The Wooden Nickel

  “Ginger ain’t coming today,” he says. “Get her back up on land and send her home.”

  “How come, Lucky? She gets bored at home. Besides, Clyde could come over and kidnap her.”

  “I got two guns aboard today, don’t want no animals getting hurt.”

  The dog hasn’t learned to climb the ladder yet, so Ronette has to climb back up and call her from shore. Ginger leaps in and swims for the boat landing and Ronette slaps her on the tail and sends her home.

  He looks her over when she gets on board. “How come you ain’t dressed for work?”

  “Aw, Lucky. It’s wicked hot.” She looks down and tries to fasten the top snap of her shorts but she can’t do it.

  “Eating too much,” he observes.

  “I ate too much back in May. I’m on the Lucky Lunt diet plan. Gain fifty pounds in nine months.”

  “Here, put these on.” He tosses her the big spare orange rubber work pants he uses to keep the sun off the seawater tank.

  “Too damn hot for them things. Maybe I’ll work topless today, that’ll scare them pirates off.”

  The whole time they had the Wooden Nickel over in Riceville while Harley dicked around with the Ford six, Ronette was coming aboard with her paintbrush and sewing box. She painted the bulkheads horsepiss yellow and the wood trim the color of windshield-washer fluid. The new foam pad has a flowery couch cover and a fringed pillow with an embroidered picture, smells just like Yvonne’s Gift Shoppe. Pine cone soap. The picture is a six-passenger canoe entering a covered canal with bushes all around it, looks like the boat’s steering right into a cunt. Tunnel of Love, that’s what it says. They’re paddling right back where they came from. She’s got new blue curtains on the side windows. She’s painted the old piss-bucket bright yellow and stuck a roll of pink toilet paper beside it so you no longer have to wipe your ass with the tide tables. He hollers up over the exhaust: “Looks like a whorehouse down here.”

  “I knew you was going to like it,” she says. “But it ain’t a whore-house. It’s a nursery.”

  They make the Sodom whistle and turn southwest towards Toothpick Shoal. Just north of Toothpick, on the four-fathom spot known as Gross’s Bank, Lonnie and Laurie and Li’l Nort are pulling in keepers as fast as they can haul them. Danny Thurston’s about a mile beyond, hauling off to starboard from the Perpetrator, his old man Howard a bit beyond him in the Gloria T. By this time it’s getting choppy, they’ve all put in a seven-hour day, and they’re pulling their last strings, boats full and fixing to go in.

  It’s so shallow at the center of Toothpick, the sunlit morning swell breaks over it in explosions of fourteen-karat spray. He’s almost forgotten he’s got a working radio till a voice comes in on the Orphan Point channel: HEY, WOODEN NICKEL, YOU GOING OUT FOR SOME NIGHT FISHING?

  It’s Howard.

  “Negative,” he comes back. “I’m going to drag for some bottom-feeders. You might want to come along.”

  NEGATIVE, LUCAS. I GOT THREE CRATES OF LOBSTERS ABOARD, I’M TAKING THEM IN WHILE CLYDE’S STILL GOT SOME MONEY LEFT.

  Ronette says, “You ain’t getting much help on this.”

  “My old man’s day, they’d of had a posse out here. Boundaries don’t mean nothing anymore.”

  She gives him a big pregnant smile. She used to have an under-nourished look, now her face is rounding and widening like a belly. “You got a posse of one. One and a half, counting the unborn.”

  “Can’t shoot too good when they’re all balled up like that.”

  “Don’t matter, loyalty’s what counts.”

  They’re steaming onto the north edge of his ground with no foreign boats in sight, though the radar shows a couple of vessels way offshore and coming on. The only thing on Toothpick Shoal is a redhulled sailboat that’s dead in the water with her canvas furled and heeled over like she’s trying to winch up a trap. In the binoculars he can read the name on the stern: Bull Goose, out of Dover, Delaware. “They don’t make enough off of their god damn stocks,” he says, “they got to steal lobsters. Steer over, see what the fuck’s going on.”

  They come up to starboard of the Bull Goose but they can’t see any traps aboard. The crew are all hanging over the side looking down towards the rudder. Three men and three women with blotchy sunburnt legs and a tangled pot warp around their wheel. They should be on the golf course where they belong, bunch of rich ass-holes with a big red plastic bath toy frigging up five hundred dollars’ worth of gear. Just one of their stainless steel winches would cost more than a man’s house. His finger trembles for the bird gun but Ronette says, “Take it easy, Luck, they ain’t got one of yours.”

  He takes the binoculars and looks again. The buoy tangled in their propeller has a zebra stripe. He steers upwind and brings her alongside on the lee of the sailboat and yells, “You drag that fucking thing from someplace or was it there?”

  “Right on this spot,” the skipper says. “It stopped us cold. I’m awfully sorry, if it’s one of yours. We had no intention . . .”

  “Finest kind,” Lucky says. “It ain’t one of mine. You want some lobsters?”

  “Never pass up an opportunity,” the guy says. “Course we can’t afford an arm and a leg.”

  “I’m sure you can’t.” He slips back a bit and gaffs the zebra buoy and slices it off with the rope knife. “Here’s a souvenir.” He tosses the buoy over to the skipper, then spins the Wooden Nickel bow-and-stern alongside of the Bull Goose, gaffs the warp and puts it on his pot hauler. “Now turn your prop nice and slow in reverse,” he yells, “slip the clutch, she’ll peel the line right off.” The captain starts his fart-nosed little toy diesel and the hauler pulls the line free off his shaft.

  “How much do we owe you for the rescue?” Now they’ve all got their wallets out, big eager accountant smiles like a bunch of Arvid Hannafords.

  There’s more than one trap on the zebra buoy’s line. He hauls the first one, then comes in close and throws four good-sized shedders right into the sailboat’s cockpit, one after the other. The three wives are backing away and squeaking like rabbits, but the men corral the monsters into a corner with their boathooks and work all four of them into a nylon sail bag, then they pull the drawstring tight and throw the bag below. The wives squeal and applaud like they’re married to a bunch of toreadors.

  Free at last, the red sailboat is drifting downwind now in the breeze and tide. “Better watch it,” Lucky shouts, “you’ll pick up another one.”

  “How can we thank you?” one of the wives shouts. “Don’t you want a bottle of scotch?”

  Ronette yells back, “I can’t drink alcohol, ma’am, cause of my condition.”

  “Oh dear, what a sweet thing. And you’re still working all the way out here. Take care!”

  By the time they turn around there’s a foreign boat hauling traps right on the southern drop-off of Toothpick Shoal. He doesn’t need binoculars to see it’s a Wing Brothers hull and hear the same Isuzu diesel that smoked him at the Stoneport races.

  “There’s another one coming,” Ronette says. This one he hasn’t seen before, it’s an identical Goldwing hull with the snub stern, but midnight black. “Let me have them glasses.” It’s coming on fast, in a minute he can read the name Darth Vader on the bow. The white one’s the Bad Pussy. They’ve both got zebra buoys skewered on their radio whips. The two of them are stopped together now, right on the south fringe of Toothpick Shoal, and the Darth Vader’s just idling while the Bad Pussy hauls a triple over the side. The orange-bearded guy with the finger stump and contact lenses is alone on the Darth Vader. The ponytailed one is sternman on the Pussy. The traps are loaded and they’re keeping everything they haul. “You think they don’t see us?” Ronette says.

  “Of course they fucking see us. But they ain’t going to want to see us when I’m done.”

  Soon as they bait and drop the last of that string and cast the buoy off, the two boats head for another a hundred yards northwards. Lucky reaches behind the bulkhead and pulls
the .410 out and hands it to Ronette. “Bird gun,” he says. “Ever use one?”

  “Old Clyde had me trained on the pistol range. He wanted me to defend myself, case anyone made a sexual advance.”

  He puts a hand down the back of her orange work pants but she slithers away. He steers up to the zebra buoy they just set two minutes ago, gaffs the toggle and slices the warp off with the rope knife, that’s two traps they’ll never see again. A man’s voice instantly comes over channel 64: WATCH YOUR ASS, COWBOY. THEM AIN’T YOUR FUCKING TRAPS.

  There’s another zebra buoy a couple of hundred feet upwind. He puts the helm up and goes over and sets that one on the hauler to see what they’ve got. He sees the Darth Vader guy holding his mike, and the same voice comes over the VHF: I SAID, STAY THE FUCK OFF OF THAT TRAP.

  He punches the mike button and says, “Clear off the fucking channel, this channel’s Orphan Point.”

  Lucky cuts him off by going back to channel 16 — emergencies only — but there they are: YOU DON’T OWN THE AIR, COWBOY. YOU DON’T OWN THE WATER, YOU DON’T OWN NOTHING.

  He punches the VHF mike and says, “Suck my dick, asshole.”

  A sugary female voice comes on and says, VESSELS CONVERSING ON CHANNEL SIXTEEN, BE ADVISED THAT CHANNEL SIXTEEN IS A CALLING AND DISTRESS FREQUENCY. THIS IS THE UNITED STATES COAST GUARD, OUT.

  Now the two boats are coming right at him from the windward side of the ledge. He puts her in neutral and pumps a shell into the chamber of the .410. They’re looking down each other’s throats but the Isuzus make so much noise they have to use the radio. When he gets out the deer rifle and hands the .410 shotgun to Ronette, the Bad Pussy’s diesel queen comes on: HONEY, AIN’T YOU TOO SMALL FOR THAT KIND OF WORK?

  A boat comes steaming up behind them. It’s the Abby and Laura,manned by Lonnie and Norton Gross. Lonnie comes on the radio, WE AIN’T GOING TO LET YOU DOWN, then the Darth Vader’s skipper picks up a big hunting rifle and fires one right into Lonnie’s hull less than a foot over the waterline. Cheap fucking glass must be about an eighth of an inch thick, cause the hollowpoint opens a hole you could put your dick through. He goes back on channel 64: “Lonnie, the son of a whore opened you up on your port side. You better stuff a sock in there and haul ass home.”

  Ronette’s at the wheel idling the engine but when she sees the chop splashing around the hole in Lonnie’s hull she says, “Lucky, why not get out of here and let the law take care of this?”

  “Only law out here is us. We let them get away with this, they’ll be handing this ledge down to their fucking kids.”

  He tries to reach Howard and Danny Thurston. “Gloria T, this is Wooden Nickel. You on here, Howard?”

  Howard comes back, CAN’T HEAR YOU, LUCKY, YOUR TRANSMISSION’S BREAKING UP.

  He looks at the radio and there’s a film of blue smoke coming out of it like someone’s smoking a cigarette in there. He rips the mike cord out of its socket and yells into it, “Fuck you, Clyde, ninety-four dollars to fix this sucker and it works for five minutes.” He throws the mike towards the Bad Pussy, which is calmly setting a string of traps maybe a hundred yards away. It whirls around and lands in the waves. “Fucking lobsters can fix it better than your old man.”

  “Old ex.”

  One of Lucky’s green-and-orange buoys bobs off the Bad Pussy’s port side so close it’s almost up against her hull. “Dumb cunt’s setting them right on top of me. Steer over there.”

  As soon as the Bad Pussy baits her zebra-stripe and sets it down right next to his orange-and-green, Ronette shows up there with the Wooden Nickel. Lucky hauls the single trap on his buoy and takes out a nice two-pounder. He cleans the crabs and starfish out, baits it and drops it back. The Bad Pussy is working a couple hundred feet to the west, the Darth Vader close in behind her but not working traps, just waiting in reserve.

  At that point the Coast Guard lady comes on his radio, which can’t transmit anymore but it can hear. VESSELS ENGAGED IN TERRITORIAL DISPUTE, PLEASE GIVE YOUR LOCATION.

  He sees the orange-bearded guy pick up the microphone over in the Darth Vader. WE ARE FOUR MILES SOUTHEAST OF THREE WITCH LEDGE.

  THANK YOU, CAPTAIN, WE’LL HAVE A VESSEL ON STATION ETA THREE P.M.

  Ronette looks startled. “That ain’t where we are.”

  True enough, the Darth Vader gave the Coast Guard a position twenty-five miles away. Anyone would have done the same. “Ain’t government business, Ronette. It’s them and us.”

  He reaches down and gaffs the zebra-stripe buoy they’ve just set down and slices the warp off below the toggle. Over in the Darth Vader the orange-bearded brother leaves the wheel and aims a rifle right at them. “Down in the cuddy,” Lucky orders Ronette.

  “What the hell, Lucky, I ain’t scared.”

  “Ain’t you I’m thinking about.”

  She takes one step down the companionway and stops by the engine box with just her head out above the hatch. In the face of that son of a bitch with his raised rifle barrel he steams over to the next zebra-stripe buoy and slows to gaff it. Right as he’s bringing the toggle up to catch it on the drum, a shot breaks the safety-glass wind-shield over Ronette’s head and a split second later the bang comes in, cunt hair’s difference between impact and noise. Fucking bullets are faster than sound. Another shot, then the radar makes a couple of loud clicks like a sewing machine and the screen goes blank, just the raster line wheeling around. He can’t see the radome up over the wheelhouse but they must have knocked it out. He pumps the lever on the .300 Savage and aims through the two-power scope sight to put a shot through the Darth Vader’s windshield from the stern.

  Boom.

  He got the shot off steady but a wave lifted him just as he fired, so it probably went over. Didn’t kill anyone, anyway: the orange-bearded captain comes to the transom and flips that missing finger at him, a fist with a one-inch stump on it. If he wants to get the point across he ought to use the other hand.

  He runs seaward again to pull another zebra buoy but before he can get the gaff on it the Bad Pussy’s black-bearded sternman buries a rifle bullet right in a hull plank aft of the stem, no .22 either, got to be at least a .30-30. Ronette says, “They got us,” and grabs his leg like it’s a life ring. The Wooden Nickel’s inch-and-a-half white cedar is sounder than the day it was cut, it didn’t open up like Lonnie Gross’s pulpy fiberglass, but still he feels it like it went into his own skin. He puts the crosshairs on the left shoulder of that black-bearded sternman standing with the rifle in one hand, scratching his balls with the other and smiling like a piano with his missing teeth. Just like aiming at a deer. His bald head is covered with a Hells Angels bandanna but the ponytail sticks out behind and in the scope the pit bull tattoo shows on his upper arm. With no one at the helm, they’ve gone beam to the wind so both boats are in the trough, causing the crosshairs to move up and down on the guy’s body. The swell drives the sights down to the guy’s knee, then up to the wheelhouse top. He’s standing right in front of the big female captain, who is mostly out of sight behind his body, and that crazy son of a bitch, with a .300 Savage scoped right in on him, has now got his own gun butt down on the platform and he’s raising his ball-scratching hand to give Lucky the finger. He doesn’t know who he’s fucking with, it’s not just Lucas Lunt but his old man Walter and Walter’s old man Merritt Lunt who fished this ledge under a canvas sail. Even so, Lucky would not pull the trigger on a man for his dead ancestors, or for Kyle either, he’s a lost cause, with his Jap sushi dealer and his fairy boyfriend, but this other one that’s already popping the buttons of Ronette Hannaford’s shorts, he’ll be a chip off the old block. He’s still in the larval stage now, but one day he’ll be a lobsterman and he’s going to need this ledge.

  So thinking of someone he can’t even picture in his mind, he waits for the upswell to pull the crosshairs right under that fucking finger, then he shoots.

  The deer rifle kicks his arm back so he can’t see where it hit. The sound of it throws Ronette’s head
down into the companionway, but she comes up yelling, “Jesus, Lucky, what’d you aim at?”

  Though he truly wishes the black-bearded guy’s body would be jerking like a mackerel on the cockpit floor, he is still standing. He has dropped his gun and gone over beside the female captain at the helm. Lucky tries to see what’s going on through the two-power scope but it’s too weak and he can’t hold it steady. “Give me them binoculars.”

  He missed the black-bearded bastard’s finger and hit the woman. She’s standing with a bloodstain on her sweatshirt, he can see that, then the black-bearded guy sits her down on the rail to take a look. The Darth Vader comes up close beside the Bad Pussy while the black-bearded sternman leads her below. There’s no one visible for a while, then he comes up and takes the helm. They’ve still got a line on the pot hauler. The sternman slices the warp off the winch drum with a knife, so it must be serious. He watches the line clear his wheel, then he puts her in gear and jams it, the stern dips and they steam due south for Shag Island under full throttle, with the Darth Vader hammer down and following close behind.

  Ronette’s back in the companionway now, saying, “Lucky, what did you do?”

  “I winged her.”

  “You shot a human being?”

  “Depends how you want to define it.”

  “You don’t believe in nothing, do you?”

  “I believe them son of a whores are off the territory. Now we got work to do. Let’s finish slicing off their christly traps.”

  By now the two Goldwings, black and white, have disappeared into the summer haze around Nigh Shag. He heads for another zebra-stripe buoy and gaffs it up onto the hydraulic winch and cuts the line. She’s standing beside him at the pot hauler but she’s not helping, just bitching about something over the power takeoff noise.

  “It’s gone too far, Lucky. It ain’t funny anymore. What if something happens to her?”