John Casey - Spartina

Paying 12 percent more would be a burden, and Dick had sunk more than just money. He couldn’t go with another engine without refiguring the size and weight, probably tearing out the bed. And what was as hard as the money or the work was the time he’d put in studying that engine. A diesel is a diesel, a pretty simple idea, but he knew this model inside out. He’d put one in when he worked at the yard, serviced it twice. And over the last year he’d read the manual so often he could close his eyes and see any page he wanted, words and diagrams both, down to every bolt, washer, and nut suspended magically in mid-air just the way they were in the manual.

He wasn’t in love with it the way he was with his boat, but until he got the engine in her he couldn’t feel good about her. There was some pleasure in looking at the line drawing in his mind’s eye, and converting it to metallic, oily density, hoisting it, lowering it — a convergence of two daydreams here — into the boat, onto the preset bolts in the bed, jostling its huge weight on the hoist chain so that the eight holes in the thick-flanged base lined up, settled over the tips of the bolts, slid down, giving off a little ringing rasp, a steel whisper from the touched threads.

He’d do the clambake. He’d fix their boats, their docks, hell, he’d fix their toilets. He wasn’t going to work for them because he wasn’t good enough to make his living from the sea. He’d work for them to get himself out to sea.

D ick got all the clambake goodies onto Sawtooth Island. He made Charlie and Tom spend the night on the beach on Sawtooth to keep an eye on the lobster car and the steel baskets of clams he’d submerged alongside it.

He ran by the Neptune and left a message for Parker that the stuffing box was fixed, the bow pulpit was rigged, and they only had to wait their turn for the boatyard to put her back in the water.

He dug the pit on the beach. He had to get Charlie and Tom to collect a new set of rocks to line the pit. The boys had gathered their rocks from below the high-tide line, and Dick had heard that every once in a while these had pockets of moisture in them. Dick hadn’t seen a low-tide rock explode, but he’d heard tell of some summer folks’ blowing up their whole damn clambake, sandstone and granite shrapnel blowing holes through the tarp. It’d almost be worth it to do it on purpose — make them catch their hot lobsters on the fly. Of course things never went wrong when you wanted them to.

The boys had got a load of clean seaweed from the ocean side of the beach. When the fire burned out on the rocks, they dumped in the first layer of seaweed. There was a nice sizzle, and the air sacs on the seaweed began to pop. They got the whole wheelbarrow full of new potatoes in, and another layer of seaweed. A bit later the bigger quahogs, then the smaller ones and the steamers. Last of all the lobster. Resealed the tarp with wet sand and rocks.

Joxer had brought the first load of guests from the point to the island in his boat. Dick recognized some of them and nodded. A slice off the top of local South County and their summer guests.

Joxer brought him a beer and asked Charlie and Tom if they wanted Cokes. The boys had moved in behind Dick in a sheepish way that annoyed him, though he couldn’t blame them — these first ten guests had come ashore and arranged themselves in a semicircle on the higher ground, as though the Pierce boys and their authentic South County clambake were on stage. Dick turned away toward the water.

Joxer and Schuyler were lucky with the weather. A perfect June evening, one of the first still summer evenings after an unsettled spring. Just enough movement in the air to bring the smell of beach roses in across the pond. The sky, the puffs of clouds, the flat water of the pond, the swell breaking on the bar at the mouth of the breachway, even the terns circling and fluttering over their nests in the marsh grass seemed suddenly less frantic as the afternoon glare began to soften, the air and water to carry more color.

Joxer said, “You boys want to go for a swim?”

“Go ahead,” Dick said. “You got your swimsuits on. Then you won’t have to wash up when you get home for supper.”

“They’re welcome to eat here,” Joxer said. “I thought May and the boys would join us.”

“They’re used to early supper. Thank you just the same. Go on, boys, get wet and then go on home.”

The boys looked around awkwardly, as though taking off their sneakers and T-shirts was like changing in front of a crowd.

Elsie Buttrick came down to join them. “Hi, Dick. Hi, Charlie, Tommy.”

Dick said, “Hello, Officer Buttrick.”

The boys smiled. Elsie was an old neighbor but also an officer in the Rhode Island Natural Resources Department, a sort of super-powered game-and-fish warden. This authority would have made any of Dick’s friends more remote, but since Elsie started off as one of the Buttricks, a pretty rich family living on the Point, her official position brought her closer.

Dick was uneasy with her — closer wasn’t easier — but he liked her for her way with Charlie and Tom. She sometimes gave lectures in the school system and called on Charlie and Tom by name. “Charlie Pierce, I know you know if snapping turtles live around here.” Charlie said, “Yes, ma’am.” She’d turned to the class. “He knows ’cause one took a snap at him right in Pierce Creek. Right, Charlie? And is Pierce Creek salt, brackish, or fresh water? That’s too easy for you, Charlie. We’ll ask one of the potato farmers.”

Charlie reported all this, and more — the class trip to the Great Swamp, to Tuckertown to see potato planting. Elsie got Miss Perry to give a slide show on local birds, and — something that had puzzled Dick a lot — Eddie Wormsley to talk about trees. The only time Eddie ever got really pissed off at Dick was at the Neptune when Dick started to kid Eddie about his tree lecture.

Elsie said, “You boys going for a swim?” She kicked off her sandals and pulled off her jersey. She had on a faded red swimsuit. She flicked off her wrap-around skirt, and Dick saw Charlie look at her legs.

Elsie said, “Come on, you guys.”

Dick was about to say something, tease Charlie about his girlfriend. He held back, puzzled by a sudden melancholy.

Charlie was sixteen. He wasn’t as tough as Dick had been at sixteen. He was smaller, smarter, and nicer. Not a shitty kid. A scrawny, shy kid who took a look at Elsie Buttrick’s legs. Dick knew he was too rough on him. From behind, Elsie still looked the way she had when she was sixteen. He remembered her walking up to him in her swimsuit that summer (at the town dock? at the boatyard?). He noticed her figure then. Little Elsie Buttrick all grown up. He watched her with pleasure as she came right up to him. She said she was sorry to hear about his father’s death. Put an end to his looking at her legs.

The next thing he knew she was back in South County after college— two colleges. Brown and Yale Forestry School. In uniform. She was good-looking — not pretty all the time but often enough to throw you. And she was law. It was the combination that was shifty. And her being one of the rich kids. But she worked hard — she was like Joxer that way — you could see she put in a day’s work.

Joxer said to him, “There’s some more guests coming. If it’s okay with you, here’s the plan. I’ll stay here with this bunch, and you get the next bunch. Schuyler and Marie are giving them a drink at the Wedding Cake and then sending them down to the wharf. You give them a lift. Then Schuyler’ll wait for the late arrivals and bring them.”