The Wooden Nickel

  “What the fuck’s going on? Can’t see nothing out of this christly window. It’s covered with birdshit.”

  He steps back so Carleton Trott can open the door. Almost sunset and they’re still on the high seas. The swell’s nearly gone, a sharp land breeze carries the smell of fall. The other boat’s on the other side where he can’t see it. Carleton jumps out and goes aft to get around the crew cabin.

  In a minute he’s back. “Coast Guard’s alongside. They’re going to take her in. Both of you’s going. See if you can walk her around the stern, get over on the leeward side, we’ll put her over there with the hoist. Here’s some boots, they’re Anson’s and he’s going to want them back.”

  “Zeke going too?”

  “Zeke don’t want to leave the ship. He ain’t hurt bad. He’s coming on with us.”

  He gets Ronette up and wraps the blanket around her so it covers the union suit. He scoops her up to carry her but he can’t balance in the sea swell so he has to put her down. He pulls her arm over his shoulder but she can’t even hold it there, she’s pretty much dead weight. She looks at him and smiles but she can’t talk, she shuffles forward like he did when he was first walking after the heart job. Slow, looking down at her feet, one little step at a time. There’s not much sea motion on the big dragger, otherwise she’d fall right over.

  When they get around aft of the crew cabin there’s a white-hulled Coast Guard auxiliary off to starboard, big black numbers 7701, the name Robert J. Sweeney on its hull. They’ve got two spring lines attached but the boats are still about ten feet apart, too much swell to bring them together so she can walk across. Big Anse is yelling into the handheld radio at the Coast Guard coxswain up on the bridge. Back on the Rachel T’s stern, Harvey Trott stands aft by the cable reel with his hook on the controls of the deck crane. They’ve got a four-point sling rigged with an empty haddock box to swing her over to the Coast Guard boat. In the wheelhouse he sees Zeke’s low bald head over the helm, a bloody towel around his arm. Son of a bitch just got shot and he’s running a ship. One by one the Rachel T’s deck lights come on in the gloom, then the lifeboat swivels its spotlight over so it’s bright as noon. He hears the sound of Big Country 105 from the wheelhouse, fucking Zeke’s listening to Reba McEntire. Ronette puts her head up for the first time and says, “It’s Reba. ‘Please Come to Boston.’ That was on the album that went down.”

  Then Carleton helps her into the sling and she’s up and over. Two or three coasties on the other side pick her up and walk her into the round aft cabin on the auxiliary, looks like a little white Quonset hut. Aft, at the hydraulics, Harvey the Hook swings the tackle back aboard the Rachel T and it’s time for him to get in. Big Anson yells into the handheld, “You better take this asshole or we’re throwing him over the side.”

  The radio voice comes back: DON’T KNOW IF THE SLING’LL HANDLE THAT MUCH WEIGHT, CAP’N.

  “That’s OK, he can swim over.”

  Carleton and Harvey Trott have the sling beside him and they’re pushing him into it. The box stinks of marijuana and herring guts. Back aft Harvey jerks the hydraulics so he’s going up and over the side like a space launch. Harvey stops the hoist right in the middle and dangles him over black water for a moment, then Big Anse yells, “Christ sake, Harv, ain’t you frigged around enough?” The Coast Guard keeps their spotlight on him as he finishes his swing over the gap and drops on the afterdeck. Safe.

  The auxiliary’s smaller and lighter than the Rachel T and it’s got a familiar lively motion, bit more like a lobster boat. He finds when he tries to get out of the sling that he can’t lift his own weight. A couple of coasties in orange life jackets take him out and help him into the shelter cabin. One of them’s a big sailor with no shirt under his life vest and a U.S. flag tattooed on his shoulder, another’s a black guy with a Confederate accent and a gold tooth. The black guy takes him to the door of the Quonset hut and says, “Y’all are darn lucky to be alive.”

  Ronette is lying on one of the bunks with a small pale coastie standing watch over her like she’s a drug haul. He’s got a belt holster holding a stainless steel .45 and he’s nervous, Anson must have told them there’d be trouble. She has a small olive-drab blanket barely covering her bloody union suit and the guy looks scareder than shit, but the blood’s already dry and caking, not flowing out anymore. Outside there’s a clatter as the Rachel T’s tackle swings back over the rail, the next moment the big Cummins opens up as the boat lifts and they take off over the long following swell like a jet ski.

  She’s wide awake now, half sitting up so she can sip a mug of Uncle Sam’s coffee though the high-speed vibration is spilling it all over her GI blanket. The coastie, who’s about fifteen, looks at Lucky and yells over the engine noise: “I’m supposed to assess the victim, sir, but I don’t exactly know what to do. We didn’t practice on any girls.”

  Ronette says, “Take it easy, sailor, it’s OK. I looked down there myself and it ain’t coming out no more.” Then she looks over at Lucky and starts crying again. “You was right about today, Luck. You should of took Sonny Phair.”

  He sits beside her, and the Coast Guard kid’s glad to let him take over. The kid backs all the way across the shelter cabin and sits down on a bench with his thumb rubbing the hammer of his handgun, he’d rather be back with a Playboy in his bunk. Over his head there’s a locked gray metal cabinet where they must keep the rest of their arsenal, a pile of olive-drab blankets on top of it. The coastie says, “You can help yourself to one of those blankets, sir. You must be some cold after all that exposure.”

  “Don’t need it,” he says. But he pulls one down and unfolds it over Ronette’s knees. If they sit close together on the bunk they can talk in a normal voice. “Way he’s pushing this thing, they’ll have us on shore in fifteen minutes. You just hang on, OK?”

  “Lucky, it wasn’t just blood coming out of me. I lost it. I know I did. I didn’t feel nothing the whole time we was sinking but I got the cramps soon as I laid down. They was worse than a monthly. It’s gone, honey, and I already loved that kid so much.”

  “You got to rest up,” he says. “Another few minutes, they’re going to transfer you again.”

  But all she can keep saying is, “I lost it. I know I did. I didn’t deserve it for what I did to Clyde, and they took it away.”

  “You ain’t losing nothing,” he says. “You just got hurt when they pulled you over the side. Anyhow, anything happens, we’ll make another, be pretty god damn easy, now we know how.”

  “Lucky, we ain’t talking about a transmission. You can’t just make another. Life ain’t like that. That was a human being, he was starting to be my friend. You never lost nothing, so you don’t know.”

  “I ain’t lost nothing? Guess again.”

  He knows she knows what he’s thinking about: the Wooden Nickeldropping upside down through its own fuel slick like a blood-red shadow.

  “It ain’t the same,” she says, still looking down at the olive-drab GI blanket covering up the union suit.

  The Coast Guard seaman’s totally silent on the bunk, sitting right up at attention like he’s going to be inspected at any time. Lucky yells over to him, “Hey, where are they bringing this thing in?”

  “They didn’t tell me, sir. The boat’s out of Norumbega base.”

  “That’s a long fucking way. Can’t they bring her in closer by?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir. I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I did hear them talking about Burnt Neck.”

  “That’s right,” Lucky says. “They got a dock hoist there, they can lift her off if she needs it.”

  “What do you mean, she?” Ronette says. “They lifted you too.”

  “Well, I wasn’t about to fucking swim.”

  She smiles for a minute, then her head goes down and she’s crying again.

  Lucky says to the coastie, “Know what the ETA is?”

  “I don’t, sir.”

  “How fast this thing go?”

  “Twen
ty-four knots, sir, wide open.”

  “Think she’s wide open now?”

  “Yes sir, I think she is.”

  He feels the auxiliary making a wide turn to port, so they must have passed the Burnt Neck entrance buoy. Twenty-four knots, that’s three times what the Rachel T would have done, they ought to be in by now.

  Then the motor slows down and he hears boots on the starboard side of the Quonset hut. There’s no portholes in the shelter cabin, but the minute the coastie opens the metal door they’re hit by the flashing red and white strobe lights of the ambulance on the Burnt Neck pier. Behind the ambulance there’s a crowd of local kids and drunks to check out the action, biggest thing that’s happened to Burnt Neck since the genetic counselors came to town. The auxiliary bangs up sharp against the wharf pilings and the coasties jump off and tie her on. The high tide gives them a near horizontal gangplank, so they won’t have to use the hoist. Soon as they’ve docked up, the paramedics come running with a stretcher, carry Ronette into the back of the white Ford medivan and shut the door. Lucky starts to follow but the cox says, “Got a few formalities, skipper, then you can go.”

  They’re filling out paperwork as the ambulance backs off the dock, strobes flashing, all the wharf drunks and Burnt Neck Indian kids scattering out of the way. “You OK in those clothes, skipper?”

  “Finest kind. I ain’t got far to go.”

  The ambulance is gone, the crowd’s headed for home to watch the playoffs, he’s on the pier alone. The auxiliary swivels its decklight around and picks up nothing but drizzle in the smoky fog. Up on the night-lighted bridge he can make out the cox peering into the radar screen as he backs the Robert J. Sweeney away from the Burnt Neck pier. A teenage kid comes up to him, curious. The kid’s holding a bottle in a brown paper bag. “Hey mister, what’s that all about?”

  “What’d it look like? It was the UPS, taking all the Coast Guard money to the bank.”

  “No shit? Looked like an ambulance to me.”

  “Hey,” Lucky says. “You got a car?”

  “I ain’t got a license. I ain’t sixteen. My brother’s got a truck, though.”

  “Want to make a fast ten bucks?”

  “Sure.”

  “Go get your brother’s truck and come back down here and take me over to Whistle Creek.”

  “You buy some beer for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Cigarettes?”

  “Anything you say.”

  In a minute the kid’s back driving a beat-up Ford Ranger with no plates and the muffler dragging a plume of sparks along the ground. “Let’s go to the store first,” the kid says. “I ain’t stupid.”

  “Nobody said you was. You’re going to get picked up, though, this thing ain’t registered.”

  “Ain’t no cops around here, mister. Town can’t afford them.”

  “You some kind of Indian?”

  “Tarratine Nation,” the kid says. “You see all this land?” He waves his hand towards a line of roadside trees, then a couple of trailers and a bottle-redemption shed, then more trees. “In the old time all this belonged to us.”

  The truck hits a pothole and a blast of hot yellow sparks fills the rearview mirror from the dragging exhaust. Lucky says, “Don’t sweat it. You’re going to own it again someday.”

  “You think so, mister?”

  “Yup. You just hang on and be patient. We’re going to get sick of the god damn maintenance and give it back.”

  The lights are still out when they reach Moto’s wharf in the Old Cove. The Indian kid waves and bounces back up the road, he’s got a carton of Winstons and a twelve-pack of Rolling Rock, he’s happy. There’s no taillights on either side of the Ranger, just a wake of sparks spewing off the busted muffler, then the kid’s gone.

  No sign of Moto or Curtis Landry or the reefer truck. The place looks abandoned, just like when it was a leftover from the sardine days. The smell of dead squid oozes like a tentacle under the reefer shed door. Ronette’s Probe is the only vehicle in the lot, keys right in the ignition where she forgot them.

  High beams are useless in the night and fog, he puts them on low to crawl up the hill from Moto’s pier. Can’t see anything anyway, just fog and more fog, the wind hasn’t reached this place to clear it out. He’s still so wet he feels underwater, like the Wooden Nickeldown on her twenty-fathom ledge. She’s had planks sprung before, refits, recaulks, blown engines, bent shafts, but she’s always come out of it, just like Alfie the cat. Not this time, though. If he closes his eyes he sees her on the bottom, big nuclear starfish already crawling down below. Lobsters will find her, they’ll breed like a cathouse once they settle in.

  He feels for a tape in the glove compartment and it’s Vince Gill singing “The Heart Won’t Lie.” He turns Ronette’s stereo up loud enough so he can’t think.

  Before heading up to the Tarratine hospital he stops back at the trailer to get changed. The truck’s just like he left it, sunk up to the hubcaps in the water and mud, front end propping up the side of the trailer. He pulls the Probe into the swampy driveway till he feels the front wheels going down, Mexican shitheap couldn’t crawl out of a sandbox.

  At least there’s a light glowing in the trailer, TV’s on too. Tarratine Hydro finally got the power back on. Corey’s dog yowls away under the yard lamp on his side of the road, somebody ought to do the neighborhood a favor and shoot that fucking thing. On their side of the road there’s a couple of lights glowing in the trailer windows, plus the dim, flickering streetlight outside of Sonny Phair’s. And there’s Sonny himself, cigarette in his mouth, black trawler boots over his union suit, taking a leak in the big puddle under the greenish lamp.

  When Sonny sees the Probe pull in he buttons up and comes sloshing over in the boots, he’s wading through water a foot deep as he crosses behind the truck. He’s all excited. “Hey Lucky, you had your scanner on?”

  “I ain’t. I been listening to a Vince Gill tape.”

  “Some kind of boat went down, people was hurt, Coast Guard was calling back and forth. You see any of that?”

  “I seen it. I seen the whole christly fucking thing.”

  “What, was you and Ronette out there helping?”

  “Me and Ronette was out there sinking.”

  “No fucking shit. That whole thing was you?” Now Sonny’s looking up at Lucky like he’s a movie star passing through Split Cove on the way to his summer estate.

  “You want my autograph?”

  Sonny keeps saying, “I can’t fucking believe it. Thought you was just another shitheel fisherman and now you’re on the radio all day long. And that woman was Rhonda? Coast Guard radioed up to Tarratine for an ambulance. I heard the whole thing.”

  “You got a great scanner, Sonny.”

  “I got it on all the time, even if I’m watching TV. You never know. They was making that movie two summers ago, I heard Mel Gibson right on the radio.”

  Lucky’s already peeling the oilskins off, throwing them in the back of the pickup while they talk. Under his wet wool pants his body itches like the skin’s going to come off.

  “I’m going in for some dry clothes, Sonny. Then I’m heading for the Tarratine hospital, see how she’s doing. You want to go up with me?”

  “Sure, anything. Want me to bring the scanner? It works off of a battery.”

  “You don’t have to, Sonny. There ain’t nothing left to scan.”

  Half-hour later they pull into emergency room parking. The whole way to Tarratine, Sonny’s been puffing on this long wiry joint, slapping his knees like there’s bugs on them, fishing around the radio for Lee Ann Womack songs. Lucky parks in the same place Sarah did when she picked him up after the heart job. Then it was snowing. Now the parking lot’s strewn with yellow leaves from the first October blow.

  Sonny stays in the car smoking his joint with the stereo on. “Don’t go nowhere,” Lucky shouts back. He turns around to get the keys but Sonny says, “Christ sake, I want to hear the radio. I ain’t go
ing to steal your car.”

  The young nurse at the emergency desk buttons her shirtfront when she sees him staring. “You a relative?”

  “I better be. I slept alongside her last night.”

  “Guess that qualifies. You the husband?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll put you down as domestic partner. Dr. Radner will be right out. He has the rest of the paperwork.”

  He stands in the corner of the emergency room breathing the stench of death. The bubbling fish tank beside him has three or four guppies and minnows drifting belly-up on the surface and another half dozen on the way out. You’d think they could keep the fish going in a hospital. Across the room is a guy about to die of old age, looks like he can’t wait. He’s holding on the sides of his walker, just staring out the emergency room door towards the parking attendant’s shelter like it’s the tollbooth to heaven. His wife looks up from her People magazine and gives him a little nudge now and then to keep him alive.

  A doctor comes through a door with a porthole, looks around for just a minute, then comes over to Lucky and takes his arm. “I’m Dr. Radner,” he says. “I guess you’ve been through a lot too.”

  “I come in under my own power.”

  “Yes. The young lady wasn’t so fortunate.” The doctor flips a few pages on his clipboard, finds the right one. “Rhonda Hannaford,” he says. “And you’re the husband?”

  “Domestic partner.”

  He checks a box. “I didn’t get her insurance company. We didn’t want to bother her with a lot of questions. We have her under mild sedation and she’s resting.”

  “We ain’t insured.”

  He grunts and checks another box. “We’ll want to observe her overnight, Mr. Lund.”

  “Lunt.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I can never read Portia’s writing. Your domestic partner shows every sign of coming through this in good shape, despite a pretty serious brush with hypothermia. In many ways the pregnant female is the sturdiest organism on the planet. I’ll be frank with you, we were afraid she’d lost the child at first. Now it looks like there’s a sporting chance. You have other children, Mr. Lunt?”