Ms. Anna

by Bill Lockwood

  “I know, I know,” her father said. “But your mother and I named you after the patron saint of sailors. You belong on the boat. You have been called to pilot us through the seas.”

  Anna sighed. “Daddy, my T-shirt may say RUM, but I studied all kinds of serious stuff in that college you sent me to. From the French tradition, maybe, but not so much here in the Caribbean, Saint Anne is not the patron saint of sailors.”

  Captain Bob lifted his hands in surrender. “I never did really learn all the stuff the nuns were teaching us about religion…”

  Captain Jim returned to the table with their snacks and fresh beers. “Buen provencho.” He smiled.

  Both the men took a long drink, and they dug right into the snacks. Anna sipped her coffee and ate more delicately than the men. Then she spoke up. “I’ve been looking at the figures again. You could have a pilot full time, if we fished for tuna every day. We just need a good contract from one of the plants.”

  “Times are bad,” her father said. “The locals get hired first. It’s that way everywhere.”

  “What about your friend Señor Cofresí’s plant?” Anna asked. “We’re mainlanders, but we’ve been here for some years. Besides hiring us for special jobs from time to time, he comes in here a lot. He brings people from the mainland here all the time, and he plays poker with you two guys a couple times a month.”

  Captain Jim laughed. “We like to take those stupid mainlanders for all we can.”

  Captain Bob remained serious. “Yes, he does that. And he tells me he’s doing all he can with the contracts. That’s why he hires us for the special trips. That poor man’s got problems. Some mainlanders bought his plant a couple months ago. He’s been blaming the problem with the contracts and the bad times we’re having on them.”

  “And you trust him on that?” Anna asked.

  Captain Bob shrugged. “A man I play cards with is my friend. Besides, a stupid mainlander is a good source of a little extra pocket money for even Señor Cofresí, too.”

  Anna sighed impatiently. “Daddy, something fishy is going on with that plant besides its manager meeting secretly with Cubans on the high seas…”

  Her father held up a hand warning her not to say that so others could hear.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on his fleet,” Anna continued. “Sometimes five boats go out and only four come back in. I think someone else is meeting someone at night out on the high seas, as well.”

  Her father made a face that said he discounted the idea. “No one in this town can navigate in the dark as well as you.”

  “Other people can use instruments.” Anna laughed.

  “But your saints and gods?” her father protested.

  “And other people can channel the saints and gods, too.”

  Captain Jim put down his beer and spoke up. “What difference does it make? All we can do is know what’s going on with our own boat. We have no way of knowing what’s going on with the rest of them.”

  “No, we don’t,” Anna agreed. “Not easily, anyway, but there are ways to look into these kinds of things.”

  “Oh, right.” Her father laughed. “Now you’re going to tell me you’re a detective, too.”

  “You know what you need,” Captain Jim said. “You just need a good man of means to marry you and take you away from this smelly old harbor town. Weren’t you looking for one in that college you went to?”

  Anna ignored the comment. “I’ve done some research on the new owners,” she said.

  Captain Jim ignored her. “Señor Cofresí brings some important people here to drink with him sometimes. You should ask him to introduce you to some of them.”

  Anna continued with her own conversation. “They’re an old family who’ve been in the lobster business, and whaling before that, for many years.”

  “Lobstermen, holy shit.” Her father was surprised. “I had lobster in New York once. They don’t spice seafood the way we do here in the Caribbean. It’s really bland. Give me some sopa de pescado any day.”

  “Ah.” Captain Jim smiled. “Good Puerto Rican fish stew. Maybe, Anna, you’ll make that for dinner tonight…”

  “They’re expanding?” Captain Bob asked. “Lobsters are in trouble, so they’re going into tuna too?”

  “But tuna’s not doing all that well either,” Captain Jim put in. “Though I suppose tuna may be the new lobster of the less fortunate.”

  “Right. Maybe they know something about the fishing industry in general that we don’t,” Anna said.

  “Ah, now I see.” Her father said. “If you did have that college-level job you want, then maybe you’d know all about industry trends and important things.”

  “I studied some of that stuff,” Anna countered. “I can research that on my own, but if I were working in the office in that plant, I’m sure I’d know all about what’s going on.”

  Captain Jim set his beer down again. “Have you ever asked Señor Cofresí for a job?”

  “Yes,” Anna answered. “I even sent him my resume.”

  “And what’d he say?” her father asked.

  “He’s kind of avoided talking to me about it ever since.”

  “Ah, these Latinos,” her father complained. “They never like to give you a bad or sometimes even a straight answer.” Then he glanced around quickly, fearing that one of the locals had heard him.

  “No,” Anna disagreed. “Señor Cofresí may do that, but they’re not all like that. Anyway, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands…”

  The two captains waited to hear what she would say.

  “I looked up the lobster company in the university library. I got the address of their main office and the name of their CEO. I made it kind of cryptic, but I wrote a letter to the CEO, in the good business language I learned, of course, and I told him there’s something fishy going on in that new plant of theirs.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Captain Jim said, “La Señorita es muy loco. Maybe there’s more rum than we know of in that strong coffee she drinks.”

  “You got that right,” her father agreed. “Why in the world would you do a thing like that?”

  Anna laughed. “Because maybe when they find out what’s going on they’ll fire Señor Cofresí and hire me to replace him.”

  “Muy loco, indeed.” Captain Jim nodded.

  Captain Bob was more serious. “You are right. It’s obvious Señor Cofresí is dealing illegally with the Cubans, but how do we know the new owners aren’t involved in that too? And what’ll happen to you and the Ms. Anna if they tell Señor Cofresí you contacted them?”

  “I asked for anonymity,” Anna said. “That’s the way these things are done.”

  “That’s one of them college words,” Captain Jim put in. “I think it means she asked them not to tell Señor Cofresí who ratted on him.”

  “Exactly,” Anna confirmed.

  “Okay,” her father conceded the point. “But these new owners are lobstermen. Even if they fire him, why wouldn’t they replace Señor Cofresí with one of their own? Why wouldn’t they send some lobster-catching mainlander down here instead?”

  “Then some new mainlander may just give me a job there, too.” Anna smiled.

  Captain Jim laughed heartily. “Sounds like just the kind of guy we should get into a good card game.”

  Chapter 2

  Some change in the boring drone of the plane’s engines woke Max. He glanced at the stranger in the aisle seat next to him. It was a young woman who had hardly spoken to him the entire flight. Her eyes were focused intently on the screen of the laptop she had set up on the fold-down tray in front of her. Her fingers flew over the keys. Max could read enough to understand that it was some kind of report on the holding qualities of various glues on beer bottles.

  Max looked around and out the window next to him. There was an expanse of blue water below. “Ah, starting our descent for landing,” Max said to the woman. “Looks like we’re doing our approach from the ocean side.” />
  The woman’s fingers did not pause in their flight over the computer keys. She appeared younger than Max, who was almost forty. He fidgeted in his seat. Coach class airplane seats were no longer big enough for him to be really comfortable on a flight of any length.

  “Either that, or we’re completely lost, and we’re going down at sea,” Max added.

  She still didn’t respond, but he went on anyway. “I don’t know about these airplane pilots, but, you know, they say the old sailors in Micronesia can find their way from island to island just by the feel of the currents, even if the land they are headed for is over the horizon. I’ve met a lot of great lobster boat captains, been on some other fishing boats, too, but never met one who could pull off a trick like that.”

  The fingers stopped, and the woman finally looked at him. “If you go out to sea often enough, I’m sure you’ll meet one.”

  “You really think so?” Max asked.

  “In fact, I know you’ll be sailing in the near future with a boat pilot who can do just what you’re talking about.”

  “You do?” Max asked. “Are you psychic?”

  “I think so. I’m always right about such things.” She glanced at the time at the edge of her computer screen. “But I can’t explain all that to you now.” She resumed her typing. “I go right from the plane to a meeting at a factory. I have to get this report done.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Max said. “I’m just coming here to see my relatives for Thanksgiving, even though I hate this yearly ordeal. I don’t have any plans to go out on a boat.”

  The captain of their plane spoke over the intercom, announcing their imminent landing in Portland, Maine.

  “Well, he does know where we are,” Max said. “They do it with instruments, up here in the air.”

  The woman’s fingers stopped again. “The pilot of your boat will use instruments as well. She will guide you with instruments and by her feel of the currents, the wind, and with the help of the gods of the sea.”

  “She?” Max said. “I was thinking that maybe one of my cousins had bought himself a lobster boat, but…” He let his voice trail off. The fingers were flying over the keys again.

  The plane landed, and they were both occupied with gathering their things. Max followed her into the terminal. She suddenly turned back to him. “It won’t be a lobster boat,” she said. “You will think you are moving a dead man’s bones. The dead are very present to the people where you will go.”

  “How do you know?” Max demanded. “Who’s gonna die? How do you know these things?”

  She turned away and disappeared into the holiday crowd.

  ****

  “So you’ve come home for Thanksgiving?” the cab driver asked as he followed the familiar route to Prout’s Neck, an area of expensive houses south of Portland. It was a bright, crisp November day with blue sky and puffy clouds.

  “How’d you know that?” Max asked from the back seat.

  The cabby shrugged. “Pretty much everybody in the airport’s doing the same,” he said.

  “Sorry, I’m just a little jumpy about predictions an’ shit,” Max said. “Woman next to me on the plane said I was going to be sailing on a boat with a woman pilot who can find her way by the feel of the waves.”

  “Not a trait I’d care about in a woman,” the cabby said.

  “Freaked me out a little,” Max said. “Flying’s never been my thing. And I have flown quite a bit in my time. I teach college now, but I’ve done a lot of things. Never drove a cab, but I’ve been in a rock band, worked as a cook and bartender. I even spent a summer working on a lobster boat when I was in school.”

  “Planes are good for my business,” the cabby said. “That’s all I care.”

  “I used to always bring my white bean dip to these holiday gatherings,” Max explained. “Now they’re so funny about taking things on the plane. S’pose they think the beans might explode. I used to bring it ’cause it fit the family so well. Beans and old Republicans are all full of gas.”

  The cabby looked uncertain whether he should laugh or just ignore his fare.

  Max smiled. “I’m a die-hard Democrat. They let me out of the home once a year for this.”

  The cabby looked even more uncertain.

  Max laughed. “I’m just kidding, although I enjoy the thought that they would all have to try real hard to keep from farting.”

  The cabby laughed at that.

  “Beans are a wonderful fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot.” Max laughed again. “That’s an old nursery rhyme, I think…or maybe not. They never seem to get the joke, anyway.”

  The cabby remained silent.

  “That’s the trouble,” Max continued. “Republicans just have no imagination. Of course, they are pretty successful financially, at least this family is. Way back, our ancestors got rich stripping the land of its timber for the shipyards in Portland and Bath. Then they built and sailed whaling ships in the 1800s. That dried up, and now they’re in lobster and high-end seafood for the big restaurants all over New England. My damn cousins are all so proud of it, but I’m not. Now I hear they’ve bought a tuna canning plant. I can’t believe they’ve gone into the food of the common man.”

  “So you’re the only Democrat?” the cabby asked.

  “That’s the simple way of looking at it,” Max nodded. “I’m the black sheep, as they say. They only get in touch with me when they need something. I’ve helped them on occasion. They think I once worked for the CIA, and my skills at checking things out are useful to them.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Of course I can’t tell you, or them, for that matter, if I ever really worked for the CIA. The mystery of it all works just fine for me.”

  Again the cabby seemed uncertain, and he didn’t reply.

  Max realized how much fall had set in. The big houses they were passing on the Neck were starkly visible because so many of the leaves had fallen from the trees that surrounded them. He watched as they neared the yacht club. The full expanse of water became visible. Max had always loved the coast of Maine. It was the place he most thought of as home.

  They rounded a bend and stopped in front of a driveway guarded by a gate. Beyond the gate was a large house sitting near a rocky cliff that protected it from the ocean. The cabby slowly moved over to a post that had a key pad and an intercom at car-window level. “I don’t suppose they let you know the code?” he said.

  “You got that right,” Max answered. “I got ’em back this year, though. Credit cards are wonderful things. I called a deli in Portland and had them deliver a shitload of white bean dip this morning. The damn airlines aren’t going to stop me.”

  “Shall I ring the bell?” the cabby asked.

  “Sure,” Max said. “Tell ’em Cousin Max is here, an’ he can’t wait to see if all you bastards are turning blue tryin’ not to fart.”

  A voice answered the ring. “Cousin Max is here,” is all the cabby said. The gate immediately drew aside.

  Uncle Henry and Aunt Claudia, the host and hostess of the affair, met him at the big front door.

  “Max, thank you so much for sending that bean dip,” Aunt Claudia said. “I put it out, and half of it’s eaten already.”

  “Excellent,” Max said.

  “You must come more often,” Aunt Claudia said. “Big holidays seem to be the only time we see you any more.”

  Max chose not to comment on what she had said. He looked past them into the room beyond. The men were dressed in coats and ties and the women in pantsuits or good dresses. It wasn’t his scene. Fine classical music was playing on a stereo. The windows at the far end of the big room looked out on the water, and the walls around were hung with portraits of severe-looking men whose dress was that of the early to mid 1800s. One would think the family had hung portraits of ancestors in the room, but these were all paintings of the whaling captains who had insured the family its fortune.

  “Uncle Henry,” Max said, “you haven’t bought a lobste
r boat, have you? You don’t have one with a female pilot?”

  “Good heavens, no.” Uncle Henry laughed. “Where would you get such an idea?”

  “Heard someone talking about going on a boat ride,” Max said. “Must be it doesn’t involve you.”

  “Heard someone talking?” Aunt Claudia asked. “You just got here. Who did you hear?”

  Max ignored her again. Uncle Henry was talking to him at the same time. “This family hasn’t owned any boats since whaling days. We buy our seafood from the fishermen. The people who own the boats are all contractors.”

  The host and hostess were distracted when the front door opened again and another relative arrived.

  “Your Uncle Nate’s at the bar,” Uncle Henry said before turning away from Max. “Let him fix a drink for you.”

  Max wandered toward the bar that had been set up across the room, but his mind was still focused on the prediction of the woman on the plane. So, they let Uncle Nate out of the home for the holidays again. Maybe he’s the one who’s gonna die.

  Uncle Nate was alive and doing well behind the bar. He poured Max a red wine, a twinkle in his eye.

  After a bit of idle conversation about the weather and the ocean outside, Max moved away with his glass of wine. He gravitated toward a group of men. They were his cousins. All of them were pretty much his own age. The nubile younger women were all off limits to him, and the older women in the family had almost always treated him with disdain. Still, the things the younger men talked about Max often didn’t understand. He spotted his dish of white bean dip surrounded with crackers on his way across the room. It was about half gone. Max smiled. That was encouraging.

  Three of the cousins seemed engaged in deep conversation with the youngest of the uncles, Uncle Fred. The uncle looked up as Max approached. “Ah, Max,” Uncle Fred said. “Just the man we were hoping to see.”