The Wooden Nickel (13 page)

She pulls the straps back and the heart starts up again, too slow to too fast, just like a partridge drumming in the woods.

“So,” she says. “Where’s yours?”

“I’d have to take the whole damn sweatshirt off, and the vest, and whatever else she put on me this morning.”

“She put on you?” Ronette busts out laughing. “Your wife dresses you in the morning?” She’s hitching her suspenders up, laughing,
getting ready to go back to work.

“She don’t dress me,” he says. “She just lays the clothes out, depending on the weather.”

“And you dress in the dark, so you don’t even know what color your underwear is.”

“It ain’t that bad.”

“It ain’t that bad. It’s worse. That’s what’s wrong with marriage, Lucky. That’s why I had to leave, you get so frigging close
to someone you don’t even know what you got on.”

“That why you left?” He’s curious now. She had a split-level ranch with hot tub and sunken swimming pool, now she’s in somebody’s
mobile home. It’s not enough that Clyde Hannaford is an ass-hole. There’s got to be something else.

“It ain’t the only thing,” she says shyly, not laughing anymore. She tilts her head to one side and pulls back the permed-up
curls over her neck. “Take a look at that.”

A dim blue line runs diagonally across the back of her neck. He reaches over, pushes more of the curls up to follow the mark
as it fades into her hairline. “What’s that?”

“Son of a bitch tried to strangle me.”

“Jesus H. Christ. Clyde Hannaford. Didn’t know he had it in him.”

“Yeah, well he had it in him. And I was out the door. There’s some girls I can name that put up with it, including his little
brother’s wife Yvonne. I could put
that
cocksucker in jail in about three minutes. I’d rather go on welfare than get treated like that. Clyde’s a weak little bastard
too, I could stand up to him, but I ain’t going to have that kind of marriage.”

“Maybe Yvonne had it coming,” he suggests.

“I ain’t saying she did or didn’t. But
I
didn’t have it coming. I was behaving myself like a choir girl and getting nothing in return. I don’t stay if I get slapped
around. Ask my old man.”

“Ivan Astbury? Ask him what?”

“Ask him what I do when I get beat up, I don’t even stop to say good-bye.”

She’s crying now, pausing to listen to George Strait singing “I Know She Still Loves Me,” then crying again, though both the
song and her sadness are drowned out by Siggy Winchenbach’s big diesel pilot boat, the
Gretchen and Irene,
which passes a little closer than he has to, then steams over to lay a string into the boulder canyon stretching north off
of Red’s Bank.

“Nosy bastard,” he says. The first wave from Siggy’s wake slams the side of the hull, sprays them both, then the wake hits
and they rock hard up and down, splashing a few gallons right out of the circulating tank.

“You ain’t showed me your tattoo,” she says.

“I ain’t taking my shirt off with them assholes hanging around.”

“Take it off down in the cuddy, then.” She ducks her head in the companionway for something to dry her cheek but she can’t
find anything cleaner than an engine rag. “Jesus, Lucky, what a mess down here. But let me show you what I brought.”

She reaches into the backpack and pulls out two strips of flowery blue fabric.

“What the hell’s that? A bikini?”

“It’s the curtains. First thing you need to make it decent down here.”

“Ain’t got nothing to put them up with.”

“Look, I brought these.” She gets out a box of pushpins, scoots down the hatchway and starts stabbing the curtains along the
cabin windows. “Gives us a little privacy too. Now you can show me the damn tattoo. It better be a good one after all this
work.”

She’s not going to be quiet till she sees the truck, which is a very nice piece of art though Sarah’s tired of it and makes
him take his shirt off in the dark. He folds down the front of his big rubber lobster apron, so thick with grass and barnacles
it’s got green crabs breeding on it, and pulls up the layers of shirts and sweatshirts so Ronette can have a look at his chest.

“Christ sake, Lucky, it
is
a truck. I don’t frigging believe it. A truck with hair!”

“M-thirty-five A, six-wheel drive. Cocksuckers could roll through anything. A Chinese guy did that on R and R in Manila. The
truck don’t look too oriental, does it?”

“Hundred percent American,” she says. “You can see mine again if you want. Tit for tat. I got it before we was married.”

She pulls the strap down, shudders her shoulders so the little sea horse comes to life. Down here in the dark curtained cabin
he feels like a shark at a nude beach, all the forces of nature pushing him up to take a bite, except for one voice in his
ear saying,
Lucas, this is the worst kind of activity for your heart.

“Can you believe it,” Ronette’s saying, “that bastard Clyde wanted me to have it removed.”

He stands up, as much as he can under the low cabin trunk, and speaks with authority. “Can’t really remove them. You’re always
going to have a shadow, it’s going through a lot of pain for nothing. Specially in a soft-tissue place like that.”

“That ain’t the point, Lucky. He thought he could own me. He was afraid that skinny bitch Yvonne would see it and not invite
us out to her precious
cunt
ry club. It’s my frigging body, that’s what I told him, and I can do with it as I see fit.”

“You sound like one of them pro-choicers,” he says.

“I am a pro-choicer. Only with Clyde I didn’t have to make no choice, you know why?”

“Why?”

“Cause you know what his sperm count was? Zero. Point oh oh oh. So we didn’t have no choice to be pro
about.
And you know what? That dickhead knew it all along. Only he never let on till after the honeymoon.”

He’s struck with a rush of sympathy for his dealer. “Jesus, Ronette, how was he supposed to know that? Ever take a good close
look at sperm? Can’t hardly see them little bastards. A normal guy don’t go around counting his sperm all the time.”

She lights another Marlboro, leaves her strap down so the sea horse jiggles around when she pounds the cigarette pack and
flicks the lighter. He can’t quite see the nipple but he’s sure it’s in there. “That’s just it,” she says. “My husband is
not a normal guy. He had an undescended testicle till he was thirty-one years old.”

He chews on that term for a minute. “No shit,” he says. “Undescended. You think you know someone your whole life, it turns
out you don’t know them at all. The boys are going to look at old Clyde some different when this gets out.”

“So he had to have an operation to bring it down, and afterwards, that’s when they did the sperm count and he found out it
was zero. He knew that and he married me anyway. You don’t know what that means to a woman. And you know what he wanted? He
wanted to get me artificially inseminated, just like a frigging cow. It’s so embarrassing, I never told no one, not even Doris.”
She leans her head into the weed-encrusted folds of Lucky’s sweatshirt and seems to shrink, like a kid or something dying
in his arms. Then the boat starts to rock a bit as the late-morning southwesterlies pick up strength, and she calms down,
wipes her eyes, and goes over to the stereo at the wheelhouse end of the cuddy. “I also brought my new Reba tape,” she says.
“
Starting Over.
Good name, huh? Get it? Just like me.”

Three o’clock in the mornin’

And it looks like it’s gonna be another sleepless night

He stretches and starts up the hatchway to finish hauling, but Ronette puts an arm out and blocks his path. “Your crew don’t
feel like hauling, Lucky. They ain’t in a working mood.” Under a coil of pot warp she spots a brown beat-up slab of foam he
hooked one time on a mackerel trawl. “That all you got for bunks in this place? Reggie’s boat had a whole bedroom down below.”

“Portholes even had bars on them, made him feel right at home.”

She drags the foam out and plunges her face in it. “It’s
wet,
” she says, “and it smells like fish bait.” She tosses the foam on the workbench and sniffs the air. “It don’t matter, I smell
like fish bait too. But you know what, Lucky? It ain’t the best time of the month for me.”

“I don’t mind fish bait. Lived with it all my life.”

“I don’t mean
that.
I mean the time ain’t safe. You got something out here we can use? We don’t want to have no accidents.”

“This ain’t the Rite Aid Pharmacy,” he replies. “This is a lobster boat. And we ought to be hauling lobsters, afternoon wind’s
coming on.”

“Too bad. I guess you’re all married up and everything.”

“My old man used to say something, and I always stuck by it. Ain’t supposed to mix fish and flesh.”

She grabs his face in both hands and looks right at him but she goes blurry, he can’t focus that close. “Jesus H. Christ,”
she says. “You got your wife dressing you, you go by your old man’s sayings like they was the book of God. Who am I out here
with? You’re like one of them giant clams. It would take a crowbar to pull them shells apart, see what’s inside.”

“I ain’t got a crowbar. It’s in the truck.”

“Bet we could find one on board, Mr. Lucas Lunt, if we look hard enough.” She’s standing now, her head almost touches the
roof beam. He’s sitting on the engine box, so she looks down on him like a mom undressing a kid for bed. “She probably takes
everything off for you too, home from a hard day’s work.” She undoes the suspender snaps of his grass-covered orange apron
and lays it on the chain locker. A couple of green crabs scuttle off it and make for the bilge. Then comes the sweatshirt
that says orphan point v.f.d., then his old man’s red plaid hunting vest. When “Ring on Her Finger” comes on she listens to
Reba for a moment.

In a three-bedroom prison I tried to make a home

She finishes pulling down the top of his one-piece union suit and stands back to view her work. “No shit, Lucky, you’re a
good-sized man. Clyde’s such a little fucker, I used to call it Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Now unhook me, will you?
This dumb thing unfastens in the back.” She turns around and bends her head down so he can see the bruise again while his
huge fingers fumble with the hook. He’s hoping for the voice to stop him, Sarah’s or Clyde’s, but there’s only a dog whimper
from the hatchway and Ronette saying, “Be a good girl, Ginger, we’ll give you a Milk-Bone when we’re done.”

She lets the tank top slide all the way down on one side, there’s no more bra in the way, the nipple puckers and sticks its
little tongue out under the sea horse riding the wave crest of her tit. Under Reggie’s big oilskins her pants slip down to
her knees: nothing but some kind of bikini bottom left, curly hairs peeking around the edge. “Clyde’s crazy,” he says. “You
ought to get a couple more of them tattoos.”

“Bet we could find a couple more on
you.
” She pushes him back on the wet foam, rolls down his oilskins, canvas pants, union suit. “She’s got more layers on you than
a wedding cake.” He tries to stop her before she gets to the camouflage boxers he got at the ammo store, but she’s got him
backed up against the foam and she keeps pushing things down. “Whoa. Camouflage shorts. You sneak up on the moose in them
things?”

She has no trouble peeling the boxers down, but underneath he’s limp as a garden slug.

“Must be them heart pills, it ain’t been working right all year.”

She’s looking down, shaking her head like her dog died. “It ain’t the pills, it’s your loving little wife. She owns you, her
and your old man. If you ain’t interested, we better go back to fishing. No hard feelings, Lucky Lunt. I know true love when
I see it.” She slides the blue tank top over the sea horse and goes to stand up, then gives him one last glance with her big
kelp-colored eyes. “Before I go, I’d love to give that little guy a kiss. I bet he don’t get half enough attention.”

All those long winter nights under the covers with Sarah Peek, all the truck-seat midnights of their courtship, that was always
where she drew the line. Her mouth got anywhere near it, she’d close up tight as a quahog, so finally he gave up hope. That’s
what they say, girls don’t do it north of Boston. Now all of a sudden he’s watching the pile of brown hair crawl down his
stomach just like a deep throat video. He glances once more at the blue bruise on her neck, closes his eyes, and leans his
head back onto an old moldy seat cushion that smells like blue cheese. Ronette mumbles something like, “Like that?”

“Ain’t polite to talk with your mouth full.”

She releases him for a second but he can feel her warm breath as she speaks. “Clyde couldn’t stand it. He was scared I’d bite
it off. I should of, too.” Then she plugs him back in. His wife’s face appears on the screen of his eyelids —
You can still stop, Lucas, and it will be all right
— but down below it’s another story. When she finally comes up for air and looks at what she’s done, her eyes grow wide.
It’s a foot and a half long and glowing red in the shadowy cabin like an electric eel. He tries pulling his clothes back up
but it’s too late, she’s got one leg of her oilskins off and she’s on top of him saying, “It’s too big, Lucky, it ain’t going
to fit.” She has to grab onto his arms to pull herself down tight, then she’s got him surrounded, she’s rowing him homeward
like a lapstrake dory and all voices of the past are drowning in their foamy wake. Then out of nowhere there’s an engine roar
and a big six-cylinder Mack diesel passes close astern. Jesus, if it’s Siggy Winchenbach he could peer down the companionway
just like an aquarium. Siggy’s wake rolls them right off the engine box onto the starboard bench as she slides in under him
on the foam pad soaked with bilgewater and herring juice where she’ll be crushed flat, he’s the size of a walrus and she’s
so tiny with that little patch of fur, just like Alfie when he was a kitten from the pound. But no, she’s still alive and
laughing and pulling at his union suit to try and bring him deeper in. There’s still a few inches that won’t fit, but she’s
working on it, then all of a sudden she screams like a fish hawk and seizes his chest hair with both hands like she wants
to pull the truck off and cram it inside her with the rest of him, the veins stand out of her neck like a weightlifter, her
face and chest turn bright red, the sea horse is a dragon with eyes of fire saying, “You got me, Lucky, I ain’t never,” then
she clamps him like a live warm oyster so even though he doesn’t want to he can’t hold it, he’s the bull seal up on both flippers
roaring his nuts off and spraying inside his female like a fire hose. A thousand-volt electric shock runs from his dicktip
right up his spine, jumps into his heart and cracks it open, only it’s pain now and he can’t stay up, his shoulders and elbows
buckle and he collapses like that moose in the October sunlight, .357 hollowpoint dead center in his chest.