Stern Men

5

CALCOOLEY made the arrangements for Ruth Thomas to visit her mother in Concord. He made the arrangements and then called Ruth and told her to be on her porch, with her bags packed, at six o’clock the next morning. She agreed, but just before six o’clock that morning, she changed her mind. She had a short moment of panic, and she bolted. She didn’t go far. She left her bags on the porch of her father’s house and ran next door to Mrs. Pommeroy.

Ruth guessed that Mrs. Pommeroy would be up and guessed that she might get breakfast out of the visit. Indeed, Mrs. Pommeroy was up. But she wasn’t alone and she wasn’t making breakfast. She was painting her kitchen. Her two older sisters, Kitty and Gloria, were helping her. All three were wearing black garbage bags to protect their clothes, their heads and arms pushed through the plastic. It was immediately obvious to Ruth that the three women had been up all night. When Ruth stepped into the house, the women lunged toward her at the same time, crushing her between them and leaving paint marks all over her.

“Ruth!” they shouted. “Ruthie!”

“It’s six o’clock in the morning!” Ruth said. “Look at you!”

“Painting!” Kitty shouted. “We’re painting!”

Kitty swiped at Ruth with a paintbrush, streaking more paint across Ruth’s shirt, then dropped to her knees, laughing. Kitty was drunk. Kitty was, in fact, a drunk. (“Her grandmother was the same kind of person,” Senator Simon had once told Ruth. “Always lifting the gas caps off old Model Ts and sniffing the fumes. Staggered around this island in a daze her whole life.”) Gloria helped her sister to stand. Kitty put her hand over her mouth, delicately, to stop laughing, then put her hands to her head, in a ladylike motion, to fix her hair.

All three Pommeroy sisters had magnificent hair, which they wore piled on their heads in the same fashion that had made Mrs. Pommeroy such a famous beauty. Mrs. Pommeroy’s hair grew more silvery every year. It had silvered to the point that, when she turned her head in the sunlight, she gleamed like a swimming trout. Kitty and Gloria had the same gorgeous hair, but they weren’t as attractive as Mrs. Pommeroy. Gloria had a heavy, unhappy face, and Kitty had a damaged face; there was a burn scar on one cheek, thick as a callus, from an explosion at a canning factory many years earlier.

Gloria, the oldest, had never married. Kitty, the next one, was off-and-on married to Ruth’s father’s brother, Ruth’s reckless Uncle Len Thomas. Kitty and Len had no children. Mrs. Pommeroy was the only one of the Pommeroy sisters to have children, that huge batch of sons: Webster and Conway and Fagan and so on and so on. By now, 1976, the boys were grown. Four had left the island, having found lives elsewhere on the planet, but Webster, Timothy, and Robin were still at home. They lived in their old bedrooms in the huge house next to Ruth and her father. Webster, of course, had no job. But Timothy and Robin worked on boats, as sternmen. The Pommeroy boys only found temporary work, on other people’s boats. They had no boats of their own, no real means of livelihood. All signs pointed to Timothy and Robin being hired hands forever. That morning, both were already out fishing; they’d been gone since before daylight.

“What are you doing today, Ruthie?” Gloria asked. “What are you doing up so early?”

“Hiding from somebody.”

“Stay, Ruthie!” said Mrs. Pommeroy. “You can stay and watch us!”

“Watch out for you is more like it,” Ruth said, pointing to the paint on her shirt. Kitty dropped to her knees again at this joke, laughing and laughing. Kitty always took jokes hard, as if she’d been kicked by them. Gloria waited for Kitty to stop laughing and again helped her to stand. Kitty sighed and touched her hair.

Every object in Mrs. Pommeroy’s kitchen was piled on the kitchen table or hidden beneath sheets. The kitchen chairs were in the living room, tossed on the sofa, out of the way. Ruth got a chair and sat in the middle of the kitchen while the three Pommeroy sisters resumed painting. Mrs. Pommeroy was painting windowsills with a small brush. Gloria was painting a wall with a roller. Kitty was scraping old paint off another wall in absurd, drunken lunges.

“When did you decide to paint your kitchen?” Ruth asked.

“Last night,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“Isn’t this a disgusting color, Ruthie?” Kitty asked.

“It’s pretty awful.”

Mrs. Pommeroy stepped back from her windowsill and looked at her work. “It is awful,” she admitted, not unhappily.

“Is that buoy paint?” Ruth guessed. “Are you painting your kitchen with buoy paint?”

“I’m afraid it is buoy paint, honey. Do you recognize the color?”

“I can’t believe it,” Ruth said, because she did recognize the color. Astonishingly, Mrs. Pommeroy was painting her kitchen the exact shade that her dead husband had used to paint his trap buoys-a powerful lime green that chewed at the eyes. Lobstermen always use garish colors on their pot buoys to help them spot the traps against the flat blue of the sea, in any kind of weather. It was thick industrial paint, wholly unsuited to the job at hand.

“Are you afraid of losing your kitchen in the fog?” Ruth asked.

Kitty hit her knees laughing. Gloria frowned and said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Kitty. Get a-hold of yourself.” She pulled Kitty up.

Kitty touched her hair and said, “If I had to live in a kitchen this color, I’d vomit all over the place.”

“Are you allowed to use buoy paint indoors?” Ruth asked. “Aren’t you supposed to use indoor paint for indoor painting? Is it going to give you cancer or something?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “I found all these cans of paint in the toolshed last night, and I thought to myself, better not to waste it! And it reminds me of my husband. When Kitty and Gloria came over for dinner, we started giggling, and the next thing I knew, we were painting the kitchen. What do you think?”

“Honestly?” Ruth asked.

“Never mind,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “I like it.”

“If I had to live in this kitchen, I’d vomit so much, my head would fall off,” Kitty announced.

“Watch it, Kitty,” Gloria said. “You might have to live in this kitchen soon enough.”

“I will fucking not!”

“Kitty is welcome to stay in this house anytime,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “You know that, Kitty. You know that, too, Gloria.”

“You’re so mean, Gloria,” said Kitty. “You’re so fucking mean.”

Gloria kept painting her wall, her mouth set, her roller layering clean, even strokes of color.

Ruth asked, “Is Uncle Len throwing you out of your house again, Kitty?”

“Yes,” Gloria said, quietly.

“No!” Kitty said. “No, he’s not throwing me out of the house, Gloria! You’re so fucking mean, Gloria!”

“He says he’ll throw her out of the house if she doesn’t stop drinking,” Gloria said, in the same quiet tone.

“So why doesn’t he stop fucking drinking?” Kitty demanded. “Len tells me I have to stop drinking, but nobody drinks as much as he does.”

“Kitty’s welcome to move in with me,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“Why does he still get to be fucking drinking every fucking day?” Kitty shouted.

“Well,” Ruth said, “because he’s a nasty old alcoholic.”

“He’s a prick,” Gloria said.

“He’s got the biggest prick on this island; that’s for sure,” Kitty said.

Gloria kept painting, but Mrs. Pommeroy laughed. From upstairs came the sound of a baby crying.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“Now you’ve done it,” Gloria said. “Now you’ve woken up the goddamn baby, Kitty.”

“It wasn’t me!” Kitty shouted, and the baby’s cry became a wail.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Pommeroy repeated.

“God, that’s a loud baby,” Ruth said, and Gloria said, “No shit, Ruth.”

“I guess Opal’s home, then?”

“She came home a few days ago, Ruth. I guess she and Robin made up, so that’s good. They’re a family now, and they should be together. I think they’re both pretty mature. They’re both growing up real nice.”

“Truth is,” Gloria said, “her own family got sick of her and sent her back here.”

They heard footsteps upstairs and the cries diminished. Soon after, Opal came down, carrying the baby.

“You’re always so loud, Kitty,” Opal whined. “You always wake up my Eddie.”

Opal was Robin Pommeroy’s wife, a fact that was still a source of wonder to Ruth: fat, dopy, seventeen-year-old Robin Pommeroy had a wife. Opal was from Rockland, and she was seventeen, too. Her father owned a gas station there. Robin had met her on his trips to town when he was filling gas cans for his truck on the island. She was pretty enough (“A cute dirty little slut,” Angus Addams pronounced), with ash-blond hair worn in sloppy pigtails. This morning, she was wearing a housecoat and dingy slippers, and she shuffled her feet like an old woman. She was fatter than Ruth remembered, but Ruth hadn’t seen her since the previous summer. The baby was in a heavy diaper and was wearing one sock. He took his fingers out of his mouth and grabbed at the air.

“Oh, my God!” Ruth exclaimed. “He’s huge!”

“Hey, Ruth,” Opal said shyly.

“Hey, Opal. Your baby’s huge!”

“I didn’t know you were back from school, Ruth.”

“I’ve been back almost a month.”

“You happy to be back?”

“Sure I am.”

“Coming back to Fort Niles is like falling off a horse,” Kitty Pommeroy said. “You never forget how.”

Ruth ignored that. “Your baby’s enormous, Opal! Hey, there, Eddie! Hey, Eddie boy!”

“That’s right!” Kitty said. “He’s our great big baby boy! Aren’t you, Eddie? Aren’t you our great big boy?”

Opal stood Eddie down on the floor between her legs and gave him her two index fingers to hold. He tried to lock his knees and swayed like a drunk. His belly stuck out comically over his diaper, and his thighs were taut and plump. His arms seemed to be assembled in segments, and he had several chins. His chest was slick with drool.

“Oh, he’s so big!” Mrs. Pommeroy smiled widely. She knelt in front of Eddie and pinched his cheeks. “Who’s my great big boy? How big are you? How big is Eddie?”

Eddie, delighted, shouted, “Gah!”

“Oh, he’s big, all right,” Opal said, pleased. “I can’t hardly lift him anymore. Even Robin says Eddie’s getting too heavy to carry around. Robin says Eddie’d better learn to walk pretty soon, I guess.”

“Look who’s gonna be a great big fisherman!” Kitty said.

“I don’t think I ever saw such a big, healthy boy,” Gloria said. “Look at those legs. That boy’s going to be a football player for sure. Isn’t that the biggest baby you ever saw, Ruth?”

“That’s the biggest baby I ever saw,” Ruth agreed.

Opal blushed. “All the babies in my family are big. That’s what my mom says. And Robin was a big baby, too. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Pommeroy?”

“Oh, yes, Robin was a great big baby boy. But not as big as great big Mr. Eddie!” Mrs. Pommeroy tickled Eddie’s belly.

“Gah!” he shouted.

Opal said, “I can’t hardly feed him enough. You should see him at mealtimes. He eats more than I do! Yesterday he had five strips of bacon!”

“Oh, my God!” Ruth said. Bacon! She couldn’t stop staring at the kid. He didn’t look like any baby she had ever seen. He looked like a fat bald man, shrunken down to two feet high.

“He’s got a great big appetite, that’s why. Don’t you? Don’t you, you great big boy?” Gloria picked up Eddie with a grunt and covered his cheek with kisses. “Don’t you, chubby cheeks? You have a great big healthy appetite. Because you’re our little lumberjack, aren’t you? You’re our little football player, aren’t you? You’re the biggest little boy in the whole world.”

The baby squealed and kicked Gloria heftily. Opal reached out. “I’ll take him, Gloria. He’s got a ca-ca diaper.” She took Eddie and said, “I’ll go upstairs and clean him up. I’ll see you all later. See you later, Ruth.”

“See you later, Opal,” Ruth said.

“Bye-bye, big boy!” Kitty called, and waved bye-bye at Eddie.

“Bye-bye, you great big handsome boy!” Gloria called.

The Pommeroy sisters watched Opal head up the stairs, and they grinned and waved at Eddie until they lost sight of him. Then they heard Opal’s footsteps in the bedroom above and all stopped grinning at the same moment.

Gloria brushed off her hands, turned to her sisters, and said, sternly, “That baby’s too big.”

“She feeds him too much,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, frowning.

“Not good for his heart,” Kitty pronounced.

The women returned to their painting.

Kitty immediately started talking again about her husband, Len Thomas.

“Oh, yeah, he hits me, sure,” she said to Ruth. “But I’ll tell you something. He can’t give anything to me any worse than I can give anything back to him.”

“What?” Ruth said. “What’s she trying to say, Gloria?”

“Kitty’s trying to say Len can’t hit her any harder than she can hit him.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Pommeroy said with pride. “Kitty has a real good swing on her.”

“That’s right,” Kitty said. “I’ll put his head right through the fucking door if I feel like it.”

“And he’ll do the same to you, Kitty,” Ruth said. “Nice arrangement.”

“Nice marriage,” Gloria said.

“That’s right,” Kitty said, satisfied. “It is a nice marriage. Not like you’d know anything about that, Gloria. And nobody’s kicking anybody out of anybody’s house.”

“We’ll see,” Gloria said, real low.

Mrs. Pommeroy had been a romp as a young girl, but she’d quit drinking when Mr. Pommeroy drowned. Gloria had never been a romp. Kitty had been a romp as a young girl, too, but she’d kept at it. She was a lifetime boozer, a grunt, a dozzler. Kitty Pommeroy was the example of what Mrs. Pommeroy might have become if she had stayed on the bottle. Kitty had lived off-island for a while, back when she was younger. She’d worked in a herring-canning factory for years and years and saved up all her money to buy a fast convertible. And she’d had sex with dozens of men-or so Gloria reported. Kitty had had abortions, Gloria said, which was why Kitty couldn’t have babies now. After the explosion in the canning factory, Kitty Pommeroy returned to Fort Niles. She took up with Len Thomas, another prime drunk, and the two of them had been beating each other up ever since. Ruth couldn’t stand her Uncle Len.

“I have an idea, Kitty,” Ruth said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Why don’t you kill Uncle Len in his sleep some night?”

Gloria laughed, and Ruth continued, “Why don’t you club him to death, Kitty? I mean, before he does it to you. Get a jump on him.”

“Ruth!” Mrs. Pommeroy exclaimed, but she was also laughing.

“Why not, Kitty? Why not bludgeon him?”

“Shut up, Ruth. You don’t know anything.”

Kitty was sitting on the chair Ruth had brought in, lighting a cigarette, and Ruth went over and sat on her lap.

“Get off my goddamn lap, Ruth. You got a bony ass, just like your old man.”

“How do you know my old man has a bony ass?”

“Because I fucked him, stupid,” Kitty said.

Ruth laughed as if this was a big joke, but she had a chilling sense that it may have been true. She laughed to cover her discomfort, and she jumped off Kitty’s lap.

“Ruth Thomas,” Kitty said, “you don’t know a thing about this island anymore. You don’t live here anymore, so you have no right to say anything. You aren’t even from here.”

“Kitty!” Mrs. Pommeroy exclaimed. “That’s nasty!”

“Excuse me, Kitty, but I do so live here.”

“For a few months a year, Ruth. You live here like a tourist, Ruth.”

“I hardly think that’s my fault, Kitty.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “It isn’t Ruth’s fault.”

“You think nothing is ever Ruth’s fault.”

“I think I wandered into the wrong house,” Ruth said. “I think I wandered into the house of hate today.”

“No, Ruth,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Don’t get upset. Kitty’s just teasing you.”

“I’m not upset,” said Ruth, who was getting upset. “I think it’s funny; that’s all.”

“I am not teasing anyone. You don’t know anything about this place anymore. You haven’t practically been here in four goddamn years. A lot changes around a place in four years, Ruth.”

“Yeah, especially a place like this,” Ruth said. “Big changes, everywhere I look.”

“Ruth didn’t want to go away,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Mr. Ellis sent her away to school. She didn’t have any choice, Kitty.”

“Exactly,” Ruth said. “I was banished.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, and went over to nudge Ruth. “She was banished! They took her away from us.”

“I wish a rich millionaire would banish me to some millionaire’s private school,” Kitty muttered.

“No, you don’t, Kitty. Trust me.”

“I wish a millionaire would have banished me to private school,” Gloria said, in a voice a little stronger than her sister had used.

“OK, Gloria,” Ruth said. “You might wish that. But Kitty doesn’t wish that.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Kitty barked. “What? I’m too stupid for school?”

“You would have been bored to death at that school. Gloria might have liked it, but you’d have hated it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gloria asked. “That I wouldn’t have been bored? Why not, Ruth? Because I’m boring? Are you calling me boring, Ruth?”

“Help,” Ruth said.

Kitty was still muttering that she was plenty goddamn smart for any goddamn school, and Gloria was staring Ruth down.

“Help me, Mrs. Pommeroy,” Ruth said, and Mrs. Pommeroy said, helpfully, “Ruth isn’t calling anyone dumb. She’s just saying that Gloria is a little bit smarter than Kitty.”

“Good,” said Gloria. “That’s right.”

“Oh, my God, save me,” Ruth said, and she ducked under the kitchen table as Kitty came at her from across the room. Kitty bent down and started whacking at Ruth’s head.

“Ow,” Ruth said, but she was laughing. It was ridiculous. She’d only come over for breakfast! Mrs. Pommeroy and Gloria were laughing, too.

“I’m not fucking stupid, Ruth!” Kitty slapped her again.

“Ow.”

“You’re the stupid one, Ruth, and you aren’t even from here anymore.”

“Ow.”

“Quit your bitching,” Kitty said. “You can’t take a slap to the head? I got five concussions in my life.” Kitty let up on Ruth for a moment to tick off her concussions on her fingers. “I fell out of a highchair. I fell off a bicycle. I fell in a quarry, and I got two concussions from Len. And I got blown up in a factory explosion. And I got eczema. So don’t tell me you can’t take a goddamn hit, girl!” She smacked Ruth again. Comically, now. Affectionately.

“Ow,” Ruth repeated. “I’m a victim. Ow.”

Gloria Pommeroy and Mrs. Pommeroy kept laughing. Kitty finally quit and said, “Someone at the door.”

Mrs. Pommeroy went to answer the door. “It’s Mr. Cooley,” she said. “Good morning, Mr. Cooley.”

A low drawl came through the room: “Ladies…”

Ruth stayed under the table, her head cradled in her arms.

“It’s Cal Cooley, everyone!” Mrs. Pommeroy called.

“I’m looking for Ruth Thomas,” he said.

Kitty Pommeroy lifted a corner of the sheet from the table and shouted, “Ta-da!” Ruth waggled her fingers at Cal in a childish wave.

“There’s the young woman I’m looking for,” he said. “Hiding from me, as ever.”

Ruth crawled out and stood up.

“Hello, Cal. You found me.” She wasn’t upset to see him; she felt relaxed. It was as if Kitty had knocked her head clear.

“You certainly seem busy, Miss Ruth.”

“I actually am a little busy, Cal.”

“It seems you forgot about our appointment. You were supposed to be waiting for me at your house. Maybe you were too busy to keep your appointment?”

“I was delayed,” Ruth said. “I was helping my friend paint her kitchen.”

Cal Cooley took a long look around the room, noting the dreadful green buoy paint, the sloppy sisters wrapped in garbage bags, the sheet hastily tossed on the kitchen table, the paint on Ruth’s shirt.

“Old Cal Cooley hates to take you away from your work,” Cal Cooley drawled.

Ruth grinned. “I hate to be taken away by old Cal Cooley.”

“You’re up early, buster,” Kitty Pommeroy said, and punched Cal in the arm.

“Cal,” Ruth said, “I believe you know Mrs. Kitty Pommeroy? I believe you two have met? Am I correct?”

The sisters laughed. Before Kitty married Len Thomas-and for several years after-she and Cal Cooley had been lovers. This was a piece of information that Cal Cooley hilariously liked to imagine was top secret, but every last person on the island knew it. And everyone knew they were still occasional lovers, despite Kitty’s marriage. Everyone but Len Thomas, of course. People got a big laugh out of that.

“Nice to see you, Kitty,” Cal said flatly.

Kitty fell to her knees laughing. Gloria helped Kitty up. Kitty touched her mouth and then her hair.

“I hate to take you away from your hen party, Ruth,” Cal said, and Kitty cackled fiercely. He winced.

“I have to go now,” Ruth said.

“Ruth!” Mrs. Pommeroy exclaimed.

“I’m being banished again.”

“She’s a victim!” Kitty shouted. “You watch yourself with that one, Ruth. He’s a rooster, and he’ll always be a rooster. Keep your legs crossed.” Even Gloria laughed at this, but Mrs. Pommeroy did not. She looked at Ruth Thomas-concerned.

Ruth hugged all three sisters. When she got to Mrs. Pommeroy, she gave her a long hug and whispered into her ear, “They’re making me visit my mother.”

Mrs. Pommeroy sighed. Held Ruth close. Whispered in her ear, “Bring her back here with you, Ruth. Bring her back here, where she belongs.”

Cal Cooley often liked to affect a tired voice around Ruth Thomas. He liked to pretend that she made him weary. He often sighed, shook his head, as though Ruth could not begin to appreciate the suffering she caused him. And so, as they walked to his truck from Mrs. Pommeroy’s house, he sighed and shook his head and said, as though defeated by exhaustion, “Why must you always hide from me, Ruth?”

“I wasn’t hiding from you, Cal.”

“No?”

“I was just evading you. Hiding from you is futile.”

“You always blame me, Ruth,” Cal Cooley lamented. “Stop smiling, Ruth. I’m serious. You always have blamed me.”

He opened the door of the truck and paused. “You don’t have any luggage?” he asked.

She shook her head and got into the truck.

Cal said, with dramatic fatigue, “If you bring no clothes to Miss Vera’s house, Miss Vera will have to buy you new clothes.”

When Ruth did not answer, he said, “You know that, don’t you? If this is a protest, it will backfire in your pretty face. You inevitably make things harder for yourself than you have to.”

“Cal,” Ruth whispered conspiratorially, and leaned toward him in the cab of the truck. “I don’t like to bring luggage when I go to Concord. I don’t like anyone at the Ellis mansion to think I’ll be staying.”

“Is that your trick?”

“That’s my trick.”

They drove toward the wharf, where Cal parked the truck. He said to Ruth, “You look very beautiful today.”

Now it was Ruth who sighed dramatically.

“You eat and eat,” Cal continued, “and you never get heavier. That’s marvelous. I always wonder when your big appetite’s going to catch up to you and you’ll balloon on us. I think it’s your destiny.”

She sighed again. “You make me so goddamn tired, Cal.”

“Well, you make me goddamn tired, too, sweetheart.”

They got out of the truck, and Ruth looked down the wharf and across the cove, but the Ellises’ boat, the Stonecutter, was not there. This was a surprise. She knew the routine. Cal Cooley had been ferrying Ruth around for years, to school, to her mother. They always left Fort Niles in the Stonecutter, courtesy of Mr. Lanford Ellis. But this morning Ruth saw only the old lobster boats, bobbing. And a strange sight: there was the New Hope. The mission boat sat long and clean on the water, her engine idling.

“What’s the New Hope doing here?”

“Pastor Wishnell is giving us a ride to Rockland,” Cal Cooley said.

“Why?”

“Mr. Ellis doesn’t want the Stonecutter used for short trips anymore. And he and Pastor Wishnell are good friends. It’s a favor.”

Ruth had never been on the New Hope, though she’d seen it for years, cruising. It was the finest boat in the area, as fine as Lanford Ellis’s yacht. The boat was Pastor Toby Wishnell’s pride. He may have forsworn the great fishing legacy of the Wishnell family in the name of God, but he had kept his eye for a beautiful boat. He’d restored the New Hope to a forty-foot glass-and-brass enchantress, and even the men on Fort Niles Island, all of whom loathed Toby Wishnell, had to admit that the New Hope was a looker. Although they certainly hated to see her show up in their harbor.

They didn’t see her much, though. Pastor Toby Wishnell was rarely around. He sailed the coast from Casco to Nova Scotia, ministering to every island along the way. He was nearly always at sea. And, though he was based directly across the channel on Courne Haven Island, he did not often visit Fort Niles. He came for funerals and for weddings, of course. He came for the occasional baptism, although most Fort Niles citizens skipped that particular procedure to avoid asking for him. He came to Fort Niles only when he was invited, and that was seldom.

So Ruth was indeed surprised to see his boat.

On that morning, a young man was standing at the end of the Fort Niles dock, waiting for them. Cal Cooley and Ruth Thomas walked toward him, and Cal shook the boy’s hand. “Good morning, Owney.”

The young man did not answer but climbed down the wharf ladder to a neat little white rowboat. Cal Cooley and Ruth Thomas climbed down after him, and the rowboat rocked delicately under their weight. The young man untied his line, seated himself in the stern, and rowed out to the New Hope. He was big-maybe twenty years old, with a large, squarish head. He had a thick square body, with hips as wide as his shoulders. He wore oilskins, like a lobsterman, and had on fisherman’s tall rubber boots. Though he was dressed like a lobsterman, his oilskins were clean and his boots did not smell of bait. His hands on the oars were square and thick like a fisherman’s hands, yet they were clean. He had no cuts or knobs or scars. He was in a fisherman’s costume, and he had a fisherman’s body, but he was obviously not a fisherman. When he pulled the oars, Ruth saw his huge forearms, which bulged like turkey legs and were covered with blond hairs scattered as light as ash. He had a homemade crew cut and yellow hair, a color never seen on Fort Niles Island. Swedish hair. Light blue eyes.

“What’s your name again?” Ruth asked the boy. “Owen?”

“Owney,” Cal Cooley answered. “His name is Owney Wishnell. He’s the pastor’s nephew.”

“Owney?” Ruth said. “Owney, is it? Really? Hello there, Owney.”

Owney looked at Ruth but did not greet her. He rowed quietly all the way out to the New Hope. They climbed a ladder, and Owney hoisted the rowboat up behind him and stowed it on deck. This was the cleanest boat Ruth had ever seen. She and Cal Cooley walked back to the cabin, and there was Pastor Toby Wishnell, eating a sandwich.

“Owney,” Pastor Wishnell said, “let’s get moving.”

Owney hauled up the anchor and set the boat in motion. He sailed them out of the harbor, and they all watched him, although he did not seem aware of them. He sailed out of the shallows around Fort Niles and passed buoys that rocked on the waves with warning bells. He passed close to Ruth’s father’s lobster boat. It was early in the morning still, but Stan Thomas had been out for three hours. Ruth, leaning over the rail, saw her father hook a trap buoy with his long wooden gaff. She saw Robin Pommeroy in the stern, cleaning out a trap, tossing short lobsters and crabs back into the sea with a flick of his wrist. Fog circled them like a spook. Ruth did not call out. Robin Pommeroy stopped his work for a moment and looked up at the New Hope. It clearly gave him a shock to see Ruth. He stood for a moment, with his mouth hanging open, staring up at her. Ruth’s father did not look up at all. He was not interested in seeing the New Hope with his daughter aboard.

Farther out, they passed Angus Addams, fishing by himself. He did not look up, either. He kept his head down, pushing rotting herring into bait bags, furtively, as if he were stuffing loot into a sack during a bank robbery.

When Owney Wishnell was fully on track and heading on the open sea toward Rockland, Pastor Toby Wishnell finally addressed Cal Cooley and Ruth Thomas. He regarded Ruth silently. He said to Cal, “You were late.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I said six o’clock.”

“Ruth wasn’t ready at six o’clock.”

“We were to leave at six in order to be in Rockland by early afternoon, Mr. Cooley. I explained that to you, didn’t I?”

“It was the young lady’s fault.”

Ruth listened to the conversation with some pleasure. Cal Cooley was usually such an arrogant prick; it was engaging to see him defer to the minister. She’d never seen Cal defer to anyone. She wondered whether Toby Wishnell was really going to chew Cal a new asshole. She would very much like to watch that.

But Toby Wishnell was finished with Cal. He turned to speak to his nephew, and Cal Cooley glanced at Ruth. She raised an eyebrow.

“It was your fault,” he said.

“You’re a brave man, Cal.”

He scowled. Ruth turned her attention to Pastor Wishnell. He was still an exceedingly handsome man, now in his mid-forties. He had probably spent as much time at sea as any Fort Niles or Courne Haven fisherman, but he did not look like any of the fishermen Ruth had known. There was a fineness about him that matched the fineness of his boat: beautiful lines, an economy of detail, a polish, a finish. His blond hair was thin and straight, and he wore it parted on the side and brushed smooth. He had a narrow nose and pale blue eyes. He wore small, wire-framed glasses. Pastor Toby Wishnell had the look of an elite British officer: privileged, cool, brilliant.

They sailed for a long time without any further conversation. They left in the worst kind of fog, the cold fog that sits on the body like damp towels, hurtful to lungs, knuckles, and knees. Birds don’t sing in the fog, so there were no gulls screaming, and it was a quiet ride. As they sailed farther away from the island, the fog diminished and then vanished, and the day turned clear. But it was, nonetheless, an odd day. The sky was blue, the wind was slight, but the sea was a churning mass-huge round swells, rough and constant. This sometimes happens when there’s a storm much farther out at sea. The sea gets the aftermath of the violence, but there’s no sign in the sky of the storm. It’s as though the sea and the sky are not on terms of communication. They take no notice of each other, as if they’ve never been introduced. Sailors call this a “ground sea.” It’s disorienting to be on so rough an ocean under a picnic-day blue sky. Ruth stood against the rail and watched the water seethe and fume.

“You don’t mind the rough sea?” Pastor Toby Wishnell asked Ruth.

“I don’t get seasick.”

“You’re a lucky girl.”

“I don’t think we’re lucky today,” Cal Cooley drawled. “Fishermen say it’s bad luck to have women or clergy on a boat. And we got both.”

The pastor smiled wanly. “Never begin a trip on a Friday,” he recited. “Never go on a ship that had an unlucky launch. Never go on a boat if her name has been changed. Never paint anything on a boat blue. Never whistle on a boat, or you’ll whistle up a wind. Never bring women or clergy aboard. Never disturb a bird’s nest on a boat. Never say the number thirteen on a boat. Never use the word pig.”

“Pig?” Ruth said. “I never heard that one.”

“Well, it’s been said twice now,” Cal Cooley said. “Pig, pig, pig. We’ve got clergy; we’ve got women; we’ve got people shouting pig. So now we are doomed. Thank you to all who participated.”

“Cal Cooley is such an old salt,” Ruth said to Pastor Wishnell. “Being from Missourah and all, he’s just steeped in the lore of the sea.”

“I am an old salt, Ruth.”

“Actually, Cal, I believe you’re a farm boy,” Ruth corrected. “I believe you are a cracker.”

“Just because I was born in Missourah doesn’t mean I can’t be an island man at heart.”

“I don’t think the other island men would necessarily agree, Cal.”

Cal shrugged. “A man can’t help where he’s born. A cat can have kittens in the oven, but that don’t make ’em biscuits.”

Ruth laughed, although Cal Cooley did not. Pastor Wishnell was looking closely at Ruth.

“Ruth?” he said. “Is that your name? Ruth Thomas?”

“Yes, sir,” Ruth said, and stopped laughing. She coughed into her fist.

“You have a familiar face, Ruth.”

“If I look familiar, that’s only because I look exactly like everyone else on Fort Niles. We all look alike, sir. You know what they say about us-we’re too poor to buy new faces, so we share the same one. Ha.”

“Ruth is much prettier than anyone else on Fort Niles,” Cal contributed. “Much darker. Look at those pretty dark eyes. That’s the Italian in her. That’s from her Eye-talian grandpappy.”

“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.