Seventeen Against the Dealer

by Cynthia Voigt

  Having Cisco live at the shop was no trouble at all. He was awake, his bedding rolled up and put away in the bathroom, up and dressed and ready to get to work when she arrived in the early mornings. “I told you it wouldn’t inconvenience you, Miss Tillerman,” he said to her, pleased with himself, like a little kid who’s proved to you he could keep his own promises. They got right to work, in the mornings, and they talked.

  “So what does your other brother do? The one who isn’t at Yale College,” Cisco asked. “And your sister?”

  “They go to school.”

  “Everybody’s in school except you?”

  “And my grandmother.”

  “So you’re the mother? Isn’t that a waste of your own life?”

  “No,” Dicey said. Sometimes, in the course of a day, she might feel wound around with her family, trapped in some spiderweb of love and responsibility, but most of the time she would look over the years they’d spent together and feel how lucky she was. “That isn’t the way it is.”

  “Ah,” Cisco said, sarcastic. “You just support them.”

  At that, Dicey laughed. She couldn’t support her family, not in this business anyway. “You know how little I earn,” she pointed out to Cisco. “Although, Claude owes me money for the first ten boats—minus next month’s rent—and when we finish these four he’ll owe me another third, so—but that wouldn’t support us. A family of five people is expensive.”

  “And one of them at Yale College,” Cisco added.

  “That really gripes you, doesn’t it?”

  “Gripes me? No, not a bit. I feel sorry for the kid. It’s not as if—I could have gone to Yale if I’d wanted to,” Cisco said.

  Dicey didn’t believe him.

  “You don’t believe me, but I could have,” he insisted.

  She didn’t know why he needed to tell that lie, and to her. Maybe he was telling it to himself. It wasn’t impossible, of course, but she knew somehow that it wasn’t true. Partly she knew it because of the offended way he said it. But partly also because it seemed like the kind of thing Cisco would say, to let people know he was better than he seemed to be. That was kind of sad, Dicey thought, when you wanted people to think you were better than you were, as if you thought your whole life wasn’t good enough.

  “I could have,” Cisco repeated, “but there were other things I wanted to do more. Like places to see. And doing things they don’t even know about in colleges, where they spend their time thinking about things out of books, old, dusty ideas that anyone with brains figured out years ago nobody would be able to understand. So why bother, Miss Tillerman? I ask you that.”

  Dicey didn’t know. She half-agreed with him, anyway.

  “I’ve put my feet down on every continent of the globe—except Antarctica, but I’ve laid eyes on Antarctica, which is more than most people can say. I’ve seen all the great waters of the world.” He wanted her to envy and admire him.

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” she said, which was the truth.

  He went on, telling her, “The best of them is the Pacific, mile after rolling mile of it. Every now and then you stumble on an island. I’ve lived on the islands there. Nothing happens except sunrise and sunset, the tides, and meals. And love—there’s more love available on the islands than a man could use up in a lifetime.”

  Dicey figured she knew exactly what Cisco meant when he said love.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Miss Tillerman,” his voice came over her shoulder, laughing at her. “You’re wrong, you know. Like everybody else, you just don’t understand the part pleasures play in life. People don’t understand what life really is,” he told her.

  She was willing to believe that. She just wasn’t willing to believe he knew better than other people. “The way I understand it, life is working,” she said.

  “Not if you’re lucky.”

  “You know”—Dicey faced him to say this, because she didn’t want Cisco thinking she’d just stand there and let him tell her what to think—“I think you’re lucky if you have work you want to do.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re kidding yourself. Sounds to me like you’re making a virtue of necessity. Sounds to me like you can’t recognize good advice when you hear it. And there’s someone at your door,” Cisco said, staring over her shoulder.

  The man outside the door knocked, and Dicey went to answer. She didn’t recognize him at first, with his thick sheepskin jacket and dark fur hat. Then she did. “Mr. Hobart. Come in.”

  He brought cold air in with him. “Hello, Dicey. I came down to shoot over a couple of my dogs, so I thought I’d stop by. How are you?” He took off his hat and looked around the shop. Cisco stood staring at him, but Mr. Hobart ignored the man. “You look busy.”

  “I am,” Dicey said. She wondered what he wanted, and hoped it wasn’t to talk about his boat. Guilt washed over her like waves, or like one big wave rising up from her stomach. She should have more work done for him, work she could show him; she didn’t even have any plans he could look at. She didn’t have anything to show him for the money he’d paid.

  “So,” Mr. Hobart said, making his way around the four rowboats on the floor, “how’s my boat coming along?” He bent down to look closely at one of the rowboats. “Is this one you built?”

  “No,” Dicey said. “I told you I’ve never built one. We’re just painting these.”

  Mr. Hobart looked at her, and she knew what he was going to ask her. She would have liked to lie, or to explain why she hadn’t started on his boat yet, why she had to have the money and time that doing this job for Claude would give her—but she didn’t want to just apologize, and that’s what it would be.

  “Yours is over here,” she said, indicating the pile of larch.

  “It looks a lot like it did the last time I saw it,” he said. His eyes were on her face. He was expecting her to make excuses. When she did, his expression said he knew what he was going to answer.

  “You said you wanted it at the beginning of April,” she reminded him. “I said I’d have it by then.”

  “Yes, I did. As it turns out, however, it’s just as well you haven’t done any work on it,” he said. Dicey could have corrected him, but she didn’t. “Because I found a builder up in Massachusetts, and I’ve bought one of his. So I came by here to cancel the order.”

  Dicey didn’t know what to say. She thought when you ordered something, that was a definite thing. She thought Mr. Hobart had meant what he said when he asked her to build him a boat. Mr. Hobart’s blue eyes stared at her. She was trying to take it in: He didn’t want her to build him a boat. She hadn’t even begun to actually build, she hadn’t even made the first cut in the wood, and he had fired her.

  Cisco moved over to stand beside her. “Cancel it? Name’s Cisco.” He held out his hand to shake. After a few seconds, Mr. Hobart took off his gloves, let his gold watch shine in case Cisco wanted to notice it, then held out his own hand to be shaken.

  “Tad Hobart,” he said. “Call me Hobie. This concerns you?” He looked from Dicey to Cisco, and kept on looking at Cisco.

  Cisco didn’t answer his question. “I thought all hunting seasons were finished by this time of year,” he said.

  Mr. Hobart looked pleased to hear the criticism. “Not if you own the property,” he said. “Happens that I own some land down here. I’ve got some dogs being trained. I like to keep an eye on my properties.”

  “So you just stopped by the shop here to renege on an obligation,” Cisco said.

  “There was no obligation,” Mr. Hobart said. “No contract signed. It was all informal.”

  “Yes, of course,” Cisco sounded unsurprised. “It’s better if you can do business that way, isn’t it? By unwritten word.” Cisco wasn’t even pretending to be polite.

  “A handshake, and earnest money,” Mr. Hobart said. Mr. Hobart at least was pretending politeness, but he didn’t care if anyone believed in it.

  That was something Dicey hadn’t realized: She’d h
ave to give him back the $500. That would about clean her out. Claude’s check was due any day, she reminded herself, due yesterday or the day before. It was going to be okay.

  “Earnest money?” Cisco asked, but he didn’t wait for any answer. “But didn’t you say there’s no written contract?”

  Unless Claude was as slow to get around to paying his bills as he was slow to get around to doing everything else. Because that $500, or actually $325, was all Dicey had. She couldn’t even start to build a boat without that money. If she didn’t build, she couldn’t sell—then what about her business?

  “There’s a stack of lumber over there,” Cisco said, “which represents a considerable investment. The way I understood it, that timber is for your order. Excuse me, your alleged order. There being no written contract.”

  The two of them were talking as if Dicey wasn’t even there. They were talking as if it was all between the two of them.

  “Rather like,” Cisco added, sounding pleased with himself, “the alleged earnest money.”

  Dicey saw what Cisco was doing, and she didn’t like it. “You’ll get your money back, Mr. Hobart,” she promised.

  “But there’s no need,” Cisco told her. “How much was it, anyway? Fifty dollars? A hundred?”

  “Five hundred,” Mr. Hobart said.

  “Five hundred dollars, and no contract written,” Cisco said. He didn’t have to add what he thought of that.

  Dicey wanted to agree with Cisco. It would save her $500, for one thing, and she was angry, anyway, angry at Mr. Hobart just coming in like that to fire her.

  “And what about the wood that was bought to build this alleged boat with?” Cisco inquired.

  “Uh-uh,” Mr. Hobart said. “She’d already bought the wood. That wasn’t bought for my job.”

  Dicey didn’t say anything. Let the two of them quarrel about it; they could have their quarrel. She’d given her word. If she wasn’t going to keep her word—even if the reason she wasn’t going to keep it wasn’t her own choice—then she’d give back the money. She went over to the worktable. She took her checkbook out of her jacket pocket and opened it. She filled in the date, Mr. Hobart’s name, and the amount, $500. Then she entered the check in the record section and did the subtraction.

  That left her $115.77 in her account. After all the work, first to save up, then here in the shop to keep things going, she had $115.77 left to show for it. Bills had been sent out, she told herself—but she answered that she’d learned you couldn’t count on people to pay bills. She’d given her word, she told herself—but she answered that Mr. Hobart had given his word, too.

  Cisco followed her over to the table, to talk into her ear. “You don’t have to do that.” He didn’t bother to lower his voice.

  “I gave my word,” Dicey said.

  “If it’s a hardship, Dicey,” Mr. Hobart said from across the room, “I’m in no big hurry. I’m not pressing you and I hope you know that.”

  Dicey signed her name and ripped the check out. She reached it over to Mr. Hobart. “I gave my word on the deal,” she said.

  He took the check, without even looking at it. He just folded it and jammed it into the pocket of his stiff sheepskin jacket. “I am sorry, I want you to know that. You know how sorry I am about any inconvenience, don’t you?”

  No, Dicey didn’t know that. She knew she’d been fired. He’d hired her to do something, then changed his mind. She knew he could afford to lose $500, but she also knew she couldn’t afford to break her word. She couldn’t afford to lose $500, but he could afford to break his word. That made no sense. It was all backward from the way it should be.

  “Well,” Mr. Hobart said, no longer paying any attention to Cisco. “The best of luck to you, Dicey.” He smiled—white teeth appearing like the flesh of an apple between round pink cheeks. He took his gloves out of his pocket and put them on. “I’ll expect to see your name, someday—maybe on a boat that’s just beaten the pants off of me.” His smile was smooth and easy; it stayed on his face as if he was accustomed to smiling, and keeping on smiling.

  Cisco went around him to open the door. Cisco was smiling, too, smooth and easy, too, just like a newspaper photograph of a politician. “Why don’t you just fuck off, friend?” Cisco asked, smiling away.

  Mr. Hobart, halfway through the door, didn’t much like that. Dicey tried to contain it, but laughter leaked out of her. Mr. Hobart looked at her, looked at Cisco, and decided not to say anything more. He shrugged, making sure they could see that shrugging of his shoulders under the thick, stiff jacket. That shrug was supposed to say to them, without any words, that he’d come out ahead, he hadn’t lost, he was satisfied with the way things turned out. If they weren’t satisfied, those shoulders said, they couldn’t do anything about it. Then Mr. Hobart walked out.

  All the laughter drained out of Dicey, like all that money draining out of her checking account.

  She should have had a contract signed, just any piece of paper with both their signatures on it. She knew that was the way Ken did business, but she’d failed to think of it for herself. A contract would have specified what would happen if one side or the other failed to meet the terms. It was stupid not to have one.

  “You can always stop payment on the check,” Cisco suggested. “He’s rich, he wouldn’t be bothered to harass you. He wouldn’t even notice any missing money, that piddling a sum is nothing to people like him.”

  “You didn’t like him, from the first glance you didn’t,” Dicey said.

  “I didn’t,” Cisco agreed cheerfully. “He’s got money,” he told her, as if that explained everything. “I don’t much like people with money.”

  “Yeah, well, it shows,” Dicey grumbled.

  “Because they have it and I don’t.” Cisco grinned. “You should have kept the five hundred dollars.”

  Dicey wasn’t surprised to hear him say that, but it still made her angry. “That would be like making somebody give you something. Like taking something for nothing.”

  “That’s what they call good business, Miss Tillerman,” Cisco told her, grinning away.

  Dicey turned her back to him.

  “I saw how little you’ve got left in the bank. I’ve got exceptional distance vision. You can’t even pay your rent now, I’m willing to bet.”

  “Claude’s taking that out of what he owes me. I’ve sent out bills, for storage, and the maintenance is on them this month,” she said stubbornly.

  “I guess about everybody owes you money. I guess you better hope they pay.”

  Dicey just got back to work. She didn’t want to talk about it, and she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t know who Cisco thought he was, anyway, telling her how to run her business.

  But she was beginning to think she wasn’t doing a very good job of running it herself. Even she had to admit that.

  Well, she’d just have to work harder. Although now she wasn’t awfully sure what she was working so hard for.

  They worked late, finishing up the final coat of paint. Gram’s light was out when Dicey finally stood in the kitchen, eating a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in huge, hungry bites. Upstairs, only Maybeth’s bedroom had a line of light at the bottom of the door. Dicey knocked and went in.

  Maybeth, in a faded flannel nightgown with pale blue flowers printed all over it, her hair wound loosely into one thick braid to keep it out of her face, sat up in bed with a math textbook and pieces of paper spread around. The air smelled of growing things, brown earth and green herbs in pots along a window shelf.

  “You were waiting up for me, weren’t you?” Dicey said. “I should have been home earlier.”

  “You’re working hard. You have a lot of work to do,” Maybeth explained. “But I need to talk to you because Sammy’s getting worried about Gram.”

  “Yeah,” Dicey agreed. She would have liked to sit down but she had paint all over her. “She’s been in bed now for, what? Almost a week?”

  “Only two days and a half, but
she’s had that cough for weeks.”

  “She told me she’s getting better.”

  “She doesn’t eat as if she is.” Maybeth looked at Dicey, her eyes round and gold-flecked in her serious face. Dicey thought, looking at her sister, how lovely Maybeth was, and gentle and patient, what good care she took of people—how Maybeth was about the exact opposite of Dicey.

  “What about you? Are you worried?” Dicey asked. Since it was Gram, Sammy might get himself worried even if he didn’t have to, but Maybeth would know.

  Maybeth nodded her head, her eyes large.

  “I thought,” Dicey told her little sister, “if she doesn’t do something this weekend, at least start reading while she’s in bed, but unless she eats more, and wants to get out of bed—this weekend—then we should call Dr. Landros, no matter what Gram says.”

  Maybeth was satisfied. “I knew you’d know what to do.”

  Dicey didn’t know that she was doing anything. “I’ll need the truck, first thing tomorrow, but as soon as that job’s done I’ll come home. I should be home by lunchtime, at the latest. I’ll stay here after that.”

  “Good,” Maybeth said. “That’s good. What would you like for dinner?”

  Dicey didn’t need to be asked twice. “Spaghetti.” Maybeth’s spaghetti sauce, with three kinds of ground meat in it and the tomatoes they’d put up in August, with the fresh herbs she put into it: Dicey’s mouth got hungry for the taste of Maybeth’s spaghetti, just thinking about it. “But Gram can’t eat that.”

  “She doesn’t eat anything, except I give her soup sometimes.”

  Seeing how worried Maybeth really was, Dicey started to get seriously worried herself. “I’ll be home at lunchtime, or just after,” she promised.

  She kept her word, rousing a grumpy Cisco on the phone before she started over, hurrying through the hours it took to haul the boats back and forth. She was just going to have to leave Cisco to get the sanding done on his own that afternoon. “I can’t stay,” she said, when the four unpainted rowboats had been set out on the floor of the shop.