The Wooden Nickel (42 page)

“You ain’t saying nothing,” she says.

“I’m listening.”

“You hear what I’m telling you? Dr. Sempert thinks maybe we ought to terminate. It’s easy, they just take their little vacuum
aspirator and it’s like sucking a hair ball off a rug.”

“We ain’t doing it.”

She turns her body towards him but keeps her head back so he can focus on her with his farsighted eyes. Even pregnant, with
her clothes off she looks like jailbait, younger than Kristen. “It ain’t your choice,” she says. “It’s mine.”

“Then why are you telling me all this shit?”

“Just thought I’d see what you had to say. You wanted to, remember? You change your mind?”

“Wanted to what?”

“You know. Terminate.”

He lights up a Marlboro, takes the last slug of Miller High Life, and sizzles the match out in the can. “Maybe I did. So what?”

“It ain’t going to be easy for us two, Lucas Lunt. I’m giving you a way out if you want to take it. You can say good-bye and
get in your truck and go back to your snow-white little house with your dead ancestors and your famous fucking wife. You won’t
have to feel the trailer shake no more.”

He lies down again, turns his back to her and looks out the cracked bedroom window. By Corey Prentiss’s yard light he can
see his high-lifted GMC four-by-four parked next to Ronette’s round little Probe, just like the two of them lying there in
bed. Beyond that’s the roofline of Sonny Phair’s hubcap-shingled shack with the window open and Sonny all by himself drinking
beer and yelling like a hand job at the TV. She’s got her mouth against the back of his neck and she’s saying, “I got an appointment
tomorrow, Lucky. What am I going to tell him?”

“Tell him to stick his little vacuum cleaner up his ass. We been this far, we’re going through with it.”

She puts her arm over his shoulder and hangs on to him like she’s clinging to a life preserver. She’s not making a sound back
there, she just buries her face in the hair of his back till it grows warm and wet, and pretty soon he’s dreaming he’s down
in the Everglades with Wilfred Beal. Lucky’s swimming around on his back and spouting a big stream of swamp water and watching
Wilfred Beal up there on the flybridge of his tuna boat. Moto’s dockboy Curtis Landry walks out on the pulpit and aims the
harpoon gun at him, no escape, nothing but eelgrass and alligators all around. It feels like it’s all over, he calls to Wilfred
Beal but no sound comes out, and that son of a bitch Curtis is pulling the trigger of the harpoon gun, only what comes out
of it is not a harpoon but a stream of piss, so warm and golden he lets it fall over his head and shoulders like summer rain.

T
HIRD OF OCTOBER
, first big autumn storm’s blowing itself out, wind out of the northeast for three days straight. It came right over the roof
of Sonny Phair’s hubcap-covered shack and shook Ronette’s eight-by-forty like a paint mixer. Halfway through the blow a transformer
went down, they’ve been in the dark for thirty-six hours in weather so thick you can’t tell if it’s night or day. Tarratine
Hydro doesn’t give a god damn about the shacks and trailers on the Back Cove Road, they’ll be the last ones back on line.
Ronette went off to work the lunch shift at the Blue Claw, so Lucky’s left with ten pounds of frozen cod thawing out and a
six-pack of Rolling Rock that’s going to go rotten if it doesn’t get consumed. The wind scrapes the last leaves off the two
poplars by the driveway and rattles the trailer roof like a sheet of tin, which it is. That first morning he went over to
Sonny Phair’s and found him lying in his bed in front of a blank TV, voice so small you could barely hear him. “I get wicked
depressed when the lights go out.” He goosed Sonny out of bed and got some clothes on him and the two of them heaved five
or six truck tires on top of the trailer to keep the roof on. Now the tires are clomping around like there’s a horse up there,
they should have roped them down. Ronette’s got a battery-powered eight-track and Sonny lent them some oldies, so they spent
the evening snugged up by the kerosene heater listening to Waylon Jennings in the dark. System goes down, that’s when you
know the survivors, they’ve got all they need.

He brings the gas lantern over to the kitchen counter and opens one of the Rocks. Thick-looking water drips out of the freezer
compartment onto the floor and runs into another stream from a roof leak over the stove. Inside the freezer, the block of
frozen cod’s gone soft and started to smell a bit, but the chowder’s always tastier anyway if it’s a tad ripe, people ought
to know that but they don’t. He takes the whole ten pounds out and cubes it up with the cleaver and sets it to steam a few
minutes on the gas. He hauls out a gallon of whole milk that’s swelling the plastic bottle up and should also be used before
it turns. Half a pound of salt pork, bottle of Rolling Rock, bag of onions, slice and dice, two sticks of butter. He’s unwrapping
the Land O’Lakes quarters when he hears a woman’s voice in his ear so real it makes him turn around.
Too much cholesterol, Lucas.
He hoists his finger to the empty air and throws in a third butter quarter, waits for the voice to say something but it doesn’t.

By now everything in the refrigerator’s at room temperature. No use looking for a cold one, though the Rock is a better beer
warm than a cold Bud. He opens a five-pound plastic bag of scallops that never got to the freezer compartment and a wisp of
steam comes out. Bad sign. He was thinking of tossing a few in the chowder along with the codfish but they’re some rotten,
you can tell from the green spots. Maybe Corey Prentiss’s rottweiler would go for them, never hurts to make a friend.

He turns the chowder down to simmer. He puts on his oilskin jacket and his trawler boots, grabs a flashlight and goes outside.
Come to think of it, though, Corey might be in a trading mood. He drags his old Remington .30-06 out from under the built-in
and wraps it in a green garbage bag to keep it dry.

The wind’s still strong out of the northeast and there’s rain slanting down through the ground fog onto the trailer and the
GMC parked outside. The driveway and yard have a couple inches of bubbling rain on them and the road’s awash on both sides,
so he wonders how Ronette will ever get back from Doris’s in her little low-slung Probe. The afternoon sky’s darker than midnight.
A high-lifted Dodge four-by-four sloshes down the road till its taillights are lost in the rain and wind. The guy waved but
Lucky doesn’t know him so he didn’t wave back. A man’s been in one spot for two hundred years, takes a while to cozy up with
the new neighbors. He walks right up Corey Prentiss’s driveway with the rottweiler barking and straining at its chain. He
opens the scallop bag and lets a little rainwater run in to kill the stench, then tosses the whole load over the dog fence.
They say dogs don’t care for seafood but this one tears the bag open and wolfs down the whole five pounds, then starts howling
again like he hasn’t been fed for days. This time Corey throws the door open so you can see the light streaming out of his
kitchen and stands there in the doorway in his undershirt, cigar in his mouth and rubbing his belly like he just got out of
bed.

“Hey Corey, hope your dog likes scallops. I just fed him a five-pound bag.”

“Well, ain’t you considerate. Fritz got an allergy to them things, he’ll be throwing up all night.”

“That’s tough, Corey. We had to get rid of them. They was getting ripe.”

“Icebox don’t work, huh? Come on in and have a drink. I got gas lights, gas stove, gas-powered refrigerator. I ain’t dependent
on nothing. We could have a fucking nuclear war, I wouldn’t even know it. I got two years’ worth of dog food in the basement.”

“Finest kind, Corey. One year for the dog, one for you.”

“That stuff ain’t as bad as you might think. I try a little now and then. Man oughtn’t to feed an animal what he won’t eat
himself.”

He comes in out of the rain and takes the wet jacket off and plops down in Corey’s den. Gas lamps sticking out of every wall,
brass-colored Aladdin lantern with a green chimney hanging from the center of the room, behind Corey’s drawn curtains it’s
bright as day. His hobby is taxidermy. He’s got a whole fucking zoo in there, pheasants and deer heads, lacquered trout plaques
on the wall, beaver chewing a tree in a glass case. A big moose head over the recliner faces the TV like it’s watching the
evening news. According to Sonny Phair, when Corey’s wife died a couple years back he had her down in the basement half stuffed
by the time the deputies showed up and took her away for a church burial.

Corey’s also got a six-foot gun cabinet with every kind of rifle and shotgun known to man. First thing Lucky does, after he
puts the deer rifle down and hangs up his wet oilskins, is accept a shot of whiskey with ice cubes and peer into the glass
doors of that rack to see what’s there.

“I been thinking of a large-bore rifle,” he says. “Thought maybe you would swap for this Remington .30-06. I kept her good.”

“What’d you, win the moose lottery? Thought you said you got a moose last year. Season’s over anyway.”

“Didn’t even try this year. Where the fuck would I put a moose in that little place? Just want something a tad heavier around
the house.”

“I’m right with you on that one. Never know when a man might need to defend his home.”

“You got a fifty-caliber?”

“I ain’t. You’re talking about a bazooka.”

“That’s what them Indians use on the whales. Out west.”

“That’s different. They’re government subsidized out there. You and me, they don’t even let us look at guns like that. Wait
a couple years, you won’t be able to buy a water pistol.”

Lucky peers through the beveled glass of the gun cabinet. “Wouldn’t mind seeing what you have.”

“Take a look at this Ruger four-sixteen. That’s what the elephant poachers use over in Zimbabwe. That’s a three-hundred-grain
soft-point, she’ll expand to the size of an apple right in an elephant’s heart, stop it cold. She’ll pass through a two-inch
plank and kill someone in body armor on the other side. I got a thousand rounds of them Rigby four-sixteens, down in the shelter.
You never know.”

The deal gets interrupted by a gust that shakes Corey’s solid double-wide prefab till there’s a crash on the roof like an
antenna coming down. “Wind’s backing,” Lucky observes. “She’ll clear off tonight.”

“Maybe. You want to swap that little Remington for the Ruger?

It ain’t exactly an even exchange, Lucky. How much you want to spend?”

“I’ll throw in my four-wheeler, it’s a Polaris 350 with a gun rack and deer winch. You just have to pick it up yourself over
to my wife’s garage in Orphan Point.”

Corey thinks for a while, then says, “OK, I could use an ATV, won’t be any roads left when the shit comes down. Your ex-wife
better give me the god damn thing when I go after it. I don’t want no domestic trouble.”

He unwraps his side of the deal and rubs the moisture off the .30-06 with his shirttail. Corey takes the Ruger out of the
gun rack and hands it over, stock first. The Ruger outweighs the Remington three to one. This is a bona fide African rhino
rifle: commando sling, open sights, five- or six-shot clip and a nice checkered walnut stock that glows under the gas lamp
like sunset on the flanks of a bull moose. Must have quite the kick too, the stock’s got a recoil absorber thick as a crutch
pad. Corey comes up with a box of Rigby ammunition from the steel drawer under the gun rack. “You ought to fire her a few
times before you use her,” he warns. “She’ll rip your shoulder off if you ain’t braced up.”

“I’m going to try her out on that christly dog of yours on the way out.”

“You go right ahead, Lucas. Save me the trouble. Say, you folks ready for the year two thousand over there? It ain’t going
to be pretty.”

He turns around and slings the Ruger over his shoulder like he’s back in boot camp at Fort Dix. “We are now.”

On the way home the wind’s stopped howling through Corey’s satellite dish but the rain keeps coming down. The rottweiler’s
lying there strangely silent while the empty scallop bag floats around his yard.

Back in the trailer he gives the simmering chowder a stir and fills the clip on the Ruger, just to get a feel of the action.
He’s picturing himself out there in the clearing wind, shoulder braced against the pot hauler, sights lined up right on that
son of a whore’s eyeball. Take your time, wait till the sucker turns over, squeeze her nice and gentle. With a heart the size
of a Volkswagen he ought to be able to hit the christly thing. Then a car splashes into the driveway and he slides the gun
back under the built-in and throws a handful of pepper in the chowder pot.

Ronette comes blasting through the aluminum trailer door in her white waitress outfit, white skirt and shoes splattered with
rain and mud. The door won’t latch right and blows back open in the rain, so they both have to go out and wrestle it in. “Power
ain’t back yet?” she says.

“What’s it look like?”

“I don’t know, but it smells like cod heaven. Didn’t know you was a cook.”

“We still got the gas anyway.”

They sit down to a couple of lukewarm Rolling Rocks and the hot chowder and another old Waylon Jennings, he listened to it
with Sarah when they first went out, now she won’t have it in the house.

“Turn it up, Ronette, so we don’t hear the god damn wind.”

I can’t say I’ve always been proud of the things that I’ve done

But I can say I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone

“Lucky, it’s fucking
raining
in here, can’t you feel that?”

She’s right, a wet breeze is blowing right through the trailer wall. Then there’s a crash over the fridge as one of the roof
tires vibrates to the edge and falls scraping down past the aluminum siding. After that even more rain comes into the living
room. He finishes the last of his chowder and starts shining the flashlight around. A wall section has buckled between the
kerosene heater and the gas stove and there’s a two-foot-long crack opened up between the panels. Serious water is gathering
on the floor and floating the carpet up. His first instinct is to look around for a bilge pump, then he gets up and throws
his shoulder against the panel to try and straighten her out.