John Casey - Spartina

“Just a good Girl Scout,” he said, trying to keep his distance. He couldn’t resist her when she settled down.

“Uh huh.”

He said, “You aren’t sick or anything, are you? Mornings?”

“No, I’ve been fine. I guess I’m lucky.”

She held her hand out for him to help her up. After she got to her feet she shifted her weight and sagged a little. She held on to his arm and bent over at the waist, let her head hang down. After a moment she stood up straight. “Just a dizzy spell,” she said.

“You want to sit down again?”

“No, I’m fine.” She kept her hand on his arm.

“You want a drink of water?”

“No. I’m fine, really.”

He looked over at the yard. He saw some of the visors of the workers’ caps point toward Elsie and him.

“I know you from years ago,” he said. “Coming through this very yard here. I know what you’re like now. I think you’re as good as Mary Scanlon or Miss Perry. Of course you’re your own wild bird too.”

He felt her draw back. Was she on guard against him, against his saying his feelings? Or maybe she was, you know, pained he wasn’t saying it just right.… To hell with that. Then he thought she might be afraid he was setting her up for a final word. But at last he couldn’t see any way to go but dead ahead. He said, “The thing is, there’s a lot that feels … incomplete. I don’t mean the physical side.…”

“It’d be hard to call that incomplete,” Elsie said. “I mean, taking the point of view of the egg.”

“Stop fooling around for one goddamn minute.” He looked at the yard. The crew had got back to work. “But in a way that kind of answers something I was wondering about. Which is, I used to wonder if we could’ve just got to know each other. Like Mary Scanlon and me.”

“Just a couple of good scouts?” Elsie said. “Or is class prickliness the problem? Or do you wish I’d have let you go on being the wholesome boy you were?”

“No.” He was going to tell her to shut up, but she became still. He said again, “No. I’m talking about something else. I like Mary a lot, but if I don’t see her for a while it’s okay. Forget Mary. What’s hard to see is how to keep seeing you, that part of you I got to know besides. The part that’s like getting echoes.”

She didn’t say anything. He wanted to say more, but he couldn’t. He turned to see if she was going to say something, but she’d turned away. He had no idea. He’d just as much as said he could read her mind, and now he couldn’t tell a thing she was thinking.

At last he said, “Okay. I guess all that doesn’t cut one way or the other. It doesn’t let us out of trouble.”

She turned back to him, her face drawn down. She shook her head. “No. Still in trouble. I’d better take the dinghy back.”

Maybe he’d been wrong when he’d been grandly picturing the way she felt for the natural order of things. Maybe she was way ahead of him, thought he was a fool when he talked about echoes, thought he was whining when he talked about trouble. She was the one used to not living in her everyday bones, used to flying above the rules. He wouldn’t wish them on her — Get some rules, Elsie. Get back in your everyday bones.

He said, “Yeah. I got to get back to work too.”

He took her hand to help her into the dinghy. She cast off but floated nearby for a bit, just holding the oars in the water. She said, “I meant to make it easier. Just tell you I was all set. About my job.” She slid the blades out of the water. “Will you be able to come see me?” She took one little stroke. “Mary and me. Maybe you could come see Mary and me.”

He had the rest of the afternoon to let it sink in. No matter what he said or how he said it, no matter if she misunderstood him or understood him, he wasn’t going to make anything better for her.

D ick went out on Spartina two days later. Even with Eddie and Charlie helping, it took longer to get her ready than he’d planned for. Dick took Charlie along. He also got Keith college-boy, since Parker wasn’t taking him south just yet.

It was clear breezy weather, not too choppy to spot the buoys, though a little tricky to haul the trawls. As he feared, he’d lost a lot of complete trawls to the hurricane. No buoys to be seen anywhere near where he’d left them. The pots were down there somewhere, probably with lobster in them, and trash fish. Little aquariums of starving creatures at the bottom of the sea.

He brought as many of his extra pots as Spartina could carry below and on deck, but it wasn’t near enough to fill in the blanks. Even when he found a buoy and hauled the trawl, there were a few pots stove in, or missing where they’d snapped the gangion.

But all in all it wasn’t the worst he’d feared. The good news came when he got back to port and sold his lobster. The price was way up, higher than it had ever been. Lobster were scarce — everybody was missing pots, and half the offshore lobstermen were fixing their boats, if they still had boats to fix.

Dick wanted a quick turnaround. He had to let Charlie off to go back to school, which had finally opened two weeks late. Dick sent word with Keith to ask Parker if he’d care to come along while he was waiting for his insurance money. Mamzelle was a total loss. Dick took over her berth near the Co-op. Parker said yes, but a few hours before Spartina was to leave, Parker showed up on the dockside with a very small Vietnamese man.

“I got some business to tend to,” Parker said, “but this fellow’s willing to work for a half-share. Save you some money.”

Dick said, “Just how green is he?”

The Vietnamese man spoke up. Dick didn’t understand him, thought he was speaking Vietnamese. The man repeated himself. Dick understood that the man was trying to introduce himself. Dick looked him in the face. The man said his name a third time. Something something Tran. Tran something something. Dick liked that the man said it just as slow and patiently the third time. Dick said, “I’m Dick Pierce.” Tran’s hand moved at his side and Dick stuck out his hand. Tran’s hand was as small as Elsie’s. “Well, look, Tran. You understand English?”

Tran said, “Yes, sir.”

“You been on boats?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know what a winch is?”

Tran pointed to the winch.

“You know what a self-tailing winch is?”

Tran shook his head, said, “No, sir.”

Parker said, “He knows all kinds of stuff, he just don’t know the names.”

Tran said, “Yes, sir.”

Dick said, “So how am I going to tell him what to do?”

“I can learn the names, sir.”

Dick said, “Parker, what’s the deal here? You got something going?”

Parker took Dick to the wheelhouse.

It turned out Parker had set up a lobster-pot factory near Westerly. He employed all of Tran’s family. Parker had rented a truck, and was selling pots from Wickford to Westerly as fast as his Vietnamese assembly line could turn them out. The family wanted one member to get work on a lobster boat. Maybe just to see how the pots actually worked.

Dick said, “What are you paying these guys?”

Parker smiled. “It’s piecework. They’re still paying me off for the tools and material, so I ain’t paid them nothing yet. I gave them a loan to get through the month. And I’m getting a job for their boy here. Look. Give him a try. The boy don’t work out, send him back. I done you plenty of favors, think of all them pots you’re hauling.”