Beauty: A Novel (15 page)

“If we got real observers,” Buddy said, “they’d see how much we pull in. They’d see how much we have to throw back that’s over quota, that’s bycatch. These are dead fish we’re throwing back. But yeah, all right. If we have to pay for overfishing, all right, but let’s really save the fish.”

“And so then there’s Mathews,” Easy said to Carol, and the edge was back.

“So, what about Mathews?” Buddy said to her, looking at Easy to settle him down.

“What about this toothfish?” Easy said to her, not completely settled but not ugly.

Carol smiled at him, which wasn’t the point, and was the point. She tilted her head toward the storage with its two million dollars’ worth of stolen toothfish that by the time it went onto the menu would have to be worth closer to four million. She said, “Let me get this clear. The toothfish should never have been caught. That they were caught is a violation of the law and of what good fishermen are trying to do to save the ocean and make up for how they fished in the past. And this is Mathews’s fault?”

“All the Mathewses,” Buddy said, and now Buddy began to get angry.

Easy, holding back, but angry just the same, added, “Maybe it was American fishermen, maybe not.”

Their anger had taken on personal intensity, and because she was the one in front of the anger, Carol was starting to get angry back. When she realized that, she looked down at Easy’s boots and remembered those boots beside her that first night when she was on her hands and knees after Remy had told her she was out. She also remembered how she’d come to feel about Easy since then.

Besides which, she was a businesswoman and she could deal with a little heat.

“Whatever the last fish is worth,” Easy said, “the Mathewses are going to find someone to go get it for them at a cost they can make money off of. After that, they start another business. Strip-mine the last of the shore and then develop it for second homes. When that’s done, go into asbestos.”

Carol, all common sense and business, love aside, said, “Mathews broke the law, apparently, but you’re starting to make me feel like if I run a fish business, at the end of the day I’m wading through my own sewage just like Mathews.” Which came out sounding harder than she meant, but they were coming at her.

Buddy said, as full-on angry now as if Carol were Mathews’s right hand, “He was here, watching our days get cut, watching the fleet lose its boats and our kids take jobs in cubicles off the island. Meanwhile, he’s buying fish nobody is allowed to catch. It’s a fish outside our waters, but we’ve got plenty of illegal fish inside our waters, and we forfeit our boats if we catch them.”

Easy looked almost as if he could take a swing. He said, “We’re going to give this fish for charity or we’re going to kill Mathews with it,” and he looked hard at Carol. Still hard, he said, “We are not going to keep it.”

Carol said, “We are going to keep it. I’m going to keep it.” She knew what she was saying, and not just about the fish. She was telling Easy, the man she still had not kissed nearly enough, that she had other priorities. She’d be heartbroken in an hour or however long it took, but she’d say it again.

And she wasn’t just thinking about her own invested savings. Every year of her life was in this company, the two million belonged to the company, and the company needed it. It was a fact that at least once a week she imagined herself among the legions of men and women she had fired. She hadn’t gone in, and brought everybody else in, on a whim. If the business took too much longer than they’d hoped to get traction, at that point, two million dollars could mean everything. Carol believed Easy would understand eventually. It shouldn’t have to be heartbreak between Easy and her company, Easy
or
her company.

Buddy said, “You’re going to keep it?”

Annette had come back among them and heard most of it.

As Dave Parks jogged to them, he called, “Two million. No shit. But okay, who do we give it to? Start with the Coast Guard?”

“She’s keeping it,” Easy said. He said it and aimed it at her. “Dirty fish and dirty money and let the jerks go free.”

At that, Carol damn near told him to hell.

“You’re going to keep it?” Parks said.

Easy turned his back on the conversation. He looked away between the buildings at a slice of air over the harbor, and Carol felt the beginning of heartbreak, coming quicker than she’d have thought.

Buddy said, “We report the fish, and we say it was Mathews. Even if he’s got the records to protect him, we make him look like who he is. And we look like who we are.”

Easy didn’t turn around.

Parks said, “Carol, Buddy may be right. It’s a lot of money, but this is more sensitive than you know. The word will get out, and we’ll be sleazebags. We don’t want our new brand to say sleazebag. A lot of people in this town and down the coast, throughout the business, have been hurt by the restrictions. If we can say we’re turning over illegal catch, if we can say we’ve got a real enough business that we can take the high road, it’s going to make a difference. We’re starting out and we’re the little guy, but especially with what you just added in, we have the reserves to wait to be sleazebags until we’re the big guy. Look at your investors. They don’t want money from wiping out a species. I don’t want it, and I’m not even a fisherman. Let’s advertise it, Carol. Let’s brand it. We’re the company of the new fisherman, farming the ocean honestly and sustainably.”

Carol concentrated on Parks. She heard him. She was doing what she had to do. She was doing her job. She said, “Fair enough, Dave.” Then she turned to Annette.

Annette said, “We don’t know if we’ll make it, and we took money from people who can’t afford to lose money. If the fish could swim, I would put them back in the water. Everybody we know is in this company, and some of them don’t have jobs. They’re our responsibility now. How we feel and how we look doesn’t matter if we fail. Excuse me, Dave.”

Buddy looked over the roof of the plant at a cloud of screaming gulls.

Carol said, “Thank you, Annette. For a moment, I’d almost managed to forget about the town money.”

Parks said, “No need to excuse, Annette. We’re having a meeting. We all say our piece, and Carol makes a decision.”

Carol knew where Parks, Buddy, and Easy were coming from, and she believed that what Annette said might have the best chance of changing their minds. She did not believe Baxter would have to go through Annette’s logic; Baxter, she was sure, would see that two million and pick it up before anyone else could blink.

She said to Parks, “Can we place it? Can what’s left of our marketing department sell what we’ve got here? Our Chilean sea bass?”

Parks said, “Mathews would have fed it out a little at a time, and he would have had buyers lined up. We don’t have those buyers lined up, and we don’t have the logistics in place to slip out bits and pieces. If we try to sell in bulk, or if we put the word out to sell piecemeal, by the second day of trying to move this volume of illegal catch, some agency is going to be here suspending further sales until everything checks out. If Mathews did his fake books well enough, which he wouldn’t have had to do if he knew his buyers, maybe we can hope to sell it all, but who knows how long that will take? In the best version, it’ll get ugly and we’ll get covered in mud, not to mention legal costs.”

The cloud of gulls was moving away, following something, and Buddy watched them. Easy didn’t move.

Annette said, “Buddy, your mother and her Wives of the Sea could sell those fish in an hour. And they would love to do it. And they’re as much fishing people as you and Easy. After it’s all sold, if anybody asks, we can say, truthfully, that we came by the fish honestly and that along with the fish we found books justifying the plant’s original purchase of them.”

Carol thought about the local fishermen’s club and the diner, both named for Christ’s fisherman, and it went back further than that. It went back to people nourishing themselves and their communities since the beginning of time. Buddy and Easy were standing up for oceans that had once seemed eternal, and for a way of life that had seemed equally eternal—and they were standing up against their own practical well-being. The new company Buddy and Easy had just invested in was nothing close to a sure thing, and the Patagonian toothfish could absolutely determine whether or not they lost everything. It was hard not to admire their integrity, and Carol did admire it.

She said to Annette, “Call Anna Rose and tell her and the Wives of the Sea to sell it all, and get immediate payment. If she has to give up on price to get payment, do it.”

Annette still had the phone, and turned away to dial.

Carol said to Parks, “We start the first line in three days? Is that right?”

She knew it was right. She asked to find out if he was still on the team.

He said, “Everything’s on schedule. And I wanted to tell you that what’s left of marketing, which is a kid who used to work at the Chamber, is excited about cheese breading, a pizza-fish thing. Really, he’s got some schools interested. He’s thinking about prisons. He may be an asset, this kid.”

She said, “I love the pizza-fish idea, Dave. I’ll go to the schools with him, if you’ll do the prisons. Annette, keep me posted on Anna Rose.”

Then she turned and walked away from everyone. She walked away from Easy.

If she needed the two million dollars and didn’t have it, if the company went under, she’d have to go back to shutting places and firing people, and she didn’t even know if she could get hired for that again. Who would she be then? Not a CEO and not an undertaker. She tried to imagine Easy, standing behind her, but she could only see Dominic whom she’d loved from her hair to her toes and lost before anything. Since then she’d learned that she could live without love. Yet now, here was Easy, and it was as if she hadn’t learned anything at all.

She kept walking. She had to keep walking.

Behind her, Parks sang just loud enough for her to hear, “There she goes.”

Under her breath, Carol said, “Screw you, Parks.” She walked away by herself and held her stomach. She’d chosen her company. She’d never have another chance.

Named Beauty

E
asy turned around. She was walking away. He looked at Buddy, and Buddy looked back like he was thinking what a jerk Easy had been. Easy felt like he had said what had to be said, which he would say again in a heartbeat, and which, if you got down to it, he had not nearly said in the way he would have said to Mathews. With Mathews, it would have gotten beyond language. With Carol, he had only turned up the volume.

Easy told himself to come up for air. He liked that Carol was good at what she did. Maybe he even liked that she did what she had to do when it wasn’t what he wanted. He was pretty sure he liked her, almost loved her, regardless of what she figured out about toothfish. He had started to think she felt the same way. He wondered if he wanted her to love him so much that she’d forget about her company.

Easy saw Carol MacLean walking away from him, and he called, “Beauty,” and it came out a whisper. He called, “Carol.”

She heard him. She walked away faster. She had business; she always had business—he admired that, but he believed what she was doing right now was leaving him, and god-damned Parks kept humming.

He said, “Jesus, Dave.”

Parks said, “Jesus yourself, Easy. What’s the matter with you? That’s your girl.”

Easy yelled, “Beauty!” and ran after her. He ran scared.

He’d run after Angie after she died. He hadn’t been able to stop himself. He couldn’t stop himself now either. He didn’t want to stop. He should have started running after Carol the night he first saw her.

He ran so fast, he went past her and had to stop and then had to jog to stay beside her, because she could walk that fast. That was one more sweet thing about her. He could tell her that. He knew she had noticed him, but she was acting like she hadn’t. He laughed because she wasn’t going to laugh, and laughing was what Angie had taught him of love. He said, “I hope you weren’t listening to Parks.”

He didn’t expect she’d look at him, and he was sure she wouldn’t say anything, but he kept along next to her so she’d understand that he was going to keep it up.

Since he could only keep it up for so long before they got into the plant, he stepped in front of her and spread his arms so she had to stop and look at him. It had been a long time since he’d wished he was handsome, but he wished it now, not that he thought it would have made a difference.

He said, “Parks was singing that at me. You were leaving, and I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t getting it. He’s guessed that I like you, and he was telling me that, “There she goes,” and if I liked you, I’d better run after you.”

She moved to go around him, and he stood in front of her again.

He said, “You think I can’t accept a decision? I’m a captain. I drive a sizable boat and run a crew. I take responsibility for that boat and those people, and if those people don’t do what I say, the boat’s in trouble. You drive this company. I respect that.”

That wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all. Or it wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was what Parks had guessed.

She looked past him and said, “Right now I’ve got carpenters framing the lunchroom and setting in lockers.” She was beautiful outdoors, not that she wasn’t beautiful indoors.

He said, “I’m sorry I sounded angry. I was angry, but not at you. You were there, so it came at you. I was a jerk to you, and I’m crazy sorry for that. I ain’t happy about the toothfish, but it’s your decision, and it’s done. I’m at my oar.” And that wasn’t what he meant to say either.

She said, “Thank you, Easy,” and moved to go around him again, slower though, a good sign. He could walk and keep up beside her.

“You know what this means?” he said.

He wondered if she thought because he was still angry at her and she was angry at him that there was no going back. He’d never been angry at her, though he knew he’d sounded that way. Then Parks had started singing. It wouldn’t be hard at all to tell Carol that she meant more to him than toothfish.

Carol said, “Tell me what it means, Easy.”

He said, sounding as sure of himself as he could, “Finding the toothfish means we can afford to take a day off.”

It was a Friday morning. He had the boat cleaned up, and they were supposed to go to dinner. He bet she’d forgotten about that. He said, “And dinner. Remember?”

She said, “You expect me to believe Parks was singing at you?”

“Of course he was. He wouldn’t needle you like that.” Easy took a deep breath. This was what he had to say, and he said it so she’d have to understand. “Parks gets it how much I like you.”

He took hold of her arm with both of his hands. She didn’t pull her arm away. He said, “Once you open the doors of that place, we won’t have another chance for months.”

Easy was ready for her to tell him to let go, but he had to hold on. They were at the door into the plant and he turned her away and kept on walking.

He said, “I want you to take the day on my boat. You should know, in your business, how a stern dragger drives.”

They walked all the way around to his boat without either of them saying anything more. He kept both his hands on her arm as if she might run away, and he looked at her the whole time.

He let go for the climb down onto his boat and up again into the pilothouse. She followed. It wasn’t anything difficult, but he was glad she had on flat shoes. Then when she was up in the pilothouse, he found himself wondering why she didn’t ever wear high heels. She had nice legs, even in her suits with pants.

He started the engine and untied and backed out. She stood beside him at his wheel.

When you first pulled into the inner harbor and shut down and the air was still, the smell of fish could be strong, but the guys had hosed down, and he and Carol would soon be to the outer harbor. He feathered his engines and played the wheel. It was something he did every day, short radius changes of direction, the slides, but Carol was watching closely, and he remembered picking up that she was a car person, or had been as a kid. So he took his boat into the channel for the thousandth time and felt like he was showing off.

It was a beautiful day. Briny wind, the sky as blue as God, the sides of the cabin open, and already they were to the outer harbor. He throttled up, and he could tell she was listening to the good engines that he had in the boat and that he kept good. Easy always liked what he did, but it was work, and when you were working, you took things for granted. Today, he felt like Carol would feel, the boat underfoot and the water carrying the boat.

She looked past him at the mansions of the richest summer people, along the shore of Eastern Point. She stood close enough that their elbows were firm against one another. There wasn’t any kind of swell, no roll to the boat, but maybe she wanted to be ready, and he wasn’t going to argue. He liked having her near.

She looked through his salted windshield, squinting into the glare off the water. Ahead was the breakwater, and outside, the ocean rolled with swells. They weren’t big, but Easy wasn’t going to take her outside anyhow.

She looked at him now. She seemed about to say something important but she didn’t say it; she just looked.

So he said, to his windshield in his pilothouse, “When I was a kid, I joined the Army, and they sent me to the South. I followed a girl to the Mississippi coast, and we got married and were happy head to toe, and she died with our baby giving birth. Long time since. That’s the only other woman I ever felt this way about.”

He hadn’t planned to say that about Angie, but he believed it was the kind of thing people who loved one another talked about. He realized he’d also pretty much told Carol that he loved her, not just liked but loved, and he hadn’t planned that either, though he felt as if he’d been trying to say it all morning.

He glanced over at Carol. She was staring at him as hard as if her life depended on it, but she looked deaf.

“Oh no,” he said. “Stand outside on the deck. Hold to the rail.”

She didn’t move. She mumbled about liking his cabin, but she was looking again at the swells beyond the breakwater.

He spun his wheel, and the boat turned in a slow, weighted slide to aim back toward town. Then he got her out of the pilothouse. She didn’t have time to make much of a mess on his deck, a deck that had seen a lot worse messes. Most of it went over the rail, and she said, “I’m sorry.”

Easy held her with one arm all the way around her waist. With his other hand he kept her hair clear. He liked holding her, but he could think of better times to do it. He wasn’t going to blame her that she got seasick. It happened. But it was as if he’d never told her he loved her.

She retched, and he braced her sideways against his leg and his hip. She hung over the rail and asked in a tiny voice, “Who’s steering?”

He should tell her again, just say it, but probably not now. It couldn’t be good to say you love somebody while she’s vomiting, though that was probably better than telling her and having her vomit as soon as she heard.

Still holding to the rail, she stood up and looked down herself. It was on her shoes.

He couldn’t possibly tell her now. He handed her the handkerchief from his back pocket. It was clean. He said, “You may need some new shoes.” He said it in fun, to distract her. He’d had sick people on the boat, out for day rides. Sometimes a joke helped. “Does this mean you don’t like cruising on a ninety-two-foot Elizabeth Island stern dragger?”

She said, “I’m fine.”

She wiped her mouth and couldn’t seem to decide what to do with the handkerchief, so she threw it over the side. He didn’t care about the handkerchief, but he said, “Why don’t you throw the shoes, too. Come on. Get some new shoes.”

She said, “I should get back to work.”

He drove the boat and she waited for shore.

He tried to help her get off, and she shrugged him away. When she was off, she looked and saw, for the first time he guessed, the name of the boat.

She said, “Your boat is named
Beauty
.”

“If that’s what it says.”

He was mad, and he sounded mad, and that wasn’t fair to her. She was the one who’d thrown up; she was supposed to get mad, not him. She was walking away again, and he had to run after her again and begin all over. He wanted to. He didn’t blame her for walking off. He tied the boat in a hurry, terrified he wouldn’t catch her.

He ran after her shouting, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” wishing he could say, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”