The Wooden Nickel

by William Carpenter

  12

  THIRD OF OCTOBER, first big autumn storm’s blowing itself out, wind out of the northeast for three days straight. It came right over the roof of Sonny Phair’s hubcap-covered shack and shook Ronette’s eight-by-forty like a paint mixer. Halfway through the blow a transformer went down, they’ve been in the dark for thirty-six hours in weather so thick you can’t tell if it’s night or day. Tarratine Hydro doesn’t give a god damn about the shacks and trailers on the Back Cove Road, they’ll be the last ones back on line. Ronette went off to work the lunch shift at the Blue Claw, so Lucky’s left with ten pounds of frozen cod thawing out and a six-pack of Rolling Rock that’s going to go rotten if it doesn’t get consumed. The wind scrapes the last leaves off the two poplars by the driveway and rattles the trailer roof like a sheet of tin, which it is. That first morning he went over to Sonny Phair’s and found him lying in his bed in front of a blank TV, voice so small you could barely hear him. “I get wicked depressed when the lights go out.” He goosed Sonny out of bed and got some clothes on him and the two of them heaved five or six truck tires on top of the trailer to keep the roof on. Now the tires are clomping around like there’s a horse up there, they should have roped them down. Ronette’s got a battery-powered eight-track and Sonny lent them some oldies, so they spent the evening snugged up by the kerosene heater listening to Waylon Jennings in the dark. System goes down, that’s when you know the survivors, they’ve got all they need.

  He brings the gas lantern over to the kitchen counter and opens one of the Rocks. Thick-looking water drips out of the freezer compartment onto the floor and runs into another stream from a roof leak over the stove. Inside the freezer, the block of frozen cod’s gone soft and started to smell a bit, but the chowder’s always tastier anyway if it’s a tad ripe, people ought to know that but they don’t. He takes the whole ten pounds out and cubes it up with the cleaver and sets it to steam a few minutes on the gas. He hauls out a gallon of whole milk that’s swelling the plastic bottle up and should also be used before it turns. Half a pound of salt pork, bottle of Rolling Rock, bag of onions, slice and dice, two sticks of butter. He’s unwrapping the Land O’Lakes quarters when he hears a woman’s voice in his ear so real it makes him turn around. Too much cholesterol, Lucas. He hoists his finger to the empty air and throws in a third butter quarter, waits for the voice to say something but it doesn’t.

  By now everything in the refrigerator’s at room temperature. No use looking for a cold one, though the Rock is a better beer warm than a cold Bud. He opens a five-pound plastic bag of scallops that never got to the freezer compartment and a wisp of steam comes out. Bad sign. He was thinking of tossing a few in the chowder along with the codfish but they’re some rotten, you can tell from the green spots. Maybe Corey Prentiss’s rottweiler would go for them, never hurts to make a friend.

  He turns the chowder down to simmer. He puts on his oilskin jacket and his trawler boots, grabs a flashlight and goes outside. Come to think of it, though, Corey might be in a trading mood. He drags his old Remington .30-06 out from under the built-in and wraps it in a green garbage bag to keep it dry.

  The wind’s still strong out of the northeast and there’s rain slanting down through the ground fog onto the trailer and the GMC parked outside. The driveway and yard have a couple inches of bubbling rain on them and the road’s awash on both sides, so he wonders how Ronette will ever get back from Doris’s in her little low-slung Probe. The afternoon sky’s darker than midnight. A high-lifted Dodge four-by-four sloshes down the road till its taillights are lost in the rain and wind. The guy waved but Lucky doesn’t know him so he didn’t wave back. A man’s been in one spot for two hundred years, takes a while to cozy up with the new neighbors. He walks right up Corey Prentiss’s driveway with the rottweiler barking and straining at its chain. He opens the scallop bag and lets a little rainwater run in to kill the stench, then tosses the whole load over the dog fence. They say dogs don’t care for seafood but this one tears the bag open and wolfs down the whole five pounds, then starts howling again like he hasn’t been fed for days. This time Corey throws the door open so you can see the light streaming out of his kitchen and stands there in the doorway in his undershirt, cigar in his mouth and rubbing his belly like he just got out of bed.

  “Hey Corey, hope your dog likes scallops. I just fed him a five-pound bag.”

  “Well, ain’t you considerate. Fritz got an allergy to them things, he’ll be throwing up all night.”

  “That’s tough, Corey. We had to get rid of them. They was getting ripe.”

  “Icebox don’t work, huh? Come on in and have a drink. I got gas lights, gas stove, gas-powered refrigerator. I ain’t dependent on nothing. We could have a fucking nuclear war, I wouldn’t even know it. I got two years’ worth of dog food in the basement.”

  “Finest kind, Corey. One year for the dog, one for you.”

  “That stuff ain’t as bad as you might think. I try a little now and then. Man oughtn’t to feed an animal what he won’t eat himself.”

  He comes in out of the rain and takes the wet jacket off and plops down in Corey’s den. Gas lamps sticking out of every wall, brass-colored Aladdin lantern with a green chimney hanging from the center of the room, behind Corey’s drawn curtains it’s bright as day. His hobby is taxidermy. He’s got a whole fucking zoo in there, pheasants and deer heads, lacquered trout plaques on the wall, beaver chewing a tree in a glass case. A big moose head over the recliner faces the TV like it’s watching the evening news. According to Sonny Phair, when Corey’s wife died a couple years back he had her down in the basement half stuffed by the time the deputies showed up and took her away for a church burial.

  Corey’s also got a six-foot gun cabinet with every kind of rifle and shotgun known to man. First thing Lucky does, after he puts the deer rifle down and hangs up his wet oilskins, is accept a shot of whiskey with ice cubes and peer into the glass doors of that rack to see what’s there.

  “I been thinking of a large-bore rifle,” he says. “Thought maybe you would swap for this Remington .30-06. I kept her good.”

  “What’d you, win the moose lottery? Thought you said you got a moose last year. Season’s over anyway.”

  “Didn’t even try this year. Where the fuck would I put a moose in that little place? Just want something a tad heavier around the house.”

  “I’m right with you on that one. Never know when a man might need to defend his home.”

  “You got a fifty-caliber?”

  “I ain’t. You’re talking about a bazooka.”

  “That’s what them Indians use on the whales. Out west.”

  “That’s different. They’re government subsidized out there. You and me, they don’t even let us look at guns like that. Wait a couple years, you won’t be able to buy a water pistol.”

  Lucky peers through the beveled glass of the gun cabinet. “Wouldn’t mind seeing what you have.”

  “Take a look at this Ruger four-sixteen. That’s what the elephant poachers use over in Zimbabwe. That’s a three-hundred-grain soft-point, she’ll expand to the size of an apple right in an elephant’s heart, stop it cold. She’ll pass through a two-inch plank and kill someone in body armor on the other side. I got a thousand rounds of them Rigby four-sixteens, down in the shelter. You never know.”

  The deal gets interrupted by a gust that shakes Corey’s solid double-wide prefab till there’s a crash on the roof like an antenna coming down. “Wind’s backing,” Lucky observes. “She’ll clear off tonight.”

  “Maybe. You want to swap that little Remington for the Ruger?

  It ain’t exactly an even exchange, Lucky. How much you want to spend?”

  “I’ll throw in my four-wheeler, it’s a Polaris 350 with a gun rack and deer winch. You just have to pick it up yourself over to my wife’s garage in Orphan Point.”

  Corey thinks for a while, then says, “OK, I could use an ATV, won’t be any roads left when the shit comes down. Your ex-wife better give
me the god damn thing when I go after it. I don’t want no domestic trouble.”

  He unwraps his side of the deal and rubs the moisture off the .30-06 with his shirttail. Corey takes the Ruger out of the gun rack and hands it over, stock first. The Ruger outweighs the Remington three to one. This is a bona fide African rhino rifle: commando sling, open sights, five- or six-shot clip and a nice checkered walnut stock that glows under the gas lamp like sunset on the flanks of a bull moose. Must have quite the kick too, the stock’s got a recoil absorber thick as a crutch pad. Corey comes up with a box of Rigby ammunition from the steel drawer under the gun rack. “You ought to fire her a few times before you use her,” he warns. “She’ll rip your shoulder off if you ain’t braced up.”

  “I’m going to try her out on that christly dog of yours on the way out.”

  “You go right ahead, Lucas. Save me the trouble. Say, you folks ready for the year two thousand over there? It ain’t going to be pretty.”

  He turns around and slings the Ruger over his shoulder like he’s back in boot camp at Fort Dix. “We are now.”

  On the way home the wind’s stopped howling through Corey’s satellite dish but the rain keeps coming down. The rottweiler’s lying there strangely silent while the empty scallop bag floats around his yard.

  Back in the trailer he gives the simmering chowder a stir and fills the clip on the Ruger, just to get a feel of the action. He’s picturing himself out there in the clearing wind, shoulder braced against the pot hauler, sights lined up right on that son of a whore’s eyeball. Take your time, wait till the sucker turns over, squeeze her nice and gentle. With a heart the size of a Volkswagen he ought to be able to hit the christly thing. Then a car splashes into the driveway and he slides the gun back under the built-in and throws a handful of pepper in the chowder pot.

  Ronette comes blasting through the aluminum trailer door in her white waitress outfit, white skirt and shoes splattered with rain and mud. The door won’t latch right and blows back open in the rain, so they both have to go out and wrestle it in. “Power ain’t back yet?” she says.

  “What’s it look like?”

  “I don’t know, but it smells like cod heaven. Didn’t know you was a cook.”

  “We still got the gas anyway.”

  They sit down to a couple of lukewarm Rolling Rocks and the hot chowder and another old Waylon Jennings, he listened to it with Sarah when they first went out, now she won’t have it in the house.

  “Turn it up, Ronette, so we don’t hear the god damn wind.”

  I can’t say I’ve always been proud of the things that I’ve done

  But I can say I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone

  “Lucky, it’s fucking raining in here, can’t you feel that?”

  She’s right, a wet breeze is blowing right through the trailer wall. Then there’s a crash over the fridge as one of the roof tires vibrates to the edge and falls scraping down past the aluminum siding. After that even more rain comes into the living room. He finishes the last of his chowder and starts shining the flashlight around. A wall section has buckled between the kerosene heater and the gas stove and there’s a two-foot-long crack opened up between the panels. Serious water is gathering on the floor and floating the carpet up. His first instinct is to look around for a bilge pump, then he gets up and throws his shoulder against the panel to try and straighten her out.

  At first she seems to be bending back OK. “One more heave ought to set her in.”

  “Take it easy, Lucky. This place ain’t the Rock of Gibraltar.” Soon as she says that, his last heave splits the aluminum panel right off at the roofline and a whole wall section falls down onto the lawn. They’re standing there right in the living room looking into the powerless night with the downpour pissing in from the direction of the two shadowy vehicles in the invisible driveway. “Jesus H. Christ, now you’ve done it.”

  “Weren’t my fault. God damn wall’s thinner than a beer can.”

  “It’s a good trailer, you just found a weak spot, that’s all.”

  “Bull shit. The whole fucking thing’s weak. Watch this.” He takes the next panel in both fists and pulls the edge back where it busted off from the other. It curls like a sardine top and the roof bends down till another tire slides off and splashes down on the flooded lawn.

  “Holy shit, Lucky. Enough.”

  He opens two more beers and they stand there watching the rain sluice past the big open square like it’s a Sony projection TV. Every once in a while a lightning bolt flashes and it’s like changing to another channel, you can see the chartreuse car and the red truck, Corey Prentiss’s chain-link fence with the doghouse behind it, the naked poplar sapling in the front yard with the empty bird feeder flailing around in the wind, Ronette’s fall-brown little garden with the blue crystal ball, just like a photograph. Then it goes black again and it’s just the rain and the night and the two of them by the wet sizzling kerosene heater next to the open wall.

  She cuddles up in her waitress outfit looking like the first time he laid eyes on her, she was a waitress in the RoundUp, brown-haired and cute as a pussy, flashing her half-carat engagement ring. He tosses his empty through the open wall into the dark and leans away from the missing panel in the direction of the bed. Then she says, “Lucas, maybe we ought to bring that wall back up before you get any ideas.”

  He gets his trawler boots back on and wades out in the swampy yard with the rain pouring down and tries to get his shoulder under the wall panel and jerk it back up in place. He can get down there and lift it up at an angle, but he can’t keep it up high enough to push it forward to the roofline. Ronette’s in there screaming about Noah and the fucking animals but she’s not coming out to help. He’s standing there holding the wall up slantways so all the water funnels right into the trailer, when a flashlight shows up like a lifeboat through the rain and fog. It’s the next-door neighbor Sonny Phair, drunk as a mackerel, with a tarp draped completely over him like a boat ready for winter.

  “Seen you needed some help.”

  “Sonny, get your head under here and prop up this son of a whore till I drive the truck up against it.”

  Now he’s got Sonny under the wall panel, he can go over and start the pickup and slog it across the muddy yard in four-wheel granny low. With the headlights on high beam and the truck coming over at an angle, he can finally see. There’s the trailer with a panel wide open and old Sonny Phair stone blind in his tarp, his legs spread wide, holding the panel steady as a sawhorse. There’s the living room inside lit by the gas lantern, and Ronette standing in her waitress outfit at the table by the two bowls of chowder and the Rolling Rocks like she expects a tip. He creeps the pickup right up against the panel and slowly encourages her into an upright position, with Sonny Phair pushing alongside till the piece finally fits back in. Sort of.

  He shuts the truck off with its grille up against the trailer panel and leaves her in that position for the night. He says to Sonny, “Long as that truck don’t move she’s going to stay put. How about some ripe cod chowder and a nice warm beer?”

  Inside, they’ve still got a considerable drip down the wall where the panels don’t join, but the wind’s quieted down so it’s not pushing the rain through quite so hard. Sonny pulls up a chair and stares like a stray dog in the direction of the chowder pot. He’s a short, round, dark little guy with big thick hairy wrists and a long thick neck with veins and red streaks on it like a pecker. He eats a couple of bowls like he’s never seen food before. “I been eating Nine Lives,” he says. “I like the Ocean Platter best.”

  “Why don’t you go up to the state agency in Norumbega, get yourself some food stamps?”

  “Ain’t got a license.”

  “Jesus,” Ronette says. “You should of come over here.”

  “Don’t want to get no obligations, if I can’t pay it back.” Ronette gives him a third bowl of chowder and another Rolling Rock. Lucky gets out the new rifle from under the built-in and says, “Surprise
. Look what I swapped off with Corey Prentiss.”

  “Looks like a cannon,” Ronette says. “What do we want that thing around for, you and Corey planning to go to war?”

  Sonny turns the gun around with the stock up, sticks it in his eye and looks down the barrel. Lucky says, “Ain’t nothing to drink in there, Sonny.” He takes it back and polishes Sonny’s fingerprints off the blue steel with his shirttail.

  Outside, the rain’s coming down harder but the wind’s slacked and gone north. “We may be out tending them traps tomorrow.”

  “Jesus, Lucky. It’s a fucking hurricane.”

  “No, she’s winding down. Be a swell offshore but no wind, next day it’ll start blowing northwest and we’ll be stuck another three days. Keeps slacking off like this, I’m catching the window in the morning.”

  “Crazy bastard,” Sonny Phair says. He’s eaten half the chowder now and he’s going home.

  “Thanks for holding the wall up, Sonny.”

  “Anytime. What friends are for.”

  He’s in a dream with Sarah on one side of him and Alfie on the other, they’re in a wire mesh jail cell full of cons and every one of them’s using chopsticks to build a computer in a bottle. When the alarm rings he doesn’t know who he’s with or who he is. He reaches an arm out to slap the clock quiet, the trailer shakes all over from the impact so he knows he’s not at home. He listens for signs of the storm but the wind’s backed and died, just a little breeze on the north side ruffling a downed wire outside the window, he can hear it knocking against the kerosene tank. He can’t see Corey Prentiss’s twenty-four-hour yard light, that means the power’s still down. Someone turns and gives him a kiss on the forehead, then slips out of bed on the other side. He still has to think Who is this? for a moment, then he figures it out. He hears her feeling her way through the dark corridor towards the bathroom, then a flashlight switches on and she shuts the door. He hears the whirlpool of the flush and the hiss of the tank filling, then the flush again.