They did not speak. Ruth heard an owl.
“Don’t be afraid,” Owney said. “The island’s full of noises.”
She knew those noises. The woods were at once familiar and disorienting. Everything smelled, looked, sounded like Fort Niles but wasn’t Fort Niles. The air was sweet, but it was not her air. She had no idea where they were, until, suddenly, she sensed a great opening to her right, and she realized they were high up, along the edge of a gutted quarry. It was an old Ellis Granite Company scar, like the ones on Fort Niles. Now they moved with great caution, because the path Owney had chosen was only four feet or so from what seemed to be a serious drop. Ruth knew that some of the quarries were several hundred feet deep. She took baby steps because she was wearing sandals, and the soles were slippery. She was aware of a slickness beneath her feet.
They walked along the edge of the quarry for a while and then were back in the woods. The sheltering trees, the enclosed space, the embracing darkness was a relief, after the wide gape of the quarry. At one point they crossed an old railway. As they got deeper into the woods, it was hard to see, and after they had walked a half hour, in silence, the dark suddenly became thicker, and Ruth saw why. Just to her left was a shelf of granite reaching up into the darkness. It may have been a wall a hundred feet high of good black granite; it swallowed up the light. She reached out and brushed the surface with her fingers; it was damp and cool and mossy.
She said, “Where are we going?” She could really barely see Owney.
“For a walk.”
She laughed, a quiet, nice sound that didn’t travel at all.
“Is there a destination?” she asked.
“No,” he said, and, to her great delight, he laughed. Ruth joined him; she liked the sound of their laughter in these woods.
Now they stopped. Ruth leaned back against the granite wall. It was slightly tilted, and she tilted with it. She could just make out Owney standing in front of her. She reached out to his arm and felt along it all the way down to his hand. Nice hand.
“Come here, Owney,” she said, and laughed again. “Come in here.” She pulled him close, and he put his arms around her, and there they stood. Against her back was the cold dark granite; against the front of her was Owney Wishnell’s big warm body. She pulled him closer and pressed the side of her face to his chest. She really, really liked the way he felt. His back was wide. She didn’t care if this was all they did. She didn’t care if they held each other this way for hours and did nothing else.
No, actually; she did care.
Now everything was going to change, she knew, and she lifted her face and kissed him on the mouth. To be exact, she kissed him in the mouth, a thoughtful and long wet kiss and—what a nice surprise!—what a fat, excellent tongue Owney Wishnell had! God, what a lovely tongue. All slow and salty. It was a gorgeous tongue.
Ruth had kissed boys before, of course. Not many boys, because she didn’t have access to many. Was she going to kiss the Pommeroy sons? No, there hadn’t been many eligible boys in Ruth’s life, but she’d kissed a few when she’d had the chance. She had kissed a strange boy on a bus to Concord one Christmas, and she had kissed the son of a cousin of Duke Cobb’s who’d been visiting for a week from New Jersey, but those episodes were nothing like kissing Owney Wishnell’s big soft mouth.
Maybe this was why Owney spoke so slowly all the time, Ruth thought; his tongue was too big and soft to form quick words. Well, what of it. She put her hands on the sides of his face and he put his hands on the sides of her face, and they kissed the hell out of each other. Each held the other’s head firmly, the way you hold that of an errant child and get right in his face and say, “Listen!” And they kissed and kissed. It was great. His thigh was shoved so hard up into her crotch that it almost lifted her off the ground. He had a hard, muscled thigh. Good for him, Ruth thought. Nice thigh. She didn’t care if they never did anything but kiss.
Yes, she did. She did care.
She took his hands off her face, took his big wrists in her own hands, and pushed his hands down to her body. She placed his hands on her hips, and he pushed himself even closer against her and—he was deep in her mouth now with that gorgeous sweet tongue—he moved his hands up her body until his palms were covering her breasts. Ruth realized that if she didn’t get his mouth on her nipples soon she was going to die. That’s right, she thought, I will die. So she unbuttoned the front of her sundress and pulled away the fabric and pushed his head down, and—he was brilliant! He made a touching, quiet little moan. It was as if her whole breast was in his mouth. She could feel it all the way to her lungs. She wanted to growl. She wanted to arch back into it, but there was no room to arch, with that rock wall behind her.
“Is there someplace we can go?” she asked.
“Where?”
“Someplace softer than this rock?”
“OK,” he said, but it took them ages to separate from each other. It took them several tries, because she kept pulling him back, and he kept grinding his groin into hers. It went on and on. And when they finally did pull away from each other and headed up the trail, they raced. It was as if they were swimming under water, holding their breath and trying to make it to the surface. Forget about roots and rocks and Ruth’s slippery sandals; forget about his helpful hand under her elbow. There was no time for those delicacies, because they were in a hurry. Ruth didn’t know where they were off to, but she knew it was going to be a place where they could continue, and that knowledge set her pace and his. They had business to attend to. They practically ran for it. No talking.
They finally broke out of the woods onto a small beach. Ruth could see lights across the water and knew they were facing Fort Niles, which meant they were way on the other side of Courne Haven from the wedding party. Good. The farther away the better. There was a shed on a ridge above the level of sand, and it had no door, so they went right in there. Piles of old traps in the corner. An oar on the floor. A child’s school desk, with the tiny kid’s chair attached. A window covered with a wool blanket, which Owney Wishnell tore away without hesitation. He flipped the dust from the blanket, kicked away an old glass buoy from the middle of the floor, and spread out the blanket. Now moonlight came through the empty window.
As if this had been worked out well in advance, Ruth Thomas and Owney Wishnell stripped off their clothes. Ruth was faster, because all she had on was that sundress, which was already mostly unbuttoned. Off it came, then the blue cotton underpants and the sandals kicked away and—there!—she was done. But Owney took forever. Owney had to take off his sweatshirt and the flannel shirt that was under that (with buttons at the cuffs that had to be dealt with) and the undershirt beneath it all. He had to take off a belt, unlace his tall workboots, pull off his socks. He took off his jeans and—this was taking forever—finally his white underwear, and he was done.
They didn’t exactly tackle each other, but they collected each other very quickly, and then realized this would be a whole lot easier if they were on the ground, so that happened pretty quickly, too. Ruth was on her back, and Owney was on his knees. He pushed her knees back against her chest and opened her legs, hands on her shins. She thought about all the people who would be outraged if they knew of this—her mother, her father, Angus Addams (if he knew she was naked with a Wishnell!), Pastor Wishnell (terrifying even to think of his reaction), Cal Cooley (he would lose his mind), Vera Ellis, Lanford Ellis (he would kill her! Hell, he would have them both killed!)—and she smiled and reached her hand forward through her legs and took his cock and helped him put it inside her. Just like that.
It is extraordinary what people can do even if they’ve never done it before.
Ruth had thought a lot in the last few years about what it would be like to have sex. Of all the things she’d thought about sex, though, she’d never considered that it might be so easy and so immediately hot. She’d thought of it as something to be puzzled out with difficulty and a lot of talking. And she could never really picture sex,
because she couldn’t picture who exactly she’d be puzzling it out with. She figured her partner would have to be much older, somebody who knew what he was doing and would be patient and instructive. This goes here; no, not like that; try again, try again. She’d thought that sex would be difficult at first, like learning to drive. She’d thought that sex was something that might grow on her slowly, after a great deal of grim practice, and that it would probably hurt a lot in the beginning.
Yes, it is truly extraordinary what people can do even if they’ve never done it before.
Ruth and Owney went at it like pros, right from the start. There, in that shack on the filthy woolen blanket, they were doing raunchy, completely satisfying things to each other. They were doing things it might take other partners months to figure out. She was on top of him; he was on top of her. There seemed no part of each other that they were not willing to put into the other’s mouth. She was up on his face; he was leaning up against the child’s desk while she crouched in front of him and sucked him as he clutched her hair. She was lying on her side, with her legs positioned like a runner in mid-stride while he fingered her. He was sliding his fingers into her slippy tight cracks and licking his fingers. Then he was sliding his fingers into her slippy tight cracks again and putting his fingers in her mouth, so that she could taste herself on his hands.
Incredibly, she was saying, “Yes, yes, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”
He was flipping her over onto her stomach and lifting her hips into the air and, yes, yes, he was fucking her, fucking her, fucking her.
Ruth and Owney fell asleep, and when they woke, it was windy and cold. They hurried into their clothes and made the difficult hike back into town, through the woods and past the quarry. Ruth could see the quarry more clearly, now that the sky was starting to lighten. It was a huge hole, bigger than anything on Fort Niles. They must have made cathedrals out of that rock.
They came out of the woods in Owney’s neighbor’s yard, stepped over the low brick wall, and walked into Pastor Wishnell’s rose garden. There was Pastor Wishnell on the steps of the porch, waiting for them. In one hand, he held Ruth’s empty whiskey glass. In the other, Mrs. Pommeroy’s flashlight. When he saw them coming, he shone the flashlight on them, although he really didn’t need to. It was light enough outside now for him to see perfectly well who they were. No matter. He shone the flashlight on them.
Owney dropped Ruth’s hand. She immediately thrust it into the pocket of her yellow sundress and clasped the key, the key to the Ellis Granite Company Store, the key Mr. Lanford Ellis had handed her only hours before. She hadn’t thought about the key since taking off into the woods with Owney, but now it was extremely important that she locate it, that she confirm it had not been lost. Ruth held on to the key so tightly that it bit into her palm—as Pastor Wishnell came off the porch and walked toward them. She clung to the key. She could not have said why.
12
In severe winters, lobsters are either driven into deeper water, or, if living in harbors, seek protection by burrowing into the mud when this is available.
—The American Lobster: A Study of Its Habits and Development Francis Hobart Herrick, Ph.D. 1895
RUTH SPENT MOST of the fall of 1976 in hiding. Her father had not expressly thrown her out of the house, but he did not make her feel welcome there after the incident. The incident was not that Ruth and Owney had been caught by Pastor Wishnell, hiking out of the Courne Haven woods at daybreak after Dotty Wishnell’s wedding. That was unpleasant, but the incident occurred four days later, at dinner, when Ruth asked her father, “Don’t you even want to know what I was doing in the woods with Owney Wishnell?”
Ruth and her father had been stepping around each other for days, not speaking, somehow managing to avoid eating meals together. On this night, Ruth had roasted a chicken and had it ready when her father came in from fishing. “Don’t worry about me,” he’d said, when he saw Ruth setting the table for two. “I’ll pick some dinner up over at Angus’s,” and Ruth said, “No, Dad, let’s eat here, you and me.”
They didn’t talk much over dinner. “I did a good job with this chicken, didn’t I?” Ruth asked, and her father said that, sure, she’d done a real good job. She asked how things were working out with Robin Pommeroy, whom her father had recently hired back, and Stan said the kid was as stupid as ever, what did you expect? That sort of talk. They finished dinner quietly.
As Stan Thomas picked up his plate and headed to the sink, Ruth asked, “Dad. Don’t you even want to know what I was doing in the woods with Owney Wishnell?”
“No.”
“No?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t care who you spend your time with, Ruth, or what you do with him.”
Stan Thomas rinsed off his plate, came back to the table, and took Ruth’s plate without asking whether she was finished with dinner and without looking at her. He rinsed her plate, poured himself a glass of milk, and cut himself a slice of Mrs. Pommeroy’s blueberry cake, which was sitting on the counter under a sweaty tent of plastic wrap. He ate the cake with his hands, leaning over the sink. He wiped the crumbs on his jeans with both hands and covered the cake with the plastic wrap again.
“I’m heading over to Angus’s,” he said.
“You know, Dad,” she said, “I’ll tell you something.” She didn’t get up from her chair. “I think you should have an opinion about this.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t.”
“Well, you should. You know why? Because we were having sex.”
He picked his jacket off the back of his chair, put it on, and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Ruth asked.
“Angus’s. Said that already.”
“That’s all you have to say? That’s your opinion?”
“Don’t have any opinion.”
“Dad, I’ll tell you something else. There’s a lot of things going on around here that you should have an opinion about.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t.”
“Liar,” Ruth said.
He looked at her. “That’s no way to talk to your father.”
“Why? You are a liar.”
“That’s no way to talk to any person.”
“I’m just a little tired of your saying you don’t care what goes on around here. I think that’s pretty damn weak.”
“It doesn’t do me any good to care about what’s going on.”
“You don’t care if I go to Concord or stay here,” she said. “You don’t care if Mr. Ellis gives me money. You don’t care if I work on a fishing boat forever or get hauled off to college. You don’t care if I stay up all night having sex with a Wishnell. Really, Dad? You don’t care about that?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, come on. You’re such a liar.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I’ll say what I want to say.”
“It doesn’t matter what I care, Ruth. Whatever happens to you or your mother won’t have anything to do with me. Believe me. I got nothing to do with it. I learned that a long time ago.”
“Me or my mother?”
“That’s right. I got no say in any decisions involving either one of you. So what the hell.”
“My mother? What are you, kidding me? You could totally dominate my mother if you bothered. She’s never in her life made a decision on her own, Dad.”
“I got no say over her.”
“Who does, then?”
“You know who.”
Ruth and her father looked at each other for a long minute. “You could stand up to the Ellises if you wanted to, Dad.”
“No, I couldn’t, Ruth. And neither can you.”
“Liar.”
“I told you to stop saying that.”
“Pussy,” Ruth said, to her own immense surprise.
“If you don’t watch your fucking mouth,” Ruth’s father said, and he walked out of the house.
That was the incident.
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Ruth finished cleaning up the kitchen and headed over to Mrs. Pommeroy’s. She cried for about an hour on her bed while Mrs. Pommeroy stroked her hair and said, “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Ruth said, “He’s just such a pussy.”
“Where did you learn that word, hon?”
“He’s such a fucking coward. It’s pathetic. Why can’t he be more like Angus Addams? Why can’t he stand up for something?”
“You wouldn’t really want Angus Addams for a father, would you, Ruth?”
This made Ruth cry harder, and Mrs. Pommeroy said, “Oh, sweetheart. You’re sure having a tough time this year.”
Robin came into the room and said, “What’s all the noise? Who’s blubbering?” Ruth shouted, “Get him out of here!” Robin said, “It’s my house, bitch.” And Mrs. Pommeroy said, “You two are like brother and sister.”
Ruth stopped crying and said, “I can’t believe this fucking place.”
“What place?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked. “What place, hon?”
Ruth stayed at the Pommeroy house through July and August and on into the beginning of September. Sometimes she went next door to her house, to her father’s house, when she knew he’d be out hauling, and picked up a clean blouse or a book to read, or tried to guess what he’d been eating. She had nothing to do. She had no job. She had given up even pretending that she wanted to work as a sternman, and nobody asked her anymore what plans she had. She was clearly never going to be offered work on a boat. And for people who didn’t work on boats on Fort Niles in 1976, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do.
Ruth had nothing to occupy herself. At least Mrs. Pommeroy could do needlepoint. And Kitty Pommeroy had her alcoholism for companionship. Webster Pommeroy had the mudflats to sift through, and Senator Simon had his dream of the Museum of Natural History. Ruth had nothing. Sometimes she thought she most resembled the oldest citizens of Fort Niles, the tiny ancient women who sat at their front windows and parted the curtains to see what was going on out there, on the rare instances that anyone walked past their homes.