The Wooden Nickel Read online

  He puts the throttle up and swings way over to avoid Split Rock, used to be big lobsters right in those shallows in his old man’s day, but they’re long since gone. He’s going eighteen knots by the time he reaches Sodom Ledge, which at this tide is lined with seals, big fat cocksuckers, every one of them’s got a hundred pounds of lobster digesting in their stomachs. The Eskimos have the right idea, kill them and eat them just like anything else. It would improve the environment. You cut up seal blubber in thin strips, dry it in the sun, it tastes just like a fried clam.

  He slows and swings close to Sodom Ledge so the color fishfinder comes right up in a big red splash. He pulls the twelve-gauge out from its bulkhead rack, feeds a shell into the chamber and takes aim at a couple of big bull seals dozing off on a rock after pumping their harems all night. Take a look at those females, every one of them’s pregnant, all they do is bellow and fuck out there, there’s more seals than the sea can support so they have to raid traps, lazy fucking parasites, living off the sweat of other people’s brows. It would be a good deed to kill three or four of the greedy bastards.

  The seals take one glance at the Wooden Nickel and its blood-thirsty captain and slide off their deck chairs into the surge. Too late. He puts the gun away and hauls ass out to sea.

  End of the day, he’s made his gas and bait, he’s got maybe fifty pounds aboard and a bucket of rock crabs from the line off Ragged Arse Ledge that will return to the water in Sarah’s deluxe crab sandwiches. He’s moving a line inshore that didn’t catch anything out by Red’s Bank, carrying twelve traps on the stern, motor purring easy at 1600 rpm, clouds breaking up after a gray spell, nice George Strait song on the radio. Though his heart’s jumping a bit from the skipped medicine, it feels pretty decent to be alive. He takes Ronette’s note out of his oilskin bib pocket and reads it again.

  Just a snack.

  What the fuck does she mean by that? He crumples the note into the bag and throws it off the stern. Then he notices one of his traps has the vent hatch missing so the lobsters can walk right out. And another. No wonder this string didn’t produce. Fucking seals rip the vents right off the trap and help themselves. The state makes you use these escape hatches that turn every christly lobster trap into a seal feeder. Might as well forget about fishing and just throw pieces of meat off the side all day long. Fucking government can’t help itself, it pisses out welfare every chance it gets.

  He sees one of their brown bald heads staring at him from the water right off the starboard beam, with a dumb satisfied look like he’s got two or three lobsters in his throat right out of some poor man’s trap who’s trying to make ends meet. He slows down and grabs the shotgun off the radar shelf and fires a twelve-gauge load right in the seal’s skull.

  BOOM.

  The shot echoes off the sharp granite ledges and a flock of seagulls jumps into the air flapping and squawking like a hippie protest. Though the top of its head is sliced off at the eye line, the seal flashes a look of hatred, then goes down for its last dive. “Fuck you too!” he yells. Only this time it won’t be ripping up anyone’s trapline when it gets down there. Another Orphan Point family is going to have food on the table as a result of Lucky’s quick thinking and steady aim even in a cross-running sea. Not to mention the lobsters already feasting on hot bloody seal. Scavengers, just like us.

  Half the seagulls are circling the water where the seal went down, looking for what they can get. The other half are crowding over his stern for a free lunch, bunch of parasites worse than the seals. There’s one big blackback cocksucker flying right over the bait barrel like he owns the fucking sea and every fish in it. He pumps another round into the chamber and blows the seagull into a cloud of bloody feathers. The minute its head hits the water another gull gives off a cannibal scream and dives down to peck the eyes out. He puts the gun down and backs up till he can gaff the dead gull and bring him over the side. He slices the left wing off with a rope knife and throws the carcass to the other gulls. He stands up on the rolling side deck and duct-tapes the bloody wing to the loran whip. Soon as it’s up there, the other gulls back off like they’ve seen a ghost. He’ll leave it up all season, teach them a little respect for the workingman.

  He steers with one knee on the bronze wheel spoke while he runs a wad through the shotgun barrel, rubs a little Watson’s gun oil on the untarnished surface, and puts it back. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Survival of the fittest. It’s them or us. They’ve got the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Greenpeace submarines and the financial backing of the Rockefellers and the IRS. Whereas we, the people, what does that leave us but our guns and our own two hands?

  Or one, in the case of that Shag Island guy with the robot hook. A whole fucking government against one human hand.

  He sets his trapline in five fathoms right where the seal went down. Free bait. He’ll be back to get them in a couple of days.

  He’s coming in by Sodom Ledge now with a couple of other boats in sight. There’s the Bonanza running a foot low in the water from what must be three thousand pounds of lobster, Art’s kid steering while Art throws shorts over the side like he’s trying to reseed the inner harbor.

  There’s Damon Peterson, he always took second in class C diesels till he got himself a vasectomy. Since that day he hasn’t risen above sixth place.

  Coming up on Damon is the Trudy P, Chucky Peek’s boat, throwing off black smoke the way a boat does when it’s in its death throes. Chucky’s a relation of Sarah’s, he’s got six kids, his wife’s pregnant, they have one with spina bifida so they spend half their time at the Ronald McDonald House, and now his diesel’s going. They told him he was crazy to race the fucking thing, that 260 Isotta-Zucchini was a piece of shit right out of the crate. He came in dead last and burnt her out to boot. Guy like that’s not going to survive, but where’s he going to go? Ought to be a way to help out, chip in, keep it a secret, get him a new engine or something, but you can’t. No way he wouldn’t know it, and he wouldn’t take a cent. A man would go under first. But there’s no under, when you think about it. And nothing under that.

  Now a Split Cove boat crowds the Wooden Nickel coming up to the narrows at the Sodom Ledge bell. It’s a little black plastic diesel called the Bad Trip, there’s about four Split Cove guys aboard. It’s clear they’ve been hauling all day and have nothing to show for it, they’re riding high and passing a joint around, all huddled grimly about the wheel. They’ve got a bottle of that fruit-flavored brandy they like so much, Split Cove life expectancy’s around twenty-six. One of them pulls a Red Sox cap down low over his eyes, another one gives Lucky the finger, low and sneaky, but no mistaking it. That boat belongs to some Astbury cousins if he recalls, all of them dark-skinned like Ronette, dark-haired, there’s Indians in the next town over. The Split Covers like to fish with the whole tribe aboard and they’re now trying to crowd the Wooden Nickel into the bell buoy, which is not allowed. He puts the throttle up hard and the stern drops, his four-blade Michigan prop grabs solid water and the wake rises behind him like a waterspout. The loran takes a minute to figure it out, reads out twenty-one knots, then twenty-four, then twenty-seven. He sneaks past Ronette’s Indian cousins before the bell. They’re straining her. It sounds like a little Isuzu 650 in there, kerosene vaporizing from the stack and all six injectors strangling in oil.

  Then, because he can’t stand bullshit, he spins the wheel to port and cuts dead across their bow at top speed with about three yards to spare. He looks back to see them drenched and pounded by his wake, all four pumping the finger up and down, taking their trawler boots off to drain the water out. Fuck them. He slows down and lets them pass, falls just astern of them, floors her again and crawls right up their asshole with the Wooden Nickel throwing off a bow wave full of crystal stars and rainbows from the afternoon sun.

  He parts company with the Bad Trip after Sodom Ledge, fast-forwards the Reba McEntire cassette to the next cut, “He Broke Your Memory Last Night.” That lady is one fine musician. He throt
tles back so he can hear the words.

  Like a rare piece of crystal

  Like a fine china cup

  Which leads his thoughts to Sarah’s sea glass ornaments, the delicacy of leadwork that makes his hand seem as gross as a backhoe, so he’s afraid even to touch them. Yet Reba’s talking about sex, if you think about it. That’s the thing about Reba McEntire, she’s full of hidden meanings. You have to listen more than once.

  The Bad Trip’s oriental whine has faded to the other side of the bay. He’ll sell these lobsters, maybe take Sarah out to dinner at the Irving Big Stop, though if she makes him order the Petite Chicken Breast again he’ll put a fork through her hand. Fuck her. He only had three cigarettes today. He’s going to order the Prime fucking Rib.

  He spots his son Kyle’s dive boat in the shoal water west of Split Ledge, it’s an old pop-riveted aluminum derelict that had been relaxing on the bottom for at least three years. Metallica, numb name for dumb music. Kyle spotted it one day on the Wooden Nickel’s fishfinder and floated her up with inner tubes. He borrowed five hundred from his old man and put a 60-horse Merc on the transom so it planes in a flat sea though it pounds like a bastard if there’s any chop. On a calm day he might have a chance in class B outboards but the kid’s too lazy to sign up. He’s got one of his Burnt Neck buddies with him from the other night, half Indian probably, schoolmate of Kyle’s but he looks about thirty with his skull shaved like George Foreman along with a snake’s head tattoo on the left arm and two or three earrings in each ear. They’re taking their dive tanks off, smoking cigarettes, pawing through a big black plastic bucket of urchins.

  “Ain’t you supposed to be in school?” he shouts.

  “School got out at noon today.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Bullshit, nothing. Ask Darrell. It was teachers’ day.”

  Darrell looks around and shoots a big weasely grin earring to earring but he doesn’t say anything.

  “You ain’t going to graduate,” Lucky says. “That guy Leavitt called your mother. You’re flunking two courses. I don’t give a shit myself, but you got your old lady all wound up.”

  Kyle stands up in the boat, grabs an urchin and cuts it open with his dive knife, rubs the meat of it between thumb and finger, then spreads the eggs out on his palm. “Black gold,” he says. “Price is going through the roof. Urchin divers don’t need no diploma. Besides, when’d you drop out? Eighth fucking grade?”

  “Another thing,” Lucky says. “You ought to watch your language. Your mother heard you talking like that, she’d lock your ass right in your room. You wouldn’t see your friend here for a fucking week. Wouldn’t that be a shame.”

  The Burnt Neck kid, Darrell, picks an urchin out of the bucket, stares into the cunt end of it, then takes the dive knife off his belt and jabs at it like he’s testing a clam. He brings the urchin up to his face and touches his tongue to it, makes a face, spits in the bilge and throws the urchin over the side. He looks into another one and throws that up to Lucky. “Here, Mr. Lunt. You want some lobster bait?”

  Lucky catches it and smells it. It stinks OK, but it’s got a different stink to it than lobster bait. “They ain’t going to go for that,” he says. “Might as well put a bag of horseshit down there.”

  “Never know till you try,” the kid says.

  Lucky kills the engine, takes a quick hitch around the midship cleats to raft onto the urchin boat, which they’ve got anchored with light line. “Hey Kyle,” he says to his son, “you giving all them urchins to Clyde Hannaford?”

  “We don’t give,” Kyle says. “We sell.”

  “Well, Clyde ain’t going to buy none after this week. Urchin season’s over. He’s got the sign up already. Starting Monday, if you ain’t in school, you can come out as sternman.”

  “Clyde ain’t the only guy that buys them,” Kyle shoots back. “There’s others.”

  Down in the bilge, Darrell gives him a kick on the ankle to shut him up. “It don’t matter, Darrell. He’s my old man. He ain’t going to tell no one.”

  Darrell cuts a rotten piece off an urchin and throws it over the side. “Don’t say nothing about it.”

  Lucky feels his heart missing a beat, then pumping to catch up. He puts a hand on the pot hauler to steady himself, then says to Darrell, “I don’t give a shit what you do. Half your fucking town’s stamping license plates, other half’s on welfare. Just don’t drag my kid into it or I’ll kick your ass.”

  “Too bad,” Darrell says. “I hear they’re paying top dollar for lobsters too.”

  “Top yen,” Kyle adds.

  “Go ahead, tell him,” Darrell says, “Tell him about Mr. Moto. He might be interested.”

  “If it’s Italian I ain’t dealing with them,” Lucky says. “They got the fish mafia up to Boston, frig around with them, they don’t give a shit, they’ll cuff you to the wheel and set your truck on fire.”

  Darrell squints down into the Wooden Nickel’s tank, couple of four-pounders in one corner, shakes his head. “Mr. Moto wouldn’t have nothing to do with them. Too fucking small.”

  “Right up at the legal limit,” Lucky says. “You put the gauge to them.”

  “No doubt.” Darrell keeps shaking his head like he doesn’t believe something. “You see them urchins, Mr. Lunt? The price of them suckers is going to double next week. Only we don’t sell. We hold out. Week after that, closed season, Japs starving for sushi, the price is going to double again.”

  “You ain’t going to play that kind of game with the mafia,” Lucky says.

  Darrell says, “Mr. Moto ain’t Italian. He happens to be from oriental extraction.”

  “And he’s buying off-season?”

  “Oversize lobsters too,” Kyle says, trusting his old man now that Darrell has trusted him. “How about eight dollars a pound?”

  Lucky has to stop on this one. He’s had a couple of jumbos in the outside traps over the last week, five or six pounds apiece, which he throws back by instinct, not even bothering to put the measure to them. Forty-eight pounds of lobster at eight bucks a pound would be close to four hundred bucks a week, on top of what he gets off Clyde. Kristen’s going to college next year, mailbox full of bills all winter when the boat is hauled, nothing coming in, he hasn’t the dimmest fucking idea where he’s going to get the money.

  Another voice comes in, it’s his old man Walter Lunt: Don’t take no shorts, Lukie, and don’t take no breeders, you got to leave something for your kids. A brief little length of tape inside playing his old man’s voice. Just like the shorts and the females, big offshore breeders are the future, like his house and his fishing grounds, a legacy to save for his own flesh and blood, whether they give a shit or not. If lobstering was a religion, that would be the first commandment. “I ain’t going to do it,” he says. “I don’t care nothing about sea urchins, but them big deep-sea lobsters ain’t going to Tokyo. They’re the breeding stock.”

  “Don’t worry,” Darrell says, “you ain’t going to catch them all.”

  “Don’t matter, I ain’t doing it. And Kyle ain’t either. There’s things besides money.”

  “I’d like to know what,” Kyle says. “I didn’t learn none from you.”

  “You won’t learn none from him either. Or that gook dealer of yours.”

  Kyle gets sullen and looks down but he doesn’t answer back. He takes up a cracked urchin and throws it on the other side. Darrell goes to cast off the Wooden Nickel but Lucky beats him to it. He idles out so as not to rock them too bad, then after a few yards he runs up the harbor to bring his legal lobsters into Clyde’s.

  3

  HE’S GOT HIS FEET UP after supper on the big stack of Commercial Fishermans in the TV nook. One eye’s checking out the boat photos in the new issue, the other’s watching the K-Mart Kountry Talent Show, which is not showing much talent, couple of Christian crotch-scratchers from the county, a commercial for the Tarratine Monster Truck Show, then a pale wrinkly woman that looks like Dale Evans out of the
grave. It’s supposed to be her debut performance but she’s sixty if she’s a day. They used to have a good show with real talent but now it’s mostly freaks. They’re bringing the Lemieux Brothers next, a ghoul act with two dead-looking teenagers stuck together like Siamese twins, when the phone rings and he lets Sarah get it. She sings sweetly, “Lucas, somebody for you.”

  She hands him the cordless and waits listening as if it’s a business call that concerns them both. Must be some son of a bitch pushing bank cards, they like to call you when your mouth’s full, even though when they actually run his credit check, they turn him down. But god damn if it’s not Ronette Hannaford answering the sternman ad.

  “Don’t like calling you at your home like this, I know you’re with your family, probably finishing up supper, but I didn’t want you to give it to no one else. You ain’t, have you?”

  “Not yet,” he says. “I had it up awhile and no calls come in. That ain’t to say I’m going to hire you. You already passed it up.”

  “Things are different. That bastard Clyde’s cutting me off completely. I need the money. I got to have a better lawyer. I got to have car insurance.”

  “Insurance ain’t that much,” he says. “It’s twice as cheap for females.”

  “You don’t know, honey, I flunked so many breath tests, I got to go with a special company.” He hears the tears in her voice, imagines her holding an open coffee can with the other hand.