John Casey - Spartina

There was a small part of Dick that recognized that his dream of working his way up to master wouldn’t have been a piece of cake. He hadn’t done so good in the Coast Guard, and that was before he could blame his bad temper on his bad luck. Even his friend Eddie Wormsley told him he wasn’t good at taking advice, let alone taking orders. When Dick crewed on fishing boats, the various captains and shipmates had been glad to see the last of him. When he worked in the boatyard, even though the yard owner let him do his work his own way at his own pace, Dick drove boat owners up the wall. There was a pretty strong tradition at most New England boatyards of rich boat owners’ putting up with blunt talk from grumpy workmen. The New England bankers and lawyers who owned boats didn’t expect well-mannered servants — they even liked being roughed up a little by an old salt when they handled their boats badly, or came in to get a dumb mistake fixed. “Of course you broke your mast. There was whitecaps on the pond , and you tried to take her to Block Island.” Dick’s mistake was adding a little barb. Like “You’re a real piss-to-windward sailor.”

The yard owner let him go, but still called him in for a job now and again. And when someone asked at the yard to have a beetlecat built of wood, he referred him to Dick.

The beetlecat was a beauty. Cost four thousand dollars. Dick’s profit was less than a thousand, and the pay rate finally came to less than three dollars an hour, including driving around for the right wood and fittings. You could buy an okay used beetlecat for a quarter of that. A new plastic knockabout for only a little more.

He built a couple of skiffs to sell, and then the one for himself. A smaller one for the boys. Thought he would just see if a man with a good skiff could make do. The answer was yes. Barely. But the yes gave him less and less satisfaction as the seasons went by. Then, three years ago, he started his big boat. He saw the plans in the National Fisherman and fell for her. That was the main part of it — he just fell in love. Later on he felt other motives, felt the jump this would give him. No one expecting it, he’d pop her into Great Salt Pond at high water and chug past the rest of the fleet to the town wharf. The harbormaster would ask him if the owner was a resident. “You can’t tie up here unless the owner’s a resident. You know that, Dick.” Dick wouldn’t answer. Just stroll back and look at the lettering across the stern, as though he was checking where the boat was from. Dick wasn’t sure of the name — maybe May , maybe Spartina —but underneath it would say “Galilee, R.I.” The harbormaster would come back and look. Dick would show the papers. “Owner: Richard D. Pierce.”

The harbormaster would say “Jesus! Jesus, Dick.” The town-wharf crowd would see something was up then. They’d all come over, even Captain Texeira. They’d all say, “Jesus, Dick.” Maybe Captain Texeira wouldn’t say “Jesus,” but he’d damn well think it.

“Where’d you get her?”

“She’s not the one the yard’s been building …?”

They’d figure it out. One of them would pretend to just be strolling the length of her along the dockside, but he’d be counting the paces. He wouldn’t be able to keep it to himself. “Fifty-four feet!”

Dick might say something then. He might say, “Near enough.” The harbormaster would have seen it written down. He’d say “Fifty-four feet, eight inches.” He was always setting people straight.

Dick had a couple of other scenes he couldn’t help playing in his imagination no matter how he tried not to. Miss Perry, Captain Texeira, and the harbormaster were recurring characters. So was Joxer Goode. Joxer Goode with a sweet contract. “Dick, I need you and your boat. Here’s the deal.…”

Joxer briefing the skippers of the red-crab fleet, pointing out likely spots near the edge of the continental shelf.

“And by the way, men, the Spartina was this month’s bonus winner. Some of you sixty-footers better stay out longer.”

Dick took a bite of the bottom with his tongs. He could feel the good crunch of sand. He was working in about eight feet of water, not far in from the gut. Farther back in the pond it was mud and black silt — with eel grass and wrack to get fouled in the tongs. Too much current near the gut for that stuff. Dick closed the tongs and flipped up the business end, using the padded gunwale as a fulcrum. He shook a bit of ooze and muddy sand loose from the basket. Bingo! Look what the Easter Bunny left. He pulled the tongs in and picked up the quahog. He used to say that to Charlie and Tom when they were little. So little they had to use both hands to pick up a good quahog. Look what the Easter Bunny left. Dick held the quahog in his hand, ran a fingertip over the fine grooves of the shell.

He reached in with the tongs again. It was a good patch in here. Hard to get to except by boat. Didn’t get weekend quahoggers wading in with their forks, pulling their inner tubes on a string with bushel baskets riding in the doughnut hole.

The effort of tonging calmed him. The mild southwest wind blew toward him from the scrub at the back of the barrier beach. Beach plums, bayberry, beach peas, poison ivy. He caught a whiff of beach-rose blossoms.

He was bringing up a quahog or two with every try. Better than he’d expected. If he topped off a bushel he’d run them over to Mary Scanlon’s Green Hill restaurant, just west of the salt-marsh bird sanctuary. The tide was running in — he could get up the salt creek right to the restaurant porch. He’d come away with a few bucks for May. Sweeten up the fact that he was going out with Parker. Mary usually threw in a pie or a cake that hadn’t turned out just right — that would sweeten up May and the boys.

It came through to Dick that Joxer Goode was calling to him. Dick looked up. Joxer waved both arms and yelled again, “Ahoy! Dick Pierce!”

Dick finished sifting the basket, dropped another quahog on the pile, and waved back. Joxer beckoned to him. Dick saw that Joxer’s boat was pulled up pretty high on the beach. Dick yanked his anchor up, but didn’t crank the motor. He caught a little curl of the incoming tide that took him the first fifty feet, then he fitted his sculling oar and stroked across the current. Joxer waded in and caught the prow.

“Hello there, Dick. Sorry to bother you, but you haven’t by any chance got a bottle opener on board?”

Dick shook his head, not meaning so much “no” as “goddamn.”

The smaller man put down a big movie camera that rode on his shoulder on a padded stock. He said, “We have all this cold beer, but it’s in nontwist bottles.”

Joxer’s wife said hello and introduced Dick to the other two, Marie and Schuyler van der something. Dick saw a look on Marie’s face that was familiar to him. It was a little bit puzzled, a little bit vacant. Dick knew it from May. It meant “I’m not saying anything, but I’m not having as much fun as everyone else.”

Dick said to Joxer, “You got a screwdriver — or a marlin spike?” Dick pulled his own rigging knife from his pocket and opened the spike. He took the bottle of Heineken Schuyler was holding and gave a little pry to several of the crimped furrows of the bottle cap with the tip of the spike. There was a satisfying hiss and a little foam leaked down the neck. Dick popped the cap off and handed the bottle back. Schuyler toasted him with the bottle and took a swig. Schuyler’s wife said, “Would you like one, Mr. Pierce?”

Dick said, “No thanks.”

Dick was having a little trouble with the bareness of the four bodies, particularly the two van der somethings. They looked barer than the Goodes. All four of them had early-summer pink-brown tans. Dick looked away and thought it might be the fact that both the van der somethings had perfect sets of tight blond ringlets.