The Lobster Kings (16 page)

Loosewood Island couldn’t pass for a puritanical paradise by any measure. We didn’t have more than a couple of real bars in the off-season, but that was a function of the island’s size, not any comment on temperance. During the U.S. Prohibition, the island firmly declared itself to be under Canadian control. We all drank, some of us to excess. Pot smoking wasn’t much of a problem, either, and by that I mean nobody seemed to have any problem if you smoked pot. There were a dozen or so older residents—die-hard hippies who moved here in the late seventies and made their living as potters, and a few third- and fourth-generation fishermen—who liked lighting up a joint on a regular basis, and there was some of it with the teens and with the other people in their thirties and their forties. But weed was about where it ended on the island.

I’m not trying to make it sound like islanders were somehow above temptation. We sure as hell had enough drunks, and when
people moved off-island or fished on ocean crews with mainland outfits, we had our fair share of people who turned into cokeheads, meth addicts, heroin, opium, crack addicts, whatever else was out there. But
on
the island, things were different. The simple explanation was that we more or less kept the island clean of any sort of serious drugs. Sure, there were tourists who’d bring in their own stashes, but we tried to keep it on the mainland. When there was somebody who didn’t understand that there were unspoken rules about what we were willing to tolerate, we made things very clear. Every year or two there’d be somebody, sometimes a prodigal son but usually an outsider—always a man—who’d move to the island and come trailing bad ideas in his wake. Coke or heroin or pot or whatever it was, it didn’t take too long before the word got around, and then Daddy and few of the lobstermen would visit and persuade that man that he wasn’t welcome on Loosewood Island. Usually words were enough, sometimes a beating, and every once in a while a boat would be sunk, a truck smashed. Sooner or later, whomever it was would get on the ferry and not come back.

Was it hypocritical? Yeah. No question. Chip and Tony had worked as mules to get the money to buy their own boat, running pot south from Canada. They could make eight, nine, ten thousand dollars running two hundred pounds of weed over the border, and a few quick nights of risk put them in business as lobstermen, which was all they wanted. Petey had never done it—his brother was a cop and had him scared shitless about what jail would be like—nor had Timmy, but they both had friends on the mainland who supplemented their fishing incomes with a run now and then. I’d never done it, but then again, I’d never needed to with the money that Daddy had. But even if I had, or Petey or Timmy had, we would have said the same thing that Chip and Tony said: it’s just pot, and it wasn’t something we brought home. As long as we kept the island clean—and that was a line that was etched in the rock—what was the big fucking deal?

Maybe meth was going to be a different matter. According
to Petey’s brother there was a wave coming, a wave that wouldn’t pass Loosewood Island by. “Is Petey’s brother worried that the James Harbor boys are going to start dealing here?”

“Seriously?”

“What?”

He looked over his shoulder to the table where Chip, Tony, and Petey were still sitting. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Give me a second,” he said. He touched my arm and then walked back to the table with the other boys. He leaned low to speak, and after a minute, he nodded me over.

“Something that needs telling?” I said. I sat down at the table and put the
James Harbor Tide
in front of the Warner boys, tapping on the picture. “We got more of a problem with James Harbor than just fishing?”

Tony was the one who did almost all of the talking, so I was looking at him, and when it was Chip who answered instead, I knew there was going to be trouble.

“Depends,” Chip said, “on whether you think of Eddie Glouster as a James Harbor problem or a Loosewood Island problem.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Eddie’s not working for Daddy anymore. You know that. Hasn’t been on the
Queen Jane
in more than a year.”

“But he’s still on the island, Cordelia,” Chip said.

“So?”

“So,” Tony said, reaching out to take the newspaper, “how do you think he’s making money if he’s not fishing?”

I could feel my shoulders slump. “He’s dealing.”

Chip reached in front of Tony, to stop his brother from speaking. “We’re not blaming Woody for giving Eddie a chance. Woody likes those sort of reclamation projects. Hell, he let me and Tony work for him when you were at college and our dad kicked us off the boat. I’m just not sure that Eddie really wanted to be saved,” Chip said. “So, yeah. He’s dealing. It’s Jenny.”

Jenny. Chip and Tony’s little sister. I guess she wasn’t that young—fifteen and supposedly she’d been sleeping her way through the half dozen boys who were her age—and Chip said she’d been scoring meth from Eddie Glouster.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s the play?”

“Our dad’s going to talk to Woody,” Tony said. “I’m assuming they’ll run him out.”

I thought of Daddy spending the night at the hospital. The way those cotton gowns can make anybody look old and sick. Fluorescent lights and pulse monitors and blood draws, the doctors trying to figure out why he’d fainted. I thought of Daddy and Mr. Warner and probably George, three men who were older than they wanted to believe, facing up against Eddie Glouster. And I thought of the way Daddy looked passed out on his kitchen floor.

I didn’t like it.

“No,” I said. “We’ll take care of it.”

Petey Dogger leaned forward, his voice eager. “We will?”

I looked around the table at Chip, Tony, Timmy, and Petey. I realized they were all eager, not just Petey. Timmy was my age, and Petey and Chip and Tony were younger than me, but none of us were kids anymore, and they felt like I did, that we could handle things just as well as the old guard. “Can’t let Daddy and all of those old farts have all of the fun, can we? It’s our island, too, and it’s something we can take care of, so we will,” I said. They all nodded, and I wondered if any of them knew that Daddy was in Saint John getting tested, that my desire to take care of the Eddie Glouster problem was as much about keeping Daddy out of it as it was about it being time for us to start taking care of the island on our own.

“When?” Tony asked.

“Tonight,” I said, thinking we needed to take care of it before Daddy got back from Saint John. I reached out and took the newspaper back. “At least it’s just Eddie we’re dealing with, not all of James Harbor.”

Petey shook his head. “Not sure that’s going to last. My
brother said it’s a real shitshow in James Harbor. It’s not like the old days, when we were just fighting over lobsters. Half those boys are users and need the money to keep tweaking. Things are going to get messy, and it might not be enough just to carry a hammer.”

I knew he wanted me to say something about Daddy smashing Al Burns’s hand, but instead I said, “You trying to say I should have a gun on board?”

“You don’t already?” Timmy looked at me with his half-bit smile. “This isn’t exactly the pirate coast, but with James Harbor pushing into our waters, I figured Woody’s the kind of daddy who wouldn’t give you much choice about being armed.”

In fact, Daddy would have been pissed if he’d known I stopped carrying my shotgun on board the
Kings’ Ransom
. He’d given me his father’s Remington Wingmaster when I’d started running my own boat. He stuck with the company that had worked out just fine for him and his own father, and bought himself a new, nickel-plated Remington Marine Magnum shotgun for the
Queen Jane
. He had at least two pistols on board as well, and I’d occasionally find one of my buoys with a bullet hole in it, Daddy having gotten it into his mind to take target practice on the high seas. I kept my Wingmaster loaded with double-aught, but I hadn’t bothered carrying it on the
Kings’ Ransom
for a few years. It was a pain in the ass to keep it registered in both Canada and the U.S., though I bet Daddy didn’t bother with registration in either country. More importantly, I’d never needed a gun. “Way I hear it, you’re telling me I should make sure I got it handy,” I said.

Timmy looked over my shoulder and nodded. “One for him wouldn’t be such a bad idea, either.”

I glanced back and saw Kenny ordering at the counter.

I stood up and grabbed the newspaper. “I’ll see you boys tonight, but in the meantime, I’ve got to go. Kenny and I have something to talk about.”

I
stepped up to Kenny as he stood at the counter, but before I could say anything, he asked, “You hear about James Harbor?”

“The shoot-out at the docks?” I said.

“Yeah. No, what?” I handed him the copy of the
James Harbor Tide
that I was holding and showed him the “Meth Death Bloodbath” headline. He took the paper out of my hand, gave it a scan, and then put it down on the counter. “No, but I mean, Jesus. Nah, I’m talking about James Harbor dropping pots in our waters.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what you said this morning, that the rumor is that they’re coming.”

He shook his head. “Nope. Not a rumour. They’re here. I ran into George on my way here. He found a couple James Harbor traps in our waters when he was pissing around on his boat this morning. Fucking peckerwoods.”

“Shit. I knew it was coming, but the season hasn’t even started yet and there are already real live traps in our waters? Can’t Al Burns keep his boys in check?”

“I think things have changed. He’s just an old man now. It’s not the same as when you were a teenager, not the same as—” He stopped and looked at my hands and then back to my eyes.
“It’s different. Been long enough that there’s a new, young group of fishermen, and they’re looking to extend their range, and they aren’t listening to Al Burns,” Kenny said. “That’s my understanding.” He pulled out his wallet. “Buy you a coffee?”

I shook my head, unsure of how to bring up what Carly had told me, that he and Sally were leaving the island. Out the window, the rain had broken momentarily, but a new wave of dark clouds seemed to be swimming over the island. It would start raining again soon, but I didn’t want to ask Kenny about his moving away in front of the boys. When Kenny picked up his drink and came over I took his arm and steered him outside.

As soon as the door closed, I hit him with it: “When the fuck were you going to tell me?”

He was staring over the water and up at the incoming clouds, and instead of turning to face me he gave me the corner of his eyes. “What are you talking about, Cordelia?”

“You and Sally leaving the island.”

That made him turn toward me. “We aren’t leaving the island.”

“I just talked to Carly. She said Sally gave notice at the school yesterday. Principal Philips called up Carly, hired her to take over K through grade three, and there we have it. Said Sally told Principal Philips you were headed off the island.”

I could see it in Kenny’s face as I was talking, but I somehow couldn’t stop myself from going forward: he didn’t know. He turned pale. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out for a moment. “You sure about that, Cordelia?”

“You mean you didn’t know? Oh, Jesus, Kenny. I’m sorry. I thought—” I shook my head and then grabbed his elbow. “Come on; let’s get out of the doorway. Walk down to the docks.” He came along. “I just assumed …” I shook my head again, not sure what to say, but Kenny left it at silence, and as we headed down the slope I tried again. “I was mad at you, you know? I couldn’t figure out why you hadn’t told me. But, well, fuck.”

“She’s leaving me,” he said.

“Maybe.” I wanted to say something better, but all I could add was, “I’m sorry.”

“I mean, we’ve talked about it, splitting up. Sleeping apart for most of the last year. Jesus. She’s leaving me. We’ve been having problems, you know?”

I did know. We talked about it sometimes on the boat. Not much—Kenny didn’t bring up Sally that often with me—but it was something that came up occasionally. I would have known anyway. Sally had been heading mainland every Saturday for therapy, and on Sundays it was both of them going over for couples counseling, and there was no way to hide that kind of thing from the island.

“But I thought things were getting better. Sally’s been acting happier lately.” Kenny stopped walking and turned to look at me and I could see that he was trembling, that despite all of the things he and Sally had gone through, he hadn’t believed that it would come to this. “You really think she’s leaving me?” he said, and I thought if I didn’t answer him quick—any answer would do—he might just start walking again and not stop when he came to the end of the dock.

“I’m not sure, but you need to talk to her,” I said. “I’m sorry, Kenny. I really am.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. I need to go talk to her,” he said, and then he looked at his watch. I realized that he was thinking that Sally was still at school, that he was going to have to go home and brood until the children left Loosewood Elementary and Sally could make her way back to the house; that glance at his watch was such a tender, domestic action that it was all I could do to stop from taking him in my arms and pulling him into me. “Jesus. I’ve got to go, Cordelia,” he said.