The Wooden Nickel (14 page)

He manages to roll off to one side so he won’t squash her, ends up flat on his back on the bilge-smelling foam with his heart
fibrillating uncontrollably like a fish on the cockpit sole.

She’s up now and her eyes are bugged out, she thinks he’s dead. “Jesus, Lucky, are you OK? What the hell’s that
noise?
” She lays her head on his truck tattoo and clenches her eyes shut like that’s going to help her hear.

“Heart,” he says, his voice up high like a little kid’s.

“Sounds like you’ve got two of them in there.”

“That’s right. I keep a spare handy, just in case.”

“No shit? That’s what they did at the hospital? They put in another one? If I’m going to be with you, Lucky, you have to tell
me how to switch it on.”

The heart’s calming down now, but he still feels the blood swirl like transmission oil through his wire-mesh stent. He ought
to reach for the pills in his lunchbox — he brought them this time — but Ronette’s cheek pressing on his chestbone seems to
have the same effect.

“Better not try
that
anymore,” she says, lifting her head up gingerly. “We don’t want nobody dying out here, least of all you. I wouldn’t know
how the hell to get us back.”

He swallows a couple of pills and claps another under his tongue. They sit there naked and quiet, just listening to Reba,
while his heartbeat settles down, her body pale as a flounder except for the purple sea horse and the big brown nipples, his
own body a hairy skinned-out whale.

You shouldn’t of done it,
that’s what his heart was trying to tell him. But it waited till it was too fucking late.

Ginger’s sitting on the floor beside them with her tongue hanging out, she could be spying for old Clyde. Ronette disentangles
an arm, reaches into the backpack and feeds her the Milk-Bone. Outside, the light little waves slap up against the hull as
the current pulls them broadside to the wind. Reba McEntire has reversed herself twice over the last hour.

I had a ring on my finger and time on my hands

He rests a fingertip just under the sea horse, and the brown nipple tip wakes up and stirs, just like touching the neck of
a clam to see if it’s alive. She looks down, curious, like it belongs to someone else. He traces a letter on it, up and over
the stiff little bud, ending on the sea horse tattoo.

“What’d you write?”

“F.”

“F for
what?
”

“Finest kind.”

She blushes so much her whole face and neck turn red. “I got saline in them.”

“What?”

“Saline injections. You know. They used to do silicone, but they don’t anymore. Saline’s just salt water. It’s natural.”

“When’d you do that?”

“It was a wedding present from Clyde. The health plan don’t cover it. He wanted them bigger. He used to compare me with that
bitch Yvonne. Yvonne had hers done when she was fourteen years old.”

“I wouldn’t of made you do it, if it was me. Bet they was nice enough as it was.”

“Well, you ain’t Clyde Hannaford. Clyde was always wanting more more more. Not that he could do nothing when he had it.”

He touches the other one and she shivers and pulls away. From the new angle he can make out the little scars under each tit
where they put the salt water in and sewed her up. “Little bit of the ocean,” he says, rubbing the scar tissue gently at first,
then a little harder, thinking he might erase it with a fingertip, but it won’t come off.

“You too,” she says. She traces a fingertip around the incision scar on his left thigh where they went in with the heart balloon.
“That won’t come off neither. What’s it feel like when I rub it? Numb like mine?”

“There’s times when it feels like they left the whole fucking tube in there, but it feels pretty good right now.”

It’s a fine mid-May evening when he drives back from his errand at the Rite Aid drugstore. A yellow dust of pollen has settled
over the cars and driveway, the roofs of houses, it’s so thick in the air he has to put the wipers on, just like driving through
a fog of piss. Then when he gets there his garage door is blocked by a rusted-out Toyota four-by-four longbed which he’s never
seen. He parks up close behind it to check it out. The Toy’s got thirty-five-inch mud tires and big yellow Hurst lifters that
raise it so high a dog the size of Ginger could walk beneath. Its cab stands taller than his full-sized GMC, and he’s got
five inches of extra leaf on that. There’s dive tanks and weight belts in the back, must be one of Kyle’s pals from Burnt
Cove. He whistles his way in from the truck with a tune from the Reba McEntire tape that played and replayed through the lunch
hour and etched itself into his mind.

Lord, I’m still five hundred miles away from home

“Somebody’s happy about something,” his daughter shouts as soon as he gets in the door. “Must have been a good fishing day.”
He’s looking around for the guest that would explain the unknown pickup truck outside. Usually Kristen’s locked up in her
room studying or listening to church music, but now she’s got all her brochures and pamphlets from the university spread out
on the living room rug, because, as she says ten or twelve times a day, “September tenth and I’m getting another life.”

Sarah gives him a big welcome too. She lets her wire-rimmed glasses slip onto their neck cord and puts a thin hand on the
back of his neck, though he can’t actually feel it because it’s a spot where Ronette Hannaford touched him and the skin seems
numb. “We were concerned,” his wife says. “You’re unusually late.”

“Busy day out there. We brought in pretty near a hundred and twenty pounds. That’s better than I was doing in a week, working
alone.”

“I guess we were wrong, Lucas. Your sternperson’s paying for herself. I hope she’s taking some of the physical strain too,
for your health’s sake. I hear Ellis Seavey’s got a girl working for him too, they’re all doing it these days.”

Kyle looks up from the TV and says, “You can’t
get
no guys to go sternman anymore. That kind of money, might as well go up to Norumbega and work for the Pizza Hut.”

His wife pops into the warm chowdery kitchen and returns with his earthly reward for a hard day’s work, hot tea with a shot
of prohibited 101 black rum and a light kiss on the crown of his head, a spot where the scalp can feel the direct touch of
her lips. “Kristen’s got some good news too. She’s got a job.”

“Where you working, Princess? Down to the cat food plant?”

“Don’t you wish. Then I’d smell like you when I walked in.”

“Kristen,”
her mother says.

“I’m only teasing. Daddy can take it. He’s tough.” She hops up and gives him a whack on the shoulder, not with all her might
like the old days, more of a heart-patient pat, then a big bear hug, rubbing her nose right in the mossiest fold of his sweatshirt.
“Big fragile bear. We have to take it easy on you now.”

“Don’t have to do nothing different. I’m fixed.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you up at the U.”

“You’ll think of something,” Kyle says. “You can hang some bait bags around your room, they’ll remind you of home.”

“You still ain’t told me what your job is. One of them topless dancers Andy’s hiring for at the RoundUp?”

“Lucas,”
Sarah warns. “Keep this up, you’ll be sleeping out in the garage.”

His daughter covers his eyes with both hands. In her palms’ darkness he sees a little sea horse in the circle of a lipstick
kiss.

“I’m going to be an au pair.”

“Oh pear? What the hell’s that? You going into the fruit business? Not a bad idea, when the summer trade shows up.”

“It’s French, Daddy. It means someone who takes care of children. And no more slurs on the summer families. I’m working for
one now. They’re from Baltimore.”

He asks Kristen, “Which family you working for? You happen to know what they drive?”

“You wouldn’t know them, Daddy. They’re called the Hummer-mans, and they’re new. They’re fixing up that big old Victorian
down from the Point Club, on the shore road, it’s the one with the turret. You could see it from here if the air were a little
clearer.”

“I don’t have to see it, I know which one it is. Half this town out of work and the son of a bitch hired foreigners.”

“
Lucas.
It’s your daughter’s employer.”

“They’re not foreign,” Kristen explains. “The architectural firm is from Salem, Massachusetts. It’s not like a local contractor
could do a
historical restoration.
”

“Local contractors was good enough to build the damn thing in the first place. Them shingle jobs was all built by old man
Lurvey, Wendell Lurvey’s grandfather.”

“Restoration is different, Dad. You can’t dig up Wendell Lurvey’s grandfather. You have to know history. I’ve met them. They
were there when I interviewed. The head of the construction crew has a Ph.D. Can you imagine how much someone like that
knows?
”

Lucky’s back has a quick spasm and flash of pain like he’d thrown it out hauling a trap over the side. He tries to recall
how it happened, then he remembers. Suddenly he’s back in the cuddy with Ronette Hannaford squirming beneath him and his spine
arched upward like a sea lion.

Sarah says, “Oh Lucas, did you strain your back today?” and adds a second splash of black rum to the half-full tea. “Maybe
you
should
have hired a man, he could have taken on the strenuous part.” She then tries to massage his back and shoulder but her thin
fingers aren’t strong enough to get through the layers of body hair, blubber, muscle and cartilage down to where it really
hurts. “I suppose I’m failing you, Lucas, not to be out there, but look at my hands, they don’t have the strength for a proper
backrub. I wouldn’t be much help on a lobster boat.”

“Them Ph.D.’s,” he asks Kristen, “how many kids they got?”

“Well, with Dr. Hummerman’s old wife he has a son in college, and with his new wife, who is the one that interviewed me, they
have a girl eight and a boy five. And I know the Hummermans let local people work on their dock project because Billy Thurston’s
working there too, so there’ll be someone I know.”

“I heard. Doug Travis has got three men on that job full-time and they’ve been there all spring long. Doug’s crew put in a
granite pier and a float made of Tibetan redwood, they must be putting half a million into it.”

“The Hummermans
need
it, Daddy, for their new yacht.”

“I’m sure they do. And another thing, why can’t the college boy take care of their kids?”

“Lucas,” Sarah says on her way out to the kitchen, “a college boy doesn’t want to baby-sit for two small children. It’s a
perfect situation for an au pair. It will get her ready for college too. These are the kind of people she’ll meet in her new
life. They’ve already stopped in at Yvonne’s gallery. She says they have excellent taste.”

“Hey Mom,” Kristen says, “one of your mobiles would look nice in their house.”

“Don’t be pushy, darling. I’m not good enough yet.”

“Not true. You’re the best. And Dad, did I tell you, I’m going to have my own room there. Right in the old servants’ quarters
over their carriage house.”

“Slave quarters,” he says. “They lost their fucking plantations down in Dixieland, now they come up here. Confederates should
of won, this country’d be a damn sight better off.”

“Daddy, they’re not Confederates. They’re Jewish. Mrs. Hummerman’s going to teach me all their customs, like eating by candlelight
on Friday night.”

“Jesus H. Christ, our customs ain’t good enough anymore?”

“
Lu
cas.”

“No, let me explain to him. Don’t you see, Daddy, we don’t
have
customs. We live in a cultural vacuum. The Hummermans can’t watch any TV after sunset on Friday. It’s very refined.”

“Can’t be Friday,” he says. “You must of heard it wrong. Friday’s World Wrestling night on TNN.”

“Daddy, if you think like that you’ll never get anywhere, you’re just going to
rot
here in this old house that hasn’t changed since the Civil War.”

Sarah’s just arrived back at the table with a full steaming bowl of mussel stew thick with diced turnips and onions and what
looks like tofu but he prays to God is big chunks of salt pork. Even Kyle shuts the TV off with his foot and sits down to
slouch his half-shaved head over his food. Now it looks like some kind of writing’s carved into his hair, probably Chinese.

Sarah serves her daughter first, as the person of honor. “We should all try to have some positive feeling for Kristen’s achievement.
I heard there were a dozen girls applying for that job.”

“They didn’t hire Lenore Hannaford,” Kristen says. “And she goes to private school.”

“No shit? Clyde’s niece, huh? That’s decent. Sounds like this guy Hummerman really stepped in shit. What did he do, win the
Maryland Megabucks?”

“He’s a doctor,” Kristen says. “He’s a cardiac surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, and you know what his wife told me? Nobody’s
supposed to know, only members of the family, so Kyle, don’t say anything to your dropout friends. If anything ever happened
to the president’s heart, Dr. Hummerman would be on the team that gets called in.”

“Hey. He could fix the whole frigging country with one little slip of the knife.”

“You know, Lucas, you might not be here eating this food if it weren’t for the miracle of heart surgery.”

“That would be OK with me. A man ain’t good enough for his own family, he might as well be fucking dead.”

“Lucas.”

His son stands up from the table and flips a set of keys in the air. “I don’t have to listen to this shit. I’m going out.”

“Out? Where? Ain’t this a school night for you?”

“Maybe I’ll drive over to Split Cove, see what’s happening.”

“Drive what? You ain’t using the GMC, you got a ticket last time. You going to use the Lynx?”

“Don’t have to. Got my own.”

Lucky had forgotten about the truck. “That ain’t your Toyota blocking my door, is it?”

“Sure is,” Kyle says proudly. “Bought it this afternoon.”