68 Knots (12 page)

“I know some great recipes for lobster,” Joy said. “Boiled lobster, lobster alfredo, lobster bisque. And I think I could make something decent with lobster, pasta, and Szechwan pepper. But we can't just take the lobsters. That's stealing, and stealing is wrong. It's immoral, and it's against God's will. So we can't.”

“Just plain butter,” BillFi said. “I like it with just plain butter and a little salt. Just butter and salt.”

“Or melted cheese,” Logan said, rubbing his flabby belly. “Some lobster, a lotta melted cheese, and some crusty bread. Oh, wait. We don't have any bread.”

“Hold it!” Arthur said. “Think for a minute. First, Joy's right. You're talking about theft—stealing lobsters from the fishermen who put out those traps. That's illegal, and I don't—”

“It doesn't seem too bad to me,” Crystal said, “compared to, you know, dumping a dead guy off the bow.”

Arthur was silent for a moment. He shook his head. “Forget about it,” he said. “If we get caught, we could get in a lot of trouble. We also might get shot at.”

“Oh, come on!” Crystal said. “We won't get caught. We'll only do it when no other boats are around. No one can see us. I don't think—”

“No!” Arthur said. “I'm your captain, and I said no. We are not going to do something illegal and risky just because you all lacked the discipline to stick to your shopping lists.”

Crystal sneered. She turned to address the rest of the crew. “Hear that?” she said. “Arthur, our fucking captain, said no. Well tell you what, Mr. Fucking Captain. Unless you have both the strength and the balls to stop me—and I doubt it on both counts—I'll go get lobsters whenever I feel like it. You got a problem with that, I won't bring one back for you.”

“I see,” Arthur said icily. “I'll tell
you
what. We'll put your idea to a vote, and when you lose, you'll be forbidden from diving for lobsters at any time. And if you do, we'll leave you at the next port.” He looked around the table. “All in favor of violating your captain's orders and stealing lobsters, raise your hands,” Arthur said.

At first, no one moved. Only Crystal's hand shot defiantly into the air. Then slowly, Logan lifted his hand, too. “Melted cheese!” he pleaded as Arthur glared at him.

“Fine,” Arthur said, “that's two votes to six. Any others?”

A moment later, BillFi raised his hand, and Jesse did the same.

“I vote no,” Marietta said. “I'm with Arthur.”

Dawn voted yes on the grounds that the Sea Goddess would give them whatever they were supposed to have; the vote held at five in favor and three opposed. Joy just shook her head.

“Fine,” Arthur said, fuming and hoping that everyone knew it. “The vote carries, and Crystal gets to lead a group to steal lobsters. Understand what we're doing, though. We just
decided to break the law. Not bend it—deliberately break it. Not because McKinley tried to cheat us. Not because we were committed to a great summer on an old schooner. We're breaking the law now because we bought sweaters and sleeping bags and a boombox in Freeport.”

He shook his head slowly and turned to face Crystal, who was staring at him with a smirk on her face.

“Bring back enough for everyone,” he ordered.

Because Jesse wasn't able to row the dinghy—his arm was still striped with purple bruises—Crystal took one oar, and Logan took the other. BillFi gave directions from the bow, and Marietta rode in the stern. Once the vote had gone against her, she jumped to side with the majority.

“Which one do you think we should take?” BillFi asked no one in particular. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “There's a red-and-white float. Should we pull up that one? The red-and-white one? Or maybe the one with the blue stripes. Should we pull that one up? The one with the stripes?”

Marietta rubbed oil over her already tan skin and scanned the lobster floats bobbing in the bay. They offered a kaleidoscope of colors, but a few patterns began to emerge. The floats were painted in eight different color patterns, and she guessed that eight different fishermen worked this area.

“I think that's right,” Logan said. “I think the colors are how they, you know, tell their floats apart.”

Marietta did some quick counting.

“Most of the ones out here are solid pink,” she said. “I think we should try a few of those first, 'cause that fisherman is less likely to miss a few lobsters than the other ones.”

“Good idea,” Crystal said. “But we'll spread it around a little. If we have to check several traps to get enough lobsters, we won't do all the same color. That way, the fishermen might not notice the missing lobsters and get all pissed off. Let's go for that nearest pink one.”

The dinghy glided slowly toward the float. When it was close, BillFi reached over the side and grabbed the mossy line that trailed into the shadowy water beneath it.

“Got it!” he said. “I need some help.”

Crystal and Logan put their oars down and scrambled to the bow. They grabbed the line and pulled together, and slowly the wet slimy rope slithered into the dinghy.

“I see the trap!” Marietta called out. “It's almost here.”

A few more pulls, and the trap broke the surface. The crew hauled it, dripping, into the dinghy.

The trap looked like a miniature Quonset hut, rectangular on the bottom and curved on the top. It was made out of small slats of wood, and netting covered the two ends. It was gray and green with algae, and water poured off it into the bottom of the boat.

One lobster lurked inside. It was dark green and about ten inches long, and it had one large, intimidating claw.

“How do you open this thing?” Marietta asked, touching it like it might explode. Then she saw a small door that was latched shut. “There it is.”

“Well, go ahead,” BillFi said. “Open it and get that lobster out of there. Go ahead. Go ahead and get it.”

“Yeah, Marietta,” Logan said with a grin. “Go ahead.”

“Me? Why me? Why don't you reach
your
hand in there and get it out?” Marietta said. “I'm not sticking my hand in there.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Crystal said, sneering. “You people
are so afraid of everything.” She turned the latch, and in motions almost too fast to see, she thrust her hand into the trap, grabbed the lobster behind its claw legs, and yanked it out. She dropped it to the bottom of the dinghy and shut the trap.

“Let's go,” she said. “At this rate, this'll take us all day.”

They tossed the trap back into position and rowed over to a green float. The crew pulled on that line, and the trap slowly came to the surface.

No lobsters. The trap was empty.

They rowed some more. The next trap, beneath a half-purple and half-white float, held two lobsters. Crystal plucked the lobsters out of the trap. “Only five more to go,” she said. “If we each want only one, that is. We should probably get more.”

Logan groaned. “I don't know how many more of these traps I can pull up,” he said. “These things are like, incredibly
heavy
.”

“I know what you mean,” Marietta said, rubbing more oil into her skin. “I can't do more than one or two more. This is hard work.”

Crystal shook her head. “Pretty sad, ladies,” she said, staring flatly at Logan. “Okay, fine. How long are these lines? How deep is the water here?”

“Not much,” Logan said. “Maybe like, eight feet.”

“Fine,” Crystal said. “Just row us to the next trap. I'll take care of it.”

Logan shrugged and rowed the creaking dinghy over to another pink float. Crystal stood up in the stern and kicked off her sneakers without rocking the boat.

“Just wait here,” she said, sliding off her socks. “I'll be right back with the lobsters.”

She pulled her shirt over her head and tugged her shorts down over her hips and off her legs. She stood for a moment,
dressed in only a small sports bra and underwear, then took a deep breath and dove over the side.

Logan rolled his eyes. “She's totally nuts,” he said. Everyone in the dinghy peered over the side, but none of them could see a thing.

Less than a minute later, Crystal swam up through the murky water, splashed through the surface, and shook the saltwater from her short blond hair. She had a lobster in each hand.

“Here,” she said, tossing the lobsters at Logan. She took a few more breaths. “I'll be right back.”

She dove down again and resurfaced a moment later, gripping two more lobsters behind their claw legs. She lobbed them into the dinghy, swam over to another float, and ducked her head into the water. She raised her rear end and then her legs into the air and dove downward.

Before an hour had passed, Crystal had collected a dozen lobsters in addition to the first three. Then she grabbed the gunwale, flipped herself into the dinghy, and pulled her clothes back on.

“Okay,” she said. “Let's go back to the ship. I don't know about you, but I'm fucking hungry.”

Joy sat on the bow and tried to think and pray at the same time. She knew in her heart that stealing the lobsters was wrong—a
sin
—but she didn't think God wanted her to quit and go home. She was going to create a new church, after all, and the House of Joy was sure to do enough good to offset the theft of a few lobsters in Maine. Besides, she thought, do the lobsters belong to the fishermen just because they crawled into a trap? If we had caught them just
before
they went into the trap, that wouldn't be
stealing at all. Surely God doesn't want me to quit just because we got the lobsters a minute too late, does He? But we wouldn't have gotten the lobsters at all if it weren't for the traps. So if it is stealing, then it's a direct violation of a Commandment, and surely going home was better than defying God's will. “
Dios mio
,” she whispered. “Help me decide what to do.”

She had started to pull her coin from her pocket when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Dawn sat down next to her and dangled her long legs over the side.

“It's no fun sometimes, is it?” Dawn asked, her green eyes staring out to sea. “We're spiritual beings trapped in a messy human existence. The answer is not always clear.”

Joy nodded. “I don't know what to do,” she said softly.

“I think you shouldn't do anything you can't undo,” Dawn said. “If cooking and eating the lobsters are wrong, I'm sure God will forgive you. But if you leave the ship, I don't think you'll be able to come back if you change your mind.”

Joy was silent.

“Just give it some time,” Dawn said, pulling her red baseball cap over her light brown hair and flipping her ponytail out the space in the back. “If you don't know the answer right now, then maybe you should give it time to reveal itself.”

Joy nodded again. She was silent for a while, her chubby hands holding onto supports while her mind considered her options. Then with a sudden movement, she spun her coin on the deck. Saint Christopher—the patron saint of travelers. “I'll stay,” she said, putting the coin back into her pocket. “For now, anyway.”