John Casey - Spartina

“The yard fixed her up some, a plate or two was loose.…”

“What’s wrong with her now?”

“I ought to take a look at the stuffing box.”

Dick said, “Damn. I hate messing with that. That’s a real shitty job.”

“Uh huh, a real shitty job.”

“Okay, I’ll take a look at her.”

Parker said, “Only thing is, I can’t have an outside worker. You know the rule. I’ll have to sign you on as crew for you to work.”

Dick said, “You going to use a spotter plane? I don’t want to go out and wallow around in the swordfish grounds, just me and you.”

“Maybe a spotter plane. Got to make some money, I owe the yard. Maybe second time out. You go down, take a look at her, and consult your horoscope. I’ll be here.”

D ick ran his skiff out with a half-dozen pots he’d repaired. He pulled his pots, rebaited a few. Brought in all the heavy-duty ones. He probably would go with Parker. He sold his basket of lobster, fifteen bucks. Groceries, nothing to put by. If he went with Parker, the boys could pull these few pots he’d left in less than an hour. May didn’t much like the boys’ going out alone if there was any sea running. She got a little bit grim if Dick took them out when it was blowing hard or foggy.

Dick checked the water temperature. Sixty-six degrees. Might be sixty-five out on the swordfish grounds. Sixty-five to sixty-eight was what they favored, and mighty picky they were about it. Dick wished Parker would hire a spotter plane. The rate was fifty bucks an hour plus a bonus of a hundred dollars per fish, no matter what size. The price at the wharf for swordfish was $3.50 a pound. Probably going up as the summer people came in. If Parker and him got just one 150-pound fish they’d pay for the spotter plane and his bonus. With a good fish, two hundred pounds, they’d start to make some real money. With a plane they’d spot the fish ten, fifteen feet down, not just the ones finning. Two, three fish wasn’t out of the question. And if they stuck a real good fish the first day, they could keep the spotter plane working for a couple more days. Parker was generous about shares — of course he did have a busted arm. Dick was supplying the pots for lobster — or red crab if Joxer Goode’s price was good — and Dick was bringing the harpoons, a little more experience, good eyes.

Dick got to the yard early enough so he didn’t have to argue with the yard manager about whether he was working on Parker’s boat or just looking at her. He got down inside to the stuffing box. Rotten wood and the stuffing all clumped up. Tear it all out. One of the few decent things about the boat was easy access to the stuffing box. And the propeller shaft was true. The hull was fair to poor. Not a design he’d seen around — shallow draft, hard lines. Parker must have bought her down on the Gulf Coast. The half-dory on board was local, but not much good. Dick lined up a couple more strings of heavy pots, one in Westerly, one in North Kingstown, dropped them off alongside Parker’s boat. Mamzelle. Dick wasn’t sure the right way to spell it, but he knew it wasn’t Mamzelle.

Dick stopped by Joxer Goode’s crab-processing plant to check the price. The wells on Parker’s boat were pretty big. The price for crab was about half that of lobster, but if they got to the right spot they might get twice as many. Dick asked if Joxer was there. Joxer had few enough boats going out for crab that he might just give a tip about where to set the pots. One thing Dick knew was even the nearest crabs were way out, on the edge of the continental shelf, took a day or more just to get out to the grounds.

The secretary told him Joxer was out on his motorboat showing some friends around the salt ponds and then picnicking on Sawtooth Island.

Dick went home and headed down the creek in his skiff. He took his quahog tongs. He didn’t want to seem to be looking too hard for Joxer. When he got into the pond past Sawtooth he saw Joxer’s boat pulled up on the tiny beach on the southwest of the island. Sleek little water-jet with padded seats, like the inside of a new car. Two couples standing on the beach. Joxer and his wife, both of them great big folks, played lots of sports. Tennis, waterskiing. Joxer had a little single shell. He’d been a single-sculler in college, Dick had seen the engraved cups in Joxer’s office, and a picture of Joxer with a lot of Japs on board a fishing vessel. But Joxer knew his stuff. Dick had heard how Joxer had gone into the water with his scuba gear to cut loose a propeller fouled with a stray piece of polypropylene. The boat had tied up at Joxer’s dock to unload crabs and got fouled as she was pulling away. Joxer had another boat standing by to unload and didn’t want to wait around. So in he jumped.

Dick understood that. What he held against Joxer was his paying his crab workers piecework instead of an hourly wage. And then breezing through the plant jollying up the pickers, patting the women on the back. “That’s the ticket, ladies!” As though it was a little-league game and a lot of fun. And his Jap foreman who never talked but just reached over the picker’s shoulder and showed her how to do it faster.

Joxer was out to make his million. Didn’t have time to come look at the boat Dick was building.

Joxer’s wife. You couldn’t tell she’d had two kids. Striding around in a tennis outfit or a bikini with a beach robe that just came to the tops of her yard-long thighs. Dick saw her waterskiing around the salt ponds and out on the ocean on calm days. She and Joxer were good at things like that.

The other couple were smaller versions of the Goodes. Same healthy good looks, but scaled down, and more willowy too — the pair of them.

Dick began to work his tongs.

The couples were in a huddle, pointing to parts of Sawtooth Island and back up to Sawtooth Point. Dick had heard there was some buying and selling going on. Dick wouldn’t mind having Joxer Goode as a neighbor, that would give Dick a bit of a claim on Joxer. Dick had always been a handy neighbor during snow, flood, power outage. But the only landowners left on Sawtooth Point were one old couple — every other house was now a summer rental — even the Wedding Cake, completed in 1911 by Dick’s great-uncle. Dick’s part of the family had never lived in it. When his great-uncle died, his son, who’d moved away, sold it, along with a narrow right-of-way from the Post Road. Dick’s grandfather got the rest of the point, Dick’s father sold off two house lots — the Buttricks’ and the Bigelows’. Then Dick’s father had sold off his house and the rest of the point, except for the acre Dick now owned, when he went to the hospital. He thought he’d leave Dick some money after his bills were paid. There was so little left, Dick had to use up his own savings from his Coast Guard tour to build his little house. Dick had tried to shut his mind to all the ifs. If his father had held on a little longer, the land prices would have doubled, tripled. If the old man had had health insurance. If the old man had deeded over some of the land to Dick. If, if, if. The old man had paid his debts. He probably held the record at South County Hospital for biggest bill ever paid by an uninsured patient. Dick had been away at sea, helicoptered off his cutter when his father died, was buried. Dick’s hitch was up eight months later and he was back in time for the final accounting after probate. He’d figured there might not be a lot, but he hadn’t been prepared for next-to-nothing. He’d thought of using the money — he’d hoped there would be ten thousand at the very worst — to send himself to the Merchant Marine Academy. He’d had a plan: by age forty he would be master of a ship. Here he was at age forty-plus in an eighteen-foot skiff. Here he was tonging quahogs. Here he was watching four beautiful people in swimsuits so small that all four of them wouldn’t make a single shirt.