The Wooden Nickel (6 page)

He had Harley Webster in Riceville rebore a factory-new Chevy 454 and custom fit it to an oversize Hurth transmission on a
two-inch stainless shaft, not a cunt hair of torque lost passing through the hull. When he took delivery on
Wooden Nickel
that June he brought her right to the Summer Harbor races, broke it in on the way and took third in gas unlimited though
there were three 502s in that race from as far away as Kittery Point. Thirty-six miles an hour on the radar gun, the only
wooden hull in the top ten. That’s what they clocked him at. Cocksucker was paid for and now it’s the bank’s again.

He notes one strange boat lying in the dredged channel just off of Clyde’s wharf: the
Rachel T,
a big steel dragger out of Shag Island with rust streaks weeping down both sides. He knows them, the Trott brothers. Half
of Shag Island is named Trott, the other half’s Shavers. The genetic counselors make three flights a month out to their office
at the Shag Island airport, which is this grassy field with a weather sock at one end and a graveyard at the other, that’s
where they get laid when they’re young and buried when they’re old. Captain Anson Trott and his boys must have brought Clyde
a load of shellfish, then got drunk at the RoundUp and now they’re out there sleeping it off on the
Rachel T.

Moment he thinks of Clyde Hannaford, here comes Ronette herself, cruising in with her lemon-and-lime Probe, little white kitten
on the rear shelf whose eyes glow red when the brake’s on. The two of them get out of their vehicles at the same time, Lucky
and Ronette. She’s tying the lacy waitress apron around her waist as she goes in, so he’s forced to hold the door open for
her, and she brushes against him a little more than she has to to get past.

“Sleep late?” he asks as she disappears behind the counter.

“None of your business, Mr. Lucky Lunt. If you are. You look like bad luck to me.” She reaches a hand out of the pantry with
nail polish the same color as the blueberry syrup. The purple finger-nails tune the radio to Big Country, they’re playing
Lorrie Morgan’s “Go Away, No, Wait a Minute.” Ronette’s got black tights under the white waitress outfit, little fringed white
cowgirl boots with waitress-shoe bottoms. He tries to see under her clothes but has no more success than he had in the dream.
“See anything you need?” she asks, flicks her tail and ducks into the pantry again.

“Driving your own car now,” Lucky observes. “What color they call that, anyway?”

“That’s chartreuse.”

“Chartrooz,” Lucky tries to say.

“It’s a
French
color, you wouldn’t know.” She’s back out now, she had been opening a big five-pound coffee can on the industrial opener
and now she’s throwing the jagged top in the recycling box.

He likes the way the black tights tuck into the cowgirl boots, it makes his pulse beat in his eardrums like he was back to
normal and not a medicated fucking cripple who may never get it up again except in his sleep. “How come you work here, anyway,
Ronette? With all Clyde’s money you could sleep late every morning and watch the Oprah show on TV.”

“A woman’s got to have her independence. This woman anyway. I ain’t living off no one.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and tell him?” Doris says from behind the register.

The tinny radio over the coffee urn’s playing a Garth Brooks song:

Little café, table for four

But there’s just conversation for three

“I ain’t staying at Clyde’s,” Ronette says. She sticks her chin up for a minute, then she lets her face fall and her mouth
goes down and she starts crying, right behind the counter with the big open can held in her two hands and the drops making
little craters on the surface of the coffee like rain on a dusty road. Tears have always silenced him, so he just looks at
her with her mascara eye-rings breached through and offers his big hairy paw over the counter but she doesn’t take it so he
feels like a fool and pulls it back. “I ain’t going to be able to get by,” she says.

“You’re working here.”

“Three mornings a week. Way you guys tip, it don’t buy cigarettes.”

“Summer it’ll get better,” Doris says.

“Wicked long time till summer.”

“Clyde ain’t helping you?” Lucky asks.

“That son of a bitch ain’t giving me a dime. He says I walked out on him so I can pay.”

“Did you?”

“I couldn’t go in the door of that place no more. It was like a frigging igloo in there.”

“Thought you had a hot tub,” Doris says.

“I mean the
emotional temperature.
Clyde would sit there without saying nothing days on end. It ain’t walking out if you can’t bring yourself to walk in.”

“You did get the car,” Lucky reminds her.

“What the hell use is it? The insurance was in his name. He ain’t even paying the premiums. Just stay away from me, I’m an
uninsured motorist.”

“You know,” he says, “I might be wanting a sternman. Didn’t you used to fish with Teddy Dolliver at one time?”

“It was his brother Reggie,” she says, with some pride, though Reggie Dolliver is currently up in Thomaston serving two to
five for aggravated assault.

“Reggie then. He ain’t going to need you in the joint. How about working every other day for me?”

Doris gives out a choked little laugh followed by a spasm of cigarette coughs. “Good idea, Ronette. You ought to consider
it. Your husband would get a kick out of that. Hey Lucky, didn’t Clyde date your old lady once upon a time?”

Ronette looks up. “He didn’t do nothing of the kind.”

Doris says, “How would
you
know, honey? It was before you were born.”

Ronette lights a cigarette off the one she was smoking, stabs the spent butt in the dishwasher to put it out, throws it in
the garbage. “Clyde is a jealous fool. He was born in the Year of the Pig, that’s what it says on the Chinese place mat up
at the Tarratine mall. Jealousy is the
main quality
in the Year of the Pig.”

“You must mean horse, dear,” Doris says. “There’s no pigs on those Chinese place mats.”

Ronette says, “I bet the both of you never ate a Chinese meal in your lives.”

Lucky says, “Bullshit. I was in Vietnam. We used to eat stir-fried dogmeat over there. Tell me that ain’t Chinese.”

“It ain’t. Dog’s Vietnamese, not Chinese. Anyone with half a brain knows that. Rat’s Chinese.”

“How’d you come to know so much?” Lucky asks Ronette.

“Clyde used to take me out.”

“So how come you left him?”

“It wasn’t what happened when he took me out that was the reason, it was what didn’t happen when we got back home.”

“None of that talk,” Doris says. “This is a family place.”

“It’s true, Doris, and my lawyer says that’s grounds. Noncon-summation, he put it right down in black and white.”

She starts crying again into the five-pound coffee can, which she’s still holding.

“All them tears,” he says, “ain’t going to do the coffee any good.”

“Hell with you, Lucky Lunt. I’ll pee in it if I want.” She shoots a guilty look over towards the cash register but the boss
lady doesn’t flinch.

“Flavored coffee, Doris. That’d bring the yuppies in.”

“Why don’t you take the morning off,” Doris suggests. “I can handle things on my own. If I can’t, I’ll get Lucky here to help
out. We’ll put an apron on him, he’ll make more here in tips than he makes off that old lobster boat.”

Ronette puts the can under the counter where it belongs and wipes her face once more with the white waitress apron. Then she
takes the apron off, throws it in Lucky’s lap and says, “He’ll look real cute in this. Thanks, Doris, that’s exactly what
I need. See you tomorrow.”

Without a word more she waltzes out.

“What’s that all about?” he asks Doris, who has taken over the job of brewing the new coffee. He gives her the waitress apron
and she ties it around her waist.

“Guess you know as much as I do. She’s right. Clyde’s not planning to give her a cent either, that’s what they say.”

“Where’s she staying?”

Doris gives him a dark suspicious look. “Wouldn’t
you
like to know.”

“Guess I ain’t going to get
her
for a sternman. Doris, you mind if I put a note up by your door?”

“What do you want a sternman for? You always liked working alone.”

“Sarah don’t want me out there by myself, account of the operation.”

“Can’t say as I blame her. Considering your father, how he went, and his father too, didn’t he? Working alone. Everyone else
got a sternman anyway. What about your boy?”

“Kyle’s got his own boat, he’s a big urchin diver now. He fishes the underutilized species for the Asian trade.”

“Urchin season’s over this week,” Doris reminds him.

“Don’t bother him none. He’ll go down after something. Sea cucumbers, squid. If it’s got tentacles, them Asians will eat it.
No questions asked.”

“Afro-
dee
siacs,” Doris says, “that’s what they called them on
20 / 20 .
Barbara Walters, so it’s not bullshit. They are highly regarded as a marriage aid for men.”

“Well, they must have some pecker problems over there, cause they finished off the fucking tigers and now they’re buying up
everything in the sea.”

“You wouldn’t think so from the population,” Doris says. “I heard the other day there’s five hundred billion of them. Think
of that, five hundred billion.”

“Lot of god damn sushi.” He tries to think of the number, but the picture that comes is not a land teeming with human beings
but the darkness of outer space.

Doris says, “What about Sarah, can’t she go out? She used to fish with her old man, back when she was a kid, before she worked
at the sardine plant. And your daughter, Kristen. Jesus, Lonnie Gross takes
his
daughter out.” They both break out laughing at that one, then Doris doesn’t pursue the subject.

“Kristen gets sick from the bait smell, Kyle don’t want to be on my boat. Period. I ain’t going to force him. I asked Sarah
but she’s got her arts and crafts.”

“She’s quite the celebrity, I hear. Got those mobiles or whatever they are up at the art school. But you two are man and wife,
and if you’ve got a condition she ought to be by your side.”

“Well, she ain’t. Print out a sign for me, will you, Doris? I ain’t such a neat writer.”

She prints on the back of her own business card and sticks it up with the others, right under the S&P Septic Service card.

“Thought you already asked Ronette. Trying to lure a good waitress away, better watch your step.”

“You only hire her three days.”

“She can go full-time in the summer if she wants. Lots of money in the dinner trade. She can earn a living off of tips, that
one, she just flicks her tail at them, they leave her fifty percent. I let her keep all of it too. Some’s don’t.”

“You are the employer of the month, Doris.”

“Knowing her, by summertime she’ll have somebody else paying the bills.
If
she doesn’t go back with Clyde.”

He borrows her pen to circle the phone number and starts to leave. Just then this decrepit Ford F-150 four-by-four drives
up, solid rust, muffler dragging sparks, grille stove in like a guy smashed in the mouth. Two bullet holes in the windshield.
No fucking license plates on it, front or rear. The Trott boys from Shag Island are in there, all three of them in the front
seat, it’s a miracle they can pull the doors shut. It must be the vehicle they keep on the mainland. Nice bumper sticker too:

It’s clever and it makes a point about education.

The driver’s door won’t open, so they all three come out the passenger side. The driver’s a giant, he’d outweigh Frank Alley,
the bald-headed one that’s only around five-six has a neck like a gorilla, and the third one’s a wiry son of a bitch with
a carved-up face and an artificial arm all the way up past the elbow. He’s wearing a sleeveless black shirt so you can see
how the thing’s attached to his shoulder stump. Harvey Trott: they say his sleeve caught in the dragger winch, he had to chew
his own arm off to get free. He’s holding the cigarette in the hook of his artificial limb, with all the cables so he can
twist it around like a robot and poke the filter between his lips. Out on the island he scooped a guy’s eye out with that
hook, that’s what Travis Hammond said. Close relation too.

He asks the last one in, the driver and dragger captain, Anson Trott, “Them two come up in the net?”

Lucky stands six-one or -two, weighs two twenty-five, but Anson Trott looks down at him through his beard like a Civil War
statue. “Kiss my ass, Lunt.” The way he says it, sounds more like he’s calling him “Lint.” Licky Lint. You can hardly understand
them, they talk a foreign language from not coming off of that island for three hundred years. “Hey Lint. Take at look at
this.” Big Anse unfolds a roll of cash the size of a horseshoe, all brand-new hundred-dollar bills with the big Ben Franklins
that look like large-print money for the blind. “We just sold twelve thousand pounds of scallops to your cousin Hannaford.”

“He ain’t my cousin,” Lucky says.

“We heard you was all cousins in Orphan Point.” The Trotts all laugh like it’s a big joke. Their mouths have some teeth, some
black holes, some false teeth that look like wooden lobster pegs green with mold, there’s not many dentists on Shag Island.
They’re all millionaires, though, that’s what Noah Parker says, he’s out there all the time with his pilot boat.

The Trotts order breakfasts of creamed chipped beef on English muffins, which Doris is gleeful to sell since she’s had the
stuff simmering in there for a month.

“You boys planning to race this year?” Lucky inquires. One of the Trotts is looking at his creamed beef like he’s having a
second thought, then decides it’s all right and forks it in. The bald-headed one says, “Sure, we’ll enter the dragger and
sink the whole fucking fleet.” Har, har, har, laugh the other Trotts with their mouths full of wooden teeth and pink-and-white
creamed chipped beef.