The Lobster Kings (19 page)

“No, dickwad,” Petey said, “build a fire like this. But do it on the beach. Bring down a cooler of beers, a few chairs, maybe get Kenny to bring down his guitar, and have a get-together.” He laughed. “Any left in there?”

Chip reached down in the cooler again and pulled out a can of beer. “What do you think? Were they all high?” Chip asked. He tossed the beer softly to Petey, who fumbled it before pulling it in to his chest with both hands.

“Thanks, man,” Petey said, and then pulled open the tab. “Beats the fuck out of me, but yeah, I sort of assume they were all high.”

“That guy is such a shitbag,” I said.

Petey raised his beer. “Here’s to dealing with problems the old-fashioned way.”

And that’s when we heard the shot.

I wish I could say that we sprang into action, or even that we were smart enough to drop to the ground or run away, but all five of us stood there dumbly, looking around. It couldn’t have been more than a second or two before Tony said, “Was that a gunshot?”

I looked over at Petey, and he was holding the can of beer out in front of him, staring at it like he wasn’t sure what exactly was in his can, and I noticed that a stream of beer was leaking out the bottom. He looked at me and then said, in a voice that seemed more amused than frightened, “They shot my beer.”

I heard the click of the safety and saw Chip pulling the bolt of his rifle back, but Timmy had already grabbed the barrel of the rifle and tilted it up before I turned. “You don’t want to kill anybody,” Timmy said.

“I sort of do.” Chip shook his head. “I can’t believe they shot a can of beer.”

“I’d bet that they were trying to shoot over our heads and just aren’t so good with a rifle,” Tony said. “Actually, that’s not so reassuring. Let’s get out of here.”

“You know,” I said, as we turned to start moving down the
driveway, “I’m kind of impressed at how calm we’re being about this.” I reached down to grab a couple of beers for the road, and that’s when I heard Eddie’s voice calling, “Get out of here, you cunt.”

I didn’t think about it. I just said, “Fuck it,” and then I pulled a log that was half eaten with flames from the fire. With one motion, I spun and swung it hard toward Eddie’s house.

The burning log landed on the porch and sent up a shower of sparks.

“Yeah,” Tony said with the sort of wryness that sounded like he’d been expecting me to do it, “that’s calmness at its best.”

“Guess we’re burning them out tonight,” Chip said, clearly gleeful, and he was already reaching into the fire himself, swearing when he caught an ember, before grabbing the unburnt end of another log and chucking it onto the roof of Eddie’s house.

There’s not a lot more to it than that. By the time the other guys had thrown a few more burning logs I was laughing, and then we took off, running away from there as the house went up in flames. I’m not proud that I laughed at it—I think I was laughing more from the stress of it than anything else—and I’d like to think that if Nelly and the baby had been in the house instead of just Eddie and his buddies, I wouldn’t have done it, but at the time, it was exhilarating.

I
’d showered before bed, and I showered again in the morning, but I could still smell the smoke on me. I took a book and went to the diner for breakfast, but other than a few sideways looks from some of the older fishermen, nobody said a word about Eddie Glouster or the fire. I was finishing up my hash browns when Tony slid into the booth across from me. He leaned forward, his voice quiet.

“Gone,” he said.

“Gone?”

“The early ferry. All of them.”

I squeezed some more ketchup onto my plate and dipped a forkful of potatoes. “Eddie?”

“All of them,” Tony said. He looked around furtively, but nobody was paying attention. “Ain’t nothing left but a pile of smoke and char.”

“Stupid,” I said. I took a sip of my coffee. I saw Helen coming toward me with the coffeepot, but I waved her off. “We were stupid. That could have gone south.”

“What we were was right,” Tony said. “You should have seen yourself. Woody would have been proud.”

A bit of the hash browns got caught in my throat and I gave a cough. Would he? Would Daddy be proud? I wasn’t looking forward to telling him what had happened.

Tony reached across and tapped the back of my hand. “Chip and I,” he said, “we owe you. You did good, Cordelia. You took care of things like Woody would have. Trash like that doesn’t belong on Loosewood Island.”

He pulled his hand back and then picked at the skin around his thumb. He looked away from me and sank lower into his seat.

“Something else?”

He put his hands down on the bench and straightened up, but he still wouldn’t look at me. “Kenny.”

I knew what he was going to say, but I asked anyway. “Kenny, what?”

“Kenny was on the ferry, too. Had two big bags with him.”

I was staring at Tony, but I was glad that he was looking at anything but me. I don’t think he would have believed my words if he had seen my face. “I know. He’s taking a little time.”

Tony nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Just so you know.” He lifted himself out of the booth, reached over to bounce his fingers off the top of my hand again, and then walked out.

I took a sip from my coffee even though it had gone cold. I had to do something to give myself a second. Kenny.

I checked my watch. It was late enough for school to have started, for Rena to be at the fish shop. I needed to talk to her. I dug some cash out of my jacket pocket and dumped it on the table.

The fish shop wasn’t officially open in the off-season, but I knew Rena would be in there, either doing the books or playing on her computer: she’d gotten involved in an online knitting community and spent a couple of hours each day chatting with ladies on the forums.

As I wiped my feet and pulled off my jacket, I was surprised to be greeted by my nephew, Fatty. Fatty had just turned six, and his name isn’t Fatty; if anything, he looks skin and bones, though
I’d seen him knock away plenty of chicken nuggets and fries when he put his mind to it.

Back when Rena had Fatty, he’d come as a surprise. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that she was having a baby so much as a surprise that she was having
two
babies. Even the doctor was surprised at the twins, which led Daddy to comment that maybe Rena and Tucker needed a better doctor. When they were born—a boy and a girl, a perfect pair—all Tucker had said was, “Well, I’ll be painted with herring. We’re going to need another crib.” I don’t know what the hell “painted with herring” means, but I can guess what Tucker thought it meant. It was just Tucker’s way of trying to impress Daddy, saying something that sounded vaguely like a lobsterman might say it. I suppose being surprised like that—and make no mistake, getting an extra baby
is
a surprise—can make you say some strange things. Tucker’s become a decent lobsterman in his own right these past five years.

He and Daddy have a complicated relationship. Daddy isn’t exactly easy to please, and he’s been happy with Tucker on the boat. Things can be different on land, however. There was a spell when Daddy was talking like it would be Tucker taking over the business instead of me, but then Rena and Tucker hit a bit of a rough patch in their marriage. Daddy didn’t pry too much, but it was enough to end the talk of Tucker being slipped in as the heir to the Kings. It left some bruises, though, both with me and with Tucker, and I wondered how Daddy and Tucker would fare on a boat with Carly’s girlfriend thrown in the mix. It was going to be a sight to see Stephanie, Tucker, and Daddy together on the
Queen Jane
.

Tucker and Rena had named the twins Johnny and Mary. Johnny after Tucker’s dad, who lived in California, where Tucker had grown up, and Mary after Momma. You could see Daddy wasn’t sure how to take the name of his granddaughter, and he did what he usually did, which was to pretend there wasn’t anything to it. Still, he never called Mary by her name. He called her Guppy from minute one, and once he started, it took off with
everybody on the Island. Even Tucker and Rena were calling her Guppy before the first month was out. Johnny, however, got his nickname later.

Daddy had opened the fish shop even before the twins were born, and he’d given over the running of it to Rena when she returned to the island. When the kids were still too young for school they spent most of their time up there with her, and had their run of the place. During the summer Fatty was three, we had a real heater—ninety degrees for three weeks on end—and there wasn’t a building on Loosewood Island set out with air-conditioning. Guppy was her usual sweet self, but Fatty had been a high holy terror, screaming anytime his mommy or daddy, or even when I, who was always his favourite, tried to get him into a set of clothes, even just underwear. So after a few days of this, Rena gave up.

“Let him walk around with his dick flapping away,” she said. “What’s the difference? The kid’s three, it’s hot enough to melt an iceberg, and if some tourist gets his pants in a bunch because Johnny’s not wearing clothes, well, they can buy their fish somewhere else.”

There wasn’t anywhere else, of course, and nobody complained. But each and every time somebody came into the shop, Johnny came running out yelling, “Look at my belly! I’m a fatty!” It was both horrifying and hilarious, and of course, lobstermen being lobstermen—which is to say, maybe not as aware of the niceties of things—the name Fatty had stuck. At six, he’d turned into a sweet kid, finally matching Guppy’s temperament, and when I looked up as he called my name I saw that he was sitting on the stool behind the counter, holding the
James Harbor Tide
. “You reading the newspaper?” I asked.

“Nah. Just looking at pictures.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school, Fatty?”

“I had a fever last night, so Mom kept me home today. I puked, too,” he said.

I hung my jacket up on the hooks behind the counter and
pulled him into a hug. I kissed his forehead, letting my lips linger on his skin like I was a mother myself. “Not too hot.”

“No,” he said. “Haven’t had a fever at all today.”

Rena stuck her head out of the back room and scowled. “Is it true?”

“You heard?” I meant about Kenny, because that’s why I’d come. I had to choke the words out, but that wasn’t what Rena meant.

“Of course. The fire’s all anybody’s talking about today. That and James Harbor making a play.”

Fatty looked up. “What fire?”

Rena stepped over to her son and stood behind him, resting her arms around his neck. She leaned down to him and said, in the same voice I sometimes recognized her using with Daddy when he started to get belligerent, “You want to run over to the coffee shop and pick up something sweet for you and Guppy to split when she gets home from school?” He jumped from the stool and was almost out the door when Rena called him to a halt and made him get a raincoat on.

“You involved in that fire, Cordelia?”

I wiggled my hand. “Something like that.”

“Daddy’s going to have a fit.”

“Daddy needs to understand that I can handle my own business,” I said. I went over to the cooler and pulled out a can of soda water.

“You going to pay for that?”

I popped the tab of the soda water. The hit of the bitter bubbles felt good. “Add it to my tab.”

Rena gave me the finger, but then she held out her hand. “Grab me one, will you?”

I handed her a can and then I leaned back against the glass door of the fridge. I looked down at my hands. My nails were chipped. I never bothered painting them during fishing season, but when the traps were out of the water I usually kept them neat. When I looked back up, Rena wasn’t drinking from her soda
water. She squinted at me and then said, “It’s something else, isn’t it? You didn’t come to talk about Eddie Glouster.”

“No,” I said, but I started with Eddie Glouster anyway. I told her everything that had happened the night before, and then I told her about Carly coming back to Loosewood Island, and then I told her about talking with Kenny and about Sally’s leaving.

“Shit,” Rena said. “I don’t feel strongly about Sally one way or the other—” I rolled my eyes and she said, “Come off it, Cordelia, she’s not
that
bad, and they had something once, and maybe they would have made a go of it somewhere other than the island. But that’s sure a crappy way for a husband to find out a marriage is over.”

“It’s hard, sure,” I said, “but don’t you think that maybe it’s for the best? I mean, I feel bad for Kenny. He looked like he’d taken a punch in the face, but they’ve been having problems from the jump.”

Rena pushed Fatty’s stool back to the counter, folded the newspaper, and closed the door to the back office. “Sometimes it’s worth working through things.”

She wasn’t talking about Kenny and Sally. I knew that. There’d been a rough stretch for her and Tucker, but they’d righted the ship.

Rena peered over my shoulder and out the window looking over the ocean and then glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Daddy’s back.”

I felt sick all of a sudden, like I did when I was a kid and Momma told me I was going to have to wait for Daddy to get home to give me a punishment. Whether or not it was the right thing to do, I wasn’t looking forward to explaining what had happened with Eddie Glouster. “He shouldn’t have been back until this afternoon,” I said.