Yes, it is truly extraordinary what people can do even if they’ve never done it before.
Ruth and Owney went at it like pros, right from the start. There, in that shack on the filthy woolen blanket, they were doing raunchy, completely satisfying things to each other. They were doing things it might take other partners months to figure out. She was on top of him; he was on top of her. There seemed no part of each other that they were not willing to put into the other’s mouth. She was up on his face; he was leaning up against the child’s desk while she crouched in front of him and sucked him as he clutched her hair. She was lying on her side, with her legs positioned like a runner in mid-stride while he fingered her. He was sliding his fingers into her slippy tight cracks and licking his fingers. Then he was sliding his fingers into her slippy tight cracks again and putting his fingers in her mouth, so that she could taste herself on his hands.
Incredibly, she was saying, “Yes, yes, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”
He was flipping her over onto her stomach and lifting her hips into the air and, yes, yes, he was fucking her, fucking her, fucking her.
Ruth and Owney fell asleep, and when they woke, it was windy and cold. They hurried into their clothes and made the difficult hike back into town, through the woods and past the quarry. Ruth could see the quarry more clearly, now that the sky was starting to lighten. It was a huge hole, bigger than anything on Fort Niles. They must have made cathedrals out of that rock.
They came out of the woods in Owney’s neighbor’s yard, stepped over the low brick wall, and walked into Pastor Wishnell’s rose garden. There was Pastor Wishnell on the steps of the porch, waiting for them. In one hand, he held Ruth’s empty whiskey glass. In the other, Mrs. Pommeroy’s flashlight. When he saw them coming, he shone the flashlight on them, although he really didn’t need to. It was light enough outside now for him to see perfectly well who they were. No matter. He shone the flashlight on them.
Owney dropped Ruth’s hand. She immediately thrust it into the pocket of her yellow sundress and clasped the key, the key to the Ellis Granite Company Store, the key Mr. Lanford Ellis had handed her only hours before. She hadn’t thought about the key since taking off into the woods with Owney, but now it was extremely important that she locate it, that she confirm it had not been lost. Ruth held on to the key so tightly that it bit into her palm-as Pastor Wishnell came off the porch and walked toward them. She clung to the key. She could not have said why.
12
In severe winters, lobsters are either driven into deeper water, or, if living in harbors, seek protection by burrowing into the mud when this is available.
– The American Lobster: A Study of Its Habits and Development Francis Hobart Herrick, Ph.D. 1895
RUTH SPENT MOST of the fall of 1976 in hiding. Her father had not expressly thrown her out of the house, but he did not make her feel welcome there after the incident. The incident was not that Ruth and Owney had been caught by Pastor Wishnell, hiking out of the Courne Haven woods at daybreak after Dotty Wishnell’s wedding. That was unpleasant, but the incident occurred four days later, at dinner, when Ruth asked her father, “Don’t you even want to know what I was doing in the woods with Owney Wishnell?”
Ruth and her father had been stepping around each other for days, not speaking, somehow managing to avoid eating meals together. On this night, Ruth had roasted a chicken and had it ready when her father came in from fishing. “Don’t worry about me,” he’d said, when he saw Ruth setting the table for two. “I’ll pick some dinner up over at Angus’s,” and Ruth said, “No, Dad, let’s eat here, you and me.”
They didn’t talk much over dinner. “I did a good job with this chicken, didn’t I?” Ruth asked, and her father said that, sure, she’d done a real good job. She asked how things were working out with Robin Pommeroy, whom her father had recently hired back, and Stan said the kid was as stupid as ever, what did you expect? That sort of talk. They finished dinner quietly.
As Stan Thomas picked up his plate and headed to the sink, Ruth asked, “Dad. Don’t you even want to know what I was doing in the woods with Owney Wishnell?”
“No.”
“No?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t care who you spend your time with, Ruth, or what you do with him.”
Stan Thomas rinsed off his plate, came back to the table, and took Ruth’s plate without asking whether she was finished with dinner and without looking at her. He rinsed her plate, poured himself a glass of milk, and cut himself a slice of Mrs. Pommeroy’s blueberry cake, which was sitting on the counter under a sweaty tent of plastic wrap. He ate the cake with his hands, leaning over the sink. He wiped the crumbs on his jeans with both hands and covered the cake with the plastic wrap again.
“I’m heading over to Angus’s,” he said.
“You know, Dad,” she said, “I’ll tell you something.” She didn’t get up from her chair. “I think you should have an opinion about this.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t.”
“Well, you should. You know why? Because we were having sex.”
He picked his jacket off the back of his chair, put it on, and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Ruth asked.
“Angus’s. Said that already.”
“That’s all you have to say? That’s your opinion?”
“Don’t have any opinion.”
“Dad, I’ll tell you something else. There’s a lot of things going on around here that you should have an opinion about.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t.”
“Liar,” Ruth said.
He looked at her. “That’s no way to talk to your father.”
“Why? You are a liar.”
“That’s no way to talk to any person.”
“I’m just a little tired of your saying you don’t care what goes on around here. I think that’s pretty damn weak.”
“It doesn’t do me any good to care about what’s going on.”
“You don’t care if I go to Concord or stay here,” she said. “You don’t care if Mr. Ellis gives me money. You don’t care if I work on a fishing boat forever or get hauled off to college. You don’t care if I stay up all night having sex with a Wishnell. Really, Dad? You don’t care about that?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, come on. You’re such a liar.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I’ll say what I want to say.”
“It doesn’t matter what I care, Ruth. Whatever happens to you or your mother won’t have anything to do with me. Believe me. I got nothing to do with it. I learned that a long time ago.”
“Me or my mother?”
“That’s right. I got no say in any decisions involving either one of you. So what the hell.”
“My mother? What are you, kidding me? You could totally dominate my mother if you bothered. She’s never in her life made a decision on her own, Dad.”
“I got no say over her.”