Spartina

by John D. Casey

  For years, the way he’d been good, the way he’d been an ill-tempered son of a bitch—both had been bound by habits or inheritances. He’d gone along set ways. He wasn’t done with them yet, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be done with them. Even wanting his own boat, wanting to be skipper of his own boat, was a set way. What was odd as odd could be was that now he’d put parts of his life into other people’s hands—Parker’s and Elsie’s—outside of rules in either case, nothing but their fluid wills, he was on his own.

  On the way out through the swordfish grounds Dick noticed that the water temperature was too high in some places, about right in others. He started checking the thermometer frequently. They didn’t see any swordfish. They pulled and reset the pots and headed back in toward the swordfish grounds. The conventional wisdom has it that you don’t see swordfish finning when the tide’s running hard. No one’s completely sure why, but it was handed down that way, like the optimum water temperature for finning, sixty-four degrees to sixty-eight degrees, though you hear some people swear by the lower and others by the upper end.

  What Dick found was that there were narrow tongues of water the right temperature, strung along drift lines. These could have been upwellings of cooler water, and maybe some mixing as the set of the tide stretched them out. He figured if the swordfish hadn’t left the grounds they had to come up to get rid of their worms, so they’d concentrate in the right-temperature water, the tide running or not. Worth a try.

  Charlie spotted the first one. They’d scarcely hauled that one in when Charlie sang out again. The second one felt like three hundred pounds.

  Charlie sang out a third time toward evening, but whatever it was disappeared before they got to it. Charlie said, “I’m pretty sure. Looked too high to be a shark. I’m—”

  “Okay, okay,” Dick said, “I believe you. You go back up tomorrow. We’ll stay out another day.”

  Charlie said, “You’d better tell Mom.”

  Keith laughed. Dick looked at him enough to shut him up and then showed Charlie how to use the VHF radio to raise someone at the Fishermen’s Co-op. “Okay,” Dick said. “Now, what are you going to say?”

  “I say, please telephone May Pierce and tell her we’ll be late ’cause we’re into a whole mess of swordfish.”

  “Jesus!” Dick said. “This radio isn’t a goddamn telephone. Everyone listens.”

  Keith laughed. Charlie was laughing too. “I know that,” Charlie said. “I was joking, Dad.”

  Dick grunted. He said, “Well, what are you going to say?”

  “I say please tell May Pierce our estimated time of arrival is Wednesday.”

  “Good. That’s fine.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad, I thought you’d know I was—”

  “I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know. So when I ask you something, you just tell me plain.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Dick felt foolish, and still irritated. But there was an echo—it was partly hearing Charlie say “May Pierce,” the funny way that hung in the air. It was also that Charlie was feeling good enough to get sassy. In an uncomfortable way, all this pleased Dick.

  At dawn the tide was running more or less the same pattern as twelve hours before. A few patches of fog, but clear enough. Charlie spotted a fin right after breakfast. Dick couldn’t see it. He headed the boat where Charlie pointed, and after a minute Dick made out the fin.

  When they hauled it on board it felt like another two-hundred-pounder. That was it for the morning. But three in sixteen hours—sailing up these tongues of cool water was like wading up a stocked trout stream. Dick had Keith come down to take the wheel. Dick brought a cup of soup up to Charlie in the crow’s nest.

  “You aren’t tired, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, watch yourself. You know what they say—one hand for the boat, one hand for you.”

  “I know, Dad.”

  “Okay. We’re making money now. So I just don’t want …”

  “Dad, you’re getting worse than Mom.” Charlie put his sunglasses on. “What is it, anyway? I’m doing okay so far.”

  “Yup,” Dick said. Charlie looked strange to him here, his eyes narrowed behind the glass, his face dark and hard under the visor, behind him the blank sky and sea. Dick said, “You’re doing good. You got good eyes.”

  Charlie turned away. The praise made him look young and soft again. “Remember what I told you,” Dick said. “Don’t look hard all the time, let your eyes unfocus, then—”

  “I remember,” Charlie said.

  “Okay. Finish your soup so I can take the mug down.”

  Charlie laughed. He said, “It’s weird, I never realized how alike you and Mom are.”

  They got another fish before supper, smaller, under 150 pounds. Dick was tempted to radio the Co-op to check the price, but he didn’t want to tip off any other boats. They could lock on to Mamzelle with their RDFs in the minute or two it took to talk to the Co-op.

  Nothing more that day. Dick wanted another day.

  After supper he took Charlie with him to check the lobster in the live wells and to see that the swordfish were iced right.

  Charlie asked him what was the most swordfish a boat had ever brought in.

  “When I was with Captain Texeira, we got twenty fish in eleven days. That’s the most I’ve ever heard of. Next trip out we got nine in two weeks. The trip after that, nothing. And nothing for the rest of the season. That was the summer you got your bicycle.”

  Charlie touched the hole in the swordfish.

  “But I’ll tell you,” Dick said, “I’m making more money off of these four than I did off of those twenty, even though I was the one that stuck all twenty. And if I were on my own boat, I’d make more off of two than I will off of these four or those twenty. That’s how it works. I knew that all along, but I never paid enough attention to the arithmetic.”

  Charlie said, “Did you ever miss? I mean, when you were on Captain Texeira’s boat.”

  “Yeah,” Dick said. “Five men and the skipper watching their shares go down-a-down-down. Pulling that slack line back in … But I made a worse mistake than missing—I didn’t keep my mouth shut. I blamed the man at the wheel.”

  “Was it his fault?”

  “That’s not the point. It’s the captain’s place to say. Or not to say. You can look at the guy who screwed up, you might even have a little talk in private. You don’t sound off in front of everyone.”

  Charlie nodded. Dick added, “That’s not so likely to be a problem for you. You’ve got more good sense than me. I mean me when I was as green as you.”

  “But was it his fault?”

  “He came in too fast, but I should have stuck that fish anyhow. You sure you understand what I just told you?”

  “Sure,” Charlie said, a little carelessly for Dick’s taste. Dick worried that he’d praised Charlie too much for one day.

  Charlie said, “When are you going to show me how to use a harpoon? If we see a skilley can I try?”

  “I’ll show you this winter. You got to practice before you try on something live.”

  Charlie said, “I have practiced some.”

  “No,” Dick said. “You got enough other stuff to learn this trip. Anyhow, your mother said to keep you out of the skiff, and she wouldn’t like you leaning out of that bow pulpit any better.”

  Charlie didn’t say anything. Dick saw his face close over, not in a sullen way, just go blank. He was a good-looking kid. Dick was surprised how much Charlie looked like May. Charlie turned and went topside. Dick stayed below, caught by something in the dim light. May’s face more than seventeen years back, in the same kind of bad light. He remembered where—the hospital corridor, taking her to see his father. May’s face plain and broad. A solid woman at twenty-two, not a girl. Willing to take on his trouble. Without any nonsense, willing to go back to the dark, cold house in Snug Harbor. Her hands were warm from her wool mittens, which she left wit
h her wool hat and scarf in the front hall. She still had her coat on when she turned down his tufted bedspread. The two of them pale and dry and hot against the salt damp in the house. He’d felt she was a lot like him, a lot like the slow serious parts of himself that he thought were okay. She didn’t have his temper, thank God for that. She was patient and stubborn, she could wait out his temper. Now he thought for the first time of what she’d do if she found out about him and Elsie. She wouldn’t leave him. She might go off for a bit, but she wouldn’t leave. She’d stay, but she wouldn’t forgive him. She wouldn’t turn the boys against him, but she’d make him take it out of himself week by week, day by day, until he was as clean as her kitchen floorboards, mopped every day, scalded and steel-wooled every Saturday. He’d told her it was no way to treat wood. She paid no attention where she had the upper hand. She’d hold a hard mortgage on him, one that might outlast the two on the house.

  But that wasn’t the worst. There was a good part of her that settled for the way their life went, and there was another part, maybe smaller, but still part of her, that couldn’t help looking for the weakness in him. Even faced with his infidelity, she wouldn’t say it right out, but she’d think, I always knew there must be a reason why you don’t rise. He’d be able to read her mind. It would be in her, stuck in her, a lump of contempt. She would still go to bed with him, the food wouldn’t be any worse, she wouldn’t even keep him from going to the Neptune.

  No outburst, no keeping him on a leash. She’d do it worse, she’d accept it.

  Before he went topside to take the wheel, Dick looked around the dim hold. He might as well not keep Charlie at sea any longer. Give May that at least. Even if they got extra lucky with more swordfish, May was right. He’d never get his boat in the water working Parker’s boat for him.

  Dick sent Charlie up to the office to collect for the swordfish and lobster, while he and Keith hosed down Mamzelle. Dick wanted the kid to see the deductions for bait, fuel, and dock fees, to see what a crew member’s share of all that swordfish and lobster looked like after deductions. How the boat’s share got the owner just about half of everything without his even being there.

  Dick said to Charlie, “If Parker’d been along, he would have a right to another share for being skipper. You see how it usually goes?”

  Charlie was too pleased. Dick sent him back up to the office to get some small bills. Dick made up an envelope for the household, both monthly mortgage payments and a little extra for groceries. “You understand that in summer we get off easy because of your mother’s garden. And summer we get free clams and flounder.”

  Charlie was still pleased. Dick let it go. He said, “Well—it was a good trip. You earned your way.”

  Charlie asked Dick to hold on to his share, put it toward Dick’s boat. Dick said, “It’s your money, Charlie.”

  Charlie said that he’d just as soon get it back when Dick’s boat was in the water making money. Before Dick could say anything, Charlie added, “And I don’t want to make Tom feel worse for having to stay home. If he sees me with all that money …” Dick let that go too. Charlie was high from a good trip, nothing to worry about with that. And that Charlie transformed his own excitement into eager good will … Dick didn’t want to knock that down either.

  They tossed their sea bags into the bed of the truck, Charlie with a little flourish that made Dick laugh. Charlie hitched his trousers and strode around the back of the pickup. The kid had a little roll and swagger to his walk. Dick stopped himself from saying, “Don’t bump your head getting in.”

  Charlie gave May the household envelope. She made a fuss, got into a better mood than Dick had seen her in for months. She started fixing a big breakfast, and Charlie started talking to her about the trip, day by day.

  Dick went off to take a hot shower. He could hear May oohing and ahing.

  He turned the water on. He understood his pleasure at Charlie’s pleasure, he understood his uneasiness and his urge to bring Charlie down some. What Dick didn’t understand was the feeling of bleak despair that hit him now. Here he was flush with two thousand bucks, more than half of it unquestionably his. Flush with a good haul of lobster and swordfish on account of good luck and his knack. It was his marked charts, not Parker’s, that they’d set the pots by. His measurements and reckoning that got them into those swordfish.

  And there was still a chance Parker would show up from New York and pay him.

  He was closer than he’d ever been to fitting out his boat. Time was short, and the list of things he needed was long—there was the loran, five thousand bucks. And then a depth finder, a bilge pump, another payment on the engine. The pieces of equipment and what they cost tumbled through his head as clear as ever. But it wasn’t that. It was something else he couldn’t bear. It wasn’t worry or too much work or even facing pain. It was as though he was suddenly weakened by a causeless ease. Something already in him was shifting loosely and lightly. It wasn’t a temptation to give up, but a sensation that he already had.

  It wasn’t until he’d eaten his breakfast—May and Charlie were still having a pretty good time at their end of the table—that he squeezed down on himself.

  He got up and said, “I’m going to see Miss Perry. Talk about money.”

  May looked up. She looked alarmed.

  May said, “What …,” cleared her throat, and started over. “Have you thought about how to put it?”

  “I’m going to do something you want me to do,” Dick said. “Don’t get fussy about how I do it.”

  Dick pulled into Miss Perry’s main driveway and then the side drive to her house and into the white-pebble circle around the enormous weeping willow. Dick got halfway around the little circle before he saw Elsie’s Volvo, parked with its nose sticking onto the flagstone path to the back of the house, its tail out so far in the circle he couldn’t get around without tearing off pieces of weeping willow.

  Jesus, he thought, Elsie too.

  He marched up the steps to the front door and rang the bell before he could start thinking about it. It was Elsie who opened the door.

  “Good God,” she said. “Dick. Where have you been?” He took a breath in. Elsie said, “And what are you doing here?” Dick let his breath out. Elsie said, “Look, this isn’t a good time. I mean, it was very clever of you to figure out I was here, but this just isn’t a good time. I’m going back to my house in a little while. Say a half-hour.”

  Dick said, “I came to talk to Miss Perry.”

  Elsie said, “Oh.”

  “Is Miss Perry in?”

  “Well, yes. But this isn’t a good time. She just got back from a doctor’s appointment. It’s a little bit complicated.”

  Dick said, “Is she sick?”

  “It’s her … you know, her annual spell.”

  “I thought that was more toward the end of the summer.”

  Elsie said, “Well, yes. It usually is. But I’ve been—or, I should say, her doctor and I have been—trying to talk her into taking a drug, and all our talk seems to have upset her. Look, can you come to my house in a half-hour? Or maybe you can just go over there now. Just go on in. I’ll be back, and I’ll explain it all then. She’ll be glad you called on her. I’ll tell her.”

  “I came to ask her to lend me money.”

  “Oh.” Elsie stepped back. “Oh dear. I don’t know. Look, I’ve got to arrange some things. Captain Texeira’s coming over, and then the doctor’s going to call, so why don’t you go on to my house. I’ll see you there.”

  Elsie closed the door. Dick stood there. He felt too reckless and lightheaded to feel he had shamed himself, but he could tell he was going to feel shamed. He got back in his pickup. When he got to the crossroads of Miss Perry’s lane and the dirt road, he stopped. What was the point in going to Elsie’s house? But, then, what was the point in going home?

  When he got to Elsie’s house, he sat in his truck and smoked a cigarette. He lit another but put it out. He went into the house.

&n
bsp; He felt odd being there alone. He was glad to feel odd, it kept his thoughts from settling. The scarlet curtain was drawn back from around the bed, the bed unmade but not messy, just the near corner of the covers flapped down, two pillows on top of each other.

  The sun was bright on the little pond and on the slant of the greenhouse roof.

  On the table by the window there was a plate with a wet peach pit and a coffee mug. A letter addressed to Elsie, several pages covered with handwriting on both sides. Next to it a tablet of paper and a pen. At the top of the page only “Dear Lucy” in Elsie’s writing.

  These pieces of interrupted activity made the house even more charged with stillness.

  Elsie didn’t come in a half-hour. Dick waited. He was made uneasy by the peach pit and the unmade bed. He threw the peach pit in the trash and tucked in the bedcovers. He sat back down at the table by the window. He let his mind go lax. Nothing here in this bright room. The sun moved across the pond, across the slant of glass. Now his thoughts began to settle. What had he done? His face felt cold, but busy with sensation. He’d blurted out how he needed money. Why did that feel so bad? He’d made himself more naked in front of bank officers, in front of Joxer Goode. The difference was that with those people he had an argument. They stood to gain if they used him shrewdly. Neither Miss Perry nor Elsie really knew the argument. They weren’t fighting for advantage. They didn’t set themselves out as being in business. Going to them was begging. There it was.

  Dick thought he’d leave. Maybe write a note to Elsie saying he’d changed his mind. He felt weightless again, as though he’d been cut loose and might end up anywhere. Was this what Parker felt like all the time? Was this what it felt like to be a player? Or did you find yourself feeling like this and that’s when you had to decide whether you were a player? Parker wasn’t tied to anyplace or anyone. That part was how Dick felt now, but the difference was Parker wasn’t scared so much as dizzy about it. Once Parker started moving dangerously, he thought it all out. And Parker grinned. That was a difference too.