The Wooden Nickel Page 5

  “That’s chartreuse.”

  “Chartrooz,” Lucky tries to say.

  “It’s a French color, you wouldn’t know.” She’s back out now, she had been opening a big five-pound coffee can on the industrial opener and now she’s throwing the jagged top in the recycling box.

  He likes the way the black tights tuck into the cowgirl boots, it makes his pulse beat in his eardrums like he was back to normal and not a medicated fucking cripple who may never get it up again except in his sleep. “How come you work here, anyway, Ronette? With all Clyde’s money you could sleep late every morning and watch the Oprah show on TV.”

  “A woman’s got to have her independence. This woman anyway. I ain’t living off no one.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and tell him?” Doris says from behind the register.

  The tinny radio over the coffee urn’s playing a Garth Brooks song:

  Little café, table for four

  But there’s just conversation for three

  “I ain’t staying at Clyde’s,” Ronette says. She sticks her chin up for a minute, then she lets her face fall and her mouth goes down and she starts crying, right behind the counter with the big open can held in her two hands and the drops making little craters on the surface of the coffee like rain on a dusty road. Tears have always silenced him, so he just looks at her with her mascara eye-rings breached through and offers his big hairy paw over the counter but she doesn’t take it so he feels like a fool and pulls it back. “I ain’t going to be able to get by,” she says.

  “You’re working here.”

  “Three mornings a week. Way you guys tip, it don’t buy cigarettes.”

  “Summer it’ll get better,” Doris says.

  “Wicked long time till summer.”

  “Clyde ain’t helping you?” Lucky asks.

  “That son of a bitch ain’t giving me a dime. He says I walked out on him so I can pay.”

  “Did you?”

  “I couldn’t go in the door of that place no more. It was like a frigging igloo in there.”

  “Thought you had a hot tub,” Doris says.

  “I mean the emotional temperature. Clyde would sit there without saying nothing days on end. It ain’t walking out if you can’t bring yourself to walk in.”

  “You did get the car,” Lucky reminds her.

  “What the hell use is it? The insurance was in his name. He ain’t even paying the premiums. Just stay away from me, I’m an uninsured motorist.”

  “You know,” he says, “I might be wanting a sternman. Didn’t you used to fish with Teddy Dolliver at one time?”

  “It was his brother Reggie,” she says, with some pride, though Reggie Dolliver is currently up in Thomaston serving two to five for aggravated assault.

  “Reggie then. He ain’t going to need you in the joint. How about working every other day for me?”

  Doris gives out a choked little laugh followed by a spasm of cigarette coughs. “Good idea, Ronette. You ought to consider it. Your husband would get a kick out of that. Hey Lucky, didn’t Clyde date your old lady once upon a time?”

  Ronette looks up. “He didn’t do nothing of the kind.”

  Doris says, “How would you know, honey? It was before you were born.”

  Ronette lights a cigarette off the one she was smoking, stabs the spent butt in the dishwasher to put it out, throws it in the garbage. “Clyde is a jealous fool. He was born in the Year of the Pig, that’s what it says on the Chinese place mat up at the Tarratine mall. Jealousy is the main quality in the Year of the Pig.”

  “You must mean horse, dear,” Doris says. “There’s no pigs on those Chinese place mats.”

  Ronette says, “I bet the both of you never ate a Chinese meal in your lives.”

  Lucky says, “Bullshit. I was in Vietnam. We used to eat stir-fried dogmeat over there. Tell me that ain’t Chinese.”

  “It ain’t. Dog’s Vietnamese, not Chinese. Anyone with half a brain knows that. Rat’s Chinese.”

  “How’d you come to know so much?” Lucky asks Ronette.

  “Clyde used to take me out.”

  “So how come you left him?”

  “It wasn’t what happened when he took me out that was the reason, it was what didn’t happen when we got back home.”

  “None of that talk,” Doris says. “This is a family place.”

  “It’s true, Doris, and my lawyer says that’s grounds. Noncon-summation, he put it right down in black and white.”

  She starts crying again into the five-pound coffee can, which she’s still holding.

  “All them tears,” he says, “ain’t going to do the coffee any good.”

  “Hell with you, Lucky Lunt. I’ll pee in it if I want.” She shoots a guilty look over towards the cash register but the boss lady doesn’t flinch.

  “Flavored coffee, Doris. That’d bring the yuppies in.”

  “Why don’t you take the morning off,” Doris suggests. “I can handle things on my own. If I can’t, I’ll get Lucky here to help out. We’ll put an apron on him, he’ll make more here in tips than he makes off that old lobster boat.”

  Ronette puts the can under the counter where it belongs and wipes her face once more with the white waitress apron. Then she takes the apron off, throws it in Lucky’s lap and says, “He’ll look real cute in this. Thanks, Doris, that’s exactly what I need. See you tomorrow.”

  Without a word more she waltzes out.

  “What’s that all about?” he asks Doris, who has taken over the job of brewing the new coffee. He gives her the waitress apron and she ties it around her waist.

  “Guess you know as much as I do. She’s right. Clyde’s not planning to give her a cent either, that’s what they say.”

  “Where’s she staying?”

  Doris gives him a dark suspicious look. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “Guess I ain’t going to get her for a sternman. Doris, you mind if I put a note up by your door?”

  “What do you want a sternman for? You always liked working alone.”

  “Sarah don’t want me out there by myself, account of the operation.”

  “Can’t say as I blame her. Considering your father, how he went, and his father too, didn’t he? Working alone. Everyone else got a sternman anyway. What about your boy?”

  “Kyle’s got his own boat, he’s a big urchin diver now. He fishes the underutilized species for the Asian trade.”

  “Urchin season’s over this week,” Doris reminds him.

  “Don’t bother him none. He’ll go down after something. Sea cucumbers, squid. If it’s got tentacles, them Asians will eat it. No questions asked.”

  “Afro-deesiacs,” Doris says, “that’s what they called them on 20 / 20 .Barbara Walters, so it’s not bullshit. They are highly regarded as a marriage aid for men.”

  “Well, they must have some pecker problems over there, cause they finished off the fucking tigers and now they’re buying up everything in the sea.”

  “You wouldn’t think so from the population,” Doris says. “I heard the other day there’s five hundred billion of them. Think of that, five hundred billion.”

  “Lot of god damn sushi.” He tries to think of the number, but the picture that comes is not a land teeming with human beings but the darkness of outer space.

  Doris says, “What about Sarah, can’t she go out? She used to fish with her old man, back when she was a kid, before she worked at the sardine plant. And your daughter, Kristen. Jesus, Lonnie Gross takes his daughter out.” They both break out laughing at that one, then Doris doesn’t pursue the subject.

  “Kristen gets sick from the bait smell, Kyle don’t want to be on my boat. Period. I ain’t going to force him. I asked Sarah but she’s got her arts and crafts.”

  “She’s quite the celebrity, I hear. Got those mobiles or whatever they are up at the art school. But you two are man and wife, and if you’ve got a condition she ought to be by your side.”

  “Well, she ain
’t. Print out a sign for me, will you, Doris? I ain’t such a neat writer.”

  She prints on the back of her own business card and sticks it up with the others, right under the S&P Septic Service card.

  STERNMAN WANTED. TWO DAYS. 222-2714.

  “Thought you already asked Ronette. Trying to lure a good waitress away, better watch your step.”

  “You only hire her three days.”

  “She can go full-time in the summer if she wants. Lots of money in the dinner trade. She can earn a living off of tips, that one, she just flicks her tail at them, they leave her fifty percent. I let her keep all of it too. Some’s don’t.”

  “You are the employer of the month, Doris.”

  “Knowing her, by summertime she’ll have somebody else paying the bills. If she doesn’t go back with Clyde.”

  He borrows her pen to circle the phone number and starts to leave. Just then this decrepit Ford F-150 four-by-four drives up, solid rust, muffler dragging sparks, grille stove in like a guy smashed in the mouth. Two bullet holes in the windshield. No fucking license plates on it, front or rear. The Trott boys from Shag Island are in there, all three of them in the front seat, it’s a miracle they can pull the doors shut. It must be the vehicle they keep on the mainland. Nice bumper sticker too:

  IF YOU CAN READ THIS, FUCK YOU

  It’s clever and it makes a point about education.

  The driver’s door won’t open, so they all three come out the passenger side. The driver’s a giant, he’d outweigh Frank Alley, the bald-headed one that’s only around five-six has a neck like a gorilla, and the third one’s a wiry son of a bitch with a carved-up face and an artificial arm all the way up past the elbow. He’s wearing a sleeveless black shirt so you can see how the thing’s attached to his shoulder stump. Harvey Trott: they say his sleeve caught in the dragger winch, he had to chew his own arm off to get free. He’s holding the cigarette in the hook of his artificial limb, with all the cables so he can twist it around like a robot and poke the filter between his lips. Out on the island he scooped a guy’s eye out with that hook, that’s what Travis Hammond said. Close relation too.

  He asks the last one in, the driver and dragger captain, Anson Trott, “Them two come up in the net?”

  Lucky stands six-one or -two, weighs two twenty-five, but Anson Trott looks down at him through his beard like a Civil War statue. “Kiss my ass, Lunt.” The way he says it, sounds more like he’s calling him “Lint.” Licky Lint. You can hardly understand them, they talk a foreign language from not coming off of that island for three hundred years. “Hey Lint. Take at look at this.” Big Anse unfolds a roll of cash the size of a horseshoe, all brand-new hundred-dollar bills with the big Ben Franklins that look like large-print money for the blind. “We just sold twelve thousand pounds of scallops to your cousin Hannaford.”

  “He ain’t my cousin,” Lucky says.

  “We heard you was all cousins in Orphan Point.” The Trotts all laugh like it’s a big joke. Their mouths have some teeth, some black holes, some false teeth that look like wooden lobster pegs green with mold, there’s not many dentists on Shag Island. They’re all millionaires, though, that’s what Noah Parker says, he’s out there all the time with his pilot boat.

  The Trotts order breakfasts of creamed chipped beef on English muffins, which Doris is gleeful to sell since she’s had the stuff simmering in there for a month.

  “You boys planning to race this year?” Lucky inquires. One of the Trotts is looking at his creamed beef like he’s having a second thought, then decides it’s all right and forks it in. The bald-headed one says, “Sure, we’ll enter the dragger and sink the whole fucking fleet.” Har, har, har, laugh the other Trotts with their mouths full of wooden teeth and pink-and-white creamed chipped beef.

  Lucky’s not going to let it drop, you don’t get a chance like this every day. “I heard there ain’t any fast boats out to Shag Island since Alvah Greene died.”

  “We got a couple,” the skipper says. “Carleton Trott just got his-self a six-hundred-cubic-inch Deetroit Diesel.”

  “I heard he had a Deere.”

  “He did. After a week he didn’t like it, pulled the cocksucker out and threw it overboard. Low tide, you can see that son of a whore right off the ferry wharf in eight feet of water, bright fucking John Deere yellow.”

  “Brand-new thirty-thousand-dollar engine,” his brother echoes. “Put the dock crane to the son of a whore and dropped her over the side.”

  “He any relation?” Lucky asks, fishing in his pocket to leave a decent tip.

  “Not that I know of,” the Trott captain says, at the same time fingering a piece of chipped beef off one of his huge wooden molars, spearing it on his fork, and eating it again. He spits something else out of his mouth, holds it out, looks at it. “Jesus H. Christ, Doris, what do you put in this shit?”

  “It’s kind of a secret,” Doris says.

  “Looks like a fucking tooth. Don’t that look like a tooth, Harv?”

  Harvey Trott puts his cruller down with his hook hand, reaches for the thing with his good one, looks it over, pops it in his mouth and chews it down. “Nothing wrong with that, Anson. Just a bit gristly, that’s all.”

  Anson gets up off of the stool, his head just about touching Doris’s acoustic ceiling, and goes to pay her with a brand-new hundred-dollar bill.

  When Lucky goes to take care of his own check, she says, “Coffee’s paid for. The Trott boys picked it up.”

  Lucky runs right into Clyde Hannaford on the gangway leading to the skiff float. He can’t avoid him. “Sorry to hear about things at home,” he says.

  Clyde answers, “Fuck you too,” which Lucky doesn’t know whether to take personally, or if it’s just what a guy might say to anyone after his wife takes off.

  “It ain’t my fault, Clyde. Could happen to anyone.”

  “I’m going to close this fucking place up and sell it,” Clyde says. He’s got a bit of a whine in his voice, same whine he uses when he’s jawing your dock price down five cents a pound.

  “No you ain’t, Clyde. We all need you. Get drunk after work, jerk off, give her a while, maybe she’ll come back.”

  “I can’t get drunk,” Clyde whines. “Only place to get drunk is the RoundUp, and she’s going to be there. Sure as shit. I’m moving to Florida, live with my folks down in Coral Gables.”

  “You ain’t. Who would run things around here? Nobody knows diddly shit except how to fish.”

  “You boys could take over the wharf, buy me out, make it a co-operative like they got over to Split Cove.”

  “Won’t work. There ain’t one of us that can keep the books.”

  “No problem,” Clyde says. “It’s not hard. Just take what I pay you guys and add on fifty percent for yourself.”

  “That’s simple,” Lucky says. “I could even do that.”

  “Then take her, she’s yours.” He squints over at Clyde, who adds, “I mean the wharf.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Lucky says. “I’m sure as shit sure you do.”

  He leaves Clyde turning the prices up on his fuel pumps and rows towards the Wooden Nickel, hugging the shore at first to avoid the channel current. A ways down he can see a construction crew renovating one of the old mansions for some Philadelphia son of a bitch, well-drilling rig in there, backhoe digging for a huge septic tank the size of a garage. That’s what Dwight Lord tells him, he’s the honey-wagon driver from Burnt Neck, Nobody shits like the rich. Dwight claims they stuff those big tanks full three or four times a month — just one family, plus a few other big shitters that show up for weekend visits in their corporate jets. He has to come down and ream the drains out twice a week. Eat and shit, that’s how Dwight puts it. And the fucking contractor is from Massachusetts.

  He ties the skiff to the pennant and lets it drift back aft where it’s easier to climb on, not jumping up on the prow as he might have ten or fifteen years ago. You don’t go leaping around when you’re a forty-six-year-old m
edical experiment, proud father of a kid bound off to college and another one bound for jail. He climbs in, flips the radio to High Country and reaches behind the radar screen for a Marlboro. On the way, though, his hand encounters something else. Hey. A bag lunch. Sarah must have come out here and stuck it on the boat. That would be a first. Anyhow, he’s already got Sarah’s lunch right in his hand. He puts Sarah’s sandwich on the engine box and opens the new bag. There’s an éclair in there from Doris’s with its cream interior oozing out and the chocolate topping stuck to the paper bag, and a banana and a Reba McEntire cassette and a note. The note is printed like the way Kristen used to print in about grade four. It reads, HAVE I GOT A DEAL FOR YOU, which is the name of one of Reba’s songs. On the other side it reads, JUST A SNACK. DINNER SOME TIME. And on that side it is signed, Rhonda (Astbury) Hannaford. He barely remembers Ronette was an Astbury before she married Clyde. Her old man Ivan runs Astbury’s Wrecking out on the Burnt Neck Road. And another thing, as a high school freshman Lucky played JV football for Orphan Point when Ivan Astbury was a senior on the same team. He must have had Rhonda first thing after graduation. Sarah would know.

  Sixteen years difference. She could pretty near be his kid.

  He throws the banana in the bait bucket, thinking he might bait one of the traps with it, lobsters might go for something new. He eats the éclair, wipes the cream smears off the cassette so it won’t fuck up the stereo, and puts it on. It’s cued right to the song too.

  Have I got a deal for you

  A heart that’s almost like brand-new

  Her old man Ivan Astbury lives over on the Split Point Road, right near the RoundUp so he can find his way home when he’s drunk. That’s where she’s probably gone, home to Daddy, all the way across the harbor from the hot tub of her frozen home. He looks over eastward as if he could see Ronette Astbury standing on the Split Cove wharf, but it’s a good two miles and his eyes aren’t what they once were either, not anymore.

  When he starts up, instead of steaming past his own house on the eastern side, he steers her down the Money shore and doesn’t turn eastward till he’s opposite the Split Cove entrance buoy, a red nun half sunk because the Split Cove boys like to take a shot at it as they go by. He doesn’t go in exactly, it’s been a long time since an Orphan Point boat crossed the Split Cove line. He does come close enough to make out a figure on the dock. He picks up the binoculars. It’s not Ronette, just the blubbery outline of Chub Washburn, the Split Cove co-op manager, inspecting his lobster cars. It’s a well-known fact that Chub takes a leak in them now and then, gives his product that special Split Cove taste.