“Got him already at the market,” he flicked the radio on and dialed in the National Weather Service. The officious voice of an Englisman droned out the hourlies.
Pete shook his head, “We’ll try it tomorrow.” He turned off the radio and checked his watch. “You shoulda seen him. I’m not ready to say you’re right.”
“What?”
“I knew he’d be there, that’s why I went straight over to give him his check because he’s always in a hurry for it. To drink it up. And let Tom and Tom drink it up with him.”
“Yeah.”
“But last night I was thinking about Angie and I was going to hold back on his money and give her a little. I’d tell him we got less. Oh,” he snapped his beaten brief case open and fingered through the fish tickets and papers, licenses and yellowed permit copies. He passed a sharp check over.
1500 dollars. Lefty had never held a check so big. He was afraid to fold it.
“Not too bad, eh? We got a dollar eighty-four. Could have been more but Jake’s always picking blanks.”
“Blanks.”
“And those fat spermy ones, too. He can’t wait to get off the bottom so he picks whatever’s there until his bag’s full. Beer?”
Pete got up and went to the icechest out on deck and fished through the melted ice and returned with two wet bottles which he opened with the flat end of the wide gutting knife. The caps plopped to the floor.
“So you gave her some money?”
“That’s the thing. I was going to, I had it all worked out. To be willing to be around him… Maybe she could hold some of his money for him, like a bank. But I couldn’t do it. It felt like stealing, even though it was for his own good.”
“That’s a tough one.”
“Yeah, and anyway who the hell is she? You’ve haven’t been around enough, but she’s always caught up with one or another like him. The first couple of times and then a woman should get the picture. Not her.”
“Then she’s earned a little of his money.”
“Maybe in Communist Russia she has. It’s up to him.”
“How’d he look? When he was here with Tom he looked pretty good. Maybe he’s trying out a new trick.”
Pete sat up straight in the captain’s chair at the wheel and leaned out into the room, hands clasped over his thin knees. “Right,” he said. “And Tom didn’t look too happy, either, but that’s hard to say. He gave her the check anyway. I don’t think she let’s him drink.”
“Maybe it’s what he needs.”
“We’ll see how long it goes. Tomorrow it’s dinner at the sister’s. Angela’s boys’ll be there, too.”
“She moves fast.”
“I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
And the sea so vast; if he turned his head so that the island was not in view he could see nothing but grey-green sea and grey-blue sky, and the black line of horizon where these met. Nothing nowhere forever is what he thought he thought when later he tried to explain it to Maria. But oh so contrary is wary Mary; she said over her shoulder while she washed the dishes, “Then what’s so great about that?”
“Nothing,” he said.
He yawned and stretched, soon the sun would set and then he would scramble down the ladder into the cabin and down further to the bunkroom again and his bunk, but only to be awakened at midnight sometime to take the wheel. That’s fishing they always say. The usual rhythms over and over like the swell rolling into the anchorage, or December’s storms blowing in weekly, the wind from the North, then Northwest, and West as the storm spins over Southern California, until finally the blow blows out of the Southeast as the low pushes on to the desert and Arizona. The old fishermen had seen it so many times they could tell you, with their arcana of wind direction and shape of high cloud and color of sea, the day before a storm exactly how long the waters would be too rough for work and how much money they wouldn’t be making tied up at the dock. Unless the storm did something else, as frequently happened, and then who knew? Far off the island and nearer the bouncing boat a grey speckly mass of sea birds caught his eye, terns and pelicans which dipped and dropped to the water in a frenzy, the terns like German Stukas, efficient and graceful, the pelicans clumsy and awkward as they splashed upon their prey. Only for food is why the birds fly, thought Lefty.
“They’re just like us, those birds,” said Jake.