Stern Men

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “Come on, Mrs. Pommeroy. All your sons are good.”

  “You’re sweet, Ruth.”

  “Except Chester, of course. He’s no good.”

  “In their way, they’re good enough. But not good enough for a bright girl like you. I’ll bet I could get it right, you know, if I had another go at it.” Mrs. Pommeroy’s eyes teared up again. “Now, what a thing for me to say, a woman with seven kids.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “Besides, I can’t expect you to wait around for a baby to grow up, can I? Listen to me.”

  “I am listening.”

  “I’m talking crazy now.”

  “A little crazy,” Ruth admitted.

  “Oh, things don’t always work out, I guess.”

  “Not always. I think they must work out sometimes.”

  “I guess. Don’t you think you should go live with your mother, Ruth?”

  “No.”

  “There’s nothing out here for you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Truth is, I like having you around, but that’s not fair. There’s nothing here for you. It’s like a prison. It’s your little San Quentin. I always thought, ‘Oh, Ruth will marry Webster,’ and I always thought, ‘Oh, Webster will take over his dad’s lobster boat.’ I thought I had it all figured out. But there’s no boat.”

  And there’s barely a Webster, Ruth thought.

  “Don’t you ever think you should live out there?” Mrs. Pommeroy stretched out her arm and pointed. She had clearly intended to point west, toward the coast and the country that lay beyond it, but she was pointing in the dead-wrong direction. She was pointing toward the open sea. Ruth knew what she was trying to say, though. Mrs. Pommeroy, famously, did not have a great sense of direction.

  “I don’t need to marry one of your sons to stay here with you, you know,” Ruth said.

  “Oh, Ruth.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t tell me I should go. I get that enough from my mom and Lanford Ellis. I belong on this island as much as anyone. Forget about my mother.”

  “Oh, Ruth. Don’t say that.”

  “All right, I don’t mean forget about her. But it doesn’t matter where she lives or who she lives with. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll stay here with you; I’ll go where you go.” Ruth was smiling as she said this, and nudging Mrs. Pommeroy the way Mrs. Pommeroy often nudged her. A teasing little poke, a loving one.

  “But I’m not going anywhere,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

  “Fine. Me neither. It’s decided. I’m not budging. This is where I stay from now on. No more trips to Concord. No more bullshit about college.”

  “You can’t make a promise like that.”

  “I can do whatever I want. I can make even bigger promises.”

  “Lanford Ellis would kill you if he heard you talking like that.”

  “Hell with it. The hell with them. From now on, whatever Lanford Ellis says to do, I do the opposite. Fuck the Ellises. Watch me! Watch me, world! Look out, baby!”

  “But why do you want to spend your life on this crappy island? These aren’t your people out here, Ruth.”

  “Sure they are. Yours and mine. If they’re your people, they’re my people!”

  “Listen to you!”

  “I’m feeling pretty grand today. I can make big promises today.”

  “I guess so!”

  “You don’t think I mean any of it.”

  “I think you say the sweetest things. And I think, in the end, you’ll do whatever you want.”

  They sat out there on the porch couch for another hour or so. Opal wandered out a few more times in a bored and aimless way with Eddie, and Mrs. Pommeroy and Ruth took turns heaving him onto their laps and trying to bounce him around without hurting themselves. The last time Opal left, she didn’t go into the house; she wandered down toward the harbor, to go “downstreet to the store,” she said. Her sandals flip-flopped against her soles, and her big baby smacked his lips as he sat, heavy, on her right hip. Mrs. Pommeroy and Ruth watched the mother and baby descend the hill.

  “Do you think I look old, Ruth?”

  “You look like a millions bucks. You’ll always be the prettiest woman out here.”

  “Look at this,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, and she lifted her chin. “My throat’s all droopy.”

  “It is not.”

  “It is, Ruth.” Mrs. Pommeroy tugged at the loose flesh under her chin. “Isn’t that horrible, how it hangs there? I look like a pelican.”

  “You do not look like a pelican.”

  “I look like a pelican. I could carry a whole salmon in here, like a ratty old pelican.”

  “You look like a very young pelican,” Ruth said.

  “Oh, that’s better, Ruth. Thank you very much.” Mrs. Pommeroy stroked her neck, and asked, “What were you thinking when you were alone with Owney Wishnell?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. Tell me.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell.”

  “Hmm,” said Mrs. Pommeroy. “I wonder.” She pinched the skin on the back of her hand. “Look how dry and saggy I am. If I could change anything about myself, I’d try to get my old skin back. I had beautiful skin when I was your age.”

  “Everyone has beautiful skin when they’re my age.”

  “What would you change about your appearance if you could, Ruth?”

  Without hesitating, Ruth replied, “I wish I was taller. I wish I had smaller nipples. And I wish I could sing.”

  Mrs. Pommeroy laughed. “Who said your nipples were too big?”

  “Nobody. Come on, Mrs. Pommeroy. Nobody’s ever seen them but me.”

  “Did you show them to Owney Wishnell?”

  “No,” Ruth said. “But I’d like to.”

  “You should, then.”

  That little exchange took both of them by surprise; they’d shocked each other. The idea lingered on the porch for a long, long time. Ruth’s face burned. Mrs. Pommeroy was quiet. She seemed to be thinking very carefully about Ruth’s comment. “OK,” she said at last, “I guess you want him.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He’s weird. He hardly ever talks—”

  “No, you want him. He’s the one you want. I know about these things, Ruth. So we’ll have to get him for you. We’ll figure it out somehow.”

  “Nobody has to figure anything out.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Ruth. Good. I’m happy that you want someone. That’s appropriate for a girl your age.”

  “I’m not ready for anything stupid like that,” Ruth said.

  “Well, you’d better get ready.”

  Ruth didn’t know what to say to that. Mrs. Pommeroy swung her legs up on the couch and put her bare feet on Ruth’s lap. “Feet on you, Ruth,” she said, and she sounded deeply sad.

  “Feet on me,” Ruth said, and felt a sudden and sharp awkwardness about her admission. She felt guilty about everything she’d said: guilty about her frank sexual interest in a Wishnell, guilty about leaving her mother, guilty about her weird promise never to leave Fort Niles, guilty about confessing that she’d never in a million years marry one of Mrs. Pommeroy’s sons. God, it was true, though! Mrs. Pommeroy could have a son every year for the rest of her life, and Ruth would never marry one of them. Poor Mrs. Pommeroy!

  “I love you, you know,” she said to Mrs. Pommeroy. “You’re my favorite person.”

  “Feet on you, Ruth,” Mrs. Pommeroy said quietly, by way of reply.

  Later that afternoon, Ruth left Mrs. Pommeroy and wandered over to the Addams house to see what the Senator was up to. She didn’t feel like going home yet. She didn’t feel like talking to her father when she was blue, so she thought she’d talk to the Senator instead. Maybe he’d show her some old photographs of shipwreck survivors and cheer her up. But when she reached the Addams house, she found only Angus. He was trying to thread a length of pipe, and he was in an appalling mood. He told her the Senator was down at Potter Beach again with that skinny goddamn n
itwit Webster Pommeroy, looking for a goddamn elephant’s tusk.

  “No,” Ruth said, “they already found the elephant’s tusk.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Ruthie, they’re looking for the goddamn other tusk.” He said it as if he was mad at her for some reason.

  “Jeez,” she said. “Sorry.”

  When she got down to Potter Beach, she found the Senator pacing unhappily on the rocky sand, with Cookie close at his heels.

  “I don’t know what to do with Webster, Ruth,” the Senator said. “I can’t talk him out of it.”

  Webster Pommeroy was far out in the mudflats, scrambling around awkwardly, looking unsettled and panicky. Ruth might not have recognized him. He looked like a kid floundering around out there, a stupid little kid in big trouble.

  “He won’t quit,” the Senator said. “He’s been like this all week. It was pissing rain two days ago, and he wouldn’t come in. I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself. He cut his hand yesterday on a tin can, digging around out there. It wasn’t even an old tin can. Tore his thumb right open. He won’t let me look at it.”

  “What happens if you leave?”

  “I’m not leaving him out there, Ruth. He’d stay out there all night. He says he wants to find the other tusk, to replace the one Mr. Ellis took.”

  “So go up to Ellis House and demand that tusk back, Senator. Tell those fuckers you need it.”

  “I can’t do that, Ruth. Maybe Mr. Ellis is holding on to the tusk while he decides about the museum. Maybe he’s having it appraised or something.”

  “Mr. Ellis probably never even saw the thing. How do you know that Cal Cooley didn’t keep it?”

  They watched Webster flail around some more.

  The Senator said, quietly, “Maybe you could go up to Ellis House and ask about it?”

  “I’m not going up there,” Ruth said. “I’m never going up there ever again.”

  “Why’d you come down here today, Ruth?” the Senator asked, after a painful silence. “Do you need something?”

  “No, I just wanted to say hello.”

  “Well, hello, Ruthie.” He wasn’t looking at her; he was watching Webster with an expression of intense concern.

  “Hello to you. This isn’t a good time for you, is it?” asked Ruth.

  “Oh, I’m fine. How’s your mother, Ruth? How was your trip to Concord?”

  “She’s doing OK, I guess.”

  “Did you send her my regards?”

  “I think I did. You could write her a letter if you really wanted to make her day.”

  “That’s a fine idea, a fine idea. Is she as pretty as ever?”

  “I don’t know how pretty she ever was, but she looks fine. I think she’s lonely there, though. The Ellises keep telling her they want me to go to college; they’d pay for it.”

  “Mr. Ellis said that?”

  “Not to me. But my mom talks about it, and Miss Vera, and even Cal Cooley. It’s coming, Senator. Mr. Ellis will be making an announcement about it soon, I bet.”

  “Well, that sounds like a pretty good offer.”

  “If it came from anyone else, it would be a great offer.”

  “Stubborn, stubborn.”

  The Senator paced the length of the beach. Ruth followed him, and Cookie followed Ruth. The Senator was hugely distracted.

  “Am I bothering you?” Ruth asked.

  “No,” the Senator said. “No, no. But you can stay. You can stay here and watch.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing,” Ruth said. But she couldn’t stand watching Webster beating around in the mud so painfully. And she didn’t want to follow the Senator around if all he was going to do was pace up and down the beach, wringing his hands. “I was heading home anyway.”

  So she headed home. She was out of ideas, and there was nobody else on Fort Niles she wanted to talk to. There was nothing on Fort Niles she wanted to do. She might as well check in with her father, she decided. She might as well make some dinner.

  9

  If tossed into the water back or head first, the animal, unless exhausted, immediately rights itself, and, with one or two vigorous flexations of the tail, shoots off obliquely toward the bottom, as if sliding down an inclined plane.

  —The American Lobster: A Study of Its Habits and Development Francis Hobart Herrick, Ph.D. 1895

  THE SECOND Courne Haven-Fort Niles lobster war took place between 1928 and 1930. It was a pathetic war, not worth discussing.

  The third Courne Haven-Fort Niles lobster war was an ugly, short, four-month affair that raged in 1946 and had a greater effect on some islanders than the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This war prevented the island men from fishing in a year that saw the largest total catch of lobsters known in the fisheries of Maine: six thousand licensed fishermen took in a record nineteen million pounds of lobster that year. But the men on Fort Niles and Courne Haven missed the bounty because they were too busy fighting.

  The fourth Courne Haven-Fort Niles lobster war began in the mid- 1950s. The cause of this war was not clearly defined. There was no single instigation, no one angry event that lit the fuse. So how did it begin? With pushing. With slow, typical, everyday pushing.

  According to the laws of Maine, any man with a lobstering license may put a trap anywhere in Maine waters. That’s what the laws say. The reality is different. Certain families fish certain territories because they have always done so; certain areas belong to certain islands because they always have; certain waterways are under the control of certain people because they always have been. The ocean, though not marked by fences and deeds, is strictly marked by traditions, and it would serve a novice well to pay attention to those traditions.

  The barriers, though invisible, are real, and they are constantly being tested. It is the nature of man to try to extend his property, and lobstermen are no exception. They push. They see what they can get away with. They shove and bump the boundaries whenever they can, trying to move each empire a foot here, a foot there.

  Maybe Mr. Cobb has always stopped his line of traps at the mouth of a certain inlet. But what would happen if, one day, Mr. Cobb decided to set a few traps a few dozen feet farther in, to a spot where Mr. Thomas has traditionally fished? What harm could there be in a few dozen feet? Maybe the move would go unnoticed. Mr. Thomas isn’t as diligent as he once was, thinks Mr. Cobb. Perhaps Mr. Thomas has been ill or has had a bad year or has lost his wife and isn’t paying as close attention as he used to, and maybe—just maybe—the push will go unnoticed.

  And it may. Mr. Thomas might not feel the crunch. Or, for whatever reasons, he may not care enough to challenge Mr. Cobb. Then again, maybe he will care. Maybe he’ll be immensely annoyed. Maybe Mr. Thomas will send a message of dissatisfaction. Maybe when Mr. Cobb goes to pull his traps the next week, he’ll find that Mr. Thomas has tied a half-hitch knot in the middle of each line, as a warning. Maybe Mr. Thomas and Mr. Cobb are neighbors who’ve never had any conflict in the past. Maybe they’re married to sisters. Maybe they’re good friends. Those harmless knots are Mr. Thomas’s way of saying, “I see what you’re trying to do here, friend, and I ask you to please back the hell out of my territory while I still have patience with you.”

  And perhaps Mr. Cobb will back away, and that will be the end of it. Or perhaps he won’t. Who knows what reasons he may have for persisting? Perhaps Mr. Cobb is resentful that Mr. Thomas feels entitled to such a big piece of the ocean in the first place, when Mr. Thomas isn’t even that gifted a fisherman. And maybe Mr. Cobb is angry because of a rumor he heard that Mr. Thomas is keeping illegal short lobsters, or maybe Mr. Thomas’s son has looked in a lecherous manner at Mr. Cobb’s attractive thirteen-year-old daughter on more than one occasion. Perhaps Mr. Cobb has had troubles of his own at home and needs more money. Perhaps Mr. Cobb’s grandfather once laid claim to that same inlet, and Mr. Cobb is taking back what he believes rightfully belongs to his family.

  So next week he sets his traps in Mr. Thomas’s territory again,
only now he doesn’t think of it as Mr. Thomas’s territory but as free ocean and his own property as a free American man. And he’s a little pissed off, to tell you the truth, at that greedy bastard Thomas for tying knots in a man’s fishing lines, for Christ’s sake, when all a man is trying to do is make a goddamn living. What the hell was that supposed to mean, tying knots in his lines? If Mr. Thomas has a problem, why doesn’t he talk about it like a man? And by now Mr. Cobb doesn’t care if Mr. Thomas tries cutting his traps away, either. Let him cut! The hell with it! Let him try. He’ll clobber the bastard.

  And when Mr. Thomas finds his neighbor’s pot buoys floating in his territory again, he has to make a choice. Cut the traps away? Mr. Thomas wonders how serious Cobb is. Who are Cobb’s friends and allies? Can Thomas afford to lose traps if Cobb retaliates by cutting them? Is it such great territory, after all? Worth fighting for? Did any Cobb ever have a legitimate claim to it? Is Cobb being malicious or is he ignorant?

  There are so many reasons that can lead a man to set traps accidentally in another man’s area. Did these traps happen to drift there in a storm? Is Cobb a young hothead? Should a man protest every affront? Must a man be on constant guard against his neighbors? On the other hand, should a man sit in silence while some greedy bastard eats from his dinner plate, for Christ’s sake? Should a man be deprived of his means for making a living? What if Cobb decides to take over the whole area? What if Cobb pushes Thomas into someone else’s traps and causes more trouble for Thomas? Must a man spend hours of his every working day making such decisions?

  In fact, he must.

  If he is a lobsterman, he must make these decisions every day. It’s the way of the business. And over the years, a lobsterman develops a policy, a reputation. If he’s fishing for a living, fishing to feed his family, he cannot afford to be passive, and in time he’ll come to be known as either a pusher or a cutter. It’s hard to avoid becoming one or the other. He must fight to extend his territory by pushing another man’s trap line, or he must fight to defend his territory by cutting away the traps of anyone who pushes in on his.