Daddy kept all of the sorts of things that I would have expected him to keep down there. The same sort of crap I had on the Kings Ransom: spools of wire for repairing traps, spare parts for the engine, life-saving gear, lobstering supplies, a rough galley that wouldn’t serve for more than heating up a can of soup. The stingy bunk was made with a blanket and pillow, hospital corners making it look even less inviting than it already was. There were things that surprised me, though. He’d built a small bookshelf, cordage keeping the books in their place, and I wondered when it was that he read on the Queen Jane. The books themselves were nothing that I would have looked twice at—a few Shakespeare plays; two Dickens novels; Jane Austen; Hemingway; Moby-Dick; a few others I’d never read. To the side, there was a heavy trunk that was lashed against the wall, and it caught my attention because it looked big enough that I wasn’t sure how Daddy had gotten it down the ladder. There was something about the trunk that was familiar, and I wondered if it had been there when I was a kid and still played belowdecks.
I had trouble one-handing the latch, an old-fashioned leather tongue that fastened like a belt, but after working it a bit, it came loose and I lifted open the lid of the trunk. Inside the trunk was another trunk, but this one was designed to be waterproof, made of hard blue moulded plastic. It was the kind of plastic that could spend a month floating out on the ocean with no apparent ill effects. There were a couple inches of space on top of the plastic trunk where the lid of the wooden trunk would have closed, but the sides fit so closely that it was hard to believe that Daddy hadn’t built the wooden trunk around the walls of the plastic one. Then I saw the small envelope with my name written on it in Daddy’s cramped writing. It was tucked under the handle of the plastic lid, wedged in so it wouldn’t come loose, and I had to tug to pull it out. The envelope wasn’t sealed, and when I slipped out the card I thought at first it was blank. Of course, when I flipped it over, it wasn’t.
“Cordelia,” it said, “these are for you for when I’m gone. You can share with your sisters if you’d like, but these are for you. If I’m not dead, get the hell out of my stuff. But if I’m dead, remember that I’ve always loved you and always will. You’ll know what to do.”
He didn’t sign his name, but it’s not like he needed to.
I heard Kenny call me and then his steps on the deck. I was wiping my eyes with my sleeve when he ducked down and saw me.
“What are you doing down there?” he said. He was holding a paper bag from the Coffee Catch, and he had a smile to greet me until he noticed my tears. “You okay?” I saw him reach out and then he put his hands on the ladder and started down. I glanced at the plastic trunk.
“No,” I said. “I’m okay. I’m coming up.” He stopped, looked at me, and then went back up the ladder. I put the card back in the envelope, wedged it under the handle again, and closed the lid to the wooden trunk. I stood there for a few seconds, my hand resting on the wood. It was smooth under my fingers. I left it unlatched. I’d had enough trouble undoing the clasp. I wasn’t sure I could manage closing it. As it was, with my broken wrist, I struggled going up the few rungs that made the ladder. I was glad that Kenny reached down and helped me up.
Stephanie was sitting in the captain’s chair eating a bagel. I must have given her a funny look, because she blushed and then blurted out, “I know, but it looked good, and I figured a second breakfast wasn’t the worst thing I could do.” I didn’t say anything. “Oh,” she said. “The chair.” She scrambled to her feet. “Sorry.”
“No. It’s not that. It’s … it’s nothing. Actually, really, it’s nothing. I think I’m just tired,” I said, but I was thinking about what it was that Daddy had left for me in the blue plastic waterproof trunk.
Kenny was already by the stern, untying us from the dock. Stephanie started to raise her hand, hesitated, and then finished her movement, touching my hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “We don’t have to go out today.”
I think she was expecting me to bristle, but her voice was so gentle that it was all I could do not to start crying again, and I turned my hand over so that I could give hers a soft squeeze. “No, I do. I do have to go out today. It’s all I know how to do, Stephanie.”
She held my hand and did her best to smile, but I could tell that she was holding herself back from crying, too. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go fishing.”
And I thought about what Daddy’s card said, that I’d know what to do, and suddenly I did. “No. First we have to run an errand.”
Stephanie and Kenny were quiet all the way to James Harbor. They prepped gear and bait, and then they stayed at the stern, leaning out over the water and talking. I wondered if Kenny was telling Stephanie about our new arrangement.
As we came in sight of the harbour, I reached over and opened the locker that had daddy’s guns. I was going to order Kenny and Stephanie to stay on the boat, but I didn’t plan on going in to talk to the James Harbor boys alone. Even if I didn’t intend to fire one, I’d be accompanied by a shotgun. I was trying to figure out which one to take when I glanced again at the harbour.
“Jesus,” I said, and I throttled the boat down. The water was choked with boats that I recognized. The Green Machine, George’s boat, John O’Connor’s boat, the Warner boys’, all of them. The whole fleet from Loosewood Island. I kicked the locker closed and then brought the Queen Jane up to the only open spot on the docks.
I felt like I was moving in a daze. I didn’t remember to tell Stephanie and Kenny to stay put, and they followed behind me. As we walked up the dock, I saw a group of men rounding the corner of the building. They were laughing and smiling. It was Timmy who saw me first and called out.
“You missed the meeting, Cordelia.”
I stopped and waited for them to surround me. I don’t know what expression I had on my face, but Timmy started laughing. “We rounded up a bunch of their boys. Not just Al Burns, but the younger ones, too. You can turn around, Cordelia. It’s fixed. They’ll stay out of our waters.”
George scowled, but he also nodded. “Mostly fixed. They’ve got one or two boys who aren’t part of their co-op and who don’t seem to want to listen. We’ll sort them out later, but I think the message has been sent. They can’t do anything about the rogues, but James Harbor as a whole is done with poaching Loosewood Island waters.” He took a few steps until he was in front of me, and then he cupped his hand around the back of my neck. “I heard you last night, Cordelia. I was listening, and you’re right. Nothing’s changed.”
I didn’t say anything. Nobody else did, either, and it took me a few seconds to realize they were waiting for me, that with Daddy gone, I was the one who had the final say. It took me a few more seconds past that realization to shake my head, let a grin creep onto my face, and to say, “Well, then, I’m going fishing.”
Stephanie and Kenny settled in together immediately, like we’d picked up where we’d left off before we found the ghost ship. Instead of splitting my line and Daddy’s line—or what was left of Daddy’s line—like I’d done in September, I fished them as if they were a single line, working the water in chunks of geography. We started on the far side of the island, where depending on what way you looked you could only see either the hills and bluffs of the backside of the island or the open sea. It was as if the mainland didn’t exist.
Every trap was bursting with bugs, and despite me being limited by the cast on my wrist, I pitched in best I could. We were moving slowly, not because we weren’t being efficient, but because I’d never seen a haul like this. Even Trudy seemed excited, barking every time we pulled a trap to the surface. Normally there were lobsters that were oversized or undersized. Normally there were eggers or lobsters with notched tails that told us they were eggers at other parts of the year. Not today. Every single lobster we pulled from the traps was a keeper. The good weather had carried over from the funeral, and I worked up a sweat. Even with the trip to James Harbor and back, it wasn’t even nine o’clock by the time I peeled off my
sweatshirt and was down to a T-shirt. My cast was itchy, and I could feel water that had trickled underneath the plaster. I was hoping the doctor had used something that didn’t mind getting wet. We’d worked our way through all of the traps on this stretch of water, and I grabbed the last lobster out of the last of Daddy’s traps, slapping the brass gauge against its carapace, though by that point I didn’t even know why I bothered. Every single lobster had been the right size, just small enough that they were still legal, but big enough that they’d fetch a premium.
Stephanie was over at the bait barrel, but I felt Kenny next to me. I looked at him and he was grinning fit to sink a ship. “What?” I said.
“The lobsters. Nice haul today.” he said. “Never seen anything like it.”
I banded the lobster, securing its claws closed, and chucked it in with the others. I didn’t actually know what to say to him. What he said was true for me, too. I’d never seen anything like it, even when I’d been out with Daddy. I felt like I was going crazy, but the only thing I could think of was that this haul of lobsters was, in some sort of bizarre way, a gift, like the ocean was trying to tell me that it was sorry.
Enough. To the sea, I wanted to say: Enough. The Kings were fragile flesh and blood, and I’d had enough of the ocean clawing away at us. It was enough for Brumfitt to lose a son, and for each son of each generation to lose a son. It was enough for Scotty to die. It was enough to have Tucker washed away on the same night that Daddy died.
I realized that Kenny was still staring at me, waiting for an answer, and because I couldn’t think of what to say and couldn’t think of anything else to do, I grabbed him and kissed him. We were like that for a few seconds. I think that both Kenny and I realized at the same time that Stephanie was awfully quiet.
Stephanie kept looking back and forth from me to Kenny, and then finally she crouched down next to Trudy. She scratched at Trudy’s head and said, “Well, I guess that’s happening. And you know what? I’m just going to pretend that I didn’t see that, and I’m going to go about my business as a lobsterman. How about we drop these last two traps back in the water and head around to the other side of the island like we’d planned? Sound okay to the two of you?” There was a tremor in her lips, and then she gave up and just let herself smile.
I gave Kenny another kiss and then headed forward to the wheel and pushed the throttle. I hadn’t conned the Queen Jane in years, but I liked the way she felt in my hands. She rolled differently than the Kings’ Ransom, but it was a familiar movement, and I was already thinking that maybe instead of selling Daddy’s boat I’d sell the Kings’ Ransom. My boat was going to need some time in the boatyard getting worked over after having everything blown out by the lightning strike, and it made a certain kind of sense to keep Daddy’s boat instead. Behind me, Kenny and Stephanie had taken seats on spare lobster traps, and Kenny was fishing a donut out of the bag from the Coffee Catch. He held it up to me, but I shook my head. He shrugged and took a bite for himself before thinking to offer it to Stephanie. I faced forward again, though there wasn’t much point. The water was empty aside from lobster buoys and seagulls, and other than ramming the side of the island, there wasn’t much for me to hit. As we passed the harbour it seemed as though every boat was docked. I could only see a handful of men milling about on the wharf. I wondered if maybe I was the only fisherman out on the water today—if everybody but me had come back from James Harbor and decided that it was a day to spend onshore with their families.
We came fully around to the front of the island, the mainland laughing in the distance, the harbour hiding again. I was relieved to see that there was another boat out in the field of buoys. Even with Kenny and Stephanie on board, there was something lonely about seeing the ocean without anybody else working. At first we were far enough away that I couldn’t see whose boat it was. I tried matching up where it was against Seal Coat Cove, but I wasn’t sure with the angle how far past my and Daddy’s buoys he was working. Could have been Petey Dogger, could have been John O’Connor, but I didn’t think he was far enough past to be Mr. Warner. The way the shelf rippled around this part of the island, the buoys weren’t spaced as tightly as they were at other places, but the closer we got to where we could pull our traps, the more I started feeling sick to my stomach about the boat in front of me. We were still half a mile away when I knew that it wasn’t Petey or John or Mr. Warner, wasn’t any of the boys who had a right to be out in these waters. I let our speed creep down to a quarter of what it had been, and I felt Kenny and Stephanie come up behind me. Trudy got to her feet and pushed herself between me and Stephanie.
“That what I think it is?” Kenny said.
“What?” Stephanie stepped up until she was almost right against the glass. “The boat? What about it?” She looked at Kenny, at me, through the glass, and then back at me and Kenny again. “What?”
“It’s not one of ours,” I said.
“I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” I said, cutting her off. “You heard what George said. Not all of them. They took care of the bulk of James Harbor, but there’s always some that do what they want.”
Kenny reached out and pulled the microphone from its rest on the side of the radio. I grabbed his wrist and stopped him before he keyed it. “No.”
“Come on, Cordelia. You know we’ve got to call it in. You know what Woody said.”
“I know what he said, Kenny, and we’re going to take care of this ourselves. The boys went to James Harbor this morning and they took care of something that I should have taken care of. With Daddy gone, that was my job to do this morning, and while I appreciate what the boys did, I’m not calling for help every time there’s something scary out in these waters.” I didn’t let go of Kenny’s wrist. He stared at me and I stared back, and then, after what seemed like a long time, Kenny put the mic back on its clip.
I didn’t say that Daddy wasn’t here to take care of me anymore, and I didn’t say that I was sick of things, that I’d had enough. I was tired of doing things the right way. I was tired of the ocean dictating its terms to me. And I was fucking tired of James Harbor. The ones who wouldn’t listen? I planned on making them listen. These were the Kings’ waters. These were my waters.
The fellows in the other boat saw us coming and were waiting. They weren’t surprised when I turned the Queen Jane broadside, but even though I shouldn’t have been, I was surprised to see Eddie Glouster looking back at me. I’d left a hefty gap between the two boats, almost a boat length, but suddenly it didn’t seem hefty enough, and I began to regret not having Kenny call it in. I glanced over at the radio, and Kenny saw me. He lifted his eyebrow. Let’s see how things pan out, I tried to say to him with the way I shook my head.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Eddie called across. He had his arms down at his sides. I couldn’t see his hands. The same went for the other man on the boat. I didn’t know his name, but I recognized him as one of the men who’d been there the night we burned Eddie off the island. At the thought, the image of Oswald Cornwall, face blown through, came to me. It wasn’t hard to imagine Oswald on his knees, begging, crying, saying it was only money, and Eddie standing behind him, gun to the back of his head, pulling the trigger. I kept thinking of the other body, too, the one that went with that finger.
I looked over the water. Near as I could tell, all of my buoys were still there, but Daddy’s had been thinned out. I expected to see yellow buoys with a triple ring of sky-blue and a band of green, and I wasn’t disappointed. “You’re in the wrong waters,” I called back.
He shrugged, but he still kept his hands down. I couldn’t figure out if he was holding a rifle or a shotgun or something smaller. But I didn’t think his hands were empty. If this was the same boat that had fired on George—and at this point, I was willing to put money on it—then there was a good chance Eddie was holding a shotgun. But maybe it was a pistol. I was hoping pistol. I wasn’t sure how good a shot he was, but most people aren’t as good at handlin
g a firearm as they think they are, and pistols are a bitch to aim, particularly with the motion of a boat.
“I’ve heard you’ve got an opening, what with your daddy finally kicking the bucket. Besides, you’ve got plenty of lobsters,” Eddie said. “You won’t even notice I’m here.”
“Sorry,” I said across the open space between our boats. “We’re full up on assholes, Eddie.”
He seemed to be enjoying himself, but he was also bouncing a little, like he was full of a nervous energy, and for the first time I had the thought that he might be hopped up on something. He was thinner than when I’d last seen him, the night of the fire, and I tried to remember what I knew about meth. “You know, I pulled those traps and emptied them before I cut them.” His voice faded in and out over the idle of my motor, but his words were still clear. “I don’t know what the fuck your Daddy was using for bait, but the lobsters sure love it.” He finally showed one of his hands, lifting it up to cover his mouth in mock surprise. The other hand stayed firmly down, out of sight. “Oops. Did I say that out loud? I didn’t mean to let you know that I was cutting Woody’s traps. I guess he isn’t using them anymore, so no harm, no foul.”
“Hey, fuck you, Eddie.” Kenny brushed past me and leaned on the rail. He spit the words out. Eddie flinched at Kenny’s forward motion. “I get my hands on you, I’m going to kill you.”
I reached out and pulled Kenny back by the sleeve. “This is on me,” I said to him quietly; and then, louder, I yelled across to Eddie. “Basically, what he said, Eddie. Fuck you, fuck your piece-of-shit boat. I get near you, and I’m going to fucking kill you.”
The Lobster Kings Page 29