Stern Men (10 page)

“Not to be a fisherman.”

“I will kill myself if you become a fisherman, Ruth. I will kill myself every single day.”

“What if I wanted to be a fisherman, though? What if I wanted to be a sailor? What if I wanted to join the Coast Guard? What if I wanted to be a circumnavigator?”

“You don’t want to be any circumnavigator.”

“I might want to be a circumnavigator.”

Ruth did not want to be a circumnavigator. She was making small talk. She and the Senator spent hours talking nonsense like this. Day after day. Neither one paid too much mind to the nonsense-speak of the other. Senator Simon patted his dog’s head and said, “Cookie says, ‘What’s Ruth talking about, a circumnavigator? Ruth doesn’t want to be a circumnavigator.’ Didn’t you say that, Cookie? Isn’t that right, Cookie?”

“Stay out of this, Cookie,” Ruth said.

A week or so later, the Senator brought up the topic again while the two of them watched Webster in the mudflats. This is how the Senator and Ruth had always talked, in long, eternal circles. They had, in fact, only one conversation, the one they’d been having from the time Ruth was about ten years old. They went round and round. They covered the same ground again and again, like a pair of schoolgirls.

“Why do you need experience on a fishing boat, for heaven’s sake?” Senator Simon said. “You’re not stuck on this island for life like the Pommeroys. They’re poor slobs. Fishing is all they can do.”

Ruth had forgotten that she’d even mentioned getting work on a fishing boat. But now she defended the idea. “A woman could do that job as well as anyone.”

“I’m not saying a woman couldn’t do it. I’m saying nobody should do it. It’s a terrible job. It’s a job for jerks. And if everyone tried to become a lobsterman, pretty soon all the lobsters would be gone.”

“There’re enough lobsters out there for everyone.”

“Absolutely not, Ruthie. For heaven’s sake, who ever told you that?”

“My dad.”

“Well, enough lobsters for him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s Greedy Number Two. He’ll always get his.”

“Don’t call my father that. He hates that nickname.”

The Senator patted his dog. “Your dad is Greedy Number Two. My brother is Greedy Number One. Everyone knows that. Even Cookie here knows that.”

Ruth looked out at Webster in the mudflats and did not reply. After a few minutes, Senator Simon said, “You know, there are no lifeboats on lobster boats. It’s not safe for you.”

“Why should they have lifeboats on lobster boats? Lobster boats aren’t much bigger than lifeboats in the first place.”

“Not that a lifeboat can really save a person . . .”

“Of course a lifeboat can save a person. Lifeboats save people all the time,” Ruth asserted.

“Even in a lifeboat, you’d better hope to get rescued soon. If they find you floating around in your lifeboat in the first hour after a shipwreck, of course, you’ll be fine . . .”

“Who’s talking about shipwrecks?” Ruth asked, but she knew very well that the Senator was always about three minutes away from talking about shipwrecks. He’d been talking to her about shipwrecks for years.

The Senator said, “If you are not rescued in your lifeboat in the first hour, your chances of being rescued at all become very slim. Very slim, indeed, Ruthie. Slimmer with every hour. After a whole day lost at sea in a lifeboat, you can assume that you won’t be rescued at all. What would you do then?”

“I’d row.”

“You’d row. You would
row,
if you were stuck on a lifeboat and the sun was going down, with no rescue in sight? You would
row.
That’s your plan?”

“I guess I’d have to figure something out.”

“Figure what out? What is there to figure out? How to row to another continent?”

“Jesus, Senator. I’m never going to be lost at sea in a lifeboat. I promise you.”

“Once you’re in a shipwreck,” the Senator said, “you will be rescued only by chance—if you are rescued at all. And remember, Ruthie, most shipwreck survivors are injured. It’s not as if they jumped off the edge of a boat in calm water for a little swim. Most shipwreck survivors have broken legs or ghastly cuts or burns. And what do you think it is that kills you in the end?”

Ruth knew the answer. “Exposure?” she guessed wrongly, just to keep the conversation going.

“No.”

“Sharks?”

“No. Lack of water. Thirst.”

“Is that right?” Ruth asked politely.

But now the subject of sharks had arrived, the Senator paused. Finally he said, “In the tropics, the sharks come right up into the boat. They bring their snouts into the boat, like dogs sniffing around. But barracudas are worse. Let’s say you’ve been wrecked. You’re clinging to a piece of wreckage. A barracuda comes over and sinks his teeth into you. You can rip him off, Ruthie, but his head will stay attached to you. Like a snapping turtle, Ruthie. A barracuda will hold on to you long after he’s dead. That’s right.”

“I don’t worry about barracudas too much around here, Senator. And I don’t think you should worry about barracudas, either.”

“Well, how about your bluefish, then? You don’t have to be in the tropics for bluefish, Ruthie. We’ve got packs of bluefish right out there.” Senator Simon Addams waved past the mudflats and Webster, pointing to the open Atlantic. “And bluefish hunt in packs, like wolves. And stingrays! Shipwreck survivors have said that giant rays came right up under their boat and spent the whole day there, hovering. They used to call them blanket fish. You could find rays out there bigger than your little lifeboat. They ripple along under your boat like the shadow of death.”

“That’s very vivid, Senator. Well done.”

The Senator asked, “What kind of sandwich is that, Ruthie?”

“Ham salad. Want half?”

“No, no. You need it.”

“You can have a bite.”

“What’s on there? Mustard?”

“Why don’t you have a bite, Senator?”

“No, no. You need it. I’ll tell you another thing. People lose their minds in a lifeboat. They lose their ideas about time. They might be out there in an open boat for twenty days. Then they get rescued, and they’re surprised to find that they can’t walk. Their feet are rotting from waterbite, and they have open sores from sitting in pools of saltwater; they have injuries from the wreck and burns from the sun; and they’re surprised to find, Ruthie, that they can’t walk. They never have any understanding of their situation.”

“Delirium.”

“That’s right. Delirium. Exactly. Some men in a lifeboat get a condition called ‘shared delirium.’ Let’s say there are two men in a boat. They both lose their minds the same way. One man says, ‘I’m going over to the tavern for a beer,’ and steps over the side and drowns. The second man says, ‘I’ll join you, Ed,’ and then he steps over the side and drowns, too.”

“With the sharks lurking.”

“And the bluefish. And here’s another common shared delusion, Ruthie. Say there are only two men in a lifeboat. When they do get rescued, they’ll both swear that there was a third man with them the whole time. They’ll say, ‘Where’s my friend?’ And the rescuers will tell them, ‘Your friend is in the bed right next to you. He’s safe.’ And the men will say, ‘No! Where’s my other friend? Where’s the other man?’ But there never was any other man. They won’t believe this. For the rest of their lives they’ll wonder: Where’s the other man?”

Ruth Thomas handed the Senator half of her sandwich, and he ate it quickly.

“In the Arctic, of course, they die from the cold,” he continued.

“Of course.”

“They fall asleep. People who fall asleep in lifeboats never wake up.”

“Of course they don’t.”

Other days, they talked about mapmaking. The Senator was a big fan of Ptolemy. He bragged about Ptolemy as if Ptolemy were his gifted son.

“Nobody altered Ptolemy’s maps until 1511!” he’d say proudly. “Now that’s quite a run, Ruth. Thirteen hundred years, that guy was the expert! Not bad, Ruth. Not bad at all.”

Another favorite topic of the Senator’s was the shipwreck of the
Victoria
and the
Camperdown.
This one came up time after time. It didn’t need a particular trigger. One Saturday afternoon in the middle of June, for instance, Ruth was telling the Senator about how much she’d hated the graduation ceremony at her school, and the Senator said, “Remember the wreck of the
Victoria
and the
Camperdown,
Ruthie!”

“OK,” Ruth said, agreeably, “if you insist.”

And Ruth Thomas did remember the wreck of the
Victoria
and the
Camperdown,
because the Senator had been telling her about the wreck of the
Victoria
and the
Camperdown
since she was a toddler. This wreck was even more disturbing for him than the
Titanic.

The
Victoria
and the
Camperdown
were the flagships of the mighty British Navy. In 1893, they collided with each other in open daylight on calm seas because a commander issued a foolish order during maneuvers. The wreck agitated the Senator so much because it had occurred on a day when no boat should have sunk, and because the sailors were the finest in the world. Even the boats were the finest in the world, and the officers were the brightest in the British Navy, but the boats went down. The
Victoria
and the
Camperdown
collided because the fine officers—fully knowing that the order they had received was a foolish one—followed it out of a sense of duty and died for it. The
Victoria
and the
Camperdown
proved that anything can happen on the sea. No matter how calm the weather, no matter how skilled the crew, a person in a boat was never safe.

In the hours after the collision of the
Victoria
and the
Camperdown,
as the Senator had been telling Ruth Thomas for years, the sea was filled with drowning men. The propellers of the sinking ship chewed through the men horribly. They were chopped to pieces, he had always emphasized.

“They were chopped to pieces, Ruthie,” the Senator said.

She didn’t see how this related to her story about graduation, but she let it go.

“I know, Senator,” she said. “I know.”

The next week, back at Potter Beach, Ruth and the Senator got to talking again about shipwrecks.

“What about the
Margaret B. Rouss?
” Ruth asked, after the Senator had been quiet for a long time. “That shipwreck ended pretty well for everyone.”

She offered up this ship’s name carefully. Sometimes the name
Margaret B. Rouss
would calm the Senator down, but sometimes it would agitate him.

“Jesus Christ, Ruthie!” he exploded. “Jesus Christ!”

This time it agitated him.

“The
Margaret B. Rouss
was filled with lumber, and it took forever to sink! You know that, Ruthie. Jesus Christ! You know it was an exception. You know it’s not usually that easy to be shipwrecked. And I’ll tell you another thing. It is not pleasant to be torpedoed under any conditions, with any cargo, no matter what happened to the crew of the goddamn
Margaret B. Rouss.
”

“And what did happen to the crew, Senator?”

“You know full well what happened to the crew of the
Margaret B. Rouss.
”

“They rowed forty miles—”

“—forty-five miles.”

“They rowed forty-five miles to Monte Carlo, where they befriended the Prince of Monaco. And they lived in luxury from that point forward. That’s a happy story about a shipwreck, isn’t it?”

“An unusually easy shipwreck, Ruthie.”

“I’ll say.”

“An exception.”

“My father says it’s an exception when any boat sinks.”

“Well, isn’t he a smartie? And aren’t you a smartie, too? You think because of the
Margaret B. Rouss
it’s safe for you to spend your life working on the water in someone’s lobster boat?”

“I’m not spending my life on any water, Senator. All I said was maybe I could get a job spending three months on the water. Most of the time I’d be less than two miles from shore. I was just saying I want to work on the water for the summer.”

“You know it’s exceedingly dangerous to put any boat on the open sea, Ruth. It’s very dangerous out there. And most people aren’t going to be able to row any forty-five miles to any Monte Carlo.”

“I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“In most conditions, you’d be dead from exposure by then. There was a shipwreck in the Arctic Circle. The men were in lifeboats for three days, up to their knees in icy water.”

“Which shipwreck?”

“I do not recall the name.”

“Really?” Ruth had never heard of a shipwreck the Senator did not know by name.

“The name doesn’t matter. The wrecked sailors landed on an Icelandic island eventually. They all had frostbite. The Eskimos tried to revive their frozen limbs. What did the Eskimos do, Ruthie? They rubbed the men’s feet vigorously with oil. Vigorously! The men were screaming, begging the Eskimos to stop. But the Eskimos kept on vigorously rubbing the men’s feet with oil. I can’t recall the name of the shipwreck. But you should remember that when you get on a boat.”

“I’m not planning on sailing to Iceland.”

“Some of those men on the Icelandic island fainted from the pain of the vigorous rubbing, and they died right there.”

“I’m not saying that shipwrecks are good, Senator.”

“Every one of those men eventually needed amputations.”

“Senator?”

“To the knee, Ruthie.”

“Senator?” Ruth said again.

“They died from the pain of the rubbing.”

“Senator, please.”

“The survivors had to stay in the Arctic until the next summer, and the only thing they had for food was blubber, Ruth.”

“Please,” she said.

Please.
Please.