Levi tapped information into his Thistle box and checked his depth finder, looking for the signs that indicated a gravel or hard bottom, and signaled Evan when to throw over the trap he’d emptied. The morning’s traps had been set in a straight line, but in the afternoon the buoys that showed where Levi’s traps were placed were clustered in small groups. “This spot has been good for us before,” he explained. “I want to make sure I’ve got it covered.”
“Yeah, and don’t give Holland any room to drop his load on top of ours,” Evan added.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He’s been following us all day,” Evan said, nodding at a boat about a half mile aft of Levi’s.
I followed his glance. “But we’ve seen lots of other boats today,” I said. “How do you know who that is?”
“That’s Holland, all right. Does it all the time,” Evan said. “Has no idea where to put his traps, so he shadows the good fishermen and copies them.”
“I guess that’s flattering in a way,” I said.
“Mebbe, but if he comes too close he’ll foul our lines, or worse, he’ll be stealing our catch. I’d’a thought he’d’a learned by now,” Levi said, winking at his son.
Evan grinned. “Okay to tell the story?” he asked his father.
“Only if you don’t go printin’ it,” Levi replied, looking at me sternly.
I looked back and forth between father and son, who were clearly sharing a joke. “Scout’s honor,” I said.
Evan took off his cap and wiped his brow with his bare arm. “Holland made a mess of our lines one time, and Pop wanted to teach him a lesson. He took about fifteen traps and, when he knew Holland was on his tail, put ’em off a ledge near Arrow Point. But there weren’t nothin’ in them, only bricks. The lobsters were long gone from there. Holland was sure he’d catch what my father was catching, but all he did was waste his time and bait.”
“He finally figured it out by pulling one of my traps,” Levi added.
“And made a fool of himself at the association by accusing Pop of staking out a prime fishing ground to keep other lobstermen away.”
“I asked him how he knew what was in my traps,” Levi said, his eyes twinkling.
“The other men gave him what-for,” Evan added.
“You don’t mess with another man’s traps,” Levi said, sobering. “That’s his livelihood.”
“He would’ve been booted out if Linc wasn’t his uncle.”
“Linc Williams is Brady Holland’s uncle?” I said.
Levi nodded. “His sister’s boy. Troublemaker all his life.” He looked hard at Evan. “You keep away from Holland and his friends. I don’t want to hear bad about you.”
“And when did you ever?” Evan said, smirking at his father. “I’m your best son.”
“And the only one,” Levi said, trying to suppress a smile.
“Yeah, well, Anna would’ve liked that title.”
“She’s a tomboy, all right, but she’ll come ’round. So was your mother in her younger days.”
“Yeah, I know,” Evan said, laughing. “But she took one look at you and—”
“Put on a dress,” they finished together.
I joined in their laughter at what was a familiar family story. I didn’t remember Mary as a tomboy, but I’d heard tales of how she set her eyes on Levi and nothing would do until they were paired off and married. That persistence was still part of her personality, and she was always in demand when any committee was forming for a purpose. I imagined that was how I got to sit on Levi’s boat. Mary had “put on a dress” and convinced Levi to take me along.
The sun was high overhead as the men continued working without slowing their pace. They must have been tired. The work was physical, repetitive and grueling. As the afternoon wore on, the seas became rough, making it more difficult to balance the traps on the rail. Evan had to hold them steady with one hand, and empty and rebait them with the other. Added to the challenge of the rolling pitch, the heat took its toll.
I snugged down my fishing hat to shield my face from the sun’s rays. Evan’s face was bright red under his cap, and his T-shirt was dark with sweat that poured down his back and left two long stains under his arms. The temperature was working on the bait barrels, too, and the seaborne debris that littered the deck. What had been merely a briny smell in the morning was turning sour and pungent, and I began to regret the sandwich I’d so happily consumed earlier.
As the stench of rotting bait sharpened, I began to feel my gorge rise. At first I tried moving to the rail and facing the wind to get away from the smell. But it was only a temporary respite. The rough waters caused the boat to dip and rise as if caught in a wake. Grabbing the low rail and squatting down, I realized I could easily tumble overboard, and while I might welcome the coolness of the water and temporary escape from the reeking fish, my hosts wouldn’t thank me for having to interrupt their routine to save their passenger. I’d promised to stay out of their way, not make more work, and I was determined not to show my landlubber weakness by giving up my lunch to the sea. I’ve always been a good sailor, and the wave of nausea I experienced was as embarrassing as it was stomach-turning.
Breathing through my mouth, I stumbled back to my stool and fumbled in my fanny pack for the acupressure bands Seth had given me the night before. I drew them over my hands, positioning the hard button on the inside of my wrist as he’d shown me.
“Feelin’ a mite queasy?” Levi asked.
I nodded, not sure I could get the words out.
“Thought you looked a little funny. Those work for you?” Levi asked.
“I hope so,” I managed to say.
“I never tried them.”
“You get seasick?”
“Not anymore, but I did when I was his age,” he said, cocking his head toward Evan, who wasn’t looking all that well himself. “It’s one of the hazards of the trade.”
“What did you do for it?”
Levi shrugged. “I threw up.”
I managed to hold steady for another hour and heaved a silent sigh of relief when Levi turned his boat around and headed back toward Cabot Cove. By land standards, it was early to end a working day, but we’d been on the water for almost ten hours, and I could barely uncurl my hand from the cleat I’d been gripping to balance myself on the rocking boat. I was surprised to realize that the acupressure bands had calmed my stomach, and was grateful I hadn’t had to take the pills Seth had supplied, which I’d brought with me as a precaution.
Evan spent the ride back hosing down the boat and shoveling overboard what remained of the rotten bait, to the delight of the gulls, which had appeared again as soon as Levi gunned the engine and turned toward home. My body was sore and my hair was stiff from the salty spray and flecks of things I didn’t want to think about, but when the harbor hove into sight, I felt the relaxation that accompanies a good day’s work, and the exhilaration of having landed what appeared to me to be a good-sized catch.
Levi slowed down as we passed the buoys that marked the mouth of the harbor, and navigated around other boats in the shipping lane, angling his boat toward a dock about a quarter mile down the shore from Nudd’s. There was a large shack at one end and two gasoline pumps at the other. We were not the first lobster boat in and had to wait as Henry Pettie’s assistants weighed several catches ahead of ours.
While Levi tied up the boat and went to check on the day’s price, Evan climbed onto the boards and grabbed two of the blue plastic bins that lined the dock. He dropped them onto the deck and jumped down after them, leaning down to pull off the board that served as the hatch cover.
“May I help?” I asked, looking down at the mass of green and orange lobsters that gleamed in the afternoon sun.
“Sure, if you want to.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Grab my father’s gloves over there, and I’ll show you.”
Evan used a net ring with short handles on either side to scoop out the lobste
rs. He balanced the ring on the corner of the blue bin. “You have to be real careful with them,” he said. “Rough handling makes ’em drop a claw. The culls are less valuable.” Together we transferred the lobsters by hand to the cart, which Evan called a tote, placing them gently inside. Each bin, the sides slotted to let water flow through, held a hundred pounds of lobster, and we’d filled two of them before Levi returned, his eyes stormy.
“Why are you letting her work?” he said. “She’s a guest.”
“I asked to help,” I said quickly, not wanting Evan to get the brunt of Levi’s anger.
“That’s not the point.”
“I’ve been watching you work all day,” I said. “There wasn’t anything I could do before but get in your way. Don’t be angry at Evan. I just wanted to be able to say I helped, at least in some small measure.”
Levi frowned at me and held out one hand. I stripped off the gloves and laid them in his palm. “You’re making me feel like a naughty child,” I said.
“Not blamin’ you.”
“I know that, but don’t blame Evan either. It was my idea.”
“You’re a guest.”
“And guests should know their place. I’m terribly sorry for overstepping my bounds. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
He grunted but didn’t argue further, taking the scoop and bending over the hatch.
I smiled at Evan and he winked back at me, both of us pleased we’d escaped the tongue-lashing that had surely been awaiting us had I not apologized so quickly.
“What are they goin’ for, Pop?”
“Ten cents a pound less than yesterday,” Levi ground out, resting the scoop on the edge of the tote. “And he’s blamin’ the big companies down in Boston this time. When the price goes up, it’s all his doing. When he’s cheatin’ us, it’s Boston’s fault.”
“Why don’t we form a co-op?” Evan asked. “They’ve got them in Stonington and South Bristol and Swan’s Island. No reason we couldn’t do it, too.”
“It’s hard for the men to change what they know,” Levi said. “But a little more of this may convince them. You keep researchin’ it on the computer.”
“Is ten cents a pound a big drop?” I asked.
“It’s more than forty dollars out of my pocket. You multiply that by all of Cabot Cove’s lobstermen, assumin’ he’s payin’ us all the same price, and I’ll bet it’s almost two thousand bucks a week to him. That’s a big incentive to cheat us, don’t you think?”
“It’s a lot of money, yes. But haven’t you been working with Mr. Pettie for a long time? Why would he jeopardize his relationship with you?”
“If he can get away with it, he will. That’s human nature. But we have ways of finding out what other dealers are payin’.”
“I can find out on the Internet,” Evan put in.
“They can’t hide it from us anymore,” Levi said, ignoring the interruption. “And if we see he’s living off what he steals from us, I can make the case to change dealers or start up a co-op.”
“It won’t be that hard, Pop. I know I can find it on the Internet,” Evan said. “I’ll get everything we need to start a co-op.”
“You’re talkin’ a lot of work, son. It’s not as simple as all of us deciding to sell the bugs on our own. We need a manager, someone with the right connections in the market. Someone with the experience of a dealer, but working for us instead of himself. And somebody who doesn’t gain anything unless we all gain.”
Levi and Evan dropped the topic while they filled two more bins, four altogether, and part of a fifth—over four hundred pounds of lobster for the day—and took the totes to be weighed. Pettie’s assistants gave Levi a chit and dropped the buoyant bins into an area of the water that was cordoned off by floating booms. On shore, three large trucks waited to take their live cargo to market, and a gaggle of tourists surrounded one of the drivers, trying to bargain for some lobsters to take home.
I followed Levi into the shack, where Henry Pettie leaned back in an office chair, resting his cowboy boots on a scarred table, and argued with someone on the other end of the telephone. The room was large and mostly bare. In addition to his office furniture, Pettie’s shack contained three stacks of lobster traps in one corner and boxes of what looked like replacement parts for them. Alex Paynter’s sternman, Maynard, was sifting through the boxes, looking for something.
“We’ll be there by six. That’s what I promised and that’s what I’ll deliver. They’re coming in right now. I can’t make the boats go faster. Don’t tell me what I’ve got in the lobster pound. That’s not for you anyway. You’ll get when I said you’ll get and not a minute earlier.” He dropped his feet to the floor and raised his index finger at Levi to indicate he knew he was there. “Sam, if I put you at the top of the list, I got to charge you more. My men are suffering down here because no one wants to pay more, you understand. That’s what I thought. Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of you.”
He hung up the phone and pulled his checkbook toward him, reaching a hand out to take Levi’s receipt. “It’s tough this year,” he said, selecting a pen from a mug filled with them. “No one wants to pay more than last year even though the hauls are smaller. I know the men are angry. But what can I do?”
He sounded as if he were talking to himself, not us. But Levi was listening and wasn’t happy with what he was hearing.
“Last year we were swimming in lobsters,” Levi said. “When they’re plentiful, I expect I’m not goin’ get much per pound, but I’ll make it up in volume. But this year they’re scarce and you’re paying the same price. It don’t fly with me. I want to know why.”
Pettie tore the check from his checkbook and waved it around as if to dry the ink, although he’d used a ballpoint pen to write it. “You heard what I told Sam. No one wants to pay more than they paid last year. That’s the market. When Boston pays less, we all get it in the neck.” He opened his desk drawer and took a piece of paper from a pad, scribbled something on it, and gave it to Levi along with his check.
“I don’t want you mad at me, Carver,” Pettie said. “You’re one of my highliners. No better fisherman around, not even down the coast. I rely on you guys, but I can’t control the market. You know that. Give that note to Nudd. He’ll give you a discount on the bait for tomorrow. It’s not much, I know, but it’s the best I can do right now. Things’ll turn around soon, I’m sure.”
Levi glanced at the amount of the check, stuffed the papers in his shirt pocket, turned, and left without saying another word to Pettie.
The broker shrugged at me. “He’ll get over it,” he said. “I’m the only game in town.” He pulled a small black notebook from his hip pocket and made notations in it. Then he picked up the phone and dialed a number.
I followed Levi back to the dock. Evan had moved the boat to where the gasoline pumps were located and was filling the tanks.
“That man’s cheating us. I just know it,” Levi said.
“He told me you’ll get over it,” I said, “because he’s the only game in town.”
“He said that?” Levi looked back toward the shack, his mouth in a tight line. “Not for long, he ain’t. Not for long.”
Chapter Seven
“How’s the coffee, Mrs. F?”
“Just fine, Mort. Do you like the doughnuts?”
“What cop doesn’t like doughnuts?”
I had stopped at Charlene Sassi’s bakery on the way to see Cabot Cove’s sheriff and my friend, Mort Metzger. Charlene had just taken a tray of plain doughnuts out of the oven and iced them with her special recipe for vanilla glaze. I’d bought half a dozen, and while she boxed them up I perused notices taped to her front window. Next to a plea for help finding a missing cat and an announcement of yoga classes forming at the hospital was a photo of Katherine Corr, the young lady Sassi’s Bakery was sponsoring in the Lobsterfest pageant.
“Is that Jim Corr’s daughter?” I asked. Jim was the high school choirmaster.
“That’s her
,” Charlene said, handing me the box tied up with several strands of string.
“They grow up so fast. I think I had her in one of my classes, years back. Tiny girl with an elfin face. Very bright and very shy.”
“She’s not so shy anymore. All grown up and gorgeous now. Wait till you get a load of her.”
“I’m planning to stop by the pageant rehearsals this afternoon,” I said. “I’ll look forward to seeing her again.”
Mort had a weakness for Charlene’s doughnuts, and I allowed myself one while we shared the latest news over a cup of his jailhouse coffee. Mort had worked in New York City before coming up to Cabot Cove to take over as sheriff after Amos Tucker retired. He was a bit of a coffee snob, claiming our local brew was not up to his standards, and sending to the city for special blends from a secret source he wouldn’t reveal. I suspected his secret source had moved closer to home when a Starbucks opened out near the new mall. But Mort wasn’t saying and I wasn’t pressing. The coffee was good and the company even better.
“Heard you went out with Levi Carver and his son. How did that go?”
“Who told you about that?”
“I met the doc in the emergency room yesterday. Said you were writing a piece for the Gazette.”
“What were you doing in the ER?”
“We had a fender bender over by the high school.”
“Any serious injuries?”
“Nah. One of his patients. She already had a bandage on her head. I figure it may have distracted her while she was driving. The other guy was fine.”
“Oh, dear. That must have been the lady who stepped on a hoe.”
“That sounds right.”
“She’s not having a good week. Was she okay?”
“I think so. Maybe a little whiplash, but that’s all. So how’d the lobstering go?”
“Pretty well, I thought. We brought in over four hundred pounds,” I said. “Will you listen to me? ‘We brought in.’ They brought in over four hundred pounds. I just watched.”
The Maine Mutiny Page 8