by Paul Watkins
My mother was standing in the doorway. ‘Do you miss your friend who died?’ I sat up and rubbed at my face. ‘Why are you asking me now?’
‘Who are you going to work with on your own boat now that he’s gone?’
‘I’ll work by myself until I find a partner.’
‘You can’t do it by yourself. That’s what I came in here to tell you. I couldn’t go to sleep until I told you what’s on my mind. You can’t do that job by yourself.’ Then she coughed and tapped at her chest with the tips of her fingers.
‘Can’t because you don’t want me to, or because you don’t think I can do it?’ I swung my legs on to the floor and heard the blood storm in my ears. When I looked up, she was gone.
In the morning, she denied ever coming to my room. I told her word for word what she said and she still denied it. After a while, I couldn’t be sure whether she’d really been there and was only talking in her sleep or whether I had dreamed it up myself.
My father said it wouldn’t be the first time she walked around and did things in her sleep. He told me that once, just after they got married, she carried their record player out of the living room in her sleep and hid it under her bed. When she woke up in the morning she called the police because she thought their house had been robbed.
After breakfast, Joseph and I piled into the bathroom the way we always did. We brushed our teeth over the same tiny sink and fought for space in front of the mirror to comb our hair.
Then he sat down on the toilet and shaved with an electric razor while I stayed at the sink with a can of shaving foam.
‘Joseph, do you think Dad likes his new job at the Fishermen’s Co-op?’ I rinsed my plastic razor under the tap.
‘Doubt it.’
‘Has he said anything to you?’
‘Nothing,’ Joseph muttered over the bumble-bee hum of his shaver.
‘I was going to ask him … I mean … he could work with me when I get my new boat.’
‘He could but he wouldn’t.’
‘You could work with me, Joseph. I’d be happy to teach you how things work.’
‘Don’t be preposterous.’ He trimmed his sideburns.
I tapped my razor against the faucet to loosen shaving cream caught between the blades. ‘I wouldn’t hold you to it. You could quit when you wanted to.’
‘It would be smelly. I don’t want to work where it’s smelly.’
‘You get used to it. You don’t notice it after the first couple of days.’
‘Would I have to touch the lobsters? I never could figure out how to touch them when they don’t have those rubber bands on their claws.’
‘You take hold of their backs. They can’t pinch you that way.’
‘Maybe I’d do the job if I could drive the boat. Could I drive the boat and not touch the lobsters?’
‘I guess.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No. I’m getting talked into this.’ He shut off the shaver and scraped at his cheek. Then he splashed aftershave on his face and walked out smelling of limes.
Fourteen
The Gatsby people disappeared.
When I came back from my next trip on the Grey Ghost, the streets of Newport were almost empty.
Some of the cafés on Severn Street had closed down.
In my free days on shore, Bucket took me out in his boat to check the few pots he still kept in the water. When the lobsters had been collected and the last pots dropped back down, leaving shreds of seaweed and small crabs scattered on the deck, Bucket cut the motor and we sat drinking coffee while the boat drifted towards land.
Back at the dock, I crouched in the engine room of his boat, learning how to pull the thing apart and put it back together.
I scraped barnacles off old lobster-pots and painted them with an ugly-smelling dye to keep them clean.
I rebuilt parts that had rotted out, sitting cross-legged on the dusty ground with small nails held between my teeth.
When he became too tired to work anymore, or too tired from watching me do all the work, we moved to the work shed, where other lobstermen sat reading papers or having papers read to them. The room was filled with smoke from their tobacco.
‘I been looking for Kelley’s money.’ Bucket gummed at a sandwich in the stuffy air of the work shed.
‘No luck?’ I kneaded my neck. It was stiff from crouching in the engine room.
‘No.’ Bucket waved his sandwich across the room. ‘But everybody’s in on it. The whole wharf’s crawling with people every night.’
I nodded, imagining the shadows seething with clumsy fishermen tripping over each other in the dark.
‘Damn Lester’s ruining it for everybody.’ Bucket blinked at me through the smoky air. ‘A couple of nights ago, when I was having a look around, he sat himself up on the roof of Sabatini’s fish house every evening. The old fucker had himself a flashlight. He waited until I was in range, then he turned the damn thing on and yelled at me to stop or he’d shoot.’
I nodded again.
‘Hey.’ He prodded me with his sandwich. ‘Want a bite?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘You aren’t talking much today.’
‘I went to the dentist earlier.’
‘Oh, is that where you was?’
‘I sat in his chair half the day listening to the squeal of that drill. He was grinding down my broken teeth so he could fit the permanent replacements.’
‘Once you lose them, you don’t miss them. Let me tell you, James.’
I rubbed my chin, feeling again the weight of the dentist leaning into my mouth. My spit tasted of metal. The replacements were made of porcelain and gold. They felt too big in my mouth.
‘You don’t miss them a bit.’ Bucket rummaged through his stale-smelling lunch box for something else to eat.
Someone kept calling our house.
When one of us answered the phone, the person on the other end stayed quiet.
They called at different hours. Breakfast time. Dinner time. The middle of the night.
Mostly I just hung up. Other times, I put my hand over the mouthpiece and listened. Faintly in the distance, I heard a radio playing, or a TV. Once I heard an ambulance whine past.
I thought it was just some kid with nothing better to do. I knew it would stop in a while.
My father couldn’t stand it. Every time he heard a ring, he’d jump. He’d pick up the receiver and scream into it that the line was tapped and the police were on their way.
My mother told him to calm down. She said if the kids thought they were getting to us, then they’d keep calling.
He didn’t listen.
On the third night of crank calls, the phone rang at two in the morning.
I heard the bedsprings creak in my parents’ room as my father lunged for the receiver.
‘Stop it!’ he screamed. ‘For Christ’s sake, can’t you see I’ve had enough?’ He slammed the phone back again. I heard my mother’s voice telling him to be calm. He mumbled something and went downstairs.
A while later, since I couldn’t sleep, I went down after him. I stepped carefully on the creaking boards of the staircase.
The lights were off.
My father sat in a chair in the living room, his bare feet on the coffee table.
He had opened the windows. The white lace curtains billowed in with the breeze.
He turned to face me. His cheeks looked hollow in the dark. ‘Did you hear something outside? Is that why you came down?’
‘I came down to see if you were all right.’
He turned away and looked out the window again. ‘I thought I heard someone in the garden.’
‘Do you want to take a look?’
We walked out on the lawn and stood looking up and down the empty road. Streetlights scooped holes out of the dark.
My ankles and feet were wet with dew. I knelt down and ran my fingers through the soaked grass.
My father stood by the mailbox. He breathed in deep and scratched
at the back of his neck. ‘This is ridiculous.’ He spun on his heel and walked back toward the house.
‘They won’t come for you now.’ I spoke quietly as he moved by.
He stopped. ‘What?’
I looked up. ‘I said they won’t come for you now.’
‘Who won’t?’
‘You know who. They’ll leave you alone from now on.’ For a long time he didn’t move. Then he sighed. ‘Maybe so.’
From the rustle in his throat, I thought he was about to cry.
He disappeared into the house.
I stayed kneeling in the grass after he had gone, watching fireflies spark in the hedge across the road. I wished he had talked to me then, explained how they muscled him and kept him going out to sea. I wished he could have asked me for advice. I wished I had advice to give.
‘Don’t answer it!’ My mother held up her hand. It was coated with suds from the dish-washing liquid in the sink. ‘Let the damn thing keep ringing.’
I let the phone ring three times. ‘It could be important.’ I picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi! Is James there?’
‘This is James.’ I nodded at my mother, showing her it was all right.
‘It’s Rex calling.’
‘Who?’
‘Rex Webber. Emily’s friend.’
‘Oh. Hello, Rex.’
My mother stood next to me, pointing at the receiver and mouthing the word ‘who’ over and over. She dripped dish-washing suds on the floor.
I waved her away.
Rex cleared his throat. ‘I have some great news.’
‘What’s that?’ I watched my mother go back to washing the dishes.
‘Emily and I are getting married.’
‘You are?’ My stomach boiled. I walked into the next room, pulling the phone cord tight. ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ Rex laughed. ‘Umm …’
‘I mean, when?’ I sat down at the dining room table. ‘When are you getting married?’
‘The day after tomorrow. It’s all kind of sudden, I know. That’s why I’m calling to invite you rather than sending a printed card. Besides, the damn things are too expensive.’
For a while it was quiet. Mother finished with the dishes and went upstairs. I heard her run the bath water.
I dug my thumbnail into the wood of the table.
‘So.’ Rex cleared his throat again. ‘Are you coming?’
I slid back until my neck rested against the edge of the chair and I was looking at the ceiling. ‘Sure.’
‘Great! It’s at two o’clock. The old courthouse in Newport, the one with punishment stocks out front. Now I have to call Emily’s parents. They’re down in the West Indies, you know. Mr Vogel’s in the fishing business, too. Did you know that?’
She didn’t tell you about us, did she? I thought to myself. She didn’t tell you a thing. ‘Yeah, Rex. I know about Vic Vogel.’
‘Well, of course. I forgot how long you two have been friends. Well, I’d better make the call. See you at two o’clock.’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
‘You got it, buddy.’
When he had hung up, I very carefully unplugged the phone from the wall and took it outside. I took a shovel from the garage and dug a deep hole at the far end of the yard, where Mother grew blackberries and pumpkins. I set the phone in the hole and buried it. I tamped the earth down with my hands.
No one said a word. My mother probably thought my father had hidden the phone. He probably thought she did. I knew it would be weeks before we bought another.
My parents came to the ceremony. They insisted.
Emily’s mother and father didn’t show. They were still in the West Indies, waiting to be extradited.
A man with a video camera crept up and down the aisles, jamming the lens in our faces and making the floorboards creak. His camera whirred like the beating of wings.
The priest spoke in a soft voice and I heard very little of what he said.
A woman with fake flowers on her hat blocked my view, so I had to lean out into the aisle.
Rex and Emily stood in front of the priest with their heads bowed. He wore black and she wore white.
I sat fidgeting on the bench, craning my neck around at the windows and rafters and wood floor. The memory of the time Emily and I spent in high school and at the East Bay Plant filed past my eyes and straggled back into the past.
I tried to catch her eye as she and Rex walked out the door, into the pelting of rice thrown by others at the ceremony.
Emily smiled at everyone, her eyes tripping past us without seeing as she made her way down to a limousine with tinted windows. The limo pulled away from the kerb.
I was sure I’d never see her again.
An old lady stood next to me, holding a brown paper bag half filled with rice. She was the one with the fake flowers on her hat.
I grabbed her bag and ran down the steps. I ran after the limo, snatching handfuls of rice from the bag and throwing them after the limousine. I ran as fast as I could, my shirt coming untucked and something ripping in the arm of my suit jacket. I threw all the rice and then I crumpled the bag and threw that.
In a single flutter of confusion, everything I remembered of her and me together became antique and small and unimportant.
But the limousine looked important. Rex looked important. The pure black and pure white of their clothes looked important.
I stood by myself in the road, watching their car turn up on to the highway. When it was gone, I tucked in my shirt and walked to our truck, where my mother and father sat. I climbed into the open back and slumped down.
Mother rolled down her window. ‘Don’t get your suit dirty. You’re invited to a reception in an hour.’
‘Hell with it.’ I wiped sweat off my face.
Father rolled down his window. ‘Don’t you want to go?’
‘Hell with it.’ The cold air cut into my throat.
Father drove home over the bridges.
I sat in the back, shivering in the wind. It cut round the cab of the truck and through the thin fabric of my suit.
Father slid back a window at the rear of the cab. ‘You could have sat up front with us, you know.’
I looked up, my ears feeling frozen solid like little clamshells. ‘I could have caught the damn limo if I’d run a little faster.’
He smiled weakly. ‘That might have been inappropriate, James.’
My spine shuddered in the cold. ‘Inappropriate!’ I shouted. ‘The hell with everything!’ I huddled into a ball and let my teeth rattle.
*
Two days later, storms came down hard from the north.
Gil had planned to take us out to sea that night, but we stayed in the harbour while cold wind beat at the windows of Mary’s bar.
I’d been in Mary’s all afternoon. It was a place meant for summer, with light through the windows and shadows of fishing nets stretched along the walls. Now it looked dingy. I grew sick of catching sight of my shabby face in the mirror behind the bar. The jukebox broke, and no-one played the pinball machine. Coloured lights tiptoed up and down its screen, trying to attract attention.
Before the storm, my father had met his old crewman Kitteridge at a bar in Galilee. Kitteridge had his own boat now. For a favour, my father agreed to go out with Kitteridge as mate on a couple of trips while he broke in a new crew. Kitteridge’s boat left port just as the wind started blowing.
Gil took us out to sea one day in late September.
The storm still trampled the water, but we were tired of waiting on land.
Franklin cooked hot dogs for dinner. We all crammed into the galley to eat.
There was no room at the table, so I sat with Howard on the floor. Heat rose up from the engines below.
‘What’s the matter, James?’ Gil called to me from across the galley. ‘You don’t look so good. Is the storm getting to you?’
‘A bit.’ I always felt a little seasick in the s
torms.
‘You wait until the winter comes. Then you’ll see some storms. I’ll have you up in the rigging knocking off icicles with a hammer. I’ll have you beating chunks of ice from the bow rail so we don’t get top heavy and capsize. Oh, it gets nasty in the winter. You wait and see.’
By midnight, we were nowhere near land. It rained in sheets around the boat, making us feel as if we were surrounded by static on a television screen.
From my bunk, I heard waves explode on the hull. I found myself waking with hands pressed hard against the roof of the bunk, as if only the force of my body could stop the sea from breaking through.
I crawled down to the forward bulkhead to find new light bulbs after the ones in the kitchen gave out. Against the plate steel of the bow, I saw trickles of water along the weld marks. Gil laughed at me when I ran into the wheelhouse out of breath and told him about the droplets. He said it was only condensation, but I went back to the bulkhead and stayed for a long time, shining a flashlight on the sweating walls, made deaf by the thunder of the waves.
Howard bought himself a Walkman and kept me awake playing it while we lay in the bunk room. The tinny drumbeat sounds reached me as ‘ksh ksh’. When he left the room, I took the batteries out and put them in again backward. He got so mad at the machine, because he couldn’t fix it, that he set it on the floor and stamped it into rubble.
At sunrise, I was walking the deck.
I gathered fish that came up in the dredges and flipped them into a basket. They were winter fluke, with thick green skin, white bellies and bubble eyes. I dug the nail of the fish pick into the meat of their backs and jerked them into a slime-covered basket.
Sun shone in dull grey strips on the water.
As I moved to pick up the basket, a big crab reached from the deck and grabbed my thumb. Its claws were black at the ends, as if they had been hardened in a fire. I cried out and shook my hand but the crab stayed on, legs tucked under its shell, mouth plates sliding back and forth. I swung the crab against the ice hatch and broke the claw off its body. The crab dropped to the floor and started crawling away. The claw still gripped at my thumb. By squeezing the muscle behind its first joint, I made the claw let go. Then I ground the crab into the deck with my heel.