Stern Men

  “That’s not true. I pay attention to everything.”

  “You pay a great deal of attention to some things.”

  “Old Cal Cooley is incapable of not paying attention.”

  “You should have paid more attention to that tusk, then.”

  “I am interested in that tusk, Ruth. I’m actually holding it for Mr. Ellis so that he can look at it later. I think he’ll be very interested indeed.”

  “What do you mean, holding it?”

  “I’m holding it.”

  “You took it?”

  “As I’ve said, I’m holding it.”

  “You took it. You sent them away without their tusk. Jesus Christ. Why would a person do something like that?”

  “Would you like to share a cigarette with me, young lady?”

  “I think you people are all pricks.”

  “If you would like to smoke a cigarette, I won’t tell anybody.”

  “I don’t fucking smoke, Cal.”

  “I’m sure you do lots of bad things you don’t tell anybody about.”

  “You took that tusk out of Webster’s hands and sent him away? Well, that’s a downright horrible thing to do. And typical.”

  “You sure do look beautiful today, Ruth. I meant to tell you that immediately, but the opportunity did not arise.”

  Ruth stood up. “OK,” she said, “I’m going home.”

  She started to walk off, but Cal Cooley said, “As a matter of fact, I believe you need to stay.”

  Ruth stopped walking. She didn’t turn around, but she stood still, because she knew from his tone what was coming.

  “If you’re not too busy today,” Cal Cooley said, “Mr. Ellis would like to see you.”

  They walked toward Ellis House together. They walked silently beyond the pastures and the ancient gardens and up the steps to the back verandah and through the wide French doors. They walked through the broad and shrouded living room, down a back hall, up the modest back stairs—the servants’ stairs—along another hall, and finally reached a door.

  Cal Cooley stood as though to knock, but, instead, stepped back. He walked a few more paces down the hallway and ducked into a recessed doorway. When he gestured for Ruth to follow, she did. Cal Cooley put his big hands on Ruth’s shoulders and whispered, “I know you hate me.” And he smiled.

  Ruth listened.

  “I know you hate me, but I can tell you what this is all about if you want to know.”

  Ruth did not reply.

  “Do you want to know?”

  “I don’t care what you tell me or don’t tell me,” Ruth said. “It doesn’t make any difference in my life.”

  “Of course you care. First of all,” Cal said, in a hushed voice, “Mr. Ellis simply wants to see you. He’s been asking after you for a few weeks, and I’ve been lying. I’ve told him that you were still at school. Then I said you were working with your father on his boat.”

  Cal Cooley waited for Ruth to respond; she didn’t.

  “I should think you’d thank me for that,” he said. “I don’t like to lie to Mr. Ellis.”

  “Don’t, then,” Ruth said.

  “He’s going to give you an envelope,” Cal said. “It has three hundred dollars in it.”

  Again, Cal waited for a response, but Ruth did not oblige, so he continued. “Mr. Ellis is going to tell you that it’s fun money, just for you. And, to a certain extent, that’s true. You can spend it on whatever you like. But you know what it’s really for, right? Mr. Ellis has a favor to ask of you.”

  Ruth remained silent.

  “That’s right,” Cal Cooley said. “He wants you to visit your mother in Concord. I’m supposed to take you there.”

  They stood in the recessed doorway. His big hands on her wide shoulders were as heavy as dread. Cal and Ruth stood there for a long time. Finally, he said, “Get it over with, young lady.”

  “Shit,” Ruth said.

  He dropped his hands. “Just take the money. My suggestion to you is not to antagonize him.”

  “I never antagonize him.”

  “Take the money and be civil. We’ll figure out the details later.”

  Cal Cooley stepped out of the doorway and walked back to the first door. He knocked. He whispered to Ruth, “That’s what you wanted, right? To know? No surprises for you. You want to know everything that’s going on, right?”

  He threw open the door, and Ruth stepped inside, alone. The door closed behind her with a beautiful brushing sound, like the swish of expensive fabric.

  She was in Mr. Ellis’s bedroom.

  The bed itself was made, as seamlessly as though it were never used. The bed was made up as though the bedding had been produced at the same time as the piece of furniture itself and had been tacked or glued to the woodwork. It looked like a display bed in an expensive store. Bookcases were everywhere, holding rows of dark books, each precisely the same shade and size as its neighbors, as though Mr. Ellis owned one volume and had had it repeated throughout the room. The fireplace was lit, and there were heavy duck decoys on the mantel. The musty wallpaper was interrupted by framed prints of clippers and tall ships.

  Mr. Ellis was near the fire, sitting in a large, wing-back chair. He was very, very old and very thin. A plaid lap rug was pulled high over his waist and tucked around his feet. His baldness was absolute, and his skull looked thin and cold. He held out his arms to Ruth Thomas, his palsied palms upward and open. His eyes were swimming in blue, swimming with tears.

  “It’s nice to see you, Mr. Ellis,” Ruth said.

  He grinned and grinned.

  4

  In traveling over the bottom in search of its prey, the lobster walks nimbly on its delicate legs. When taken out of the water, it can only crawl, owing to the heavy weight of the body and the claws, which the slender legs are now unable to sustain.

  —The American Lobster: A Study of Its Habits and Development Francis Hobart Herrick, Ph.D. 1895

  THAT NIGHT, when Ruth Thomas told her father she had been to Ellis House, he said, “I don’t care who you spend your time with, Ruth.”

  Ruth had gone looking for her father immediately after she left Mr. Ellis. She walked down to the harbor and saw that his boat was in, but the other fishermen said he’d long been done for the day. She tried him at their house, but when she called for him, there was no answer. So Ruth got on her bicycle and rode over to the Addams brothers’ house to see whether he was visiting Angus for a drink. And so he was.

  The two men were sitting on the porch, leaning back in folding chairs, holding beers. Senator Simon’s dog, Cookie, was lying on Angus’s feet, panting. It was late dusk, and the air was shimmering and gold. Bats flew low and fast above. Ruth dropped her bicycle in the yard and stepped up on the porch.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, sugar.”

  “Hey, Mr. Addams.”

  “Hey, Ruth.”

  “How’s the lobster business?”

  “Great, great,” Angus said. “I’m saving up for a gun to blow my fucking head off.”

  Angus Addams, quite the opposite of his twin brother, was getting leaner as he grew older. His skin was damaged from the years spent in the middle of all kinds of bad weather. He squinted, as if looking into a field of sun. He was going deaf after a lifetime spent too near loud boat engines, and he spoke loudly. He hated almost everyone on Fort Niles, and there was no shutting him up when he felt like explaining, in careful detail, why.

  Most of the islanders were afraid of Angus Addams. Ruth’s father liked him. When Ruth’s father was a boy, he’d worked as a sternman for Angus and had been a smart, strong, ambitious apprentice. Now, of course, Ruth’s father had his own boat, and the two men dominated the lobster industry of Fort Niles. Greedy Number One and Greedy Number Two. They fished in all weather, with no limits on their catch, with no mercy for their fellows. The boys on the island who worked as sternmen for Angus Addams and for Stan Thomas usually quit after a few weeks, unable to take the pace. Other
fishermen—harder drinking, fatter, lazier, stupider fishermen (in Ruth’s father’s opinion)—made easier bosses.

  As for Ruth’s father, he was still the handsomest man on Fort Niles Island. He had never remarried after Ruth’s mother left, but Ruth knew he had liaisons. She had some ideas about who his partners were, but he never spoke about them to her, and she preferred not to think about them too much. Her father was not tall, but he had wide shoulders and thin hips. “No fanny at all,” he liked to say. He weighed the same at forty-five as he had at twenty-five. He was fastidiously neat about his clothing, and he shaved every day. He went to Mrs. Pommeroy once every two weeks for a haircut. Ruth suspected that something may have been going on between her father and Mrs. Pommeroy, but she hated the thought of it so much that she never pursued it. Ruth’s father’s hair was dark, dark brown, and his eyes were almost green. He had a mustache.

  Ruth, at eighteen, thought her father was a fine enough person. She knew he had a reputation as a cheapskate and a lobster hustler, but she also knew that this reputation had grown fertile in the minds of island men who commonly spent the money from a week’s catch on one night in a bar. These were men who saw frugality as arrogant and offensive. These were men who were not her father’s equal, and they knew it and resented it. Ruth also knew that her father’s best friend was a bully and a bigot, but she had always liked Angus Addams, anyway. She did not find him to be a hypocrite, in any case, which put him above many people.

  For the most part, Ruth got along with her father. She got along with him best when they weren’t working together or when he wasn’t trying to teach her something, like how to drive a car or mend rope or navigate by a compass. In such situations, there was bound to be yelling. It wasn’t so much the yelling that Ruth minded. What she didn’t like was when her father got quiet on her. He got real quiet, typically, on any subject having to do with Ruth’s mother. She thought he was a coward about it. His quietness sometimes disgusted her.

  “You want a beer?” Angus Addams asked Ruth.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Good,” Angus said. “Makes you fat as all goddamn hell.”

  “It hasn’t made you fat, Mr. Addams.”

  “That’s because I work.”

  “Ruth can work, too,” Stan Thomas said of his daughter. “She’s got an idea to work on a lobster boat this summer.”

  “The two of you been saying that for damn near a month now. Summer’s almost over.”

  “You want to take her on as a sternman?”

  “You take her, Stan.”

  “We’d kill each other,” Ruth’s father said. “You take her.”

  Angus Addams shook his head. “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “I don’t like to fish with anyone if I can help it. Used to be, we fished alone. Better that way. No sharing.”

  “I know you hate sharing,” Ruth said.

  “I fucking do hate sharing, missy. And I’ll tell you why. In 1936, I only made three hundred and fifty dollars the entire goddamn year, and I fished my balls off. I had close to three hundred dollars in expenses. That left me fifty to live on the whole winter. And I had to take care of my goddamn brother. So, no, I ain’t sharing if I can help it.”

  “Come on, Angus. Give Ruth a job. She’s strong,” Stan said. “Come on over here, Ruth. Roll up your sleeves, baby. Show us how strong you are.”

  Ruth went over and obediently flexed her right arm.

  “She’s got her crusher claw here,” her father said, squeezing her muscle. Then Ruth flexed her left arm, and he squeezed that one, saying, “And she’s got her pincher claw here!”

  Angus said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Is your brother here?” Ruth asked Angus.

  “He went over to the Pommeroy house,” Angus said. “He’s all goddamn worried about that goddamn snot-ass kid.”

  “He’s worried about Webster?”

  “He should just goddamn adopt the little bastard.”

  “So the Senator left Cookie with you, did he?” Ruth asked.

  Angus growled again and gave the dog a shove with his foot. Cookie woke up and looked around patiently.

  “At least the dog’s in loving hands,” Ruth’s father said, grinning. “At least Simon left his dog with someone who’ll take good care of it.”

  “Tender loving care,” Ruth added.

  “I hate this goddamn dog,” Angus said.

  “Really?” Ruth asked, wide-eyed. “Is that so? I didn’t know that. Did you know that, Dad?”

  “I never heard anything about that, Ruth.”

  “I hate this goddamn dog,” Angus said. “And the fact that I have to feed it corrodes my soul.”

  Ruth and her father started laughing.

  “I hate this goddamn dog,” Angus said, and his voice rose as he recited his problems with Cookie. “The dog’s got a goddamn ear infection, and I have to buy it some goddamn drops, and I have to hold the dog twice a day while Simon puts the drops in. I have to buy the goddamn drops when I’d rather see the goddamn dog go deaf. It drinks out of the toilet. It throws up every goddamn day, and it has never once in its entire life had a solid stool.”

  “Anything else bothering you?” Ruth asked.

  “Simon wants me to show the dog some goddamn affection, but that runs contrary to my instinct.”

  “Which is?” Ruth asked.

  “Which is to stomp on it with heavy boots.”

  “You’re terrible,” Ruth’s father said, and bent over laughing. “You’re terrible, Angus.”

  Ruth went into the house and got herself a glass of water. The kitchen of the Addams house was immaculate. Angus Addams was a slob, but Senator Simon Addams cared for his twin brother like a wife, and he kept the chrome shining and the icebox full. Ruth knew for a fact that Senator Simon got up at four in the morning every day and made Angus breakfast (biscuits, eggs, a slice of pie) and packed sandwiches for Angus’s lunch on the lobster boat. The other men on the island liked to tease Angus, saying they wished they had things so good at home, and Angus Addams liked to tell them to shut their fucking mouths and, by the way, they shouldn’t have married such lazy fat goddamn whores in the first place. Ruth looked out the kitchen window to the back yard, where overalls and long underwear swayed, drying. There was a loaf of sweetbread on the counter, so she cut herself a piece and walked back out to the porch, eating it.

  “None for me, thanks,” Angus said.

  “Sorry. Did you want a piece?”

  “No, but I’ll take another beer, Ruth.”

  “I’ll get it on my next trip to the kitchen.”

  Angus raised his eyebrows at Ruth and whistled. “That’s how educated girls treat their friends, is it?”

  “Oh, brother.”

  “Is that how Ellis girls treat their friends?”

  Ruth did not reply, and her father looked down at his feet. It became very quiet on the porch. Ruth waited to see whether her father would remind Angus Addams that Ruth was a Thomas girl, not an Ellis girl, but her father said nothing.

  Angus set his empty beer bottle on the floor of the porch and said, “I’ll get it my own self, I guess,” and he walked into the house.

  Ruth’s father looked up at her. “What’d you do today, sugar?” he asked.

  “We can talk about it at dinner.”

  “I’m eating dinner here tonight. We can talk about it now.”

  So she said, “I saw Mr. Ellis today. You still want to talk about it now?”

  Her father said evenly, “I don’t care what you talk about or when you talk about it.”

  “Does it make you mad that I saw him?”

  That’s when Angus Addams came back out, just as Ruth’s father was saying, “I don’t care who you spend your time with, Ruth.”

  “Who the hell is she spending her time with?” Angus asked.

  “Lanford Ellis.”

  “Dad. I don’t want to talk about it now.”

  “Those goddamn bastards again,” Angus said.
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  “Ruth had a little meeting with him.”

  “Dad—”

  “We don’t have to keep secrets from our friends, Ruth.”

  “Fine,” Ruth said, and she tossed her father the envelope Mr. Ellis had given her. He lifted the flap and peered at the bills inside. He set the envelope on the arm of his chair.

  “What the hell is that?” Angus asked. “What is that, a load of cash? Mr. Ellis give you that money, Ruth?”

  “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  “Well, you fucking give it back to him.”

  “I don’t think it’s any of your business, Angus. You want me to give the money back, Dad?”

  “I don’t care how these people throw their money around, Ruth,” Stan Thomas said. But he picked up the envelope again, took out the bills, and counted them. There were fifteen bills. Fifteen twenty-dollar bills.

  “What’s the goddamn money for?” Angus asked. “What the hell is that goddamn money for, anyhow?”

  “Stay out of it, Angus,” Ruth’s father said.

  “Mr. Ellis said it was fun money for me.”

  “Funny money?” her father asked.

  “Fun money.”

  “Fun money? Fun money?”

  She did not answer.

  “This sure is fun so far,” her father said. “Are you having fun, Ruth?”

  Again, she did not answer.

  “Those Ellis people really know how to have fun.”

  “I don’t know what it’s for, but you get your fanny over there and give it back,” Angus said.

  The three sat there with the money looming between them.

  “And another thing about that money,” Ruth said.

  Ruth’s father passed his hand over his face, just once, as though he suddenly realized he was tired.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s another thing about that money. Mr. Ellis would really like it if I used some of it to go visit Mom. My mother.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Angus Addams exploded. “Jesus Christ, you were gone all goddamn year, Ruth! You only just goddamn got back here, and they’re trying to send you away again!”