The Maine Mutiny (5 page)

“The lobstermen’s association agreed to that when we first started planning the event. Are they changing their minds now?”

“It’s not that they’re changin’ their minds, but they feel they’re gettin’ . . . well, cheated.”

“Cheated! How?”

Mary looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know if I should say anything. It’s just stuff I hear.” She fiddled with the edge of her napkin, her lips pressed into a line. Finally she looked at me. “You’ve been working hard on this project, as much as the rest of us. You got a right to know.”

I nodded to encourage her. “If it’s something confidential—” I started to say.

“No, it’s nothin’ like that. It’s just that the price of lobster has been going up recently. All the rain and fog cut back on fishing days up and down the coast. Not just us. That, plus the catches are off last season’s mark. Don’t know where those critters go in the rain. Seems to me it’s wet all the time for lobsters. But, fact is, if the supply goes down—and it has—the prices go up. Restaurants in Boston and New York still want their lobster.”

“That’s good for the lobstermen, isn’t it?”

“If they sell now, it would be. They could get top dollar. But if they hold their catch for the festival, which they promised they would, the prices could drop by then. If they do, the men stand to lose a lot of money. This is what we live on, Jessica. We don’t want to gamble with our income.”

“I thought the dealer had agreed to pay the going price for the lobsters we’re holding for the festival.”

“Henry Pettie? He’s a slippery one. He may have agreed in March when we were making plans. But now he sees a way to boost his profit. He’s offering thirty cents a pound less than what the market is going for now. The men are torn. They want to support the festival, but they don’t want Pettie to take advantage of their goodwill.”

“I don’t blame them. Has anyone spoken to him?”

“It’s complicated. Pettie holds the notes on a lot of the men’s boats.”

“You mean he lends them money and uses the boats as collateral?”

“Well, the banks won’t,” she said, sounding defensive.

“Why not?”

“They say the business is too precarious. The men never know how much they’re goin’ to make. And that’s true. You’re lucky if you have a house, but they won’t give a dime for a boat. Or for the equipment. Those Fathometers and radios and satellite boxes, they cost a fortune. There’s not a lobsterman in town doesn’t owe Pettie money. And he makes ’em sign for it. Keeps a little black book in his back pocket. Threatens to collect whenever someone goes up against ’im.”

“Even so, there must be some recourse when he’s paying below the market rate.”

“Levi says their hands are tied. The festival committee negotiated with the dealer, and the association had a man on the committee, representin’ the lobstermen. He signed the contract.”

“Oh, dear. Didn’t he show it to others in the association first?”

Mary shook her head. “You can’t really blame him. No one thought Pettie would exploit the situation for his own gain. But Spencer’s an old man. Maybe he was the wrong one to put on the committee, but no else volunteered.”

“Spencer Durkee?”

“Yes. There are a bunch of Monday-morning quarterbacks now heapin’ abuse on him, carryin’ on about how they would never have signed that contract. There’s lots of resentment. The other morning Spencer went out and found his lines cut; he lost all his traps. Then, when he went into town to try to scare up new ones, someone poured a pile of rotten bait on the
Done For
’s deck.”

“How awful.”

“It was in the
Gazette
. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.”

“I get behind in my reading when I’m finishing up a book,” I said. “I have a pile of magazines and newspapers at home to look through before I recycle them.”

“I can’t imagine why they put something like that in the paper. We were all embarrassed. Levi helped Spencer clean it up, and he came home stinkin’ worse than I’ve ever smelled him. And that’s saying something. Some of the men can be very mean when they’re provoked. But what’s the point of poundin’ up an old man? And who knows if one of these young highliners would’ve been any better at reading the contract? They didn’t raise their hands when asked to serve on the committee, so they’ve only themselves to blame.”

“Is there anything the committee can do now?” I asked.

“I think it’s too late. The lobstermen’s association is meeting tonight.”

“Oh, dear,” I said. “You don’t think they’d do anything to jeopardize the festival, do you?”

“I can’t promise you that.”

“Where are they meeting?”

“Down at Nudd’s Bait and Tackle, on the other end of the docks from Mara’s.”

“I know the place.”

“I wouldn’t get in the middle of this, Jessica.”

“No. No,” I said. “They should work it out themselves.”

“I’m sure they will,” she said, pouring me another cup of tea. “When Levi gets home, I’ll talk to him about your request. I’m sure he won’t mind passing it along to Linc. The lobstermen can use a positive story in the press. The paper covers our dirty laundry fast enough.”

I thought about what Mary had told me as I rode my bicycle home. The lobstermen were a community within a community. They were like a closed club, with their own rules and punishments for those who broke them. But they were quick to take care of their own when someone needed help. And they prided themselves on contributing to the wider community as well. Cabot Cove was counting on that. The lobstermen were represented on every charitable and civic organization in town. I hoped their goodwill would prevail when it came to the lobster festival. We would be sunk without them.

“It was the days of Prohibition, see. And the rumrunners’ud bring down the whiskey from Canada and drop anchor just beyond the three-mile limit.”

Spencer Durkee sat on a folding metal chair outside Nudd’s Bait & Tackle, his fishing cap pushed up high on his forehead and his gnarled fingers working to loosen a knot in a length of twine. A half dozen children lingered nearby, the braver ones crowding close, the more timid hanging back. But all eyes, and certainly all ears, were focused on the old man, who entertained the youngsters while their fathers milled about inside Nudd’s, waiting for the meeting to start.

Seth Hazlitt had given me a lift into town. He was on his way to the hospital; one of his patients had stepped on the blade of a hoe, opening a sizable gash in her head when the handle rose up to smite her. Seth had dropped me at the dock, extracting a promise that I would call him if I couldn’t find a ride home from among the fishermen attending the meeting. I’d walked down to Nudd’s to find Spencer regaling the youngsters with stories of the days of rumrunners off the Maine coast.

“Why’d they call them ‘rumrunners’ if they was carrying whiskey? Why wasn’t it ‘whiskey runners’?” The speaker was Levi and Mary’s daughter Anna, her dark, curly hair shoved under a Red Sox cap with the peak turned to the back. Attired in a green T-shirt and faded overalls with one shoulder strap hanging loose, she bounced on the toes of her untied sneakers, the laces gray and spotted from having been dragged along the ground.

“You know the answer to that, girl.”

“I don’t remember.”

Spencer leaned forward and lowered his voice to just above a whisper, drawing the children closer. “The smugglers started out in the Caribbean, see. That’s where they make rum. They’d sail north along the coast from Florida all the way up heah, sellin’ crates of rum. When the cargo bay was empty, they’d take a run up to Saint John’s, pick up a supply of Canadian whiskey, an’ sell it on the way back south.”

“But they still could’ve been called ‘whiskey runners.’ ”

Spencer frowned at Anna. “Mebbe. But ‘rumrunner’ had a nice ring to it, so it stuck,” he said.

“Why’d they anchor so far out?” asked a boy of about ten who had kept his distance from the storyteller.

“Well, see, that was so the coast guard couldn’t come fer them. At that time, if you went beyond three miles from shore, you’da been in international waters. Later they made it twelve miles, but the distance didn’t stop the rum-runnin’. The guard only had jurisdiction in U.S. territory, and they had a lot of water to cover.”

“But they knew the rumrunners were there, didn’t they?” asked Anna.

“Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t,” Spencer said, freeing the knot, rolling the twine into a ball, and tucking it in his shirt pocket. “But even when they did, they had a hard time catching the little boats that went out to pick up the bottles.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, because a good many of them were lobstermen, and lobstermen are the cleverest breed of fishermen there are.”

Anna grinned at the familiar line. She’d heard the story many times before but never tired of Spencer’s telling. She knew all the places he would pause and wait for the children’s questions, and she jumped in to hurry him along. “How’d they fool the guard?”

“They didn’t always—the coast guard’s a sharp bunch, and their cutters were wicked fast. The captain, he figures they’re in heavy water, and, with the lobster boats weighted down with bottles, they should be an easy catch. But the lobstermen knew a trick or two. They’d frog around in international waters, waitin’ for the ebb tide. Then, just before low water, they’d make their escape.” Spencer’s eyes cut from one child to another. “As the tide goes out, what happens?”

“The water goes down and you can see the sandbars that connect the islands,” Anna said, triumphant.

“That’s right. Those cutters come after our men, but the lobster boats give ’em the slip. They’d cross over the shoal slicker’n a smelt, just before the water receded. The big coast guard cutter couldn’t follow or the rocks’ud stove up the hull.” He sat back with a satisfied smile on his face.

“What happened then?” the ten year old asked. He had been inching closer to Cabot Cove’s pied piper.

“Their captain was some ugly about losing his quarry, but by the time the tide switched, the lobstermen had emptied their boats, sold off the goods, and were sittin’ down to breakfast.”

Levi stuck his head out the door of Nunn’s. “You fillin’ them youngsters with that bilge again?”

“Bilge, my foot,” Spencer replied. “That’s history I’m givin’ them.”

Levi wasn’t a tall man, probably my height, broad-shouldered and thickset. His hair was sun-bleached a sandy color, somewhere between red and blond, and his face, neck, and forearms were heavily sprinkled with freckles. “We’re about to start, Spencer. Come on in.” He nodded at me. “How do, Jessica? Got your item on the agenda. Sorry we can’t invite you for the whole meetin’.”

“I understand,” I said. “I’ll wait to hear your decision.”

“Anna, scooch down and tie your shoes,” he said, pointing at his daughter’s sneakers.

She knelt to fiddle with her laces.

Spencer put his hands on his knees and pushed to his feet. “Got to go in now,” he said.

“Wait, wait,” Anna cried, jumping up and pulling on his sleeve. “You didn’t tell us where the bottles went.”

Spencer tugged at the waistband of his trousers and pulled them up so high that his gray socks, which were puddled at his ankles, were visible. “Allst I know is this,” he said, winking at me as he shuffled to the door. “Maine had been dry a long time, so most of the booty probably got drunk in Massachusetts, mebbe even New York. Though I hear tell a few bottles found their way into the cellar of what was then the local inn. That’s the library building these days.” He turned to eye his fans—“Might still be a few bottles down there, if you care to take a look”—and went inside.

I envisioned our librarian besieged by an army of Cabot Cove’s schoolchildren wanting to visit the basement, where, it just happened, the children’s book department was located.

A few youngsters followed Spencer inside to sit with their fathers during the discussions, while the older ones wandered off to play till the meeting ended. I took the chair Spencer had vacated and watched Anna and her friends pull pebbles from their pockets and skip the stones across the water. I noticed she wasn’t the only one with untied sneakers. It must be a trend these days, I thought, hoping none of them landed facedown on the dock from tripping on their laces.

Mary had telephoned me that afternoon to let me know that Levi had agreed to raise my request with the lobstermen. I imagined it was a hard sell, but she would never let on that her husband had been anything but helpful. Would I mind sticking around in the event they had any questions? she’d asked. Grateful to have my petition given a hearing so quickly, I agreed to stay outside until I was called, or rather on the chance I might be called.

I didn’t mind waiting. It was a balmy evening. The sun had peeked between the clouds to cheer the town’s spirits. It had another hour to go before it set. I took a deep breath, enjoying the briny air. The water was chockablock with boats at anchor, lines flapping against masts, setting off melodious, if dissonant, notes. Tourists wandered on the dock, admiring the boats and ogling the occasional yacht that sat at anchor in the bay. A high-pitched squeak floated across the wharf from where Mara stood cranking up the awning in front of her luncheonette. The children’s voices competed with the cries of the gulls, echoing back from the far end of the dock, where a pelican with a gullet full of fish launched himself into the air, hoping to evade them both—the gulls and the children. The sounds of the harbor were music to me. They represented home, as much as my treasured house on Candlewood Lane. Although my fishing days were limited by my busy travel and work schedule, my affection for the waterfront was undiminished. No matter where in the world I roamed, nothing could touch my heart more than the beauty of Cabot Cove’s bay, the charm of the village, the friendship of the colorful and generous people who drew their living from the sea and from the industries that sprang up to serve the fishing community.