The Wooden Nickel

by William Carpenter

  “There’s places,” he says. “I won’t be needing it.”

  “I’m sure there is. See you tomorrow, then. Five a.m.”

  “That’s what I came to tell you. We ain’t going out.”

  “What do you mean? We ain’t hauled in four days. Them lobsters will be busting through the traps.”

  “We ain’t hauling. I got five years.”

  “Five years in prison?” She bends her head down and her eyes look like they’re getting ready to cry.

  He likes that look and lets her hang there a second before he says, “A five-year suspension. Just as bad. A man can’t fish, he might as well be in the joint making bottled ships.”

  “Lucky, you been working all your life. You earned some time. I got it figured out. I’ll take another job. I got eight hours between shifts here at the Claw. I’ll work down to Riceville at the cat food plant, my cousin Shane is a foreman. You just have to stay home and take care of little Luke.”

  Doris comes over to hustle Ronette back to work. “You’re going to have to speed up, dear. People are waiting.” By now she’s got customers lined up beside the door just for seats at the counter so they can wait for a table. Standing room only. Every fucking one of them is having lobster and they don’t even know where it comes from. This is what he lived for and his old man lived for and his grandfather drowned for, to stuff a butchered-up red shellfish in the mouth of these gossiping fairies who are pulling the assholes out of their lobster tails and laying them on the saucers of their butter bowls. All of a sudden he’s getting a picture of Merritt Lunt on his last morning, he’s seen it a hundred times, clear as a real photograph. The old man’s slipping a trap over the transom, first of a double. A loop of pot warp catches around his ankle. He doesn’t even see it. Puff of wind tips her and trap number two slips off the rail just as he’s dropping number one. Silent movie, black-and-white photograph, bad dream. Soon as he’s down there the lobsters are all over him, he had no pecker when they brought him up. They find his boat with the old four-banger jeep engine idling in circles north of Toothpick Shoal, loyal as a spaniel, marking the spot where he went down.

  That was the first Wooden Nickel, her skipper perished so these fucking parasites could enjoy their meal.

  He could take his work glove and sweep the lobsters right off their table, he could handle four fairies with one hand and smoke a cigarette with the other. But Doris is at his elbow saying, “We love having you here, Lucky, but you’re distracting the help.” She points the big stray lobsterman towards the open door. “Take care of yourself,” she says. “We’ll be here in the morning. You need anything then, just ask old Doris and she’ll fix you up.”

  On the oyster-shell walkway to the parking lot, he runs into a crowd of Chinese tourists in red and white sweaters, cameras around their necks. They’re pointing at Doris’s sign, chattering, “Robsta, robsta.”

  “She’s full up,” he tells them. “Go eat someplace else.”

  One of the Chinese asks, “You take picture?” and hands him a Nikon. They line up in front of Doris’s shiny blue claw sign and he squeezes them all into the frame, then pulls the trigger. He’s pretending it’s his .410 loaded with duck shot but it just flashes and they all laugh and clap, then the Chinese line up around him with some of their arms on his shoulders and the guy with the camera takes a picture: Lucky and the seven dwarfs. He’s never been that close to a Communist in his life.

  It’s way too early for the RoundUp’s parking lot to be full, but it is, he can’t figure out why. No out-of-staters either, just wall-to-wall pickups, some he knows but many he’s never seen. It’s Wednesday, nothing special, no live band. Soon as he parks, though, he hears the noise and smells scorched hardwood and burned power cords. Now he remembers, it’s Belt Sander Night, third Wednesday of the month, he should have known. He was hoping to have a few quiet shots and beers and get his hands washed and maybe get someone to put him up for a couple of days so he doesn’t have to sleep in the truck. He also hoped to see what’s around for odd jobs now that his work is gone.

  Inside, there’s a couple hundred guys with caps and beers around Andy’s old birch-planked tavern bowling lane. The wood has two deep grooves laid in by the races, with deep brown burn scars on the sidelines and the median strip. The track is still smoking and smoldering from the last race. The racers are huddled with their belt sanders down at the starting end, they’re tightening up the belts, checking the duct tape around the cords. Up at the finish line Big Andy has two clam hods full of ten- and twenty-dollar bills. To bet on one sander or the other you have to throw your money in the right- or left-hand hod, then the losers’ cash gets dumped into the winners’ hod and the winners take double. Honor system, people trust each other around here. There’s so many guys he can’t even see the bar.

  “Lunt! You coming home from church?”

  It’s Reggie Dolliver, last man he wants to see. But Reggie’s right alongside of the bar so he’s got access. “Get me something,” he shouts.

  Reggie comes over with a shot and a Rolling Rock. “Guy from Riceville’s smoking everyone. Hey, what’re you all dressed up for? Somebody die?”

  He takes the shot and beer in his two gloved hands and slugs them down at the same time. “Men’s prayer group,” he answers.

  “No shit?” Reggie says. “I seen a lot of that on the inside. Happens when you get old, ain’t nothing else to live for.”

  The Riceville guy’s sander is a big two-horse Craftsman Professional with inch-thick duct tape protecting the power cord. He’s got teeth painted on the front of it like a tiger shark, a lead weight duct-taped to the midsection and what looks like a number twelve floor-sanding belt for traction. He’s setting it up on the left side. The challenger’s on the right, a new-looking blue Makita Power Pro with two lead pigs clamped around the handle and an oversize motor that looks like a custom job. Both of the sanders have the dust bags off so the dust can blow back like a jet trail, the exhaust adds thrust, and if you aim it right you can blind the other guy so he can’t hold his power cord straight.

  “You betting?” Reggie Dolliver asks.

  “Just got here. Ain’t seen what they can do.”

  The two racers plug into a power strip on the ceiling behind the starting line. Big Andy has a long-barreled western-style starting gun. He raises it once and the gamblers all edge over toward the finish to drop their money in one clam hod or the other. Reggie slides over and puts a twenty on the Makita and comes back to his seat. “Son of a bitch is fast. He smoked a Black & Decker Professional before you come in.”

  Wallace is behind the bar with his hand on the breaker panel. The two racers make sure their motor switches are on, then grab the oversized power cords and lean back to absorb the force of the start. The winner will be the first one over the far edge, drilling into the big sandpit at the end of the track.

  Big Andy fires the blank, Wallace closes the switch and the belt sanders scream to life. They hold the wires for a second while the sanders gather traction and dig in, then they let go and the two machines screech down the bowling lane and bury their owners in a cloud of dust and smoke. But the Craftsman chews over to the right and knocks the Makita off the track so they have to run the race again. Half the guys scramble over to the clam hods to change their bets, but Reggie Dolliver stays put. “How’s that cocksucker going to win if it don’t run straight?”

  Next race the Craftsman’s owner hangs on to the power cord a second longer before letting go. His sander digs in, tracks down the groove and slams into the sandpit before the Makita can reach the finish line. The Craftsman’s owner is a tall skinny guy with a cap saying rosen’s flooring, which is all the way up in Tarratine. Guys gather around him, checking his machine out, buying him drinks while the winners rake their profits out of the clam hod.

  The next challenger is a Ryobi painted a godawful orange with a little Confederate flag on either side of the motor housing. Bets are taken, they hold the cord, they let go, an
d the Craftsman screams ahead down the groove, then the Rebel sander skews to the left and crawls up the Craftsman’s power cord so the race ends in a blaze of sparks that blows a main fuse and puts out every light in the place. The weak little emergency lights blink on in the corner over the steer head, and there’s Big Andy running over to the fuse box while Wallace is swamped with drink orders, stirring with his finger, trying to mix them up by feel.

  Reggie Dolliver excuses himself and slinks his way among the crowd in the direction of the clam hods. Pretty soon he’s back, folding a couple of twenties into his shirt pocket. “Take advantage of god-given opportunity, that’s what I say.”

  “You learn that in the joint?”

  “What do they say? ‘Everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten.’”

  “Jesus, Reggie, I thought you dropped out before kindergarten.”

  “I ain’t talking about kindergarten. I’m saying I learned plenty up there, taxpayers’ expense.”

  “How’s the ship models?”

  “Fuck them, that’s for cons. I been taking computers down to the voc school in Stoneport. I got into home security. High tech.”

  “I heard. Any money in that kind of work?”

  “Ain’t nothing to brag about. But I got some ideas. Hey, I hear you got some trouble going out there too, don’t know how that’s going to come down on you...”

  The lights snap back on. Instantly more belt sanders line up for their crack at the starting line. He grabs Wallace’s arm going past with a tray of beers and orders a couple more Rocks and shots. He taps out a Marlboro and another for Reggie Dolliver. Reggie’s not betting this time around. The sanders roar across the bowling alley and into the pit, everyone screaming, a dead heat. He says to Reggie, “Five cocksucking years.”

  “In the joint?”

  “I ain’t that lucky. License suspension.”

  “Hey. Think about it. You’re still a free man.”

  “I ain’t that free. I got payments. I owe the home equity even though I can’t set foot in the fucking house. I owe the hospital. I can’t even afford to fucking die.”

  “Tell you what,” Reggie says. “I got a plan.”

  Now they’ve got three contestants on the track at once, the crowd’s getting drunk, half of them holding a belt sander in the crook of their free arm. So many guys want to race it looks like they’re going to start driving them right on the floor. Behind the bar, Big Andy’s glancing at his aluminum baseball bat alongside the cash register.

  Lucky laughs, chugs his shot. “I know where your fucking plans end up.”

  “No, this is hot. You’re only in on it cause you and me’s pretty near family.” Lucky pulls his Rolling Rock a few more inches away from Reggie’s, as far as he can get it without running into the guy’s on the other side, big Indian biker from Riceville with a spiked bulldog collar on his wrist.

  “I don’t see as we’re family,” Lucky says.

  “Maybe not. Down the road, though, who knows? Anyway, I’m wiring that new development, Split Acres, they got a gated entry so you can’t even get in there, but you can see it from the water. Million-fucking-dollar estates. They got art up the butthole in them places, Louie the Nineteenth couches, buck-naked statues, old fucking masters, they got safes behind the pictures with stocks and cash, you name it. Got to be drugs too, rich bastards, every one of them’s strung out on coke. I seen them. They can’t even stand up half the time.”

  “So what’s the point?”

  “The point is this. I wire these fucking places for security, and I got the codes. Only you can’t get anything out of there in a truck, they got this gate, they got a private cop. So all’s I need is someone with a boat. And a little imagination, you know what I mean.”

  “What about your ankle bracelet? Ain’t your parole officer going to be watching you on TV?”

  “First thing we learned in security class, how to disable them things. I can set mine for anywhere I want. You’ll get the hang of it. What do you think? You aboard? You ain’t got nothing to lose.”

  “Just what I need,” Lucky says. “Spend a couple of years getting cornholed up at Thomaston.”

  “You ain’t going to get cornholed, Lucky. You’re too old.”

  “I’m too fucking old for that shit too.”

  Reggie looks him over like he’s a job applicant. “Just trying to help out,” he says. “Think it over, no hurry. There’s a window of opportunity, guys like us just got to pry it open a little, that’s all. Cousin.”

  He gives him a family slap on the shoulder and they turn to the bar to focus on their shots and beers. Reggie’s a moody bastard, he must be on some kind of pills. He gets so quiet and lost in thought, Lucky’s ready to start talking to the Indian biker, then he feels the presence of two guys behind him, one on either side. Fucking Shag Island, he thinks. They’re here. He puts the shot glass down and turns around slow and ready, but it’s not. It’s a tall lanky kid with his head shaved and his eyebrow pierced with a gold pin, big enough to look him right in the eye. Fucking Kyle, standing there in his bald skull wearing a leather jacket that looks like the Hells Angels gave it to the Salvation Army. Beside him is his fairy friend Darrell Swan, six inches shorter, little mouse-colored mustache, black sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, brown veiny arms like he’s been working out.

  Lucky spits into the sea-green sawdust around his feet. The whole room smells like an electrical fire from the belt sander track. He looks at Kyle. “How’d you get here? You come in your little slant-eyed truck?”

  “I ain’t got it on the road. It’s up to Heidi Astbury’s on blocks.”

  “How come?”

  “Ain’t got no fucking insurance.”

  “I ain’t got no insurance either. It don’t stop me.”

  “Yeah, Heidi’s cousin’s a cop, he lives down the street, he stopped me and ran the insurance down and now he don’t even let me out of the driveway. We come here looking for a ride.”

  “I ain’t got room.”

  “Bullshit. We seen your truck out there. It’s empty.”

  He’s caught between Kyle and Reggie Dolliver and he picks Kyle. Couple more drinks and he’d be down on Split Point busting into someone’s home.

  “How far you going?”

  “Couple miles. It ain’t long.”

  He gets Wallace to sell him three bottles of Colt .45 under the table and waves Reggie good night. “I ain’t rushing you,” Reggie says. “Just think it over. And don’t let it get nowhere.”

  In the RoundUp parking lot, the three of them thread their way to his truck through a hundred pickups. Kyle says, “Hey Dad, what’s with the gloves?”

  “Burnt my hands on the exhaust.”

  The three of them hoist themselves up into the GMC’s high-lift cab and he starts her up. “Truck sounds like shit,” Kyle says.

  “Don’t remind me. That son of a whore Virgil Carter put a hot Chevy transfer case in her, he got the year wrong and it don’t even fucking fit. Where we going?”

  He takes one of the Colt .45s out of the bag and goes to twist the top off with his work glove but it’s not the twist kind. His hands hurt like hell from crushing the lead frames. He takes the top between his teeth and pops it off like they did in the old days, takes a swig, hands it across Darrell’s chest to his son.

  “Ain’t you going to give Darrell none?”

  “Here.” He hands an unopened bottle to Darrell Swan.

  “I ain’t going to open it with my teeth. Fuck that.”

  Kyle comes up with a Buck knife and pops it off, then shouts instructions to his old man. “Next right. Head out the Sherman Road.”

  “What the fuck’s out on the Sherman Road? Nothing but pulp-wood and coyotes after you pass the dump.”

  “We’re going to Moto’s place.”

  “Your Chinese sushi dealer? I ain’t taking you out there.”

  “Come on, Dad. I ain’t even living at home. What do you care where I go?”


  “If we can’t go to Mr. Moto’s,” Darrell Swan says, “would you mind swinging us over to Burnt Neck?”

  “I ain’t going to that shithole. Mojo’s it is.” He drops her into second gear and the hard-sprung GMC goes airborne with every bump. After the town dump, the Sherman Road turns to gravel and they raise a cloud of dust turned red by the taillights in the rearview mirror. “Yahoo!” Lucky shouts. “The Orient Express! I ain’t been out here in twenty years. Used to jack deer on this land when we was kids, put the lights on them and shoot them right between the eyes. Your grandma didn’t ask no questions, neither. We’d bring one in at night, we’d have venison pie next day for supper. Now they lock you up for that, can’t even take a leak without breaking some fucking law.”

  They make a sharp turn and Kyle says, “Slow down, it’s right around here.” They haven’t passed a house in miles, nothing on the roadside but scrub thicket and beer cans in the ditch, then they pass by a little unmarked opening in the shoulder, just a couple of upright stones on either side, no sign, no mailbox, looks like a gravel pit road. “That was it,” Darrell Swan says. “Them was the Zen stones.”

  Lucky says, “Ain’t nothing but a woods road,” but he backs her up and noses into the unmarked entrance. A sign nailed to a tree says

  NO HUNTING NO FISHING NO TRESPASSING

  GUARD DOG ON DUTY

  The sign’s got a silhouette of a German shepherd but someone has put its eye out with a .22.

  Another quarter mile on the winding entrance road and they come to a big circular drive with a four-bay garage at the other end. He knows right where he is, middle of fucking nowhere, they used to come out here in the back of Johnny Thurston’s wood truck, feel up their girlfriends, jack off and smoke Indian tobacco. Now they’re surrounded by orange floodlights and a big garage with ten-foot-high bays, all but one of them open: must be this Moto’s personal fleet. One bay has a mean-looking black Humvee, backed in, showing a five-ton Warn winch and tow cable crisscrossed over the front bumper. He’s seen the black Hummer a couple of times crawling through Orphan Point, windows tinted all around like it’s Saddam Hussein inside.