Beauty

by Frederick Dillen

  Carol got rid of the stares by introducing herself to Garcia and asking if he knew the plant well enough to run it.

  Easy, freed from attention, settled in to watch Carol do her stuff.

  Garcia said, “I know this plant like my pocket,” an answer that made Carol laugh. Garcia was up from El Salvador, and had an accent, but so did a lot of Elizabeth Island, and Garcia smiled like he had just come up with his line.

  Carol studied him, and Garcia stood straight and looked back at her. He looked respectful and also like he could hold his own. Carol said, “How long would it take to get it running?”

  “We have cooking oil and batter. We have boxes for shipping at dropdown. It is only waiting.”

  “Can you keep it running?”

  Everybody else was concentrated on following along, but Easy was admiring how sharp Carol was, how she was finding out what she needed to know about the plant and Garcia both. A small thing, but it spoke to Easy about how capable Carol was. Easy liked capable.

  Garcia, matter-of-fact but on the nose, said, “It is simple. Like the old Detroit cars: iron, manual transmission, carburetor. Turn it on, let it go. Change the oil every thousand miles. And I still can work as foreman.” Easy could have used Ben Garcia on the boat, and he figured Carol had already come to the same conclusion about Garcia and her plant.

  She said, “Would you turn on part of a line so that Mr. Taormina can see something work?”

  Garcia started for the door with his ball of keys and had the lights on in seconds and then, in another minute, a belt going at the head of the first line.

  Easy had not been in the plant for years, but you couldn’t miss that work had been done. Buddy was noticing the same thing. The lines looked like they’d had major upgrading.

  Easy said, “Ben, the lines look shinier.”

  Garcia looked a little less head-on, at first, but then stood into it. He said, “Mr. Mathews ordered as soon as everybody moved up to the new plant. He paid me overtime to be here and see it all went in good, asked me not to talk about it because it was separate from the company, for selling this plant. The work was good and the plant was already left behind, so I didn’t feel it was wrong. Also they brought one truck and the men in at night and out by the end of the next night. I don’t know about all that, but I know machinery, and for these lines, it was a little quicker, also more reliable, besides prettier; a good thing, no question. For me, too, and my family, the overtime money helped. I wouldn’t be saying anything now because I promised, except he doesn’t own the plant anymore.”

  Buddy and his mother were surprised like Easy, but Carol and Parks and Annette Novato were not.

  Carol said, “It’s fine, Ben, a good thing.” To Buddy and Anna Rose, she said, “We found out about it in the private file cabinet Mathews kept. One more of his games, but it works for us; it gives us some extra value and a better chance keeping up with the big processing outfits.”

  Buddy said, “That jerk.”

  Anna Rose said, “I am not going to listen to you speak like that.”

  Easy was already back to watching Carol. She said, “Go ahead, Ben.”

  Garcia said, “It all works pretty much the same. I can light the ovens over here, after the basting. You would see flames if you want.”

  Carol said, “Buddy?”

  Buddy said, “No, that’s all right.”

  Garcia said, “You want to walk all of it?”

  Carol looked to Buddy, who said, “I knew it would run if it was still here. I just wanted to be sure those jerks hadn’t gutted the place. I guess, yeah, great if they fixed it up some. I lumped for the water line as a kid in summer. Remember, Ma? And Maria was with the cutters until Dad found out. Hey, Ben. How about that? Do you know anything about the water line?”

  Garcia headed for the dock wall.

  Easy remembered the water lines from all the times when he was a kid and had fed them out of his father’s hold. He had no idea how long since they were used, but he watched Carol check everything out, and he thought that, given a day, she could probably get the whole plant up and running again by herself.

  Easy liked the plant. It reminded him of his boat—not pretty but useful. The belt at the head of the first line echoed like gravel. The ceiling had blackened above the fluorescents. The walls were yellowed stucco, hung with watermark. The floor was concrete gone iron with rust and stained by dry pools of sickly green. The lines hunched up and down through the room. Actually, the rust on the floor could be blood from all the thumbs lost to shattered flywheels.

  Carol interrupted Easy’s musing. She said, “All the plants I shut down had old machinery held together with not much more than hope and chewing gum. Sometimes, when the people were emptied out, I cared for the dead machinery more than a real factory, because it had been loved all the way to the end.”

  That was how Easy had felt, and why he couldn’t bear his own empty house without Angie and the baby they’d made ready for. It was how he imagined the bones of his father’s boat off the Georges.

  Parks said, “Carol. I don’t think that’s the note we want to strike just now.”

  Carol laughed with everybody else, but Easy thought she was beautiful for what she had said. Besides which he thought there was a good chance she’d find his boat beautiful. He went ahead and said that, courageous and happy both. “Wait until you get a good look at my boat.”

  More laughing, from everybody, but he thought Carol gave him an extra nod.

  She said, “Now. Where were we?”

  Annette Novato pointed off to one wall where there was a warren of alcoves with partitions that didn’t come close to reaching the ceiling. Then Carol, pointing at one alcove that jutted into the floor, said, “Corner office.”

  Parks pointed at a stain on the floor and said, “We had business from McDonald’s and lost it, and we won’t get them back with the way the place looks. But the inspections come up clean, so it’s mostly cosmetics.” Easy had expected a golden oldie on floor stains, but he knew Parks well enough around town to have seen a smart guy underneath the songs. Parks, along with the kidding, kept things in focus. Another good guy to have around. Carol was hiring all the best crew.

  There was a rolling rumble from across the width of the building, and a bright slice of sunlight shot in through the wall. The rumble continued as Garcia pushed the dock doors open wider, and the day poured into the cave of the plant.

  Buddy said, “It’s ready for business, Ma.”

  “Of course it’s ready,” Anna Rose said. “I told you it was ready.”

  Garcia was folding blue plastic tarp off of the simple series of belts and countertops that had been stacked in sections along the open wall.

  Buddy said to Carol, “They called it the water line because it was next to the water and brought in the fish fresh from the boats. Used to be a couple of lines.”

  Garcia said, “I never saw it run, but I have set it up before to know. It is nothing to work. Just people cut the fish.”

  “Look, Ma. The saws. Remember when Maria was cutting the heads off whiting and Dad found out?”

  Annette Novato said something about still not seeing the missing electricity.

  Anna Rose led everybody out onto the dock, saying, “Why do you remember those things, Ignacio? Let Carol see what a beautiful city we have.”

  Easy looked. It was a beautiful city, if you could call it a city. The late lobster and day boats were still clustered at the head of the inner harbor, dirty reds and yellows and blues, their guys dragging bait barrels from the pickups. Just behind them was the back of the hardware and lumberyard and the back of the appliance place with the grandson still holding out against the Sears off the island. The back of the St. Peter’s club was there where Main Street came down to the harbor road, and at the other end of things were the windows of the Peg Leg, where the Lions and Ro
tary and all the others held their meetings until the bottom of the summer crowd came to eat either the dregs of local catch or frozen from God knew where. Most of the buildings up the hill were still the stone and brick they’d always been, and they had a worn importance with being solid and with having been there years, and the edging of their rooftops was greened copper. As the hill rounded side to side higher up, there were the wood buildings, the houses with some of the colors still true and with pointy roofs, lonely looking houses from up close but postcard pretty from here. Away to the right, you could see the two blue steeples of the Portuguese church, and from here on the plant dock, which Easy had never realized, you could actually see the Our Lady between the steeples holding her boat. You couldn’t see the big Italian Catholic church, going the other way to the Italian end of town, but there were a couple more wooden steeples tucked in, Yankee steeples, his own among them for as long as there was anyone to drag him, and the trees were becoming green up there. His city. It was hurting, and had been hurting for a while, but you didn’t see that. You saw, Easy saw, and he believed Carol would see, how beautiful it was. He was glad Anna Rose had said something.

  Anna Rose said, “Is that your car, Easy? Do you have a new car?”

  All of them lined along the dock looking across the harbor at Carol’s car beyond Easy’s boat.

  “Out-of-state plates,” Buddy said.

  Carol said, “It’s my car.” Said it just like that and no more. Straightened up some, maybe took a deep breath that only Easy saw because he was looking for it. She stared across at her car and let the quiet be the quiet. She was a strong woman, first to last. Easy didn’t care what people thought about him, but he didn’t want anybody assuming things about Carol. Now was a time when Easy wanted to put an arm around her, which would have been stupid and would also have taken courage he could only ever dream of. What he did, he looked away out at the harbor, pretending to see any sort of something fishermanly, pure chickenshit.

  Anna Rose said, “It is Carol’s car, Ignacio. Mind your business.”

  Carol stood between Buddy and Garcia and said, “It is a beautiful town.” Then she turned to Buddy and said, “And you believe the plant can work?”

  So much for the car. Good going, Carol. Only, now, Easy wondered if she was starting to think, like he was, what it would be like if they had spent the night together.

  Buddy said, “I’m in, Carol. You’ll be seeing me and my fish off your dock here as soon as you’re ready.”

  Good to have Buddy say that. Easy said, “Me, too.”

  Anna Rose said, “Carol. Maybe you didn’t see this.” She pulled a rolled section of newspaper out of her clothes. “The Boston Globe. Front page. From the meeting right here in Elizabeth. The agency will tell the judge she should not enforce the amendment. Even the environmentalists agree. And now fishermen are environmentalists, too, Carol. We are helping the fish to come back. So if Ignacio thinks he has to know the plant is working, Carol, you can know that Ignacio and Ezekiel will be able to bring you fish. Don’t worry about that.”

  Buddy said, “Thank you, Ma, for that instruction.”

  Garcia, still looking across at the car, said to Carol, “You tune?”

  Easy said, “Forget the car, Garcia.” He didn’t say it loud, because Garcia wasn’t sniggering, but enough about the damn car.

  Carol nodded at Garcia and said, “Once upon a time,” and both of them nodded.

  Then Carol gave Easy a cool-it tilt of the head. He took a breath and cooled it.

  Parks said, “So, Carol.”

  Parks was a smart guy and a guy who kept an eye out. He’d probably picked up on all of it: Easy saying what he hadn’t had to say to Garcia, and Carol’s tilt.

  But Parks was going somewhere else. He said, “Somebody has to ask it out loud, Carol. You’re an undertaker. You bury places. Can you run this place?”

  If somebody besides Parks had asked that, Easy might have said something, but Parks looked like he knew what he was doing, and Carol had given the cool-it tilt, and really she looked fine with the question.

  She said, “The fact is, I don’t think I can run it.”

  Carol said that and looked out over the harbor coming blue under the early sun. Everybody was quiet, including Easy, who was way out of his league here. Carol must have practiced at quiet. She turned, looked up at the brick and the stone and green copper roof trim toward Town Hall and the steeples. No argument it was a beat-up town, but nobody’d deny it was beautiful.

  Just when everybody was getting used to the quiet, Carol came back on.

  She said again, this time with muscle, “I don’t think I can run it.”

  Then she said, “I am running it.”

  That sank in, and she said, “We’ll have a company in a matter of days, and this plant will be up in a matter of weeks. For now, Ben, you get oriented inside, figure out who you need and clear that with Dave. We’ll have to clean and paint. Give some thought to that.”

  Had she worked that out with Parks? Easy didn’t think so. Maybe Parks had just wanted her to step up. But Easy would have bet Carol was waiting for the right chance to step up. Leaving him, a fisherman, feeling landlocked. He’d better be ready to step up himself.

  But what was really on Easy’s mind was how pretty Carol was and that her car was right there across the harbor by his boat, as if . . . he wasn’t sure as if what. He wanted to hold her first.

  Going to the Kitchens

  As everybody came out of the dim of the plant, somebody got Carol’s arm from behind to hold her back, and at first she thought it would be Easy. She smiled because she was happily worried that Easy was going to collect his kiss right now, for God sake.

  It was Anna Rose. “Some of us, especially our Wives of the Sea, talk to one another about the things you said last night, our history and our harbor. Others don’t want to talk; they want to forget and be done. It was difficult for all of us, everybody, having a stranger stand up and put her nose into other people’s families and how we live and who has died. But you said it like you were in church. Everybody heard that, and when they heard it, they were surprised. Me and the Wives of the Sea and also the others; you made us see our dead and remember like the first time. No one liked it, but it was what we needed.”

  When she’d finished, Anna Rose clamped her short arms around Carol and squeezed. Her head came to Carol’s chin. Carol was not used to hugs. It had only been her and her father in their house, and what hugging there was had been as awkward as it was rare. She was glad Anna Rose had said what she’d said, but Carol was a businessman in the middle of something, and Anna Rose did not give a quick hug, and Carol’s arms were trapped. The hug went on until finally Carol laid her head down on top of Anna Rose’s head.

  Anna Rose hugged a moment more, then pulled away and looked at Carol as if they had become people who had known each other forever. For some reason, it came to Carol that Baxter would doubt a hug if it ever happened. Baxter didn’t deal one on one with many Anna Roses, and if he did they weren’t going to think of hugging him. Carol decided that she’d liked her hug, and she put Baxter away.

  “Now,” Anna Rose said. “Business.” And she led Carol in a march to Annette’s car, where Annette had the detailed justifications and was handing out copies of a one-page summary. She mentioned to Carol again that the plant was using electricity she couldn’t account for, and Carol cared about anything on Annette’s mind, but the electric bills would have to wait.

  Out from behind the bulk of the plant, the sun came up on the old, idled cold-storage building, peeled and half repainted in industrial greens and blues and the fading black of abandoned signage.

  Carol took a copy of the summary and pretended to study it. It was brief and it looked doable. All Carol had to do was close. She didn’t care how Baxter closed; she wasn’t Baxter.

  The price on the old Elizabeth’s
Fish plant was next to nothing. Even Ben Garcia knew that.

  It was also a ton.

  Or was it?

  Was it a ton to Anna Rose?

  Was it really a ton to Elizabeth Island?

  Carol wanted to say, “We can do it.”

  She glanced at Easy as if he might have a suggestion. He was watching her, probably to see how she’d handle things.

  What she said, with calculated hesitance, was “We can go to the banks,” and she knew that if Baxter were here he would be grinning like the used car salesman he was. This was how he did it.

  She said, “Frankly, I doubt we can raise this much among ourselves and in town. But with what we can raise, and with the competitive pricing we can show because of our fresh fish business and the office rentals and the refurbished lines, we might be able to find a banker.” She spun it out in quasi-business vernacular to disguise the manipulation.

  She could all but hear Baxter whispering, “Yes.”

  She said, “This is a whole lot more than we’re likely to come close to raising. I wish we could, and you know better than I do, but Elizabeth’s not a big town or an especially wealthy town. We may find fewer investors than we hope. On the other hand, we might find more than one banker and muster some pushback on the rates. I’m willing to put in half of my net worth to start the ball rolling, and work at least a couple of years on subsistence salary with some performance options, but I don’t have deep enough pockets myself. I hate to do it, but it looks like banks are the only option.”

  She paused. She glanced at Easy. She hoped he would understand. After all, she’d just promised a lot of her own money. She took a breath to go on, and in her head, Baxter told her, “Don’t say another word.”