Lobster Boy

by Rodman Philbrick

  Just beyond the harbour, striped bass are feeding on baitfish in the shallows, making a noise my dad used to call “fish grenades”. Kind of a hard, wet smack. Big fish eating little fish. You can tell by the way they hit sometimes, that the little fish gets away.

  I like it when that happens.

  I’m easing in along the shore, about a hundred yards from the Crofts’ big floating dock, when a boat pulls away from the dock. I quick shut off my motor and lie down in my little skiff as it goes by. When I peep over the side, there he is: Tyler Croft taking off in Boy Toy, his own personal Boston Whaler. Brand-new four-stroke outboard runs so quiet, all you can hear is the slap of water on the hull. Perfect for sneaking around at night. Doesn’t have his running lights on, so I know he’s up to no good.

  Trouble is, he’s going so fast, he’s almost out of sight before I can get my little five-horse motor started. All I can do is follow along in his wake. But that’s enough to get a pretty good idea of where he’s going. The curve inside the jetty where I set a dozen traps. If he’s really there, cutting my buoys, I’ll have to sneak up on him. Otherwise he’ll just take off and I’ll never catch him.

  Once I get to where the jetty starts, I turn off the motor and get out the oars. Row up close to the jetty and then follow it along. Jetty is like this big arm made of rocks that pokes out into the harbour and protects it from waves whenever there’s a storm. Right now it’s hiding me in its shadow as I row along. Being careful as I dip the oars. Splash might give me away.

  As I row I’m looking over my shoulder. Wishing I could see in the dark like a cat or something. I do see something out there, but what is it? Could be just a boat anchored on its mooring, farther away than I think. Distance is hard to judge at night, on the water, with only the light of stars to guide you. But then something moves on the boat and I know.

  A person standing up. Then leaning over the side of the boat. Then standing up again. Can’t quite make it out, but it’s got to be Tyler, grabbing my buoys in the water and cutting the line, then moving along to the next buoy. Must be it’s too much work to actually haul up the trap and steal the lobster. Easier just to cut the buoy.

  I keep rowing until I get opposite the dark boat. Then I take hold of the starter cord and pull, praying my outboard motor will fire up on the first go.

  It does.

  I got no plan in mind except how mad I am. So I twist the throttle and head for the dark boat as fast as my little skiff will go. See him drop a buoy and then my bow goes wham! into the side of the Whaler, and he falls down inside the boat. Cursing and hollering, madder than a bee in a jar.

  Knocked me down, too, but I don’t care. I’m glad I hit him, even if it probably did more damage to my boat than his.

  “Tyler Croft, you’re a thief! I hope you die, you miserable piece of crud!”

  Tyler’s head pokes up over the side and I can see him clear as day. He’s smiling.

  “Well, look who I bumped into,” he says.

  “I bumped into you.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You owe me five hundred dollars,” I go, making up a number. “Pay up or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “You’ll get arrested. You’ll go to jail.”

  “You’re cracked, lobster boy. Why would I go to jail?” He’s having fun now, teasing me.

  “Stole my lobster. Cut my buoys.”

  “Yeah? Prove it.”

  “Saw you with my own eyes.”

  “You didn’t see anything. It’s too dark. Nobody will believe anything you say. You’re just a lying swamper and everybody knows it!”

  The thing that makes me maddest of all, that makes me feel like I swallowed a frog, is how right he is. My word against his. Lobster boy versus rich boy. You know who wins that fight. I ain’t got money for lawyers and he does, or anyhow his father does.

  No way can I win against him.

  Our boats have started to drift apart. My motor has stalled, so I get out the oars and try to close the distance.

  He sits there, waiting, like he’s got nothing better to do than remind me that I can’t hurt him but he can hurt me.

  “Why’d you do it, Tyler?”

  “Do what, Swamp Thing? Mess with your stupid traps?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come a little closer, I’ll tell you.”

  That makes me stop where I am, backing water.

  Tyler stands up, swinging a boat hook. I duck and feel it whoosh over my head.

  “You’re a loser, lobster boy! Get used to losing!”

  Then he fires up his big outboard and zooms away, rich boy in the dark of night, laughing and hooting my name, Skiff-eeeeee, Skiff-eeeeee.

  My motor still won’t start. I’d like to unhook the rotten old motor and drop it in the water, but I don’t. Instead, I row all the way home.

  Takes me the rest of the night. Night ain’t half so dark as what’s inside my brain.

  13

  When You Wake Up

  When I finally drag my tired butt into the house, it’s four in the morning and my dad ain’t on the TV couch, he’s sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Circles so dark around his eyes, he looks like a skinny raccoon with a dirty beard.

  Wants to know where I been.

  “What happened, Skiffy?”

  “Nothin’. Motor wouldn’t start.”

  But I can tell he knows that ain’t the whole story. Figure it’ll go faster if I say what happened. Then I can go to bed and sleep for ever.

  When I’m done telling, he looks as sick as me.

  “The Croft kid has been cutting your traps? Why’d he do a thing like that?”

  I shrug. “For the fun of it, I guess. And because I’m a swamper and he’s not.”

  “Swamper? You serious? Didn’t think anybody still used that word.”

  “Tyler does.”

  “I thought them days was long gone,” says Dad, talking to himself. “I’ll be darn.”

  “So,” I say, “you gonna call Mr. Croft and make him pay for what Tyler done?”

  Dad looks at the floor and sighs. He gets himself up from the chair, goes to the Frigidaire, and takes out a can of beer. He pops the tab and studies the foam. “I’ll have to think about that,” he says.

  “You think about it,” I tell him. “I’m going to bed.”

  There’s a time just before you wake up when your brain thinks all the bad things that have happened only happened in your sleep. Wake up, your brain says, wake up and everything will be okay.

  What a crock. When I wake up, all the bad stuff is still there. The Mary Rose still don’t have an engine, and my traps are still cut.

  Oh yeah, and my dad is passed out on the TV couch, which makes it perfect. I can smell the beer even before I get downstairs. I hate that smell. It comes from the pile of beer cans on the floor by the couch, and it comes from him, too. Passed out with his mouth open, like a little bird waiting for the next meal.

  I kick that stupid pile of beer cans across the room, but he don’t notice. I could set off a firecracker and he wouldn’t notice, that’s how drunk he is.

  Looking at the scattered cans and the sight of him snoring with his mouth open, I decide I hate him almost as much as I hate Tyler Croft. ’Course I don’t, not really, but it’s one of those mornings where it feels good to hate somebody.

  By the time I finish my cereal I’m done hating him for the time being, and I go in and clean up the cans and open a window to air out the smell.

  Don’t seem right that it’s a beautiful summer day, with the sun shining to beat the band. I’d rather it was foggy and miserable, like me. I go out to check on Rose, but really, what’s the point? Dad was right, should have left her sunk at the dock.

  Thought I had it all sussed out, how to make the money for a new engine and all. What I didn’t figure on was Tyler, and I should have. There’s always somebody like him, looking to make folks miserable. Can’t fight him no more than you can fight the wind or
the tide. Wasn’t him it would be somebody else. Joey Gleeson or Parker Beal. Somebody. My mom used to say there’s always another turd in the bowl, no matter how hard you flush.

  She was joking, but it’s true.

  For a while I mope around the Mary Rose and the dock. Check out my skiff, see there’s a place on the bow needs fixing, from crunching into the Whaler, but I ain’t in the mood. Finally I settle down and chuck around with the motor. Turns out it weren’t nothing crucial, just a loose connection on the fuel line. So I start her and head up the creek for Mr. Woodwell’s place.

  Don’t know why exactly, just to get away.

  Something about the old man’s boat shed always calms me down. Like the air is quiet there, and when you breathe it, the quiet gets inside you. Smell of them cedar shavings is nice, too, or maybe it’s the smell from Mr. Woodwell’s corncob pipe. Anyhow, that’s where I go, and when I get there, Captain Keelson’s long rowing boat is at the dock.

  The two of them are in the shed, studying a broken oar.

  Mr. Woodwell looks up and goes, “’lo, Samuel! What are the fish doing today?”

  “Swimming around, I guess.”

  Captain Keelson gives me his crinkly smile and says hello. “Broke an oar,” he says. “Caught the blade on a piling.”

  Mr. Woodwell has the broken oar clamped in a vice on his bench. I can tell they’re in no rush to fix it. They’re at the talking-about-it stage and that will take awhile.

  “Rose okay, is she?” the old man asks. “Still dry?”

  I nod and pretend to study the oar, but the truth is, I can’t tell where it broke.

  “How about your lobster business?” Captain Keelson asks. “Going pretty good, is it? Dev Murphy says you’re catching ’em by the bushel.”

  “Dev Murphy don’t know everything!” I say, feeling hot inside.

  Now they’re both studying me instead of the broken oar.

  “Best tell us, Samuel,” says the old man.

  “Won’t do no good.”

  He puffs his pipe and nods. “Come up the porch,” he says. He turns to the captain. “Alex, you mind?”

  “Amos, as you know very well, I don’t care if that oar gets repaired this year or the next. I’ve plenty of oars.”

  The old man nods. “Boy needs a drink. Strong lemonade with plenty of sugar. Care to join us?”

  We go up the porch and wait there while Mr. Woodwell fiddles in the kitchen, squeezing juice from the lemons.

  “Weather’s been good,” the captain says, looking out on the creek.

  “Yup. Pretty good.”

  “Remarkable lack of fog,” he says.

  “I guess.”

  “There was a summer when the sun never shined. This is before you were born. Fog came in on the Fourth of July and didn’t leave until Labour Day.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It was so damp, the mould complained. Several people dissolved. Just melted away in the street. Left nothing behind but soggy pairs of shoes.”

  I know he’s trying to make me smile, but I ain’t got one to spare.

  “Fog was so thick, they were selling it by the slice. Genuine State of Maine Fog. Very popular with the tourists, if you could find one. Many got so lost, they ended up in Pennsylvania.”

  “That’s pretty funny,” I say, to be polite.

  “Actually, Pennsylvania is a very serious state.”

  Mr. Woodwell brings out the steel pitcher and three glasses. “What did I interrupt?”

  “Fog,” says Captain Keelson.

  “Fog? Alex does a mighty fine fog, if I do say so. Did you tell him about the man who melted?”

  “I did.”

  “Left nothing behind but his hat.”

  “It was shoes,” I tell him.

  “Must have been another fellow.”

  “Thank you,” I say when he hands me the icy glass.

  Captain Keelson takes a sip and makes a face. “Didn’t spare the lemons, did you, Amos?”

  “Too tart?”

  “No. Exactly tart enough. Thank you kindly.”

  “How about you, young man?”

  “Really good,” I say. “Like always.”

  Mr. Woodwell settles back in his rocker. His hands are so cramped up, he has to use both of ’em to hold the glass, but it don’t seem to bother him. “Now then, Samuel,” he goes. “You are among friends. Something is troubling you. If there’s anything either of us can do to be of assistance, you have only to ask.”

  “There’s nothing nobody can do.”

  “Just so you know.”

  “My traps been cut!”

  “Good heavens!” says Captain Keelson, so surprised, he spills lemonade on his shirtfront. “How many?”

  “Don’t know, exactly. Most of ’em.” Then I tell them the whole story, like I done with my dad. Except I leave out the part where I smacked Tyler’s Boston Whaler.

  When I’m done, Captain Keelson sighs and goes, “He’s correct, you know, Amos. There’s very little we can do. It’s an awkward situation. Big Skiff and Jack Croft have a history. Best not to meddle.”

  Mr. Woodwell nods in agreement, but he looks mournful sad. “I’m sorry, Samuel. I was thinking we might be able to help. But your father would not want us interfering in his personal affairs.”

  “It ain’t my dad’s problem. It’s mine.”

  “Maybe so. But you’re Big Skiff’s son, and he’s Jack Croft’s son, and that makes it complicated. If anything is to be done, your father will have to do it.”

  ’Course I knew that before I come up the creek. They made me tell for nothing, and that makes me mad all over again. Mad at Tyler and mad at my dad and mad at the beer cans on the floor and at myself for thinking it might be different.

  “It’s a sorrowful thing, that kind of cruelty,” says Mr. Woodwell. “Not confined to boys, either.”

  “Mmm,” says the captain. He leans forward and catches my eye. “I suppose you’ll try grappling for the lost traps?”

  I ain’t thought that far and he knows it. Real casual, he allows as how if I was to drag a grapple along the bottom, I might hook up on my traps.

  “I guess,” I say.

  “You must be terribly discouraged.”

  “I’m mad is what I am. It ain’t fair.”

  “No,” says Mr. Woodwell.

  “Indeed no,” says the captain. “Decidedly not.”

  We sit awhile, drinking our lemonades, and nobody says much after that.

  14

  By Hook and By Crook

  Next couple of weeks I work on finding my lost traps. Captain Keelson’s idea about the grapple helps. What you do is tie the grapple – it’s like a big fish-hook with four barbs – to a length of rope. Then pull it along the bottom until it hooks on something. Might be a trap. Might be an old boot or a tyre or a plastic milk crate or a clump of seaweed. All kinds of junk on the bottom.

  Once I find this old telephone all clotted with mud. Take it to Dev Murphy at the bait house. He puts the receiver up to his ear and goes, “I hear the ocean!”

  Sometimes if it’s in a shallow spot and the water is flat calm, you can see the trap down there. Sometimes a lost trap comes up clicking with lobster. More often it don’t.

  Anyhow, I got nothing better to do. Stripers are running, but somehow it don’t seem right, taking time off for fun. Not until I get the traps back. ’Course I can’t locate them all. Tide or current has shifted ’em, or I don’t recall exactly where I set ’em. Figure out of two hundred traps I’ll get back half, eventual.

  Dev thinks I should rig out and put them back in the water, but what’s the point? I know Tyler. He won’t quit on this. He come by in his Whaler to tell me so. Parker Beal is with him. Parker don’t say nothing, he just tries to look tough, and laughs at everything Tyler says, like that’s his job.

  “Hey stinky!” Tyler shouts. Keeping well away in case I try to ram him with the skiff. “Whatcha doing, lobster boy?”

  “What’s it look
like?”

  “Looks like you’re trolling for more stupid junk to put in your stupid junky shack. Drag long enough you’ll probably find an old toilet seat for your outhouse.”

  Matter of fact, I had pulled up a toilet seat but threw it back. He must have seen me from the shore.

  “Go away,” I say. “Leave me alone.”

  “It must really suck being you, Skiffy. How do you stand it?”

  “Come in a little closer, I’ll tell you.”

  He laughs. Parker laughs, too, of course, but he don’t know why exactly, except Tyler wants him to.

  “Later, lobster boy!”

  Then the Whaler zooms off. I’m still mad, but it’s a deep mad now, not on the surface, so I can stand it without my ears getting hot whenever I think about what he done, and what he keeps on doing.

  Sometimes I wonder why he hates me so. I never did nothing mean to Tyler, but he’s always been at me, since back when his dad and my dad were friends. Got so miserable on the school bus, with him pulling my ears and singing that song he made up, that I took to riding my bike. My mom used to say he’d grow out of it, but he just grew meaner and meaner.

  You ever seen where someone will take a magnifying glass and try to focus the sun on a fly until it burns? Just because they want to hurt something and they got nothing better to do?

  Feels like Tyler is the sun and I’m the fly.

  One day I’m going by the fish co-op when a big sport-fishing boat is unloading. Not Fin Chaser or I wouldn’t have gone in close. Some fancy boat I never seen before. There’s a whole crowd standing around and jawing, so I tie up to see what all the fuss is about.

  “Will you look at that fish!” somebody says, and then whistles. “Four hundred and ten pounds!”

  The boat captain has a big ice chest open and he’s letting folks admire his fish. It’s a giant bluefin tuna like my dad used to harpoon. Seven foot long and built for speed.

  “Now that is a beautiful animal,” the captain says, showing it off like a fancy sports car. “See the big tail? Bluefin can flick its tail back and forth thirty times a second. That’s faster than the eye can see. Turbo-charged thruster. See these dorsal fins? How they fold back into a groove? That decreases drag, increases efficiency. Even has special eyelids to make it move faster through the water. Gills have ram ventilators for increased oxygen. Strong, rapid heart for power. Warm-blooded, so it’s quick. How quick? Bluefin can hit fifty miles an hour. It can leap fifteen feet into the air. It will swim two thousand miles to feed on a particular school of fish, at a particular time of year. When the good Lord created fish, He reached perfection with the bluefin tuna! This is the fish of all fishes. The king of fish! The queen of the Seven Seas!”