“No,” Ruth said, “they already found the elephant’s tusk.”
“For Christ’s sake, Ruthie, they’re looking for the goddamn other tusk.” He said it as if he was mad at her for some reason.
“Jeez,” she said. “Sorry.”
When she got down to Potter Beach, she found the Senator pacing unhappily on the rocky sand, with Cookie close at his heels.
“I don’t know what to do with Webster, Ruth,” the Senator said. “I can’t talk him out of it.”
Webster Pommeroy was far out in the mudflats, scrambling around awkwardly, looking unsettled and panicky. Ruth might not have recognized him. He looked like a kid floundering around out there, a stupid little kid in big trouble.
“He won’t quit,” the Senator said. “He’s been like this all week. It was pissing rain two days ago, and he wouldn’t come in. I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself. He cut his hand yesterday on a tin can, digging around out there. It wasn’t even an old tin can. Tore his thumb right open. He won’t let me look at it.”
“What happens if you leave?”
“I’m not leaving him out there, Ruth. He’d stay out there all night. He says he wants to find the other tusk, to replace the one Mr. Ellis took.”
“So go up to Ellis House and demand that tusk back, Senator. Tell those fuckers you need it.”
“I can’t do that, Ruth. Maybe Mr. Ellis is holding on to the tusk while he decides about the museum. Maybe he’s having it appraised or something.”
“Mr. Ellis probably never even saw the thing. How do you know that Cal Cooley didn’t keep it?”
They watched Webster flail around some more.
The Senator said, quietly, “Maybe you could go up to Ellis House and ask about it?”
“I’m not going up there,” Ruth said. “I’m never going up there ever again.”
“Why’d you come down here today, Ruth?” the Senator asked, after a painful silence. “Do you need something?”
“No, I just wanted to say hello.”
“Well, hello, Ruthie.” He wasn’t looking at her; he was watching Webster with an expression of intense concern.
“Hello to you. This isn’t a good time for you, is it?” asked Ruth.
“Oh, I’m fine. How’s your mother, Ruth? How was your trip to Concord?”
“She’s doing OK, I guess.”
“Did you send her my regards?”
“I think I did. You could write her a letter if you really wanted to make her day.”
“That’s a fine idea, a fine idea. Is she as pretty as ever?”
“I don’t know how pretty she ever was, but she looks fine. I think she’s lonely there, though. The Ellises keep telling her they want me to go to college; they’d pay for it.”
“Mr. Ellis said that?”
“Not to me. But my mom talks about it, and Miss Vera, and even Cal Cooley. It’s coming, Senator. Mr. Ellis will be making an announcement about it soon, I bet.”
“Well, that sounds like a pretty good offer.”
“If it came from anyone else, it would be a great offer.”
“Stubborn, stubborn.”
The Senator paced the length of the beach. Ruth followed him, and Cookie followed Ruth. The Senator was hugely distracted.
“Am I bothering you?” Ruth asked.
“No,” the Senator said. “No, no. But you can stay. You can stay here and watch.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing,” Ruth said. But she couldn’t stand watching Webster beating around in the mud so painfully. And she didn’t want to follow the Senator around if all he was going to do was pace up and down the beach, wringing his hands. “I was heading home anyway.”
So she headed home. She was out of ideas, and there was nobody else on Fort Niles she wanted to talk to. There was nothing on Fort Niles she wanted to do. She might as well check in with her father, she decided. She might as well make some dinner.
9
If tossed into the water back or head first, the animal, unless exhausted, immediately rights itself, and, with one or two vigorous flexations of the tail, shoots off obliquely toward the bottom, as if sliding down an inclined plane.
– The American Lobster: A Study of Its Habits and Development Francis Hobart Herrick, Ph.D. 1895
THE SECOND Courne Haven-Fort Niles lobster war took place between 1928 and 1930. It was a pathetic war, not worth discussing.
The third Courne Haven-Fort Niles lobster war was an ugly, short, four-month affair that raged in 1946 and had a greater effect on some islanders than the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This war prevented the island men from fishing in a year that saw the largest total catch of lobsters known in the fisheries of Maine: six thousand licensed fishermen took in a record nineteen million pounds of lobster that year. But the men on Fort Niles and Courne Haven missed the bounty because they were too busy fighting.
The fourth Courne Haven-Fort Niles lobster war began in the mid- 1950s. The cause of this war was not clearly defined. There was no single instigation, no one angry event that lit the fuse. So how did it begin? With pushing. With slow, typical, everyday pushing.
According to the laws of Maine, any man with a lobstering license may put a trap anywhere in Maine waters. That’s what the laws say. The reality is different. Certain families fish certain territories because they have always done so; certain areas belong to certain islands because they always have; certain waterways are under the control of certain people because they always have been. The ocean, though not marked by fences and deeds, is strictly marked by traditions, and it would serve a novice well to pay attention to those traditions.
The barriers, though invisible, are real, and they are constantly being tested. It is the nature of man to try to extend his property, and lobstermen are no exception. They push. They see what they can get away with. They shove and bump the boundaries whenever they can, trying to move each empire a foot here, a foot there.
Maybe Mr. Cobb has always stopped his line of traps at the mouth of a certain inlet. But what would happen if, one day, Mr. Cobb decided to set a few traps a few dozen feet farther in, to a spot where Mr. Thomas has traditionally fished? What harm could there be in a few dozen feet? Maybe the move would go unnoticed. Mr. Thomas isn’t as diligent as he once was, thinks Mr. Cobb. Perhaps Mr. Thomas has been ill or has had a bad year or has lost his wife and isn’t paying as close attention as he used to, and maybe-just maybe-the push will go unnoticed.
And it may. Mr. Thomas might not feel the crunch. Or, for whatever reasons, he may not care enough to challenge Mr. Cobb. Then again, maybe he will care. Maybe he’ll be immensely annoyed. Maybe Mr. Thomas will send a message of dissatisfaction. Maybe when Mr. Cobb goes to pull his traps the next week, he’ll find that Mr. Thomas has tied a half-hitch knot in the middle of each line, as a warning. Maybe Mr. Thomas and Mr. Cobb are neighbors who’ve never had any conflict in the past. Maybe they’re married to sisters. Maybe they’re good friends. Those harmless knots are Mr. Thomas’s way of saying, “I see what you’re trying to do here, friend, and I ask you to please back the hell out of my territory while I still have patience with you.”
And perhaps Mr. Cobb will back away, and that will be the end of it. Or perhaps he won’t. Who knows what reasons he may have for persisting? Perhaps Mr. Cobb is resentful that Mr. Thomas feels entitled to such a big piece of the ocean in the first place, when Mr. Thomas isn’t even that gifted a fisherman. And maybe Mr. Cobb is angry because of a rumor he heard that Mr. Thomas is keeping illegal short lobsters, or maybe Mr. Thomas’s son has looked in a lecherous manner at Mr. Cobb’s attractive thirteen-year-old daughter on more than one occasion. Perhaps Mr. Cobb has had troubles of his own at home and needs more money. Perhaps Mr. Cobb’s grandfather once laid claim to that same inlet, and Mr. Cobb is taking back what he believes rightfully belongs to his family.