Mrs. Pommeroy informed the Senator that Conway was twelve.
“Ah, they’ll take it all from you, for sure they will. It’s a shame, a shame. They’ll take the Pommeroy fishing ground, split it among them. They’ll buy your husband’s boat and gear for a song, and all that money will be gone in a year, from feeding your boys. They’ll take over your husband’s fishing territory, and your boys will have a hell of a fight to win it back. It’s a shame. And Ruthie’s father probably gets the most of it, I’ll bet. Him and my greedy brother. Greedy Number One and Greedy Number Two.”
Under the table, Ruth Thomas frowned, humiliated. Her face got hot. She did not entirely understand the conversation, but she felt deeply ashamed, suddenly, of her father and of herself.
“Pity,” the Senator said. “I’d tell you to fight for it, Rhonda, but I honestly don’t know how you can. Not all by yourself. Your boys are too young to stage a fight for any territory.”
“I don’t want my boys fighting for anything, Senator.”
“Then you’d better teach them a new trade, Rhonda. You’d better teach them a new trade.”
The two adults sat silently for some time. Ruth hushed her breathing. Then Mrs. Pommeroy said, “He wasn’t a very good fisherman, Senator.”
“He should have died six years from now, instead, when the boys were ready for it. That’s really what he should have done.”
“Senator!”
“Or maybe that wouldn’t have been any better. I honestly don’t see how this could have worked out at all. I’ve been thinking about it, Rhonda, ever since you had all those sons in the first place. I’ve been trying to figure out how it would settle in the end, and I never did see any good coming of it. Even if your husband had lived, I suppose the boys would have ended up fighting among themselves. Not enough lobsters out there for everyone; that’s the fact. Pity. Fine, strong boys. It’s easier with girls, of course. They can leave the island and marry. You should have had girls, Rhonda! We should have locked you in a brood stall until you started breeding daughters.”
Daughtahs!
“Senator!”
There was another splash in a glass, and the Senator said, “And another thing. I came to apologize for missing the funeral.”
“That’s all right, Senator.”
“I should have been there. I should have been there. I have always been a friend to your family. But I can’t take it, Rhonda. I can’t take the drowning.”
“You can’t take the drowning, Senator. Everyone knows that.”
“I thank you for your understanding. You are a good woman, Rhonda. A good woman. And another thing. I’ve come for a haircut, too.”
“A haircut? Today?”
“Sure, sure,” he said.
Senator Simon, pushing back his chair to get up, bumped into Cookie. Cookie woke with a start and immediately noticed Ruth sitting under the kitchen table. The dog barked and barked until the Senator, with some effort, bent over, lifted the corner of the tablecloth, and spotted Ruth. He laughed. “Come on out, girl,” he said, and Ruth did. “You can watch me get a haircut.”
The Senator took a dollar bill from his shirt pocket and laid it on the table. Mrs. Pommeroy got the old bed sheet and her shears and comb from the kitchen closet. Ruth pushed a chair into the middle of the kitchen for Simon Addams to sit on. Mrs. Pommeroy wrapped the sheet around Simon and his chair and tucked it around his neck. Only his head and boot tips showed.
She dipped the comb in a glass of water, wetted down the Senator’s hair against his thick, buoy-shaped head, and parted it into narrow rows. She cut his hair one share at a time, each segment flattened between her two longest fingers, then cropped off on a neat bias. Ruth, watching these familiar gestures, knew just what would happen next. When Mrs. Pommeroy was finished with the haircut, the sleeves of her black funeral dress would be topped with the Senator’s hair. She would dust his neck with talcum powder, bundle the sheet, and ask Ruth to take it outdoors and shake it. Cookie would follow Ruth outside and bark at the whipping sheet and bite at the tumbling clumps of damp hair.
“Cookie!” Senator Simon would yell. “Come on back in here now, baby!”
Later, of course, the men did visit Mrs. Pommeroy.
It was the following evening. Ruth’s father walked over to the Pommeroy house because it was right next door, but the other men drove over in the unregistered, unlicensed trucks they kept for carting their trash and children around on the island. They brought blueberry cakes and casseroles as offerings from their wives and stayed in the kitchen, many of them leaning on the counters and walls. Mrs. Pommeroy made the men polite pots of coffee.
On the grass outside, below the kitchen window, Ruth Thomas was trying to teach Robin Pommeroy how to say his name or any word beginning with r. He was repeating after Ruth, fiercely pronouncing every consonant but the impossible one.
“ROB-in,” Ruth said.
“WOB-in,” he insisted. “WOB-in!”
“RAZZ-berries,” Ruth said. “RHU-barb. RAD-ish.”
“WAD-ish,” he said.
Inside, the men offered suggestions to Mrs. Pommeroy. They’d been discussing a few things. They had some ideas about dividing the traditional Pommeroy fishing ground among them for use and care, just until one of the boys showed interest and skill in the trade. Until any one of the Pommeroy boys could maintain a boat and a fleet of traps.
“RUBB-ish,” Ruth Thomas instructed Robin, outside the kitchen window.
“WUBB-ish,” he declared.
“RUTH,” she said to Robin. “RUTH!”
But he wouldn’t even try that one; Ruth was much too hard. Besides, Robin was tired of the game, which only served to make him look stupid. Ruth wasn’t having much fun, anyhow. The grass was full of black slugs, shiny and viscous, and Robin was busy slapping at his head. The mosquitoes were a mess that night. There hadn’t been weather cold enough to eliminate them. They were biting Ruth Thomas and everyone else on the island. But they were really shocking Robin Pommeroy. In the end, the mosquitoes chased Robin and Ruth indoors, where they hid in a front closet until the men of Fort Niles began to file out of the Pommeroy house.
Ruth’s father called for her, and she took his hand. Together, they walked to their home next door. Stan Thomas’s good friend Angus Addams came with them. It was past dusk and getting cold, and once they were inside, Stan made a fire in the parlor wood stove. Angus sent Ruth upstairs to the closet in her father’s bedroom to fetch the cribbage board, and then he sent her to the sideboard in the living room to fetch the good decks of cards. Angus set up the small, antique card table next to the stove.
Ruth sat at the table while the two men played. As always, they played quietly, each determined to win. Ruth had watched these men play cribbage hundreds of times in her young life. She knew how to be silent and useful so that she wouldn’t be sent away. She fetched them beers from the icebox when fresh beers were needed. She moved their pegs along the board for them so that they wouldn’t have to lean forward. And she counted aloud to them as she moved the pegs. The men said little.
Sometimes Angus would say, “Have you ever seen such luck?”
Sometimes he’d say, “I’ve seen better hands on an amputee.”
Sometimes he’d say, “Who dealt this sorry rag?”
Ruth’s father beat Angus soundly, and Angus put down his cards and told them a terrible joke.
“Some men are out fishing one day for sport, and they’re drinking too much,” he began. Ruth’s father put down his cards, too, and sat back in his chair to listen. Angus narrated his joke with the greatest of care. He said, “So, these fellas are out fishing and they’re really having a time and drinking it up. They’re getting awful stewed. In fact, these fellas get to drinking so bad that one of them, the one named Mr. Smith, he falls overboard and drowns. That ruins everything. Hell! It’s no fun having a fishing party when a man drowns. So the men drink some more booze, and they set to feeling pretty miserable, because nobody wants to go home and tell Mrs. Smith her husband is drowned.”