The Lobster Kings (41 page)

I had trouble one-handing the latch, an old-fashioned leather tongue that fastened like a belt, but after working it a bit, it came loose and I lifted open the lid of the trunk. Inside the trunk was another trunk, but this one was designed to be waterproof, made of hard blue moulded plastic. It was the kind of plastic that could spend a month floating out on the ocean with no apparent ill effects. There were a couple inches of space on top of the plastic trunk where the lid of the wooden trunk would have closed, but the sides fit so closely that it was hard to believe that Daddy hadn’t built the wooden trunk around the walls of the plastic one. Then I saw the small envelope with my name written on it in Daddy’s cramped writing. It was tucked under the handle of the plastic lid, wedged in so it wouldn’t come loose, and I had to tug to pull it out. The envelope wasn’t sealed, and when I slipped out the card I thought at first it was blank. Of course, when I flipped it over, it wasn’t.

“Cordelia,”
it said,
“these are for you for when I’m gone. You can share with your sisters if you’d like, but these are for you. If I’m not dead, get the hell out of my stuff. But if I’m dead, remember that I’ve always loved you and always will. You’ll know what to do.”

He didn’t sign his name, but it’s not like he needed to.

I heard Kenny call me and then his steps on the deck. I was wiping my eyes with my sleeve when he ducked down and saw me.

“What are you doing down there?” he said. He was holding a paper bag from the Coffee Catch, and he had a smile to greet me until he noticed my tears. “You okay?” I saw him reach out and then he put his hands on the ladder and started down. I glanced at the plastic trunk.

“No,” I said. “I’m okay. I’m coming up.” He stopped, looked
at me, and then went back up the ladder. I put the card back in the envelope, wedged it under the handle again, and closed the lid to the wooden trunk. I stood there for a few seconds, my hand resting on the wood. It was smooth under my fingers. I left it unlatched. I’d had enough trouble undoing the clasp. I wasn’t sure I could manage closing it. As it was, with my broken wrist, I struggled going up the few rungs that made the ladder. I was glad that Kenny reached down and helped me up.

Stephanie was sitting in the captain’s chair eating a bagel. I must have given her a funny look, because she blushed and then blurted out, “I know, but it looked good, and I figured a second breakfast wasn’t the worst thing I could do.” I didn’t say anything. “Oh,” she said. “The chair.” She scrambled to her feet. “Sorry.”

“No. It’s not that. It’s … it’s nothing. Actually, really, it’s nothing. I think I’m just tired,” I said, but I was thinking about what it was that Daddy had left for me in the blue plastic waterproof trunk.

Kenny was already by the stern, untying us from the dock. Stephanie started to raise her hand, hesitated, and then finished her movement, touching my hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “We don’t have to go out today.”

I think she was expecting me to bristle, but her voice was so gentle that it was all I could do not to start crying again, and I turned my hand over so that I could give hers a soft squeeze. “No, I do. I do have to go out today. It’s all I know how to do, Stephanie.”

She held my hand and did her best to smile, but I could tell that she was holding herself back from crying, too. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go fishing.”

And I thought about what Daddy’s card said, that I’d know what to do, and suddenly I did. “No. First we have to run an errand.”

S
tephanie and Kenny were quiet all the way to James Harbor. They prepped gear and bait, and then they stayed at the stern, leaning out over the water and talking. I wondered if Kenny was telling Stephanie about our new arrangement.

As we came in sight of the harbour, I reached over and opened the locker that had daddy’s guns. I was going to order Kenny and Stephanie to stay on the boat, but I didn’t plan on going in to talk to the James Harbor boys alone. Even if I didn’t intend to fire one, I’d be accompanied by a shotgun. I was trying to figure out which one to take when I glanced again at the harbour.

“Jesus,” I said, and I throttled the boat down. The water was choked with boats that I recognized. The
Green Machine
, George’s boat, John O’Connor’s boat, the Warner boys’, all of them. The whole fleet from Loosewood Island. I kicked the locker closed and then brought the
Queen Jane
up to the only open spot on the docks.

I felt like I was moving in a daze. I didn’t remember to tell Stephanie and Kenny to stay put, and they followed behind me. As we walked up the dock, I saw a group of men rounding the
corner of the building. They were laughing and smiling. It was Timmy who saw me first and called out.

“You missed the meeting, Cordelia.”

I stopped and waited for them to surround me. I don’t know what expression I had on my face, but Timmy started laughing. “We rounded up a bunch of their boys. Not just Al Burns, but the younger ones, too. You can turn around, Cordelia. It’s fixed. They’ll stay out of our waters.”

George scowled, but he also nodded. “Mostly fixed. They’ve got one or two boys who aren’t part of their co-op and who don’t seem to want to listen. We’ll sort them out later, but I think the message has been sent. They can’t do anything about the rogues, but James Harbor as a whole is done with poaching Loosewood Island waters.” He took a few steps until he was in front of me, and then he cupped his hand around the back of my neck. “I heard you last night, Cordelia. I was listening, and you’re right. Nothing’s changed.”

I didn’t say anything. Nobody else did, either, and it took me a few seconds to realize they were waiting for me, that with Daddy gone, I was the one who had the final say. It took me a few more seconds past that realization to shake my head, let a grin creep onto my face, and to say, “Well, then, I’m going fishing.”

S
tephanie and Kenny settled in together immediately, like we’d picked up where we’d left off before we found the ghost ship. Instead of splitting my line and Daddy’s line—or what was left of Daddy’s line—like I’d done in September, I fished them as if they were a single line, working the water in chunks of geography. We started on the far side of the island, where depending on what way you looked you could only see either the hills and bluffs of the backside of the island or the open sea. It was as if the mainland didn’t exist.

Every trap was bursting with bugs, and despite me being limited by the cast on my wrist, I pitched in best I could. We were moving slowly, not because we weren’t being efficient, but because I’d never seen a haul like this. Even Trudy seemed excited, barking every time we pulled a trap to the surface. Normally there were lobsters that were oversized or undersized. Normally there were eggers or lobsters with notched tails that told us they were eggers at other parts of the year. Not today. Every single lobster we pulled from the traps was a keeper. The good weather had carried over from the funeral, and I worked up a sweat. Even with the trip to James Harbor and back, it wasn’t even nine o’clock by the time I peeled
off my sweatshirt and was down to a T-shirt. My cast was itchy, and I could feel water that had trickled underneath the plaster. I was hoping the doctor had used something that didn’t mind getting wet. We’d worked our way through all of the traps on this stretch of water, and I grabbed the last lobster out of the last of Daddy’s traps, slapping the brass gauge against its carapace, though by that point I didn’t even know why I bothered. Every single lobster had been the right size, just small enough that they were still legal, but big enough that they’d fetch a premium.

Stephanie was over at the bait barrel, but I felt Kenny next to me. I looked at him and he was grinning fit to sink a ship. “What?” I said.

“The lobsters. Nice haul today.” he said. “Never seen anything like it.”

I banded the lobster, securing its claws closed, and chucked it in with the others. I didn’t actually know what to say to him. What he said was true for me, too. I’d never seen anything like it, even when I’d been out with Daddy. I felt like I was going crazy, but the only thing I could think of was that this haul of lobsters was, in some sort of bizarre way, a gift, like the ocean was trying to tell me that it was sorry.

Enough. To the sea, I wanted to say:
Enough
. The Kings were fragile flesh and blood, and I’d had enough of the ocean clawing away at us. It was enough for Brumfitt to lose a son, and for each son of each generation to lose a son. It was enough for Scotty to die. It was enough to have Tucker washed away on the same night that Daddy died.

I realized that Kenny was still staring at me, waiting for an answer, and because I couldn’t think of what to say and couldn’t think of anything else to do, I grabbed him and kissed him. We were like that for a few seconds. I think that both Kenny and I realized at the same time that Stephanie was awfully quiet.

Stephanie kept looking back and forth from me to Kenny, and then finally she crouched down next to Trudy. She scratched at Trudy’s head and said, “Well, I guess that’s happening. And you
know what? I’m just going to pretend that I didn’t see that, and I’m going to go about my business as a lobsterman. How about we drop these last two traps back in the water and head around to the other side of the island like we’d planned? Sound okay to the two of you?” There was a tremor in her lips, and then she gave up and just let herself smile.

I gave Kenny another kiss and then headed forward to the wheel and pushed the throttle. I hadn’t conned the
Queen Jane
in years, but I liked the way she felt in my hands. She rolled differently than the
Kings’ Ransom
, but it was a familiar movement, and I was already thinking that maybe instead of selling Daddy’s boat I’d sell the
Kings’ Ransom
. My boat was going to need some time in the boatyard getting worked over after having everything blown out by the lightning strike, and it made a certain kind of sense to keep Daddy’s boat instead. Behind me, Kenny and Stephanie had taken seats on spare lobster traps, and Kenny was fishing a donut out of the bag from the Coffee Catch. He held it up to me, but I shook my head. He shrugged and took a bite for himself before thinking to offer it to Stephanie. I faced forward again, though there wasn’t much point. The water was empty aside from lobster buoys and seagulls, and other than ramming the side of the island, there wasn’t much for me to hit. As we passed the harbour it seemed as though every boat was docked. I could only see a handful of men milling about on the wharf. I wondered if maybe I was the only fisherman out on the water today—if everybody but me had come back from James Harbor and decided that it was a day to spend onshore with their families.

We came fully around to the front of the island, the mainland laughing in the distance, the harbour hiding again. I was relieved to see that there was another boat out in the field of buoys. Even with Kenny and Stephanie on board, there was something lonely about seeing the ocean without anybody else working. At first we were far enough away that I couldn’t see whose boat it was. I tried matching up where it was against Seal Coat Cove, but I wasn’t sure with the angle how far past my and Daddy’s buoys he
was working. Could have been Petey Dogger, could have been John O’Connor, but I didn’t think he was far enough past to be Mr. Warner. The way the shelf rippled around this part of the island, the buoys weren’t spaced as tightly as they were at other places, but the closer we got to where we could pull our traps, the more I started feeling sick to my stomach about the boat in front of me. We were still half a mile away when I knew that it wasn’t Petey or John or Mr. Warner, wasn’t any of the boys who had a right to be out in these waters. I let our speed creep down to a quarter of what it had been, and I felt Kenny and Stephanie come up behind me. Trudy got to her feet and pushed herself between me and Stephanie.

“That what I think it is?” Kenny said.

“What?” Stephanie stepped up until she was almost right against the glass. “The boat? What about it?” She looked at Kenny, at me, through the glass, and then back at me and Kenny again. “What?”