Spartina (46 page)

D
ick woke up when he heard Eddie’s truck leave. He heard May in the kitchen. He got up and stood behind the bedroom door listening. The boys weren’t there, must have left for school. He was sore from lying on the floor, so he got sidetracked by the thick quilt covering the bed. He wrapped himself in one of his blankets and curled up on top of the quilt. He hadn’t been in bed so late in months. He hadn’t been so tired in months. Not since after the hurricane blew itself out and he slept away a day on
Spartina.
He’d never taken a nap ashore in his life. Except the time he drowsed off
in Elsie’s bed one of those afternoons. That recollection snapped him awake. What struck him as odd was that the sensations were so alike—waking up in Elsie’s bed, with that same feeling of two pressures—alarm and satisfaction. It took him a minute to identify that, although he was in trouble, he was satisfied by what May had said, by how she was taking it.

May woke him up to tell him Tran and Tony had both called to ask when they were going out. She made him breakfast while he tuned in the weather. No better. He called Tran and Tony.

He spent the morning fixing some pots in Eddie’s cellar. May called him for lunch but otherwise didn’t talk to him. She didn’t seem mad. Just slow and far away.

The wind backed into the northeast and blew hard for three days. It turned cold.

May said he could get back in the bed to sleep.

For three days they were alone, in and around the house all day, from breakfast to when the boys got home from school. May talked to him some about other matters. She also felt free to make comments about Elsie’s having a baby. Dick understood he wasn’t to answer back, just pay attention and give whatever facts May might ask for.

He didn’t dare say out loud he admired the way May was acting. She was taking her own time. She was hard, but she wasn’t asking anything for herself. He could see it weighed on her steadily and she was carrying it. He went about his business.

Eddie had brought back a wood sailboat from one of the wrecked boathouses he was rebuilding. It was on a cradle in one of the sheds. Dick set to work on it during the day. At night he went down to the cellar for an hour or so to mend a few more pots.

May came down and said he could go to the Neptune if he wanted. He knew what she meant—his working extra hours didn’t count that much one way or the other.

D
ick went down to the harbor to check
Spartina.
As he walked past the Co-op the radio operator called out to him. She had a message for him from Woods Hole. He couldn’t think of anyone he knew there. Even when he read the message he wasn’t sure it was for him. From Neptune Documentary Film Co. Woods Hole, Massachusetts To: Capt. R. Pierce, master of
Spartina
, Galilee, RI … Tune in Channel Two Boston, 2000 hrs, 18 Jan.

He got off on the wrong track for a second … thought of channel 2 on the CB. Then he figured a TV channel. Schuyler’s movie? Why didn’t he put his name? Then he figured it was Elsie. That was why there was no name, why it was phoned to the Co-op, why she’d put that it was from Woods Hole. Dick couldn’t recall the real name of Schuyler’s film company—Elsie’d told him each of Schuyler’s films had its own company—but maybe she put Neptune because she meant him to watch it at the Neptune.…

It was still blowing a little on the 18th. He went to the Neptune. Neither the Celtics nor the Bruins were playing. He bought a beer and asked the bartender to tune in Channel 2. A couple of guys Dick knew said they wanted to watch a cop show. He bought them each a beer and said if it turned out this wasn’t a movie about around here, they could switch back.

The teaser was an aerial shot of the harbor of refuge and Galilee. The guys called to a couple of their buddies.

At first Dick didn’t recognize Schuyler’s voice narrating. It was a slow, serious baritone, none of Schuyler’s usual prance. What he was
saying
was more like Schuyler, little jabs and twists:

“Rhode Island—poor cousin to Massachusetts” … “Most densely populated state after New Jersey” … “Lowest educational level of any state outside the Deep South” … “Highest percentage of people whose first language is not English” …

Dick thought of what Mary Scanlon used to say—“Rhode Island is not a high—expectation state.”

There was an aerial shot of palaces in Newport—“… glittering remnant of the robber barons, but the greater part of Rhode Island is as desperately poor as West Virginia.

“According to a Ph.D. thesis on state governments, Rhode Island came in second only to Louisiana for the title of most corrupt state legislature.

“If Rhode Island were a country, it would be part of the Third World. The largest employer is the military. Tourism is the major moneymaker, although most Rhode Islanders benefit from it only in service positions. The bulk of choice real estate is in the form of second homes or resorts run by absentee corporations.

“There is a seafaring tradition, and there is—still—a fishing fleet. By comparison to the high-tech factory ships of Russia, East or West Germany, Japan, or the tuna clippers of our own West Coast, the boats and methods are quaint. But it is still possible—barely possible—to wrest a living from the sea.”

One of the guys said, “Who the fuck this fag think he is?”

During the introductory narration, the shots kept alternating between luxury and what was meant to be seen as squalor. A fancy restaurant. Then, at the phrase “lowest educational level of any state outside the Deep South,” there was a shot of the crab pickers at Joxer Goode’s plant. Dick knew that some of those guys were hired out to Joxer from the state school for the retarded. Dick had
always thought Joxer was doing the crazies a favor while he got some real cheap labor. In the pictures Schuyler shot, the camera lingered on the retarded men and women in a half-light that made them look like driven slaves. The soundtrack left out the Muzak Joxer piped in that the poor guys sort of bobbed to, so their movements all looked like some necessary part of a hellish assembly line. Then there was a shot of a mansion from the ocean walk at Newport, with a pack of guard dogs snarling behind the ironwork fence. Then a shot which Dick recognized as his own backyard, and the outside of his patchwork boat shed. Then the Wedding Cake. At the phrase “wrest a living from the sea,” a long shot of Dick tonging quahogs.

A guy said, “Hey—that’s Sawtooth Pond.”

Dick thought of leaving before the boys at the bar recognized him. He couldn’t move without making a big effort—the boys were now two deep behind the bar stools.

Schuyler had rearranged things so that the launching of
Spartina
came before the shots of lobstering or harpooning swordfish from
Mamzelle’s
bow pulpit. Schuyler’d made it look like
Spartina
was the only boat in the movie.

Schuyler’s voice-over—“According to OSHA, fishing and coal mining are the two most dangerous occupations in America. On board this fishing boat sometimes there is camaraderie, sometimes a good deal of tension.” And there was a close-up of Dick’s face for the first time. He turned to the camera and said, “If you go over, we pick the fish up first.”

The boys laughed. One said in a mock singsong, “Ooh, Dickey, he thinks you’re cute. Wants a little of that camaraderie.” The boys quieted down at the shots of pulling pots, emptying them, and rebaiting them. No faces, but Dick recognized his old gloves with duct tape around the middle finger. One guy yelled, “Short! That lobster’s a short!” but no one laughed.

Then there was a sequence that puzzled Dick—underwater shots of a pot settling on the bottom. In the corner of the picture there was an inset rectangle with elapsed time—oo:oo.

One of the guys said, “That’s that old URI movie. It’s infrared or something.”

At first Dick thought that was just like Schuyler—fake a little, bullshit a little, steal a little, stitch it together. But then Dick got to like the contrast of the seabed to how things looked on the boat—cluttered, noisy, and bouncing around.

Elapsed time 02:38, the first lobster. Jump to a little later, three more. First one still can’t figure out how to get in.

Back upstairs. Long shot of Elsie in the dory. The guys couldn’t tell who she was, but they figured out what was wrong quick enough. “Look there—that asshole’s fouled his line.”

Good shot of shark fins. One of the guys hummed the theme from
Jaws.
They laughed. A shark jostled the bow of the dory. Dick hadn’t seen that at the time. The boys settled down for a bit, then cheered half-derisively and laughed when Dick hauled Elsie up, her feet running in mid-air. “Look at the little bugger go!” “Ain’t that the Vietnamese kid that’s the boy on
Spartina?
” They laughed again at the shot of Elsie from the rear, crawling to grab hold of the hatch cover.

Dick felt as if his head was in an oven. It was a relief when the movie went back to the lobsters. Elapsed time 09:43. A whole workday for one lobster to get in. He’s reaching for the bait with one claw, can’t get it. He’s using the other claw to keep the others out, jabbing and thumbing with it. But it somehow seems slow and quiet down there. For all the lobster scuttling, scuffling, and claw waving, it’s peaceful. They take their time between moves. Their feelers sweep out in slow arcs like unhurried casting with a fly rod. Even the quick tuck of the tail when a lobster drives himself backward seems calm. He darts once, then settles, his tail
spreading out like a Spanish lady’s fan, the rows of walking legs touching down as light as a spider’s on her web.

The last rectangle gets crowded with big numbers. A lobster is in the parlor. A second one is just inside the entrance, keeping the crowd out. The line is around the block; it’s like
Star Wars
at the Wakefield theatre. Dick shook his head. You could get on edge about it, pretty discouraged at how slow they go about getting themselves caught. But he found himself soothed by the way everything wafted, by the watery gentleness of time down there. He’d never seen this. He’d thought about it of course, knew about it mechanically, but never seen it this way. But then it occurred to him he’d seen something like it: newsreels of astronauts on the moon—heavy-shelled, weightless creatures finding their own slow way, not in rhythm with the click of earth-surface readouts, their large motion as liquid as the silt they stirred up.

Send these brave lobsters to the moon.

Dick didn’t mind now about all the lobsters that didn’t get in the pot. He was pleased to see what he’d never imagined—that he’d spent a lot of his life dropping pots onto the moon.

The movie jolted back to the surface. Dick’s gloved hands moving fast, grabbing lobster out of the netting. Side view of his face, but you could still read his lips—“Fuck you, Schuyler.”

The guy next to him back-handed his shoulder. “Jesus, Dick. You’re on fucking educational TV.” Laughter. Dick tipped his head. Let him have his joke. They weren’t so bad, a little rowdy was all. Dick wished the movie would get back down to the seabed. But it was in his backyard. A shot of May in her garden. Looking pretty good. One of the guys at the bar leaned forward to say something. Another guy knocked his forearm.

May said, “When do you want your supper?”

Dick’s voice—“When I get back.”

They all whooped it up. “Keep her right in line, do you, Dick.”

Okay, Dick thought, I’m an asshole.

A while later there was Dick back in the bow pulpit, leaning forward with his harpoon. Dick heard the tail end of Schuyler’s voice—“… requires strength and timing.”

“Hey. He does think you’re cute.”

Dick shoved the harpoon.

“Give it to me, Dick. Put it in all the way.”

Dick said, “Blow it out your ass.”

Then there was
Spartina
sliding out the channel past the sandbagged crab-processing plant. Shots of boats being hauled.

“That’s
Swiss Miss.
”

“Where’s
Bom Sonho?
”

“She was out with
Lydia P.
”

“Yeah. That was just before the hurricane.”

Then they all shut up when they saw the sea come up over the breakwater.

They sat still and watched boats crack like nuts. One broke loose and lifted up onto land and rolled—they could scarcely believe their eyes—she goddamn rolled across the parking lot in the white surge.

Then you couldn’t tell. There was stuff moving, but you couldn’t tell. Blackout, but the soundtrack kept going for a bit. Then quiet.

The next day. The guys stared at the harbor. They spoke up again to say the names of boats they saw, boats they couldn’t see.

There was
Spartina
riding off the beach. Dick remembered Elsie had been in her jeep. He remembered looking at the hills, the scrubbed beach, the green shoots in the salt marsh. All he could see now was how beat-to-shit
Spartina
looked. The movie could erase what he thought. But it didn’t erase completely. It left little bits of his life all lit up.

There was another shot of the wrecked boats at the state pier.