Spartina

by John D. Casey

  “No,” he said.

  “Be honest, now. When I was helping you with the clams, wearing my bathing suit and your old rubber boots, and my thighs were turning pink from all the steam. Come on. Just for an instant you had evil thoughts. Say it. ‘I had evil thoughts.…’ ”

  He said, “Hell, Elsie, I thought you were being a good scout.” It drove her nuts.

  “You jerk!” She regrouped to get the better of him. “Too bad for you, then. There were at least five guys at that clambake who thought I was cute as hell.” She started to count on her fingers.

  “Okay, okay.” He would have liked to think that when she pulled on the boots and waded in to help him she’d looked good by accident. He wished it all to be an accident. But he could give up that little clambake accident. What he really didn’t want to hear was that she’d drawn the look Charlie gave her, that she’d enjoyed Charlie’s look. “You’re right,” he said. “I burned my fingers twice on account of looking at your legs.” But that was just a cloud of ink he squirted so he could slip away.

  This was one of the many times he felt her urge to draw everything in him up to the surface. The farther down it was, the more she wanted to get at it. Sometimes he felt the pleasure of it, he liked the feeling that she put all her skimming and diving into getting at him. But, once in a while, he felt a third, completely different way: that all the skimming and diving, all her sexual eagerness (which could get as edgy and probing as her conversation) were just the small broken-off pieces of her that swam to the surface—that really she had a quieter, larger nature in her. He still liked all that top-water busyness, he was still charmed by her tern-self—and so was she, it probably felt good, as good as flying and wheeling and swooping. But he also got a sense of that part of her that wasn’t so sparkling with seizures and escapes. Far below all the different things that she thought she was, that she wanted to be, that she feared to be, there was a part of her that was more gently defined, more easily receiving and more easily flowing out, defined less as a shell or carapace or hard shore against the waves and more as a bay as it becomes deeper and vaguer, undefining itself into the broader sea.

  That sense of her, but also his connection to her childhood (sharpened by their talking, and splintered into their sexual thrill), and his tender admiration and liking for her were all troubling thoughts. So then he would think of the thoughtless fainting of their first falling into her bed. If the whole thing had stopped after that time he wouldn’t have felt so guilty. It had washed over him, a freak wave.

  He still didn’t know what he was doing, but he did know he was coming to Elsie on evenings he told May he was going to the Neptune, and on afternoons when he said he was going to get something for the boat.

  Now the sex was sex. Variable but recognizable. In that sense, he knew what he was doing. It was talking with Elsie that kept changing. He still told her she was nosy, he still kept his mouth shut about some things—Parker, for one—but he told her a lot about himself he’d never told anyone, not even May. He told himself that he’d never told May because May hadn’t ever asked. But in truth he knew that May would like to know everything Elsie pulled out of him. He told himself that that was just the way it was, that Elsie was good at asking questions. And he could tell Elsie stuff he’d done, stuff he’d thought, and Elsie wouldn’t get upset. Even when Elsie found fault with stuff he’d done, she didn’t come down all that hard, perhaps because of what she’d told him about herself, but perhaps because she imagined herself doing it, good or bad. May would have held it at arm’s length, would have sounded warnings.

  It was when he drove away from Elsie’s house that he felt full guilt. He’d stomp down on the gas and drive fast out her driveway, bottoming out on the crown, whipping the sides of his truck with laurel branches that cocked on the wide wing mirrors.

  His work habits gave way. He barely touched the boat for days, just did the wiring with Eddie and told Charlie how to put in the wheelhouse windows.

  He talked to the boatyard owner about using the owner’s new trailer to haul the boat to the yard, about using the old marine railway to launch it. The owner said, “You got her finished?” Dick said, “No. I’m just planning ahead.”

  “Well, don’t show up the week after Labor Day,” the owner said. “That’s when all them yachts come out. In the spring it’s all spread out. Anywhere from Memorial Day to July. Fall, they all want it the same time.”

  Dick dropped by to see Joxer Goode at the crab plant. Still not buying crabs. But Joxer had financed the new freezer system, got a new investor, though he didn’t have a dime to spare. Joxer said, “Will you come by when you get your boat finished?” Dick said sure. Joxer’s tone was one Dick hadn’t heard. They were equals, but it was based on Joxer’s bad luck, not on any gains Dick had made.

  Dick stopped by Schuyler’s new cottage, found Marie sunning herself in a lawn chair on the wharf that stuck out into the creek. Dick could smell the coconut oil ten feet away. Marie said that the phone company hadn’t put the phone in, so she hadn’t heard from Schuyler. “And I can’t call anyone to come do anything about the house. There isn’t a single thing I can do. It’s sort of delicious.”

  Charlie and Tom went by in Dick’s skiff. Charlie slowed down, waved, headed toward the cut. Marie raised her head, Tom waved. The wake, which had rolled up the bank under the wharf, slid back out.

  Marie said, “Your friend Parker isn’t back, is he?”

  Dick said, “No. Not that I know.”

  Everything he saw was part of his familiar life, except where he stood. And the part of himself that was heading for Elsie’s. Every time he talked to someone he felt odder and odder. The yard owner, Joxer, Marie. How odd it must look to Charlie and Tom to see him there. He should have been in the skiff. How odd to see his skiff, when for years he’d been in it, turning his head to look at the point.

  Marie slid her sunglasses up her nose with one finger and began to read again. Dick said goodbye. She turned her face toward him, her lips moved silently, “Bye-bye.”

  Dick decided he’d better take Mamzelle out on his own. He’d take Keith college-boy and Charlie. Parker would still get the boat’s share. No sense in letting everything stay idle. The weather was good, would hold for a few days.

  Dick went home. May was in the garden. He went past her to look at his boat. As he pulled back the plastic sheet from the doorway May said, “The Buttrick girl was here. She said you wouldn’t mind her taking pictures of your boat.”

  Dick didn’t say anything. May said, “I let her, I didn’t know. Is that all right?”

  Dick said, “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Have you thought of asking her to lend you some money?” May said. “I hear Joxer Goode’s still shut down, so you can’t look to him. I know you won’t ask Miss Perry, but you could ask the Buttrick girl. The Buttricks just sold their whole lot to the development. And God knows they bought it cheap enough.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Still … It ought to be on their mind, now they’ve made such a profit.”

  Dick said, “If Parker shows up, tell him I’ve taken his boat out. I can’t wait around.”

  “You going to ask the Buttrick girl?”

  “If I decide to.”

  May looked at him so long he felt alarmed. She said, “You’ve worked so hard, I hate to see you give up now.”

  “I’m not giving up. Jesus, woman! I’m going out.”

  “I never thought I’d have to tell you to do something about the boat. It’s been—”

  “Then don’t tell me. Don’t tell me what to do with the boat. I told you already, if I don’t get her in the water by September, I’ll sell her as is and get a regular job. You’ll be satisfied one way or the other.”

  May sighed. “It’s true I couldn’t stand another winter like last one. And the one before, and before that. It’s not just the lack of money, it’s the way you are on account of it. On account of the lack of your boat. The boys a
nd me get to feel every bit of what you feel about banks, the price of lumber, anything that goes wrong. So if you don’t raise the money, if you sell the boat, the rest of us won’t be any better off. You say I’ll be satisfied one way or the other. I’m saying you’ll be sour one way or other. The only way you won’t be sour is if you finally get your boat in the water. You won’t get the money quick enough putting out to sea. It may suit you better to get knocked around some by salt water, but the plain truth is you’ve got to do it the way everyone else does it—get your nerve up and go ask.”

  Dick said, “I’m not going to talk about it with you. What do you think Joxer Goode was here for? I went and cooked for him, I went and waited on his friends to get him over here to look at my boat. I asked him, I damn near pleaded with him. Were you blind that day? Deaf? Have you been blind all summer? This whole summer I’ve been making money. I poached those clams, and you complained. I did that clambake, and you said I worked the boys too hard. I’ve gone out with Parker and stuck swordfish and brought back more than four thousand dollars, and you complain about Parker. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know you’ve done all that,” May said, “and I know it’s not enough. And I know you haven’t asked Miss Perry, I know you haven’t asked the Buttricks. So don’t tell me you’ll sell the boat, don’t tell me you’ll cut off your arm. Just don’t you come in all next winter and make the house stink with your moods. Not unless you’ve gone round and—”

  “And begged—” Dick said.

  “No,” May said, “you just tell them how you figure to make money, how they’ll get their money back. But if it does come to begging, I’d rather you begged and hurt from begging than have you sit around oozing poison for another year. I won’t live like that. It may be the only way you can drive yourself as hard as you do, but I can’t let you put me and the boys through it. So you go ask.”

  Dick knew enough not to get mad. What May said wasn’t just her nagging. It was a well-seasoned bitter complaint. In the end what May said was hard but true. It wasn’t worth arguing over the details. About the boat, she had him pretty well pegged.

  May sat down on an upside-down washtub. She put her arms across her knees, her head on her arms. She didn’t cry. After a bit she got up and went back to hoeing the weeds out.

  Dick had no exhaustion to match hers, not this week. No salt of work. He felt rotten with his secret sweet.

  May stopped hoeing and looked at him. He said flatly, “I’m thinking about it.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  May looked like winter. Not bright-blue winter but drizzling, tired winter. On this summer day, the sun still above the trees, May in the middle of her bell peppers and summer squash, in front of the square of tasseling sweet corn, she was the only thing that hadn’t absorbed the summer, that hadn’t flourished.

  Dick felt the justice of the claim she made. He felt it the more since she spoke from the middle of bleakness. But he doubted he could bring himself to ask Miss Perry. He could hope Parker would get back. But even if Parker paid up, he’d be short.

  He felt the embarrassment and danger of his next thought before he fully knew what it was—May wanted him to go see Elsie. Dick saw himself coming back late, May stirring in bed, himself saying, “I did what you asked, I went over to see the Buttrick girl.”

  Perfect. Just perfect. Go all the way, Dickey-boy. Be a player.

  Dick wondered if it was in any way possible that he could have been pushed into asking Elsie if he and Elsie hadn’t started up.… It didn’t matter, there was no way, not after what he’d been up to.

  Dick now couldn’t wait to get out to sea. “This next run’ll be a short one,” he said. “I’ll be careful with Charlie, you needn’t worry. The weather’s good. There’s nothing can hurt us in summer.”

  “The Buttrick girl told me you saved her life,” May said. “That was summer.”

  “Oh, that,” Dick said. “That wasn’t—”

  “She told me what happened. So don’t put Charlie out in the skiff. You keep him on board,” May said. She added, “The Buttrick family ought to have that in mind too. They …” May cut herself off. She knew you didn’t mention help of that kind. You salvaged ships, not people. If your life was saved, you were grateful; if you saved a life, you claimed nothing.

  Dick was glad May bit her own tongue. He was too stung with shame by his other thoughts to correct her.

  He pulled the plastic curtains shut across the front end of the shed. He didn’t want to look at the boat. He shouldn’t touch her, he shouldn’t even go near her in his condition. He should go out to sea in Parker’s tub.

  But still Dick didn’t put out to sea. His temptations continued, though their tone and nature changed. He resisted these no more successfully than the first.

  Their sexual encounters had changed rapidly from the initial weightless cloud-tumbling-into-cloud. The second time he’d come to her house, the day had been clear, the light harsh. He’d come back on purpose. But she kept the lead. In the cab of his pickup on the way to pick up her Volvo she’d been chatty and cozy, leaning against him until he had to say, “Look, Elsie, I know about half the guys driving pickups up and down this road.” She moved way over to her side but still punctuated what she was saying by sliding her bare foot up under the cuff of his pants.

  On the way back she passed him in her car just before the turnoff to her little arc of access road. She practically forced him onto it, but he charged after her and took the turn up her driveway so close he could hear fine gravel pinging his bumper, then green branches hitting her car and his bumper in one sweep. He could see all this from far off—there he was, a crazy teen-ager. She seemed to know it—she jumped out of her car and ran around toward the pond, laughing, and, come to think of it, pretty nimble for someone with sore muscles. He rushed after her clumsily, as if he was running through a thicket, batting away briars and vines, the last threads of his good sense. She ran herself into a corner of the tiny lawn between the bull briars and the pond. Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man. Her underpants and sneakers became teen-age litter on the grass.

  The day after, he’d left Eddie doing the wiring in the wheelhouse, Charlie and Tom painting. He reminded himself to tell the same lie to May and to Eddie. In up to his chin now, planning his craziness.

  Once again, Elsie stayed a step ahead. She had a little lunch tray set for them, little napkins folded under the forks. “Would you like me to fix you a drink?” And she seemed to have a touch with the way time moved, as though she could pull time out of the air and wind it round him. He felt immobilized, but not at a loss, since nothing else could move either. When she loosened him, let a little time writhe down his wrists and ankles, he moved, but only inch by inch. When they finally stretched out on her bed, he was naked but subdued, balanced between pleasurable impatience and pleasurable patience, happy to let her control him, tilt his urges against each other. She knew what she was doing, he said out loud she knew what she was doing. With her fingertips and then with practically nothing but her breath she kept him up in the air as if he were a plume of down. She’d send him up and then let him sink, eddying and side-slipping back down. Then back up higher, a little higher each time.

  She reached up to his mouth once with her hand—turned her head to say, “You’re grinding your teeth, don’t grind your teeth”—and slid her fingers into his mouth, just touching his side teeth and gums in a way that made his jaw go slack. He heard his breath, felt his breath as though she’d made him part of his own breathing.

  But afterward, while he was still astonished by her physical delicacy, she roughed him up before he was quite ready for it. She said, “You know what I like about having you come in my mouth? I feel like a blind person—you know how they say blind people feel with their faces so they can practically see a building? Same thing … Now I’ve felt it this way, the next time you come in my cunt I’ll practically see it.
…”

  He was just getting over the effect her words had had and understanding what she meant when she laughed. “You should see your face now. You’re really shocked. I should think you’d like the idea.… Or is it another hippie girl with hairy legs?”

  “No …”

  “You’d just prefer a prettier piece of poetry.”

  “No. It was just sudden. I’d just as soon have stayed a little lazy.”

  “Well, yes.” She took his head between her hands, but then sat back on her heels, her eyes turning beady as a bird’s. “You know, I once asked a doctor if a shot of sperm had any nutritional value. He said, ‘Certainly, it has about the same number of calories as a slice of white bread.’ ”

  “Now you’re doing it on purpose.”

  “I am. I can’t help it, you make it so worthwhile. When I shock you, I feel as if I’ve shocked a whole layer of granite.”

  He tried not to think about her when he wasn’t with her, but of course he did. One of the most unsettling thoughts that came to him was that the things he liked about Elsie were at odds with each other. That wasn’t how it was with May, May was a single settled person. He stopped there—he didn’t want May and Elsie getting together in his mind.

  After the first delirium—a word Parker used to describe his shore leaves, along with lotus-eating and postcoital amnesia—phrases Dick found leaking into his thoughts no matter how often he bailed them out—Dick and Elsie fell into an odd mental intimacy, which, like the other stuff he liked about Elsie, had its opposed charges. It was cozy but high-strung, idle but energetic, aimless but part of a design. She could be absolutely sympathetic (“Good God, Dick, I don’t see how you could stand it!”) but absolutely remorseless about drilling into him for the facts and the tone of his life. The rhythm of her inquisition was vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it for a while. They spent a couple of afternoons just lazing around. Dick was secretly relieved that the sexual schedule was less urgent, though there was still an erotic shimmer to just coming up to her house. It occurred to him at last what the rhythm was: A blue heron wading in the marsh on her stilts, apparently out for a stroll—suddenly freezing. An imperceptible tilt of her head—her long neck cocking without moving. No, nothing this time. Wade, pose. Abruptly, a new picture—a fish bisected by her bisected beak. Widening ripples, but the heron, the pool, the marsh, the sky serene. The clouds slid across the light, the fish into the dark.