Spartina (44 page)

Parker said, “You got something on your mind?”

“Yeah. I was wondering if you screwed Marie on account of Schuyler was greedy about selling your coke.”

Parker looked at him. Parker smiled, and then laughed out loud. Parker shook his head. “I’ll tell you why I’m enjoying that. It’s sort of peculiar.” Parker rubbed his chin with one hand. “How’d you find out? I didn’t figure she’d talk much about it. But maybe she got together with Elsie. That’s okay. So long as she don’t talk about drugs.”

“I saw your car at her cottage.”

“You saw my car.”

“I saw your car and I heard her.”

Parker laughed. “Hearing things again, Dickey-bird? You can’t say I tuned you in on this one.”

Dick didn’t say anything.

Parker said, “What was peculiar was—I’m getting back to your question now—was this: She’d sort of been a bitch all along, you know the way she was with us that morning, all depressed but snotty to everybody. When I ran into her after the hurricane—she and Schuyler moved up to the inn in Wakefield—she was all revved up. She was still being snotty about Schuyler”—Parker mimicked Marie—“ ‘How’d you like the big city with Schuyler? Did he take you out on the town?’ But she was laughing about it. Then she said, ‘Did he treat you fair on your deal?’ I said, ‘He got a little more than his share, but I’m not complaining.’ She looked at me and I just knew. Even if it might take a while, we were on. She was one of them who like to pretend nothing’s going on till it’s too late. So we drove down to look at their cottage. She kept talking the whole time. I was getting interested enough. We’d get going some, and then she’d spin away and go look at something else. It was okay, sort of a tease to keep me on my toes. But when it came right down to it, she shut up. It needed a little something, so I whispered in her ear, ‘I’m only doing this ’cause Schuyler cheated me.’ She loved it. So I said, ‘He didn’t cheat me much. About a thousand.’ She got into it some more. So I said, ‘Maybe less.’ How’d I know that was the stuff? It was just a lucky guess. I mean, the idea had come up. But, to get back to your question, Schuyler gouging me a little or my doing a little rag-doll dance with Mrs. Schuyler Van der Hoevel, neither one has been what you’d call preying on my mind. I’ll tell you what it is—I’ve got lots of energy, I can’t wait around like this without getting up to something, it’s the kind of boy I am.”

“You don’t worry about it, do you?”

“I told you, it don’t prey on my mind.”

“What if Marie tells Schuyler?”

“What if. But I don’t figure she will.”

“Why’s that?”

“For one, she couldn’t be bothered. That’s the way she is, kind of inert. That’s part of her charm, if you choose to take it that way. For another, one thing women have is a sex imagination. The whole thing is more in their heads. And what that means is it
does
prey on
their
minds—they dress it up, they replay it in their heads. So they naturally figure a man is going to do it the same way. And it wouldn’t do to give someone you’re married to a script like that, something they’re going to keep on imagining about. I’ve never had a married woman to tell on me. It’s not just an act for them, it’s a whole soap opera. You understand what I’m saying?”

With bleak distaste, Dick had to admit Parker seemed to know what he was talking about. As Dick applied Parker’s theory to his own coming problem with May, his good mood from several clear days at sea covered over with gloom. It angered him that Parker could get things figured in that slick way of his. It angered him that he was tempted to ask Parker what he should do. It angered him that there was so much confusion, so much thrashing around, in his own efforts to think. Buy her a dishwasher. Good, Dick, take care of everything. He was unfit for this kind of duty. He pictured himself talking to Eddie about it. Eddie wasn’t any fitter than he was.

“I’m off,” Parker said. “I got to make a delivery. I’ll be in touch.”

Dick got
Spartina
squared away, put her in her berth, paid Keith and Tran. He sat by himself for a bit in the wheelhouse. When he got on the road, he overtook Tran, who was on a bicycle. He told Tran to put his bike in the back of the truck and climb in.

Dick thought again how Parker was on to something about women’s imagination, even a plain-thinking woman like May. The boys away all day. No surprises in her work, no little puzzles. No boat, no sea. Nothing to take her mind off it.

One of the pleasures of being at sea was you didn’t think about sex much. Hardly at all. It just disappeared. That’s why it had been so disconcerting to have Elsie on board
Mamzelle.
In a way that had started that whole line of trouble. These last two trips had been good; making money was just part of it, another part was the gentle oblivion.

He asked Tran where to turn off. Tran was embarrassed, finally said, “Another ten miles.”

“Jesus, Tran. You can’t bicycle all this way. The weather’s going to turn cold. You understand? I’ll pick you up day after tomorrow. You be all ready to go, I’ll come get you.”

Dick went into the barn with Tran. Parker was right, the whole family was in assembly-line stations: banging together the frames, bending the wire mesh on a jig, tying in the entrance cone and wall of the parlor with needle-nose pliers. Even with all that wire, the pots had to be weighted. At one of the stations the smallest kids were lining the bottom with newspapers soaked in cement. They sloshed some more on to bond the little slab of newspaper-concrete.

When Tran came in, the family quit one by one to come up to him. Then each one stepped back on line.

In the time Dick stood there, a pot came out the end of the line. The old man came up to Dick. Tran spoke to him, then introduced him in English to Dick. “Father. Captain Pierce.”

Dick said, “I never seen a pot built so fast. Looks pretty good.”

The old man nodded. “Good, thank you.”

“Tran did okay on the boat. I’ll take him out again.”

“Good, thank you. Tran is able-bodied.”

“Yeah, he’s okay. Look. What does Parker pay you for your pots?”

“Captain Parker pays us. Then he drives the truck, and the men wanting pots pay him.” The old man smiled. “Tran is okay on your boat?”

Dick figured he could get the price out of Tran next trip out. Get rid of Keith, get an older hand, keep Tran. Then work on a better deal on the pots through Tran.

Dick said, “Who’s going to sell the pots when Parker goes south?”

The old man looked puzzled.

Dick said, “Who’s going to drive the truck after Parker has gone away?”

“Driving a truck will not be a problem.” The old man spoke carefully. Dick was now sure the old man was just being careful, not dumb.

Dick said, “When I come back to pick up Tran day after tomorrow, I’d like to put another thirty pots on my pickup. You get Parker to call me tonight or tomorrow.” Dick wrote Eddie’s number down.

“Captain Parker is a old friend of yours?”

“Oh yeah, Parker and I go way back. You don’t mind if I take a look at what you got stacked up there?” Dick nodded at the rows of pots near the double doors of the barn, six pots high, six pots deep, and at least ten pots long. A lot of good cheap pots.

Dick relaxed some. He’d had a couple of jarring nervous impulses. One was a worry about Parker gouging these guys and leaving them in the lurch. The other was a hot spurt of greed seeing the stacked-up pots—not just to replace his missing trawls, but to get a hold of all these pots before the other boats did. He opened and closed a couple of the pots on top. He imagined the barn door opening, Eddie’s flatbed backing up to the pots.…

Spartina
could just carry all these, if they stacked them high and lashed them down. But he couldn’t afford this many, not cash money. He
could
manage a hundred each time he turned around. Of course, in November he’d have to start moving all his trawls in closer so he could duck back into someplace safe if the weather turned.

The old guy and Tran hovered by him. Dick said, “I’ll try to get Parker to agree to a hundred of these. And, Tran, you get yourself
some wool clothes, you understand? Summer’s over. I’ll get you a survival suit at the Co-op, but when I come get you, you better have a sea bag full of long johns and sweaters. I can’t teach you much when your teeth are chattering.”

The old guy said, “When do you pay Tran a full share?”

“The more he learns, the more he earns.”

“Christmastime?” The old guy said.

Dick hoped the old guy was as pushy when he was dealing with Parker. Dick said, “He’s still the boy. That’s just one week he’s put in.”

“Twenty years old. You call him boy?”

“He’s the boy till he can do all the stuff needs to be done. I’ll teach him. He pays attention, he’ll be full-share in a year.”

The old guy spoke softly, but he kept coming. “Tran spent time on fishing boats, more than a year, three years.” The old guy held up three fingers. “How long you have your boat? Captain Parker says your boat is brand-new.”

Dick said, “Goddamn.” Tran spoke to his father in Vietnamese. Dick said, “Goddamn!” more angrily, but he kept his temper. He looked at Tran and shook his head. “You tell your old man not to screw up a good thing. I’ll see you day after tomorrow. You get them wool clothes, and you stand by to load my truck with pots.”

Dick left. He gunned his truck some so they’d hear it. He saw in his rearview mirror he was burning oil. He said out loud, “Goddamn! Next thing, I’ll need a new truck.”

He thought of what Elsie would make of all this. It made him laugh.

It wasn’t surprising the old man came on the way he did. He’d been dealing with Parker, didn’t know any better. Dick recollected he himself had some greed in his mind, maybe it’d showed in his eyes. The old man was foreign, probably didn’t know there was some things you push back and forth, some things you don’t.

With a little jolt Dick saw himself as Captain Texeira when
Captain Texeira fired him. As the loan officer at the bank pursing his mouth. As Joxer Goode asking about collateral.

Captain Goddamn Pierce. His saying “Goddamn” wasn’t the worst thing—it wasn’t necessarily the hard-ass sons of bitches that humiliated you.

Dick wasn’t all that worried about the old man, but he was sorry about Tran. The way things had gone, Tran would have rather pedaled home on his bicycle.

Dick still couldn’t figure what he liked so much about Tran. Part of it was Tran reminded him of when he’d been the kid on board. Let the kid do it, that way he’ll learn. And Tran reminded him of a different way to take it—he wasn’t as sour as Dick had been. Tran was quiet and serious and earnest about it all, reminded Dick of Charlie. And for all his being a bronze-colored fellow, what with his small hands, his small bones dwarfed in the foul-weather jacket, he reminded Dick of Elsie. He’d even picked him up bicycling on Route 1, took him home, and caused trouble.

Dick said “Goddamn” again and laughed. He was still in that other trouble.

D
ick had another surprise when he got back to Eddie’s. He’d figured May would get on the subject of when he was going to get their house fixed. He and May went to the bedroom. May sat on the bed. She had something on her mind, but it wasn’t the house.

He gave her the money for the month and told her about the
Vietnamese family. He said he’d like to put some of the money into buying a bunch of pots cheap. May nodded, said at least the food bills were low, what with Eddie having cooked up pots of stew with the meat that had thawed at the edges when the power was out. Then she asked him for a hundred dollars for herself. When he asked her what for, she was embarrassed. She wouldn’t say right off.

Dick said, “Look, I’ll give you the money, May. What the hell, it’s not even a quarter-trawl of cheap pots.”

May twisted her mouth at that, not angry but peevish.

Dick tried to brighten things up. “I’ll give you the money. It’s coming in regular for a change.” He opened his wallet and held out five twenties. She took it and put it away in her purse. He saw she was peeved with herself. With her back to him, she said, “I’m going to spend it on a makeover.”

“Good,” he said. “Whatever it is, good.”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” she said.

“Don’t have to,” he said cheerily.

May said, “It’s a beauty treatment. You learn what makeup and what kind of hairstyle and what color clothes you ought to wear.” She was furious now.

“You look pretty good to me.” No help.

May said, as if Dick was dragging it out of her, “Eddie invited over that woman he’s been helping out. The one he met when she was lost in the woods. He cuts wood for her, fixes her storm windows. He was over to her house cutting up a tree across her driveway, and he asked her to come back for supper.” May paused and said, “She’s the same age as me. The boys have seen her, she works at the library and she substitute-teaches. She has a daughter the same age as Charlie. When she told us about her daughter and her thinking of where to go to college, Charlie and Tom couldn’t believe it, she looked so young. They said so. Eddie laughed and
said, ‘It is hard to believe, isn’t it.’ All three of them stared at her till she was embarrassed and talked about something else.”