John Casey - Spartina

Parker headed the boat farther out, spotted something, headed for it. It was a buoy marker with a double orange pennant. Parker came alongside and prepared to haul it.

“Jesus, Parker. This isn’t ours.”

“It’s okay, Dick. It’s all arranged. Lend a hand.”

Parker only hauled to the third pot, opened it, and took out a package. He put the three pots and buoy marker back overboard.

Dick looked at the kid. The kid was in on it.

Parker headed back in. Dick went up alongside the wheel. “Parker, I told you a long time ago—”

“A long time ago,” Parker said, “you swallowed hard and took a couple hundred bucks. Small. This is small. Small is the way to do it.”

Dick didn’t like it. It occurred to him that one thing he could do, when they got within a few miles of shore, was to get in the skiff and go home. That would be it with Parker and him. He wouldn’t get on another boat. If he did get on another boat, he’d never get 40 percent sticking swordfish. The Mamzelle wasn’t a good boat, but she was doing the job for him.

Parker asked him to take the wheel. Dick watched Parker and Keith get out some enormous whelk shells, big as he’d ever seen. They stuffed the whelk shells with sealed sandwich bags of coke. This wasn’t quite so small as Parker said.

Parker broke out some plastic eggshells. Keith and Parker were laughing. Dick asked what that stuff was. Parker, still giggling to himself, brought one of the eggshells over to Dick. “It’s slime,” Parker said. “See.” He pointed to the word SLIME written in dripping capital letters. “It’s from a toy store. It’s like Silly Putty, but it looks slimy.”

Parker and Keith plugged the whelks with SLIME. It looked pretty much like the retracted foot of a whelk.

Just in sight of land Parker told Dick to stop. “Okay, here’s the deal. Small and easy. You and I leave Keith on board. We go in with the skiff once it’s dark. Get to where the creek goes by Mary Scanlon’s parking lot. I go to the parking lot, meet a guy who has a truck. He’s been in talking to Mary Scanlon about her buying specialty seafood like these scungilli. ” Parker used the Italian word for “whelks.” Parker said, “I drop the basket in the back of his truck, get back in the boat, we come back out a different way than we went in. We meet old Keith here, head back out for a bit. Small and easy. I pay you five thousand.”

Dick shook his head.

Parker said, “This is easier than poaching clams.” Dick wished he hadn’t told Parker about that. Kid stuff, he looked silly. But it still set him up for Parker. You break a little law, you might as well break a big one. Parker said, “This is real money. This is half of the rest of your boat.”

Dick looked off at the smudge of land. He said, “This five thousand. I don’t suppose it’s forty percent.”

“No,” Parker said. “It’s a flat rate. I’ve taken most of the risk already. Your piece is five thousand. Very little risk. Anything goes wrong, I dump the whelks.”

Dick liked that Parker didn’t lie about the 40 percent. Dick didn’t know what Parker was aiming to get, but he damn well knew it wasn’t so small as — Dick took a bit to figure in his head—$12,500.

Parker said, “The beauty part is the deniability. See, your skipper said to you, ‘Take me in to sell some whelks.’ So you think to yourself it’s kind of weird but what with no crabs and all … And maybe you’ve heard scungilli are aphrodisiacs. That’s what they say. Turks and Greeks, someone like that. Better than oysters. So you think, What the hell.”

Dick said, “What the hell. What about six thousand.”

Parker said, “No.”

Dick liked that Parker wasn’t desperate.

“The only reason I want you,” Parker said, “is for my peace of mind in a small skiff on open water. I don’t want my fillings knocked loose, I don’t want to get wet. I could use Keith, I could run the skiff myself with one hand. I just like the way you slide a small boat along.”

Dick said, “You going to clear out after this? Go back to Virginia or North Carolina?”

“Hell no. I’ll fish up here through August. Tell you what. We’ll use spotter planes. Two days of spotter planes every week for a month. We’ll get some fish, absolutely get some fish. We’ll get five or six big fish.”

“Suppose it blows too hard. Suppose the water gets too hot.”

“Dickey-bird, we’ll go round Cape Cod if need be. I’ll do it. But you’re thinking negative. This is all positive.”

“Spotter plane,” Dick said.

“That’s right,” Parker said. “We’ll go first-class again. Hell, we’ll take your girlfriend and Schuyler along to make more movies. We get two fish at once, we’ll put Keith in the skiff. And you’ll get your boat in by Labor Day, Captain Pierce.”

Dick looked at the smudge of land again, felt Mamzelle roll in her awkward way.

“When you planning on going in?”

“After dark. Get in at ten p.m. In and out in an hour or so. No more than a dentist appointment.” Parker tapped his new teeth. “Painless.”

I t was high tide when they went in. No moon. Some gusts of wind from the southwest, and a patchy sky.

When they slipped through the gut, Parker, who was in the bow looking astern, said, “Oh shit.”

Dick headed for Sawtooth Creek. “What’s that?” he said.

“Thought I saw a boat out there. Maybe not.” Parker started to come aft.

“Stay up there,” Dick said. “This motor’s too heavy on the stern as it is.”

Up Sawtooth Creek, he took the west branch past the flounder hole. Then the long narrow creek that wound way up into the sanctuary salt marsh. Dick stood up to keep an eye out for debris in the creek. The water was so high he could see over the spartina. They were edging north of Trustom Pond. Dick could see the pole light at the corner of Mary Scanlon’s parking lot. He hoped Parker would be quick — if the tide went out any, he couldn’t get through the culvert under the Green Hill Beach Road.

Dick cut the motor a good ways short of the parking lot. After he broke out the oars, he cocked his head, thought he heard a motor far off. It stopped. He rowed up to the bend in the creek that came nearest to the corner of the restaurant parking lot. Parker scrabbled up onto the bank, pulling the clam basket full of whelks. He disappeared into the slope of bayberry and sumac.

Dick kept an oar on the bank to hold the skiff. He cupped his right hand around his watch to see the luminous hands. He waited a while. He spit in the creek. It floated away, the tide was going out faster. He looked at his watch again, maybe seven minutes had gone by. He heard the far-off motor again, then Parker sliding down the bank. Parker got in, pulled in the basket. It was still full. Parker hissed at him, “Go.”

Dick rowed. Parker said, “What the fuck is that?” Dick heard the motor. He stood up. Over the top of the spartina he could make out the line of the creek they’d come up, not the channel itself but the dark break in the tall grass. Whatever was coming up was running without lights. The motor sounded high-pitched.

Dick cranked the outboard and got the skiff planing. If it was Natural Resources or Coast Guard, they’d have a Boston Whaler, probably a forty-horse. Dick figured he had a half-mile of creek to go before he got into the next pond. He could keep ahead of the whaler for that part. He wasn’t so sure what next.

He got through the slit under the road, another quarter-mile to the top of the pond.