There was an aerial shot of palaces in Newport—“… glittering remnant of the robber barons, but the greater part of Rhode Island is as desperately poor as West Virginia.
“According to a Ph.D. thesis on state governments, Rhode Island came in second only to Louisiana for the title of most corrupt state legislature.
“If Rhode Island were a country, it would be part of the Third World. The largest employer is the military. Tourism is the major moneymaker, although most Rhode Islanders benefit from it only in service positions. The bulk of choice real estate is in the form of second homes or resorts run by absentee corporations.
“There is a seafaring tradition, and there is — still — a fishing fleet. By comparison to the high-tech factory ships of Russia, East or West Germany, Japan, or the tuna clippers of our own West Coast, the boats and methods are quaint. But it is still possible — barely possible — to wrest a living from the sea.”
One of the guys said, “Who the fuck this fag think he is?”
During the introductory narration, the shots kept alternating between luxury and what was meant to be seen as squalor. A fancy restaurant. Then, at the phrase “lowest educational level of any state outside the Deep South,” there was a shot of the crab pickers at Joxer Goode’s plant. Dick knew that some of those guys were hired out to Joxer from the state school for the retarded. Dick had always thought Joxer was doing the crazies a favor while he got some real cheap labor. In the pictures Schuyler shot, the camera lingered on the retarded men and women in a half-light that made them look like driven slaves. The soundtrack left out the Muzak Joxer piped in that the poor guys sort of bobbed to, so their movements all looked like some necessary part of a hellish assembly line. Then there was a shot of a mansion from the ocean walk at Newport, with a pack of guard dogs snarling behind the ironwork fence. Then a shot which Dick recognized as his own backyard, and the outside of his patchwork boat shed. Then the Wedding Cake. At the phrase “wrest a living from the sea,” a long shot of Dick tonging quahogs.
A guy said, “Hey — that’s Sawtooth Pond.”
Dick thought of leaving before the boys at the bar recognized him. He couldn’t move without making a big effort — the boys were now two deep behind the bar stools.
Schuyler had rearranged things so that the launching of Spartina came before the shots of lobstering or harpooning swordfish from Mamzelle’s bow pulpit. Schuyler’d made it look like Spartina was the only boat in the movie.
Schuyler’s voice-over—“According to OSHA, fishing and coal mining are the two most dangerous occupations in America. On board this fishing boat sometimes there is camaraderie, sometimes a good deal of tension.” And there was a close-up of Dick’s face for the first time. He turned to the camera and said, “If you go over, we pick the fish up first.”
The boys laughed. One said in a mock singsong, “Ooh, Dickey, he thinks you’re cute. Wants a little of that camaraderie.” The boys quieted down at the shots of pulling pots, emptying them, and rebaiting them. No faces, but Dick recognized his old gloves with duct tape around the middle finger. One guy yelled, “Short! That lobster’s a short!” but no one laughed.
Then there was a sequence that puzzled Dick — underwater shots of a pot settling on the bottom. In the corner of the picture there was an inset rectangle with elapsed time — oo: oo.
One of the guys said, “That’s that old URI movie. It’s infrared or something.”
At first Dick thought that was just like Schuyler — fake a little, bullshit a little, steal a little, stitch it together. But then Dick got to like the contrast of the seabed to how things looked on the boat — cluttered, noisy, and bouncing around.
Elapsed time 02:38, the first lobster. Jump to a little later, three more. First one still can’t figure out how to get in.
Back upstairs. Long shot of Elsie in the dory. The guys couldn’t tell who she was, but they figured out what was wrong quick enough. “Look there — that asshole’s fouled his line.”
Good shot of shark fins. One of the guys hummed the theme from Jaws. They laughed. A shark jostled the bow of the dory. Dick hadn’t seen that at the time. The boys settled down for a bit, then cheered half-derisively and laughed when Dick hauled Elsie up, her feet running in mid-air. “Look at the little bugger go!” “Ain’t that the Vietnamese kid that’s the boy on Spartina?” They laughed again at the shot of Elsie from the rear, crawling to grab hold of the hatch cover.
Dick felt as if his head was in an oven. It was a relief when the movie went back to the lobsters. Elapsed time 09:43. A whole workday for one lobster to get in. He’s reaching for the bait with one claw, can’t get it. He’s using the other claw to keep the others out, jabbing and thumbing with it. But it somehow seems slow and quiet down there. For all the lobster scuttling, scuffling, and claw waving, it’s peaceful. They take their time between moves. Their feelers sweep out in slow arcs like unhurried casting with a fly rod. Even the quick tuck of the tail when a lobster drives himself backward seems calm. He darts once, then settles, his tail spreading out like a Spanish lady’s fan, the rows of walking legs touching down as light as a spider’s on her web.
The last rectangle gets crowded with big numbers. A lobster is in the parlor. A second one is just inside the entrance, keeping the crowd out. The line is around the block; it’s like Star Wars at the Wakefield theatre. Dick shook his head. You could get on edge about it, pretty discouraged at how slow they go about getting themselves caught. But he found himself soothed by the way everything wafted, by the watery gentleness of time down there. He’d never seen this. He’d thought about it of course, knew about it mechanically, but never seen it this way. But then it occurred to him he’d seen something like it: newsreels of astronauts on the moon — heavy-shelled, weightless creatures finding their own slow way, not in rhythm with the click of earth-surface readouts, their large motion as liquid as the silt they stirred up.
Send these brave lobsters to the moon.
Dick didn’t mind now about all the lobsters that didn’t get in the pot. He was pleased to see what he’d never imagined — that he’d spent a lot of his life dropping pots onto the moon.
The movie jolted back to the surface. Dick’s gloved hands moving fast, grabbing lobster out of the netting. Side view of his face, but you could still read his lips—“Fuck you, Schuyler.”
The guy next to him back-handed his shoulder. “Jesus, Dick. You’re on fucking educational TV.” Laughter. Dick tipped his head. Let him have his joke. They weren’t so bad, a little rowdy was all. Dick wished the movie would get back down to the seabed. But it was in his backyard. A shot of May in her garden. Looking pretty good. One of the guys at the bar leaned forward to say something. Another guy knocked his forearm.
May said, “When do you want your supper?”
Dick’s voice—“When I get back.”
They all whooped it up. “Keep her right in line, do you, Dick.”
Okay, Dick thought, I’m an asshole.
A while later there was Dick back in the bow pulpit, leaning forward with his harpoon. Dick heard the tail end of Schuyler’s voice—“… requires strength and timing.”
“Hey. He does think you’re cute.”
Dick shoved the harpoon.
“Give it to me, Dick. Put it in all the way.”
Dick said, “Blow it out your ass.”
Then there was Spartina sliding out the channel past the sandbagged crab-processing plant. Shots of boats being hauled.
“That’s Swiss Miss.”