“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 fish? 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?”
“Delaware.”
“Is that in Rockland?”
“Not really,” Ruth said, and as Kitty started to shake with laughter again, she added, “Take it easy, Kitty. It’s going to be a long day. It’s too early to start falling down every two minutes.”
“Is that in Rockland?” Kitty wailed, and wiped her eyes. The Courne Haven fishermen and their wives, gathered in the Wishnell gardens around the Pommeroy sisters, all laughed, too. Well, that’s good, Ruth thought. At least they know the little blond girl is an idiot. Or maybe they were laughing at Kitty Pommeroy.
Ruth remembered what Pastor Wishnell had said about Fort Niles disappearing in twenty years. He was out of his mind. There’d be lobsters enough forever. Lobsters were prehistoric animals, survivors. The rest of the ocean might be exterminated, but the lobsters wouldn’t care. Lobsters can dig down into the mud and live there for months. They can eat rocks. They don’t give a shit, Ruth thought, admiringly. Lobsters would thrive if there was nothing left in the sea to eat except other lobsters. The last lobster in the world would probably eat himself, if he was the only food available. There was no need to get all concerned about lobsters.
Pastor Wishnell was out of his mind.
“Your brother really beat up a shark?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked Mandy.
“Sure. Jeez, I don’t think I ever had my hair combed so much in one day!”
“Everybody’s caught a shark sometime,” one of the fishermen said. “We all beat up a shark one time or another.”
“You just kill them?” Mrs. Pommeroy said.
“Sure.”
“There’s no call for that.”
“No call to kill a shark?” The fisherman sounded amused. Mrs. Pommeroy was a lady and a stranger (an attractive lady stranger), and all the men in the garden were in a good mood around her.
“There’s no reason to be cruel to animals,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. She spoke around a few bobby pins in the corner of her mouth. She was working on the head of a steel-haired old lady, who seemed utterly oblivious of the conversation. Ruth guessed she was the mother of the bride or the mother of the groom.
“That’s right,” said Kitty Pommeroy. “Me and Rhonda, we learned that from our father. He wasn’t a cruel man. He never laid a hand on any of us girls. He stepped out on us plenty, but he never hit nobody.”
“It’s plain cruelty to pick on animals,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “All animals are God’s creatures as much as any of us. I think it shows that there’s something really wrong with you, if you have to be cruel to an animal for no reason.”
“I don’t know,” said the fisherman. “I sure like eating them fine.”
“Eating animals is different from picking on them. Cruelty to animals is unforgivable.”
“That’s right,” repeated Kitty. “I think it’s disgusting.”
Ruth could not believe this conversation. It was the kind of conversation people on Fort Niles had all the time-dumb, circular, uninformed. Apparently it was the kind that people on Courne Haven liked, too.
Mrs. Pommeroy took a bobby pin from her mouth and set a small gray curl on the old lady in the chair. “Although,” she said, “I have to admit I used to shove firecrackers in frogs’ mouths and blow them up.”
“Me, too,” said Kitty.
“But I didn’t know what it would do.”
“Sure,” said one of the amused Courne Haven fishermen. “How could you know?”
“Sometimes I throw snakes in front of the lawn mower and run over them,” said Mandy Addams, the pretty teenager.
“Now that’s downright cruel,” said Mrs. Pommeroy. “There’s no reason to do that. Snakes are good for keeping pests away.”
“Oh, I used to do that, too,” said Kitty Pommeroy. “Hell, Rhonda, we used to do that together, me and you. We were always chopping up snakes.”
“But we were only children, Kitty. We didn’t know any better.”
“Yeah,” said Kitty, “we were only children.”
“We didn’t know better.”
“That’s right,” Kitty said. “Remember that time you found a nest of baby mice under the sink, and you drowned them?”
“Children don’t know how to treat animals, Kitty,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.
“You drowned each one in a different teacup. You called it a mouse tea party. You kept saying, ‘Oh! They’re so cute! They’re so cute!’ ”
“I don’t have such a big problem with mice,” said one of the Courne Haven fishermen. “I’ll tell you what I do have a big problem with. Rats.”
“Who’s next?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked brightly. “Whose turn is it to look pretty?”
Ruth Thomas got drunk at the wedding.
Kitty Pommeroy helped. Kitty made friends with the bartender, a fifty-year-old Courne Haven fisherman named Chucky Strachan. Chucky Strachan had earned the great honor of serving as bartender largely because he was a big drunk. Chucky and Kitty found each other right away, the way two garrulous drunks in a bustling crowd always find each other, and they set out to have a great time at the Wishnell wedding. Kitty appointed herself Chucky’s assistant and made sure to match his customers, drink for drink. She asked Chucky to whip up something nice for Ruth Thomas, something to loosen up the little honey.
“Give her something fruity,” Kitty instructed. “Give her something just as sweet as her.” So Chucky whipped up for Ruth a tall glass of whiskey and a little tiny bit of ice.