No, not her. Not out there, where forgotten lobsters and clams and mussels and sea worms grew to godless size, and where Christ only knew what else hovered about. When the Scottish settlers first came to Fort Niles, they had leaned over those very mudflats from huge rocks and had dug out, with gaffs, living lobsters as big as any man. They had written of this in their journals; descriptions of pulling out hideous five-foot monster lobsters, ancient as alligators and caked with mud, grown to repulsive extremes from centuries of unmolested hiding. Webster himself, sifting with his bare, blind hands, had found in this mud some petrified lobster claws the size of baseball mitts. He had dug out clams the size of melons, urchins, dogfish, dead fish. No way was Ruth Thomas going in there. No way.
So the Senator and Ruth would have to sit and watch Webster sink. What could they do? Nothing. They sat in tense silence. Sometimes a gull would fly overhead. Other times, there was no movement at all. They watched and waited, and occasionally felt panic simmering in their hearts. But Webster himself never panicked in the mud. He would stand, sunk past his hips, and wait. He seemed to be waiting for something unknown that, after a long period, he would find. Or perhaps it would find him. Webster would begin to move through the sinking mud.
It was not clear to Ruth how he did this. From the beach, it looked as though a rail had risen from below to reach Webster’s bare feet, and he was now standing safely on this rail, which was taking him, slowly and smoothly, away from a dangerous spot. It looked, from the beach, like a clean, gliding rescue.
Why was he never stuck? Why was he never cut by clams, glass, lobsters, mollusks, iron, stone? All the hidden dangers in the mud seemed to shift politely aside to let Webster Pommeroy pass. Of course, he wasn’t always in danger. Sometimes he would dawdle around in the shallow, ankle-deep mud near the shore, staring down, expressionless. That could get boring. And when it got too boring, Senator Simon and Ruth, sitting on the rocks, would talk to each other. For the most part, they talked about maps and explorations and shipwrecks and hidden treasure, the Senator’s favorite topics of conversation. Especially shipwrecks.
One afternoon, Ruth told the Senator that she might try to find work on a lobster boat. This wasn’t entirely true, although it was exactly what Ruth had written to her mother in a long letter the day before. Ruth wanted to want to work on a lobster boat, but the actual desire was not there. She mentioned the idea to the Senator only because she liked the sound of it.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “of finding work on a lobster boat.”
The Senator instantly grew annoyed. He hated to hear Ruth talk of setting foot on any boat. It made him nervous enough when she went to Rockland with her father for the day. All during the times of Ruth’s life when she’d worked with her dad, the Senator had been upset. He imagined, every day, that she would fall over and drown or the boat would sink or there’d be a terrible storm that would wash her away. So when Ruth brought up the idea, the Senator said he would not tolerate the risk of losing her to the sea. He said he would expressly forbid Ruth to work on a lobster boat.
“Do you want to die?” he asked. “Do you want to drown?”
“No, I want to make some money.”
“Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You do not belong on a boat. If you need money, I’ll give you money.”
“That’s hardly a dignified way to make a living.”
“Why do you want to work on a boat? With all your brains? Boats are for idiots like the Pommeroy boys. You should leave boating to them. You know what you really should do? Go inland and stay there. Go live in Nebraska. That’s what I’d do. Get away from the ocean.”
“If lobstering is good enough for the Pommeroy boys, it’s good enough for me,” Ruth said. She didn’t believe this, but it sounded principled.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ruth.”
“You’ve been encouraging the Pommeroy boys to be sailors forever, Senator. You’re always trying to get them fishing jobs. You’re always telling them they should be circumnavigators. I don’t see why you shouldn’t give me a little encouragement, every now and again.”
“I do give you encouragement.”
“Not to be a fisherman.”
“I will kill myself if you become a fisherman, Ruth. I will kill myself every single day.”
“What if I wanted to be a fisherman, though? What if I wanted to be a sailor? What if I wanted to join the Coast Guard? What if I wanted to be a circumnavigator?”
“You don’t want to be any circumnavigator.”
“I might want to be a circumnavigator.”
Ruth did not want to be a circumnavigator. She was making small talk. She and the Senator spent hours talking nonsense like this. Day after day. Neither one paid too much mind to the nonsense-speak of the other. Senator Simon patted his dog’s head and said, “Cookie says, ‘What’s Ruth talking about, a circumnavigator? Ruth doesn’t want to be a circumnavigator.’ Didn’t you say that, Cookie? Isn’t that right, Cookie?”
“Stay out of this, Cookie,” Ruth said.
A week or so later, the Senator brought up the topic again while the two of them watched Webster in the mudflats. This is how the Senator and Ruth had always talked, in long, eternal circles. They had, in fact, only one conversation, the one they’d been having from the time Ruth was about ten years old. They went round and round. They covered the same ground again and again, like a pair of schoolgirls.
“Why do you need experience on a fishing boat, for heaven’s sake?” Senator Simon said. “You’re not stuck on this island for life like the Pommeroys. They’re poor slobs. Fishing is all they can do.”
Ruth had forgotten that she’d even mentioned getting work on a fishing boat. But now she defended the idea. “A woman could do that job as well as anyone.”
“I’m not saying a woman couldn’t do it. I’m saying nobody should do it. It’s a terrible job. It’s a job for jerks. And if everyone tried to become a lobsterman, pretty soon all the lobsters would be gone.”
“There’re enough lobsters out there for everyone.”
“Absolutely not, Ruthie. For heaven’s sake, who ever told you that?”
“My dad.”
“Well, enough lobsters for him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s Greedy Number Two. He’ll always get his.”
“Don’t call my father that. He hates that nickname.”
The Senator patted his dog. “Your dad is Greedy Number Two. My brother is Greedy Number One. Everyone knows that. Even Cookie here knows that.”
Ruth looked out at Webster in the mudflats and did not reply. After a few minutes, Senator Simon said, “You know, there are no lifeboats on lobster boats. It’s not safe for you.”
“Why should they have lifeboats on lobster boats? Lobster boats aren’t much bigger than lifeboats in the first place.”
“Not that a lifeboat can really save a person…”
“Of course a lifeboat can save a person. Lifeboats save people all the time,” Ruth asserted.
“Even in a lifeboat, you’d better hope to get rescued soon. If they find you floating around in your lifeboat in the first hour after a shipwreck, of course, you’ll be fine…”
“Who’s talking about shipwrecks?” Ruth asked, but she knew very well that the Senator was always about three minutes away from talking about shipwrecks. He’d been talking to her about shipwrecks for years.
The Senator said, “If you are not rescued in your lifeboat in the first hour, your chances of being rescued at all become very slim. Very slim, indeed, Ruthie. Slimmer with every hour. After a whole day lost at sea in a lifeboat, you can assume that you won’t be rescued at all. What would you do then?”
“I’d row.”