Spartina

by John D. Casey

  Dick went down to the harbor to check Spartina. As he walked past the Co-op the radio operator called out to him. She had a message for him from Woods Hole. He couldn’t think of anyone he knew there. Even when he read the message he wasn’t sure it was for him. From Neptune Documentary Film Co. Woods Hole, Massachusetts To: Capt. R. Pierce, master of Spartina, Galilee, RI … Tune in Channel Two Boston, 2000 hrs, 18 Jan.

  He got off on the wrong track for a second … thought of channel 2 on the CB. Then he figured a TV channel. Schuyler’s movie? Why didn’t he put his name? Then he figured it was Elsie. That was why there was no name, why it was phoned to the Co-op, why she’d put that it was from Woods Hole. Dick couldn’t recall the real name of Schuyler’s film company—Elsie’d told him each of Schuyler’s films had its own company—but maybe she put Neptune because she meant him to watch it at the Neptune.…

  It was still blowing a little on the 18th. He went to the Neptune. Neither the Celtics nor the Bruins were playing. He bought a beer and asked the bartender to tune in Channel 2. A couple of guys Dick knew said they wanted to watch a cop show. He bought them each a beer and said if it turned out this wasn’t a movie about around here, they could switch back.

  The teaser was an aerial shot of the harbor of refuge and Galilee. The guys called to a couple of their buddies.

  At first Dick didn’t recognize Schuyler’s voice narrating. It was a slow, serious baritone, none of Schuyler’s usual prance. What he was saying was more like Schuyler, little jabs and twists:

  “Rhode Island—poor cousin to Massachusetts” … “Most densely populated state after New Jersey” … “Lowest educational level of any state outside the Deep South” … “Highest percentage of people whose first language is not English” …

  Dick thought of what Mary Scanlon used to say—“Rhode Island is not a high—expectation state.”

  There was an aerial shot of palaces in Newport—“… glittering remnant of the robber barons, but the greater part of Rhode Island is as desperately poor as West Virginia.

  “According to a Ph.D. thesis on state governments, Rhode Island came in second only to Louisiana for the title of most corrupt state legislature.

  “If Rhode Island were a country, it would be part of the Third World. The largest employer is the military. Tourism is the major moneymaker, although most Rhode Islanders benefit from it only in service positions. The bulk of choice real estate is in the form of second homes or resorts run by absentee corporations.

  “There is a seafaring tradition, and there is—still—a fishing fleet. By comparison to the high-tech factory ships of Russia, East or West Germany, Japan, or the tuna clippers of our own West Coast, the boats and methods are quaint. But it is still possible—barely possible—to wrest a living from the sea.”

  One of the guys said, “Who the fuck this fag think he is?”

  During the introductory narration, the shots kept alternating between luxury and what was meant to be seen as squalor. A fancy restaurant. Then, at the phrase “lowest educational level of any state outside the Deep South,” there was a shot of the crab pickers at Joxer Goode’s plant. Dick knew that some of those guys were hired out to Joxer from the state school for the retarded. Dick had always thought Joxer was doing the crazies a favor while he got some real cheap labor. In the pictures Schuyler shot, the camera lingered on the retarded men and women in a half-light that made them look like driven slaves. The soundtrack left out the Muzak Joxer piped in that the poor guys sort of bobbed to, so their movements all looked like some necessary part of a hellish assembly line. Then there was a shot of a mansion from the ocean walk at Newport, with a pack of guard dogs snarling behind the ironwork fence. Then a shot which Dick recognized as his own backyard, and the outside of his patchwork boat shed. Then the Wedding Cake. At the phrase “wrest a living from the sea,” a long shot of Dick tonging quahogs.

  A guy said, “Hey—that’s Sawtooth Pond.”

  Dick thought of leaving before the boys at the bar recognized him. He couldn’t move without making a big effort—the boys were now two deep behind the bar stools.

  Schuyler had rearranged things so that the launching of Spartina came before the shots of lobstering or harpooning swordfish from Mamzelle’s bow pulpit. Schuyler’d made it look like Spartina was the only boat in the movie.

  Schuyler’s voice-over—“According to OSHA, fishing and coal mining are the two most dangerous occupations in America. On board this fishing boat sometimes there is camaraderie, sometimes a good deal of tension.” And there was a close-up of Dick’s face for the first time. He turned to the camera and said, “If you go over, we pick the fish up first.”

  The boys laughed. One said in a mock singsong, “Ooh, Dickey, he thinks you’re cute. Wants a little of that camaraderie.” The boys quieted down at the shots of pulling pots, emptying them, and rebaiting them. No faces, but Dick recognized his old gloves with duct tape around the middle finger. One guy yelled, “Short! That lobster’s a short!” but no one laughed.

  Then there was a sequence that puzzled Dick—underwater shots of a pot settling on the bottom. In the corner of the picture there was an inset rectangle with elapsed time—oo:oo.

  One of the guys said, “That’s that old URI movie. It’s infrared or something.”

  At first Dick thought that was just like Schuyler—fake a little, bullshit a little, steal a little, stitch it together. But then Dick got to like the contrast of the seabed to how things looked on the boat—cluttered, noisy, and bouncing around.

  Elapsed time 02:38, the first lobster. Jump to a little later, three more. First one still can’t figure out how to get in.

  Back upstairs. Long shot of Elsie in the dory. The guys couldn’t tell who she was, but they figured out what was wrong quick enough. “Look there—that asshole’s fouled his line.”

  Good shot of shark fins. One of the guys hummed the theme from Jaws. They laughed. A shark jostled the bow of the dory. Dick hadn’t seen that at the time. The boys settled down for a bit, then cheered half-derisively and laughed when Dick hauled Elsie up, her feet running in mid-air. “Look at the little bugger go!” “Ain’t that the Vietnamese kid that’s the boy on Spartina?” They laughed again at the shot of Elsie from the rear, crawling to grab hold of the hatch cover.

  Dick felt as if his head was in an oven. It was a relief when the movie went back to the lobsters. Elapsed time 09:43. A whole workday for one lobster to get in. He’s reaching for the bait with one claw, can’t get it. He’s using the other claw to keep the others out, jabbing and thumbing with it. But it somehow seems slow and quiet down there. For all the lobster scuttling, scuffling, and claw waving, it’s peaceful. They take their time between moves. Their feelers sweep out in slow arcs like unhurried casting with a fly rod. Even the quick tuck of the tail when a lobster drives himself backward seems calm. He darts once, then settles, his tail spreading out like a Spanish lady’s fan, the rows of walking legs touching down as light as a spider’s on her web.

  The last rectangle gets crowded with big numbers. A lobster is in the parlor. A second one is just inside the entrance, keeping the crowd out. The line is around the block; it’s like Star Wars at the Wakefield theatre. Dick shook his head. You could get on edge about it, pretty discouraged at how slow they go about getting themselves caught. But he found himself soothed by the way everything wafted, by the watery gentleness of time down there. He’d never seen this. He’d thought about it of course, knew about it mechanically, but never seen it this way. But then it occurred to him he’d seen something like it: newsreels of astronauts on the moon—heavy-shelled, weightless creatures finding their own slow way, not in rhythm with the click of earth-surface readouts, their large motion as liquid as the silt they stirred up.

  Send these brave lobsters to the moon.

  Dick didn’t mind now about all the lobsters that didn’t get in the pot. He was pleased to see what he’d never imagined—that he’d spent a lot of his life dropping pots onto the m
oon.

  The movie jolted back to the surface. Dick’s gloved hands moving fast, grabbing lobster out of the netting. Side view of his face, but you could still read his lips—“Fuck you, Schuyler.”

  The guy next to him back-handed his shoulder. “Jesus, Dick. You’re on fucking educational TV.” Laughter. Dick tipped his head. Let him have his joke. They weren’t so bad, a little rowdy was all. Dick wished the movie would get back down to the seabed. But it was in his backyard. A shot of May in her garden. Looking pretty good. One of the guys at the bar leaned forward to say something. Another guy knocked his forearm.

  May said, “When do you want your supper?”

  Dick’s voice—“When I get back.”

  They all whooped it up. “Keep her right in line, do you, Dick.”

  Okay, Dick thought, I’m an asshole.

  A while later there was Dick back in the bow pulpit, leaning forward with his harpoon. Dick heard the tail end of Schuyler’s voice—“… requires strength and timing.”

  “Hey. He does think you’re cute.”

  Dick shoved the harpoon.

  “Give it to me, Dick. Put it in all the way.”

  Dick said, “Blow it out your ass.”

  Then there was Spartina sliding out the channel past the sandbagged crab-processing plant. Shots of boats being hauled.

  “That’s Swiss Miss.”

  “Where’s Bom Sonho?”

  “She was out with Lydia P.”

  “Yeah. That was just before the hurricane.”

  Then they all shut up when they saw the sea come up over the breakwater.

  They sat still and watched boats crack like nuts. One broke loose and lifted up onto land and rolled—they could scarcely believe their eyes—she goddamn rolled across the parking lot in the white surge.

  Then you couldn’t tell. There was stuff moving, but you couldn’t tell. Blackout, but the soundtrack kept going for a bit. Then quiet.

  The next day. The guys stared at the harbor. They spoke up again to say the names of boats they saw, boats they couldn’t see.

  There was Spartina riding off the beach. Dick remembered Elsie had been in her jeep. He remembered looking at the hills, the scrubbed beach, the green shoots in the salt marsh. All he could see now was how beat-to-shit Spartina looked. The movie could erase what he thought. But it didn’t erase completely. It left little bits of his life all lit up.

  There was another shot of the wrecked boats at the state pier.

  The men on either side of Dick pulled away from him.

  There was the scene Elsie shot of the boys and May at the boatyard. Schuyler—but maybe it was Elsie—had put in music. Dick was glad Elsie hadn’t recorded what they’d all said to each other. But the music was bad. It did just the wrong thing. It was happy-end-of-the-movie music. It stank, and Dick saw how some of the stink was going to stick to him.

  Some of the guys still weren’t working. It didn’t surprise him when one of them said, “And here he is with us today. Luke Skywalker.”

  At last someone else said, “Hell, there were a couple of lucky ones. Texeira’s boats were out. You got to choose lucky or good, choose lucky.”

  “Hey, Dick. They pay you? For being in their movie?”

  Dick said, “No. Nobody paid me.”

  “I heard they loaned you money. The money for your boat.”

  He left the bar. Stood by his pickup. Didn’t feel like driving home. Sooner or later May would hear about the movie. She’d smell a stink too. Different, but just as bad. For a moment he thought, What the hell have you done to me, Elsie? You thought Spartina was a work of art, put her in a movie, put me in a movie, made a fool of me.

  “Wrong.” He said it out loud. He put his hand on the door handle. Might as well blame his truck. What kind of a sorry son of a bitch was he? He had his boat. That’s what he’d wished for.

  The weather was colder. The stars were steady, the moon clear.

  And what had Elsie got? She’d got a wish too, more of a bend in her life than she’d thought of.

  The weather did clear. It was a little breezy, but Dick called up Tran and Tony.

  They got Spartina out to the near edge of the banks, where they still had a few sets of pots. They’d moved most of the others in close enough to get out and back pretty quick, not as far out as this. When they were hauling one of the trawls, the line snapped. Dick heard the crack and the whistle. When he came out of the wheelhouse he saw the line had whipped forward over the wheelhouse and sheared off the VHF antenna and cracked the radar casing. Neither Tran nor Tony was hurt. They’d hit the deck when they’d heard the line hum just before it broke.

  The damage was easy enough to fix, but he couldn’t tinker with anything delicate while Spartina was bouncing around in the chop. He took her into Woods Hole. As they came in at the end of the afternoon, he saw someone waving from the beach just north of the harbor mouth. The waving kept up. He put the glasses on it and saw the figure dragging a foot in the slope of hard sand. It made a big E.

  After they docked, Dick let Tran and Tony go ashore for a meal. Elsie showed up, bundled up in foul-weather gear.

  She’d come down from her mother’s to stay at a friend’s house … give her mother a break, they were getting along fine but … And she craved some sea air, so …

  She was grinning down at him from the dockside while she said all this. He climbed up. Elsie held on to both his hands. She said, “I’m glad to see you! Come on, I’ll buy you a meal.”

  Dick said sure, but he had to wait for either Tran or Tony to get back. He didn’t want some wharf rat pinching something off Spartina.

  He helped Elsie down on deck, she weighed a ton. He took her to the wheelhouse, which was warm.

  Elsie said, “Turn around a second.”

  She shed her foul-weather gear. When he turned back to face her, she stood sideways, pulling her wool jumper tight to show off the jut of her basketball stomach.

  Dick was taken aback. He hadn’t thought of getting to see this part.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Elsie said. “The only part I don’t like is that I can’t go out much in case I run into someone I know. Even people I don’t know but who know me—it turns out my mother’s house is right down the street from Phoebe Fitzgerald’s ex-husband. I sneak out at night in a big overcoat and go to the movies, but that’s it.” Elsie climbed back into her foul-weather gear. “Anyway, I recognized Spartina from the beach. You’re someone I can run into.… Look, let’s go eat. Leave a note for your crew. We can ask the harbormaster to keep an eye on Spartina till they get back.”

  Dick didn’t like to ask favors, but he didn’t want to say no to Elsie. He felt a terrible weight suddenly, not of trouble or sorrow, but of Elsie’s good cheer.

  At the restaurant he started to tell Elsie about telling May, but she cut him off. “Later,” she said. “Let’s just eat. This is my first social life since Thanksgiving.”

  She drove him to the cottage where she was staying. It was dark. “It’s a friend’s summer house,” she said. “She’s in Boston.”

  She asked him to start a fire in the fireplace while she made coffee. She brought a bottle of Irish whiskey out with the coffee. “I’m not drinking, but you go ahead.”

  She was in a wonderful mood. She’d eaten a huge meal, right down to pie à la mode and a glass of milk. She talked about how cozy Woods Hole was in winter. “I like walking around the harbor at night; it’s like a little cup of tea with the mist coming up like steam. My sister’s coming up here tomorrow, just for the day.” She took his hand again. “And Mary Scanlon’s come to see me a couple of times. She’s going to come for the birth. In fact everybody’s going to be there then. My mother, my sister, and Mary.” Elsie laughed. “You want to come?”

  Dick said, “Look. I got to say something. We haven’t really talked about this. I got to know about doctor’s bills and the like. I’d like to put some money aside for that. And for other things.”

  “Dick, we di
d talk about that. I told you about that already. I’m doing fine. I mean, right this minute I’m getting paid a salary.”

  Dick said, “I’ve got to do it. It’s not just because it’s May’s idea. I thought about it and she’s right. I see she’s right.”

  “Ah.” Elsie folded her hands in her lap. After a minute she said, “Was it terrible telling her? Are things okay? That’s a dumb question. I guess I hope she blamed it on me. Did she? You know, call me a tramp and a slut? It’s funny, I’ve been feeling very close to her. I mean, this baby is related to her babies.”

  “No,” Dick said. “She didn’t blame it all on you. She didn’t even get that mad. Not that way. It’s hard to explain. I’ve got to say I admire the way she feels about it—so far as I understand the way she feels.” Dick was suddenly glad to be seeing Elsie, to feel the relief of talking to someone who was in the same trouble.

  “It’ll be a while before things settle down,” he said. “If I had to guess, I’d say things’ll be okay eventually. Not the same, but okay, if I make amends.”

  “You buy her a dishwasher yet?”

  Dick looked at Elsie.

  “Oh, come on,” Elsie said. “No. I guess I shouldn’t tease you. I’m sorry, I can’t help it—part of this is funny. Me transporting myself across state lines. Elsie, the unindicted co-conspirator disguised in a man’s overcoat. I feel like an anarchist carrying a bomb.” She put her hands on her belly, said, “Boom!” and lifted her fingers.

  “There is this side to it,” she said. “I’m not killing anybody with my crime. I mean, it’s not bad that way. I get to have my deep outlaw wish, and it’s a baby.”

  Elsie sank down after that little spate of bright talk. She said, “So May didn’t blame me, she didn’t call me a cheap slut?”

  “I said she didn’t blame it all on you. She might not even think you were bad to her personally. You just ignored her. If she was going to call you anything, I guess it’d be spoiled. But I’m not sure I get everything May’s thinking. I’ve never had to forgive anybody. At least not anybody in my family. For anything so definite …” Dick thought of how he finally forgave his father so many years after his father’s death. But it wasn’t for any one thing the old man had done. He shook his head and said, “I’m no one to go by about that.”