The Wooden Nickel (17 page)

“
Lucas.
We can start off by talking like civil human beings. Hillary Clinton is an admirable woman, and she’s been a source of strength
in my working through this. What she’s had to put up with — that Jones person, who I must say does look a bit like Rhonda
Hannaford on first glance.”

“Nose is different,” he points out.

She looks at him with her eyes angled up after this remark, like he’s not her husband but a vinyl siding salesman she’s never
laid eyes on in her life.

“The nose
is
different,” she says. “And I’m different from the first lady too. Because she seems to put up with repeat offenses. But you
better listen carefully, Lucas Lunt, because you are not the president and you can’t expect your wife to be part of a harem.
If you have not completely separated yourself from the Hannaford woman, and hired a new sternman, two weeks from today, June
fifteenth, which will be Kristen’s graduation, I’ll have no choice but to open our rainy-day fund and retain a lawyer.”

She turns up the volume on those last words, like she’s dragging in Arvid Hannaford as a witness.

“Ain’t no need to,” he says. “We’ll get her straightened out.”

The waitress refills their coffee to the halfway point and shoves the check under his saucer like she wants them to get out
now before they cause a scene. The overhead speaker’s still playing the Vince Gill tape.

Why can’t I forget it

Why can’t I admit it

There ain’t no future in the past

Arvid and Wilfred are sitting on the same side of their table poring over a list of figures when they leave. He swings out
of the way to avoid them but Wilfred yells, “Hey Lunt. Check out the tuna rig on your way out, you may want to order one.
Japanese pay nine thousand for a single fish.”

Outside, he studies the big hull on its Brownell trailer. “
Miss Butterfly,
what kind of fairy name is that?”

“It’s a nice name, Lucas, I think it’s a Japanese opera.”

“They ain’t going to catch no fish with a name like that.”

Then he sees the shafts. The props are five-bladed Michigan HiTorqs on three-inch stainless shafts. Behind each screw, halfway
up the exposed shaft, something else glistens in the orange mall lot light: spurs. That son of a whore has put razor-sharp
stainless steel cutting blades on each shaft. When he plows his way through a trap zone on the way to the tuna grounds he’ll
just slice off any pot warp he happens to encounter. Wilfred is going to leave lobstering with a vengeance.

“Got your eye on a new one?” Sarah asks. “Thought you were going to be loyal to
Wooden Nickel
right to the end.”

He turns his head and spits in the direction of the tuna boat. “Wouldn’t take one of them things if the government gave it
to me.”

He gets into the loaner and turns her over. Battery’s so weak it’s got about one flip left to it before it catches. His wife’s
looking up at him from the little Lynx. “Till death do us part,” she says. “Remember.”

Then she pulls out and leads him back to Orphan Point. He’s still stuck in low-range four-wheel drive, however, and before
too long the navy blue Lynx is out of sight.

When he reaches his house there’s a red Mazda Miata in the drive, top up, Maryland plates, blocking his way to the garage.
It would be a beautiful act to drive the big bald thirty-one-inch Wranglers right up and over the back of it just like the
way they do it at Ben Schmidt’s Monster Truck Show. Society, however, has a visegrip on his nuts just like everybody else’s,
and he stops short with one front tire about a half inch from the Miata’s plastic bumper, the bow of the F-150 hanging like
an aircraft carrier over its little trunk. Whoever it is, they’ll need his permission to get out.

Sarah’s waiting in the doorway with a grim tight-lipped whisper.
“For heaven’s sake, Lucas, at least try and be nice.”

Inside, Kristen stands proudly in the door of the den with some classical thing playing behind her on
his
stereo, which is wired for country music and nothing else. “Thought you was only going to play that stuff upstairs,” he reminds
her. “It’s bad for the speakers.”

“Daddy, I’m entertaining. I want you to meet Nathan Hummerman. Nathan’s from the family I’m working for.”

Behind her is a red-haired little college boy with thick-lensed glasses that pop his eyes out like a haddock. The kid jumps
from his own chair, looks up at Lucky, who’s a head taller, then gropes for his hand like a blind man. Lucky plants both arms
behind his back so the kid can’t get at them. “Only shake hands when I buy something,” he says.

“That’s a good principle,” the kid says. “I’ll have to think about that. I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Lunt. Kristen says
you’re totally unique. Believe me, I wanted to be a fisherman till I was twelve or thirteen.”

“Oh yeah? What made you change your mind?”

Kristen steps between them same as she does with Kyle. “Nathan goes to Brandeis,” she says. “He’s premed.”

“That your car out there, Nathan?”

“Yes, it is, sir.” He stands straight, pushes the glasses right up against the meat of his eyes.

“How come you didn’t get a Corvette?”

“I thought of a Corvette, but they get about ten miles to the gallon.”

“What the hell,” Lucky says, “there’s plenty of oil down there. Ain’t you heard? The whole fucking center of the earth is
filled with oil, making more of it every day.”

“It’s OK, Daddy. We’ll take the Brahms upstairs and finish listening. You can have your den back.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Lunt, I’ll remember what you said about shaking hands. About the oil reserves too. It’s reassuring
to know we’ll never run out.”

When Kristen leads him across the dining room towards the stairs the kid’s arm jerks out and snakes itself around her waist.
Lucky was just turning the Sox game on, but when he sees that move his spine freezes in place. “Just a minute, Kris. I got
to go to bed anyway. Why don’t you two stay down here.”

The ball game is the Sox and the Orioles. The kid takes his arm off of Kristen’s body and stands next to Lucky as Tim Wakefield
shakes off a call and winds up. “Hey, there’s Cal Ripken,” the kid says. “I have a ball signed by him.”

“What was you, in the stands?”

“No, my dad’s one of the team’s consulting physicians. He’s their heart man. Cal Ripken came to dinner once, that’s when he
gave me the ball.”

Both males are intent on the game now, with Kristen standing in the doorway saying, “Nathan, I’ll be outside.”

“Guess we’re going to go, Mr. Lunt. Sorry I couldn’t watch the whole game with you. I know some of the other players too.”

“No shit,” Lucky says. “Guess I’ll go outside and move my truck.”

He wakes for no reason at half past one. The house feels empty. Kristen’s not home yet, her absence is like an open window.
He lies there listening to Sarah’s asthma, every spring it gets worse with all the pollen around. A truck passes on the road,
Dodge Ramcharger with twin pipes, probably Stevie Latete weaving home from the RoundUp at closing time. A boat leaves the
harbor, way too early for lobstering; that would be Noah Parker’s pilot boat heading out to meet an offshore tanker bound
up the Tarratine River to offload at the Exxon dock. He hears the sheriff’s cruiser, a Chevy Caprice with a well-muffled 350
V-8 under the hood, snow studs still whining cause the town didn’t vote any money for summer tires. His ears are silenced
for the next two minutes by a deep-throated Harley twin coming down the hill from Norumbega, downshifting when it meets the
cruiser, then racing off towards Burnt Neck, making sure nobody’s going to hear anything for a while. He hears Bobby Whelan’s
Mercedes reefer truck, heavy with shellfish, starting off on the Boston clam run.

Then he hears the Miata accelerating out of the village and downshifting as it gets near, four little cylinders but he has
to admit they’ve got them tuned. It turns into the driveway and stops and he can relax. But then the doors don’t open. What
the hell. They must be talking, and he hears some kind of rock and roll filtering his way. He thinks of the old pickup he
had in high school, not his really but his old man Walter’s, ’61 Chevy stepside with a bench seat you could lie right down
and fuck somebody on if she was short enough. The night he took Dolores Thurston to the Riceville Fair, it was the first time
he ever saw a girl’s tits in real life, she was smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke down across her chest so the nipples
stuck out in the saltwater moonlight like a couple of brand-new pencil erasers. Just a blink of time’s gone by and now she’s
a wrinkly Mormon grandmother with snow-white hair.

Sarah turns over and says, “Lucas, are you all right? What time is it?”

“I’m all right.”

“You were breathing like you were going to die.”

“Dreaming, I guess.”

“Are Kristen and Nathan back?” She sits up, draws the blanket over her chest and listens. The cruiser goes by again.

“I heard the car,” he says, “but she ain’t come in.”

“Well call her in, Lucas, it’s a school night and that girl has final exams. Besides, aren’t you worried? You didn’t even
want them to go upstairs.”

“What the hell?” he says. “They ain’t going to do nothing in a Miata.” He goes to the window and looks down. Sarah gets up
and draws the top blanket off and joins him, wrapping the cover around her thin shoulders like a nun.

“Cold,” she says, “for this time of year.”

They both gaze down on the foreign vehicle that looks too small to contain two grown human beings. It’s not rocking, at least.
He can see one of their arms on one side, one on the other. “Just talking,” he says.

She lets one side of the blanket fall and puts an arm gently on his back. “They do a lot of talking, Lucas.”

“They ain’t like us.” He lets himself put an arm around her shoulders, looking down at the little car.

“You had me pregnant before we had a conversation.”

They hear the door close as they’re getting back in bed. Downstairs the refrigerator opens, closes. The lights snap off, Kristen’s
footsteps climb the stairs. With the sound of a furious Chinese locust the Miata heads off for the head of the harbor, and
pretty soon he hears it on Summer Street, all the way down the Money shore till it comes to the Hummermans’ house on the point
directly across from them. There it dies and the night is quiet again. In an hour and a half he’ll be rowing out to his mooring
in the fog.

B
ACK AT THE STERN
, Ronette looks like she’s yelling at something halfway to the horizon but no sound’s coming out of her mouth, then come these
little squeaks, then, “Holy shit, Lucky, it’s a
WHALE!
”

She’s got an unbanded lobster flapping in one hand and Ginger’s collar in the other to hold her back, looks like the dog wants
to jump in and retrieve the fucking thing. With her rubber bib down and no bra and a snapping lobster in hand, his sternperson
stands a very good chance of losing a tit. Now she’s climbed up on the washboard with the dog beside her, and she’s pointing
straight at the horizon so he can see right down the armhole of her top, a nice-looking woman he’s not allowed to fuck. He
hasn’t told her yet, but for the next few days she’s just a sternman, then she’s gone. “This ain’t a nature cruise, Ronette.
See one of them things, you’ve seen them all.” He pulls the
Wooden Nickel
up to another trapline, in four fathoms, gaffs the buoy and slings the warp over the davit. Ronette’s saying something, though,
so he pauses before throwing her in gear.

“Yeah? Well, I never seen one. When I went with Reggie, he never let me look at nothing. Hope it comes up again, they get
me right in the stomach.”

“Scared?”

“No, scared ain’t it. Something else. I used to get that stomach feeling when I was a kid in church. Only other time, might
of been right here on this boat . . .” Her tanned face turns a little red, she walks over to the trap hauler and leans on
him. “Church and you, Mr. Lucky Lunt, them’s the only other times.”

“Well, it ain’t Sunday, and we ain’t after whales. Take a good look, then get back to work.”

“Ain’t you the crab today? You biting?” She takes his hand and moves the thumb in and out like a lobster claw. He pulls away,
kicks in the pot hoist and grinds up a double. The first one’s full of rock crabs and a big green eel that he tries to grab
but it squirms off and over the side. The second one has a clawless pistol and two culls. He slides the traps back to her
on the side deck, she baits them and wipes her hands on the oilskin bib, grabs the two bandits and slips the elastics on.
The pistols always disgust him a bit, like a girl with no legs. He throws it to a big blackback seagull following behind.
Funny thing, that bloody wing on the antenna keeps the regular gulls off but not the blackbacks, though it came off one of
their own.

It’s hot. Lucky’s got his shirt off under the Grundens oilpants, his flesh is bulging out through the side openings between
bib and suspenders. Ronette can’t resist giving him a squeeze like she’s kneading a loaf of fresh white hairy bread. He knows
there’s nothing but a pair of cutoffs under her orange Grundens, which are hanging down in front with the straps astray. Her
purple tank top’s soaked from the salt water and herring guts. High Country 104’s playing Tracy Byrd’s “Don’t Love Make a
Diamond Shine,” only song on the airwaves this week. Howard Thurston’s hauling maybe half a mile off to starboard in the big
calm seas, his boat going mostly under a swell when Ronette yells, “Whale! There it is again!”

He thinks of the shotgun under the wheelhouse deck, his hand trembles a bit like whenever he sees a moose feeding alongside
the road, old itch goes back to when men were hunters at the start of time.

“Wonder what would happen,” he says, “if you shot one of them son of a whores?”

“Jesus, Lucky, they wouldn’t even feel it. They got skin a foot thick. You know what I heard? A whale’s heart weighs more
than a Volkswagen. Think of it, Luck, just the heart. How could you shoot something with a heart that big? They ain’t bothering
you.”