The Lobster Kings (18 page)

I
tried calling over to Kenny’s a few times, but the phone rang through to voice mail. Finally I gave up and just watched television until it was time to head out and meet the boys. By then it was late enough—close to eleven—that the island had mostly gone dark. Fishermen are early risers, in season or not. There was an occasional breeze, enough that the stray hairs I didn’t have tucked in my ponytail wafted over my face, across my forehead, and the wind carried the cool of the water over me.

There aren’t enough roads on Loosewood Island for there to be back roads—every road is a back road—but Eddie Glouster lived on Coral Avenue, which led inland and away from the docks. The closest thing we had to the wrong side of the tracks. The house itself was set back down a rain-washed gravel drive, in a small hollow of trees and rocks. The moon came in three-quarters full, and the stars seemed to swell and sway the way they always did when the nights were clear, as if they were breathing in and out.

I met Chip, Tony, Timmy, and Petey near the Grumman Fish House. Chip was carrying a rifle. I looked at him and he shrugged, and neither of us said anything about it. In fact, for
the five minutes it took us to walk to the corner and down Coral Avenue we all stayed quiet, other than Petey’s occasional cough, a dry, short force of air that made it sound like he had the husk of a piece of popcorn caught in his throat. Our steps on the asphalt seemed heavy in the quiet of the island at night, and the only other sounds were the ocean—which you could hear from almost anywhere on the island—and the occasional float of voices and laughter coming from the direction we were walking.

The silence of the island was overbearing for some of the tourists who came from bigger cities, or even from smaller college towns, where there was always some sort of background noise. Inside a rental cottage it didn’t bother people: there was the hum of electricity, the refrigerator motor working to keep lobsters and chardonnay cold, the tick of the baseboard heaters kicking on, the echoes of breathing and movement coming off the walls and ceilings, breaking the silence. But at night, sitting on decks or walking on the beach, the absence of man-made sound seemed to collapse the darkness in a way that made some of the tourists jumpy, afraid that Loosewood Island was going to turn out to be the setting of a horror movie. Of course, the same silence, the same absences—no trains, no highway, no taxi drivers leaning on the horn, no broad-cover floodlights from parking lots erasing the stars, no neon signs leaking through the curtains—was one of the reasons tourists came here in the first place.

For islanders, however, the reverse is also true. We go to the cities for the things that we don’t have here—shopping, restaurants, theatres—and just for a chance to be somewhere else, to be
someone
else, for a few days, but also because of the closeness, the bustling hustle of people brushing your shoulder on the sidewalk, the crushed-together rides on the subway, the chance to be part of a crowd for once. It’s something I love a few times a year, despite which, the prospect of living full-time in a big city makes me shudder. There are some of the islanders who, like tourists who can’t handle the absence of man-made sounds at night, are
overwhelmed by the cities, the simple weight of so many people in one place. They shut down, withdraw to their hotel rooms, and come back to the island swearing they’ll never go to the city again.

That night, walking toward Eddie Glouster’s place, the quiet was reassuring, like a cocoon. With the sound of the ocean faded by distance, and with our footsteps on the asphalt, the stray voices coming from the direction of the Glousters’, it was easy to stay inside the moment, to stay with the idea that I was doing what I had to, that I was there because I was part of the island, and I had to excise a cancer.

We were all there for a reason: Chip and Tony because it was their sister; Timmy because his being black was enough to make him seem scary to Eddie and his crew; Petey because he
was
scary, a former wrestler and boxer, a hulk of muscle and meat that moved like he was always ready to pounce; and me because I’d do what needed being done to protect Loosewood Island. I suppose there were other people that Chip and Tony could have confided in, boys more their own age, but we were ones they knew they could count on.

When we came up to the driveway, the house itself was dark, but there was a bonfire going in the yard. I could see a half dozen people circled around the flames. One of the logs popped, and a few sparks drifted high into the air, going dark as they reached the canopy of the trees. We were maybe twenty paces back—close enough that I could see the people around the flames, four men and two women, but hidden in the darkness from Eddie and his fire-blinded friends—when Chip called out. One of the women startled a little, and the group quieted down, but Eddie stood up from the stump he’d been sitting on and came over to us. He moved with no particular hurry. Eddie had one of those closed-toe walks that I always associated with men who’d never been to sea; instead of staggering a little from side to side as he walked, he almost floated over the dirt. He had a beer in his hand, and when he came up to the five of us, he seemed like he’d been expecting a visit.

“Closed party tonight, boys,” he said. Then he lifted up his
beer and tipped the neck toward me. “She’s welcome to stay if she wants. Can never have too much pussy at a party.”

I could feel all four of the boys start to gather the beginning of the kind of energy that inevitably leads to punches, but I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

Chip looked at me, and it was as if, simply by laughing, I made some of the charge dissipate.

Eddie shifted back a step and then raised his beer but didn’t drink from it. “You think that’s funny?” Even with the light from the fire shifting and the shadows moving across him, I could see how he’d already started seeing the damage of too much beer and drugs etching lines on his face, and how in a few years he’d look hollowed out and only a woman as empty as him would be drawn in.

“Well, yeah, I guess I do think it’s funny,” I said. “When I heard you were dealing, I figured, well, let’s have a talk with Eddie, let’s see what’s going on, let’s see if he’s as much of a douche as he seems. What do you think, Eddie? Are you the kind of guy we can just have a conversation with?”

Eddie leaned over me. His breath was beery but also sort of sweet. “Fuck you.”

I put my hand up and lightly touched the scar high up on his cheek. “Yeah, I can see why Daddy busted you one in the eye.” I glanced at Chip. “Anybody who thinks that saying ‘You can never have too much pussy’ is a good way to actually get pussy doesn’t seem like somebody bright enough to get the point unless we spell it out for him.”

Eddie swatted my hand away. “And what’s your point?”

I could feel Chip, Tony, Timmy, and Petey edging closer to me.

“My point is that this is our island, and we don’t want you selling drugs to our kids.”

Eddie shook his head. “Jesus. You and your dad.” He pulled a can of beer out of the pocket of his sweatshirt. “Tell you what, why don’t you and your friends get the fuck off my property?”

The other men around the fire had come up behind Eddie, and while they didn’t seem much of anything—Eddie was by far the biggest of them, and none of them spent their days hauling lobster traps or working or doing much other than drinking beer and smoking meth—I suddenly regretted my bravado from a minute ago. I recognized one of the men, knew him as a James Harbor boy. Oswald Cornwall. I knew his brother more than I knew Oswald. His brother fished out of James Harbor, and was as decent a guy as came from that shithole of a town, but Oswald was already on his way to being a burnout. He’d done at least two stints in prison for cooking meth. He wasn’t exactly imposing, but I could hear Daddy’s voice in my head, telling me, like he’d told me before, that you should always try to avoid a fight if you can, and here I’d come in and basically stuck my hand in the wasps’ nest. The two women drifted over as well, lingering behind the group of four men, and I realized that, whatever I thought about the physical fitness of Eddie and his friends compared to Chip, Tony, Petey, Timmy, and me, pushing Eddie into a corner wasn’t the best strategy. Everybody always says that you need to stand up to a bully, that they can never take a punch, and whether or not that was true, the one thing that I knew was absolutely true was that if you take a bully and embarrass him in front of his cronies, sooner or later he’ll figure out how to hurt you. I wouldn’t have minded cutting him up a bit, and I’d already had my hand tucked back behind my hip, resting on my belt knife, but I forced myself to let my hands fall more naturally to my sides.

One of the women—she had her arms wrapped around herself like she was cold, despite the heavy sweatshirt she was wearing, the hood up and over her head—took another step forward, and then I recognized her as Eddie’s wife, Nelly. She was someone who you could tell had once been pretty, but it was as if she’d sunk into herself, faded out, and she looked both older and younger than the twenty-four or twenty-five she must have been. She touched Eddie on the shoulder, and as she did, I realized that the
other arm cradled a sleeping baby against her chest. Their daughter. “What’s going on, honey?” Nelly said.

“Take Cindy over to Marissa’s house,” he said, not even bothering to look at her.

“But I—”

“I said, take the fucking baby, and go to Marissa’s.” This time, Eddie glanced over his shoulder at Nelly, and she leaned away from him, like she half expected him to hit her. “Go on,” he said. The second woman tried to keep her face down, but it was too late. Even if Eddie wouldn’t have said her name, I recognized Marissa.

Nelly slouched over the baby and brushed past me, heading toward the lane. I grabbed Marissa’s arm, but didn’t say anything. Marissa was the kind of trash that washes up on the island every few years, and I knew that if she didn’t decide to move back to the mainland on her own, I was going to have a talk with her soon, to let her know it was time to wash away. Marissa didn’t struggle, but she didn’t look up at me, either, and I let go of her arm. We were all silent for a few seconds, listening to the sound of Nelly and Marissa’s footsteps on the gravel as the two women walked away.

Part of me felt bad for Nelly that Marissa was the best she could do for a friend on Loosewood Island, but there was a bigger part of me that wanted to laugh at Eddie again. I had to imagine that there was something good about Eddie, that maybe he was a doting father, in love with baby Cindy, or that alone with Nelly he was tender and compassionate. Maybe he was funny and warm with his friends, the sort of guy who was always available with his pickup truck when you needed to move a couch or a fridge, but standing there in his yard, the flames of the bonfire sucking in and then raising higher as the logs shifted, he seemed like an unredeemable, unrepentant dick. I wanted to see what he’d do, what sort of stupid thing he’d say next, and then I wanted us to just laugh and walk away, wanted to go get a beer with the boys and spend a couple of hours joking about how pathetic Eddie was.

I could feel Timmy sliding up beside me, and I don’t know if it was because we used to date or because I was already on edge, but without looking at him I could feel how twitchy he was, how small a provocation it was going to require for him to be the one to take the first swing. Which was the moment that Eddie chose to say, “What you staring at, nigger?”

Like I said, Eddie was a dick.

The amazing thing is that even after the quick scuffle and the few thrown punches, it didn’t escalate. I told Eddie that if he was on the island at sundown tomorrow, if he sold drugs to another kid on Loosewood, I’d have the boys pin him down while I personally cut his nuts out. Not surprisingly, Eddie’s reaction was to tell us to go fuck ourselves, but he and his buddies disappeared into his house.

Standing out by the fire, we could hear the music cranking up from inside of Eddie’s house, and I couldn’t help but think of their little girl, how she was screwed having Eddie for a father, and how maybe this was one kid who’d do better without both her parents in the picture. Petey spread his hands out in front of the fire and said, “You know, we ought to do this some nights.” There was a crest of blood on the knuckles of one of his hands, and it caught the glimmer of the fire.

“What?” Chip said. He planted the butt of his rifle at his feet and then leaned over the cooler that was next to the fire and flipped up the lid. “Get in fights? Threaten to cut somebody’s nuts off?” He pulled out a piece of ice and pressed it against his cheek.

As near as I could tell, he was the only one of our gang who’d actually gotten punched—Petey had definitely nailed one of Eddie’s friends, and I thought Timmy had clipped somebody—and Chip was going to have a bruise to show for it. Served him right, I thought, for bringing his rifle along in the first place. He was lucky that things hadn’t gotten to the point where he was tempted to use it. But then again, I could see how he thought that might send a certain message to Eddie, who seemed like the kind of guy who might take a hint better if it came at the end of a rifle’s barrel.