Had he been born a fish, Tomasso Testaverde would have been a bottom feeder.
When he grew older, it was no longer possible to hide in small places or outrun the fishermen from whom he pilfered haddock and flounder. Tomasso discovered he had acquired an unfortunate reputation. And so crewing on the trawlers and draggers of his peers, as his ancestors had done, was not in his future.
But a resourceful boy invariably flowers into a resourceful adult. Denied the livelihood of a man, Tomasso shunned those who refused to let him crew on their boats and so found other, more creative ways to survive.
In those days they set lobster pots in the water just off the shore, lowering the pots in the morning and hauling them up again at night. The buoys were colored, so that no one hauled up a pot that was not his, but as far as Tomasso was concerned, any untended pot he happened upon in his rickety dory was his.
After all, he always replaced the pot just as he found it, keeping only the lobsters within. This was fair.
And so Tomasso acquired a new reputation, one more lasting than the old. For a wayward boy might be forgiven in time, but a man who stole the sustenance from the mouths of hardworking Italian fishermen was branded for life.
Having no overhead, and expending little labor, Tomasso in time hauled up sufficient free lobsters that a more seaworthy vessel became his.
Here began his true career.
Fishing was hard work and hard work wasn't to Tomasso's liking. Not that he didn't try. He attempted dragging. He tried seine fishing and gill netting. He eked out a haphazard living, acquired a crew that often needed firing because it was cheaper to fire than pay a man regularly, and along the way Tomasso learned every draggerman's trick there was.
It was possible to survive by foraging off the coastal Massachusetts waters for many years.
Until the fish began to recede.
Tomasso refused to believe the stories that were circulating. He was unwelcome in the United Fishermen's Club, where these things were discussed. So he learned of them secondhand and imperfectly.
"Old ladies," he would sneer. "The oceans are vast and the fish free to swim. The fish are not stupid. They know they are sought. They swim farther out. That is all. We will go even farther out for them."
But the farther out the boats went, the harder it was to catch fish. Where in the days of not-so-long-ago, it was possible to lower a net and lift it bursting with pale-bellied cod, the nets straining because the innards of the cod were filling with raw air, by the early 1990s, a lowered net came up filled with wriggling, less desirable brownish whiting, some gray halibut and on a good day a mere bushel of silvery cod.
Tomasso, who had to sell his catch down in Point Judith, Rhode Island, because his cargoes were unwelcome in Massachusetts fish ports, could not meet his expenses.
There were other inconveniences. The diamond-shaped mesh was outlawed. Only small square-mesh nets were legal now. But nets were expensive and Tomasso refused to throw his away. After he was caught for the third time hauling up endangered groundfish in forbidden biomass nets, he was told his license was forfeit.
"I don't care," he told them. "There is no more fish. The others have frightened them all away. I am going north, where the lobster is plentiful."
And it was true. Lobsters were plentiful up in the Gulf of Maine. Also, Tomasso Testaverde wasn't known up in Maine. Maine would be good for him. It would be a fresh start.
Up in Bar Harbor he was accepted. The lobsters were coming back after a short period of decline. Catches were exploding.
"The cod will come back, too. You wait and see," Tomasso often said.
They were harvesting other things in Maine. Rock crab. Eels. Spiny sea urchin was very lucrative, too. But it was intensive work, and urchin roe was not to Tomasso's taste. He refused to catch what he could not also eat.
"I will stick with lobsters. Lobsters I know," boasted Tomasso Testaverde. "I will be the King of Lobsters, you wait and see. I know them well, and they know me."
But Tomasso was surprised to discover that they had rules in the Gulf of Maine. The fisheries people down east, as they called Maine or Maine called itself, were concerned that the lobsters would go the way of the cod, although that was absurd on the face of it, Tomasso thought. Cod swam far. Lobsters were crawlers. They could only crawl so far.
In the early months he caught great red jumboes, some albinos and even a very rare fifty-pound blue lobster. It made the newspapers, this monster lobster of Tomasso Testaverde's. Marine biologists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute said it was possibly one hundred years old and should not be sold to the restaurants for food.
A famous actress came to Bar Harbor to personally plead for the life of the blue lobster. Tomasso offered to spare if it the actress slept with him. She slapped him. Tomasso, cheek as red as a common lobster's, dropped the blue lobster into a boiling pot of water and ate it himself out of spite, dropping off the angry red discarded shell at the hotel where the actress slept in selfish isolation.
After that, people shunned Tomasso Testaverde. Other lobstermen especially. It did not matter to him, though. Tomasso cared only about taking lobsters from the Gulf of Maine. And the lobsters were there for the taking, to be sure.
He used all the tricks, such as soaking cloth in kerosene and baiting his lobster traps with the malodorous stuff although this was frowned upon for environmental reasons. For some reason no one knew, lobsters were attracted to the scent of kerosene in the water.
But it was the rules and regulations that bothered Tomasso Testaverde the most. They were many and inconvenient.
Lobsters under a certain length could not be taken legally. These Tomasso dropped into a secret icefilled chest in his boat. These he ate himself. Working with lobsters had not dulled his taste for the crustacean's sweet, firm meat. It pleased him to think he ate for free what rich men better than he paid good money to enjoy on special occasions.
Another rule said the egg-bearing female of any size must be returned to the sea to protect future generations of lobstermen by ensuring future generations of lobsters. Tomasso, who had no sons, thought the law should not apply to him. Only to men with futures. Tomasso cared only about today. Only about survival. Tomorrow would take care of itself.
"The law applies to everyone," a man in a bar once said to him over beer, Buffalo wings and complaints.
"Different rules for different men. That is my law," Tomasso boasted.
An unfortunate admission, because the man was from the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in Portland and he followed Tomasso down to the docks and took down the name of his scunga-bunga jonesporter boat, the Jeannie 1, named after a cousin Tomasso deflowered at a tender age.
The next time he went out, Tomasso was casually hosing off the jellylike black eggs from under the curled tail where female lobsters carry their tiny eggs. That made them legal. Technically.
A Coast Guard lifeboat came upon Tomasso as he was about this activity, and he hastily finished what he was doing and tried to look innocent as he was hailed and boarded.
"What can I do for you fellows?" he asked.
A Coast Guard inspector stepped onto the Jeannie I and said in a very serious voice, "Inspection. Suspicion of scrubbing."
"I keep a clean boat," Tomasso said, trying to keep a straight face, too.
They took up the lobster he had just deposited into the holding bin. The hold was abrim with crawling red-brown crustaceans. There were a few pistols, too, as the one-claw culls were called.
"All my lobster are over the legal limit," Tomasso protested. "You may inspect them if you wish. I have nothing to hide."
Two inspectors dropped into the hold and did that, using caliperlike measuring tools designed for that purpose. They were very professional as they measured the carapace.