John Casey - Spartina

She slipped on a bracelet, held up the long earrings to her ears. “What do you think? The dangling ones, right?”

“Yes.”

The phone rang. Elsie picked it up.

“Oh, hi. No, I haven’t left yet.… Well, sure, I could, but how will she get back? I mean, I thought I’d spend the night, if that’s okay with you. If the problem is she can’t find your house, she can follow me.… Oh. Well, then, she can drive my car back and I’ll get home somehow. Doesn’t Jack have to come look at the construction site or something? Or maybe she can stay over too.… Look. We’ll just play it by ear. Do I have to call her, or …? Tell me the number.… Okay. We’ll be there. Bye.” Elsie put the phone down and said, “Damn. Now I have to pick up that ditz who lives in Miss Perry’s cottage. Do you know her? Phoebe Fitzgerald.” Elsie laughed. “Her one claim to fame is that she got lost in the woods last year.”

Dick said, “I know who she is. It was Eddie Wormsley found her.”

Elsie laughed again. “Is that right? Is that right? Did Eddie say anything about her?”

“He liked her. He said she was kind of shaky at the time. I think he asked her out but she said no.”

“Aha,” Elsie said, “I can’t wait to get her talking. Maybe I can put a good word in for Eddie.” Elsie dialed the number. “Phoebe Fitzgerald? This is Elsie Buttrick, Sally’s sister. Yes, that’s right. I wasn’t sure you’d remember. Sally tells me you need a ride.… Sure, no trouble at all … I know the house. Are you all set? Well, I’m not dressed yet, but I’ll be along in, oh, just a little while.”

Elsie hung up.

Dick said, “What do you mean, you’re not dressed? You going to change all over again?”

“Maybe I will. Maybe this dress is too gauzy, just too helpless.” Elsie struck a pose, her body leaning to the right, her arms flung back to the left, palms up. Dick laughed. Elsie said, “A little too much fleeing nymph, know what I mean?”

Dick said, “You could strap your gun belt on, that might even things up.”

Elsie laughed. Then she said, “I don’t know, I guess it’s okay.” She took Dick’s hands. “I was feeling a little bit wanton a minute ago. Now I just feel tender. And that makes me feel sad and weak. Know what I mean? I was getting ready to be ravished on the floor. Now I just want to be sure you’ll come see me when you get back. Monday night? It doesn’t matter how late. Or even Tuesday morning, just come wake me up.”

Elsie leaned on his chest, her arms around his waist. Dick felt awkward and uneasy, his hands miles away from him, the thick pads of his fingers still farther away on the soft sliding of her back. Little Elsie Buttrick, fresh as paint. Great big Elsie Buttrick, on top of it all. But now there was a tinge of pain to her.

There wasn’t a bit of satisfaction in seeing how all her dresses, her big black tennis racket, her Volvo, her solar house didn’t weigh in for much. She was a little bit spoiled was all. The two of them were exactly the same kind of damn fool. But for some reason she was going to get more of the pain. He felt terrible about that.

She was going to get more of the pain, but he was going to sustain more damage. He wasn’t going to stop just yet.

It was on his way out along the dirt road that he knew he’d got a fresh jolt from Elsie. All that about the clothes was silly. Maybe she’d done it to annoy him, but she’d done it just to be silly too. She wasn’t careful with him. She wasn’t careful with herself. He admired that — it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Whoever she was at the moment, she came right ahead, swarmed right into him. Good for her.

He’d been about to blame her for his not working this last week. Wrong. And he’d been trying to work up a notion that he deserved this fooling around as recompense for all his bad luck. Wrong.

He didn’t understand it all, but it was pretty clear that he’d been stuck for several years. He’d blasted himself loose. That’s what he’d been doing all summer. Even that half-assed clam poaching. Going out with Parker, going along with Parker.

He’d been thinking all his thoughts as though he was still stuck — lodged in tight among the impossible banks, Sawtooth Point, everyone else floating free and easy, just him stuck. Wrong again. He was on his own. He used to think that bitterly, that he was on his own in the worst way, imprisoned up Pierce Creek by his father’s failure, by the way everyone turned away.

He’d blown himself out of all that, without knowing what he was doing. Or maybe he’d known. But he’d damn well done it, and he’d better look out where he was going now. Adrift or under way, he was afloat on his own.

For years, the way he’d been good, the way he’d been an ill-tempered son of a bitch — both had been bound by habits or inheritances. He’d gone along set ways. He wasn’t done with them yet, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be done with them. Even wanting his own boat, wanting to be skipper of his own boat, was a set way. What was odd as odd could be was that now he’d put parts of his life into other people’s hands — Parker’s and Elsie’s — outside of rules in either case, nothing but their fluid wills, he was on his own.

O n the way out through the swordfish grounds Dick noticed that the water temperature was too high in some places, about right in others. He started checking the thermometer frequently. They didn’t see any swordfish. They pulled and reset the pots and headed back in toward the swordfish grounds. The conventional wisdom has it that you don’t see swordfish finning when the tide’s running hard. No one’s completely sure why, but it was handed down that way, like the optimum water temperature for finning, sixty-four degrees to sixty-eight degrees, though you hear some people swear by the lower and others by the upper end.

What Dick found was that there were narrow tongues of water the right temperature, strung along drift lines. These could have been upwellings of cooler water, and maybe some mixing as the set of the tide stretched them out. He figured if the swordfish hadn’t left the grounds they had to come up to get rid of their worms, so they’d concentrate in the right-temperature water, the tide running or not. Worth a try.

Charlie spotted the first one. They’d scarcely hauled that one in when Charlie sang out again. The second one felt like three hundred pounds.

Charlie sang out a third time toward evening, but whatever it was disappeared before they got to it. Charlie said, “I’m pretty sure. Looked too high to be a shark. I’m—”

“Okay, okay,” Dick said, “I believe you. You go back up tomorrow. We’ll stay out another day.”

Charlie said, “You’d better tell Mom.”

Keith laughed. Dick looked at him enough to shut him up and then showed Charlie how to use the VHF radio to raise someone at the Fishermen’s Co-op. “Okay,” Dick said. “Now, what are you going to say?”

“I say, please telephone May Pierce and tell her we’ll be late ’cause we’re into a whole mess of swordfish.”

“Jesus!” Dick said. “This radio isn’t a goddamn telephone. Everyone listens.”

Keith laughed. Charlie was laughing too. “I know that ,” Charlie said. “I was joking , Dad.”

Dick grunted. He said, “Well, what are you going to say?”

“I say please tell May Pierce our estimated time of arrival is Wednesday.”

“Good. That’s fine.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, I thought you’d know I was—”