John Casey - Spartina

“How did you get to know all this?”

“A chat here, a chat there. I find out stuff, I put it together. There’s a lot I don’t know, but I got a sense of it. I don’t know what Schuyler’s worth, he may have a couple of hundred thousand somewhere. But I’m pretty sure that he’s winging it on the Sawtooth Point deal. Flying right out in mid-air.”

“You mean he just talked his way in?”

“No. No, you’re missing the point. He held some cards. It’s how he played them is the point. He got the Wedding Cake for a song. I looked up the asking price in the old ads. So I guess all he put down was a hundred grand, which I figure he got by selling his New York co-op. His wife told me they were living in her parents’ house for six months. Before that, all he had of the Wedding Cake was an option for a year before he bought it. He went way out on a limb to get that card. He was going to play it by renting it to some guys to make a sleazo horror movie, get shares in the movie. But then this deal came along. Now, for him to play it, he had to pay off the mortgage. How did he do that? I don’t know for sure, but I can tell you his wife is biting her nails. I think he went down to New York and raised money for the movie he’s making, maybe for the horror movie too, and he used that money to pay off the mortgage. So now he’s got to scramble to get the movie made. But look at him. He’s having a good time. Then look at his wife. There’s a nonplayer, a worried-sick, doing-nothing-about-it nonplayer.”

“So Schuyler’s hot shit in your book. So what?”

“It’s a difference between you and me. You look for ways to put him down. I pay attention. You should pay attention. Apply what you pick up to your own situation. You’re counting on me to take you out so we can bust our asses chasing red crabs and swordfish. If you want your money for your boat, you ought to be ready to play. One thing you got is your acre. The resort could make money putting another cottage in there.”

“For Christ’s sake, Parker! That’s where I live—”

“Another thing you’ve got is Joxer.”

“I got Joxer to say he’d come look at the boat.”

“And I hear from Elsie that Miss Perry thinks you’re a great guy. Get Miss Perry to invest. She’s loaded.”

Dick had made his mind up about that long ago. May had mentioned it when he started the boat. It just felt wrong. Dick looked at Parker and shook his head.

“Another thing you got is a way to make trouble. You’re up Pierce Creek, the resort is going to screw up something for you. Pollute a clam bed. Get a lawyer and find some rights.”

“I couldn’t pay a lawyer.”

“Do it on a contingency-fee basis. You don’t really want to sue. You just want to have that on hand. Settle for peanuts, the lawyer gets some of the peanuts. But what you get is a noncash deal — a sweeter loan for your boat. A sweeter deal for your land. The lawyer gets snookered out of that. There’s something in there, I can smell it. You could get hired as a consultant on what the currents are in the breachway and the salt pond, what’ll happen if they dredge a channel. See, if they don’t hire you, you could be a witness for the other side. If they hire you, you won’t be called to testify, because you’re their boy. It’s worth something.”

“Jesus, Parker.”

Dick couldn’t say more than that. He was numbed again, but not by anger. He felt as though Parker had picked up his life and squeezed it. His life, but what came out was foul. “Jesus,” he said again. Dick felt he had to get clean. He said, “This is just beer talk.”

Parker laughed. “Yeah. Maybe it is. Still, you go at your boat your way, the numbers don’t work. No way you can make ten thousand dollars this summer just working. In terms of materials alone you got — what? — twenty thousand in your boat. More. Sitting there doing nothing. And God knows what you put in as labor. That’s just like money sitting there doing nothing. You won’t make it through the winter unless you get your boat working by the fall. You and May’ll both be picking crabs come October. You think Joxer’ll lend money to one of his crab pickers? What I’d do if I was him is wait till February, when you’re really down, then offer you thirty thousand for your boat as is. Have the boatyard finish her, then sell her for triple that in the spring. If I couldn’t sell her, then I’d put her to work with a hired skipper. It wouldn’t be you. Joxer could trawl through New Bedford, get a pretty salty skipper, with ten, fifteen years at sea, doesn’t have a reputation for being a sorehead.”

Dick said, “I won’t sell.”

Parker shrugged. “Maybe you won’t.”

Dick said, “Look. You want to go out or not?”

Parker said, “Ah. Well. Sure. Nothing too strenuous.”

T hey went out in the late afternoon so they could lay the pots at first light way out on the edge of the shelf and get back to the swordfish grounds for the better part of daylight.

Nothing doing for two days. They headed back out and hauled pots. This time they’d done that part right. They took it easy on the way home, zigzagging through the swordfish grounds. Still nothing.

Dick’s share of the crabs was almost four hundred dollars.

Dick gave Eddie Wormsley half of what was left of the black marlin, and Eddie and he worked on the boat for two and half days, until there was nothing more to do without more money.

Joxer was away in Boston. Parker didn’t want to go out again just yet. Just as well, it was Charlie’s birthday. Miss Perry showed up in her beautifully varnished and polished station wagon — the wood trim as dark as the ribs of the old Buttrick canoe. She could have sold it for a fortune. It was almost thirty years old. It was one of the first cars the dealer in Wakefield had sold, and he’d made a point of keeping it going, pointed it out to customers, had a color photo of it in his showroom, which he took down when Miss Perry came in.

Miss Perry rarely drove herself anymore. On Sundays her driver was usually Phoebe Fitzgerald, Miss Perry’s stone-cottage tenant, but when Dick bent down to open the passenger door for Miss Perry, he saw Elsie at the wheel.

Dick had known Miss Perry all his life, her father had had dealings with Dick’s great-uncle and father. He couldn’t remember when she hadn’t seemed old. Miss Perry had called on May and Dick when Charlie was born to bring a present for the baby. And she came again on Charlie’s first birthday, and then Charlie’s second birthday, which was just a week after Tom was born. It became an annual occasion, and it always reminded Dick of the stiff black-and-white formality of his great-uncle Arthur and Pierce family gatherings at the Wedding Cake. There was the same awkwardness at first. May always treated it as an inspection and got the house clean. But the boys didn’t have to dress up, since they always went out fishing in the skiff. Dick couldn’t remember when they started doing that — he remembered Charlie and him and Miss Perry, the three of them, poor little Tom kept home with May that first time, so it must have been eleven years ago. They never went out far, just into one of the salt ponds, or, if it was very calm, just outside the gut. The initial awkwardness was eased by Miss Perry, not by informality, but by her unvarying ritual. She presented Charlie and Tom each with a gift, always a book, and each year she said the same thing. “This is for you, dear boy, it’s a plain reader’s copy and I hope you enjoy it. If you keep it nicely, if you don’t tear the pages or scribble on them, I’ll give you a brand-new book in its place when you’re grown up.”