Stern Men

  “Cal,” Ruth snapped, “stop talking now.” He always seized the opportunity to remind her of her grandmother’s shame.

  “Italian?” Pastor Wishnell said, with a frown. “On Fort Niles?”

  “Tell the man about your grandpap, Ruth,” Cal said.

  Ruth disregarded Cal, as did the pastor. Pastor Wishnell was still looking at Ruth with great attention. At last he said, “Ah . . .” He nodded. “I know now how it is that I recognize you. I believe I buried your father, Ruth, when you were a little girl. That’s it. I believe I presided over your father’s funeral. Didn’t I?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’m quite sure of it.”

  “No, sir. My father’s not dead.”

  Pastor Wishnell considered this. “Your father did not drown? Almost ten years ago?”

  “No, sir. I believe you’re thinking of a man named Ira Pommeroy. You presided over Mr. Pommeroy’s funeral about ten years ago. We passed my father baiting lobster as we left the harbor. He’s very much alive.”

  “He was found caught up in another man’s fishing lines, that Ira Pommeroy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he had several children?”

  “Seven sons.”

  “And one daughter?”

  “No.”

  “But you were there, weren’t you? At the funeral?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So I was not imagining it.”

  “No, sir. I was there. You were not imagining it.”

  “You certainly seemed to be a member of the family.”

  “Well, I’m not, Pastor Wishnell. I’m not a member of that family.”

  “And that lovely widow . . . ?”

  “Mrs. Pommeroy?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Pommeroy. She’s not your mother?”

  “No, sir. She’s not my mother.”

  “Ruth is a member of the Ellis family,” Cal Cooley said.

  “I am a member of the Thomas family,” Ruth corrected. She kept her voice level, but she was mad. What exactly was it about Cal Cooley that brought to her such immediate thoughts of homicide? She never had this reaction to anyone else. All Cal had to do was open his mouth, and she started imagining trucks running over him. Incredible.

  “Ruth’s mother is Miss Vera Ellis’s devoted niece,” Cal Cooley explained. “Ruth’s mother lives with Miss Vera Ellis in the Ellis mansion in Concord.”

  “My mother is Miss Vera Ellis’s handmaid,” Ruth said, her voice level.

  “Ruth’s mother is Miss Vera Ellis’s devoted niece,” Cal Cooley repeated. “We’re going to visit them now.”

  “Is that so?” said Pastor Wishnell. “I was certain that you were a Pommeroy, young lady. I was certain that the lovely young widow was your mother.”

  “Well, I’m not. And she’s not.”

  “Is she still on the island?”

  “Yes,” Ruth said.

  “With her sons?”

  “A few of her sons joined the Army. One’s working on a farm in Orono. Three live at home.”

  “How does she survive? How does she make money?”

  “Her sons send her money. And she cuts people’s hair.”

  “She can survive on that?”

  “Everyone on the island gets their hair cut by her. She’s excellent at it.”

  “Perhaps I should get a haircut from her someday.”

  “I’m sure you’d be satisfied,” Ruth said, formally. She couldn’t believe the way she was talking to this man. I’m sure you’d be satisfied? What was she saying? What did she care about Pastor Wishnell’s hair-related satisfaction?

  “Interesting. And what about your family, Ruth? Is your father a lobsterman, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “A terrible profession.”

  Ruth did not respond.

  “Savage. Brings out the greed in a man. The way they defend their territory! I have never seen such greed! There have been more murders on these islands over lobster boundaries . . .”

  The pastor trailed off. Ruth again did not answer. She’d been watching his nephew, Owney Wishnell, whose back was to her. Owney, standing at the wheel, was still sailing the New Hope toward Rockland. It would have been easy to assume that Owney Wishnell was deaf, the way he had disregarded them all morning. Yet now that Pastor Wishnell had begun to talk about lobstering, a change seemed to come over Owney’s body. His back seemed to draw steady, like that of a hunting cat. A subtle ripple of tension. He was listening.

  “Naturally,” Pastor Wishnell resumed, “you would not see it as I do, Ruth. You see only the lobstermen of your island. I see many. I see men like your neighbors all up and down this coast. I see these savage dramas played out on—how many islands is it, Owney? How many islands do we minister to, Owney? How many lobster wars have we seen? How many of those lobster territory disputes have I mediated in the last decade alone?”

  But Owney Wishnell did not reply. He stood perfectly still, his paint-can-shaped head facing forward, his big hands resting on the wheel of the New Hope, his big feet—big as shovels—planted in his clean, high lobsterman’s boots. The boat in his command beat down the waves.

  “Owney knows how dreadful the lobstering life is,” Pastor Wishnell said after a while. “He was a child in 1965, when some of the fishermen on Courne Haven tried to form a collective. Do you remember that incident, Ruth?”

  “I remember hearing about it.”

  “It was a brilliant idea, of course, on paper. A fishermen’s collective is the only way to thrive in this business instead of starving. Collective bargaining with wholesalers, collective bargaining with bait dealers, price setting, agreements on trap limits. It would have been a very wise thing to do. But tell that to those blockheads who fish for a living.”

  “It’s hard for them to trust each other,” Ruth said. Ruth’s father was dead against any idea of a fishermen’s collective. As was Angus Addams. As was Uncle Len Thomas. As were most of the fishermen she knew.

  “As I said, they are blockheads.”

  “No,” Ruth said. “They’re independent, and it’s hard for them to change their ways. They feel safer doing things the way they always have, taking care of themselves.”

  “Your father?” Pastor Wishnell said. “How does he get his lobster catch to Rockland?”

  “He takes it on his boat.” She wasn’t sure how this conversation had turned into an interrogation.

  “And how does he get his bait and fuel?”

  “He brings them back from Rockland on his boat.”

  “And so do all the other men on the island, right? Each man in his own little boat, chugging away to Rockland alone because they can’t trust one another enough to combine the catch and take turns making the trip. Correct?”

  “My dad doesn’t want everyone in the world to know how much lobster he’s catching, or what kind of price he’s getting. Why should he want everyone to know that?”

  “So he’s enough of a blockhead never to go into partnership with his neighbors.”

  “I prefer not to think of my father as a blockhead,” Ruth said, quietly. “Besides, nobody has the capital to start a cooperative.”

  Cal Cooley snorted. “Shut up, Cal,” Ruth added, less quietly.

  “Well, my nephew Owney saw, close up, the war that came of that last collective attempt, didn’t he? It was Dennis Burden who tried to form the cooperative on Courne Haven. He put his life out for it. And it was Dennis Burden’s little children to whom we brought food and clothing after his neighbors—his own neighbors—set his boat on fire and the poor man could no longer make a living.”

  “I heard that Dennis Burden had made a secret deal with the Sandy Point wholesaler,” Ruth said. “I heard he cheated his neighbors.” She paused, then, imitating the pastor’s inflection, added, “His own neighbors.”

  The pastor frowned. “That is a myth.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Would you have burned the man’s boat?”

/>   “I wasn’t there.”

  “No. You were not there. But I was there and Owney was there. And it was a good lesson for Owney on the realities of the lobster business. He’s seen these medieval battles and disputes on every island from here to Canada. He understands the depravity, the danger, the greed. And he knows better than to become involved in such a profession.”

  Owney Wishnell made no comment.

  At last, the pastor said to Ruth, “You’re a bright girl, Ruth.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It seems you’ve had a good education.”

  Cal Cooley put in, “Too much of an education. Cost a fucking fortune.”

  The pastor gave Cal such a hard look, it almost made Ruth wince. Cal turned his face. Ruth sensed that this was the last time she’d be hearing the word fuck spoken on the New Hope.

  “And what will become of you, Ruth?” Pastor Toby Wishnell asked. “You have good sense, don’t you? What will you do with your life?”

  Ruth Thomas looked at the back and the neck of Owney Wishnell, who, she could tell, was still listening closely.

  “College?” Pastor Toby Wishnell suggested.

  What urgency there was in Owney Wishnell’s posture!

  So Ruth decided to engage. She said, “More than anything else, sir, I would like to become a lobster fisherman.”

  Pastor Toby Wishnell gazed at her, coolly. She returned the gaze.

  “Because it’s such a noble calling, sir,” she said.

  That was the end of the conversation. Ruth had shut it right up. She couldn’t help herself. She could never help herself from mouthing off. She was mortified at the way she had spoken to this man. Mortified, and a little proud. Yeah! She could sass the best of them! But, good God, what an awkward silence. Maybe she should have minded her manners.

  The New Hope rocked and bumped on the rough sea. Cal Cooley looked pallid, and he quickly went out on deck, where he clung to the railing. Owney sailed on, silent, the back of his neck flushed plum. Ruth Thomas was deeply uncomfortable alone in the presence of Pastor Wishnell, but she hoped that her discomfort was not apparent. She tried to look relaxed. She did not try to converse further with the pastor. Although he did have one last thing to say to her. They were still an hour from Rockland when Pastor Toby Wishnell told Ruth one last thing.

  He leaned toward her and said, “Did you know that I was the first man in the Wishnell family not to become a lobster fisherman, Ruth? Did you know that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then you’ll understand when I tell you this. My nephew Owney will be the second Wishnell not to fish.”

  He smiled, leaned back, and watched her carefully for the rest of the trip. She maintained a small, defiant smile. She wasn’t going to show this man her discomfort. No, sir. He fixed his cool, intelligent gaze on her for the next hour. She just smiled away at him. She was miserable.

  Cal Cooley drove Ruth Thomas to Concord in the two-tone Buick the Ellis family had owned since Ruth was a little girl. After telling Cal she was tired, she lay down on the back seat and pretended to sleep. He literally whistled “Dixie” during the entire drive. He knew Ruth was awake, and he knew he was annoying her intensely.

  They arrived in Concord around dusk. It was raining lightly, and the Buick made a sweet hissing sound on the wet macadam—a sound that Ruth never heard on a Fort Niles dirt road. Cal turned into the long driveway of the Ellis mansion and let the car coast to a stop. Ruth still pretended to be asleep, and Cal pretended to wake her up. He twisted around in the front seat and poked her hip.

  “Try to drag yourself back into consciousness.”

  She opened her eyes slowly and stretched with great drama. “Are we here already?”

  They got out of the car, walked to the front door, and Cal rang the bell. He put his hands in his jacket pockets.

  “You are so goddamned pissed off about being here,” Cal said, and laughed. “You hate me so much.”

  The door opened, and there was Ruth’s mother. She gave a little gasp and stepped out on the doorstep to put her arms around her daughter. Ruth laid her head on her mother’s shoulder and said, “Here I am.”

  “I’m never sure if you’ll really come.”

  “Here I am.”

  They held each other.

  Ruth’s mother said, “You look wonderful, Ruth,” although, with her daughter’s head lying on her shoulder, she could not really see.

  “Here I am,” Ruth said. “Here I am.”

  Cal Cooley coughed decorously.

  6

  The young animals that issue from the eggs of the lobster are distinct in every way, including shape, habits, and mode of transportation, from the adult.

  —William Saville-Kent 1897

  MISS VERA ELLIS had never wanted Ruth’s mother to marry.

  When Mary Smith-Ellis was a little girl, Miss Vera would say, “You know how difficult it was for me when your mother died.”

  “Yes, Miss Vera,” Mary would say.

  “I barely survived without her.”

  “I know, Miss Vera.”

  “You look so much like her.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I can’t do a thing without you!”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “My helpmate!”

  “Yes, Miss Vera.”

  Ruth’s mother had a most peculiar life with Miss Vera. Mary Smith-Ellis never had close friends or sweethearts. Her life was circumscribed by service—mending, corresponding, packing, shopping, braiding, reassuring, aiding, bathing, and so on. She had inherited the very workload that once burdened her mother and had been raised into servitude, exactly as her mother had been.

  Winters in Concord, summers on Fort Niles. Mary did go to school, but only until she was sixteen, and only because Miss Vera did not want a complete idiot as a companion. Other than those years of schooling, Mary Smith-Ellis’s life consisted of chores for Miss Vera. In this manner, Mary passed through childhood and adolescence. Then she was a young woman, then one not so young. She had never had a suitor. She was not unattractive, but she was busy. She had work to do.

  It was at the end of the summer of 1955 that Miss Vera Ellis decided to give a picnic for the people of Fort Niles. She had guests visiting Ellis House from Europe, and she wanted to show them the local spirit, so she planned to have a lobster bake on Gavin Beach, to which all the residents of Fort Niles were to be invited. The decision was without precedent. There had never before been social occasions attended by the locals of Fort Niles and the Ellis family, but Miss Vera thought it would be a delightful event. A novelty.

  Mary, of course, organized everything. She spoke with the fishermen’s wives and arranged for them to bake the blueberry pies. She had a modest, quiet manner, and the fishermen’s wives liked her well enough. They knew she was from Ellis House, but they didn’t hold that against her. She seemed a nice girl, if a bit mousy and shy. Mary also ordered corn and potatoes and charcoal and beer. She borrowed long tables from the Fort Niles grammar school, and arranged to have the pews moved from the Fort Niles church down to the beach. She talked to Mr. Fred Burden of Courne Haven, who was a decent enough fiddler, and hired him to provide music. Finally, she needed to order several hundred pounds of lobster. The fishermen’s wives suggested that she discuss this with Mr. Angus Addams, who was the most prolific fisherman on the island. She was told to wait for his boat, the Sally Chestnut, at the dock in the middle of the afternoon.

  So Mary went down to the dock on a windy August afternoon and picked her way around the tossed stacks of wrecked wooden lobster traps and nets and barrels. As each fisherman came past her, stinking in his high boots and sticky slicker, she asked, “Excuse me, sir? Are you Mr. Angus Addams? Excuse me? Are you the skipper of the Sally Chestnut, sir?”

  They all shook their heads or grunted crude denials and passed right by. Even Angus Addams himself passed right by, with his head down. He had no idea who the hell this woman was and what the h
ell she wanted, and he had no interest in finding out. Ruth Thomas’s father was another of the men who passed Mary Smith-Ellis, and when she asked, “Are you Angus Addams?” he grunted a denial like that of the other men. Except that, after he passed, he slowed down and turned to take a look at the woman. A good long look.

  She was pretty. She was nice-looking. She wore tailored tan trousers and a short-sleeved white blouse, with a small round collar decorated with tiny embroidered flowers. She did not wear makeup. She had a thin silver watch on her wrist, and her dark hair was short and neatly waved. She carried a notepad and a pencil. He liked her slim waist and her clean appearance. She looked tidy. Stan Thomas, a fastidious man, liked that.

  Yes, Stan Thomas really looked her over.

  “Are you Mr. Angus Addams, sir?” she was asking Wayne Pommeroy, who was staggering by with a broken trap on his shoulder. Wayne looked embarrassed and then angry at his embarrassment, and he hustled past without answering.

  Stan Thomas was still looking her over when she turned and caught his eye. He smiled. She walked over, and she was smiling, as well, with a sort of sweet hopefulness. It was a nice smile.

  “You’re sure you’re not Mr. Angus Addams?” she asked.

  “No. I’m Stan Thomas.”

  “I’m Mary Ellis,” she said, and held out her hand. “I work at Ellis House.”

  Stan Thomas didn’t respond, but he didn’t look unfriendly, so she continued.

  “My Aunt Vera is giving a party next Sunday for the whole island, and she’d like to purchase several hundred pounds of lobster.”

  “She would?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who’s she want to buy it from?”

  “I don’t suppose it matters. I was told to look for Angus Addams, but it doesn’t matter to me.”

  “I could sell them to her, but she’d have to pay the retail price.”

  “Have you got that much lobster?”

  “I can get it. It’s right out there.” He waved his hand at the ocean and grinned. “I just have to pick it up.”

  Mary laughed.