The From-Aways (6 page)

“Nah,” I say. “You’re junior editor and I’m senior editor. I need to train you.”

“
Train
me?” She takes a few deep breaths. “Where does Charley fit in?”

“Charley is the Chief Amazon Lady of the Nile.”

“And how long have you been with the
Star
?”

“Four months. I used to be with the
Fairhaven Hour
.”

“What was your beat?”

I consider lying. I want to hang on to alpha status here, and the truth will hardly help. But I say, “Obits, you?”

“City section.”

A lot more impressive than obits. I hold out hope she worked at some podunk rag. “For who?”

“The
New York Gazette
.”

“Holy fuck, you wrote for the
Gazette
?” I shoot to my feet. “What are you even doing here?”

A diner shoots me a dirty look but I can’t help it. The
Gazette
is real shit. I have no business giving Leah orders. I should be licking a ballpoint to facilitate her note-taking. “Does Charley know that? Can you get me a job there?”

“Charley knows,” Leah says. She doesn’t say whether she can get me a job. Is it that easy to tell I wouldn’t be able to hang at a place like the
Gazette
?

Rosie comes out on the porch. She sticks her hand out and waits for an introduction. “Rosalind Salem,” I say. “Leah Lynch.”

Rosie says, “Pleasure to meet you. You want some eggs?”

“No thanks,” Leah says. “Is this your place?”

“Might as well be,” Rosie says. “It’s my tin can coffin. Where are you headed?”

“Out to Deep’s,” Leah says, “though I can’t imagine—”

The train signals flash and clang and the chugging of the engine approaching drowns out what she’s saying.

“Eleven forty-two,” Rosie calls over the racket.

Leah covers her ears and watches. Little pieces of her hair flick around her face and the sun is blazing away but she keeps her eyes open. They shudder back and forth, constantly settling on different parts of the train passing by.

7

Leah

D
eep’s Fish Market sits in a wide, unkempt lot of reeds. In the reeds are dead boats, moldering and full of bugs. I pull out my notebook. I always have my notebook with me. The slop and pull of the water is loud enough that Quinn raises her voice to speak to me. “The party line is disappearing marine real estate,” Quinn says. “Just FYI.”

FYI? “How do you know what the story is already?” I say. “How do you know the real estate is disappearing?”

Quinn points at several hand-painted signs, staked in the yard:
VOTE
NO
ON
PROP
. 2! and
KEEP
OUR
WATERS
,
KEEP
YOUR
DINNER
!

“So it’s an election story,” I say. “Concerning the upcoming issues for the town vote.”

Quinn shakes her head and pushes up her sweatshirt sleeves. “Come on, there’s Billy now.” She points at an anemic-looking boy with a blue knit cap pulled over his ears. He has enormous dark eyes, features too dainty for a fisherman, and a sideways smile. I present my hand for him to shake. The kid cocks his head and then smacks my hand like a high five.

“My da’s in the boat,” he says, already loping toward the wharf. “He’s got the
Star
real clean for you. Figured she’s the one you’d want.”

Quinn vigorously scratches her scalp. “You have any Dramamine, Gazette?”

Down where the boats are tied up is a man Billy has no chance of equaling. Joseph Deep looks not a bit off balance as the lobster boat he stands in shifts from side to side. Fortysomething, there is a little gray in the hair that curls over his ears. He is wearing a hat like Billy’s, with an embroidered logo on it that reads
DEEP
’
S
MARKET
,
EST. 1952
. He has the brightest blue eyes and a Black Irish complexion. His jaw is set hard but there is humor in this face that might be unlocked at any second.

“Joseph. Nice to meet you,” he says, and immediately grabs my hand. I watch him notice that it is approximately the size of his own. I think he’s going to shake it but instead he helps me aboard, one hand on the small of my back. Squatting in the back of the boat is the boy in the cap, Billy. He is chewing something. There’s an inch and a half of water sloshing around the boat bottom and my shoes soak through. The water is very cold. Billy is wearing rubber galoshes, and dozens of sunflower-seed husks are floating around his feet. He spits.

“You wanna life jacket?” he says.

“I’m an excellent swimmer,” I say.

“You’ll jump in and save her, though, won’t you, Billy?” says Quinn. Joseph has now extended his hand to Quinn but she says, “I wasn’t expecting a boat, Joe.”

I look over the side of the boat and the lettering says
THE
MENAMON
STAR
, next to which is an image of a compass rose. I think maybe we should use this image on the newspaper masthead. I wonder whether the paper is named for the boat. Quinn and I put on our life vests. Damp and salty, mine rides up too high on my chest. Cages are stacked in the back. Rubber bands coil in a bucket. Billy picks up a gauge from a box of metal tools and starts tweaking Quinn’s waist with it. “What size we got here?” he says, and Quinn slaps him away. “Aw, Da, she’s a runty one. We’ll have to throw her back.”

“I’ll take you over with me,” she says. “I swear to God I will use you as a raft.”

Joseph turns the engine over and the roar eats everything up. I smell diesel and we’re moving.

“How long have you been a lobsterman?” I ask.

Joseph shouts, “Since the fifties!” The engine settles. “But these days we mostly just run the shop, buy from the guys who set more traps. If we don’t lose Billy overboard, we just might stay in business another generation.”

“Not if they raise the rent again we won’t,” Billy says. “Not if those flatlanders make us move.”

“Who?” I say. I look to Quinn to see if she’s planning to ask some questions, but she seems bilious and distracted.

“The ladies over in the development have been complaining about the boats out front. Say we’re driving down real estate prices along the rest of the waterfront,” Joseph says. “But our rent has almost doubled since they changed the waterfront zoning. Cleared it for nonmarine occupancy so a developer could build those Elm Park houses on the water. And now the owners of that new house spent a fortune on a number of waterfront lots out by the carousel. Suddenly the real-estaters are thinking our shop might be more lucrative if it were owned by someone other than us.” I’m writing fast to keep up with them. Joseph turns over the engine again so it roars. “This stretch of water we call the jungle,” Joseph says.

“Mad lobsters out here,” Billy says. The water is thick with bobbing buoys in different colors. They rise and fall with the water like a comforter on a sleeping body.

Joseph says, “There have been disputes over who has the rights to this water since the seventies.”

“The lobstah wahs,” Billy says in a voice like a crusty old-timer’s.

Lobster wars? This is the news? I’m jotting fast to get everything down. It’s not that I didn’t account for this. I knew the news would be small. I just thought it would still be
news
. I try not to be too disappointed. The rent hikes, the zoning—that I could get behind. It’s worth some digging. I look up from my notes. “Quinn,” I say, because I want to see what she thinks of this angle. But she doesn’t even hear me. She is picking at sunflower-seed shells. She is not taking notes. Is she even listening over there?

“This is one of my pots,” Joseph says, and points at a floating buoy with different shades of blue in alternate stripes.

“What about that one?” I point at another buoy, tangled up and rolling around in the hull of the boat. Instead of Joseph’s blues, it has green and orange stripes. A blazing happy pattern like an Easter egg.

“That’s Hank’s pot,” Billy says.

“Henry’s?” I say. I have never heard Henry called Hank before.

“Hank Senior’s,” he says.

I pick the buoy up and turn it over in my hands. It is spongy and smells of mildew, but not old. I knew Henry’s father fished, but none of these details, these pots and lobster wars, has ever come up.

Joseph points at the floating buoy. “Why don’t you get this one, Billy,” he says. Billy scrambles to his feet, not so sure on them as Joseph, wobbly like a deer. He seizes the buoy and gets his back braced, ready to heave up the weight. He pulls, and when his arms give too easily, he tumbles backward. A length of rope comes onboard with nothing attached.

“Where’s the lobsters, Billy?” Quinn says. Her skin is sallow and she’s doing some regimented breathing. It is only now that I remember the terrible, melodramatic copy I’d spotted in the
Star
weeks ago. “Hot-blooded fury.” “Tails between their legs.” My stomach feels heavy.

I hiss at her, “Are you birthing a baby over there or are we writing a news story?”

She rolls her eyes. “If you don’t want me to ralph on you, I’d back down.”

I roll my eyes back, then realize how stupid that is. It’s Quinn’s fault, for getting under my skin like this and dragging me down to her level. The girl doesn’t know the first thing about reporting.

“It’s cut. Fucking crooks,” Billy says, inspecting the rope.

“Who would have cut it?” I say. I make a big point of lifting up my pen and notebook as I anticipate his answer so Quinn can see that this is what she should be doing.

“Could have been lots of people,” Joseph says.

“Quinn,” I say. She’s looking really green now. “We should take a picture of the cut line. Do you have the camera?”

She grimaces and pulls out a small digital camera. “Smile, Billy,” she says. Billy grins and holds up the rope like a prize catch.

“I don’t know that he should be smiling,” I say. “I mean, it depends what angle we’re taking but . . .”

Quinn snorts. “Okay, look dour, Billy.”

Joseph laughs as Billy pulls a long face. “Hey, move that trap there, Leah,” Quinn says. “It’s ruining my shot.” She points at me, then the trap. When I don’t respond she points again. In New York, I used to look over my photographers’ shoulders and adjust their lighting.

But clearly this is not New York. “This way?” I finally say, and drag the trap across the bottom of the boat so it splashes and soaks Quinn’s pants. She wheels around, more surprised than angry. I say, “Is that the best camera the
Star
has?”

“This is a nice camera.” Quinn shakes out her wet pant cuffs. “Charley got it for her birthday.” She looks approvingly at the little silver machine.

When we dock, Quinn scrambles to get out of the boat. On the boardwalk, water runs off her jeans and puddles at her feet. She takes several deep breaths and seems pleased to have her legs beneath her again. I stalk back toward the shop and Quinn runs to catch up. “So,” she huffs, “you take some good notes back there or what?”

I could murder her. This is the news.

In the store, we say good-bye to Joseph. Billy sits back down behind the counter. On a high shelf behind the register is a lobster mounted on a plank, standing jauntily on his legs.

“Who’s that guy?” I say.

Billy looks like he’s been waiting for someone to ask him this his whole life. “That would be the gentleman lobster,” he says. He grins and takes the thing down from the shelf. Up close you can see the fine work of the taxidermist. The antennules are curled elegantly, framing the face, and the lobster is wearing a tiny pair of spectacles. A mustache has been appliquéd and on each of the lobster’s feet is a small shoe. He is wearing spats.

I laugh, in spite of myself. I have never seen anything like it. I look to Quinn, but she doesn’t seem to think it’s funny. In fact, she seems enraged.

“Where would one get a taxidermied lobster like that?” Quinn asks. While I’m glad to hear her engaging in something like journalistic discourse, I can’t see how we can possibly work this into our piece.

“You’re in the market?” says Billy. “Carter Marks is the guy.”

Quinn sets her jaw. “Let’s go, Leah.” She jingles her keys at me like I’m a dog and blows out the door. Billy’s face falls.

“Thanks again,” I say. “That thing is cool.”

Billy picks it up and stares into its face. “Thanks,” he says. I head out the door but peek over my shoulder as I go. I see Billy wiggle the platform back and forth. All eight lobster legs wobble, a small dance. Billy smiles.

8