Stern Men

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “I haven’t been able to spend enough time there to get tired of it,” Ruth said.

  “Because of school?”

  “Because Lanford Ellis is always sending me away,” she said. She thought that statement made her sound a little pathetic, so she shrugged blithely, trying to indicate that it was no big deal.

  “I think Mr. Ellis is interested in your well-being. I understand that he paid for your schooling and has offered to pay for your college education. He has vast resources, and he obviously cares what becomes of you. Not such a bad thing, is it? You are meant for better things than Fort Niles. Don’t you think?”

  Ruth did not reply.

  “You know, I don’t spend very much time on my island, either, Ruth. I’m hardly ever here on Courne Haven. In the last two months, I’ve preached twenty-one sermons, visited twenty-nine families, and attended eleven prayer meetings. I often lose count of weddings, funerals, and christenings. For many of these people, I am their only connection to the Lord. But I am also called upon to give worldly advice. They need me to read business papers for them or to help them find a new car. Many things. You’d be surprised. I settle disputes between people who would otherwise end up attacking each other physically. I am a peacemaker. It’s not an easy life; sometimes I’d like to stay home and enjoy my nice house.”

  He made a gesture, indicating his nice house. It was a small gesture, though, and seemed to take in only his bedroom, which wasn’t, as far as Ruth could see, much to enjoy.

  “I do leave my home, though,” Pastor Wishnell continued, “because I have duties, you see. I’ve been to every island in Maine in the course of my life. There are times when they all look the same to me, I must admit. Of all the islands I visit, though, I think Fort Niles is the most isolated. It is certainly the least religious.”

  That’s because we don’t like you, Ruth thought.

  “Is that right?” she said.

  “Which is a pity, because it is the isolated people of the world who most need fellowship. Fort Niles is a strange place, Ruth. They’ve had chances, over the years, to become more involved in the world beyond their island. But they are slow and suspicious. I don’t know whether you’re old enough to remember when there was talk of building a ferry terminal.”

  “Sure.”

  “So you know about that failure. Now, the only tourists who can visit these islands are those with their own boats. And every time someone needs to go into Rockland from Fort Niles, he has to take his lobster boat. Every penny nail, every can of beans, every shoelace on Fort Niles has to come on some man’s lobster boat.”

  “We have a store.”

  “Oh, please, Ruth. Scarcely. And every time a lady from Fort Niles needs to do her grocery shopping or visit a doctor, she has to get a ride on some man’s lobster boat.”

  “It’s the same thing over on Courne Haven,” Ruth said. She thought she’d already heard the pastor’s view on this subject, and she wasn’t interested in hearing it again. What did it have to do with her? He clearly enjoyed giving a little sermon. Lucky me, Ruth thought grimly.

  “Well, Courne Haven’s fortunes are closely tied to those of Fort Niles. And Fort Niles is slow to act; your island is the last to embrace any change. Most of the men on Fort Niles still make their own traps, because, without reason, they’re suspicious of the wire ones.”

  “Not everyone.”

  “You know, Ruth, all over the rest of Maine, the lobstermen are starting to consider fiberglass boats. Just as an example. How long will it be before fiberglass comes to Fort Niles? Your guess is as good as mine. I can easily imagine Angus Addams’s reaction to such an idea. Fort Niles always resists. Fort Niles resisted size limitations on lobsters harder than anyone in the state of Maine. And now there’s talk all over the rest of Maine of setting voluntary trap limits.”

  “We’ll never set trap limits,” Ruth said.

  “They may be set for you, young lady. If your fishermen will not do it voluntarily, it may become a law, and there will be wardens crawling all over your boats, just as there were when the size limits were set. That’s how innovation comes to Fort Niles. It has to be rammed down your stubborn throats until you choke on it.”

  Did he just say that? She stared at him. He was smiling slightly, and he had spoken in an even, mild tone. Ruth was appalled by his snide little speech, uttered with such ease. Everything he said was true, of course, but that haughty manner! She herself may have said some nasty things about Fort Niles in her time, but she had the right to speak critically of her own island and her own people. Hearing such condescension from someone so smug and unattractive was intolerable. She felt indignantly defensive, suddenly, of Fort Niles. How dare he!

  “The world changes, Ruth,” he went on. “There was a time when many of the men on Fort Niles were hakers. Now there’s not enough hake left in the Atlantic to feed a kitty cat. We’re losing redfish, too, and pretty soon the only lobster bait left will be herring. And some of the herring the men are using these days is so bad, even the seagulls won’t eat it. There used to be a granite industry out here that made everyone rich, and now that’s gone, too. How do the men on your island expect to make a living in ten, twenty years? Do they think every day for the rest of time will be the same? That they can count on big lobster catches forever? They’re going to fish and fish until there’s only one lobster left, and then they’ll fight to the death over the last one. You know it, Ruth. You know how these people are. They’ll never agree to do what’s in their best interest. You think those fools will come to their senses and form a fishing cooperative, Ruth?”

  “It’ll never happen,” Ruth said. Fools?

  “Is that what your father says?”

  “That’s what everyone says.”

  “Well, everyone may be right. They’ve certainly fought it hard enough in the past. Your friend Angus Addams came to a cooperative meeting once on Courne Haven, back when our Denny Burden nearly bankrupted his family and got himself killed trying to form a collective between the two islands. I was there. I saw how Angus behaved. He came with a bag of popcorn. He sat in the front row while some more highly evolved individuals discussed ways that the two islands could work together for the benefit of everyone. Angus Addams sat there, grinning and eating popcorn. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘I’m enjoying the show. This is funnier than the talking pictures.’ Men like Angus Addams think they’re better off working alone forever. Am I correct? Is that what every man thinks over on your island?”

  “I don’t know what every man on my island thinks,” Ruth said.

  “You’re a bright young woman. I’m sure you know exactly what they think.”

  Ruth chewed on the inside of her lip. “I think I should go help Mrs. Pommeroy now,” she said.

  “Why do you waste your time with people like that?” Pastor Wishnell asked.

  “Mrs. Pommeroy is my friend.”

  “I’m not talking about Mrs. Pommeroy. I’m talking about Fort Niles lobstermen. I’m talking about Angus Addams, Simon Addams—”

  “Senator Simon is not a lobsterman. He’s never even been in a boat.”

  “I’m talking about men like Len Thomas, Don Pommeroy, Stan Thomas—”

  “Stan Thomas is my father, sir.”

  “I know perfectly well that Stan Thomas is your father.”

  Ruth stood up.

  “Sit down,” said Pastor Toby Wishnell.

  She sat down. Her face was hot. She immediately regretted sitting down. She should have walked out of the room.

  “You don’t belong on Fort Niles, Ruth. I’ve been asking around about you, and I understand that you have other options. You should take advantage of them. Not everyone is so fortunate. Owney, for instance, does not have your choices. I know you have some interest in my nephew’s life.”

  Ruth’s face got hotter.

  “Well, let’s consider Owney. What will become of him? That’s my worry, not yours, but let’s think about it together. You�
��re in a much better position than Owney is. The fact is, there is no future for you on your island. Every pigheaded fool who lives there ensures that. Fort Niles is doomed. There is no leadership over there. There is no moral core. My heavens, look at that rotted, run-down church! How was that allowed to happen?”

  Because we fucking hate you, Ruth thought.

  “The whole island will be abandoned in two decades. Don’t look surprised, Ruth. That’s what may well happen. I sail up and down this coast year after year, and I see communities trying to survive. Who on Fort Niles even tries? Do you have any form of government, an elected official? Who is your leader? Angus Addams? That snake? Who’s coming down the pike in the next generation? Len Thomas? Your father? When has your father ever considered anyone else’s interests?”

  Ruth was getting ambushed. “You don’t know anything about my father,” she said, trying to sound as measured as Pastor Wishnell, but sounding, in fact, somewhat shrill.

  Pastor Wishnell smiled. “Ruth,” he said, “mark my words. I know a great deal about your father. And I’ll repeat my prediction. Twenty years from now, your island will be a ghost town. Your people will have brought it on themselves through stubbornness and isolation. Does twenty years seem far away? It isn’t.”

  He leveled a cool gaze on Ruth. She tried to level one back.

  “Don’t think that because there have always been people on Fort Niles, there always will be. These islands are fragile, Ruth. Did you ever hear of the Isles of Shoals, from the early nineteenth century? The population got smaller and more inbred, and the society fell to pieces. The citizens burned down the meeting house, copulated with their siblings, hanged their only pastor, practiced witchcraft. When the Reverend Jedidiah Morse visited in 1820, he found only a handful of people. He married everyone immediately, to prevent further sin. It was the best he could do. A generation later, the islands were deserted. That could happen to Fort Niles. You don’t think so?”

  Ruth had no comment.

  “One more thing,” Pastor Wishnell said, “that came to my attention the other day. A lobsterman on Frenchman’s Island told me that back when the state first introduced size limitations on lobsters, a certain lobsterman named Jim used to keep short lobsters and sell them to the summer people on his island. He had a nice little illegal business going, but word got around, because word always gets around, and someone notified the fishing warden. The fishing warden started following old Jim, trying to catch him with the shorts. He even inspected Jim’s boat a few times. But Jim kept his shorts in a sack, weighted with a rock, that hung down from the stern of his boat. So he never got caught.

  “One day, though, the fishing warden was spying on Jim with bin-oculars and saw him filling the sack and dumping it over the stern. So the warden chased Jim in his police boat, and Jim, knowing he was about to be caught, throttled his boat as fast as it could go, and took off for home. He drove it right up on the beach, grabbed the sack, and made a run for it. The warden chased him, so Jim dropped the sack and climbed up a tree. When the warden opened the sack, guess what he found, Ruth?”

  “A skunk.”

  “A skunk. That’s right. You’ve heard this story before, I gather.”

  “It happened to Angus Addams.”

  “It didn’t happen to Angus Addams. It didn’t happen to anyone. It’s apocryphal.”

  Ruth and the pastor stared each other down.

  “Do you know what apocryphal means, Ruth?”

  “Yes, I know what apocryphal means,” snapped Ruth, who, at just that moment, was wondering what apocryphal meant.

  “They tell that story on all the islands in Maine. They tell it because it makes them feel good that an old lobsterman could outsmart the law. But that’s not why I told it to you, Ruth. I told it to you because it’s a good fable about what happens to anyone who snoops around too much. You haven’t been enjoying our conversation, have you?”

  She was not about to answer that.

  “But you could have saved yourself this unpleasant conversation by staying out of my house. You brought it on yourself, didn’t you, by poking around where you had no right to. And if you feel as though you’ve been sprayed by a skunk, you know where to lay the blame. Isn’t that correct, Ruth?”

  “I’m going to help Mrs. Pommeroy now,” Ruth said. She stood up again.

  “I think that’s an excellent idea. And enjoy the wedding, Ruth.”

  Ruth wanted to run out of that room, but she didn’t want to show Pastor Wishnell how agitated she was by his “fable,” so she walked out with some dignity. Once outside the room, though, she took off down the hall and down the two flights of stairs, through the kitchen, through the living room, and out the parlor door. She sat down in one of the wicker chairs on the porch. Fucking asshole, she was thinking. Unbelievable.

  She should have beat it out of that room the moment he started his little oration. What the hell was that all about? He didn’t even know her. I’ve been asking around about you, Ruth. He had no business telling her who she should or shouldn’t hang around with, telling her to stay away from her own father. Ruth sat on the porch in a private, angry chill. It was embarrassing, more than anything, to be lectured to by this minister. And strange, too, to watch him put on his shirt, to sit on his bed. Strange to see his empty little monkish room and his pathetic little ironing board. Freak. She should have told him she was an atheist.

  Across the garden, Mrs. Pommeroy and Kitty were still at work on the women’s hair. Dotty Wishnell and Candy were gone, probably getting dressed for the wedding. There was a small clutch of Courne Haven women still waiting for Mrs. Pommeroy’s attention. They all had damp hair. Mrs. Pommeroy had instructed the women to wash their hair at home so that she could devote her time to cutting and setting it. There were a few men in the rose garden, too, waiting for their wives or, perhaps, waiting to have their hair cut.

  Kitty Pommeroy was combing out the long blond hair of a pretty young teenager, a girl who looked about thirteen. There were so many blonds on this island! All those Swedes from the granite industry. Pastor Wishnell had mentioned the granite industry, as if anyone still gave a shit about it. So what if the granite industry was finished? Who cared anymore? Nobody on Fort Niles was starving because the granite industry was gone. It was all gloom and doom from that guy. Fucking asshole. Poor Owney. Ruth tried to imagine a childhood spent with that uncle. Grim, mean, hard.

  “Where you been?” Mrs. Pommeroy called over to Ruth.

  “Bathroom.”

  “You OK?”

  “Fine,” Ruth said.

  “Come over here, then.”

  Ruth went over and sat on the low brick wall. She felt battered and slugged, and probably looked it. But nobody, not even Mrs. Pommeroy, took any notice. The group was too busy chatting. Ruth could see that she’d walked into the middle of a completely inane conversation.

  “It’s gross,” said the teenage girl being tended to by Kitty. “He steps on all the urchins, and his whole boat gets covered with, like, guts.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “My husband always threw urchins back in the water. Urchins don’t harm anyone.”

  “Urchins eat bait!” said one of the Courne Haven men in the rose garden. “They get up on your bait bag, they eat the bait and the bag, too.”

  “I got spikes in my fingers my whole life from goddamn urchins,” said another man.

  “But why does Tuck have to step on them?” asked the pretty teenager. “It’s gross. And it takes time away from fishing. He gets all worked up about it; he has a really bad temper. He calls them whore’s eggs.” She giggled.

  “Everyone calls them whore’s eggs,” said the fisherman with the spikes in his fingers.

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Pommeroy. “Having a bad temper takes time away from work. People should settle down.”

  “I hate those bottom feeders you pull up sometimes, and they’re all bloated from coming up so fast,” the girl said. “Those f
ish? With the big eyes? Every time I go out to haul with my brother, we get a ton of those.”

  “I haven’t been out on a lobster boat in years,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

  “They look like toads,” said the girl. “Tuck steps on them, too.”

  “There’s no reason to be cruel to animals,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “No reason at all.”

  “Tuck caught a shark once. He beat it up.”

  “Who’s Tuck?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked.

  “He’s my brother,” the teenage girl said. She looked at Ruth. “Who are you?”

  “Ruth Thomas. Who are you?”

  “Mandy Addams.”

  “Are you related to Simon and Angus Addams? The brothers?”

  “Probably. I don’t know. Do they live on Fort Niles?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are they cute?”

  Kitty Pommeroy laughed so hard, she fell to her knees.

  “Yeah,” said Ruth. “They’re adorable.”

  “They’re in their seventies, dear,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “And, actually, they are adorable.”

  “What’s the matter with her?” Mandy asked, looking at Kitty, who was wiping her eyes and being helped to her feet by Mrs. Pommeroy.

  “She’s drunk,” Ruth said. “She falls down all the time.”

  “I am drunk!” Kitty shouted. “I am drunk, Ruth! But you don’t have to tell everyone.” Kitty got control of herself and went back to combing the teenager’s hair.

  “Jeez, I think my hair is combed enough,” Mandy said, but Kitty kept combing, hard.

  “Christ, Ruth,” Kitty said. “You’re such a blabbermouth. And I do not fall down all the time.”

  “How old are you?” Mandy Addams asked Ruth. Her eyes were on Ruth, but her head was pulling against the tug of Kitty Pommeroy’s comb.

  “Eighteen.”

  “Are you from Fort Niles?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve never seen you around.”

  Ruth sighed. She didn’t feel like explaining her life to this dimwit. “I know. I went away to high school.”

  “I’m going away to high school next year. Where’d you go? Rockland?”