by John Rocco
“It’s quahogging. You always say going fishing, like I’m just messing around on a boat all day.”
“Quahogging, of course.” Darcy mocks, slapping her forehead with her palm. “Are you going quahogging today?”
“Yeah . . . no. I don’t know. With the storm, we might not be going out for a few days. Gene will be here any minute.”
She suddenly stops what she’s doing and stares down at my right hand. “What happened to your hand?” Darcy grabs me by the wrist and drags me over to the ice machine.
“Jake got in an argument with the wall. The wall won.” Tommy smiles and points to the small dent.
Darcy fills a dishrag with ice and presses it down onto my bruising knuckles. I wince and suck air between my teeth. The ice feels cool on one side, and Darcy’s hand feels warm on my wrist. I look down and notice the shiny spiderweb of skin peeking out from her sleeve. I wonder what the rest looks like, if it’s as bad as kids say. Some of them have said it looks like her arm was wrapped in bacon, and others like it was covered in Silly Putty. I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know. It must be bad if she’s wearing long sleeves in the middle of summer.
“Hold still, Stretch,” Darcy says, pulling her sleeve down.
“Yes, doc.” I wince.
“So why are you punching walls?”
When I hesitate, Tommy answers for me. “Mrs. C. told Jake that she was giving up the diner and they were going to move in with his gram in Phoenix.”
“Give up the diner? She can’t do that.” Darcy’s eyes are shooting back and forth. “I can’t handle that!” She slams the ice machine door and storms through the kitchen and out back.
“I thought I was pissed. What’s her problem?” I ask Tommy.
“Cut her some slack, Jake. This is like her place too. She’s had to deal with a lot of crap, and now to add this . . .”
“I’m not adding anything.”
“You remember what she was like before she started working here. The Riptide is her safe haven,” Tommy says.
Darcy suddenly walks back in with a serious expression on her face, arms crossed. “So, what are we going to do?” she asks, slumping down on one of the stools at the counter.
“We?” I ask, joining her at the counter.
“Yeah, this affects all of us, Jake,” Tommy says.
I don’t have it in me right now to explain about the money we owe.
The three of us just sit on the stools, listening to Warren coming back to life outside the Riptide: chainsaws ripping through felled trees, the rattle of trucks hauling debris down Water Street, seagulls crying out for their breakfast, and the dull hum of fishing boats making their way up the river.
Suddenly the sound of my mom’s footsteps coming down the stairs makes Darcy and Tommy jump off the stools like they’re about to get detention.
“Morning, Mrs. C.,” Darcy says while hurriedly wiping down tables. “Did the laundry come yet? This apron is getting funky.”
“Check with Trax. I think it’s delayed because of the storm.”
“Hooo-weee! Here we go again!” On cue, Trax punches through the double doors and snaps a starched white apron around his waist. Trax is the only Native American that I know. Well, half Native American. His mother is Narragansett Indian and his father’s Irish, so he’s probably the only Indian with freckles. Now he’s got his nose deep into the stainless-steel tins next to the grill, and I can hear him taking big whiffs.
Tommy quietly slips through the double doors to leave through the kitchen.
“Damn. Did you lose power last night? This stuff is rank.” Trax starts dumping tins of food. Tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cubes of grayish-looking ham all go flying into the wastebin.
“What do you need? I’ll go prep some more,” I offer.
“Everything on the line. Gotta start fresh with all of it. Get choppin’, Skipper.” Trax whips my leg with a dishtowel and continues rummaging through the cooler, trying to find more victims to toss. In the kitchen, I find my mom already chopping onions.
“I heard,” she says, wiping tears on the back of her hand. “We have to get that cooler looked at. God knows what that’ll cost. I’m out of favors.” She starts hacking away at another onion.
“Geez, Mom, get Gene to take a look at it. Do I have to think of everything?”
“I don’t want to bother Gene with my problems. It’s nice enough that he pays you for going out on his boat every day.”
“I work hard for that money, Mom,” I say sharply.
“Oh, I know you do, Jake.” She puts the knife down and leans heavily on the cutting board. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just . . . it’s just . . .” She looks up at me. Her eyes are red and streaming, and it’s not just the onions. I can feel the small tug at the bottom of my stomach, telling me to put my arms around her and say it’s okay and that everything is going to be all right. She sends out this vibe every so often, and I have learned to ignore it. I snip that invisible string that is trying to pull me close. I haven’t hugged her or anyone else since Dad went missing, and I am not going to start now. Not today. Anyway, she’s supposed to be the strong one, not me. She is supposed to tell me the diner is doing fine, and we can stay here forever, and Dad’s coming home, and everything is going to be all right.
The kitchen is suddenly too hot and cramped.
“Morning!” Robin McCaphrey walks past me, and I follow her through the double doors as she kicks off her big yellow boots and strides in her bare feet over to the first booth, pulling sneakers out of her gigantic canvas purse.
“Don’t leave those boots at the door, Robin.”
“Yes, Mo-o-om.” Robin stretches out the word Mom the way she always does when she thinks my mom is treating her like a little kid. I think she’s twenty-three, but I’m not sure.
Darcy and I pull the red vinyl padded chairs down off the tables, and every time she sets one down, she sort of slams it into place. I can tell she’s pissed because she has this little wrinkle between her eyes that only shows up when she’s upset. Tommy is right; she loves this place. Before she worked here, she used to sit by herself in the school lunchroom, hiding her face with her hoodie and never talking to anyone. It’s because of the burn. The fire. Maybe she didn’t want to have to tell one more person about how her house burned down and that her drunk father did it and how she was in therapy and why she never goes to the beach or swimming and how she doesn’t go to gym class because she doesn’t want to change her clothes in the locker room or any of those things. She’s got her private stuff, just like me. But at the Riptide, she talks to everybody. Trax is like a big brother to her, and Robin’s the sister she never had. And there’s me.
After another twenty minutes of scurrying around, the five of us have managed to get the diner ready for the day. I karate-chop the main switch, and the lights above the booths flash on. Robin plugs in the OPEN sign that sits on the window ledge next to the door. I watch as the red glow of neon flickers to life and wonder how long we can keep this place going. There’s no way I’m moving to Arizona.
By 8 a.m. the diner is packed for the first time in months. Every quahogger I know is here. With the whole bay closed, they’ve got nothing better to do than come here, drink coffee, and talk about last night’s hurricane. There are at least four men crammed into each booth, the counter is full, and guys are leaning against every open wall spot.
“Your savior is here.” Trax cracks a smile and nods over to the front door. I spin around and there’s Gene, taking off his salt-stained Red Sox hat and holding it to his chest with both hands like he just entered church. He nods over to me and I smile back.
Gene’s not big like most quahoggers. In fact, if it weren’t for his thick, calloused hands and his weathered, sun-freckled face, you’d think he had a desk job, like one of those real-estate guys who come in for the lunch special on Sundays. But I know Gene has never had a job like that. He’s a quahogger through and through. Quahoggers have salt water
in their veins and barnacles on their backs; that’s what my dad always says. I must have salt water in my veins too; that’s probably why I feel more at ease on the water and totally Unco on land.
Everybody’s staring at the little TV that’s attached to the wall above the register. Darcy is standing on a chair and wrapping aluminum foil around the coat hanger that is sticking out of the back.
“A little to the left.”
“No, to the right.”
“That’s it right there.” The fishermen yell out instructions.
“Where’d you get that crap antenna, dahlin’?” Mel Ghist asks, pointing with his coffee cup at the TV.
“I called in specialists from NASA . . . daaaahlin’,” Darcy shoots back at him. Everyone applauds as the picture comes onto the screen. Darcy takes a bow and leaps from the chair.
The TV picture is crystal clear as a reporter shows the damage caused by Hurricane Marion. Shaky camera shots of trees ripped out of the ground, downed telephone poles, and capsized boats fill the screen. Dean Clements, the local postman, gives out a painful Oooohhh! every time they show a damaged boat, almost as if it were his own, but he doesn’t even own a dinghy. I’m half hiding behind the counter, pretending to be looking for something, crazy scared that they might show some of the boats that Captain and I “salvaged” last night. They might even interview the DEM cops.
“Can you believe this?” a fat guy named Red yells out as they show another overturned sailboat. “You’d think when those rich bastards heard the weather report, they’d have half a brain to pull their hundred-thousand-dollar sailboats outta the water.”
“They’ve got them insured up the wazoo. They’ll just buy another one tomorrow,” Johnny Bennato says without even looking up from his paper.
“You sure that wasn’t your boat, Johnny?” Red says with a nervous laugh that makes everyone uncomfortable.
“My sailboat has been on dry land since Saturday. I’m well-off, but I’m not an idiot.”
Johnny Bennato’s parents died in a plane crash and left him millions. He could spend the rest of his life on a beach somewhere, but instead he gets up early every morning and goes out digging quahogs on Narragansett Bay like the rest of us. He says he just likes the adventure of it. Most people don’t understand why he does it, but I do.
“Are you just about done down there?” Trax is looking at me as I rearrange the coffee mugs for the third time. “You better get out there and help the girls, ’cause you’re just getting in my way, Skipper.”
“Yeah, sorry, Trax. I was just looking for something.” I get up slowly and head out from behind the counter. I start making my way from table to table, clearing plates and placing them in a large black tub.
Darcy leans over and whispers into my ear. “Maybe all this extra business today will convince your mom to keep this place.”
“Doubt it.” Darcy doesn’t know about the loan sharks from the Italian-American Club and the ten grand that’s due by the end of the month. I want to pull her outside and tell her everything. I want to tell her I was out in the middle of that hurricane last night, stealing engines with some crazy dude who might know my dad. I don’t know if she’ll think I’m nuts or heroic or just plain stupid, but part of me really wants to tell her.
I push the thoughts of last night out of my brain and continue to clear tables. I notice Gene sitting alone at a small table near the jukebox where my mom usually sits when she does the ordering, and another pang of guilt rips through my gut. With all the commotion in the diner, I almost forgot he was there. I lift the black tub in my hands and give him a look that says Too busy to talk now. Gene adjusts his chair and lifts his mug. I acknowledge him and continue my rounds.
Then I happen to look outside. On the sidewalk, peering into the window of the diner, is a DEM officer, a clam cop. No, two of them! Oh, crap!
I dash back toward the kitchen, through the double doors, and place the tub down by the sink. They figured it out. How did they know it was me last night? My heart feels like it’s going to burst from my chest.
I look through the order window, hiding between the slips hanging from the metal clip. One of the clam cops walks through the front door. His shoulders are so wide he almost has to step sideways. He looks to be almost my height, with a bald head, mustache, and a pinched, angry, red face. He’s like the strongman from the circus, only wearing a khaki-green uniform and a gun holster. His partner, a scrawny, nervous, blond-haired guy, stays outside, pacing in front of the window. A hush of silence spreads through the diner as the bald-headed man walks over to the TV, watches for a second, and then clicks it off.
“Some storm last night,” he says aloud to everyone in the diner, still curiously staring at the blank screen with his hand on the switch of the TV. He’s close enough to me that I can almost read the numbers on his badge. Above the badge, embroidered on his shirt, is the name DELVECCHIO. I’m thinking I should run out the back door, but if he already knows where I live, it’s pointless to run. My knees are shaking so much I don’t think I could run anyway.
“I know most of you in here are quahoggers.” Delvecchio is looking around the diner, enjoying the attention as his hand slips away from the TV and he turns to his audience of diggers. “And most of you do the right thing . . .” He pauses for effect. “But some of you have been drifting the line, working in polluted waters. And that’s just not nice. Some of you even have the nerve to work out there at night. At night!”
“Oh, give me a break,” someone yells from the back.
“Don’t worry,” Delvecchio continues. “I won’t be writing you any tickets anymore. No, my doctor said my tendonitis has been acting up, and writing all those tickets hasn’t been helping. I’ve got a new pen.” He pulls his gun from his holster and holds it up for everyone to see.
“You can’t come in here and start threatening us with guns.”
Delvecchio steps over to Charlie Crosby, sitting at the counter, and pats his back like an old friend. “I’m not threatening anybody, Charlie. I just want you to understand that there are some lines you don’t cross. It’s like the edge of this counter. One side, legal.” Delvecchio slaps his hand down on the Formica. “But once you cross over that edge . . . I gotta write you up.” He runs his hand over the edge and pats his gun for emphasis. “Say, is that an egg sandwich?”
“Yeah,” Charlie says.
“Bacon?”
“Yeah.”
Delvecchio lifts the bread, tosses the bacon to the side, and takes a huge bite. He continues to talk to Charlie between mouthfuls, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I heard you came in with twenty bags the other day. Twenty bags at eight thirty in the morning! You must get up pretty early in the morning, Charlie. How’s the coffee here?”
“Good,” Charlie says, his head hung low, looking at the floor.
Delvecchio takes a loud slurp from the coffee. He sets the mug down on the edge of the counter and lets it fall, spilling coffee onto Charlie’s lap and smashing on the floor.
“Ow! What the hell?” Charlie jumps up, wiping the hot coffee off his pants.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Delvecchio sneers, throwing a few napkins at Charlie’s chest. “I guess I didn’t see where the edge of the counter was.”
I’m shocked as my mom walks over to him with a fresh pot of coffee held threateningly in her hand. She gets right in his face and says, “You either sit down and order some food or leave.”
Delvecchio takes a long, hard look at my mom, tilting his head to the side. You can tell he doesn’t want to back down, and she’s not backing down either. They are inches apart. Is he gonna shoot her? She’s definitely over the line. I’m scared for my mom, but kind of proud, too.
“You heard the lady.” Suddenly Gene is standing next to her, nodding toward the door. “Don’t make her repeat it.”
Several other guys stand up, and soon everyone in the diner is on their feet. Delvecchio looks at his watch, and then throws his hands up in the air as if surrender
ing. “I’d love to stay. You make good coffee, but I have some other visits to make.” Delvecchio backs up all the way to the door, and as he pushes through, he takes his gun and taps it twice against the bell above the entrance. “I’ll be watching.” He lets his voice trail off as he pulls the door closed. He grabs the other officer by the shoulder and shoves him toward their truck. Nobody says a word until they pull away.
I take a slow, deep breath and let out a long sigh of relief.
“All right, where were we?” I hear Robin yell out. “Who needs more coffee?”
Within seconds the debate turns back to the weather, as if someone has just turned up the volume again. Charlie’s trying to explain his twenty-bag morning that brought Delvecchio on top of everyone. I grab the tub and head back into the diner to help out, snaking between tables and picking up dishes, glasses, and snippets of conversation along the way.
“There ain’t no way they’re gonna open Barrington Beach after this,” Brendan Tooley says, pounding his fist on the table so his coffee cup jumps, making the spoon rattle around like an alarm clock.
“It was mainly wind blowin’, not much rain to speak of,” another voice calls out.
“They’ll use any excuse to keep that beach closed,” Brendan shouts back.
Johnny Bennato folds his paper and looks up now, much more interested in where this conversation is going. I can see that my mom, Darcy, and Robin aren’t sure what they’re talking about, but I am.
“I didn’t know you quahoggers cared so much about going to the beach. Have you got some kind of sand-castle contest going on?” Darcy asks with a smirk as we meet up at the coffee machine.
“Not the beach beach.” I look at her. “Barrington Beach. It’s the hottest quahogging ground on the entire East Coast. Hasn’t been opened up for quahogging in almost twenty years ’cause the Providence River has been dumping so much pollution into the bay over there. The littlenecks are stacked up on top of each other like candy in a gumball machine.”
“Wow, Stretch, that’s . . . really . . . exciting.” Darcy is looking at me cross-eyed as she pushes the button on the coffee grinder.