The Wooden Nickel Read online

  Tonight’s Montana Night at the RoundUp so they’ve got a live country band, the Sundowners, big banner behind them: the blue grass boys from athol, mass. He takes a look over at the dance floor, which is mostly full of old-timers waltzing their wives in full western outfits with cowboy boots and string ties. They’re playing a scaggy mutation of Marty Stuart’s “Burn Me Down” when Travis Hammond spies him staring at the future and shouts across the dance floor, “Hey Lunt, come over and join us before you get yourself in trouble.” He’s got no choice but to take his Rolling Rock over and sit down.

  “Band sucks,” he says.

  “That’s right,” Travis Hammond says. “That’s why we’re sitting over here. Hey, how come you’re solo? I thought you had women up the ass.”

  “That’s exactly where they are. They ain’t much use up there either.”

  “Know what you mean,” Travis Hammond replies. “Know what you mean.”

  Meanwhile the three fishermen with him are drinking shots and beers as fast as they can put them down. Even to Lucky’s seahardened nostrils their clothes stink of herring and diesel fuel, and one of them’s talking about blowing an 800-horsepower Caterpillar engine just out of the crate. “Son of a whore cracked open like an oyster. I sunk her for a skiff mooring.”

  A second one turns to Lucky and says, “Don’t I know you from someplace?” He’s a big black-bearded guy bald as a dick on top with his long gray-black side-hairs pulled into a ponytail in back.

  Lucky says, “You ain’t a Trott, are you? Thought you was all Trotts out there.”

  “No, we ain’t Trotts.” The three of them grin at each other and laugh. “We’re Shavers, the Trotts is up to the north end.”

  “You ain’t married into them, living out there all them years?”

  “Nobody’d marry a Trott woman, they’re too fucking ugly.”

  The black-bearded one does look familiar, he’s been at the lobster boat races, though he never wins. Small boat, big diesel, but he’s afraid to let it out. “You was at Summer Harbor last year, wasn’t you?” Lucky recalls. “You had that black Goldwing that jumped the gun.”

  “How about you, you still running that Model T?”

  “Fourth place, gas unlimited,” Lucky reminds them. “Swiftest wooden boat in the race.”

  The guy with the sunken Caterpillar is a big orange-bearded fisherman with one wide brown spade of a tooth in his upper jaw. He must have had a good haul, because he buys Lucky what they’re all drinking: shot of Wild Turkey and a Rolling Rock, it settles down smooth on top of the Fog Cutters. “Thanks,” he says. “You guys come to the mainland for dental work?”

  “No. We come in to make a bank deposit and get some local pussy, if you don’t mind, then we’re heading back. You fellows got any spare daughters?”

  “That ain’t what I heard,” Lucky says. “I heard you boys wasn’t much interested in women.”

  The orange-bearded one holds up a middle finger that’s just a one-inch stump, a big raw scar on the end that looks like he sewed it up himself with his other hand. “I heard you was interested in this.”

  “Seriously boys, I hope you’re coming in for the races next month. We always enjoy watching you get towed back home.”

  Travis Hammond says, “These guys was saying the lobsters out their way is getting scarce.”

  “No fucking wonder,” Lucky says. “Greedy bastards fishing a thousand traps apiece, you caught everything on the bottom, now you’re whining they’re gone. You might try giving them a rest, we’ll sell you some starters, you can let the stock build up.”

  The black-bearded guy wears a studded Hells Angels vest over a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a tattoo with the head of a pit bull in a black star. He has so many spaces between his teeth his mouth looks like a piano. He throws back his shot and looks at Travis first and then Lucky. “We was thinking we might want to expand our territory a bit.”

  “Well,” Lucky tells him, “you got three thousand fucking miles of clear water the other side of you. Go for it.”

  “They ain’t no keepers that side of us. You know it and we know it. It’s too fucking deep. Course that don’t stop them Taxachusetts cocksuckers coming up and dragging it clean. We was figuring we might move inshore a bit. Heard you guys got more lobsters than you can handle, ain’t that so, Travis?”

  Travis takes a sip from his Wild Turkey and a slosh of Rolling Rock. He looks very serious, which he should be, because these guys are basically asking if he and Lucky would like to bend over and get fucked. Just like ninth grade. “We got a lot of pressure,” Travis explains. “We got Split Cove on one side and them Tarratine River bastards on the other. We’re squeezed bad as you.”

  The third of the huge Shag Island figures turns out to be a woman, at least he thinks so since they’re calling her “Priscilla.” Maybe she’s a Shaver too, she’s got the size and shape. She must weigh in at one-ninety, she’s got an anatomically correct heart tattoo on her bicep with blue sliced-off arteries coming out of it, black pirate scarf around her forehead, on her chin a quarter-inch of kinky purplish beard the color of dulse on a stone, and now she’s addressing Lucky in a low chain-smoking female voice. “Think of it, sugar, all them boats fishing off of this point, you ain’t even going to notice a couple more.”

  Lucky throws back the rest of his Wild Turkey and looks the meanest one of these bastards right in the eye, the bald piano-toothed one, and says, “There was a guy out of Stoneport, he set a couple traps on Toothpick Ledge back when my old man fished it. Next day they come out to haul, they found four boats waiting for them with a dozen men. Last we seen of them son of a whores.”

  The black-bearded guy says, “Them was the old days. Things has got a bit more flexible now. It ain’t so fucking uptight anymore. People ease off, they get along. Them territory lines ain’t written in stone.”

  “Can’t write in water.” The big female laughs. “The ink don’t take.”

  Then Travis is craning his neck to see past Lucky in the direction of the band and the bar. He looks like he’s trying to get more drinks, then he says, “Hey Lucky, ain’t that your boy over there? Ain’t none of my business, but I can’t see why he hangs out with them fucking retards over to Burnt Neck.”

  “He ain’t in here,” Lucky says, “he ain’t even twenty-one. Anyway, I ain’t in charge of his life.”

  “You’re his old man, ain’t you? That fucking Swan kid, his old lady is a whore. I heard she sucked off a whole Halifax trawler crew after the Stoneport races. One after the other. Ten bucks apiece, Canadian.”

  Sure enough, it’s his son Kyle and his Burnt Neck buddy, the two of them in sweatshirts with the arms razored off, showing off their steroid biceps and their tattoos. He doesn’t want to run into them, he’s had enough fucking family for one night.

  “I don’t know him,” Lucky says.

  Travis Hammond says, “I heard you two wasn’t getting on.”

  Behind Kyle and Darrell a dozen geezers are waltzing around with their arms around their partners, old dried-out bodies hanging on each other like stuffed animals, nothing inside them anymore but Dunkin Donuts and All-Bran. They all used to be fishermen, now they can’t even find the hook, death’s climbing up their stern pipe but they hang on to their wives and waltz away. They come from Orphan Point and Split Cove, Burnt Neck and Riceville and the closer islands like Hadley’s and Cleftstone, and some from as far off as Norumbega and Stoneport, which was a dry town till the last decade and they still don’t have a dancing spot except for the public pier. The old men look like they’ve been flaked down and shrunk, big eyes stare over the shoulders of their wives at something nobody else can see.

  Kyle and his buddy are standing at the bar being guarded by Big Andy himself so they don’t try and order a drink, though Kyle’s got less than a year to go. Liquor police must be on hand. His son looks like he’s put on another inch or two since he left home. His eyes are up to the level of Big Andy’s mouth. He’s grow
ing a mustache too, make up for the shaved head, only it’s not his color. Looks like he’s dyed it blond. He’s still got the earring. On his left shoulder he’s got a new tattoo but it’s too far off to make out what it is. His friend Darrell’s a shorter, skinnier, weasely type with a crotch-hair mustache, just the kind they love in prison.

  Travis Hammond says, “Hear your boy’s living over to Burnt Neck.”

  Lucky spits on the floor. “I wouldn’t know. I ain’t been to see him.”

  The orange-haired islander stops talking to his buddies and asks Lucky, “That kid yours?”

  “Used to be. I don’t know who the fuck he is now.”

  “He lobstering?”

  “No. He’s urchin diving.”

  “What about you?” the guy says to Travis Hammond. “You got any kids?”

  “My kid’s in the service,” Travis says. “And I got another one . . .” He pauses. “. . . in the community college system.”

  “The fuck he is,” Lucky says. “He’s in the juvenile detention system.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” the bald black-bearded guy argues. “Your kids ain’t lobstering, why make such a big fuss over a few traps?”

  “Them territories ain’t going to change,” Lucky says.

  Travis turns to Lucky. “I don’t know, Luck, we might be able to accommodate a few more sets, way out south, southwest of Sodom Ledge.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Travis. They ain’t getting nothing. Think what your old man would say, he’d piss in his fucking grave, same as mine.”

  “We was thinking we’d just try it out,” the orange-haired guy says, “like an experiment. Lay some traps along south of your traps, then you could add up and see if you was getting less lobsters, keep everything nice and scientific, and if you was, like your friend says, we could back off.”

  “You can back off now,” Lucky tells him, “save yourself a whole lot of trouble.”

  The orange-haired guy gives Lucky the big shit-eating grin with his shovel tooth and the purple tongue poking out of his mouth like a liver-colored eel. He takes a slug out of the bottle of Rolling Rock and pushes his chair back. He takes off his wristwatch and slides the expansion band down over the bottle, like he doesn’t want it to get hurt. Though this guy must spend his life in the open sun, his face is white as a slice of cusk and his hands are huge and pale with large moldy freckles on them like blue cheese. The guy says, “Who you telling to back off?”

  The woman puts her tattooed forearm on the guy’s sleeve. “Let the poor man alone, Cyrus. He don’t mean nothing.”

  Lucky feels his heart beat nice and strong and regular in his chest, just like the old days, no jumping around. “Fag Island,” he says, “that’s what we used to call it.”

  The orange-bearded guy sits there a moment with his eyes bulging out of his face like a flounder, then he stands up and leans over the table to grab Lucky by the throat, his hands knocking down bottles on the way, but they never get there. Lucky plants his ass in the chair and gives the table a good forward shove and it makes contact just over the guy’s knees. The big son of a bitch grabs the air for support and goes down backwards, knocking his chair over and breaking the legs off it as he crushes it to the floor. He lies there a minute, parts of the chair all around him, then starts picking himself up with one hand while the other hand’s grabbing at his eye like he can’t see. The other two Shag Islanders get up to help him, though not too swiftly, like they’ve never seen this guy down and they want to enjoy it for a while. Meanwhile the band has stopped and all the old geezers are closing in on the action while Big Andy charges through the crowd with one hand stiff out in front of him to clear the way and the other holding an aluminum baseball bat. Along with him’s a guy in a sport coat who was up at the bar drinking, now he’s letting his coat slip back and there’s a badge on his shirt, he must be the liquor cop. That’s why they gave Kyle a hard time.

  Lucky’s still holding the table edge, then takes the opportunity to remind Big Andy, “I told you not to let them cocksuckers in here. They ain’t nothing but trouble.”

  The orange-haired guy’s still got his hand over his eye and the big woman hisses at Lucky, “Jesus, you blinded him,” but the black-bearded one says, “Cyrus ain’t blinded, he lost his fucking contact.”

  The big black-bearded guy yells, “Don’t step on it, for Christ’s sake. Somebody get a flashlight.”

  “Maybe it’s up under the lid,” the woman says. She’s pulling on his shoulders, trying to bring his head down to her level and calm him so she can look and see where the contact is. “I’ll need a flash-light to look up in there,” she says. Big Andy goes back to look for flashlights. The liquor cop has his arms outstretched to secure the area where the contact was lost so nobody walks on it. The woman yells after Big Andy, “See if anyone can find a Q-Tip!”

  It seems like the perfect time to leave. He gives Travis Hammond a twenty and says, “Leave a good tip, Travis, we want to be asked back.”

  When he gets home the garage doors are closed, the house is quiet, and the lights are out. He did the right thing by instinct, killing a little time at the RoundUp while Sarah got calmed down. He knows her to the bone, she gets all excited over stuff, then she cools off and comes around. They’re closer than Siamese twins, that’s why they’ve lasted all these years. He peeks in the window and there’s the navy blue Lynx in its place right beside the ATV. He has to be very quiet so she doesn’t wake up and start going again about Ronette. He won’t even turn on the TV, though the Daytona replays start at 1 a.m. Maybe he could put it on mute and just watch them go round the track, in hopes of glimpsing Ricky Craven in number 25, his Budweiser Chevrolet.

  He steps into the breezeway and can’t open the kitchen door, first time in history the Lunt house has ever been locked. He fingers the big key ring hanging from his belt loop. He’s got the truck key and the snowmobile key and the key to the ATV, a key to Clyde Hannaford’s ice locker that Clyde gave him in earlier days, a key to the Lynx, two boat keys, engine and cuddy hatch, key to the chain padlock for the punt, key that Ronette gave him to her trailer though he’s never yet set foot in it, key to the gun cabinet and the gun rack in the pickup, and that’s it. He does not possess a key to his own house.

  He tries the front door, which they only use for company. Locked. Garage door too. He gets the crowbar out from behind the truck seat and tries to jimmy the roll-up doors but they’re down tight from the electric opener and the only remote control is in the Lynx. He takes the crowbar around to the rear window of the garage and pries the sash up, cracking a pane in the process because it hasn’t been opened in years and the salt dampness has swollen frame and sash into a single piece of wood. He pries it about halfway up and there it jams. He has to force a couple hundred pounds of human meat and bone through a half-open garage window: part by part, leg first, balls over the threshold, ass and belly as a one-piece structure, then bring the other leg around so he’s half in, backwards, and the rest is easy. Coming in like a burglar, he trips over his own lawn tractor, feels his way to the light switch, and he can see.

  His heart gives a little flip of fear. What if something’s happened? He peers into the Lynx looking for a woman slumped over the wheel the way she was when he left her, but the car is empty. It takes a while to penetrate that she’s locked him out. She locked the car doors back in the restaurant parking lot. She locked her body into the steering wheel. She locked her car even in the locked garage. No problem, she’s a free woman. But the house is different. The car is hers and the body’s hers, but the house was built by a Lunt and Lunts have owned and maintained it since the Civil War. It’s his. He was born in the big upstairs bedroom, same as his father was. In the years since his old man’s death he has roofed it and plumbed it and dug the sump out and scarfed in new sills and rafters where the ants got to them. Evenings, after a full day’s lobstering, he built the three-car garage and her studio over it with his own hands. When Kyle and Kristen came, he fram
ed the bedrooms out of the raw attic where he himself had grown up under bare roofboards with the nailpoints sticking through. He has passed through these doors without question for forty-six years. As far as he knows the house has never been locked, and though he once owned a house key, he can’t remember when he saw it last.

  He knocks hard on the kitchen door and waits. No answer. It’s possible she’s sound asleep and doesn’t hear him.

  He goes outside through the breezeway and knocks hard on the central front door of the house, which she has to hear. No light appears in the south bedroom and no footsteps sound on the stairs. He looks at his watch dial under the yard light. One-thirty. In four hours he has to be in Split Cove picking Ronette up for the day’s work. He yells up to her window. “Sarah. What the hell?”

  No answer. He rips a clump of grass and sod out of the lawn and underhands it up towards the bedroom windowpane. In the silence that follows, he remembers once up at her folks’ house when they first met, he’d been out shrimping and they filled the boat by midnight so they all came in early, maybe one or two in the morning, and all he could think of was seeing Sarah Peek. He went to the old Peek house on the Deadman’s Hill Road and lobbed a fistful of live shrimp at her window and the light came on. She came to the window, thin as an elver in some kind of white nightdress, and whispered down, “Lucas, my folks.”

  Now he’s throwing things at her window again, and finally it does slide open, the light still off but she sticks her head out in the dark and says, “Lucas, I told you that night in the Irving Big Stop and I meant it. You can’t come in.”

  He yells up, “Christ’s sake, Sarah, I’ve got to be fishing at five a.m. We can settle this out tomorrow night.”

  “It’s settled, Lucas. You’ve violated everything this house stands for. You show no sign of remorse. You don’t have the right to live here anymore.”

  “What do you mean, the right? My family fucking built this place, my old man framed the window you’re looking out of, and I laid the floor you’re standing on. A hundred and fifty fucking years this has been a Lunt house. Now get your ass down here and unlock the door before I kick it in.”