The Wooden Nickel (31 page)

She wraps her arms around him in the old oilskin jacket that smells of gullshit and herring guts. He stays long enough to
feel the shape of her body fitting around him in a different way, then he unsheathes the rope knife, gooses the antique Ford
and steams over to slice another Shag Island trap.

R
ONETTE HAS TO WORK
both breakfast and dinner shifts at the Blue Claw, so she can’t come with him to the State Fish-eries Board hearing at the
Tarratine County offices, where he must show cause why his lobster license should not be revoked. He’s driving up there with
his lawyer, Kermit Beal. At 8:30 a.m. Kermit shows up in a two-tone Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Explorer that still has the price
sticker on the window. Thirty-three thousand, bit over the cost of a heart job.

It is the height of the tourist season now, the Norumbega Road’s jammed with out-of-state Saabs, Lexuses, Range Rovers, BMWs,
Volvos, humpbacked Mercedes Nazi SUVs. Kermit’s looking at his watch and swearing under his breath.

“We ain’t due till ten,” Lucky says.

“Know how I got this car?” Kermit Beal asks. Lucky swallows his heartfelt answer, looks straight ahead. “I got it because
I have never been late to a god damn thing. Not since grade one.”

“I was late all the time,” Lucky says. “I used to get up at three and go out fishing with my old man for four hours, and when
the tide weren’t in our favor I’d miss the bell. One morning I reached the front door of the old Orphan Point High School
around nine-thirty a.m. and just kept on walking and left her abeam. My old man was waiting at the dock like he expected it.
I ain’t been in a schoolhouse since, that’s why I’m driving a piece of shit pickup and you’re tooling around in this. They
probably still got me counted late.”

“That’s a good one, Lucas. Thirty years late. And you haven’t done bad for yourself. Up till now, anyway. He he he.” He ends
up his laugh with a big slurp from the Eddie Bauer coffee mug.

“You said them other guys been in already?”

“Cyrus Shaver gave his deposition last week, he’s the one that was driving the third boat.”

“That fucker fired the first shot, cause I decked him in the RoundUp.”

“Maybe you should let me do the talking, Lucas, that’s what I’m hired for. Anyway, we have to go in there not knowing what
the hell he said. He could have been lying through his nose, but it’s going to go better if your story squares away with his.”
Meanwhile Kermit is tailgating this white Taurus that suddenly slams on its brakes with no warning and swerves off into a
shop that sells old wooden lobster pots fitted out with glass tabletops. The big Ford Explorer almost drives on top of them.
Up on the dash, Kermit’s coffee tips over and spills down the defroster holes. Kermit says, “Damn tourists, we’re not going
to make it.”

“You could let me take the wheel, Kermit. I’d drop this thing in low range and drive over them out-of-state yuppies like the
Car Crusher.”

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Lucas. Every one of those out-of-state cars is a potential customer. Guys like you couldn’t
support their families without the tourist trade. You need them like I need criminals. Whip out your magic wand and whisk
them away, we’re eating off food stamps, simple as that. Another thing, you need to get in a serious frame of mind. No smirking,
no grinning. They see one shit-eating grin on your face, you’re toast.”

“I thought you had it all arranged.”

“What we arranged was that the state would drop the criminal charge because we have a case for self-defense. Lucky for you,
these islanders don’t trust the system. They prefer to take the law in their own hands.”

“They should still get that other bastard for shooting first. He didn’t have no self-defense. He also took a couple of shots
at Norton Gross.”

“They forget those little details when somebody gets hit. By the way, you know something? When I flew out to Shag Island checking
things out, that woman you winged, Priscilla Shaver, she pulled me aside and asked if you were single. She’s got hot pants
for you, that’s in your favor. They have some strange birds out there.”

“You’d think a bullet in the shoulder would of cooled her down some.”

“Some folks, Lucas, you kick them and they love you more.”

“I got my limits,” Lucky says. “That woman could enter the frigging horse pulls up to the Riceville Fair.”

“I’m not saying she’s Winona Ryder, Lucas. I’m saying she’s got a soft spot for you and that can work in our favor. You
shot
her, for Christ’s sake.”

“I was trying to shoot that other bastard. He buried a hollow-point in my hull.”

“Henry Shaver. I’ve represented him once or twice in the past. Not to mention his brother Cyrus. Know how Cyrus Shaver lost
that middle finger?”

“I got a few theories,” Lucky says.

“Cyrus was in a jailhouse fight with his cellmate up in the Tarratine lockup and the guy bit it off and threw it in the toilet.
He had it flushed down before Cyrus could dig it out of there. Warden had three cons comb through the septic tank but they
never found it. Hey Lucas, you see that Audi go by?”

“Missed it.”

“I’m getting one of those soon as the ninety-eights come out. You can’t beat the Europeans for safety.
Six air bags,
what do you think about that?”

Seven, he thinks, including the driver, but he doesn’t say it because it’s Kermit Beal that stands between him and a fisheries
board that’s drooling to send him to the worm flats with old Luther Webster.

Now it’s starting to rain, big thick heavy summer raindrops that fall like transparent birdshit across the Explorer’s dusty
windshield. The lawyer puts the intermittent wipers on. Tourists are stopping in the middle of the road to raise their convertible
tops.

“They fixing to pull them other guys’ licenses too?” he asks Kermit Beal. “They was the ones that shot first.”

“The other side’s claiming they sustained bodily injury, so they shouldn’t be punished.”

“Well what the fuck? They shot my fucking radar out. There’s four thousand dollars right there.”

“Believe it or not, Lucas, in the eyes of the law, a human being is worth more than a radar set.”

“Don’t that depend on who it is?”

“It’s the United States of America, Lucas, haven’t you heard? All men are created equal.”

“They teach you that at law school? That’s bullshit. That son of a whore is a con. He’s a repeat offender. Three strikes and
you’re out. Everyone knows that.”

“He wasn’t the one you hit, remember? Didn’t you say you struck another member of that family over in the RoundUp? Remember
to behave yourself in there, don’t say any more than you have to, try and look sincere, and for Christ’s sake try not to
swear.
Here, put these on.” He flips open the glove compartment and there’s about ten pairs of wire-rimmed glasses like the kind
Sarah wears. Kermit pulls out a big pair and hands them to Lucky. “There’s no prescription to them, it’s just window glass.
I put them on all my clients. It makes them look like they can read.”

He looks at himself in the Eddie Bauer vanity mirror, and for a moment sees another life in there, Mr. Ph.D. Volvo with eyeglasses
and bumper sticker:

It scares the piss out of him. He takes the glasses off and puts them back in the glove compartment. “No thanks.”

Kermit called him at 7 a.m. to tell him what to wear. “Dress like church, Lucas. They might take it easy on you if you look
contrite.” So he put on his blazer and necktie even in the August heat. The tie’s got a bowline in it but it hangs OK. Kermit’s
tan summer suit seems a lot more comfortable but he’s got the air-conditioning on anyway and all the windows rolled up, like
driving down the road in a meat cooler.

“Let’s get the story right, Lucas. After they deliberately put your radar out, you fired a warning shot to keep them away
so they wouldn’t hit you again. It was unusually windy and choppy at the time, that’s the way to put it. Both boats lurched
and the shot came in low. That’s how Ms. Shaver received her injury.”

“No problem. That’s how it happened.”

They’re in the hearing room facing the fisheries panel over a long wooden table in a room with barred windows and fluorescent
lights. There’s a flag at each end — state and national — plus a few paintings of white-headed old farts along one wall and
that’s it. The complaining officer, Ryan Beal, all dressed up in his shit-colored shirt and camouflage tie like he’s going
to stalk some game, stands at one end of the table, by the state flag. The three panel members get up and introduce themselves
like they’re interviewing him for a job. The shortest guy smiles and says, “My name is Robert Fulmar, I’m the acting assistant
fisheries commissioner.” Fulmar turns to a woman about Lucky’s age who keeps pulling her skirt down to cover her knees, though
with those piano legs she’s got nothing to worry about. She has a lot of nice gray-blond hair but it looks like a wig, and
he can’t really get a clear idea of her tits because she has a very loose-fitting high white blouse. She looks nervous and
uncomfortable, like she’s wearing somebody else’s clothes. Fulmar says, “This is Sherry Pintle, state representative from
South Livery and a member of the House fisheries panel.” He finishes off with the third guy, a downstate lobsterman he’s never
met but heard of, “Corliss Drummond, president of the Dead River fisherman’s co-op and member of the governor’s seafood council.”

“Heard of you,” Lucky says. “Dead River’s just about on the border, ain’t it?”

“Mile from the state line. Heard of you too. Your name’s on all the race results. Gas-powered.”

“Finest kind,” Lucky says. This gets a little grin out of his lawyer. Kermit seems happy there’s a real fisherman on the panel,
but his client is not so sure. This Drummond has the thick brown scarred-up hands of a lobsterman but they’re sticking out
from the sleeves of a politician’s dark blue suit. That’s another thing his old man used to say: Fishing and politics don’t
mix. He can hear his voice over the old Pontiac six, first boat he can remember.
Lukie, good fishermen don’t need no laws. Just leave them alone, they’ll regulate themselves.
His old man couldn’t even read a comic book, but he was right.

The panel members sag down into their heavy upholstered chairs. The two chairs for Lucky and his attorney are ketchup-colored
plastic, the legs feel like they’re going to splay out and snap right off. Fulmar starts off by saying, “The reason for this
hearing is to give you a chance to show cause why your state fishery license should not be revoked. It is a state policy that
any use of firearms against another fisherman will result in a suspension, from ninety days to a full year. In the case of
an actual wounding, such as we have here, there is no maximum and suspension can be indefinite.”

The Pintle woman adds, “Violence escalates, Mr. Lunt, as I’m sure you are aware.”

His lawyer, at two hundred fifty bucks an hour, responds. “I want to remind the board that the shot was fired in self-defense.
Striking the victim was an unintended consequence of justifiably defending life and property. The Shag Island parties had
already fired on and hit an Orphan Point boat belonging to Mr. Norton Gross, so there was good reason for my client to carry
a gun while he worked his territory.”

Fulmar says, “A warning shot might be understood, but a gunshot wound is something else entirely. Both the bureau and the
fishermen have worked hard over the years to civilize the fishery and it has paid off. We have no interest in a return to
the mayhem of former times.”

Next they have Ryan Beal give his version of what happened. “First of all, a false position was reported on the VHF so we
were taken twenty miles out of our way. Deliberately, if you ask me. The whole business could have been prevented if the coordinates
had been right.”

“That was them.” Lucky says, “My transmitter didn’t work.”

Kermit Beal whispers, “Hold it for now, Lucas. Anything you say will make it worse.”

The Marine Patrol cop goes on. The whole time his hand’s resting on his revolver butt and he’s looking in Lucky’s direction
like he’s authorized to shoot him in his chair if he feels like it. “We heard the call for Orphan Point vessels on the scanner,
so we arrived on scene at fifteen-twenty hours and found the suspect boat with several bullet holes but no injuries and a
freshly discharged weapon on board. You will find that in the evidence display. The accused claimed they had fired a warning
after receiving gunfire that pierced the radar antenna and the windshield. Examination of the accused’s radome showed damage
consistent with a bullet passing from bow to stern. A thirty-caliber hollowpoint was also found in the hull of the accused.
The other vessels departed the scene southward and we pursued. We followed them to Shag Island and ascertained that a thirty-four-year-old
adult female, Priscilla Shaver, had received a gunshot wound in the incident and was taken to a local residence since there
is no medical facility on the island. The victim refused to be interviewed without a search warrant so we returned to Stoneport
base. Subsequently the victim declined to testify or press charges, so we have turned the matter over to the board.”

“Thank you, Officer Beal,” Fulmar says. Then he turns to Lucky. “Mr. Lunt, you may now take the opportunity to speak for yourself,
or have your attorney enter your version of events, as you wish.”

He gets up and starts to say, “We was just minding our own business out on Toothpick Ledge . . .” when Kermit Beal gives a
secret little tug on his blazer hem that pulls him into the chair. The lawyer stands up and clears his throat. He looks like
a near cousin of Ryan Beal no matter what he claims. They’ve both got the same Adam’s apple full of shaving cuts and the same
little black mustache blending in with some serious nose hair, but Kermit’s got more weight on him from having a desk job.
“My client has asked me to speak in his behalf. This being a clear case of self-defense, these islanders were admittedly encroaching
on traditional territory that has been handed down in his family for over fifty years. They deliberately set traps on the
southern tip of Toothpick Shoal while my client was clearly present in his own boat with his buoy colors prominently displayed.
By this provocation, the victim and her family members had shown disrespect for the community codes that have civilized the
lobstering profession. The wounding was accidental, the victim recognized this by refusing to press charges, my client will
pledge to carry no firearms or alcohol...”