Spartina (14 page)

When he got to his house, he saw May’s car was gone. He sat in his pickup. He’d given both buckets to Eddie, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the red crabs. Maybe they could have put them in lobster cars, kept them alive in the pond. No. They were more fragile than lobster, lived deeper and colder. Had to be ice cold to stay alive, Joxer had to boil them live, pick them, flash-freeze the packaged meat so fast it was almost instant.

Joxer had spent two years trying to get the big lobster boats to go out the extra miles for red crab. When he got Captain Texeira on his side, he got not just Texeira’s two boats but a couple more who tagged along. Joxer had given guarantees to four boats in all. Another four including
Mamzelle
, call it three and a half, went out on spec. Even if Joxer got the plant going, and even if Captain Texeira stuck by him, Joxer would be in trouble. The two other contract skippers and the three other skippers on spec might go back to lobstering. You could always sell lobster.

But Joxer’s problem wasn’t just a problem for seven boats. Half of Galilee rode on red crab by now. That’s what shut them all up on the dock. They’d been mad as hell, had a right to be mad as hell. You don’t spend hundreds of bucks on fuel, spend a week or two at sea, haul pots for ten hours straight, and have some Jap tell you so sorry, no buy red crab.

Invisible as Joxer’s problem was, it would end up hitting Galilee as bad as a storm, undercutting something people had built on.

Dick didn’t want to think this all through just now. He felt the general disaster enough to numb his sharper thought for himself: Joxer’s company sure as hell wasn’t going to lend him ten thousand dollars.

He looked up and saw May through the window. Charlie must have the car. Dick still wasn’t used to the idea of Charlie driving.

May told him the boys had gone to a ball game. Dick took his shower, started fooling around with her. She stopped cleaning the kitchen. Afterward he told her about Joxer’s problem. She didn’t complain when he said he was going to the Neptune.

He put five bucks in his pocket and tried to think of something nice to say to May. “That garden work’s getting you in shape some.”

That didn’t do it. May looked up and twisted her head as though she’d heard a mouse in her kitchen. Dick took another five. He said, “Tell Charlie I could use some help on the boat tomorrow.”

T
here was a ball game on the TV at the Neptune. Not the Sox, just a baseball game with Howard Cosell talking. Dick watched an inning, couldn’t take Howard Cosell. Dick talked to a guy he knew off one of the big lobster boats, asked him how it was going. The guy laughed and said, “I guess all you crab boats are going to be tagging along now.”

Dick said, “Fuck you,” and looked around for Parker.

Parker came in an hour later. Dick had just bought his third shot of whiskey with a beer chaser.

“We got to go out tomorrow,” Parker said. “Clean out the dead crab. Resources officer came by and told
Marjorie
’s skipper not to dump them so’s they’ll wash up around here.”

“How far out you want to go? I got to work on my boat. Goddamn, let’s go right now. I’m offering to go right now, not tomorrow.”

“Dick, old buddy, don’t get all cramped up about it. You got to take the bitter with the sweet. Plenty of time for your boat. You only got enough money for one coat of paint anyhow.”

Dick didn’t say anything.

Parker said, “I’ll tell you what, though. I think we’ve had enough bad luck. Know what I mean? I think it just may be time for a little piece of good luck, just a small change of luck. We’ll go out for a couple, three days. You bring your little skiff, not your big one. We’ll put the dory’s outboard on her. You’re right about the dory, she’s an abortion. I wouldn’t want to have to depend on the dory.”

“What the hell are you up to? You looking for the insurance on
Mamzelle
?”

Parker held up his hand. “Jesus, you get noisy on a couple of drinks. And wrong too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, after we clean out the hold. Let’s not rush anything. Let’s just get in the right mood and get synchronized.”

T
hey headed out for three hours and dumped the dead crabs before they began to stink. Bucket after bucket. Gulls swarmed in. A few of them dropped the crabs back on deck to break the shells. A few small sharks showed up at the end of the chum line, cruised through it, and went away.

Keith college-boy wanted to fish for tuna. Dick didn’t care what they did. It was all a waste of time. He’d left Charlie and Eddie
putting on a coat of paint. Parker was right about one thing, Dick didn’t have enough money for more than a day’s work on his big boat.

The kid had brought a boat rod with a reel full of hundred-pound test, a wire leader, and a lure made out of surgical tubing and lead head with glass eyes. He paid out line, clipped it with a clothespin to a stay. He strapped on a belt with a socket for the rod butt.

Dick said, “You ever catch a tuna?”

The kid said, “No, but I been out on a sport-fishing boat once during the tuna derby.”

Parker was amused. He asked Dick if he’d go aloft and look for swordfish. Dick pointed out the tide was running hard. Parker asked him if he had any idea where the offshore lobster might be. Dick pointed out two places on the chart. He said, “But that was more than five years ago when I was last on a big lobster boat. They move around.”

Parker said, “What about there?”, and pointed to a spot.

“You know something?” Dick asked. “You talked to someone?”

Parker nodded.

“They’ll tell you any damn thing. But if you want to work there, you’re the skipper. I think we’d be better off spending money on a spotter plane for swordfish.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Parker said. “We make any money this trip, I’ll put it into a spotter plane.”

Parker was in one of his hazy good moods. He was content to let the kid fish for a couple of hours at trolling speed, burn up fuel. Dick was restless, paced around the deck waiting for the tide to slack.

He heard the snap as the kid’s line jumped out of the clothespin. He said, “Hey, kid, you awake?” The kid slid himself backward off the hatch cover and braced his feet against it. The line whirred out
in spurts. The kid hoisted the rod tip up, then lowered it, cranking furiously. “Don’t horse it,” Dick said. He called to Parker, “The kid’s got a fish.” Parker pulled the throttle back, put the engine in neutral.

Dick looked at the line, followed it out. The big pull against the drag had been the boat. This fish wasn’t going deep, it didn’t act like a tuna. The kid was still working. Could be a marlin, Dick thought, that’d be something. The kid horsed the rod up, the fish broke the surface with a flurry, just twenty yards off the stern. Dick got the gaff, put a glove on his left hand to grab the wire. The kid kept cranking. Dick got the line in his left hand, saw the fish break again with a clatter. He swung it on board.

The kid said, “Oh.”

Dick said, “It’s a meal.”

“I don’t care much for bluefish,” the kid said.

The bluefish thrashed across the deck. Dick knocked it out with the side of the gaff. He held it up by the wire leader. “It’s big for a bluefish,” Dick said. “Twenty pounds and some. At least you’re not wasting time.”

The kid was still embarrassed. All pumped up, feet braced, ready for two hundred, three hundred pounds.

Dick said, “I guess it takes more than dead crabs to chum tuna.” The kid didn’t say anything. Probably wasn’t used to Dick being friendly.

Dick told Parker he was going up to look for swordfish. Parker said fine, but he was going to keep going slow enough for the kid to fish.

“It’s your boat.”

Up in the crow’s nest, Dick calmed down. The wind blew up some, not hard enough to stop looking. He stretched and sniffed the wind, cool and salt up away from the diesel. Why not, he thought, I got no place to go, nothing to do. He looked down. The
kid was filleting the fish, his rod butt in a rodholder. Not a cloud in the sky, a perfect July day on a gentle blue sea.

They went out and hauled their pots, threw away the crabs, kept a few lobster. They ate supper at dawn, Campbell’s tomato soup with chunks of bluefish. Dick made a sandwich with a fried hunk of fillet in it, plenty of mayonnaise, and a cold beer.

Parker headed the boat farther out, spotted something, headed for it. It was a buoy marker with a double orange pennant. Parker came alongside and prepared to haul it.

“Jesus, Parker. This isn’t ours.”

“It’s okay, Dick. It’s all arranged. Lend a hand.”

Parker only hauled to the third pot, opened it, and took out a package. He put the three pots and buoy marker back overboard.

Dick looked at the kid. The kid was in on it.

Parker headed back in. Dick went up alongside the wheel. “Parker, I told you a long time ago—”

“A long time ago,” Parker said, “you swallowed hard and took a couple hundred bucks. Small. This is small. Small is the way to do it.”

Dick didn’t like it. It occurred to him that one thing he could do, when they got within a few miles of shore, was to get in the skiff and go home. That would be it with Parker and him. He wouldn’t get on another boat. If he did get on another boat, he’d never get 40 percent sticking swordfish. The
Mamzelle
wasn’t a good boat, but she was doing the job for him.

Parker asked him to take the wheel. Dick watched Parker and Keith get out some enormous whelk shells, big as he’d ever seen. They stuffed the whelk shells with sealed sandwich bags of coke. This wasn’t quite so small as Parker said.

Parker broke out some plastic eggshells. Keith and Parker were laughing. Dick asked what that stuff was. Parker, still giggling to himself, brought one of the eggshells over to Dick. “It’s slime,” Parker said. “See.” He pointed to the word
SLIME
written in dripping
capital letters. “It’s from a toy store. It’s like Silly Putty, but it looks slimy.”

Parker and Keith plugged the whelks with
SLIME
. It looked pretty much like the retracted foot of a whelk.

Just in sight of land Parker told Dick to stop. “Okay, here’s the deal. Small and easy. You and I leave Keith on board. We go in with the skiff once it’s dark. Get to where the creek goes by Mary Scanlon’s parking lot. I go to the parking lot, meet a guy who has a truck. He’s been in talking to Mary Scanlon about her buying specialty seafood like these
scungilli.
” Parker used the Italian word for “whelks.” Parker said, “I drop the basket in the back of his truck, get back in the boat, we come back out a different way than we went in. We meet old Keith here, head back out for a bit. Small and easy. I pay you five thousand.”

Dick shook his head.

Parker said, “This is easier than poaching clams.” Dick wished he hadn’t told Parker about that. Kid stuff, he looked silly. But it still set him up for Parker. You break a little law, you might as well break a big one. Parker said, “This is real money. This is half of the rest of your boat.”

Dick looked off at the smudge of land. He said, “This five thousand. I don’t suppose it’s forty percent.”

“No,” Parker said. “It’s a flat rate. I’ve taken most of the risk already. Your piece is five thousand. Very little risk. Anything goes wrong, I dump the whelks.”

Dick liked that Parker didn’t lie about the 40 percent. Dick didn’t know what Parker was aiming to get, but he damn well knew it wasn’t so small as—Dick took a bit to figure in his head—$12,500.

Parker said, “The beauty part is the deniability. See, your skipper said to you, ‘Take me in to sell some whelks.’ So you think to yourself it’s kind of weird but what with no crabs and all … And
maybe you’ve heard
scungilli
are aphrodisiacs. That’s what they say. Turks and Greeks, someone like that. Better than oysters. So you think, What the hell.”

Dick said, “What the hell. What about six thousand.”

Parker said, “No.”

Dick liked that Parker wasn’t desperate.

“The only reason I want you,” Parker said, “is for my peace of mind in a small skiff on open water. I don’t want my fillings knocked loose, I don’t want to get wet. I could use Keith, I could run the skiff myself with one hand. I just like the way you slide a small boat along.”