Revenge of the Lobster

by Hilary MacLeod

  “Murder is murder, I say,” Gus concluded. “And it’s not the only one he done.”

  The birdhouse snapped off the post and smashed to the ground. Hy felt physical anger rise in her, but she managed a weak laugh.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He kilt his poor old mother.”

  “She died of liquor and cigarettes.”

  “Just what I say.” Gus sounded smug. “An’ him runnin’ to town for them. The same with his father. He kilt him too.”

  “How?”

  “Who was bringin’ Albert cigarettes when he was on the oxygen and din’t have the strenth to light a match by hisself?”

  “Well, we don’t call that murder. I’d say it’s more like euthanasia.”

  “And there he is now, sittin’ pretty, livin’ the life of Riley…drivin’ that bran’ new truck…spendin’ the money come from his father workin’ hard all his life—”

  “That’s not what you said about Albert when he was alive.”

  Gus chuckled. “Well, no, but we can’t speak ill of the dead, can we?”

  “Anyway, what truck? What kind of truck?” Useless to ask, of course.

  “Big yella one. Bran’ new.”

  “Where’d he get the money?”

  “Oh, I expect ol’ Albert had a bit salted away.”

  Hy doubted it. Everyone thought everyone around here had a bit salted away.

  Some of them did. She was one of them herself. That was old history. She’d always had a nest egg.

  “Somethin’s going on down at the shore-” said Gus. “Trucks comin’ and goin’. Plumbers, carpenters, you name it. I thought it was the new fella, but Abel says there’s work going on at Jared’s cookhouse. Where’s he gettin’ the money for that?”

  “I thought you said Albert had some salted away.”

  Gus could change her tune as rapidly as an Atlantic wind could change direction.

  “I smell a rat,” she said knowingly.

  Hy had also seen the trucks going up and down the lane to the old cookhouse. Everyone had. They all wondered what was going on.

  “I’ll go see what I can find out. Soon as this wind dies down.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the edge of the tarpaulin that covered the woodpile, ragged and threadbare, long bits of plastic fabric twisted and whipping in the wind. Some of it caught and tugged at the clothesline, calling out its blue jay screech. Hy tried to check her temper. Futile.

  “Now you be careful. He’s a murderer an’ all.” Gus never tired of saying that. If reckless lack of concern for the life of other humans was the mark of a murderer, then she was right, in her way, Hy thought. Jared should at least have gone down for manslaughter. He always seemed to get the breaks.

  “I will. I’ll take Ian with me.”

  Gus smiled. She liked to know what was going on—not just outside her window, but all over the village. She couldn’t go snooping herself anymore. Having Hy and Ian as her eyes and legs was the next best thing.

  Chapter Six

  Ian Simmons was waiting for the first ferry of the day, anxious to cross and pick up his brand new iMac. He was leaning up against his Honda Insight—a two-seater, five-speed manual, designed to appeal to people with an environmental conscience and a bit of money. He had bought the hybrid four years ago and he was smugly self-satisfied when gas prices took off and the effects of the storm surge had made it hard to get. Now, so were parts for the car. The model had been pulled off the market within two years. It was a manual. It was ugly. The parts were too damn expensive—as Ian was finding out to his regret.

  The ferry had been running for just a few weeks. The government had put it into service as the cheapest and quickest way to re-establish a link between The Shores and the rest of The Island after the ice ride-up had destroyed the causeway. It was an old river ferry, borrowed from a neighbouring province. If work on the road continued this slowly, Ian thought, the boat might be a permanent fixture.

  In the two months since the storm surge, the province had poured in tons of rock to shore up the causeway, but hadn’t begun building the roadbed yet. The spring had been the wettest on record. Ian was keeping track of the rainfall total. Eyes glazed over at social occasions when he warmed to his favourite theme—climate change.

  “Haven’t got very far, have they?” Big Ben Mack, Abel’s much younger brother, had just pulled up. Ben was a fisherman and had a load of lobster traps stacked onto his ten-year-old Dodge Ram pickup.

  Ian pointed at them. “Aren’t you going in the wrong direction?” Big Bay Harbour was on this side of the causeway.

  “Naw. A bunch of us are givin’ some traps to Hal Dooley over the road,” said Ben, thrusting his chin in the direction of the far shore. “Lost his shed and all his traps in the ice.” He said it the way all the locals did: “oice.” He got out of his truck. Ben was a big man with black hair and a full beard. Not fat, just big—bigger than anyone else. People were always calling him to help them move their appliances. He could pick up a dishwasher and put it down as if it were a twenty-pound bag of potatoes. Some of that strength was behind his next statement:

  “It’ll never make a good job.”

  They stood in silent agreement, Ben and Ian, staring at the causeway as the sun rose up over it.

  The Islanders had Ben to thank for the ferry. Normally as easygoing as he was big, he surprised everyone with his angry resistance when the province threatened to evacuate The Shores permanently. The government said it couldn’t build a bridge for so few people and that fixing the causeway would be only a bandage solution. Moving a few hundred people made a lot more sense.

  Not to Ben Mack. His family had been at The Shores for over two hundred years —ever since a sinking ship had dumped a fifteen-year-old stowaway into Big Bay. Ebenezer Mack had survived the winter with the help of the Mi’kmaq. He had cleared land in the spring, sowed seed, and before long began sowing the other kind. There were now so many Macks on The Island, his descendants often said proudly, “He made a good job of it.” Ebenezer’s spirit had slumbered inside Ben, until the province’s threat had woken it up. His family wasn’t going anywhere.

  He’d mounted a massive protest by land and by sea. The strong March winds had cleared the ice from the Gulf early. He and the other fishermen had put their boats in the water and set sail for the provincial capital. The rest of the villagers followed on land, joined by sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, cousins, grandchildren and great grandchildren from all over The Island. They had marched as one big family on Province House. The flotilla of lobster boats anchored in reproach in the harbour and a crowd of more than a thousand people had gathered outside the government buildings. The most remarkable were the oldest resident of The Shores, 104-year-old Agnes Cousins in her wheelchair, and beside her in a stroller, her great-great-great granddaughter Maisie, just two days old. Talk about photo opportunities.

  The protestors’ rallying cry may not have come from Madison Avenue, but it came straight from The Island’s heart. “Save our shores! Save The Shores!” They chanted it like a mantra for two days in a row in the pouring rain. The powerful television images went national and became an embarrassment, especially the old lady and the newborn. The province caved in. It established ferry service as “a temporary measure” and agreed to fix the causeway and the road. It might have happened even without the protest. One of the province’s four official scenic routes, The Island Way, was also in the Premier’s riding. That alone should have guaranteed the road would be fixed.

  But the rupture would never be fully repaired.

  “Goin’ over to the mainland, wha’?” Harold MacLean ambled over with a wide grin at his own remark. Ian smiled back. Referring to the rest of The Island as “the mainland” had begun as a joke when the causeway first washed out. The idea wasn’t entirely new. There had always been a feeli
ng of distinctness here. Even its geology, thought Ian, was slightly out of whack.

  The three men ambled onto the ferry dock where Nathan Mack, Ben’s son, ran a mobile canteen. Nathan was just shy of twenty, impossibly tall and thin with a buzz cut, dancing blue eyes and an infectious grin. He had reason to smile; he was the owner of three thriving businesses created since the ferry service started: the canteen, a grocery pick-up and delivery service and a taxi that ran to and from the ferry. He employed several of his cousins and even one of his uncles. He also gave back to the community. Trained as a paramedic, he had mounted a campaign of his own—for donations of used equipment to put together a rudimentary ambulance for the isolated area. It was just his old van equipped with an oxygen tank, a battered old ECG machine and a dented defibrillator, among other things. He had bought a new eight-passenger van for the taxi service.

  “No calls this morning?” Ben stirred four sugars into his coffee.

  “Got Gladys Fraser at 7:30. Jason’ll pick her up. Off to Winterside to have her corns removed.”

  It was more than any of them wanted to know about Gladys Fraser, President of the Women’s Institute and a bulldog of a woman.

  “So Harold,” said Ian, quickly changing the subject, “what’s up with you?”

  “Bin workin’ for that new fella,” he took a short breath in. “Hyup.”

  “Parker?” asked Ian, with sudden interest. Hawthorne Parker had hardly been seen in the weeks since he’d arrived. Ian didn’t know anyone who’d met him. It didn’t seem fair that it should be Harold, out of whom you had to squeeze information like the last drop of toothpaste out of a tube. Harold nodded and looked over at the causeway.

  “’Spect they’ll get it fixed if the weather ever turns. Don’t look like it, though.” He pointed a finger in the direction of a bank of clouds on the horizon. Ian always marveled at Harold’s hands. Not one finger was the same. Each looked like it belonged to a different person. Yet Harold was a skilled carpenter, in spite of his hands and the fact that he couldn’t add or subtract. He had sharp eyes under an unruly mop of greying hair that made him look a bit like Einstein, which he was not. He was a genius with wood. His work was always beautiful, level and square. His weather forecasts were not nearly as accurate—except for this spring. This spring, when Harold had called for rain, it came. But he was wrong today.

  “Them’s rain clouds.” Pointing with certainty at Ian, he said, “Don’t think they not.” The clouds were soft, white, fluffy, appearing not to have a drop of moisture in them. “Rain before noon, I should say.” The sunrise creeping over the water promised a glorious spring day. Cool now though, thought Ian, passing a hand over his thinning hair. He should have worn a hat.

  “What are you doing for Parker? What’s the place like?” Immediately Ian regretted firing off two questions at once. He’d be lucky if Harold answered one.

  “Nice place,” said Harold.

  “So what are you doing for him?” Ian persisted.

  “This ’n’ that,” he said. “Up the house. Shelves ’n’ such. Some other fellas are workin’ on Albert’s old buildin’—say it’s gonna be goomay.”

  “Goomay?” Ian shook his head, puzzled. The ferry was reaching the landing and his thoughts flew back to the iMac, soon to be his.

  It was just a small cable ferry with no official name, but the locals had been calling it Big Ben. It was a cheeky tribute to both Ben and the boat—he so large and the ferry so small. It could only take eight cars at a time.

  All six waiting vehicles drove onto the boat. People traveling later in the day wouldn’t be so lucky. If they couldn’t get on because there were too many cars, it would be a half-hour wait as the valiant little vessel chugged back and forth from six to midnight, free of charge, a crucial link in the provincial highway.

  When they got to the other side, it was a half-hour drive into town. Ian was still going to arrive well before the stores opened. As he felt the jolt of the ferry starting off from shore, it suddenly hit him.

  Gourmet. Harold meant gourmet.

  For Ian, gourmet meant that someone else had cooked it.

  Fueled by determination and greased by money, the cookhouse had been transformed in just a few weeks. Now it was complete, and Parker stroked his mustache in satisfaction.

  “A miracle,” he pronounced it.

  Vincent Caron, the designer who was making off with the bulk of the project money, agreed. It was a miracle. That kind of money spent on this kind of thing. It was all the best that money could buy, or almost. Of course, he’d trimmed a few corners—skimped on the electric, for one. The stove, fridges and freezer were all propane anyway, so he hadn’t updated the electrical. He hadn’t fiddled with a thing—except the bill. The wiring was fully fifty years old and dicky at best, but what did a few small appliances and some lights require? The money’s much better off in my pocket.

  It was the strangest job he’d ever done. A beautiful kitchen, mind, but that business in the back, weird. There’s no telling with rich people. He just bowed and scraped and did as asked, with his thin smile, veneered teeth and face like a ferret.

  He thought Parker was throwing away his money and he was just glad he’d been there to catch it. A man of his quality would never be content with living in this backwater long enough to justify such a kitchen—crazy. Vincent prided himself on being from the big city—Halifax. He also prided himself on being an astute businessman, who beat as quick a retreat as he could on his bowed legs to the new green Jeep Cherokee Parker’s money had helped pay for. It was actually maroon, but Vincent was colour-blind. As a result, his kitchen designs were all black and white with shades of grey. It had earned him a comfortable niche in the high-end kitchen market. It was his trademark, this lack of colour, considered a dash of style rather than an inability to identify colours correctly. What Vincent lacked in colour palette he made up for in spatial aptitude. His appliance and cupboard choice, placement and installation were impeccable. Parker was pleased with the black and white decor.

  He wished his life were as well-defined.

  On the outside, the cookhouse still looked much the same—a long grey cedar shingle building of a certain vintage in reasonably good shape. Inside—well, Parker could hardly wait for Guillaume to see it.

  Chapter Seven

  Everyone was waiting for Spring. Everyone was complaining—as they did every year—that it was slow in coming. Memories were short in the village. Each year, people imagined that it would be sunny and warm in April and May, but it rarely was. This was a particularly slow and reluctant spring. There hadn’t been so much as a scratch on the land, as Gus put it.

  Too wet and too windy. It had been blowing all month long with rain most days. A few dawned fine and clear, and this was one of them, without even the breath of a breeze. Only the strong surf crashing up on the shore hinted at yesterday’s brutal nor’wester. The computer hummed and the screen lit up: Hy had an email. It was sparsely worded—like a telegram.

  Will be there for date and time requested. Happy to inform WI re: lobsters. Need only slide projector and screen.

  It was signed Camilla Samson.

  Hy wrote the name beside her W.I. agenda entry. Camilla Samson. She imagined what a woman with a name like that would look like. Prim and poised. She’d wear a skirt and a string of pearls with a twin sweater set. It was stereotyping, but also wishful thinking. Hy was hoping for a dull, informative meeting. She didn’t want a repeat of Friday the Thirteenth with that crazed feminist. The things she’d said about menstruation and the church. In front of the minister’s wife.

  Camilla Samson it would be—safe and settled. Hy felt energized. She hadn’t found any lobster recipes yet for the Super Saver site, but she planned to ask the village women for their family recipes to give it some local flavour. First, she had to finish the invitation to the W.I. Lobster Supper. When she thought she had just the
right look, she hit Print.

  The Lobster Lover’s Blog

  Some people won’t eat lobsters because they look like cockroaches. They do—because they are. Cockroaches of the sea.

  Lobsters belong to the spider, scorpion and cockroach family— Anthropodia. If they were smaller and were swarming on your kitchen floor you wouldn’t eat them, you’d step on them. You’d call the exterminator. Instead, you call the restaurant and make reservations. You should have some. Reservations, that is.

  Unless you like eating large crunchy bugs.

  They do in some parts of Asia. They eat tarantulas. Like a lobster, a big fat tarantula has crunchy legs and succulent flesh. They’re considered a treat. Some people like to eat their stomachs—the spider version of tomalley—a mush of heart, eggs and poo.

  If this grosses you out, think about it. What’s the difference between eating a deep-fried spider, sauteed cockroach or a lobster?

  Size. That’s all.

  They call them bugs in Maine.

  They know what they’re talking about.

  That blog again, thought Hy. It froze the computer. Again she had no luck when she rebooted and googled Lobster Lover’s Blog.

  It came and went at will.

  She clicked, hard, on the invitation file and hit Print.

  This time it spit the thing out.

  Lobster Lovers Unite! the invitation to the Hall supper read. She printed up a stack of them, pulled on a sweater, shoved her red curls under a baseball cap and left the house. Then she came back and grabbed her keys—left again. She got in the truck; an old habit still not broken—got back out. She was halfway down the lane on foot when, suddenly, she turned abruptly and came back again. This time she’d left the invitations inside. She snatched them up and set out one last time. She would pop one into each mailbox in The Shores, except for one, which she planned to hand-deliver. Harold MacLean was the only person who had spoken to Hawthorne Parker since he had arrived on April Fool’s Day. She intended to be the second.