Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction (82 page)

Delores and Walter’s house is at the top of a long, narrow lwan, a couple of football fields up the hill from the road and the worm shed. It’s newish, set back on the hill, modern lines, tall windows, peaked ceiling, furniture-showroom furniture. It’s all very tidy, with an entire wall devoted to a wallpaper mountain scene, anything but the ocean.

It’s well-known, according to Walter, well-known around the flats Down East, that Delores runs the Walter Lock Jr. Bait Company. He means he’s damn proud of her business acumen and not afraid to say so. Delores is tanned and short and built delicately around the ankles and knees, bigger and sturdier on top. She wears large, round eyeglasses, gives an occasional smile, looks closely at you as you speak, her bullshit detector set on stun. Walter says she’s tough, she’s the one to sell something — sell a car, sell a house, sell the worms (“If these senators up in Washington was just women,” he says again, has said it five or six times since I’ve known him). There’s a sign in her handsome handwriting in the worm shed: “No more short counts. There will be no warning.” I know it’s her handwriting, because she’s written me at the university, inviting me to come on back down, see the business end of things. It’s her sense that I didn’t quite get what I needed from the men, she wrote, in so many words, quite a few words. And today she’s gone out of her way to answer all my questions, even suggesting questions to ask. She knows I want some color for my write-up (she calls it), so she has told me that she and Walter tried a couple of winters in Florida, picking oranges (piecework, like worms), but lately it’s been back to year-round Maine. As for Truey, Truey may seem like a tough guy, but Truey is her little love bunny.

While Walter and Truey are out on the flats, she’s on the phone and watching the fax — getting orders from distributors and retailers all over, filling them. She shows me how everything works. Charts and graphs and order sheets. The volume of her sales gets translated into limits: if she’s got orders for ten thousand bloodworms and five thousand sandworms on a given day, that’s as many as she’ll buy from her diggers. A five-hundred-worm limit means a digger can make no more than $50 that day, no matter how prolific the mud. Some families, the ones Delores likes, can get around the limits by bringing spouses and sons and daughters into the picture.

In the worming shed — the windowless cinderblock basement of a truck garage (the garage now converted to an apartment — the days when they could afford to run their own trucks are over) — she washes the counting trays, packs the worms. She hasn’t stopped moving since I arrived. The worms go in the usual cardboard flats for the distributors, 125 sands or 250 bloods in a bed of seaweed. Also, increasingly, Delores makes a special fisherman’s ten-pack for bait shops to sell, her own invention. A little maidenhair seaweed, ten carefully counted worms to a small, clear, plastic bag, a twist tie, then into a partitioned shipping box, cardboard lined with styrofoam:
LIVE SEA WORMS. RUSH
!

A lot of work, something she didn’t have to do in the past.

It’s impossible to talk to her when she’s counting; she doesn’t hear or see, waits till the little bag she’s working on is completely and neatly packed. She doesn’t move quickly, even though it’s familiar work; rather, she’s elegant with it, as if she were cooking a fancy French dish. Between ten-packs she gives a small shrug, a smile, talks a snippet of politics, a bit of worm theory, tells a quick story, offers a confession: “Back when we were paying two and three cents a worm I’d kill ’em when they stung me. Now we’re paying ten, I just pack the biters in like the rest.” She likes her diggers loyal, she says, doesn’t appreciate someone who’s over limit trying to sell to other dealers, though she’ll buy spare worms from almost anybody if she’s got the orders.

Delores has two years of college, University of Southern Maine, thirty-some years back, cannot remember what major, did not get the degree. At this, I just shrug. For that, she likes me more. And I like her. She knows exactly who I am. She keeps me at her side, introduces me to everyone as a scientist. I don’t correct her, and in some weird way my actual physical stance changes. The look on my face feels scientific. Even my questions change. I’m a new man. Give me a lab coat. I peer at the worms a whole new way, as if through some delicate instrument. For the first time among wormers I don’t feel like an idiot. That’s Delores.

In the hours after the tide the wormers come in, quietly, tiredly, make their counts. There’s no banter, no conversation, no braggadocio. The diggers just come in. There’s Jordon LeMieux, whom Walter has called an ace blood digger. There’s Spooky Nick, another ace, and Clarissa Larssen — the best woman wormer in Maine, in Walter’s estimation. Squeak Snodgras comes in and counts his worms wordlessly, hands in his count slip, wordlessly leaves. There’s a cool-looking teen boy, a hottie — Nike Air sneakers, T-shirt that says slam dunk, inner-city haircut — standing by his long-haired and tattooed dad, and in the counting room at prom time the boy is attentive, engaged, watches carefully as Pop counts his allowance worm by worm into the tray. Another father stands beside his daughter, an athletic and serious young woman of sixteen — very, very pretty — with mud to her eyelashes. They count. No one talks, not even all the young guys — a dozen of them in their twenties (their muddy pants low on their hips, showing the cracks of their fannies: wormer’s cleavage). No chatter. No high fives. Nothing but the counting, the exchanging of slips, this scientist watching. There are two guys with ponytails like mine (that is, scraggly), a bunch with tattoos, several apparent body builders, a thin fellow with jesus loves you on his sweatshirt. The wormers straggle in for a couple of hours, dumping their worms, counting them fast under fluorescent light, filling out their slips, collecting their cash or watching Delores put their counts in her book for a paycheck at the end of the week. In a couple of months some of the boys will have to start blueberry picking up on the highlands; a few weeks past that some will go off logging. Some have skills like welding for whoever comes needing it; some will clean houses or leave town with construction crews or take temporary work at a mill. In December there’s firewood chopping, even knickknack carving, and many an individual scheme. Then the new year: time to start thinking about the mud. Some guys will have to get out there in January — break the ice, dig the worms. Some will luxuriate till February. Some — the diggers with luck, or skills that match this year’s needs, or spouses who work good jobs — won’t have to go out till March.

My first trip with the Down East boys proved a good one for them, Walter and Dicky both counting 1,500 sands — $90 each, plus enough bloods to carry the take over a hundred dollars for the tide. Truey, always a little more aggressive, got 1,650 sands that day. Dicky was kind enough to count my worms for me, and after culling about 50 (too small, or diseased, or broken by the bloods I’d thrown in with them), my count for the tide was an unspectacular 155 worms: $9.30. The five killer bloods in there brought my payday up to $9.80. I refused the cash, but Delores refused my refusal, and so — after a spot of negotiating, and a suggestion by Dicky — I became a minor sponsor of Truey’s big number five, glory of the Bangor Speedway.

Still trying, I make yet another worming trip, drive down from Farmington the night before a tide Truey thinks’ll be a good one, eat a diner dinner, stay at the Blueberry Motel. It’s a nice late low tide, and I sleep in, eat a big breakfast. Truey broke a camshaft in the race Saturday night and wrecked his engine, so there’s extra incentive for a big day for all of us. My boots are tight; I’ve been out on my own in the mud below Milbridge, practicing. I’ve bought myself a sandworm hoe. I have my own gloves, a proper shirt. I know the Harrington River mud, now, and the Harrington River mud knows me. I’m ready to leave the ranks of professors, even scientists, ready to move up to shitdigger. The day is auspicious, the parking lot at Ripley Neck entirely full. Walter points out a Garney across the way, hovering in a workboat. “Spyglass,” he says. “He’ll sit there and wait to see where the real wormers go.”

We cross the bay in good weather. The talk is briefly of cranberries. Walter has had a brainstorm: he’ll dig a homemade bog in the woods up behind his house, grow cranberries. Dicky and Truey don’t have much to say about that, then Truey invokes sea urchins, and they’re off on that good subject again. Twenty-eight hundred dollars a day, and you can go all winter. Twenty-eight hundred a day, and you don’t have to worry about the worm market drying up, and you don’t have to cut wood, or make wreaths, or shovel snow, or work blueberries. You just get in your diving gear, bring up the urchins, get your body heat back in the hot tank on the deck of your boat, dive and dive and dive again, get rich on the Japanese.

“It’s a hard winter in this county,” as Walter says. Here in June, the Down East boys are already thinking about ice.

That fucking spyglass Garney is going ashore in the neighborhood of some Milbridge boys. The sun is hot. Thunderheads are building up. You think of lightning, then you think of yourself plugged into the mud, the highest thing for hundreds of yards around, a lightning rod. Workboats are tooling every which way, and Truey and Dicky and Walter know everyone. “That fellow there is Minton Frawley. He went out to Arizona one winter and got himself in the movies. Did you see
Stir Crazy
? He’s the guy looking up the girl’s crotch in that bar scene.”

“He’s back worming,” Dicky says.

“Scared of lightning,” Truey says, meaning Freddy. “He’ll run at the first boom-boom. Watch him.”

“Winter does take a toll,” Walter says, drifting on his own raft of thought. When we hit the mud, Walter gets in it, immediately marches to a big mussel flat, and begins to dig its borders. Dicky and Truey and I wait. Like most wormers, they like to watch the tide, size it up, have a chat. “Ask your daddy how many orders he’s got,” Dicky says. “I need some ambition.”

He does look tired.

Truey just watches his father at work.

Dicky sizes up the tide, pretends a discouragement that looks real. “I don’t think this is going to be a profitable day, Truey.”

My deadline is long gone, my story’s a kill, but here I am. The guys don’t pay much attention to me anymore, negative or positive. I’m up to about forty bucks in Truey’s race car. Maybe one Saturday soon I’ll go to the races, hang in the pit, a scientist, see, interested in speed. Maybe
Harper’s
will like that story!

There’s a rumble of thunder not far distant. Truey smiles briefly at Dicky’s joking, goes over the gunwales, gets himself ready to worm. Dicky reluctantly follows. I’m so reluctant I just sit in the boat and watch them start. More thunder.

“There he goes,” Truey says. Sure enough, movie star Frawley has turned his boat around and is heading back in.

Truey takes off his shirt, and you have to wonder if his naked-lady tattoo is by the same artist as Dicky’s. It’s the same woman, same colors, same thick lines. I climb into the mud. Today I plan to up my sponsorship of the glorious number five to serious partnership proportions. Today I want to dig like a Down East boy.

Truey is already at it, working hard.

Dicky can’t seem to get started. “Help,” he says. A plaintive joke. He doesn’t feel like it today. In the end, though, he’ll get 1,900 sandworms, 120 bloods: $126, a super tide. Truey will get 2,100 sands, 50 bloods. A money tide, a monster. Walter will do as well as Dicky. I will get 210 sandworms, zero bloods, working as hard as I’ve ever worked, chopping and stomping and picking legs sore as hell from previous outings, shoulders aching, mind blank, struggling in the mud, turning it, panting, mucking along, pulling worms: $12.60.

Truey hikes off far away across the mud. Later, when the tide comes up, we’ll have to go pick him up. Walter is chopping away at some distant mussel mound. Dicky doesn’t range too far, gradually gets his rhythm, digs faster and faster, coming into the worms. I never get a rhythm at all, stay close to the boat, trying to get a whole tide in, no breaks, no getting stuck. I know how to walk now, don’t pause long enough to sink, but march forward, ever forward, chop left, chop middle, chop right, pulling worms from the mud. To me, they seem scarce today. To me, they seem terribly fragile. I break every third worm, miss a million that zip into their holes before I can get hold. The thunder booms a little closer.

Late in the tide, Dicky starts saying, “Help,” again, just kind of saying it out loud every twenty steps or so, groaning comically. He’s found some good mud, is plunking worms into his box three and four at a dig. “Help,” he moans, kidding around. Then he shouts, “Truey, let’s quit.” It’s an old joke, and from across the flat Truman Lock gives Dicky the finger. Dicky excavates his way through the mud, pulling worms, pulling worms, dunking them in his box, saying, “Help, Truey. Truey, help,” a mantra for the dig. Then he bellows, loud as hell across the mud, “Truey, get me outta here,” and then he shouts it again.

David Sedaris

 

DAVID SEDARIS
is the author of
Barrel Fever
and
Holidays on Ice
, as well as collections of personal essays,
Naked
,
Me Talk Pretty One Day
, and
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
. His essays appear regularly in
Esquire
and
The New Yorker
. Sedaris and his sister, Amy Sedaris, have collaborated under the name “The Talent Family” and have written several plays that have been produced at La Mama, Lincoln Center, and the Drama Department in New York City. These plays include
Stump the Host
,
Stitches
,
One Woman Shoe
, which received an Obie Award,
Incident at Cobbler’s Knob
, and
The Book of Liz
. Sedaris’s original radio pieces can often be heard on
This American Life
. In 2001, Sedaris became the third recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He was named by
Time
magazine as Humorist of the Year in 2001. He has also edited
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories
. In 2005, Sedaris was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word Album,
Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim
, and Best Comedy Album,
David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall
.

Give me your life, your pain, your bottomless sorrow — it’s not like you’re going to do anything with it.