Spartina Read online

  Money. It wasn’t just money. “Tell me about—” “Yes, I know all about it” or “You know, I don’t know the first thing about it.” It didn’t seem to matter which. Either one was an amusing answer. The whole conversation was a school of minnows, zig, zag, zig. Up to break the surface, down and away.

  Dick had come up to a tennis court once to tell a fellow his boat was ready. The fellow said to the other players, “Ah. Just a sec.” Turned to Dick and said, “We’ll just finish the game. You don’t mind.” Dick stood by. One lady cracked one, really pounded it past the guy’s feet. She looked as good as a tennis player on TV. They all laughed. They were amused. Next time it bounced between the two of them on the same team. They both reared back but hung fire. They both said, “Yours!” All four of them laughed. Joxer and Barbara Goode were playing on opposite teams. Maybe that was part of the fun. Dick waited and waited.

  “Sorry, just wanted to finish the set.”

  Joxer sang out, “Hello there, Dick!”

  Dick said, “Mr. Goode. Mr. White. Bill sent me, said you wanted to know the minute your boat was going in. Said you wanted to be there. It’s going in now.”

  “Ah yes. You’re from the boatyard.” Dick had seen this guy every day for the last week. Mr. White added, “Tell Bill I’ll be along.”

  Dismissed.

  But Dick said, “It’s up to you. If you want to see the splash, it’ll be when I get back there.” Mr. White’s ketch was forty-five feet l.o.a., drew eight feet. She couldn’t go in at low tide. The hoist, the marine railway didn’t run themselves. It was the size of the boat, the size of the job that got to Dick. Even if you owned it for fun, you ought to know the difference between playing tennis and a forty-five-foot boat. Mr. White and Bill knew there was another size involved. It wasn’t just money, but money was the length of it.

  Time to check the clams. Dick tossed the bow anchor out, snubbed it, and waded in to set the stern anchor in the beach.

  Schuyler and his wife, and Sally’s husband and little girl came out in a canoe. An old canvas job, painted deep royal blue. The ribs and thwarts were dark with age but shiny with new varnish.

  Sally and Elsie ran down to it. It turned out it was their family’s old canoe. Mr. Aldrich had found her under the old Buttrick house. Fixed it up as a surprise. Had it hidden under a tarp at Schuyler’s.

  Everyone came down to it.

  “That’s your mum’s old canoe, Jenny. I was just your age …”

  The little girl didn’t get it, but she was excited by the fuss.

  Dick looked closer and saw some of the ribs were new. Stained to match the old ones. Someone had gone to an awful lot of trouble.

  “Oh, Jack! This is wonderful!”

  The new canvas looked tight as a drum. Dick saw the seats had been recaned too—old-style, row on row of little hexes.

  Marie Van der Hoevel came over to him as he was fumbling under the edge of the tarp for a clam.

  “May I help?”

  He shooed her back with his gloved hand. “Careful. That steam’ll burn you.” He found a good-sized quahog. Open. He pulled off the tarp and stood back. “There she is!” Dick took a deep breath as the steam rose and blew slowly by him. Smelled right. He dug out a potato, dipped it in the water, and took a bite. “Good enough to eat,” he said to Mrs. Van der Hoevel. “You want to try one?” Dick was pleased at how good it turned out. He dug out a potato and a small steamer, dipped them in the edge of the water, and held them out to her. “I’ll put all this stuff in the washtubs,” he said, “and you use that camp stove to melt butter. Smells pretty good. If this was August we’d have corn too, but this ain’t too bad.”

  She touched the steamer and pulled her hand back. “Oh dear!” Dick put his glove between his knees and pulled the clam meat out for her with his finger, holding it by the tough neck. Schuyler and Elsie arrived in time to see her lean over and nibble on the clam. Dick pulled away the tough part of the neck. Mrs. Van der Hoevel reached for it. Schuyler said, “You don’t eat the foreskin, dear.” Mrs. Van der Hoevel blushed. She kept on chewing. She said “Good” out of the corner of her mouth. She reminded Dick of his wife again, though she was prettier. She was thin and jumpy—Dick could see Schuyler had her licked. But she kept herself together. Her white shorts had sharply creased pleats and a neat cuff, each leg a miniskirt flared around each narrow thigh—in the same way her hair flared out around her face made it seem even longer and narrower. At least Schuyler kept her in pretty clothes. Dick felt a pang of guilt about May.

  Elsie got a pair of long vinyl gloves and high rubber boots and shuffled into the seaweed to help fill the tubs. She was about the same height as Mrs. Van der Hoevel, but a good bit sturdier and harder. The big black boots and gloves flippering around in the seaweed while she crouched down in her red swimsuit made her look like an agitated ladybug. Every so often Dick and Elsie had to take a few steps into the water to cool off the soles of the boots. Then back into the pile, digging for the potatoes and stray clams, flipping them so quick they were making the washtubs clank and ping like a dieseling engine. It was decent of Elsie to help out. He looked over at her as she bent over the hot seaweed. Her thighs between the boot tops and bathing suit were steamed pink, but had good hard lines. He could see what Charlie’d been looking at.

  When they got through, Elsie shucked her gloves and boots, ran into the water, and dove out into a long glide. Dick was just wishing he’d brought a swimsuit when Joxer brought him another bottle of beer.

  “If you’re like most of the fishermen I know,” Joxer said, “you’d rather get wet inside than out.”

  Dick said, agreeably, “If you spend enough time wet when you don’t want to be, you don’t swim so often.” Dick scooped some water onto his face and neck. “The water’s warm for June.”

  Joxer said, “Okay by me.”

  “Waterskiing season for you and Mrs. Goode.”

  Joxer laughed. “Nope. If lobsters thin out, my red-crab prices go up too. I’m about to buy a pair of refrigerator trucks, do my own hauling to New York and Boston.”

  “You got enough skippers going out for you?”

  “Not yet.” Joxer tilted his head back. “I hear Parker’s got a boat.”

  Dick said, “Yup.” He couldn’t get himself to raise the subject of his own boat.

  Joxer said, “She doesn’t look like she could take much. Isn’t she awfully flat-bottomed for around here?”

  Dick nodded. “She won’t be comfortable, but she’ll do. For summer. We’ll run a few pots. Might do red crabs if the price is good.”

  “If you and Parker go out, stop at my office. I’ll tell you the price.”

  Dick said, “Can you guarantee—”

  “I can’t guarantee. But the price looks good—in fact, it’s going up.”

  “I hear Captain Texeira—”

  “Captain Texeira has two big boats and he’s a senior skipper, and I can count on him. If you and Parker start hauling on a regular basis, I’d be happy to move on to that next subject.”

  Joxer looked away toward the guests filing by the food. Eyes back to Dick. Joxer said cheerily, “You certainly did the job here. This is first-rate.”

  Dismissed. Joxer wasn’t a bad guy, but he was still an officer. Dick got some food and another beer, sat on a rock, and watched Elsie starting back from way across the pond, just a dark spot in the rippling light. The sun grew red and orange at the bottom; across the surface of the water and the land the near side of things turned blue and violet above their dark shadows. Dick felt his dry squint open up some, the rest of him ease up too—this violet half-light flooding the pond and marsh came into him like an easy tide.

  When it got all the way dark, Joxer’s and Schuyler’s party began to light lamps—some candles in glass chimneys, some battery lamps, and a hissing gas lantern on the bow of Joxer’s water-jet to light up the picnic-table bar.

  The noise of the people talking was the same noise Dick used to hear coming back in o
n a fishing boat easing past the yacht-club porch. The engine would be thumping at quarter-speed, and suddenly they’d hear the voices over it—the whole clump of voices at once and then one or two breaking loose and blowing off toward the boat like milkweed floss.

  Dick had always liked the sound. It was like spring peepers. Not so raucous, but more keyed up than ducks feeding in the shallows, chuckling to each other in between dabs. A silly sound, but a sign of a season.

  You couldn’t mind anything that came to its own place in a regular way. The seals went north in May, the terns came in, the striped bass came up the coast in schools. Real summer was bluefish, swordfish, tuna, sharks. When the water got to sixty-five degrees or so. And in the marsh, red-winged blackbirds, meadow-larks, and swallows. The spartina grew greener, everywhere there were new wicks of bright green.

  By midsummer all the bright turned heavy and dark. In August the sky streaked with shooting stars, and next thing it was fall. The long mild fall, the clearest and best of Rhode Island seasons, with its own flurry of movement and ripeness. You could find stray cod all the way up the coves and creeks, broken off from the schools passing in deep water. Then the November gales blew through—things bent down, folded in place. The dead spartina broke, blew off, wrapped onto the next stalks, and sank under the rains down to the live roots, mixing into the blackness. It was useful death.

  While Dick was thinking this, half-hearing the voices and the rustle of grasses stirred by light air across the pond, but still seeing a last glow of light in the sky and the sea out toward Block Island, he thought about his father’s death. He got away from his feeling of bitterness that the old man’s dying had stripped away the rest of the point, leaving his son and grandsons bare. Now he felt sorry for the old man, who must have felt his dying as a freak, not a regular gale but a tropical hurricane, too early, too destructive, tearing things away instead of bending them down and mixing them slowly into the dark marsh.

  Then Dick tightened up again. Okay—he wouldn’t get the point back. He’d get the goddamn boat built. It’d all go into the boat—the little piece that the old man had left and whatever scraps and crumbs could still come off the point from the new owners. This clambake, for instance, went right into the engine. Five hundred dollars.

  Joxer and Schuyler were good for some more. Parker would do for some too.

  That was when Dick put Schuyler and Parker together in his mind. Slick and slick. He wasn’t as slick as either of them, but the two of them would get to each other. Dick felt lucky. He was still a dumb swamp Yankee compared to them, but he had a clear will. He’d wanted his boat for a long time, but now it seemed a part of the way it was all going. As sure as finding fish when all the signs were right.

  Dick took some of the party back to the point. Sally and her husband and kids. Miss Perry, who reminded him it was getting near to Charlie’s birthday when Dick always took her and the boys out for her yearly fishing.

  Back to the island. Dick gave the big white water-jet a wide berth. People were diving off her transom now that the tide was in.

  He found Elsie. He said, “If you and your friend Schuyler want to take some pictures, I’ve got an idea for you. You and him bring your movie camera along when Parker and I go out for swordfish. We’ll be out five, six days. We’ll take you two along if Schuyler will pay for a spotter plane. The plane runs fifty bucks an hour. We’ll leave at midnight, start our own watch at dawn. Use the plane after the sun’s up. Take a two-hour break for when the tide’s running strong. Use the plane another couple of hours in the afternoon if it’s still calm. What do you think? If we use the plane it’s pretty sure we’ll get some fish.”

  Elsie said, “Parker’s boat? I don’t know about Parker.”

  “Parker’s got his arm in a cast, so …”

  “If Schuyler pays for the plane, who gets the fish?”

  “Schuyler gets the pictures, we get the fish. The pilot gets his fifty an hour, but he gets a hundred bonus for each fish. What Parker and me’ll do is pay the bonus out of the fish. That’s as good as we can go.”

  Elsie laughed. “What’s Parker going to say to this?”

  “You talk to Schuyler. I’ll talk to Parker. You won’t likely get on any other boat. Right now the water’s right. The weather’s right. You can’t find swordfish if there’s overcast or too much chop. There’s no guarantee it’ll be this good again all summer.”

  Elsie said, “Okay. I’ll bring Schuyler over now. But Dick—” She paused.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just worried when someone like you hangs around with Parker.”

  Dick said, “I have my doubts about your friend Schuyler. We’re not getting married—we’re going out for a few days to stick some fish and haul some pots.”

  Elsie went off. Dick knew what she was talking about. He would have worried the same as her if he wasn’t so sure the tide was running his way.

  The gas lamp was out now. Just the candle lamps were burning. By the waning moon Dick could see the partygoers were diving in naked. Let them have their summer fun. He’d send Charlie and Tom to clean up the island. This summer was going to see his boat. He could just make out heads bobbing in the water. They weren’t so noisy now, just splashing and giggling. Some flood tide of money and fun had brought them to Sawtooth Point and Sawtooth Island. He wasn’t going to back off. Just another fishery.

  Dick had forgot how antsy he got the day before he put to sea. May had forgot too. She’d used to leave the house. Now he was barking at her, in between trips to the boat. He must have gone back and forth a half-dozen times.

  Next to last time he found Schuyler, Elsie, and Parker on deck. Not doing anything, just gabbing. Once in a while either Schuyler or Elsie would lift up the camera each of them had strapped on. Dick muttered by them. Parker was bullshitting Schuyler. Tales of the high seas. Dick laid his harpoon up by the bow pulpit, but Schuyler wanted him to bring it over and talk about it. Schuyler and Elsie both raised their cameras. Dick pointed to the tufted wand sticking toward him from the camera pack. “That thing the microphone?”

  “Yes,” Elsie said. “What’s that in your hand?”

  “Jesus, Elsie, you’ve seen a harpoon.…”

  “Explain how it works.”

  “You’ll get to see how it works. That is, if we ever get going.”

  “Dick. Come on.”

  “When we’re steaming somewhere with nothing much to do—”

  Schuyler said, “Captain Parker tells me you got mad at the phone company once, you tore your phone off the wall and threw it out in the middle of Route One.”

  Dick said, “You worried about your camera?”

  Elsie said, “Oh, for God’s sakes!” Schuyler laughed.

  Dick put his harpoon by the bow pulpit, pigeon-holed his charts and notes in the wheelhouse, then moved around checking the bait barrels and spare pots. Schuyler asked Parker what he thought of Rhode Island. Parker said, “Cute little state. First time I heard of it, I was running a charter boat in the Gulf, had a couple of Texans on board. One says to the other, ‘I hear you picked up that land next to yours. You must have quite a spread now.’ The other one says, ‘Middling. Just over two and a half Rhode Islands.’ ”

  Schuyler laughed. Elsie said, “They don’t really.”

  Dick said to her, “He’s only here summers with his bullshit.”

  “You mean Rhode Island gets bigger during the winter?” Schuyler said. He and Parker laughed.

  “We’re leaving before long,” Dick said. “I’m going to pull a few pots and go to bed.”

  Schuyler and Elsie followed him to his house.

  May was in her garden. Elsie waved and followed Dick toward the wharf. Schuyler went over to May and introduced himself. He got his camera going and pointed it at the ramshackle shed Dick had rigged. It had a wood roof, but the siding was mostly old sheets of canvas and vinyl.

  Dick shouted to Schuyler, “Don’t go in there!”

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nbsp; May yelled down to Dick, “When do you want your supper?”

  “When I get back.” Dick cranked the outboard and cast off. Elsie jumped in. “Can’t you wait a second?” Dick started down the creek.

  Elsie said, “Are you going to be like this the whole trip?”

  Dick didn’t answer. They got going faster when they passed Sawtooth Point. Dick couldn’t believe Schuyler had made so much money just taking pictures that he could have bought the Wedding Cake.

  Elsie got cheerful when Dick pulled a pot and a huge eel was curled up in it—made a big S from one corner of the parlor to the other. When Dick swung the pot up, the eel squeezed out between the slats. Three feet long and as thick as his forearm and it was flowing through a chink the width of his thumb. Elsie zoomed in on it with her camera. Dick turned the pot so the eel fell inside the boat. The eel wiggled between Elsie’s feet as she filmed the rest of the junk in the pot—a large whelk, a starfish, and a spider crab. Dick turned the whelk so Elsie could film the single moist foot as it sucked itself into its shell.

  “Fruits de mer,” Elsie said. “Two of ’em, anyway.”

  Dick rebaited the pot. “The lobster have mostly gone from in here. Used to be you could make a living from within sight of land. Now you got to go way the hell out.”

  “But I get the feeling you like going to sea,” Elsie said. “You like being way out there.”

  “That’s right,” Dick said. “I like the time out there. I hope having movie cameras along doesn’t screw it up.”

  Elsie lowered her camera and looked hurt.

  “I don’t mean you,” Dick said. “I mean that recording everything, having those things whirring like clocks … that might change the nature of time.”

  “Oh shit,” Elsie said. “I wish I’d got that part. I suppose I shouldn’t ask you to say it again.”

  “Schuyler have rules?” Dick said. He threw the pot over. He thought he’d better not let her get him talking again.