The Wooden Nickel (33 page)

“Jesus,” he says. “It don’t take long.”

“That deputy was setting in your driveway all afternoon, just waiting for you to come back from Tarratine. Everyone figured
your wife would come back to claim the house. That art school’s closing for the season. She needs a place to live, same as
anyone else.”

“It ain’t hers.”

“She raised two kids in there. Guess that gives her a stake, same as you.”

Ronette comes swinging out of the kitchen in a low-cut black dress with gold ear hoops the size of mooring rings and her tits
bubbling over like they’re the Blue Plate Special. She’s carrying a platter of four lobster dinners on her shoulder. The tray’s
so heavy she has to lean way over to keep it level so the melted butter bowls don’t spill. Each lobster has the tail and claws
around the edge of the plate and the body sitting straight up in the middle. Their eyes bulge like they’re still looking around
the trap for a way out. Back in the kitchen he gets a glimpse of Fat Charlie leaning his bare gut against the griddle, his
stomach a road map of burn scars, cigarette hanging from his mouth, lining the lobsters up and whacking their tails off with
a cleaver, three at a time.

When she catches sight of Lucky at the bar with his microbrew and the Sunday clothes with gloves on, she almost trips. She
puts the platter down on the tray rack and dishes the lobsters to a table of four skinny queers with gray ponytails reaching
down their backs, giggling and whispering and patting each other on the back of the hand. Sweet Jesus, he didn’t think they
ever reached that age.

Finally she comes over and rests the big empty platter on the end of the counter. She bows her head for a moment like she’s
too tired to keep it up, then gives it a shake and widens her kelp-colored eyes. “Lucky Lunt, what are you doing in here on
the dinner shift? I thought they was going to put you in jail.”

“Should of. At least I’d of had a place to sleep.”

“Heard that too. Your wife’s back, you’re out. That’s what Doris said. Hey, why in hell you wearing gloves in here?”

He pulls one of the work gloves halfway off and shows her the sliced-up palm.

“Holy shit. You been in a fight.”

“Just doing some housecleaning,” he says.

The front door opens and four more yuppies squeeze in. All the tables are full and there’s people waiting at every seat in
the bar. Ronette gives his bare hand a quick pat and pulls her fingers back caulked with congealing blood. “No shit, Lucky,
I’d take off with you but I’m the only one on, and look at this place. You can’t even stay, the dinner customers have to have
a place to sit. That’s the rule. No drinking if you don’t eat. Otherwise it’d become a dive. Take care. You need a place,
you got my trailer key.”

“There’s places,” he says. “I won’t be needing it.”

“I’m sure there is. See you tomorrow, then. Five a.m.”

“That’s what I came to tell you. We ain’t going out.”

“What do you mean? We ain’t hauled in four days. Them lobsters will be busting through the traps.”

“We ain’t hauling. I got five years.”

“Five years in prison?” She bends her head down and her eyes look like they’re getting ready to cry.

He likes that look and lets her hang there a second before he says, “A five-year suspension. Just as bad. A man can’t fish,
he might as well be in the joint making bottled ships.”

“Lucky, you been working all your life. You earned some time. I got it figured out. I’ll take another job. I got eight hours
between shifts here at the Claw. I’ll work down to Riceville at the cat food plant, my cousin Shane is a foreman. You just
have to stay home and take care of little Luke.”

Doris comes over to hustle Ronette back to work. “You’re going to have to speed up, dear. People are waiting.” By now she’s
got customers lined up beside the door just for seats at the counter so they can wait for a table. Standing room only. Every
fucking one of them is having lobster and they don’t even know where it comes from. This is what he lived for and his old
man lived for and his grandfather drowned for, to stuff a butchered-up red shellfish in the mouth of these gossiping fairies
who are pulling the assholes out of their lobster tails and laying them on the saucers of their butter bowls. All of a sudden
he’s getting a picture of Merritt Lunt on his last morning, he’s seen it a hundred times, clear as a real photograph. The
old man’s slipping a trap over the transom, first of a double. A loop of pot warp catches around his ankle. He doesn’t even
see it. Puff of wind tips her and trap number two slips off the rail just as he’s dropping number one. Silent movie, black-and-white
photograph, bad dream. Soon as he’s down there the lobsters are all over him, he had no pecker when they brought him up. They
find his boat with the old four-banger jeep engine idling in circles north of Toothpick Shoal, loyal as a spaniel, marking
the spot where he went down.

That was the first
Wooden Nickel,
her skipper perished so these fucking parasites could enjoy their meal.

He could take his work glove and sweep the lobsters right off their table, he could handle four fairies with one hand and
smoke a cigarette with the other. But Doris is at his elbow saying, “We love having you here, Lucky, but you’re distracting
the help.” She points the big stray lobsterman towards the open door. “Take care of yourself,” she says. “We’ll be here in
the morning. You need anything then, just ask old Doris and she’ll fix you up.”

On the oyster-shell walkway to the parking lot, he runs into a crowd of Chinese tourists in red and white sweaters, cameras
around their necks. They’re pointing at Doris’s sign, chattering, “Robsta, robsta.”

“She’s full up,” he tells them. “Go eat someplace else.”

One of the Chinese asks, “You take picture?” and hands him a Nikon. They line up in front of Doris’s shiny blue claw sign
and he squeezes them all into the frame, then pulls the trigger. He’s pretending it’s his .410 loaded with duck shot but it
just flashes and they all laugh and clap, then the Chinese line up around him with some of their arms on his shoulders and
the guy with the camera takes a picture: Lucky and the seven dwarfs. He’s never been that close to a Communist in his life.

It’s way too early for the RoundUp’s parking lot to be full, but it is, he can’t figure out why. No out-of-staters either,
just wall-to-wall pickups, some he knows but many he’s never seen. It’s Wednesday, nothing special, no live band. Soon as
he parks, though, he hears the noise and smells scorched hardwood and burned power cords. Now he remembers, it’s Belt Sander
Night, third Wednesday of the month, he should have known. He was hoping to have a few quiet shots and beers and get his hands
washed and maybe get someone to put him up for a couple of days so he doesn’t have to sleep in the truck. He also hoped to
see what’s around for odd jobs now that his work is gone.

Inside, there’s a couple hundred guys with caps and beers around Andy’s old birch-planked tavern bowling lane. The wood has
two deep grooves laid in by the races, with deep brown burn scars on the sidelines and the median strip. The track is still
smoking and smoldering from the last race. The racers are huddled with their belt sanders down at the starting end, they’re
tightening up the belts, checking the duct tape around the cords. Up at the finish line Big Andy has two clam hods full of
ten- and twenty-dollar bills. To bet on one sander or the other you have to throw your money in the right- or left-hand hod,
then the losers’ cash gets dumped into the winners’ hod and the winners take double. Honor system, people trust each other
around here. There’s so many guys he can’t even see the bar.

“Lunt! You coming home from church?”

It’s Reggie Dolliver, last man he wants to see. But Reggie’s right alongside of the bar so he’s got access. “Get me something,”
he shouts.

Reggie comes over with a shot and a Rolling Rock. “Guy from Riceville’s smoking everyone. Hey, what’re you all dressed up
for? Somebody die?”

He takes the shot and beer in his two gloved hands and slugs them down at the same time. “Men’s prayer group,” he answers.

“No shit?” Reggie says. “I seen a lot of that on the inside. Happens when you get old, ain’t nothing else to live for.”

The Riceville guy’s sander is a big two-horse Craftsman Professional with inch-thick duct tape protecting the power cord.
He’s got teeth painted on the front of it like a tiger shark, a lead weight duct-taped to the midsection and what looks like
a number twelve floor-sanding belt for traction. He’s setting it up on the left side. The challenger’s on the right, a new-looking
blue Makita Power Pro with two lead pigs clamped around the handle and an oversize motor that looks like a custom job. Both
of the sanders have the dust bags off so the dust can blow back like a jet trail, the exhaust adds thrust, and if you aim
it right you can blind the other guy so he can’t hold his power cord straight.

“You betting?” Reggie Dolliver asks.

“Just got here. Ain’t seen what they can do.”

The two racers plug into a power strip on the ceiling behind the starting line. Big Andy has a long-barreled western-style
starting gun. He raises it once and the gamblers all edge over toward the finish to drop their money in one clam hod or the
other. Reggie slides over and puts a twenty on the Makita and comes back to his seat. “Son of a bitch is fast. He smoked a
Black & Decker Professional before you come in.”

Wallace is behind the bar with his hand on the breaker panel. The two racers make sure their motor switches are on, then grab
the oversized power cords and lean back to absorb the force of the start. The winner will be the first one over the far edge,
drilling into the big sandpit at the end of the track.

Big Andy fires the blank, Wallace closes the switch and the belt sanders scream to life. They hold the wires for a second
while the sanders gather traction and dig in, then they let go and the two machines screech down the bowling lane and bury
their owners in a cloud of dust and smoke. But the Craftsman chews over to the right and knocks the Makita off the track so
they have to run the race again. Half the guys scramble over to the clam hods to change their bets, but Reggie Dolliver stays
put. “How’s that cocksucker going to win if it don’t run straight?”

Next race the Craftsman’s owner hangs on to the power cord a second longer before letting go. His sander digs in, tracks down
the groove and slams into the sandpit before the Makita can reach the finish line. The Craftsman’s owner is a tall skinny
guy with a cap saying rosen’s flooring, which is all the way up in Tarratine. Guys gather around him, checking his machine
out, buying him drinks while the winners rake their profits out of the clam hod.

The next challenger is a Ryobi painted a godawful orange with a little Confederate flag on either side of the motor housing.
Bets are taken, they hold the cord, they let go, and the Craftsman screams ahead down the groove, then the Rebel sander skews
to the left and crawls up the Craftsman’s power cord so the race ends in a blaze of sparks that blows a main fuse and puts
out every light in the place. The weak little emergency lights blink on in the corner over the steer head, and there’s Big
Andy running over to the fuse box while Wallace is swamped with drink orders, stirring with his finger, trying to mix them
up by feel.

Reggie Dolliver excuses himself and slinks his way among the crowd in the direction of the clam hods. Pretty soon he’s back,
folding a couple of twenties into his shirt pocket. “Take advantage of god-given opportunity, that’s what I say.”

“You learn that in the joint?”

“What do they say? ‘Everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten.’”

“Jesus, Reggie, I thought you dropped out before kindergarten.”

“I ain’t talking about kindergarten. I’m saying I learned plenty up there, taxpayers’ expense.”

“How’s the ship models?”

“Fuck them, that’s for cons. I been taking computers down to the voc school in Stoneport. I got into home security. High tech.”

“I heard. Any money in that kind of work?”

“Ain’t nothing to brag about. But I got some ideas. Hey, I hear you got some trouble going out there too, don’t know how that’s
going to come down on you...”

The lights snap back on. Instantly more belt sanders line up for their crack at the starting line. He grabs Wallace’s arm
going past with a tray of beers and orders a couple more Rocks and shots. He taps out a Marlboro and another for Reggie Dolliver.
Reggie’s not betting this time around. The sanders roar across the bowling alley and into the pit, everyone screaming, a dead
heat. He says to Reggie, “Five cocksucking years.”

“In the joint?”

“I ain’t that lucky. License suspension.”

“Hey. Think about it. You’re still a free man.”

“I ain’t that free. I got payments. I owe the home equity even though I can’t set foot in the fucking house. I owe the hospital.
I can’t even afford to fucking die.”

“Tell you what,” Reggie says. “I got a plan.”

Now they’ve got three contestants on the track at once, the crowd’s getting drunk, half of them holding a belt sander in the
crook of their free arm. So many guys want to race it looks like they’re going to start driving them right on the floor. Behind
the bar, Big Andy’s glancing at his aluminum baseball bat alongside the cash register.

Lucky laughs, chugs his shot. “I know where your fucking plans end up.”

“No, this is hot. You’re only in on it cause you and me’s pretty near family.” Lucky pulls his Rolling Rock a few more inches
away from Reggie’s, as far as he can get it without running into the guy’s on the other side, big Indian biker from Riceville
with a spiked bulldog collar on his wrist.

“I don’t see as we’re family,” Lucky says.

“Maybe not. Down the road, though, who knows? Anyway, I’m wiring that new development, Split Acres, they got a gated entry
so you can’t even get in there, but you can see it from the water. Million-fucking-dollar estates. They got art up the butthole
in them places, Louie the Nineteenth couches, buck-naked statues, old fucking masters, they got safes behind the pictures
with stocks and cash, you name it. Got to be drugs too, rich bastards, every one of them’s strung out on coke. I seen them.
They can’t even stand up half the time.”