Seventeen Against the Dealer (6 page)

Half an hour later, she had the larch piled in the back of the truck, its projecting ends marked by a red cloth Ken had given her. She was using the hood of the truck as a tabletop, to write the check. “It's a good buy,” Ken told her. He'd grown a red beard over the summer and fall, which made him look like a modern-day Viking.

She couldn't quarrel with him. It was a bargain price he was giving her. “Except, of course, you've got no use for it and you don't want to have to store it,” she reminded him.

“So, you scratch my back and I scratch yours. Anything wrong with that?”

“Not by me,” she agreed, passing him the check. She'd worked for Ken one summer, and they got along fine. As she was turning to climb back into the truck, two men came into the lot. One of them, in a sheepskin jacket and heavy mittens, she knew—Jake Mitchell, she'd stitched sails for him the summer
before she worked for Ken. The other, in scuffed docksiders and jeans worn through at the knees, in a down vest over a flannel shirt, she'd never seen before. His clothing was pretty scrungy, but his face, even in the fading light, looked pinkly healthy, freshly shaved, and his hands had none of the thick calluses workingmen's hands had.

“I hoped we'd catch you before you went home, Ken,” Jake said. “Hey, hi, Dicey. How's it going?” he asked, but didn't wait for her to answer before introducing her. “Tad Hobart, Dicey Tillerman.”

“Call me Hobie,” the man said, smiling at her. He was old enough to be her grandfather, and Dicey wouldn't dream of calling him Hobie. He didn't even want her to, anyway. If she hadn't already noticed his cheeks and hands, she'd have figured him out from the way Ken and Jake stepped back, to let him take the lead. A lot of wealthy people who had to do with boats dressed like workmen; but they always had something about them to make sure you knew what they really were. This man, pulling back his sleeve to see the time, had a heavy gold watch. “We were going to get a drink. I've been looking at the sails Jake's making for me, and a beer was starting to sound pretty good. How about it, Ken? And you, too—I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name.”

Dicey shook her head. She wanted to get on back.

“Dicey's been slave labor for both of us,” Ken said. “She came to pick up some wood.”

“You're selling firewood now?” Mr. Hobart asked. “I know things are slow, but I didn't think they were that bad.”

“Dicey,” Ken said, in a mock confiding tone, “is going to become a boatbuilder.”

He didn't need to say it that way, as if she were about three years old. Mr. Hobart looked at her from under thick white
eyebrows, and smiled as if there were seven hundred things he knew, things that she'd never figure out. Dicey just stared right back at him.

“What kind of a boat are you going to build, Dicey?” Mr. Hobart asked.

“A pink one.”

It took him a minute, and then his smile came back. “Something in rose? Or more lavender?” Reluctantly, Dicey smiled, and he asked again, “What kind of boat? Seriously.”

“Just a fourteen-foot rowboat, one you could put a motor on if you wanted.”

He kept his eyes on her, as if they were playing poker. “Round-bottomed?”

She shook her head. “Flat. I've never built one on my own before.”

“Where did you learn how? Where'd you study?”

“Nowhere,” she said. She knew what he was thinking.

“What kind of wood did Ken give you?”

“I bought it,” she told him. She'd had about enough of this conversation, and she was tired of the way they kept looking at one another, like it was all a joke, and as if she couldn't see that. She turned around, to open the pickup door.

“Okay, okay,” Mr. Hobart said. “What kind of wood did you buy?”

“Tamarack.” Well, it was. Tamarack was just an obscure name for it.

“What's that?” he asked Ken. As if she didn't know.

“Larch,” Ken told the man, his smile pretty much hidden by his new beard. Dicey put her foot on the running board.

“Hey, hold on, little lady,” Mr. Hobart said. “What I'm thinking is, if you'll build it V-bottom, I'll buy it.”

That stopped Dicey. She looked at Ken, but he was as surprised
as she was. Behind Ken, Jake was smirking away, like the whole thing was some circus show that turned out even better than he'd hoped. She looked back at Mr. Hobart. He was waiting.

“That doesn't seem any too smart to me,” she said, surprising him back. “Why would you want to do that?”

He shrugged, smiled, shook his head. “You've worked for Ken, so you must know something. You've worked for Jake, too. That's recommendation enough. I like your looks, I've got a boat they're building for me up in Norwalk, an ocean cruiser, and she'll need a dinghy. I believe in supporting local industry—”

“I'm from Crisfield,” Dicey told him.

“What is it, you don't want an order?”

Dicey didn't know.

“Look, here's what I'll do.” He reached into an inner pocket of his vest and took out a thick leather folder. Opening it, moving to rest it against the side of the pickup, he took out a pen he kept fitted in it. “I'll pay you fifteen hundred, five hundred down and the rest on delivery—say, the first week in April? How do you spell your name?”

Dicey told him. She didn't know why, but she didn't know why not to. He wrote the check, tore it out, and handed it to her. “Take this with you, and think it over. Let me know what you decide. You can rip the check up if you decide not to. My address is on it. Ask Ken and Jake, they'll vouch for me. I'll meet you two in a couple of minutes; I'll order for you,” he said, and walked away.

Dicey had the check in her fingers. “He's not serious,” she asked Ken.

“He's serious. He can afford to be. I'm not sure where his money comes from, I heard it was smart investments, but someone else told me he invented a gadget for sonar or maybe it was dishwashers.”

“I heard he'd inherited it,” Jake said. “Or his wife did.”

“Whatever,” Ken said, “he's got enough, plus more than enough, to do exactly what he wants.”

“I'd take the money and be grateful,” Jake advised.

Dicey shook her head. “It's crazy.”

“Not to him. It's only crazy to people like us, who have to earn our living,” Ken told her. He looked at Jake. “It would be nice, wouldn't it? If I'd had a chance like this, at your age, Dicey—who knows where I'd be now. Not still here, that's all I know. Not still scurrying around for orders. But if it makes you nervous, or you don't think you can do it—”

“Of course I think I can do it, I just don't
know
that I can. I don't like agreeing to do something if I don't know I can.”

“How else are you going to find out?” Jake asked her.

Dicey folded Mr. Hobart's check into the pocket of her jacket. “I dunno,” she said, biting her lip.

“Hey, Dicey,” Ken said, “he's okay, he pays his bills and right on time. Building a dinghy for Tad Hobart—that could be the making of you.”

Dicey nodded. She understood. She just didn't like it. She had thought—she thought she was planning to be the making of herself.

“Think about it,” Ken advised her.

“I will.”

“Keep in touch,” he said. “Good luck.”

She raised her hand in answer, climbing into the pickup.

It wasn't until she was off the Bay Bridge, driving through the light-spangled darkness across Kent Island, that it hit her: She was in business.

In business, she thought, the recognition floating around inside her head, like a laughter you've had to hold inside and finally you can let free, and laugh out loud. With this check in her pocket, she was in business to build a boat.

She settled down to think, moving along the road. She had some rough drawings she'd made; she'd better go over them. She didn't know how to draw up nautical plans, but it was only a dinghy, it didn't require the same kind of designing. But she'd never thought of a V-bottom, and she'd have to take a look at some, and then make a trip to the library up in Cambridge, to see what the books had to say. A couple of weeks, no more than a couple—she'd have the three boats in the shop done by then, but the supplies she'd need—white ash for the keel and frame, to begin with, and she had the tools but money was going to be a problem. It was expensive to build a boat.

She wondered, following the truck's headlights, as if the headlights were pulling the truck along the highway, if she
should
take on some of Claude's boats. But, come April, she'd have been paid for this boat, so money would be fine again. If she had Claude's boats, even only ten of them, she wouldn't have the kind of time she needed, to do this one right.

There were a dozen things to do, and she wanted to get to work on them right away, but first she had to go to the shop and unload this wood. She'd never felt less tired in her life. Besides, she was impatient to tell Jeff. She could call him from the shop. He'd be as glad as she was about it, and she couldn't even imagine what Gram would say; Sammy, she could. He'd think it was only natural that Dicey should do something like get an order so easily. “Good-o,” that's what Sammy would say.

W
inter nights, Crisfield went to bed early. As Dicey drove into town, the houses she passed were black shapes with squares of yellow shining on the second stories, or, in the case of ranch-style houses, at the far ends. The pickup was the only moving thing that winter night in the dark and silent town. Cars were parked along the street, motionless as statues—if, Dicey thought, you wanted to make statues of cars, if you didn't have anything better than machines to make statues of.

Statues couldn't be like people, she thought, because people were always moving. If she met a person like a statue, she probably wouldn't like him. Or her. Striking a pose, or staying in one fixed position, those were things she didn't like in people.

Not only that, she thought, turning right, pulling into the parking lot behind the shop, turning off the headlights, enjoying the silence and her own thoughts, a boat was a kind of machine, too. You couldn't deny that. An older, simpler one, but still a machine. And a boat was beautiful. So she shouldn't go around criticizing anyone who wanted to make a statue of a car.

She shoved the truck door open with her shoulder. The night was cold, entirely still. The shop stood silent, deserted. No cars moved down the street, not at this hour of a winter night. No wind blew. If she stayed motionless and listened, she could hear
the water moving gently, delicately, in continual motion like Gram's knitting needles.

Silent, solitary, content—Maybe that was why she didn't see it right away. When she saw it—the door to the shop, standing open—she didn't know why she hadn't noticed it as soon as she drove up. For a millisecond, she kicked herself for carelessness. But she
always
locked up, last thing; she couldn't remember doing it that afternoon, but she didn't remember not doing it, either, the way you remember you haven't done something you have the habit of doing—

Dicey ran. Something crunched under her feet. When she got the light turned on, she saw glass all over the cement floor by the door.

She didn't want to look around, so she turned her back on whatever might wait for her, or might not wait. Instead, she studied the door. Someone had punched a hole through the glass, or had hit it with a rock or brick, more likely, because you could cut your hand putting it through glass, even thin glass like the door into the shop. . . . Someone had made that huge hole in the pane and then reached in to twist the little knob that locked the door. Someone had reached in, to open the door. Why would someone do that?

Dicey turned around to answer the question. She felt as if she had only eyes, with no other parts to her body. She felt as if she were two big eyes and nothing else.

The one light cast long shadows. She saw that the two boats in the center of the room had been shoved aside, left askew. But not, she looked carefully, not damaged. The row of paint cans against the far wall, by the door into the bathroom, had been knocked around, spilling white and green blotches onto the plastic sheet she kept under them. The jars in which her paintbrushes soaked had also been knocked over.

Dicey felt like sitting down, in the middle of the floor, to feel bad for a while. Just a little while. She felt like getting angry and stomping around for a while. Why should somebody break in and mess up her shop, what was the point of it? It made her feel sick and it made her angry. But there was picking up to do, so she went to do it; there were paint cans, and the brushes—she'd just roll up as much of the mess as was entirely ruined in the plastic sheet. She'd have to replace it all, which would cost her close to a hundred dollars. When she thought about that, anger began to be the only feeling she had.

Dicey stood looking down at the mess on the plastic sheet, trying not to think, and thinking she was glad she'd put that sheet down because it sure made cleaning up easier. If the paint, for example, had soaked into the cement floor, how would she have gotten it out? Claude would probably be able to make her replace the whole floor, and she could about guess how much that would cost. So it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. It was bad, but it could have been worse. A lot worse.

She studied the shop, figuring out what needed doing first. Standing at the far wall, she could see what she hadn't noticed before, and the sick feeling in her stomach swelled up to push at her heart. It was as if what she saw didn't even hesitate at her eyes but went straight down to her stomach, as if her stomach had the eyes that saw this.

Her tools. They'd taken her tools. The rack above the worktable was empty, just a couple of long pieces of wood nailed into the wallboard. Adze, broadax, saws—they were all gone.