Stern Men

8

GEORGES BANK, at the end of the Ice Age, was a forest, lush and thick and primeval. It had rivers, mountains, mammals. Then it was covered by the sea and became some of the finest fishing ground on earth. The transformation took millions of years, but it didn’t take the Europeans long to find the place once they reached the New World, and they fished the hell out of it.

The big boats sailed out with nets and lines for every kind of fish-redfish, herring, cod, mackerel, whales of many varieties, squid, tuna, swordfish, dogfish-and there were draggers, too, for scallops. By the end of the nineteenth century, the bank had became an international city afloat; German, Russian, American, Canadian, French, and Portuguese boats all pulled up tons of fish. Each boat had men aboard to shovel the flopping fish into the holds as thoughtlessly as men shovel coal. Each vessel stayed out there for a week, even two weeks at a stretch. At night, the lights from the hundreds of ships shone on the water like the lights of a small city.

The boats and ships out there, stuck in the open sea, a day from any shore, were sitting targets for bad weather. The storms came up fast and mean and could wipe out a whole fleet, devastating the community it came from. A village might send a few fishing boats out on a routine trip to Georges Bank and a few days later find itself a village of widows and orphans. The newspapers listed the dead men and their surviving dependents, too. This was perhaps the crux of the tragedy. It was imperative to count who was left, to estimate how many souls remained on shore without fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, uncles to support them. What was to become of them?

46 DEAD, the headline would read. 197 DEPENDENTS LEFT BEHIND.

That was the truly sad number. That was the number everyone needed to know.

Lobster fishing is not like this, though, and never was. It is dangerous enough, but it isn’t as deadly as deep-sea fishing. Not by a long shot. Lobster towns don’t lose men in battalions. Lobstermen fish alone, are rarely out of sight of shore, are generally home by early afternoon to eat pie and drink beer and sleep with their boots on the couch. Widows and orphans are not created in crowds. There are no unions of widows, no clutches of widows. Widows in lobster-fishing communities appear one at a time, through random accidents and freak drownings and strange fogs and storms that come and go without doing other havoc.

Such was the case of Mrs. Pommeroy, who, in 1976, was the only widow in Fort Niles; that is, the only fisherman’s widow. She was the only woman who had lost her man to the sea. What did this status afford her? Very little. The fact that her husband had been a drunk who fell overboard on a calm sunny day lessened the catastrophic dimensions of the event, and as the years went by her tragedy was by and large forgotten. Mrs. Pommeroy was something of a calm sunny day herself, and she was so lovely that people had difficulty remembering to pity her.

Besides, she had managed well without a husband to support her. She had survived without Ira Pommeroy, and did not show the world any signs of suffering from her loss. She had her big house, which had been built and paid for long before she was born and was constructed so solidly that it required little upkeep. Not that anyone cared about upkeep. She had her garden. She had her sisters, who were irritating but devoted. She had Ruth Thomas for daughterly companionship. She had her sons, who, though pretty much a pack of deadbeats, were no worse deadbeats than anyone else’s sons, and they did contribute to their mother’s support.

The Pommeroy boys who stayed on the island had small incomes, of course, because they could work only as sternmen on other people’s boats. The incomes were small because the Pommeroy boats and Pommeroy territory and Pommeroy fishing gear had all been lost at the death of their father. The other men on the island had bought everything up for a pittance, and it could never be recovered. Because of this, and because of their natural laziness, the Pommeroy boys had no future on Fort Niles. They couldn’t, once they were grown men, start to assemble a fishing business. They grew up knowing this, so it came as no surprise that a few of them had left the island for good. And why not? They had no future at home.

Fagan, the middle child, was the only Pommeroy son with ambitions. He was the only one with a goal in life, and he pursued it successfully. He was working on a squalid little potato farm in a remote, landlocked county of northern Maine. He had always wanted to get away from the ocean, and that’s what he had done. He had always wanted to be a farmer. No seagulls, no wind. He sent money home to his mother. He called her every few weeks to tell her how the potato crop was doing. He said he hoped to be the foreman of the farm someday. He bored her senseless, but she was proud of him for having a job, and she was happy to get the money he sent.

Conway and John and Chester Pommeroy had joined the military, and Conway (a Navy man all the way, as he liked to say, as though he were an admiral) was lucky enough to have caught the last year or so of action in the Vietnam War. He was a sailor on a river patrol boat in a nasty area of contention. He had two tours of duty in Vietnam. He passed the first without injury, though he sent boastful and crude letters to his mother explaining in explicit detail how many of his buddies had bought it and exactly what stupid mistakes those idiots had made that caused them to buy it. He also described for his mother what his buddies’ bodies looked like after they’d bought it, and assured her that he would never buy it because he was too smart for that shit.

In 1972, Conway, on his second tour of duty, nearly bought it himself, with a bullet near the spine, but he got fixed up after six months in an Army hospital. He married the widow of one of his idiot buddies who really did buy it back on the river patrol boat, and he moved to Connecticut. He used a walking stick to get around. He collected disability. Conway was fine. Conway was not a drain on his widowed mother.

John and Chester had joined the Army. John was sent to Germany, where he stayed on after his Army service was over. What a Pommeroy boy could do with himself in a European country was beyond the imagination of Ruth Thomas, but nobody heard from John, so everyone assumed he was fine. Chester did his time in the Army, moved to California, indulged in a lot of drugs, and took up with some weirdoes who considered themselves fortunetellers. They called themselves the Gypsy Bandoleer Bandits.

The Gypsy Bandoleer Bandits traveled around in an old school bus, making money by reading palms and tarot cards, though Ruth heard they really made their money by selling marijuana. Ruth was pretty interested in that part of the story. She’d never tried marijuana herself, but was interested in it. Chester came back to visit the island once-without his Gypsy Bandit brothers-when Ruth Thomas was home from school, and he tried to give her some of his famous spiritual advice. This was back in 1974. He was wasted.

“What kind of advice do you want?” Chester asked. “I can give you all kinds.” He ticked off the different kinds on his fingers. “I can give you advice about your job, advice about your love life, advice about what to do, special advice, or regular advice.”

“Do you have any pot?” Ruth asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Can I try it? I mean, do you sell it to people? I have money. I could buy some.”

“I know a card trick.”

“I don’t think so, Chester.”

“Yes, I do know a card trick.” He shoved a pack of cards in Ruth’s face and slurred, “Pig a card.”

She wouldn’t pick one.

“Pig a card!” shouted Chester Pommeroy, the Gypsy Bandoleer Bandit.

“Why should I?”

“Pig a fuggin’ card! Come on! I already planted the fuggin’ card, and I know it’s the three of hearts, so pig the fuggin’ card, will ya?”

She wouldn’t. He threw the deck at the wall.

She asked, “Can I please try some pot now?”

He scowled and waved her out of his face. He kicked a table and called her a stupid bitch. He had really turned into a freak, Ruth decided, so she stayed out of his way the rest of the week. That all happened when Ruth was sixteen, and it was the last time she saw Chester Pommeroy. She heard he had a bunch of children but wasn’t married to anybody. She never did get any of his marijuana.

With four of the Pommeroy boys off the island for good, that left three living at home. Webster Pommeroy, who was the oldest and smartest, was small, stunted, depressed, shy, and gifted only at plowing through the mudflats for artifacts for Senator Simon Addams’s future Museum of Natural History. Webster brought no income to his mother, but he didn’t cost much. He still wore the clothes of his childhood and barely ate a thing. Mrs. Pommeroy loved him the most and worried about him the most, and didn’t care that he made no contribution to the family, as long as he wasn’t spending day after day on the couch with a pillow over his head, sighing mournfully.

At the other end was the well-known idiot Robin Pommeroy, the youngest. At seventeen, he was married to Opal from town and father of the enormous baby Eddie. Robin worked as a sternman on Ruth’s father’s boat. Ruth’s father more or less hated Robin Pommeroy because the kid would not shut up all day. Since overcoming his speech defect, Robin had become a ceaseless motor mouth. And he wouldn’t talk just to Ruth’s father, who was the only one there. He would talk to himself, too, as well as the lobsters. He’d get on the radio during breaks and talk to all the other lobster boats. Whenever he saw another lobster boat cruising nearby, he’d grab the radio and say to the approaching skipper, “Don’t you look pretty, coming along?” Then he’d turn off the microphone and wait for a reply, which was usually along the lines of “Stuff it, kid.” Sadly, he’d ask Ruth’s father, “How come nobody ever tells us we look pretty coming along?”

Robin was always dropping things off the boat accidentally. He’d somehow let the gaff slide out of his hands, and then he’d run down the length of the boat to catch it. Too late. This didn’t happen every day; it happened almost every day. It was a real annoyance to Ruth’s father, who’d back the boat and try to catch up with the tool. Ruth’s father had taken to keeping spares of all his tools, just in case. Ruth suggested that he attach a small buoy to each tool so that at least it would float. She called this “Robin-proofing.”

Robin was tiresome, but Ruth’s father tolerated the kid because he was cheap, cheap, cheap. Robin accepted much less money than any other sternman. He had to accept less money, because nobody wanted to work with him. He was dumb and lazy, but he was strong enough to do the job, and Ruth’s father was saving a lot of money off Robin Pommeroy. He tolerated the kid because of the bottom line.

That left Timothy. Always the quietest, Timothy Pommeroy was never a bad child, and he grew up to be a pretty decent guy. He didn’t bother anybody. He looked like his father, with the heavy doorknob fists and the tight muscles and the black hair and squinty eyes. He worked on the boat of Len Thomas, Ruth Thomas’s uncle, and he was a good worker. Len Thomas was a windbag and a hothead, but Timothy quietly pulled up traps, counted lobsters, filled bait bags, and stood in the stern while the boat was moving, facing away from Len and keeping his thoughts to himself. It was a good arrangement for Len, who usually had trouble finding sternmen who’d put up with his legendary temper. He once came at a sternman with a wrench and knocked the kid out for the whole afternoon. But Timothy did not provoke Len’s anger. He made a pretty respectable living, Timothy did. He gave it all to his mother except the portion he used to buy his whiskey, which he drank, all by himself, every night, in his bedroom, with the door firmly closed.

All of which is to say that Mrs. Pommeroy’s many sons did not turn out to be a financial burden on her and, indeed, were kind enough to pass along some money. Everything considered, they’d turned out fine, except for Webster. Mrs. Pommeroy subsidized the money her sons passed her way by cutting hair.

She was good at cutting hair. She had a gift. She curled and colored the hair of women and seemed to have a natural instinct for shape, but she specialized, as it were, in men’s hair. She cut the hair of men who had previously had only three kinds of haircuts in their lives: haircuts from their mothers, haircuts from the Army, haircuts from their wives. These were men who had no interest in style, but they let Mrs. Pommeroy do frivolous things with their hair. They sat under her hand with pure vanity, enjoying the attention as much as any starlet.

The fact was, she could make a man look wonderful. Mrs. Pommeroy magically hid baldness, encouraged beards for the weak-chinned, thinned the wild brush of uncontrollable curls, and tamed the most headstrong cowlicks. She flattered and joked with each man, nudging him and teasing him as she worked his hair, and the flirtation immediately made the guy more attractive, brought color to the cheek and a shine to the eye. She could almost rescue men from true ugliness. She could even make Senator Simon and Angus Addams look respectable. When she was through with an old crank like Angus, even he would be blushing right up the back of his neck from the pleasure of her company. When she was through with a naturally good-looking man like Ruth’s father, he would be embarrassingly handsome, movie-matinee-idol handsome.

“Go hide,” she’d tell him. “Get on out of here, Stan. If you start walking around town looking like that, it’s your own fault if you get raped.”

Surprisingly, the ladies of Fort Niles didn’t mind letting Mrs. Pommeroy groom their husbands. Perhaps it was because the results were so nice. Perhaps it was because they wanted to help a widow, and this was the easy way to do it. Perhaps the women felt guilty around Mrs. Pommeroy for even having husbands, for having men who had thus far managed to avoid getting drunk and falling overboard. Or perhaps the women had come to loathe their husbands so much over the years that the thought of personally dragging their own fingers through the dirty hair of those stinking, greasy, shiftless fishermen was sickening. They’d just as soon let Mrs. Pommeroy do it, since she seemed to like it so much, and since it put their men in a good goddamn mood, for once.

So it was that when Ruth returned from visiting her mother in Concord, she went right to Mrs. Pommeroy’s house, and found her cutting the hair of the entire Russ Cobb family. Mrs. Pommeroy had all the Cobbs there: Mr. Russ Cobb, his wife, Ivy, and their youngest daughter, Florida, who was forty years old and still living with her parents.

They were a miserable family. Russ Cobb was almost eighty, but he still went out fishing every day. He’d always said he would fish as long as he could throw his leg over the boat. The previous winter, he’d lost half his right leg at the knee, amputated because of his diabetes, or “sugars,” as he called it, but he still went fishing every day, throwing what remained of that leg over the boat. His wife, Ivy, was a disappointed-looking woman who painted holly sprigs, candles, and Santa Claus faces on sand dollars and tried to sell them to her neighbors as Christmas ornaments. The Cobbs’ daughter, Florida, never said a word. She was devastatingly silent.

Mrs. Pommeroy had already set Ivy Cobb’s frothy white hair in curlers and was tending to Russ Cobb’s sideburns when Ruth came in.

“So thick!” Mrs. Pommeroy was telling Mr. Cobb. “Your hair is so thick, you look like Rock Hudson!”

“Cary Grant!” he bellowed.

“Cary Grant!” Mrs. Pommeroy laughed. “OK! You look like Cary Grant!”

Mrs. Cobb rolled her eyes. Ruth walked across the kitchen and kissed Mrs. Pommeroy on the cheek. Mrs. Pommeroy took her hand, held it for a long moment. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”

“Thank you.” Ruth felt she was home.

“Did you have a good time?”

“I had the worst week of my life.” Ruth meant to say this in a sarcastic, joking manner, but it accidentally came out of her mouth as the unadorned truth.

“There’s pie.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Did you see your father?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll be done here in a bit,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “You take a seat, sweetheart.”

So Ruth took herself a seat, next to silent Florida Cobb, on a chair that had been painted that dreadful trap-buoy green. The kitchen table and the corner cupboard had also been painted that frightening green, so the whole kitchen matched terribly. Ruth watched Mrs. Pommeroy perform her usual magic on ugly Mr. Cobb. Her hands were constantly at work in his hair. Even when she wasn’t cutting, she was stroking his head, fingering his hair, patting him, tugging at his ears. He leaned his head back into her hands like a cat rubbing against a favorite person’s leg.

“Look how nice,” she murmured, like an encouraging lover. “Look how nice you look.”

She trimmed his sideburns and shaved his neck in arcs through foamy suds and wiped him down with a towel. She pressed her body against his back. She was as affectionate with Mr. Cobb as if he were the last person she would ever touch, as if his ugly skull was to be her final human contact on this earth. Mrs. Cobb, in her steel gray curlers, sat watching, her gray hands in her lap, her steel eyes on her husband’s ruined face.

“How are things, Mrs. Cobb?” Ruth asked.

“We got goddamn raccoons all over our goddamn yard,” Mrs. Cobb said, demonstrating her remarkable trick of talking without moving her lips. When Ruth was a child, she used to lure Mrs. Cobb into conversation only to watch this trick. In truth, at the age of eighteen Ruth was luring her into conversation for the same reason.

“Sorry to hear that. Did you ever have trouble with raccoons before?”

“Never had them at all.”

Ruth stared at the woman’s mouth. It honestly didn’t budge. Incredible. “Is that right?” she asked.

“I’d like to shoot one.”

“Wasn’t a raccoon on this island until 1958,” Russ Cobb said. “Had them on Courne Haven, but not here.”

“Really? What happened? How did they get here?” Ruth asked, knowing exactly what he was about to say.

“They brought ’em over here.”

“Who did?”

“Courne Haven people! Threw some pregnant raccoons in a sack. Rowed ’em over. Middle of the night. Dumped ’em on our beach. Your great-uncle David Thomas saw it. Walking home from his girl’s house. Seen strangers on the beach. Seen ’em letting something out of a bag. Seen ’em row away. Few weeks later, raccoons everywhere. All over the goddamn place. Eating people’s chickens. Garbage. Everything.”

Of course, the story Ruth had heard from family members was that it was Johnny Pommeroy who had seen the strangers on the beach, right before he went off to get killed in Korea in 1954, but she let it slide.

“I had a pet baby raccoon when I was a little girl,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, smiling at the memory. “That raccoon bit my arm, come to think of it, and my father killed him. I think it was a him. I always called it a him, anyway.”

“When was that, Mrs. Pommeroy?” Ruth asked. “How long ago?”

Mrs. Pommeroy frowned and rubbed her thumbs deep into Mr. Cobb’s neck. He groaned, so happy. She said innocently, “Oh, I guess that was the early 1940s, Ruth. Goodness, I’m so old. The 1940s! Such a long time ago.”

“Wasn’t a raccoon, then,” Mr. Cobb said. “Couldn’t have been.”

“Oh, it was a little raccoon, all right. He had a striped tail and the cutest little mask. I called him Masky!”

“Wasn’t a raccoon. Couldn’t have been. Wasn’t a raccoon on this island until 1958,” Mr. Cobb said. “Courne Haven folks brought ’em over in 1958.”

“Well, this was a baby raccoon,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, by way of explanation.

“Probably a skunk.”

“I’d like to shoot a raccoon!” Mrs. Cobb said with such force that her mouth actually moved, and her silent daughter, Florida, actually started.

“My father sure shot Masky,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

She toweled off Mr. Cobb’s hair and brushed the back of his neck with a tiny pastry brush. She patted talcum powder under his frayed shirt collar and rubbed oily tonic into his wiry hair, shaping it into an excessively curved pompadour.

“Look at you!” she said, and gave him an antique silver hand mirror. “You look like a country music star. What do you think, Ivy? Isn’t he a handsome devil?”

“Silly,” said Ivy Cobb, but her husband beamed, his cheeks shiny as his pompadour. Mrs. Pommeroy took the sheet off him, gathering it up carefully so as not to spill his hair all over her glaring green kitchen, and Mr. Cobb stood up, still admiring himself in the antique mirror. He turned his head slowly from side to side and smiled at himself, grinning like a handsome devil.

“What do you think of your father, Florida?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked. “Doesn’t he look fine?”

Florida Cobb blushed deeply.

“She won’t say nothing,” Mr. Cobb said, suddenly disgusted. He plunked the hand mirror down on the kitchen table and dug some money out of his pocket. “Never says a goddamn word. Wouldn’t say shit if she had a mouthful of it.”

Ruth laughed and decided to get herself a piece of pie after all.

“I’ll take those curlers out for you now, Ivy,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

Later, after the Cobbs had gone, Mrs. Pommeroy and Ruth sat on the front porch. There was an old couch out there, upholstered in big bleeding roses, that smelled as if it had been rained on, or worse. Ruth drank beer and Mrs. Pommeroy drank fruit punch, and Ruth told Mrs. Pommeroy about visiting her mother.

“How’s Ricky?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s just, you know… He flops around.”

“That was the saddest thing, when that baby was born. You know, I never saw that poor baby.”

“I know.”

“I never saw your poor mother after that.”

Yah po-ah mothah… Ruth had missed Mrs. Pommeroy’s accent.

“I know.”

“I tried to call her. I did call her. I told her to bring her baby back here to the island, but she said he was much too sick. I made her describe what was wrong with him, and, I’ll tell you something; it didn’t sound too bad to me.”

“Oh, it’s bad.”

“It didn’t sound to me like something we couldn’t take care of out here. What did he need? He didn’t need much. Some medicine. That’s easy. Jesus, Mr. Cobb takes medicine every single day for his sugars, and he manages. What else did Ricky need? Someone to watch him. We could have done that. That’s a person’s child; you find a place for him. That’s what I told her. She cried and cried.”

“Everyone else said he should be in an institution.”

“Who said? Vera Ellis said that. Who else?”

“The doctors.”

“She should have brought that baby here to his home. He would’ve been just fine out here. She still could bring him out here. We’d take care of that child as good as anyone else.”

“She said you were her only friend. She said you were the only person out here who was nice to her.”

“That’s sweet. But it’s not true. Everyone was nice to her.”

“Not Angus Addams.”

“Oh, he loved her.”

“Loved? Loved?”

“He liked her as much as he likes anyone.”

Ruth laughed. Then she said, “Did you ever meet someone named Owney Wishnell?”

“Who’s that? From Courne Haven?”

“Pastor Wishnell’s nephew.”

“Oh, yes. That great big blond boy.”

“Yes.”

“I know who he is.”

Ruth didn’t say anything.

“Why?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked. “Why do you ask?”

“Nothing,” Ruth said.

The porch door swung open, kicked by Robin Pommeroy’s wife, Opal, whose hands were so full of her huge son that she couldn’t operate the doorknob. The baby, on seeing Mrs. Pommeroy, let out a crazy holler, like a delighted gorilla toddler.

“There’s my baby grandson,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“Hey, Ruth,” Opal said shyly.

“Hey, Opal.”

“Didn’t know you were here.”

“Hey, big Eddie,” Ruth said to the baby. Opal brought the child over and bent down, heaving a bit, so that Ruth could kiss the boy’s enormous head. Ruth slid over on the sofa to make space for Opal, who sat down, lifted her T-shirt, and gave a breast to Eddie. He lunged for it and set to sucking with concentration and a lot of wet noise. He sucked at that breast as if he were drawing breath through it.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Ruth asked.

“Yeah,” said Opal. She yawned without covering her mouth, showing off a mine of silver fillings.

The three women on the couch all stared at the big baby locked so fiercely onto Opal’s breast.

“He sucks like a regular old bilge pump,” Ruth said.

“Bites, too,” said the laconic Opal.

Ruth winced.

“When did you feed him last?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked.

“I don’t know. An hour ago. Half hour.”

“You should try to keep him on a schedule, Opal.”

She shrugged. “He’s always hungry.”

“Of course he is, sweetheart. That’s because you feed him all the time. Builds his appetite. You know what they say. If the mama’s a-willin’, the baby’s a-takin’.”

“They say that?” Ruth asked.

“I just made it up,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“It’s nice how you made it rhyme like that,” Ruth said, and Mrs. Pommeroy grinned and punched her. Ruth had missed the delight of teasing people without being afraid they’d burst into tears on her. She punched Mrs. Pommeroy back.

“My idea is, I let him eat whenever he wants,” Opal said. “I figure if he’s eating, he’s hungry. He ate three hot dogs yesterday.”

“Opal!” Mrs. Pommeroy exclaimed. “He’s only ten months old!”

“I can’t help it.”

“You can’t help it? He got the hot dogs himself?” Ruth asked. Mrs. Pommeroy and Opal laughed, and the baby suddenly popped himself off the breast with the loud sound of a tight seal breaking. He lolled his head like a drunk, and then he laughed, too.

“I told a baby joke!” Ruth said.

“Eddie likes you,” Opal said. “You like Roof? You like your Auntie Roof, Eddie?” She set the baby on Ruth’s lap, where he grinned crookedly and spat up yellow soup on her pants. Ruth handed him back to his mother.

“Oops,” said Opal. She heaved the baby up and went into the house, coming out a moment later to toss a bathroom towel at Ruth. “I think it’s nap time for Eddie,” she said, and disappeared into the house again.

Ruth wiped the hot, foamy puddle off her leg. “Baby barf,” she said.

“They feed that baby too much,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“He makes the necessary adjustments, I’d say.”

“She was feeding him chocolate fudge sauce the other day, Ruth. With a spoon. Right out of the jar. I saw it!”

“That Opal isn’t very smart.”

“She’s got great big boobs, though.”

“Oh, lucky her.”

“Lucky baby Eddie. How could she have such big boobs when she’s only seventeen? I didn’t even know what boobs were when I was seventeen.”

“Yes, you did. Jesus, Mrs. Pommeroy, you were already married when you were seventeen.”

“Yes, that’s right. But I didn’t know what boobs were when I was twelve. I saw my sister’s chest and asked her what those big things were. She said it was baby fat.”

“Gloria said that?”

“Kitty said that.”

“She should’ve told you the truth.”

“She probably didn’t know the truth.”

“Kitty? Kitty was born knowing the truth.”

“Imagine if she’d told me the truth? Imagine if she said, ‘They’re tits, Rhonda, and someday grown men will want to suck on them.’ ”

“Grown men and young boys, too. And other people’s husbands, knowing Kitty.”

“Why did you ask me about Owney Wishnell, Ruth?”

Ruth gave Mrs. Pommeroy a quick glance, then looked out at the yard. She said, “No reason.”

Mrs. Pommeroy watched Ruth for a long moment. She tilted her head. She waited.

“It’s not true that you were the only person on this island who was nice to my mother?” Ruth said.

“No, Ruth, I told you. We all liked her. She was wonderful. She was a little sensitive, though, and sometimes had trouble understanding the way some people are.”

“Angus Addams, for instance.”

“Oh, a lot of them. She couldn’t understand all the drinking. I used to tell her, Mary, these men are cold and wet ten hours a day their whole lives. That can really chafe a person. They need to drink, or there’s no way to deal with it.”

“My dad didn’t ever drink so much.”

“He didn’t talk to her so much, either. She was lonely out here. She couldn’t stand the winters.”

“I think she’s lonely in Concord.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it. Does she want you to move there with her?”

“Yeah. She wants me to go to college. She says that’s what the Ellises want. She says Mr. Ellis’ll pay for it, of course. Vera Ellis thinks if I stay here much longer, I’ll get pregnant. She wants me to move to Concord and then go to some small, respectable women’s college, where the Ellises know the president.”

“People do get pregnant out here, Ruth.”

“I think Opal has a big enough baby to go around for all of us. And besides, a person has to have sex to get pregnant these days. So they say.”

“You should be with your mother if that’s what she wants. There’s nothing keeping you here. People out here, Ruth, they’re not really your people.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’m not going to do a single thing with my life that the Ellises want me to do. That’s my plan.”

“That’s your plan?”

“For now.”

Mrs. Pommeroy took off her shoes and put her feet up on the old wooden lobster trap she used for a table on the porch. She sighed. “Tell me some more about Owney Wishnell,” she said.

“Well, I met him,” Ruth said.

“And?”

“And he’s an unusual person.”

Again, Mrs. Pommeroy waited, and Ruth looked out at the front yard. A seagull standing on a child’s toy truck stared back at her. Mrs. Pommeroy was staring at her, too.

“What?” Ruth asked. “What’s everyone staring at?”

“I think there’s more to tell,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Why don’t you tell me, Ruth?”

So Ruth started to tell Mrs. Pommeroy about Owney Wishnell, although it hadn’t been her original intention to tell anyone about him. She told Mrs. Pommeroy about Owney’s clean fisherman’s outfit and his ease with boats and about his rowing her out behind the rock to show her his lobster traps. She told about Pastor Wishnell’s threatening speeches on the evils and immoralities of lobster fishing and about Owney’s nearly crying when he showed her his packed, useless trap of lobsters.

“That poor child,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“Not exactly a child. I think he’s about my age.”

“Bless his heart.”

“Can you believe it? He’s got traps all along the coast, and he tosses the lobsters back. You should see how he handles them. It’s the strangest thing. He sort of puts them in a trance.”

“He looks like a Wishnell, right?”

“Yes.”

“Handsome, then?”

“He has a big head.”

“They all do.”

“Owney’s head is really huge. It looks like a weather balloon with ears.”

“I’m sure he’s handsome. They all have big chests, too, the Wishnells, except Toby Wishnell. Lots of muscles.”

“Maybe it’s baby fat,” Ruth said.

“Muscle,” said Mrs. Pommeroy, and smiled. “They’re all big old Swedes. Except the pastor. Oh, how I used to want to marry a Wishnell.”

“Which one?”

“Any of them. Any Wishnell. Ruth, they make so much money. You’ve seen their houses over there. The prettiest houses. The prettiest yards. They always have these sweet little flower gardens… I don’t think I ever talked to a Wishnell, though, when I was a girl. Can you believe that? I’d see them in Rockland sometimes, and they were so handsome.”

“You should have married a Wishnell.”

“How, Ruth? Honestly. Regular people don’t marry Wishnells. Besides, my family would have killed me if I’d married someone from Courne Haven. Besides, I never even met a Wishnell. I couldn’t tell you which one I wanted to marry.”

“You could’ve had your pick of them,” Ruth said. “A sexy looker like you?”

“I loved my Ira,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. But she patted Ruth’s arm for the compliment.

“Sure you loved your Ira. But he was your cousin.”

Mrs. Pommeroy sighed. “I know. But we had a good time. He used to take me over to the sea caves on Boon Rock, you know. With the stalactites, or whatever they were, hanging down everywhere. God, that was pretty.”

“He was your cousin! People shouldn’t marry their cousins! You’re lucky your kids weren’t born with dorsal fins!”

“You’re terrible, Ruth! You’re terrible!” But she laughed.

Ruth said, “You wouldn’t believe how scared of Pastor Wishnell that Owney is.”

“I believe everything. Do you like that Owney Wishnell, Ruth?”

“Do I like him? I don’t know. No. Sure. I don’t know. I think he’s… interesting.”

“You never talk about boys.”

“I never meet any boys to talk about.”

“Is he handsome?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked again.

“I told you. He’s big. He’s blond.”

“Are his eyes very blue?”

“That sounds like the title of a love song.”

“Are they very blue or not, Ruth?” She sounded slightly annoyed.

Ruth changed her tone. “Yes. They are very blue, Mrs. Pommeroy.”

“Do you want to know something funny, Ruth? I always secretly hoped you’d marry one of my boys.”

“Oh, Mrs. Pommeroy, no.”

“I know. I know.”

“It’s just-”

“I know, Ruth. Look at them. What a bunch! You couldn’t end up with any of them. Fagan is a farmer. Can you imagine that? A girl like you could never live on a potato farm. John? Who knows about John? Where is he? We don’t even know. Europe? I can hardly remember what John’s like. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him, I can hardly remember his face. Isn’t that a terrible thing for a mother to say?”

“I can hardly remember John either.”

“You’re not his mother, Ruth. And then there’s Conway. Such a violent person, for some reason. And now he walks with a limp. You’d never marry a man with a limp.”

“No limpers for me!”

“And Chester? Oh, boy.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Thinks he can tell fortunes? Rides around with those hippies?”

“Sells dope.”

“Sells dope?” Mrs. Pommeroy said, surprised.

“Just kidding,” Ruth lied.

“He probably does.” Mrs. Pommeroy sighed. “And Robin. Well, I have to admit I never thought you’d marry Robin. Not even when you were both little. You never thought much of Robin.”

“You probably thought he wouldn’t be able to ask me to marry him. He wouldn’t be able to pronounce it. It’d be like Would you pwease mawwey me, Woof? It would have been embarrassing for everyone.”

Mrs. Pommeroy shook her head and wiped her eyes quickly. Ruth noticed the gesture and stopped laughing.

“What about Webster?” Ruth asked. “That leaves Webster.”

“That’s the thing, Ruth,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, and her voice was sad. “I always thought you’d marry Webster.”

“Oh, Mrs. Pommeroy.” Ruth moved over on the couch and put her arm around her friend.

“What happened to Webster, Ruth?”

“I don’t know.”

“He was the brightest one. He was my brightest son.”

“I know.”

“After his father died…”

“I know.”

“He didn’t even grow any more.”

“I know. I know.”

“He’s so timid. He’s like a child.” Mrs. Pommeroy wiped tears off both cheeks with the back of her hand-a fast, smooth motion. “Me and your mom both have a son that didn’t grow, I guess,” she said. “Oh, brother. I’m such a crybaby. How about that?” She wiped her nose on her sleeve and smiled at Ruth. They brought their foreheads together for a moment. Ruth put her hand on the back of Mrs. Pommeroy’s head, and Mrs. Pommeroy closed her eyes. Then she pulled back and said, “I think something was taken from my sons, Ruthie.”

“Yes.”

“A lot was taken from my sons. Their father. Their inheritance. Their boat. Their fishing ground. Their fishing gear.”

“I know,” Ruth said, and she felt a rush of guilt, as she had for years, whenever she thought of her father on his boat with Mr. Pommeroy’s traps.

“I wish I could have another son for you.”

“What? For me?”

“To marry. I wish I could have one more son, and make him normal. A good one.”

“Come on, Mrs. Pommeroy. All your sons are good.”

“You’re sweet, Ruth.”

“Except Chester, of course. He’s no good.”

“In their way, they’re good enough. But not good enough for a bright girl like you. I’ll bet I could get it right, you know, if I had another go at it.” Mrs. Pommeroy’s eyes teared up again. “Now, what a thing for me to say, a woman with seven kids.”

“It’s OK.”

“Besides, I can’t expect you to wait around for a baby to grow up, can I? Listen to me.”

“I am listening.”

“I’m talking crazy now.”

“A little crazy,” Ruth admitted.

“Oh, things don’t always work out, I guess.”

“Not always. I think they must work out sometimes.”

“I guess. Don’t you think you should go live with your mother, Ruth?”

“No.”

“There’s nothing out here for you.”

“That’s not true.”

“Truth is, I like having you around, but that’s not fair. There’s nothing here for you. It’s like a prison. It’s your little San Quentin. I always thought, ‘Oh, Ruth will marry Webster,’ and I always thought, ‘Oh, Webster will take over his dad’s lobster boat.’ I thought I had it all figured out. But there’s no boat.”

And there’s barely a Webster, Ruth thought.

“Don’t you ever think you should live out there?” Mrs. Pommeroy stretched out her arm and pointed. She had clearly intended to point west, toward the coast and the country that lay beyond it, but she was pointing in the dead-wrong direction. She was pointing toward the open sea. Ruth knew what she was trying to say, though. Mrs. Pommeroy, famously, did not have a great sense of direction.

“I don’t need to marry one of your sons to stay here with you, you know,” Ruth said.

“Oh, Ruth.”

“I wish you wouldn’t tell me I should go. I get that enough from my mom and Lanford Ellis. I belong on this island as much as anyone. Forget about my mother.”

“Oh, Ruth. Don’t say that.”

“All right, I don’t mean forget about her. But it doesn’t matter where she lives or who she lives with. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll stay here with you; I’ll go where you go.” Ruth was smiling as she said this, and nudging Mrs. Pommeroy the way Mrs. Pommeroy often nudged her. A teasing little poke, a loving one.

“But I’m not going anywhere,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“Fine. Me neither. It’s decided. I’m not budging. This is where I stay from now on. No more trips to Concord. No more bullshit about college.”

“You can’t make a promise like that.”

“I can do whatever I want. I can make even bigger promises.”

“Lanford Ellis would kill you if he heard you talking like that.”

“Hell with it. The hell with them. From now on, whatever Lanford Ellis says to do, I do the opposite. Fuck the Ellises. Watch me! Watch me, world! Look out, baby!”

“But why do you want to spend your life on this crappy island? These aren’t your people out here, Ruth.”

“Sure they are. Yours and mine. If they’re your people, they’re my people!”

“Listen to you!”

“I’m feeling pretty grand today. I can make big promises today.”

“I guess so!”

“You don’t think I mean any of it.”

“I think you say the sweetest things. And I think, in the end, you’ll do whatever you want.”

They sat out there on the porch couch for another hour or so. Opal wandered out a few more times in a bored and aimless way with Eddie, and Mrs. Pommeroy and Ruth took turns heaving him onto their laps and trying to bounce him around without hurting themselves. The last time Opal left, she didn’t go into the house; she wandered down toward the harbor, to go “downstreet to the store,” she said. Her sandals flip-flopped against her soles, and her big baby smacked his lips as he sat, heavy, on her right hip. Mrs. Pommeroy and Ruth watched the mother and baby descend the hill.

“Do you think I look old, Ruth?”

“You look like a millions bucks. You’ll always be the prettiest woman out here.”

“Look at this,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, and she lifted her chin. “My throat’s all droopy.”

“It is not.”

“It is, Ruth.” Mrs. Pommeroy tugged at the loose flesh under her chin. “Isn’t that horrible, how it hangs there? I look like a pelican.”

“You do not look like a pelican.”

“I look like a pelican. I could carry a whole salmon in here, like a ratty old pelican.”

“You look like a very young pelican,” Ruth said.

“Oh, that’s better, Ruth. Thank you very much.” Mrs. Pommeroy stroked her neck, and asked, “What were you thinking when you were alone with Owney Wishnell?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. Tell me.”

“I don’t have anything to tell.”

“Hmm,” said Mrs. Pommeroy. “I wonder.” She pinched the skin on the back of her hand. “Look how dry and saggy I am. If I could change anything about myself, I’d try to get my old skin back. I had beautiful skin when I was your age.”

“Everyone has beautiful skin when they’re my age.”

“What would you change about your appearance if you could, Ruth?”

Without hesitating, Ruth replied, “I wish I was taller. I wish I had smaller nipples. And I wish I could sing.”

Mrs. Pommeroy laughed. “Who said your nipples were too big?”

“Nobody. Come on, Mrs. Pommeroy. Nobody’s ever seen them but me.”

“Did you show them to Owney Wishnell?”

“No,” Ruth said. “But I’d like to.”

“You should, then.”

That little exchange took both of them by surprise; they’d shocked each other. The idea lingered on the porch for a long, long time. Ruth’s face burned. Mrs. Pommeroy was quiet. She seemed to be thinking very carefully about Ruth’s comment. “OK,” she said at last, “I guess you want him.”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s weird. He hardly ever talks-”

“No, you want him. He’s the one you want. I know about these things, Ruth. So we’ll have to get him for you. We’ll figure it out somehow.”

“Nobody has to figure anything out.”

“We’ll figure it out, Ruth. Good. I’m happy that you want someone. That’s appropriate for a girl your age.”

“I’m not ready for anything stupid like that,” Ruth said.

“Well, you’d better get ready.”

Ruth didn’t know what to say to that. Mrs. Pommeroy swung her legs up on the couch and put her bare feet on Ruth’s lap. “Feet on you, Ruth,” she said, and she sounded deeply sad.

“Feet on me,” Ruth said, and felt a sudden and sharp awkwardness about her admission. She felt guilty about everything she’d said: guilty about her frank sexual interest in a Wishnell, guilty about leaving her mother, guilty about her weird promise never to leave Fort Niles, guilty about confessing that she’d never in a million years marry one of Mrs. Pommeroy’s sons. God, it was true, though! Mrs. Pommeroy could have a son every year for the rest of her life, and Ruth would never marry one of them. Poor Mrs. Pommeroy!

“I love you, you know,” she said to Mrs. Pommeroy. “You’re my favorite person.”

“Feet on you, Ruth,” Mrs. Pommeroy said quietly, by way of reply.

Later that afternoon, Ruth left Mrs. Pommeroy and wandered over to the Addams house to see what the Senator was up to. She didn’t feel like going home yet. She didn’t feel like talking to her father when she was blue, so she thought she’d talk to the Senator instead. Maybe he’d show her some old photographs of shipwreck survivors and cheer her up. But when she reached the Addams house, she found only Angus. He was trying to thread a length of pipe, and he was in an appalling mood. He told her the Senator was down at Potter Beach again with that skinny goddamn nitwit Webster Pommeroy, looking for a goddamn elephant’s tusk.

“No,” Ruth said, “they already found the elephant’s tusk.”

“For Christ’s sake, Ruthie, they’re looking for the goddamn other tusk.” He said it as if he was mad at her for some reason.

“Jeez,” she said. “Sorry.”

When she got down to Potter Beach, she found the Senator pacing unhappily on the rocky sand, with Cookie close at his heels.

“I don’t know what to do with Webster, Ruth,” the Senator said. “I can’t talk him out of it.”

Webster Pommeroy was far out in the mudflats, scrambling around awkwardly, looking unsettled and panicky. Ruth might not have recognized him. He looked like a kid floundering around out there, a stupid little kid in big trouble.

“He won’t quit,” the Senator said. “He’s been like this all week. It was pissing rain two days ago, and he wouldn’t come in. I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself. He cut his hand yesterday on a tin can, digging around out there. It wasn’t even an old tin can. Tore his thumb right open. He won’t let me look at it.”

“What happens if you leave?”

“I’m not leaving him out there, Ruth. He’d stay out there all night. He says he wants to find the other tusk, to replace the one Mr. Ellis took.”

“So go up to Ellis House and demand that tusk back, Senator. Tell those fuckers you need it.”

“I can’t do that, Ruth. Maybe Mr. Ellis is holding on to the tusk while he decides about the museum. Maybe he’s having it appraised or something.”

“Mr. Ellis probably never even saw the thing. How do you know that Cal Cooley didn’t keep it?”

They watched Webster flail around some more.

The Senator said, quietly, “Maybe you could go up to Ellis House and ask about it?”

“I’m not going up there,” Ruth said. “I’m never going up there ever again.”

“Why’d you come down here today, Ruth?” the Senator asked, after a painful silence. “Do you need something?”

“No, I just wanted to say hello.”

“Well, hello, Ruthie.” He wasn’t looking at her; he was watching Webster with an expression of intense concern.

“Hello to you. This isn’t a good time for you, is it?” asked Ruth.

“Oh, I’m fine. How’s your mother, Ruth? How was your trip to Concord?”

“She’s doing OK, I guess.”

“Did you send her my regards?”

“I think I did. You could write her a letter if you really wanted to make her day.”

“That’s a fine idea, a fine idea. Is she as pretty as ever?”

“I don’t know how pretty she ever was, but she looks fine. I think she’s lonely there, though. The Ellises keep telling her they want me to go to college; they’d pay for it.”

“Mr. Ellis said that?”

“Not to me. But my mom talks about it, and Miss Vera, and even Cal Cooley. It’s coming, Senator. Mr. Ellis will be making an announcement about it soon, I bet.”

“Well, that sounds like a pretty good offer.”

“If it came from anyone else, it would be a great offer.”

“Stubborn, stubborn.”

The Senator paced the length of the beach. Ruth followed him, and Cookie followed Ruth. The Senator was hugely distracted.

“Am I bothering you?” Ruth asked.

“No,” the Senator said. “No, no. But you can stay. You can stay here and watch.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing,” Ruth said. But she couldn’t stand watching Webster beating around in the mud so painfully. And she didn’t want to follow the Senator around if all he was going to do was pace up and down the beach, wringing his hands. “I was heading home anyway.”

So she headed home. She was out of ideas, and there was nobody else on Fort Niles she wanted to talk to. There was nothing on Fort Niles she wanted to do. She might as well check in with her father, she decided. She might as well make some dinner.