I was just so pleased he was amused. “She had me kidnapped; she had a gun on me.”
“Listen, you let her do that to you, you deserve what you got. I didn’t appreciate you settin’ her on us, you know.” He paused and smiled. “You in that dinghy!”
“Christ, I couldn’t do anything about it; you’re the one going around lying about me and the package!”
“You think I’m gonna flap my gums to any bitch that walks in here with your little picture? None of her business.”
“You could have saved me a lot of trouble.”
“Your trouble. Not mine.”
“You know, Mineola says it wasn’t meant for you. You were supposed to give it to her. It was supposed to be a sampo gift from the Koreans to Snorri.”
Mr. Lucy pulled his drinking straw from his glasses case in his pocket. He held it between his teeth and puckered his lips around it with his fingers and then took a good sip of his Irish Russian. “Snorri and Mineola, eh?”
“They want it.”
“Mini knows where to find me. Snorri’s an idiot. Says he crossed the ocean inside a whale.”
“Ill John’s pissed.”
Mr. Lucy fussed around a bit with his glasses and straw. “I ever tell you ‘bout Ill John’s dad?”
“Please don’t.”
“You know I was in the Navy in Korea, right? A submarine. No air, submarines. No room to think. We were chasing Chinese subs all the time. They were chasing us. Christ, men got better sonar on boats in the harbor right now, just to find fish for tourists.” Mr Lucy wiped his glasses again and paused so long, I was startled when he spoke again.
“It’s no Cary Grant movie, I tell you. You’d think it would be interesting to see what’s underwater, but there ain’t a single window on a sub. Christ knows why. Everyone’s always wanting to know: What’s that? They spot us? That a good echo? A bad one?
“All that ever happened was there’d be a big thud. Some officer does a bunch of math. We all twirl dials and wheels. Levels go up and down. Everyone gets worried, and you’re supposed to be very quiet. I never knew what the fuck was going on. We could have been right here in the harbor for all I knew.
“One day, the echoes are going back and forth. Maybe fleets of submarines. Maybe all the Chinese, Russians, and Japanese joined forces. Everyone’s going crazy. Suddenly, ‘Wham!’ And it’s not just some bump. We been hit so hard the hull’s buckling. Then, wham, again and again, a wicked pounding. Half the men are screaming, holding their bleeding ears. The other half are shouting ‘Shut up!’ Everyone’s ears and noses are bleeding. We’re blasting up to the surface. Men trying to climb up each other’s backs to claw open the hatch before we even strike air.”
Mr. Lucy reached out with his straw and poked me in the hip, the only part of me he could reach.
“Listen, guy, we crest so hard, we’re airborne for a minute, then we splash down again. The hatches are undogged. We clamber out. We’re all over the submarine, clinging to anything, and the sea is foaming all around us. Just as we’re getting our shit together with life boats, something else breaches hard.
“Straight out of the water comes a roaring whale, angry like no man has ever seen before. The crew is hollering a reeling of terror; I can hardly hear anything over the pounding of my heart. The whale lands hard on our bow, crushing it. We run to the tower, scared right past fright. Then we see something Christly crazy. The whale is circling our sub and it’s got a line around it and a brow full of spears like it’s been dogging a giant sea-porcupine. I tell you this, Orange: there is a man standing on the beast, holding on to the harpoons. He is driving the whale round and round us bellowing, ‘I am the Yankee circumciser!’
“Most of our crew just plain faints. It’s too much for them. It had only been a couple generations ago that my family put down its harpoons. I still got some of them right here, in the shed. Woulda given anything for a good Bismuth spear to finish the thing off.
“Anyway, nobody’s making for the lifeboats, since it seems safer on the sub even if it’s a goner. The whale is leaving a pink glowing wake. Its blood is mixing with the phosphor. The man plucks off a harpoon and hurls it at us. Our captain empties his sidearm at him. Nothing. The whale is circling tighter and tighter and our sub starts to spin in the maelstrom its making. We weren’t going to be floating much longer. The man is wind-milling his arm around, whooping, ‘the circumciser!’
“Our sub is leaking fuel and the fumes are choking us, but we can’t go anywhere. I see my chance and scoop up a floating harpoon. The whale and us are spinning in opposite directions, so it’s hard to take a bead. I was aiming for the man, but it plunges into the whale instead. A good strike at any rate. Not like I’d been practicing in the sub.” Mr. Lucy paused to rearrange the gravel in his craw and took another sip with his straw.
“I must have hit the head of an old harpoon with an explosive tip and raised a spark, because next thing you know, a sheet of blue fire spreads from the whale’s head right over the man and all across its back. It keeps circling while the man becomes a screaming torch. The fire feeds on our fuel and the oil leaking out all the whale’s jabs. Soon we’re eddying in a ring of fire spread by the flaming monster. The whale gets wise that there’s no more man on him, and dives down to quench its flames. And that’s the last we seen of it, though we could see it left a tunnel of fire down into the deep.” Mr. Lucy took out a handkerchief and wiped his chin and gave me a level stare.
I couldn’t help myself and asked, “And the man was Ill John’s father?”
“No, I don’t know who that was.Johnson Kim was on the boat that rescued us eventually.”
That was maybe the most monstrously huge big fish story I’d ever heard, and I was loathe to ask another question, but I did have my mission still. “Mr. Lucy, the package, the sampo. . . . ”
“No such thing.”
“There is too.”
“Maybe I ain’t done with it.” Then he raised himself and went into the shed, closing the door behind him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Winslow Homer and the Price of Tartar Sauce
Ill John announced: “Orange, we were discussing the cultural significance of Bill Gates’ purchase of Winslow Homer’s painting Lost on the Grand Banks.” Listening to Mr. Lucy had worn me out. I had been standing at the end of the Lucy’s crushed-shell driveway thinking about how a bit of gray weather in a summer afternoon could be a relief to the rigorous glare the sea and the sun enforced. Some smudging is restful. These fleecy thoughts led me to more germane matters—my mission and how a nap was seeming increasingly utile and possibly sampo. Mistakes were made; mission creep was experienced, I testified before the imaginary tribunal. If being underemployed on a wearying summer’s day on an island does not merit a man such as myself an afternoon nap, I’m in the wrong business, I reasoned. Minding my own business hadn’t been working out lately, though.
My chief ally in all matters of dormancy had always been Rover. She was a genuine connoisseur of the afternoon nap, and a brave temporal explorer of napping at other unorthodox times of day as well, such as when she was already asleep. I tried to see my environs through her eyes. I spied the grassy mound that had once been part of the harbor fortifications and now was strolling ground for tourists. It featured granite and earthen nooks that held soft heat like the Topsoil’s bun warmer. I was already drifting there, half-asleep, when Ill John waved to me from the driver’s seat of a big old Chevy Suburban parked on the roadside near the Lucy’s house.
He and his yet-to-speak-English partner, whose name I’d yet to remember, were unpacking bags of food from the Topsoil. They had brochures unfolded on their laps; kraft bags and Styrofoam containers and cups lined the dash.
“We are staked-out, and while we attend Mr. Lucy, we are having a picnic of taken-out food and discussing whether our imaginary visions of this region, which we developed in admiring the artwork of Northeast American painters Winslow Homer, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Andrew Wyet
h, and Edward Hopper, compared to what we see here while we are actually on this island. And our dinner is delicious. Please sit in the back seat and share it with us. Also, please tell us where Down East is.”
These two did not look like they were gunning for me, as Angie had put it. It would have been ridiculous for me to run away. I was weary, but maybe it was time to treat with them. Plus I was hungry. I got in the back seat, and told them, “Down East is just down from here and to the east.”
“And where would it be if we were not here right now?”
“That would depend on whether you’re a native or not.”
“We are not.”
“Then it just means the continent and the islands near it.”
“And if you are a native?”
“Much could be considered Down East.”
“You are saying, perhaps, that it is a culturally idiomatic concept that does not translate well?”
“It’s actually about which way the wind blows, but a way of seeing things, yeah.”
The two men were doing a decent job of ethnotourism here on the island. The old Suburban was definitely island in provenance, and their Red Sox caps, hoodies, and jeans looked local enough, except a little insufficiently slept in. Ill John’s partner’s assault rifle seemed out of place, though, as did their Ray Ban aviators.
Ill John’s partner ate a bite of sandwich slowly, as if he were chewing around something, then he spoke to his partner.
Ill John translated and elaborated: “We are also enjoying comparing the Pinkytoe Crab Salad Sandwich to the Lobster Roll. Both are served on rolls for frankfurters and both are shellfish mixed with mayonnaise sauce. Both are white-pink and sweet. Yet their mouth feelings are different. The lobster roll has a resistance to the tooth that I enjoy, while Chosen appreciates the tastes of delicacy and gentle texture of the pinkytoe. He believes it would blend well as a milkshake.”
“Chosen appreciates the pinkytoe?” I asked.
“Yes the native crab of your northern waters. So named, as the Topsoil person has said, for the traditional method of fishing used. The children of the fishermen dangled their smallest toes in the water to catch crabs for their fathers,” said Ill John.
“Did you do that as a youth?” asked Chosen.
“Never.”
“Many islanders are said to have lost their toe as children.”
Someone at the Topsoil had been pulling their legs about pinkytoes, a type of crab Islanders used to eat as a last resort, but which had become faddish in America recently. “I’ve still got all eleven. What are you guys doing here?”
“We are waiting for Mr. Lucy.”
“He’s right there,” I said, pointing to him.
“Yes, we are waiting for him to finish.”
“What, lunch?”
“No, for him to finish with the package we trusted with him.”
“So you know he’s got it? You know what it is, I’m sure. You know I gave it to him? What the fuck? You know what I been through?”
“Hellanback?” said Chosen.
“Where’s that?” I thought it was another island.
“Hell and back,” Chosen said more carefully.
He spoke more English than I thought. “Maybe not back yet. Don’t you want this package back from Mr. Lucy?”
“No,” said Ill John, “we want the package to take its natural course to its recipient, Snorri, the Finlindian.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ill John said, as if it were obvious, “We did not anticipate Mr. Lucy’s extra possession of the package; yet, we are prepared to observe Mr. Lucy’s possession of it and how it may affect him. Also the additional tacks this package must take to achieve its course are unplanned and interesting, and we may be affected too by the spirit of this enterprise.” He seemed mildly pleased his plan had been complicated by Mr. Lucy.
“The sampo.”
“Perhaps.”
“I’ve been affected.”
“Yes, we know. Waldena, the Estonindian.”
“So now you’re just waiting to see which way the breeze blows?”
They conferred. “Yes, so to speak.”
“I don’t really want to be any part of this.”
They spoke again in Korean. “Chosen and I have a saying,” said Ill John. “Every man must pull his own island.”
I sat back in my seat to think on that. “You guys chew any of the seagum?”
“It tastes terrible, and it makes my lips numb,” said Chosen.
“You islanders are addicts?” asked Ill John.
“No, well, there are some, but I just chew it now and then. When you have to work all night and stuff. It’s more like coffee you can chew.”
Ill John held two big Styrofoam cups over the seat to me. “Here, would you like to have our coffees? We have been unable to acquire the taste for coffee, and we find that the coffee here is much worse-tasting than the coffees we have had in North America.”
That was a good start. I took both cups like they were the paddles to a defibrillator. “So, like, tiger testes?” I asked.
“Many substances are sold as powdered tiger testes in Korea, including ground-up insects and caffeine pills,” said Ill John.
“You don’t have Korean Viagra?”
“Erections are still in the hands of amateurs in Korea. Men are reluctant to put their penises under medical control.”
I supposed that sounded reasonable. “The seagum must sell for a lot back home.”
“Not really,” said Ill John. “It makes the visit more interesting though.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Fuckin’ A?” said Chosen.
“It’s like ‘wicked pissa,’” I said.
Chosen had met his idiomatic match. “Oh—because of the erection and the difficulty of urination,” he said.
“Nope.” I didn’t explain, since I didn’t want to tell him that I had no idea why I had grown up believing these phrases were the proper way to express approval and enthusiasm. Also, I was uncomfortable talking about erections.
“You understand that we are here for more than seagum?” asked Ill John.
“Yeah, I think you want Snorri’s whales, right?”
“We are prepared to open a discussion with his whaling council. But we have become involved in another endeavor involving whales and Snorri and even the Estonindian witch.”
“Waldena?”
“Yes. Snorri the Finlindian says she is Waldena the Witch,” said Chosen.
“Yeah, that sounds right. I think they hate each other.”
“Now we must all cooperate along with the woman from Gaeity on something that will pay us all very well and even be a boon to your island,” said Ill John.
I recalled Mini grilling me after supper on her island and her implication that there was a bigger scheme in play with the Koreans than the seagum and sampo whatsit package. I wondered why they wanted to tell me about it.
“Boon.” I said, not expecting them to be forthcoming. “Bismuth still has to be way out of your way. Why bother coming all the way here—you could have met Snorri in Europe.”
“It is. . . .”
“A working vacation,” Chosen finished for him.
“Yes, we had admired this part of the world for years before we established the seagum trade with your Mr. Lucy. Just visiting as tourists is unsatisfying. We like to engage in the lives of people here, to see things as an Islander might. We, Chosen especially, have been researching the arts and cultures of your region since college. You should see Chosen’s bookshelf at home: Phillips Lovecraft, Waldo Emerson, James, King, Hawthorne, Mather, Rowe Snow, Maud Montgomery, Allen Poe. Books about blueberries and potatoes. Many collections of coastal seascape paintings. He has a special blanket on the wall that he traded for last summer.”
“A crazy quilt,” said Chosen, “with lighthouses and lobsters. It is authentic.”
“We would like to try lobstercatching. Do you do this?” said Ill Jo
hn. “With a pot-hauling boat—yes?”
“Yes, but it’s not my boat—you already know Mr. Lucy.”
“We asked him once; he did not answer.”
I supposed there must be lobster boats to charter. But not pots. They’d have to crew with someone. If they didn’t get in the way too badly, taking the Korean guys out would be like having free labor. I would have been quite willing to let the Koreans work in my place for a small fee.
“Do you guys want to try working in the Topsoil kitchen? It’s very authentic. I could make some arrangements. It might involve a gratuity. To me, that is.”
“No, thank you,” they said in unison.
“Perhaps, Orange, as a native, you can tell us why this tartar sauce costs so much when it is clearly composed of common ingredients and does little to complement the taste of the fried clams we have,” said Ill John.
“It’s like a tax for tourists that the Topsoil charges.”
Ill John nodded sagaciously. I was pretty certain he had an intuitive understanding of mark-ups and middle men. I continued to help them eat their lunch. They were smart not to have ordered the seafood salad. I’d seen the tub it was kept in, in the Topsoil’s walk-in.
“We have ordered well?”
“Any American would have known to get more napkins.”
“That is noted.” Ill John and Chosen spoke for a while in
Korean. Ill John turned back to include me in the conversation. “So, you are familiar with the works of Homer?”
“A little.”
“His paintings, we were saying, show more tendency of Modernism than Regionalism. Do you agree?”
I shrugged. Nobody had ever asked before. Summer people painted on Bismuth. Painters painted Bismuthians painting their boats. I heard there was one guy from New York that spent years here, winters included, trying to get the color gray right. You can’t ask a native about Regionalism though. It’s like asking the proverbial frog if his bath is boiling yet. Regardless, I appreciated being asked.
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