Elizabeth Gilbert - Stern Men

After Cal left, Ruth considered the gift she had just been offered. She wondered what it was all about. No, she still had not been up to see Mr. Ellis, who had remained on Fort Niles the entire previous winter. If he was trying to lure her up to Ellis House, she thought, he could forget it; she wasn’t going. Although she did not feel entirely comfortable with the idea of Mr. Ellis hanging about, waiting for her to visit. She knew it upset the chemistry of the island, having Mr. Ellis on Fort Niles as a permanent resident, and she knew her neighbors were aware that she had something to do with it. But she wasn’t going up there. She had nothing to say to him and was not interested in anything he had to say to her. She would, however, accept the Fresnel lens. And, yes, she would do whatever she wanted with it.

That night she had a long conversation with her father, Senator Simon, and Angus Addams. She told them about the gift, and they tried to imagine what the thing was worth. They didn’t have a clue, though. The next day, Ruth started calling auction houses in New York City, which took some research and gumption, but Ruth did it. Three months later, after intricate negotiations, a wealthy man from North Carolina took possession of the Goat’s Rock lighthouse Fresnel lens, and Ruth Thomas-Wishnell had in her hands a check for $22,000.

She had another long conversation.

This one was with her father, Senator Simon, Angus Addams, and Babe Wishnell. She had lured Babe Wishnell over from Courne Haven with the promise of a big Sunday dinner, which Mrs. Pommeroy ended up cooking. Babe Wishnell didn’t much like coming to Fort Niles, but it was hard to refuse the invitation of a young woman who was, after all, now a relative. Ruth said to him, “I had such a good time at your daughter’s wedding, I feel I should thank you with a nice meal,” and he could not turn her down.

It was not the most relaxed meal, but it would have been a good deal less relaxed had Mrs. Pommeroy not been there to flatter and pamper everyone. After dinner, Mrs. Pommeroy served hot rum drinks. Ruth sat at the table, bouncing her son on her lap and laying her idea before Babe Wishnell, her father, and the Addams brothers. She told them she wanted to become a bait dealer. She said she would put up the money for a building to be constructed on the Fort Niles dock, and she would buy the scales and freezers, as well as the heavy boat needed to transport the bait every few weeks from Rockland to the island. She showed them the numbers, which she had been juggling for weeks. She had everything figured out. All she wanted from her father and Angus Addams and Babe Wishnell was their commitment to buy her bait if she gave them a good low price. She could save them ten cents on the bushel right away. And she could save them the trouble of having to cart the bait from Rockland every week.

“You three are the most respected lobstermen on Fort Niles and Courne Haven,” she said, running a light finger over her son’s gums, feeling for a new tooth. “If everyone sees you doing it, they’ll know it’s a good deal.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Angus Addams said.

“Take the money and move to Nebraska,” Senator Simon said.

“I’m in,” Babe Wishnell said, without the slightest hesitation.

“I’m in, too,” said Ruth’s father, and the two high-line fishermen exchanged a glance of recognition. They got it. They understood the concept immediately. The numbers looked good. They weren’t idiots.

After six months, when it was clear that the bait dealership was hugely successful, Ruth founded the cooperative. She made Babe Wishnell the president but kept the office on Fort Niles, which satisfied everyone. She hand-picked a council of directors, composed of the sanest men from both Fort Niles and Courne Haven. Any man who became a member of the Skillet County Cooperative could get special deals on bait and could sell his lobster catch to Ruth Thomas-Wishnell, right there on the Fort Niles dock. She hired Webster Pommeroy to run the scales. He was so simple, nobody ever accused him of cheating. She appointed her father to set the daily lobster prices, which he arrived at by haggling over the telephone with dealers as far away as Manhattan. She hired someone completely neutral-a sensible young man from Freeport-to operate the pound Ruth had had built for storing the lobster catch before it was carted over to Rockland.

There was a good payout for anyone who joined up, and it saved weeks out of each man’s year not to have to haul the catch to Rockland. There were some holdouts at first, of course. Ruth’s father had rocks thrown through the windows of his house, and Ruth got some cold stares on the street, and someone once threatened to burn down the Natural History Museum. Angus Addams did not speak to Ruth or her father for over two years, but, in the end, even he joined. These were, after all, islands of followers, and once the high-liners were on board, it was not difficult to find members. The system was working. It was all working out just fine. Mrs. Pommeroy did all the secretarial tasks in the Skillet Co-op office. She was good at it, patient and organized. She was also great at calming down the lobstermen when they got too worked up or too paranoid or too competitive. Whenever a lobsterman stormed into the office, howling that Ruth was ripping him off or that someone had sabotaged his traps, he was sure to walk out happy and pacified-and with a nice new haircut, besides.

Ruth’s husband and her father were making a fortune fishing together. Owney was Stan’s sternman for two years; then he bought his own boat (a fiberglass boat, the first one on either island; Ruth had talked him into it), but he and Stan still shared profits. They formed their own corporation. Stan Thomas and Owney Wishnell made a dazzling couple. They were fishing wizards. There weren’t enough hours in the day for all the lobsters they were pulling out of the ocean. Owney was a gifted fisherman, a natural fisherman. He came home to Ruth every afternoon with a sort of a glow, a hum, a low buzz of contentment and success. He came home every afternoon satisfied and proud and wanting sex in the worst way, and Ruth liked that. She liked that a lot.

As for Ruth, she too was content. She was satisfied and enormously proud of herself. As far as she was concerned, she pretty much kicked ass. Ruth loved her husband and her little boy, but mostly she loved her business. She loved the lobster pound and bait dealership, and she was pleased as punch with herself for having put together the co-op and for having convinced those big strong lobstermen to join it. All those men, who’d never before had a good word to say about one another! She’d offered them something so smart and efficient that even they had seen the worth of it. And business was great. Now Ruth was thinking about setting up fuel pumps on the docks of both islands. It would be an expensive investment, but it was sure to pay off fast. And she could afford it. She was making a lot of money. She was proud of that, too. She wondered, more than a little smugly, what had become of all her horsey classmates from that ridiculous school in Delaware. They’d probably just got out of college and were getting engaged to pampered idiots at this very moment. Who knew? Who cared?

More than anything, Ruth had a big sense of pride when she thought of her mother and the Ellises, who had tried so hard to drive her away from this place. They had insisted that there was no future for Ruth on Fort Niles, when, as things had turned out, Ruth was the future here. Yes, she was pretty content.

Ruth got pregnant again in the early winter of 1982, when she was twenty-four and David was a quiet five-year-old who spent most of his day trying not to get clobbered by Opal and Robin Pommeroy’s enormous son, Eddie.