The Wooden Nickel (39 page)

“Ain’t been any storms,” he says. “Don’t know where them christly traps could be.”

Ronette’s got the binoculars and she’s sweeping the fog line off to the southeast. “I think there’s something way off there.”

“They ain’t nothing off there, cause I didn’t set no traps down there. I laid the string off to westward along the shoal.”

“No, Lucky, look.”

He turns the wheel and steams over. At twenty-five fathoms there’s a snarl of three Day-Glo lemon buoys twisted together with
the handles in three different directions like a propeller.

“What the fuck.”

She hands him the gaff but they’re twisted so tight he can’t untangle them.

“What are you going to do, Luck?”

“I’m going to haul all three of them bastards and see what’s going on.”

He waits for a down swell and hooks the snarl of pot warp over the rail cleat. The new Hydroslave hauler strains like a weightlifter,
but it just heels the boat down till she sucks green water over the starboard rail, three traps are too heavy to haul at once.
She hands him the long-handled rope knife and he feels the warps to see which is the tightest and cuts it free. “One more
fucking ghost trap, four or five big bastards chewing themselves to death.”

The cut line spirals off from the others and disappears. He throws a few more turns on the pot hauler and eases the other
two close to the surface, the rail back down to the water with their weight. One trap, ripped halfway across the top, has
scooped up a load of bottom mud and stones. The other funnel is ripped right through and another big rock’s in there, the
two of them must weigh five hundred pounds submerged.

No way he’s going to untangle the two warps, traps are ruined anyway, so he takes the rope knife and cuts them free. The starboard
rail jumps up from the relief.

The sun’s scaling the fog up some and he can see the next buoy, back where it’s supposed to be, so he steams up, slips it
over the davy block and around the drum. Twenty fathoms of water and the Hydroslave sucks her off the bottom like a loose
tooth. Ronette’s peering down in the water watching it come up. “Nothing wrong with that one.”

They haul it over and there’s two jumbos inside, covered with deepwater barnacles and squirming with hunger, all claws intact.
They’ll run eight pounds apiece, at eight bucks a pound that’s about a hundred thirty right there. They get the double bands
on them and they’re in the well.

“Look at that, Lucky, they’re trying to crawl right up the side. I feel sorry for these big ones, they could be pretty near
human.”

“They was dumb enough to get caught, it’s their own fault.”

“You don’t have no sympathy for nothing, do you?”

“Look at them lobsters close, Ronette. Look at that fucking water. It’s twenty-five fathoms down there, freezing fucking cold,
you ain’t a hard-shelled bastard they’re going to eat you alive.”

They haul a dozen more traps and drop another eight godzillas into the live well, then Ronette drops her bib straps to peel
her sweatshirt off and puts in a Trisha Yearwood classic.

Well, I’ve got a steady job that pays enough

A pretty good car that don’t break down much

He pulls a Rolling Rock out of the ice box, bites the cap off, and gives it to her for the first sip with the foam drooling
over the top and running all over her hand.

“Remind you of something?” he says.

She sticks her tongue out at him, then uses it to lick the foam off of the bottle neck. “Don’t remind me of nothing. I ain’t
that kind.”

She slips the orange oilskin bib down so she’s just wearing a T-shirt with the neck ripped down to the Nike sign. She leans
back on the cooler so her face points up at the morning sun. A good-looking woman looks good pregnant, everything she had
before and more besides. Then he looks over in the well at his jumbo lobsters shuffling around near the pump outlet, some
trying to crawl up in the saltwater pipe to escape, others trying to burrow under each other like rocks.

“Hundred pounds of them bastards, we’re going to be pushing eight hundred bucks, just this one haul.”

“Four hundred bucks for Moto, four hundred for your exes.” She holds the Rolling Rock up so the green glass catches the sun
and the inside looks like the sparkling depth of the sea.

“You should of stuck with Clyde, you’d be floating around the hot tub now.”

“Clyde would of gave me the whole ten thousand and then some. Cheap bastard, no wonder your wife threw you out.”

“How come you’re out here then? Freezing your ass off, can’t see a hundred feet, cold black water, and all the traps fucked
up.”

“There’s one or two reasons, but I ain’t going into them till after lunch.” She’s getting her sandwich out of the lunch pail.
“Jesus, I’m starved all the time, I’ll be a blimp before this is over. It don’t come off, neither.” She switches to “Don’t
It Make My Brown Eyes” on the
Country Legends
tape. She always puts that on when she’s got something in mind. Works too, same way a dog hears the can opener. He fastens
a trapline to the anchor bitt while she finishes her sandwich, then follows her down below. She’s got one leg out of her orange
Grundens before her feet hit the cabin floor.

These days, she likes to do it with her clothes half off, one leg in oilskins, the other sticking out warm and bare. The Nike
shirt pulled up to her shoulders, bra unhooked, nice round pregnant tits swinging like jellyfish as the boat sloshes in the
ocean swell.

Sometimes she’s too much for him and it’s over in a minute, but this time she’s cool and slick as a sea cucumber, he feels
he can rock in the crosswaves forever. Then she throws her eyes wide open and pushes him up off her with both hands on his
shoulders. She pulls her head back so he’s forced to look her in the eye and listen. “You can’t do this with nobody anymore.”

“Hell,” he says, “you ain’t that far gone. We don’t have to stop
yet.
”

“Nobody
else.
I mean it, Lucky. I’m going to be fat and ugly, but even so you got to promise you ain’t going to do this with nobody else.
Your womanizer days are over, you understand?”

She’s crying while she says this. Big drops splash down on the blue nylon comforter she fetched out of Clyde’s house when
she went back to get her stuff.

His dick has already shriveled and popped out, it’s curled up like a brine shrimp, so they might as well talk. “You afraid
I’ll be going back to Sarah? She calls the deputies if I drive past on the road.”

“Don’t make no difference if it’s your wife or whoever. You cheated and lied on her when you was starting up with me, how
am I supposed to know you ain’t going to do that again? I ain’t going to be your little honeypot at the Blue Claw. I’m going
to be a fat old pig. How do I know you ain’t doing it already?” She’s pointing at his dick like it’s in the witness box. “That
thing don’t tell me where it’s been.”

She dries her face off with the tail of her T-shirt but her tits are still staring at him like angry brown octopus eyes. “I
ain’t interested,” he says. “I ain’t got time.”

She pulls the shirt down and pokes her free leg around trying to jam it back in the oilskin trousers. “You do, Mr. Lucas Lunt,
and you know what’s going to happen to you? Clyde gave me a handgun, you know. I’m going to hunt you down and shoot you where
it hurts. And her too. I don’t care if I have to bring the baby up in jail. Lots of girls do, no pricks giving you a hard
time, and the medical care is free.”

Then, just to sternward, there’s an engine sound, not a lobster boat but a heavy Caterpillar eight-cylinder diesel turning
a full-size three-blade prop, nice and slow. He puts his head up through the companionway. A big black dragger with its gear
up is practically stopped just to sternward of them and the crew is staring like pirates over the port rail, every one of
them with a shit-eating toothless grin.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he yells, “if it ain’t the god damn Trotts. You boys tired of fishing? You see anything you like?”

Anson Trott puts her in neutral and calls, “Picked you up on the radar, just checking if you was OK. Awful small little boat
to be way out here. Didn’t see nobody so I thought something had happened.”

“We was below,” Lucky shouts. The Trotts change from their shit-eating toothless grins to big belly laughs, drooling tobacco
spit, stomping on each other’s boots, flashing their black tongues. When Ronette pops her head out the companionway they close
their mouths and start frigging around with their drag cable.

“OK, Lucky,” Anson Trott yells back. “Guess you was. Ain’t hauling, are you?”

“Hell no, I’m doing government research now.”

“That’s what we heard. Which government?” Har har. Anson throws his cigar stub into the space between the boats.

“Hang on a minute. You boys been towing that drag across my gear?”

“Ain’t no scallops on that ledge. We’re fishing ten miles south of here, just heading out and thought you was in trouble.
Didn’t know you had the lady aboard.”

“I catch anyone dragging this ledge, I’m going to fucking shoot them.”

In the shadow of his wheelhouse Big Anson Trott’s got both his hands raised to the sky. “Believe you will,” he shouts. “They
say you’re pretty handy with a gun.”

Anson turns back to the helm and revs the diesel while his crew members elbow and goose each other all around and go back
to work. The exhaust farts out a black storm cloud and they take off to the west-southwestward, swinging far over to avoid
Lucky’s field of traps. There’s so much fish scum and birdshit dripping down the transom you can barely make out their name
under the huge winch drum:

Shag Island

“Them bastards,” she says. “They can’t let nothing drop. That’s the thing about the god damn ocean, there’s nothing to do
out here but remember.”

Last time he set another string half a mile southward on a sixteen-fathom rise, it’s the shallowest shelf around. Steaming
over there, he can feel the sea heave up beneath them where the deep swells get lifted by the ledge. The loran and fishfinder
both say they’re right on top of it, but the whole field of them has disappeared. “Bastards,” he says. “Five traps gone to
hell. Right here.”

He’s got the waypoint alarm set and the loran’s beeping away.

“I remember,” she says. “This is where we got the ten-pounder.”

Another diesel sound, this one twins, then the squat white form of the cat-hulled whale-watching boat steams directly at them
out of the lifting fog. The cat passes close enough to see her rail full of tourists throwing up, the crew running frantically
from mouth to mouth with plastic bags. “Hey, look at them, they’re all pregnant!” Ronette says.

The whale-watcher makes a sharp turn to port and the twin engines boil the water as she throttles up. “They must be on to
something.” Soon as he says it, they both spot a whale on the close, misty horizon, tipping its tail and jamming down into
the water headfirst, just like the
Titanic.

“I ought to drive one of them boats. Easy money, don’t get your hands dirty.”

“Cute little passengers,” Ronette says.

“Cute little passengers puking all over you. Just my type.”

“That’s about all
I
do these days, ain’t it?” She’s fastening the oil-skins now, pulling the bib over the Nike T-shirt, that’s it for romance.

“Guess it’s back to work,” he says.

No answer.

The fog has scaled up to a hazy September sunlight and it’s easy to spot the next yellow buoy bobbing like a fluorescent sea
duck on the long green swell. This one’s way off station too. It seems OK as he slows alongside and gaffs it, but he grinds
her till the hydraulics smoke and she won’t come up. “Something’s onto her.” He jams on the winch brake to lean over for a
look. Same thing. There’s three or four warps snarled up like a bucket of fish guts, strands coming out all over and a sunken
buoy wrapped up in the whole mess. He grinds the hydraulics down till water spills out of the live well and sloshes over the
rail. “She ain’t going to come.”

He looks up and sees the silhouette of the
Rachel T,
trolling along slow and easy as a drag queen. “Cocksuckers,” he says.

The high-pitched double diesel of the whale-watching catamaran comes straight towards the
Wooden Nickel
on a collision course. Ronette says, “Look!” The cat’s chasing a whale with its fin out of the water, herding the fucking
thing at them till it tips up and waves its tail in the air not more than a couple hundred feet from their bow and dives straight
down. There’s something looped around its tail.

“You see the tail on that thing?”

“It had a rope around it, Lucky. You couldn’t see that?”

“I seen something.”

“If you can’t see a god damn whale maybe it’s time for glasses.”

“I got glasses.”

“You got
TV
glasses. You bought them at the Rite Aid. That frigging thing had a yellow rope on its tail. You know how one of them tail
fins was cut into like a V-notched lobster? Well, the notch had the yellow line in it and around the thick part too.”

“Anything attached to it?”

“I couldn’t see.”

Meanwhile, the whale-watcher boat crosses the
Rachel T
’s bow and disappears in the green smoky offshore mist. Lucky unhitches the tangled warp off his winch and heads south-southwest
where the
Rachel T
is still slowly dragging along the fog line.

“We’re going out and have a talk with them bastards.”

“Who?”

“The Hot to Trotts, that’s who. Them lines been fucked up by someone. Ain’t no one else fishing this deep but them.”

“No, Lucky. Don’t you see? It’s the god damn whale. It was your own yellow poly around the fin.”

“Then get the gun out, Ronette. I’m going to shoot that son of a whore.”

“You can’t, Lucky. They’re
protected.
”

“The fuck they are. We’re twenty-five fucking miles offshore. It’s every man for himself out here.”