her work of pulling them out and banding them as if she isn’t even there. He takes the watch out of his apron pocket. It’s one-thirty. He’s got to get in, get unloaded and get to his daughter’s high school graduation, first Lunt that ever made it through. “What do you mean, outside of me?”

  “This ain’t no Hannaford, Lucky, and I sure as hell didn’t clone it. It’s a Lunt.”

  “What do you mean, it? It ain’t nothing. I ain’t even known you that long.”

  “Five weeks tomorrow. That was the first time, remember? You about had a heart attack. That must of done it. I got one of them Dewline home pregnancy tests at the Rite Aid and it came out green as grass. It’s a wonder you ain’t got seventy-eight kids like Saddam Hussein, cause you’re like the Burpee seed catalog. Guaranteed to sprout. Won’t Clyde have a big surprise.”

  “Clyde don’t need to know, does he?”

  “Well he’s sure as shit going to know when I drive past with a baby seat in the back. Damn creep. All that stuff coming out of him and nothing in it. Might as well been Ivory Liquid. Fake. Like the whole damn family. You know his brother Arvid’s kids are adopted? I never told you that. That skinny bitch Yvonne got herself laid by one of them surrogate doctors, that’s what Clyde told me, and when that didn’t work they bought them kids in New York City. Ever wonder how they got that Puerto Rican look? The whole christly Hannaford line, it’s a dead end.”

  “Well you still got a few weeks to decide,” Lucky says.

  “Decide on what? There ain’t no deciding to do.”

  “Ain’t going to be easy, raising a kid by yourself. You got no money to speak of, you’re never going to get nothing off of Clyde.”

  “I counted on working for you, Lucky. You and Doris. Doris will be the godmother. She was kind of around when things got going.”

  He baits the last trap himself and throws it off the stern. “I got to get back now,” he says. “It’s Kristen’s graduation. She’s the first Lunt in history that ever finished up.”

  “And she’s going to college. You ought to be proud of her.”

  “She don’t need college. She’s too god damn smart already.”

  He reaches behind the radar screen for a Marlboro and lights it with a Bic lighter, as the manifold has gone cold with all the idling. Then he puts her in gear, points the bow for South Sodom Ledge, east-northeast, and shoves the Morse lever almost to the stop. The big Chevy V-8 explodes with a message of power and freedom that erases the word pregnant like it was never spoken. In ten seconds she’s stern down and the loran’s reading eighteen knots, taking the long way around so he doesn’t disturb Howard Thurston, who’s still working traps, and Lonnie Gross just beyond. Lonnie’s daughter’s throwing bait off the stern with a cloud of seagulls around her like she’s the most attractive creature in the world. Shows what the fuck birds know.

  He’s got her slowed down after the Orphan Ledge nun where it gets shallow and there’s a raft with a divers’ flag in the cove. He stays slow at the narrows, where he’s squeezed in by Noah Parker’s pilot boat with the big numbers on the coach roof: 772503. What a racket, Noah gets a thousand bucks each for bringing the cocksuckers in, he doesn’t even do the work, just watches over the shoulder of some Liberian captain with a row of silent Arabs on the foredeck, not a word of English between them so Noah doesn’t even have to talk. A thousand bucks just to stand there guzzling his rum and coffee on the bridge.

  He gives Noah the finger as he goes by, Noah gives him a big wave back and steals a long look at Ronette Hannaford perched up on the washboard in her cutoff shorts, k
nees crossed, already scraping barnacles off the rock crabs. Their two wakes meet in the narrow space bounded by ledges and tide rips, causing a confusing little chop, but he throttles her up a hair and she cuts right through. Ronette comes up behind him as he steers, lights a Marlboro off of his, reaches over his shoulder to turn the radio up for Reba’s “I Won’t Mention It Again.” In the rush of V-8 speed, she presses her belly up against his back and a deep shock goes through him like she’s carrying an electric eel. “What about tomorrow?” she shouts.

  “If I want you tomorrow I’ll call you at half past four.”

  He lights another Marlboro off the hot engine stack. They’re inside the ledges now and the water is calm and smooth. Off to the westward, ranging north from the big Johnson estate, there’s a string of dark-shingled mansions with turrets and hidden porches that look like Dracula’s castle. Anyone ever spent a winter in one, they’d hang themselves.

  “We used to call that Kotex Point,” he yells. “Guy that ran the Kotex company lived there.”

  “I wish I’d of known you back then, Lucky, you must of been an interesting kid.”

  “You wasn’t even born.”

  “I was an angel, waiting to come down. That’s what my momma used to say.”

  “You’re still an angel, Ronette.”

  “A pregnant angel. They don’t show those ones on the Christmas cards.”

  Most of the moorings are still empty because the summer people have not really arrived yet, but there’s one big new dark blue sailboat out there, still got the hull wax on, two million in her easy, satellite dome on the spreaders so he can chat with his broker in the Cayman Islands, big chrome windlass on the foredeck so he won’t get a hernia hauling chain. Think of the poor bastards breathing fiberglass dust over to Bunny Whelan’s boatyard, emphysema, workman’s comp for a few years, then so long Sam. Glass lung. Place is worse than a coal mine, all so some rich bastard can go nowhere at five miles an hour.

  He says out loud, “Every one of them things is some son of a bitch screwing the working man.” Then he slows down, edges a point to starboard so he can see behind the canvas dodger and there they are, five or six of them in the cockpit not doing a god damn thing, getting drunk while the money comes gushing down the mast from the satellite. Look at the bloodsuckers, three in the afternoon, swilling martinis like a bilge pump. Come suppertime they’ll reach over and pull up some poor lobsterman’s trap and steal a day’s catch, living off the labor of others, worse parasites than a colony of fucking seals. “Son of a whores,” Lucky yells and heads right towards them, turning the throttle to 2200 rpm.