The Wooden Nickel

  Sonny Phair, the next-door neighbor, is sitting on a four-wheeler with a sixteen-gauge shotgun across the fender rack, pulling his welfare checks out of a mailbox with five or six bullet holes in it. He gives a big grinning dipshit wave and drives the ATV in a wide circle around his hubcap-covered shack.

  Ronette hops up on the running board and pushes her lips on the side window in a big moist kiss that leaves a little red cunt shape on the glass. Smack. He could see counting the ten grand again inside, couple of beers, get naked and fool around a bit. She loves doing it pregnant and he does too, big spongy udders, no more Magnums, there’s a good side to everything. But instead he’s got an appointment with his daughter Kristen at the Cockatiel Café in downtown Orphan Point. It’s her last day before going off to school and she probably wants money.

  “Can’t get no blood out of a turnip,” he speaks out loud.

  Ronette says, “Who you talking to?” then without waiting for an answer she’s inside the ripped screen trailer door.

  He’s just past the Blue Claw and turning onto Summer Street when a diesel pusher RV the size of a Greyhound bus pulls out in front of him and tries to turn left so it’s going to crush him if he doesn’t back up fast. He looks up in the RV’s cab and the driver must be in his nineties, he doesn’t care anymore, close your eyes and drive this fucker over everyone, what’s the worst they can do to him, death penalty?

  They say they’re coming out with a sex pill, you can get it up when you’re a hundred years old.

  He glimpses this good-looking woman on the sidewalk in front of the health food store: black T-shirt, white shorts, green baseball cap with a ponytail sticking out the back. She steps out between a pale yellow Jeepster Commando and a BMW Z-3 and comes running to the open passenger window of the truck. “Daddy!”

  “Hey sweetheart. See if one of them cars has the keys in it, and back her out so I can park.”

  She’s up on the running board, looking in. She’s got a tan, lipstick, a pair of port-and-starboard earrings with bits of colored glass. She says, “The Cockatiel has customer parking, out behind. That’s why I picked it.”

  Inside, Kristen steers her old man to a back corner away from the AARP clusters in the window seats. The restaurant’s all white inside with color photos over every table, lobster boats in the fog and pot buoys hanging on shingle walls, most of them taken at Clyde’s wharf, old unpainted place stinking of gullshit and herring guts. “If them pictures smelled like they look,” he says to Kristen, “this place would never sell another meal.”

  “Daddy, people come from all over the country to photograph Hannaford’s wharf. It’s a motif.”

  “I don’t notice no pictures of old Albert taking a leak into the crab bucket.”

  “Everyone’s not like you, you know. Some people see the beautiful side.”

  “Ain’t no people in them pictures, just a bunch of shit-covered bait shacks.”

  The waitress approaches to take their order, picks up on the conversation and backs off. Then she sees who it is. “Kristen.”

  “Wendy, this is my dad. Wendy’s already at the U. We’re going to be in the same dorm.”

  Wendy’s wearing a little clip-on bow tie over a white shirt but the second button down from the neck has pulled open and he sits up straighter so he can improve the angle down inside. “I’m so glad you brought him,” she says to Kristen. “We haven’t had any real people here all day.” She hands out the menus, then straightens up and closes off the view.

  He leans back in his chair with his authentic oilskin pantlegs and trawler boots on either side of the little round table with the red rose sticking up out of a half-liter wine bottle. “Got any Rolling Rock?”

  “We only have microbrews.” Wendy laughs. “We have Wart-man’s Maple Ale, we have India Pale Chutney —”

  “Just make it coffee and a cheeseburger.”

  “Cholesterolburger,” Kristen says.

  Her father says, “Extra cheese, french fries, large onion rings.”

  “We don’t have a Frialator,” Wendy says. “I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with potato salad.”

  Kristen orders a latte and a tuna salad plate. She says, “Know what Mom says? She says you’re in rebellion. And she’s right. You’re bigger than anyone in here and you’re rebelling like a little kid. You’re worse than Kyle. By the way, I heard you made up with him.”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell, ain’t that how they put it?”

  “You know I’m off to school tomorrow. I have all these forms for my dorm, my student loan, it’s hard to fill them out. They say, you know, ‘If separated, father’s address,’ and I don’t even know where you live.”

  “I’m staying in Split Cove.”

  “But Daddy, you hate Split Cove, you used to drive this roundabout route for miles so you wouldn’t have to drive through that town.”

  “Things change,” he says, waits a minute then says, “I suppose you want some money for school. I ain’t got any.”

  “Dad, I didn’t ask you out to lunch for money. I wanted to see you. Money’s no problem. I have a scholarship and a loan package and I saved a ton this summer. The Hummermans even gave me a bonus. I get to work in the cafeteria in exchange for meals. I can take out a loan for my room. The one thing is books. It’s not like high school where they give them to you. You have to buy them. That’s going to be four hundred dollars.”

  He can’t believe it. “Four hundred dollars? That could get you a twenty-five-inch TV. Ain’t that school supposed to be run by the state? Hardworking people shovel their tax money into that god damn place and you have to pay for your own books?”

  “Daddy, you don’t even pay taxes.”

  The waitress arrives with the coffees and the food. She’s not much to look at now she’s got her shirt buttoned up, no chin, lot of acne under the makeup mask. He turns his eyes back to the pretty girl across from him with her face smooth and suntanned under the green cap that says north sails. “I’ve been talking to Kyle,” she says.

  “Talking Chinese or English?”

  “English.”

  “What kind of shit’s he filling your head with?”

  “He’s been staying with a cousin of your girlfriend, over in Burnt Cove. He says you guys are going to have a baby.”

  “Kyle should mind his own god damn business.”

  The chinless waitress is hanging around nearby, dusting the row of coffee urns, one ear out to hear what’s going on. Kristen leans over the table till her cap visor’s right over his potato salad and whispers, “It is our business, Dad. You have a family already. It’s us.” She started off with Sarah’s serious look, but now she’s starting to cry. He’d like to pat the back of her neck the way he did when she was ten, but his hands are too big to touch any part of her and all he can do is squint at the waitress till she comes over and tops off his doll-house coffee cup. Kristen’s pulling a pair of sunglasses out of her backpack, putting them over her eyes so they can’t be seen.

  He lays his huge lead-scarred claw over her hand beside her untouched tuna plate and asks her, “How you planning to get up to school tomorrow with your gear? Your boyfriend going to stuff it all in the Miata?”

  “Nathan’s gone back to Brandeis already. He’s on the sailing team, so he had to leave early. We got kind of distant over the summer.”

  “Too bad,” he says. “That was a decent little car. Your mother taking you up?”

  “I guess. Her Lynx is kind of broken. Nobody knows what’s wrong with it.”

  “Get some of them artists to look at it, over to the school. Sounds like you could use some wheels yourself.”

  “I could never afford it, my whole summer savings went into the first-semester bill.”

  She’s got the sunglasses off now and she’s stopped crying, but her eyes are still wet the way they used to be when she’d get hurt in the yard and come stand at the back door and look up and bite her lip with her front teeth.

  “You know Virg
il Carter?” he asks.

  “That old guy with the used car lot? I know who he is. Don’t you always say his cars are stolen?”

  “Let’s go to Virgil’s,” he says. “Maybe he’s got something that’ll get you up to school.”

  When they turn off the Eel Dam Road into Carter’s Car Care, Virgil’s in the garage with a blowtorch and a trouble light, burning the serial numbers off a ’73 Corvette. He looks up and blinks a few times from the September sun. “Who you got here?” Virgil says, eyes bloodshot from acetylene fumes, looking puzzled as hell. Sounds like he’s got Kristen mixed up with Ronette. “You planning to trade her in?”

  “She needs a car for college. You got anything that runs?”

  “This Corvette’d be nice for her. Got a 501.”

  Kristen pokes her North Sails cap into the little side window of the Corvette. “How is the gas mileage on these, Dad?”

  “Round a gallon a mile,” Virgil says. “Guess you’re looking for something practical, little Mazda 323, maybe a Sube, a Civic, I got a couple of those, light wrecks, we can glue them up.”

  “She wants something American, Virge.” Kristen’s wandered off by now, she’s looking at Virgil’s front-line specials under the pennants he’s got strung from a pine tree to his power pole.

  “What do you want to spend, five, six thousand?”

  “She’s just going to college, for Christ sake. She ain’t won the lottery. Let’s see what you got out back of the trailer.”

  “Them are all shitheaps. You’d let your flesh and blood go back and forth to school in one of them things? You want her broke down on some lonely highway in the middle of the night?”

  He’s trying to see around back of the trailer but Virge is pushing him towards Kristen, who’s looking at the row of convertibles under the summer specials sign. “Her boyfriend drove one of them Miatas.”

  “Ain’t got a Miata.”

  Over at the far end of Virge’s specials he spies an old sixties Mus-tang ragtop, cherry red. “What’s in that Mustang?” he asks.

  “Little six, four-speed. That one’s a classic, Lucas. It ain’t in the Subaru range.”

  “Give her the keys, Virge, let her try it out.”

  He’s got the Mustang’s hood open while Kristen slides behind the wheel. “Want to know something?” she says. “All that time with Nathan and he never once let me drive his car.”

  “You going to let him drive this one?”

  “In his dreams.”

  Virge comes back from the trailer with the dealer plates saying to Kristen, “Little six like that, no PCV, she’ll get twenty miles a gallon easy. Don’t race her now, honey, she ain’t been run for a while.” Soon as Virge puts the plates on she’s off up the Eel Dam Road, top down, blond hair wagging in her wake like the tail of a golden lab.

  “That’s an Alabama car, Lucas, complete restoration, no fucking Bondo, never seen road salt. That’s white leather upholstery and a brand-new top. You know them things is hard to find. I’d have to have nine-five for her.”

  “Christ, Virge, it ain’t a museum piece. Needs valve work, you can hear the fucking clutch slipping from here.”

  Virgil takes out his can of Red Man and sucks a wad under his tongue and appears to think. Pretty soon he spits a red gob out on the tire of a Honda Civic. “Have to get eight for her anyway, at that I’m losing some.”

  “You ain’t losing nothing. You stole the fucking thing.”

  “I got my overhead,” Virge says.

  He fingers Moto’s envelope in the bib pocket right over his heart. “Cash sale,” he says, “don’t have to say nothing to nobody.”

  “That way I can do you a little better,” Virgil says.

  Lucky opens the envelope and counts off forty-five of Moto’s hundred-dollar bills, folds them once, and shoves them down in his pants pocket. He leaves the remaining fifty-five hundred in the envelope and hands it over. By the time Kristen’s back from her test drive, Virgil’s coming out of the trailer with the paperwork and the ten-day plates. “Sign this here form, Lucas, it says you paid me six hundred bucks.”

  His only daughter throws her arms around his neck. “Daddy, I can’t believe you’re doing this. But how much was it?”

  Virgil Carter finishes screwing the ten-day plate on the trunk and says, “Know what them billionaires say. You can’t afford it if you got to ask.”

  Harley Webster’s got an eight-cylinder Volvo Penta on the hoist when he pulls up to the Riceville boat shop. Harley breeds pit bulls in his spare time and his yard dog comes drooling up the minute Lucky steps down off the truck. He gives it a swift boot to the shoulder, the dog goes screeching behind an engine crate. They’re pussies if you show them who’s in charge.

  Harley says, “Look who’s back for another turbo. Heard you was done lobstering. Guess you won’t be needing that boat for a while. Planning to sell her?”

  “Fuck that. I’m doing offshore research now, foreign government contract. I’m going to need something better than that dipshit six.”

  “Got a 307 Olds in there, freshwater cooled, twice as strong as that little six. Finest fucking kind, hundred percent marinized, new starter, new alternator, ain’t got a thousand hours on her. Guy out of Stoneport went diesel and traded on a 210 Cummins. Ain’t going to last, neither. I got somebody coming down tonight.”

  “Tonight? Where is it?”

  “Inside, on the small hoist.”

  The 307 has rust on the block surface and the saltwater cooling side, it’s going to need a new manifold. He takes a pipe wrench off of Harley’s shelf and cranks her over. Compression’s decent. Takes a plug out and tastes the electrode with the end of his tongue. Little burned, not bad. Puts his middle finger down in the cylinder, runs it around the cylinder wall and licks the tip. Inside’s decent but the outside’s a mess. The pit bull’s right there beside him ready to snap his hand off if he pockets a tool. He gives it a pat on the neck and goes out to deal.

  Harley’s swinging the hoist over the engineless Stoneport boat tied to the end of his wharf. His boy Peter’s down in the cockpit with the bulkhead pulled, ready to guide the big Volvo into place. “Hang on, Lucas. We’ll get this son of a whore in, then we’ll talk.”

  The sun’s starting to go down over Riceville harbor, it’s catching the line of red and green channel markers and the hulls of a couple dozen of the fastest boats on the coast. Harley keeps the locals tuned up right. Out beyond the harbor is the open sea, with a smoky afternoon southwester cooking a mist off of the whitecaps, an eastern-rig trawler passing by, hull down, bound for Stoneport with a nice full load.

  Harley has dropped the Volvo now and his son’s down there shimming up the mounts. Now he can give Lucky his full attention. “Seen anything you like?”

  “Looks like that Olds got a little wet.”

  “The fuck it did. Old fart never left the mooring.”

  “Whose was it?”

  “You know him, Alan French. Senior.”

  “Alan’s fucking boat sunk, everyone knows that. How long’d that piece of shit spend on the bottom?”

  “Lucky, you find that 307 has touched salt water, I’ll give you the fucking thing.”

  “Them growths on the flywheel cover, you sure they ain’t barnacles?”

  “No, them are just from hanging there in the fog.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty-five hundred installed, now you ain’t got the use of Clyde’s hoist.”

  “Harley, you owe me for that fucking turbo. Piece of shit blew up on me.”

  “Bull shit. You ordered that propane rig, I put it in.”

  “Two thousand.”

  Harley looks at his watch, squints his good eye down the road. He’s blind in the other, the black part’s gone white as a fish. “Guy’s coming for it in twenty minutes. I promised him over the phone. Didn’t know you was coming in. He gets here, he’s got it.” He pulls a cigar out of his tool apron and lights it like it’s a fuse and when it’s smoked
down the other guy’s going to show up and buy the 307.

  “OK, for Christ sake.”

  “I got to be paid now, Lucky. That guy comes in, he’s going to start screaming. I got to be able to tell that cocksucker the deal is done.”

  “I need something else too. Fourteen-inch Hydroslave hauler, good for offshore. You got one?”

  “Finest kind.”

  “Throw in the Hydroslave,” Lucky says, “we’ll be even.”

  “What do you mean, throw it in? For Christ sake, Lunt, this ain’t the Salvation Army, this is a fucking business. The Hydroslave’s cherry. Out of the box. New, it’s four thousand bucks. For you, because you are an asshole, it’s three.”

  “Give you forty-five hundred for the package,” Lucky offers. “Engine, hauler, hydraulics. You put them in.”

  “You come down and help me. Just so’s you won’t come back yelling your ass off like you usually do. We dig our own fucking graves in this world, nobody digs them for us.”

  He pulls the rest of Moto’s money out of his pants pocket and hands it over. Harley sticks it in his tool apron without even looking at it. He throws a screwdriver off towards the block yard and the pit bull screams off to pick it up. “You come around next Monday good and early, we’ll clean that V-8 up and stick her in that research vessel of yours, see how she runs.”

  He drives back up the Riceville Road filling the pickup cab with cigar smoke till he can barely see. The Indians knew what they were doing, zip the door of the tepee and light up. When he gets to the Carrying Place, where the road slopes down right next to the water, he stops the truck and looks out through the smoky windows onto the North Atlantic Ocean as if he’s just bought it off of Harley Webster for forty-five hundred bucks.

  Fucking Harley, how can he stay in business making deals like that?

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