The Whiskey Sea (4 page)

He said, “Congratulations on graduating from high school.”

Frieda nodded, then averted her gaze. He kept staring; she could feel the weight of it on her skin, and she wanted to shrug it away.

Hicks said, “You gotta be smart to finish.”

After chomping on bread, Frieda dug into the chowder. “I barely passed.” That wasn’t exactly true, but she wanted Hicks to believe it. Studying and reading had been a refuge of sorts, plus it turned out she was as good a student as any. It showed she was no slacker. Her grades fell because she wouldn’t participate in group assignments or stand in front of the class and read an essay. Beyond high school few opportunities awaited working-class women in Highlands. Unless one found a way to go to college, it was either a poorly paying job cooking and cleaning, or marriage and babies.

He smiled. “Still, it’s an accomplishment.”

She glanced over at him and registered the admiration in his eyes. Maybe what she was seeing was puppy love. But if he had a crush on her, why hadn’t he approached her before? Why make some deal with Silver? His apparent actions seemed archaic and made him out to be spineless.

“I brought you something,” Hicks said, and then shifted awkwardly, as if he was unsure whether to get it now or not.

Frieda glared hard.

He fidgeted, then stood up clumsily and pulled out a small box from his pants pocket. He sat again and pushed the box toward Frieda. Curious, she opened it to find an almost-round, blackened . . . something.

“It’s an old coin—from a shipwreck, I’m pretty sure. I found it a year ago when I was clamming. I raked it up and kept it for a special occasion.”

Picking up the coin, Frieda examined it closer. On it were some odd markings that indeed looked very old.

Hicks said, “I never took it to a museum or an expert to find out if it’s valuable.”

Bea chimed in, “I can ask my teacher.”

Frieda rubbed the coin between her thumb and index finger.

“I cleaned it up as best I could, but I didn’t want to damage it. I’ve heard you can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing,” said Hicks, a hopeful expression on his face. “It could be worth something.”

He seemed to be waiting for her approval. Funny thing was, Frieda did like the gift. But she wasn’t about to show it. “If it’s worth something, I can’t accept it. If it turns out to be a trinket, then . . . thank you.”

An awkward silence hung in the muggy air after that. Bea did her best to fill it, bringing up the graduation ceremony Frieda had shunned, what all the kids from her class were doing over the summer, and finally, the weather. But the conversation inevitably led back to the boat, with Hicks and Silver discussing the
Wren
’s quirks and charms, the work that needed done, and Hicks’s plans for her.

Frieda could not endure that conversation. Why didn’t Silver and Hicks just go join the drunks down at the speakeasy so she didn’t have to hear this? She despised both of them in that moment. She imagined grabbing each of them by the head and knocking their noggins together. She wiped the chowder bowl clean with a piece of bread, stuffed it in her mouth, and left the table without a word.

CHAPTER THREE

On Monday morning Bea awakened early as usual. Rolling over to the sounds of Bea moving about the room, Frieda creaked open her eyes. Bea, donned in one of her two school dresses, was packing textbooks, pencils, and composition books into her satchel.

“What are you doing?” Frieda asked.

Bea turned around and set that clear-blue gaze on her sister. “I’m meeting with my study group.”

Frieda sat up and rubbed fists into her eyes. “Funny. I thought school was out.”

“Of course it is,” Bea said. “But I’ve made plans with some friends of mine to meet three times a week to read and keep up our study habits over the summer.”

Falling back on the bed, Frieda said, “Such devotion . . .”

Bea aimed for the door. “See you later.”

Frieda quickly sat up and pushed back the covers. “Wait! I’ll help you find something to take for lunch. Give me a minute.”

“Please. I can take care of myself. Besides, Charlotte Larson’s mother is making us sandwiches. Lindsay Cooper is bringing cookies. Hazel Rogers and John LeRoy are coming, too.” She paused. “I have no idea what they’re bringing.” Bea shrugged. “Guess it doesn’t matter. We’ll have plenty to eat.”

After swinging her feet to the floor, Frieda raked her fingers through her hanging snarls of hair. “You shouldn’t show up empty-handed.” Bea was studious and smart, but not practical. It worried Frieda.

Bea passed a hand through the air as she opened the bedroom door. “Don’t be silly. These are my friends.”

A few minutes later the front door whisked open and the screen door whacked shut.

Frieda plopped back down. She stared at the cracked ceiling, where water stains blossomed like clouds. Could those clouds rain some kindness on her today? Please? Could some answers please come popping out of those cracks?

Nothing. Just bleakness.

After Frieda got up, she dressed and went to look for Silver. Normally he’d be up before dawn and out over the shoals by sunrise on his boat. But with the
Wren
in Hicks’s hands, what would he be doing now?

In the kitchen she found him filling his Thermos with black coffee.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

He smiled and scratched his thatch of hair. “Well, hello to you, too. Good morning, Frieda.”

“Good morning,” she forced.

He slipped a sweater over his head, but it took him longer than usual. Frieda could see that his shoulders were bothering him. She did worry about his health, his strength, but he’d always seemed so rugged and capable to her, despite his age. Maybe she should’ve offered to rub some salve into his sore shoulders, but that kindness sat just an inch or so beyond her reach today. She sighed. “So where are you heading?”

“You probably don’t want to know.”

“Since we don’t own a boat any longer, I thought you were going to take it easy.”

“I’m aiming to help Hicks with some repairs on the
Wren
. Want to join us?”

Frieda rolled her eyes. “No, thanks. Why would you work on a boat you no longer own? It makes no sense.”

Silver sighed. “It’s called being helpful. Friendly-like. You know . . .”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Right,” he said, and headed for the door. “You enjoy yourself, ye hear?”

Frieda crossed her arms and turned away as he, too, left the house.

Then she was alone.

She made herself a mug of coffee with a little milk and sugar. She straightened up the place, then cooked herself an egg and buttered a piece of bread. Sitting on the porch in Silver’s chair, she watched the sun rise high into the sky until it threatened to burn her eyes. A yellow butterfly landed on the porch rail. Birds flitted over the street in front of her, sails in the bay filled taut in the blows, gulls cried, and rigging chimed against masts down at the dock. She made herself some lunch, although she was hardly hungry.

A walk—she would take a walk. She went down to the small sand beach, where little waves broke and left lacy foam on the sand. Dainty sandpipers stepped in and around the froth like long-legged dancers. Smells of fish and salt drifted in the air. A group of summer tourists in their bathing dresses and bonnets were gathering up their things, probably to go back to their hotel for lunch. They glanced at her, studied her men’s clothing and wild hair just long enough not to be considered downright rude, and then looked away.

She trudged down the shoreline, her bare feet sinking into the dense wet sand, surprised there was any weight left to her at all. A deadened, empty feeling consumed her. She was nothing more than the heat and the will of a man whose stubbornness was even greater than her own. She looked out over the water. Silhouettes of fishing and clamming boats puckered the flat horizon, ridges of black against the sunny air. Her feet landed even heavier against the sand, and her throat clogged with grief. The now-impossible opportunity beat through her body. Today on the water she could’ve escaped the town that looked down on her. Today she could’ve shown them all she was good enough to compete with all the men. Maybe she would’ve discovered a new shoal for clamming. Maybe she would’ve come back with more of a haul than even the seasoned clammers had. Or today she could’ve set her sights on fishing and pulled in more silvery sea life than any other fisherman. Today she could’ve done what she was meant to do.

She walked the beach for a while back and forth, then came home and sat through the long slog of the afternoon, listless as hell. There was a heaviness in the air, and everything made her think of what was out there in the water. She blew on her coffee and saw ripples on the sea. Laundry on a nearby clothesline flapped like white sails. Birds chirping were the cries of dolphins. She was supposed to be on the sea, where the terrestrial world could close her behind a curtain of water.

What, indeed, was she going to do now?

Two weeks later, nearing sunset, she headed out to find Hicks down at the slip for the
Wren
. She couldn’t take the boredom any longer, and she’d conjured up a new plan out of idleness and desperation. She felt oddly buoyant, a purpose lifting her and keeping her afloat. On the way down the docks, she passed by the row of dilapidated storefronts that lined the waterfront and gazed up briefly at the room where she had been born and had lived with her mother. In the past Silver had always been with her, but now, alone, passing by that awful place brought on an old empty ache and mixed emotions. Sadness about her mother and also disbelief that she had let herself fall so far. How could she have chosen prostitution?

Some men stood outside one of the bars, supposedly shut down by Prohibition but still operating anyway, and they stopped to watch her pass. Disgusted, she hated the way men roved their eyes over her and probably any other woman who would venture down here alone, but she said nothing and even managed a tight smile. The door to the bar was open in the hope of a breeze, and inside the smoky darkness fishermen sat at stools, hunched over their liquor. She would have to start getting on their right side as soon as she could. Her plan depended on her ability to hide what she felt about these men. She could’ve fished and clammed with the best of them. She could’ve focused all her restless energy on working more hours than any of them did, going out in harsher conditions, finding secret harvesting and fishing spots no one else had discovered.

And then there was the hidden hope she told no one about, not even Bea—that maybe someday there would be a man who understood her, who allowed her to be untamed, who understood her love of the sea, and who might love her despite her freewheeling ways. Someday, some way . . . Torn by conflicted inner sides of herself—one that felt she could never settle down and become a man’s wife, and one that secretly dreamed of romance. But who would want a woman who wanted to work like a man, who probably could never hold her tongue, and who couldn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t? That little flutter of longing remained, however, baffling her.

She stepped into the sunlight and continued down the docks, passing by the small, shallow-drafted skiffs and dories of the local fishermen. She smiled at a group of men working on a boat and even asked about their children and wives. Most responded softly, curiously, as if surprised by her sudden sociability but welcoming it, too.

But Hawkeye, her sworn enemy, just stared. Most of the men who’d come to her mother had become nothing but blurred faces in her mind, but not Hawkeye; she remembered him. He’d come often enough to recall. She remembered his face as he leered at her mother, how he’d had the nerve to sit down at their tiny table and share their food. He’d made himself at home, pulled her mother into the bedroom; then after he’d had his fill he’d slipped away. He had always looked both ways before he passed out of their door, slinking off like a snake. A married man. Obviously guilty over what he had been doing. Frieda knew that her mother had been his weakness but also his shame. He’d not lifted a finger to help once her mother started lapsing. Frieda would have to make herself tolerate the others, but not that one.

Still glaring, Hawkeye stopped what he was doing and wiped his fish-slimy hands on his overalls. As she strode down the pier away from him, he called, “Why you being so nice? What’s got into you, girl?”

She kept walking. For some reason Hawkeye was always nosing into her business, watching her, waiting, as if hoping to find some reason to criticize.

“What are you up to?” he bellowed.

Frieda ignored him.

“Cain’t be good, girl. I know that. Cain’t be good.”

She mumbled to herself, “None of your business.”

“Seems like you might need us now that Silver’s done given up his boat.”

That old bastard, how dare he speak to her? How dare he pry? She tossed back over her shoulder, “Don’t
need
anyone, just want something.”

Hawkeye called out, “As I guessed, Frieda. As I guessed.”

Frieda walked up to the
Wren
. Hicks had put a fresh coat of white paint on the hull above the waterline, painted the deck rails blue, and had outfitted the boat with a bigger, rebuilt engine. Although she was handmade, she had always been one of the better and larger clamming boats in the harbor. As Frieda had heard retold many a time, Silver and his father had built her themselves plank by plank with heavy mahogany and good ballast, and they’d bought the motor from Sea Bright Dory Works in Long Branch.

Hicks had just pulled in for the day with a haul of clams. It was true summer now; June had ushered in sun-drenched skies, and today there was barely a breeze. Hicks was dripping sweat as he moored the boat to the pier. He looked up at her, and she registered the surprise in his eyes.

She’d been forcing herself to watch him since the day he’d bought the boat. She’d tracked him as he headed out each morning to clam and looked for him when he came in. His course took him past the house and out into the bay. The first time she saw him she watched until he had disappeared into the glare of dawn over the bay, and she felt sick. And yet a form of self-torture, a desire to feel the pain, drove her to look for him each day. She noticed that Hicks knew how to handle the boat and that he worked hard, long hours. Still, she’d have to shoulder past the fact that he had her boat. The way forward had once seemed simple, but now she needed help.

Surely Hicks knew by now she wasn’t interested in whatever plans he’d made with Silver, in that pitiful attempt at starting a romance. And yet he seemed aware of his appearance now, brushing away the sweat beads from his forehead and pushing back his hair. He seemed as if he was anticipating something sweet and good. As if he was actually happy to see her.

Brutal regret hit her. The way she had treated him the night of her graduation dinner. She had stomped off like a child and had also stomped on at least part of his dreams. Apparently he wasn’t holding it against her. Frieda had a hard time understanding people who were that kind and forgiving. Her behavior had gone beyond rude; even when he’d brought her a gift she’d been awful. She’d taken out her rage toward Silver on Hicks; she shouldn’t have reacted to him that way. It really wasn’t Hicks’s fault. He’d made a good deal, plain and simple. The idea that he might have gotten her as part of the deal was more pathetic than anything else.

He gave a nod. “Frieda.”

She went very still. She watched him as he secured the boat, gathered up his catch, and leapt off the boat onto the pier. Surprisingly agile for a big man. Finally she said, “You need any help?”

“You wait here. Need to get this sold while it’s fresh.”

Sitting on the edge of the pier, she let her legs dangle close to the water’s surface. She could’ve waited on the boat but chose not to. She knew every nick in the rails, every quirk in the way the boat handled, and she had known every sound that came from the old engine. But Hicks was already changing the
Wren
. New paint, new engine. No longer hers and never would be. Sitting close to the boat brought it all back. She’d always felt that boats had a personality and a will of their own, that somehow they forged their own ways. So why hadn’t the
Wren
rebelled? Refused to run or run aground?

The tide was coming in, heavy and dark. The sun was sinking, showing only a few inches above the hills behind her, its rays sending out golden pearls all the way across the bay. She waited while the sun dragged the shadows of the piers and masts long across the water, and the sky turned salmon pink, with dark streaks of clouds skimming across it.

Hicks came back and sat down beside her without saying a word. He let his legs dangle over the water, too, and with the rising tide and his longer legs, soon his rubber boots skimmed the surface. He reached down to touch the water he’d worked over all day long, draping his fingers through it. Still not tired of it, it seemed. There was a naturalness about this moment of quiet. If Silver hadn’t been so conniving, she might have found a kindred spirit in Hicks. But she couldn’t admit to Silver or herself that his idea had some merit.