Stern Men

  “Ruthie,” he said, “I’ll bet you any money in the world that’s the skull of your grandmother, Jane Smith-Ellis. That’s what they’re going to find out if they find out anything. The rest of her is probably still out there in the mudflats, where she’s been rotting since the wave took her in 1927.” He clutched Ruth’s shoulders in an uncommonly fierce grip. “Don’t you ever tell your mother I said that. She would be devastated.”

  “So why did you tell me?” Ruth demanded. She was outraged.

  “Because you’re a strong girl,” the Senator said. “And you can take it. And you always want to know exactly what’s going on.”

  Ruth started crying; her tears came sudden and hard. “Why don’t you all just leave me alone?” she shouted.

  The Senator looked crushed. He hadn’t meant to upset her. And what did she mean, you all? He tried to console Ruth, but she wasn’t having it. He was sad and confused by her lately; she was edgy all the time. He couldn’t make any sense of Ruth Thomas these days. He couldn’t figure out what she wanted, but she did seem awfully unhappy.

  It was a hard fall. The weather got cold overly fast, taking everyone by surprise. The days grew shorter too quickly, locking the whole island in a state of irritation and misery.

  Just as Cal Cooley had predicted, the second weekend of September came and went and Mr. Ellis didn’t budge. The Stonecutter stayed in the harbor, rocking about where everyone could see it, and word soon spread across the island that Mr. Ellis was not leaving and the reason had something to do with Ruth Thomas. By the end of September, the Stonecutter was a distressing presence. Having the Ellis boat sitting in the harbor so late into the fall was weird. It was like an anomaly of nature—a total eclipse, a red tide, an albino lobster. People wanted answers. How long did Mr. Ellis intend to stick around? What was he asking for? Why didn’t Ruth deal with him and get it over with? What were the implications?

  By the end of October, several local fishermen had been hired by Cal Cooley to take the Stonecutter out of the water, clean it, store it on land. Obviously, Lanford Ellis was going nowhere. Cal Cooley didn’t come looking for Ruth Thomas again. She knew the terms. She had been summoned, and she knew that Mr. Ellis was waiting for her. And the whole island knew it, too. Now the boat was up on land in a wooden cradle where every man on the island could see it when he went down to the dock each morning to haul. The men didn’t stop to look at it, but they were aware of its presence as they walked by. They felt its large, expensive oddity. It made them skittish, the way a new object in a familiar trail unnerves a horse.

  The snow began in the middle of October. It was going to be an early winter. The men pulled their traps out of the water for good much earlier than they liked to, but it was getting harder to go out there and deal with the ice-caked gear, the frozen hands. The leaves were off the trees, and everyone could see Ellis House clearly on the top of the hill. At night, there were lights in the upstairs rooms.

  In the middle of November, Ruth’s father came over to Mrs. Pommeroy’s house. It was four in the afternoon, and dark. Kitty Pommeroy, already blindly drunk, was sitting in the kitchen, staring at a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces on the table. Robin and Opal’s little boy, Eddie, who had recently learned to walk, was standing in the middle of the kitchen in a soggy diaper. He held an open jar of peanut butter and a large wooden spoon, which he was dipping into the jar and then sucking. His face was covered with peanut butter and spit. He was wearing one of Ruth’s T-shirts—it looked like a dress on him—that read VARSITY. Ruth and Mrs. Pommeroy had been baking rolls, and the shocking-green kitchen radiated heat and smelled of bread, beer, and wet diapers.

  “I’ll tell you,” Kitty was saying. “How many years was I married to that man and I never once refused him. That’s what I can’t understand, Rhonda. Why’d he have to step out on me? What’d Len want that I couldn’t give him?”

  “I know, Kitty,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “I know, honey.”

  Eddie dipped his spoon into the peanut butter and then, with a squeal, threw it across the kitchen floor. It skidded under the table.

  “Jesus, Eddie,” said Kitty. She lifted the tablecloth, looking for the spoon.

  “I’ll get it,” Ruth said, and got down on her knees and ducked under the table. The tablecloth fluttered down behind her. She found the spoon, covered with peanut butter and cat hair, and also found a full pack of cigarettes, which must have been Kitty’s.

  “Hey, Kit,” she started to say, but stopped, because she heard her father’s voice, greeting Mrs. Pommeroy. Her father had actually come over! He hadn’t come over in months. Ruth sat up, under the table, leaned against its center post, and was very quiet.

  “Stan,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, “how nice to see you.”

  “Well, it’s about the fuck time you stopped by and saw your own goddamn daughter,” said Kitty Pommeroy.

  “Hey, Kitty,” Stan said. “Is Ruth around?”

  “Somewhere,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Somewhere. She’s always around somewhere. It is nice to see you, Stan. Long time. Want a hot roll?”

  “Sure. I’ll give one a try.”

  “Were you out to haul this morning, Stan?”

  “I had a look at ’em.”

  “Keep any?”

  “I kept a few. I think this is about it for everyone else, though. But I’ll probably stay out there for the winter. See what I can find. How’s everything over here?”

  There was an attention-filled silence. Kitty coughed into her fist. Ruth made herself as small as she could under the large oak table.

  “We’ve missed having you come by for dinner,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “You been eating with Angus Addams these days?”

  “Or alone.”

  “We always have plenty to eat over here, Stan. You’re welcome any time you like.”

  “Thanks, Rhonda. That’s nice of you. I miss your cooking,” he said. “I was wondering if you know what Ruthie’s plans might be.”

  Ruthie. Hearing this, Ruth had a touch of heartache for her father.

  “I suppose you should talk to her about that yourself.”

  “She say anything to you? Anything about college?”

  “You should probably talk to her yourself, Stan.”

  “People are wondering,” Stan said. “I got a letter from her mother.”

  Ruth was surprised. Impressed, even.

  “Is that right, Stan? A letter. That’s been a long time coming.”

  “That’s right. She said she hasn’t heard from Ruth. She said she and Miss Vera were disappointed Ruth hadn’t made a decision about college. Has she made a decision?”

  “I couldn’t say, Stan.”

  “It’s too late for this year, of course. But her mother said maybe she could start after Christmas. Or maybe she could go next fall. It’s up to Ruth, I don’t know. Maybe she has other plans?”

  “Should I leave?” Kitty asked. “You want to tell him?”

  “Tell me what?”

  Under the table, Ruth felt queasy.

  “Kitty,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Please.”

  “He doesn’t know, right? You want to tell him in private? Who’s telling him? Is she going to tell him?”

  “That’s OK, Kitty.”

  “Tell him what?” Stan Thomas asked. “Tell me what in private?”

  “Stan,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, “Ruth has something to tell you. Something you’re not going to like. You need to talk to her soon.”

  Eddie staggered over to the kitchen table, lifted a corner of the tablecloth, and peeked in at Ruth, who was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest. He squatted over his huge diaper and stared at her. She stared back. His baby face had a puzzled look.

  “I’m not going to like what?” Stan said.

  “It’s really something Ruth should talk to you about, Stan. Kitty spoke too freely.”

  “About what?”

  Kitty said, “Well, guess what, Stan. What the hell. We think Ruth’s going to have a baby.”
br />   “Kitty!” Mrs. Pommeroy exclaimed.

  “What? Don’t holler at me. Christ’s sake, Rhonda, Ruth doesn’t have the guts to tell him. Get it the hell over with. Look at the poor guy, wondering what the hell’s going on.”

  Stan Thomas said nothing. Ruth listened. Nothing.

  “She hasn’t told anyone but us,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Nobody knows about it, Stan.”

  “They’ll know soon enough,” Kitty said. “She’s getting fat as all hell.”

  “Why?” Stan Thomas asked blankly. “Why do you think my daughter’s having a baby?”

  Eddie crawled under the kitchen table with Ruth, and she handed him his filthy peanut butter spoon. He grinned at her.

  “Because she hasn’t had her period in four months and she’s getting fat!” Kitty said.

  “I know this is upsetting,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “I know it’s hard, Stan.”

  Kitty snorted in disgust. “Don’t worry about Ruth!” she put in, loudly, firmly. “This is no big deal!”

  Silence hung in the room.

  “Come on!” Kitty said. “There’s nothing to having a baby! Tell him, Rhonda! You had about twenty of ’em! Easy breezy! Anyone with clean hands and common sense can do it!”

  Eddie stuck the spoon in his mouth, pulled it out, let forth a delighted howl. Kitty lifted the tablecloth and peered in. She started to laugh.

  “Didn’t even know you was there, Ruth!” Kitty shouted. “Forgot all about you!”

  EPILOGUE

  Giants are met with in all the higher groups of animals. They interest us not only on account of their absolute size, but also in showing to what degree individuals may surpass the mean average of their race. It may be a question whether lobsters which weigh from 20-25 pounds are to be regarded as giants in the technical sense, or simply as sound and vigorous individuals on whose side fortune has always fought in the struggle of life. I am inclined to the latter view, and to look upon the mammoth lobster simply as a favorite of nature, who is larger than his fellows because he is their senior. Good luck has never deserted him.

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

  BY THE SUMMER OF 1982, the Skillet County Fishing Cooperative was doing a pretty good business for the three dozen lobstermen of Fort Niles Island and Courne Haven Island who had joined it. The office of the cooperative was located in the sunny front room of what had once been the Ellis Granite Company Store but was now the Intra-Island Memorial Museum of Natural History. The cooperative’s founder and manager was a competent young woman named Ruth Thomas-Wishnell. Over the past five years, Ruth had bullied and cajoled her relatives and most of her neighbors into entering the delicate network of trust that made the Skillet County Co-op successful.

  To put it simply, this had not been simple.

  The idea for the cooperative had come to Ruth the first time she saw her father and Owney’s uncle Babe Wishnell in the same room together. This was at the christening of Ruth and Owney’s son, David, in early June of 1977. The christening took place in the living room of Mrs. Pommeroy’s home, was performed by the cheerless Pastor Toby Wishnell, and was witnessed by a handful of glum-looking residents of both Fort Niles and Courne Haven. Baby David had thrown up all over his borrowed antique christening gown only moments before the ceremony, so Ruth had taken him upstairs to change him into something less elegant but much cleaner. While she was changing him, he’d begun to cry, so she sat with him for a while in Mrs. Pommeroy’s bedroom, letting him nurse at her breast.

  When, after a quarter of an hour, Ruth came back to the living room, she noticed that her father and Babe Wishnell—who had not so much as looked at each other all morning, and were sitting sullenly on opposite sides of the room—had each produced a small notebook from somewhere on his person. They were scribbling in these notebooks with identical stubs of pencils and looked utterly absorbed, frowning and silent.

  Ruth knew exactly what her father was doing, because she’d seen him do it a million times, so she had no trouble guessing what Babe Wishnell was up to. They were calculating. They were taking care of their lobster business. They were shuffling numbers around, comparing prices, planning where to drop traps, adding expenses, making money. She kept an eye on them both during the brief, unemotional ceremony, and neither man once looked up from his rows of figures.

  Ruth got to thinking.

  She got to thinking even harder a few months later, when Cal Cooley appeared unannounced at the Natural History Museum, where Ruth and Owney and David were now living. Cal climbed the steep stairs to the apartment above the growing clutter of Senator Simon’s massive collection and knocked on Ruth’s door. He looked miserable. He told Ruth he was on a mission for Mr. Ellis, who, it seemed, had an offer to make. Mr. Ellis wanted to give Ruth the gleaming French Fresnel lens from the Goat’s Rock lighthouse. Cal Cooley could scarcely deliver this news without crying. Ruth got a big kick out of that. Cal had spent months and months polishing every inch of brass and glass on that precious lens, but Mr. Ellis was adamant. He wanted Ruth to have it. Cal could not imagine why. Mr. Ellis had specifically instructed Cal to tell Ruth that she could do whatever she wanted with the thing. Although, Cal said, he suspected Mr. Ellis would like to see the Fresnel lens displayed as the centerpiece of the new museum.

  “I’ll take it,” Ruth said, and immediately asked Cal to please leave.

  “By the way, Ruth,” Cal said, “Mr. Ellis is still waiting to see you.”

  “Fine,” Ruth said. “Thank you, Cal. Out you go.”

  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 w
anted 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.