Stern Men

by Elizabeth Gilbert

“Kitty!” Mrs. Pommeroy exclaimed. “That’s nasty!”

  “Excuse me, Kitty, but I do so live here.”

  “For a few months a year, Ruth. You live here like a tourist, Ruth.”

  “I hardly think that’s my fault, Kitty.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “It isn’t Ruth’s fault.”

  “You think nothing is ever Ruth’s fault.”

  “I think I wandered into the wrong house,” Ruth said. “I think I wandered into the house of hate today.”

  “No, Ruth,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Don’t get upset. Kitty’s just teasing you.”

  “I’m not upset,” said Ruth, who was getting upset. “I think it’s funny; that’s all.”

  “I am not teasing anyone. You don’t know anything about this place anymore. You haven’t practically been here in four goddamn years. A lot changes around a place in four years, Ruth.”

  “Yeah, especially a place like this,” Ruth said. “Big changes, everywhere I look.”

  “Ruth didn’t want to go away,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Mr. Ellis sent her away to school. She didn’t have any choice, Kitty.”

  “Exactly,” Ruth said. “I was banished.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, and went over to nudge Ruth. “She was banished! They took her away from us.”

  “I wish a rich millionaire would banish me to some millionaire’s private school,” Kitty muttered.

  “No, you don’t, Kitty. Trust me.”

  “I wish a millionaire would have banished me to private school,” Gloria said, in a voice a little stronger than her sister had used.

  “OK, Gloria,” Ruth said. “You might wish that. But Kitty doesn’t wish that.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Kitty barked. “What? I’m too stupid for school?”

  “You would have been bored to death at that school. Gloria might have liked it, but you’d have hated it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Gloria asked. “That I wouldn’t have been bored? Why not, Ruth? Because I’m boring? Are you calling me boring, Ruth?”

  “Help,” Ruth said.

  Kitty was still muttering that she was plenty goddamn smart for any goddamn school, and Gloria was staring Ruth down.

  “Help me, Mrs. Pommeroy,” Ruth said, and Mrs. Pommeroy said, helpfully, “Ruth isn’t calling anyone dumb. She’s just saying that Gloria is a little bit smarter than Kitty.”

  “Good,” said Gloria. “That’s right.”

  “Oh, my God, save me,” Ruth said, and she ducked under the kitchen table as Kitty came at her from across the room. Kitty bent down and started whacking at Ruth’s head.

  “Ow,” Ruth said, but she was laughing. It was ridiculous. She’d only come over for breakfast! Mrs. Pommeroy and Gloria were laughing, too.

  “I’m not fucking stupid, Ruth!” Kitty slapped her again.

  “Ow.”

  “You’re the stupid one, Ruth, and you aren’t even from here anymore.”

  “Ow.”

  “Quit your bitching,” Kitty said. “You can’t take a slap to the head? I got five concussions in my life.” Kitty let up on Ruth for a moment to tick off her concussions on her fingers. “I fell out of a highchair. I fell off a bicycle. I fell in a quarry, and I got two concussions from Len. And I got blown up in a factory explosion. And I got eczema. So don’t tell me you can’t take a goddamn hit, girl!” She smacked Ruth again. Comically, now. Affectionately.

  “Ow,” Ruth repeated. “I’m a victim. Ow.”

  Gloria Pommeroy and Mrs. Pommeroy kept laughing. Kitty finally quit and said, “Someone at the door.”

  Mrs. Pommeroy went to answer the door. “It’s Mr. Cooley,” she said. “Good morning, Mr. Cooley.”

  A low drawl came through the room: “Ladies . . .”

  Ruth stayed under the table, her head cradled in her arms.

  “It’s Cal Cooley, everyone!” Mrs. Pommeroy called.

  “I’m looking for Ruth Thomas,” he said.

  Kitty Pommeroy lifted a corner of the sheet from the table and shouted, “Ta-da!” Ruth waggled her fingers at Cal in a childish wave.

  “There’s the young woman I’m looking for,” he said. “Hiding from me, as ever.”

  Ruth crawled out and stood up.

  “Hello, Cal. You found me.” She wasn’t upset to see him; she felt relaxed. It was as if Kitty had knocked her head clear.

  “You certainly seem busy, Miss Ruth.”

  “I actually am a little busy, Cal.”

  “It seems you forgot about our appointment. You were supposed to be waiting for me at your house. Maybe you were too busy to keep your appointment?”

  “I was delayed,” Ruth said. “I was helping my friend paint her kitchen.”

  Cal Cooley took a long look around the room, noting the dreadful green buoy paint, the sloppy sisters wrapped in garbage bags, the sheet hastily tossed on the kitchen table, the paint on Ruth’s shirt.

  “Old Cal Cooley hates to take you away from your work,” Cal Cooley drawled.

  Ruth grinned. “I hate to be taken away by old Cal Cooley.”

  “You’re up early, buster,” Kitty Pommeroy said, and punched Cal in the arm.

  “Cal,” Ruth said, “I believe you know Mrs. Kitty Pommeroy? I believe you two have met? Am I correct?”

  The sisters laughed. Before Kitty married Len Thomas—and for several years after—she and Cal Cooley had been lovers. This was a piece of information that Cal Cooley hilariously liked to imagine was top secret, but every last person on the island knew it. And everyone knew they were still occasional lovers, despite Kitty’s marriage. Everyone but Len Thomas, of course. People got a big laugh out of that.

  “Nice to see you, Kitty,” Cal said flatly.

  Kitty fell to her knees laughing. Gloria helped Kitty up. Kitty touched her mouth and then her hair.

  “I hate to take you away from your hen party, Ruth,” Cal said, and Kitty cackled fiercely. He winced.

  “I have to go now,” Ruth said.

  “Ruth!” Mrs. Pommeroy exclaimed.

  “I’m being banished again.”

  “She’s a victim!” Kitty shouted. “You watch yourself with that one, Ruth. He’s a rooster, and he’ll always be a rooster. Keep your legs crossed.” Even Gloria laughed at this, but Mrs. Pommeroy did not. She looked at Ruth Thomas—concerned.

  Ruth hugged all three sisters. When she got to Mrs. Pommeroy, she gave her a long hug and whispered into her ear, “They’re making me visit my mother.”

  Mrs. Pommeroy sighed. Held Ruth close. Whispered in her ear, “Bring her back here with you, Ruth. Bring her back here, where she belongs.”

  Cal Cooley often liked to affect a tired voice around Ruth Thomas. He liked to pretend that she made him weary. He often sighed, shook his head, as though Ruth could not begin to appreciate the suffering she caused him. And so, as they walked to his truck from Mrs. Pommeroy’s house, he sighed and shook his head and said, as though defeated by exhaustion, “Why must you always hide from me, Ruth?”

  “I wasn’t hiding from you, Cal.”

  “No?”

  “I was just evading you. Hiding from you is futile.”

  “You always blame me, Ruth,” Cal Cooley lamented. “Stop smiling, Ruth. I’m serious. You always have blamed me.”

  He opened the door of the truck and paused. “You don’t have any luggage?” he asked.

  She shook her head and got into the truck.

  Cal said, with dramatic fatigue, “If you bring no clothes to Miss Vera’s house, Miss Vera will have to buy you new clothes.”

  When Ruth did not answer, he said, “You know that, don’t you? If this is a protest, it will backfire in your pretty face. You inevitably make things harder for yourself than you have to.”

  “Cal,” Ruth whispered conspiratorially, and leaned toward him in the cab of the truck. “I don’t like to bring luggage when I go to Concord. I don’t like anyone at the Ellis mansion to thin
k I’ll be staying.”

  “Is that your trick?”

  “That’s my trick.”

  They drove toward the wharf, where Cal parked the truck. He said to Ruth, “You look very beautiful today.”

  Now it was Ruth who sighed dramatically.

  “You eat and eat,” Cal continued, “and you never get heavier. That’s marvelous. I always wonder when your big appetite’s going to catch up to you and you’ll balloon on us. I think it’s your destiny.”

  She sighed again. “You make me so goddamn tired, Cal.”

  “Well, you make me goddamn tired, too, sweetheart.”

  They got out of the truck, and Ruth looked down the wharf and across the cove, but the Ellises’ boat, the Stonecutter, was not there. This was a surprise. She knew the routine. Cal Cooley had been ferrying Ruth around for years, to school, to her mother. They always left Fort Niles in the Stonecutter, courtesy of Mr. Lanford Ellis. But this morning Ruth saw only the old lobster boats, bobbing. And a strange sight: there was the New Hope. The mission boat sat long and clean on the water, her engine idling.

  “What’s the New Hope doing here?”

  “Pastor Wishnell is giving us a ride to Rockland,” Cal Cooley said.

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Ellis doesn’t want the Stonecutter used for short trips anymore. And he and Pastor Wishnell are good friends. It’s a favor.”

  Ruth had never been on the New Hope, though she’d seen it for years, cruising. It was the finest boat in the area, as fine as Lanford Ellis’s yacht. The boat was Pastor Toby Wishnell’s pride. He may have forsworn the great fishing legacy of the Wishnell family in the name of God, but he had kept his eye for a beautiful boat. He’d restored the New Hope to a forty-foot glass-and-brass enchantress, and even the men on Fort Niles Island, all of whom loathed Toby Wishnell, had to admit that the New Hope was a looker. Although they certainly hated to see her show up in their harbor.

  They didn’t see her much, though. Pastor Toby Wishnell was rarely around. He sailed the coast from Casco to Nova Scotia, ministering to every island along the way. He was nearly always at sea. And, though he was based directly across the channel on Courne Haven Island, he did not often visit Fort Niles. He came for funerals and for weddings, of course. He came for the occasional baptism, although most Fort Niles citizens skipped that particular procedure to avoid asking for him. He came to Fort Niles only when he was invited, and that was seldom.

  So Ruth was indeed surprised to see his boat.

  On that morning, a young man was standing at the end of the Fort Niles dock, waiting for them. Cal Cooley and Ruth Thomas walked toward him, and Cal shook the boy’s hand. “Good morning, Owney.”

  The young man did not answer but climbed down the wharf ladder to a neat little white rowboat. Cal Cooley and Ruth Thomas climbed down after him, and the rowboat rocked delicately under their weight. The young man untied his line, seated himself in the stern, and rowed out to the New Hope. He was big—maybe twenty years old, with a large, squarish head. He had a thick square body, with hips as wide as his shoulders. He wore oilskins, like a lobsterman, and had on fisherman’s tall rubber boots. Though he was dressed like a lobsterman, his oilskins were clean and his boots did not smell of bait. His hands on the oars were square and thick like a fisherman’s hands, yet they were clean. He had no cuts or knobs or scars. He was in a fisherman’s costume, and he had a fisherman’s body, but he was obviously not a fisherman. When he pulled the oars, Ruth saw his huge forearms, which bulged like turkey legs and were covered with blond hairs scattered as light as ash. He had a homemade crew cut and yellow hair, a color never seen on Fort Niles Island. Swedish hair. Light blue eyes.

  “What’s your name again?” Ruth asked the boy. “Owen?”

  “Owney,” Cal Cooley answered. “His name is Owney Wishnell. He’s the pastor’s nephew.”

  “Owney?” Ruth said. “Owney, is it? Really? Hello there, Owney.”

  Owney looked at Ruth but did not greet her. He rowed quietly all the way out to the New Hope. They climbed a ladder, and Owney hoisted the rowboat up behind him and stowed it on deck. This was the cleanest boat Ruth had ever seen. She and Cal Cooley walked back to the cabin, and there was Pastor Toby Wishnell, eating a sandwich.

  “Owney,” Pastor Wishnell said, “let’s get moving.”

  Owney hauled up the anchor and set the boat in motion. He sailed them out of the harbor, and they all watched him, although he did not seem aware of them. He sailed out of the shallows around Fort Niles and passed buoys that rocked on the waves with warning bells. He passed close to Ruth’s father’s lobster boat. It was early in the morning still, but Stan Thomas had been out for three hours. Ruth, leaning over the rail, saw her father hook a trap buoy with his long wooden gaff. She saw Robin Pommeroy in the stern, cleaning out a trap, tossing short lobsters and crabs back into the sea with a flick of his wrist. Fog circled them like a spook. Ruth did not call out. Robin Pommeroy stopped his work for a moment and looked up at the New Hope. It clearly gave him a shock to see Ruth. He stood for a moment, with his mouth hanging open, staring up at her. Ruth’s father did not look up at all. He was not interested in seeing the New Hope with his daughter aboard.

  Farther out, they passed Angus Addams, fishing by himself. He did not look up, either. He kept his head down, pushing rotting herring into bait bags, furtively, as if he were stuffing loot into a sack during a bank robbery.

  When Owney Wishnell was fully on track and heading on the open sea toward Rockland, Pastor Toby Wishnell finally addressed Cal Cooley and Ruth Thomas. He regarded Ruth silently. He said to Cal, “You were late.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I said six o’clock.”

  “Ruth wasn’t ready at six o’clock.”

  “We were to leave at six in order to be in Rockland by early afternoon, Mr. Cooley. I explained that to you, didn’t I?”

  “It was the young lady’s fault.”

  Ruth listened to the conversation with some pleasure. Cal Cooley was usually such an arrogant prick; it was engaging to see him defer to the minister. She’d never seen Cal defer to anyone. She wondered whether Toby Wishnell was really going to chew Cal a new asshole. She would very much like to watch that.

  But Toby Wishnell was finished with Cal. He turned to speak to his nephew, and Cal Cooley glanced at Ruth. She raised an eyebrow.

  “It was your fault,” he said.

  “You’re a brave man, Cal.”

  He scowled. Ruth turned her attention to Pastor Wishnell. He was still an exceedingly handsome man, now in his mid-forties. He had probably spent as much time at sea as any Fort Niles or Courne Haven fisherman, but he did not look like any of the fishermen Ruth had known. There was a fineness about him that matched the fineness of his boat: beautiful lines, an economy of detail, a polish, a finish. His blond hair was thin and straight, and he wore it parted on the side and brushed smooth. He had a narrow nose and pale blue eyes. He wore small, wire-framed glasses. Pastor Toby Wishnell had the look of an elite British officer: privileged, cool, brilliant.

  They sailed for a long time without any further conversation. They left in the worst kind of fog, the cold fog that sits on the body like damp towels, hurtful to lungs, knuckles, and knees. Birds don’t sing in the fog, so there were no gulls screaming, and it was a quiet ride. As they sailed farther away from the island, the fog diminished and then vanished, and the day turned clear. But it was, nonetheless, an odd day. The sky was blue, the wind was slight, but the sea was a churning mass—huge round swells, rough and constant. This sometimes happens when there’s a storm much farther out at sea. The sea gets the aftermath of the violence, but there’s no sign in the sky of the storm. It’s as though the sea and the sky are not on terms of communication. They take no notice of each other, as if they’ve never been introduced. Sailors call this a “ground sea.” It’s disorienting to be on so rough an ocean under a picnic-day blue sky. Ruth stood against the rail and watched the water seethe and fume.<
br />
  “You don’t mind the rough sea?” Pastor Toby Wishnell asked Ruth.

  “I don’t get seasick.”

  “You’re a lucky girl.”

  “I don’t think we’re lucky today,” Cal Cooley drawled. “Fishermen say it’s bad luck to have women or clergy on a boat. And we got both.”

  The pastor smiled wanly. “Never begin a trip on a Friday,” he recited. “Never go on a ship that had an unlucky launch. Never go on a boat if her name has been changed. Never paint anything on a boat blue. Never whistle on a boat, or you’ll whistle up a wind. Never bring women or clergy aboard. Never disturb a bird’s nest on a boat. Never say the number thirteen on a boat. Never use the word pig.”

  “Pig?” Ruth said. “I never heard that one.”

  “Well, it’s been said twice now,” Cal Cooley said. “Pig, pig, pig. We’ve got clergy; we’ve got women; we’ve got people shouting pig. So now we are doomed. Thank you to all who participated.”

  “Cal Cooley is such an old salt,” Ruth said to Pastor Wishnell. “Being from Missourah and all, he’s just steeped in the lore of the sea.”

  “I am an old salt, Ruth.”

  “Actually, Cal, I believe you’re a farm boy,” Ruth corrected. “I believe you are a cracker.”

  “Just because I was born in Missourah doesn’t mean I can’t be an island man at heart.”

  “I don’t think the other island men would necessarily agree, Cal.”

  Cal shrugged. “A man can’t help where he’s born. A cat can have kittens in the oven, but that don’t make ’em biscuits.”

  Ruth laughed, although Cal Cooley did not. Pastor Wishnell was looking closely at Ruth.

  “Ruth?” he said. “Is that your name? Ruth Thomas?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ruth said, and stopped laughing. She coughed into her fist.

  “You have a familiar face, Ruth.”

  “If I look familiar, that’s only because I look exactly like everyone else on Fort Niles. We all look alike, sir. You know what they say about us—we’re too poor to buy new faces, so we share the same one. Ha.”

  “Ruth is much prettier than anyone else on Fort Niles,” Cal contributed. “Much darker. Look at those pretty dark eyes. That’s the Italian in her. That’s from her Eye-talian grandpappy.”