Stern Men (33 page)

“I’ll probably have a boy,” Rhonda said, tipsily.

Rhonda was drunk, as usual. Drunk in a charming way, as usual, as though she were a young girl and this was the first alcohol she had ever tasted. Drunk like
wheee!
“I’ll probably have another boy, Mary, so you have to have a girl. Did you feel it when you got pregnant?”

“I don’t think so,” Mary said.

“I feel it every time. It’s like
click!
And this one’s a boy. I can always tell. And yours is going to be a girl. I’ll bet it’s a girl! How about that? When she grows up, she can marry one of my boys! And we can be
related!
” Rhonda nudged Mary so hard, she almost knocked her over.

“We’re already related,” Mary said. “Through Len and Kitty.”

“You’re going to like having a baby,” Rhonda said. “It’s the funnest thing.”

But it wasn’t the funnest thing, not for Mary. She got stuck on the island for the delivery, and it was a living nightmare. Her husband couldn’t take the screaming and all the women around, so he went fishing and left her to deliver the baby without his help. It was a cruel act on many levels. There had been bad storms all week, and none of the other men on the island had dared to put out their boats. On this day, Stan and his terrified sternman set out alone. He’d prefer to risk his life, it seemed, than help his wife or even listen to her pain. He’d been expecting a boy, but he was polite enough to conceal his disappointment when he came home from fishing and met his little girl. He didn’t get to hold her at first, because Senator Simon Addams was there, hogging the baby.

“Oh, isn’t she the dearest little baby?” Simon said, again and again, as the women laughed at his tenderness.

“What should we name her?” Mary asked her husband, quietly. “Do you like the name Ruth?”

“I don’t care what you name her,” Stan Thomas said, of his daughter, who was only an hour old. “Name her whatever you like, Mint.”

“Do you want to hold her?” Mary asked.

“I have to wash up,” he said. “I smell like a bait bag.”

What say you to a ramble among the fairy rock pools, weed-covered ledges, and gem-decked parterres bordering the gardens of the sea?

—
Crab, Shrimp, and Lobster Lore
W. B. Lord 1867

 

 

 

 

JULY ARRIVED for Fort Niles. It was now the middle of the summer of 1976. It wasn’t as exciting a month as it might have been.

The Bicentennial passed on Fort Niles without any outstanding revelry. Ruth thought she lived in the only place in America that wasn’t getting its act together for a decent celebration. Her dad even went out to haul that day, although, out of some patriotic stirring, he gave Robin Pommeroy the day off. Ruth spent the holiday with Mrs. Pommeroy and her two sisters. Mrs. Pommeroy had tried to sew costumes for them all. She wanted the four of them to dress up as Colonial dames and march in the town parade, but she’d managed to finish only Ruth’s costume by the morning of the Fourth, and Ruth refused to dress up alone. So Mrs. Pommeroy put the costume on Opal, and baby Eddie immediately vomited all over it.

“The dress looks more authentic now,” Ruth said.

“He was eating pudding this morning,” Opal said, shrugging. “Pudding always makes Eddie barf.”

There was a short parade up Main Street, but there were more people in the parade than there were people to watch it. Senator Simon Addams recited the Gettysburg Address from memory, but he always recited the Gettysburg Address from memory, given any opportunity. Robin Pommeroy set off some cheap fireworks sent to him by his brother Chester. He burned his hand so severely that he would be unable to go fishing for two weeks. This made Ruth’s father angry enough to fire Robin and hire a new sternman, Duke Cobb’s ten-year-old grandson, who was skinny and weak as a third-grade girl and, unhelpfully, scared of lobsters. But the kid came cheap.

“You could’ve hired
me,
” Ruth told her father. She sulked about it for a while, but she didn’t really mean it, and he knew that.

So the month of July was almost passed, and then one afternoon Mrs. Pommeroy received a most unusual telephone call. The call came from Courne Haven Island. It was Pastor Toby Wishnell on the line.

Pastor Wishnell wanted to know whether Mrs. Pommeroy would be available to spend a day or two on Courne Haven. It seemed there was to be a big wedding on the island, and the bride had confided to the pastor that she was concerned about her hair. There were no professional hairdressers on Courne Haven. The bride wasn’t young anymore, and she wanted to look her best.

“I’m not a
professional
hairdresser, Pastor,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

Pastor Wishnell said that was quite all right. The bride had hired a photographer from Rockland, at considerable cost, to document the wedding, and she wanted to look pretty for the pictures. She was relying on the pastor to help her out. It was a strange request to be made to a pastor, Toby Wishnell readily admitted, but he had received stranger ones. People expected their pastors to be fonts of information on all manner of subjects, Pastor Wishnell told Mrs. Pommeroy, and this lady was no exception. The pastor explained, further, that this bride felt somewhat more entitled than others to ask the pastor so unusual and personal a favor, because she was a Wishnell. She was actually Pastor Wishnell’s second cousin, Dorothy Wishnell, known as Dotty. Dotty was to marry Fred Burden’s oldest son, Charlie, on July 30.

In any case, the pastor went on, he had mentioned to Dotty that there was a gifted hair stylist right over on Fort Niles. That, at least, was what he had heard from Ruth Thomas. Ruth Thomas had told him that Mrs. Pommeroy was quite good with hair. Mrs. Pommeroy told the pastor that she was really nothing special, that she’d never been to
school
or anything.

The pastor said, “You’ll do fine. And another thing . . .” Apparently, Dotty, having heard that Mrs. Pommeroy was so good at styling hair, wondered whether Mrs. Pommeroy would also cut the groom’s hair. And the best man’s, if she didn’t mind. And the hair of the maid of honor, the mother of the bride, the father of the bride, the flower girls, and some members of the groom’s family. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble. And, said Pastor Wishnell, while he was thinking of it, he could use a little trim himself.

“Since the professional photographer who is coming is known to be expensive,” the pastor continued, “and since almost everyone on the island will be at the wedding, they want to look their best. It’s not often that a professional photographer comes here. Of course, the bride will pay you well. Her father is Babe Wishnell.”

“Ooh,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, impressed.

“Will you do it, then?”

“That’s a whole lot of haircuts, Pastor Wishnell.”

“I can send Owney to pick you up in the
New Hope,
” the pastor said. “You can stay here as long as you are needed. It might be a nice way for you to make some extra money.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever cut so much hair at once. I don’t know that I could do it all in one day.”

“You could bring a helper.”

“May I bring one of my sisters?”

“Certainly.”

“May I bring Ruth Thomas?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked.

This gave the pastor a moment’s pause. “I suppose so,” he said, after a cool beat. “If she’s not too busy.”

“Ruth?
Busy?
” Mrs. Pommeroy found this idea hilarious. She laughed out loud, right into the pastor’s ear.

 

At that very moment, Ruth was down at Potter Beach with Senator Simon Addams again. She was beginning to be depressed when she spent time down there, but she didn’t know what else to do with herself. So she continued to stop at the beach a few hours every day to keep the Senator company. She also liked to keep an eye on Webster, for the sake of Mrs. Pommeroy, who constantly worried about her oldest, strangest boy. And she also went there because it was difficult to talk with anyone else on the island. She couldn’t very well hang out with Mrs. Pommeroy
all
the time.

Not that watching Webster dig in the mud was still fun. It was painful and sad to watch. He’d lost all his grace. He floundered. He was searching for that second tusk as if he was both dying to find it and terrified of finding it. Ruth thought Webster might sink down in the mud one day and never show up again. She wondered whether that was, in fact, his plan. She wondered whether Webster Pommeroy was plotting the world’s most awkward suicide.

“Webster needs a purpose in life,” the Senator said.

The thought of Webster Pommeroy seeking a purpose in life depressed Ruth Thomas even more. “Isn’t there anything else you can have him do with his time?”

“What else, Ruth?”

“Isn’t there something he can do for the museum?”

The Senator sighed. “We have everything we need for the museum, except a building. Until we get that, there’s nothing we can do. Digging in the mud, Ruth, is what he’s good at.”

“He’s not so good at it anymore.”

“He’s having some trouble with it now, yes.”

“What are you going to do if Webster finds the other tusk? Throw another elephant in there for him?”

“We’ll take that as it comes, Ruth.”

Webster hadn’t found anything good in the mudflats lately. He hadn’t turned up anything other than a lot of junk. He did find an oar, but it wasn’t an old oar. It was aluminum. (“This is
magnificent!
” the Senator had raved to Webster, who looked frantic when he handed it over. “What a
rare oar
this is!”) Also, Webster had uncovered a vast number of single boots under the mud, and single gloves, kicked and and tossed off by years of lobstermen. And bottles, too. Webster had found a lot of bottles in recent days, and not old ones. Plastic laundry detergent bottles. He hadn’t, though, found anything worth all the time spent in that cold, loose mud. He looked thinner and more anxious every day.

“Do you think he’ll die?” Ruth asked the Senator.

“I hope not.”

“Could he snap completely and kill somebody?”

“I don’t think so,” the Senator said.

On the day Pastor Wishnell called Mrs. Pommeroy, Ruth had already been at Potter Beach with the Senator and Webster for several hours. She and the Senator were looking at a book, a book Ruth had purchased for the Senator at a Salvation Army store in Concord a month earlier. She’d given it to him as soon as she returned from visiting her mother, but he hadn’t yet read it. He said he was finding it difficult to concentrate because he was so concerned about Webster.

“I’m sure it’s a super book, Ruth,” he said. “Thanks for bringing it down here today.”

“Sure,” she said. “I saw it sitting on your porch, and I thought you might want to look at it. You know, if you got bored or something.”

The book was called
Hidden Treasure: How and Where to Find It. A Finder’s Guide to the World’s Missing Treasures.
It was something that, under normal circumstances, would have brought the Senator all sorts of excitement.

“You
do
like it?” Ruth asked.

“Oh, yes, Ruth. It’s a swell book.”

“Are you learning anything?”

“Not too much, Ruth, to be honest. I haven’t finished it. I was expecting a little more information from the author, to tell you the truth. You’d think from the title,” Senator Simon said, turning the book over in his hands, “that the author would tell you how to find specific treasures, but she doesn’t give much information about that. So far, she says that if you do find anything, it’s an accident. And she gives some examples of people who got lucky and found treasures when they weren’t looking for anything. That doesn’t seem to me like much of a system.”

“How far have you read?”

“Just the first chapter.”

“Oh. I thought you might like it because of the nice color illustrations. Lots of photographs of lost treasures. Did you see those? Did you see those pictures of the Fabergé eggs? I thought you’d like those.”

“If there are photographs of the objects, Ruth, then they aren’t really lost. Now, are they?”

“Well, Senator, I see what you mean. But the photographs are pictures of lost treasures that regular people already found, on their own. Like that guy who found the Paul Revere goblet. Did you get to that part yet?”

“Ah, not yet,” the Senator said. He was shading his eyes and looking out over the mudflats. “I think it’s going to rain. I hope it doesn’t, because Webster won’t come in when it rains. He’s already got a terrible cold. You should hear his chest rattle.”

Ruth took the book from the Senator. She said, “I saw a part in here—where is it? It says a kid found a marker in California that Sir Francis Drake left. It was made of iron, and it claimed the land as belonging to Queen Elizabeth. It had been there for, like, three centuries.”

“Isn’t that something?”

Ruth offered the Senator a stick of chewing gum. He refused it, so she chewed it herself. “The author says the greatest site of buried treasure anywhere in the world is on Cocos Island.”

“That’s what your book says?”

“It’s
your
book, Senator. I was thumbing through it when I was coming back from Concord and I saw that thing about Cocos Island. The author says Cocos Island is a real bonanza for people looking for buried treasure. She says Captain James Cook stopped at Cocos Island all the time with loot. The great circumnavigator!

“The great circumnavigator.”

“So did the pirate Benito Bonito. So did Captain Richard Davis and the pirate Jean Lafitte. I thought you’d be interested . . .”

“Oh, I am interested, Ruth.”

“You know what I thought you’d be interested in? About Cocos Island, I mean? The island is only about as big as Fort Niles. How about
that?
Wouldn’t that be ironic? Wouldn’t you be right at home there? And with all that buried treasure to find. You and Webster could go there and dig it up together. How about that, Senator?”