To put it simply, this had not been simple.
The idea for the cooperative had come to Ruth the first time she saw her father and Owney’s uncle Babe Wishnell in the same room together. This was at the christening of Ruth and Owney’s son, David, in early June of 1977. The christening took place in the living room of Mrs. Pommeroy’s home, was performed by the cheerless Pastor Toby Wishnell, and was witnessed by a handful of glum-looking residents of both Fort Niles and Courne Haven. Baby David had thrown up all over his borrowed antique christening gown only moments before the ceremony, so Ruth had taken him upstairs to change him into something less elegant but much cleaner. While she was changing him, he’d begun to cry, so she sat with him for a while in Mrs. Pommeroy’s bedroom, letting him nurse at her breast.
When, after a quarter of an hour, Ruth came back to the living room, she noticed that her father and Babe Wishnell-who had not so much as looked at each other all morning, and were sitting sullenly on opposite sides of the room-had each produced a small notebook from somewhere on his person. They were scribbling in these notebooks with identical stubs of pencils and looked utterly absorbed, frowning and silent.
Ruth knew exactly what her father was doing, because she’d seen him do it a million times, so she had no trouble guessing what Babe Wishnell was up to. They were calculating. They were taking care of their lobster business. They were shuffling numbers around, comparing prices, planning where to drop traps, adding expenses, making money. She kept an eye on them both during the brief, unemotional ceremony, and neither man once looked up from his rows of figures.
Ruth got to thinking.
She got to thinking even harder a few months later, when Cal Cooley appeared unannounced at the Natural History Museum, where Ruth and Owney and David were now living. Cal climbed the steep stairs to the apartment above the growing clutter of Senator Simon’s massive collection and knocked on Ruth’s door. He looked miserable. He told Ruth he was on a mission for Mr. Ellis, who, it seemed, had an offer to make. Mr. Ellis wanted to give Ruth the gleaming French Fresnel lens from the Goat’s Rock lighthouse. Cal Cooley could scarcely deliver this news without crying. Ruth got a big kick out of that. Cal had spent months and months polishing every inch of brass and glass on that precious lens, but Mr. Ellis was adamant. He wanted Ruth to have it. Cal could not imagine why. Mr. Ellis had specifically instructed Cal to tell Ruth that she could do whatever she wanted with the thing. Although, Cal said, he suspected Mr. Ellis would like to see the Fresnel lens displayed as the centerpiece of the new museum.
“I’ll take it,” Ruth said, and immediately asked Cal to please leave.
“By the way, Ruth,” Cal said, “Mr. Ellis is still waiting to see you.”
“Fine,” Ruth said. “Thank you, Cal. Out you go.”
After Cal left, Ruth considered the gift she had just been offered. She wondered what it was all about. No, she still had not been up to see Mr. Ellis, who had remained on Fort Niles the entire previous winter. If he was trying to lure her up to Ellis House, she thought, he could forget it; she wasn’t going. Although she did not feel entirely comfortable with the idea of Mr. Ellis hanging about, waiting for her to visit. She knew it upset the chemistry of the island, having Mr. Ellis on Fort Niles as a permanent resident, and she knew her neighbors were aware that she had something to do with it. But she wasn’t going up there. She had nothing to say to him and was not interested in anything he had to say to her. She would, however, accept the Fresnel lens. And, yes, she would do whatever she wanted with it.
That night she had a long conversation with her father, Senator Simon, and Angus Addams. She told them about the gift, and they tried to imagine what the thing was worth. They didn’t have a clue, though. The next day, Ruth started calling auction houses in New York City, which took some research and gumption, but Ruth did it. Three months later, after intricate negotiations, a wealthy man from North Carolina took possession of the Goat’s Rock lighthouse Fresnel lens, and Ruth Thomas-Wishnell had in her hands a check for $22,000.
She had another long conversation.
This one was with her father, Senator Simon, Angus Addams, and Babe Wishnell. She had lured Babe Wishnell over from Courne Haven with the promise of a big Sunday dinner, which Mrs. Pommeroy ended up cooking. Babe Wishnell didn’t much like coming to Fort Niles, but it was hard to refuse the invitation of a young woman who was, after all, now a relative. Ruth said to him, “I had such a good time at your daughter’s wedding, I feel I should thank you with a nice meal,” and he could not turn her down.
It was not the most relaxed meal, but it would have been a good deal less relaxed had Mrs. Pommeroy not been there to flatter and pamper everyone. After dinner, Mrs. Pommeroy served hot rum drinks. Ruth sat at the table, bouncing her son on her lap and laying her idea before Babe Wishnell, her father, and the Addams brothers. She told them she wanted to become a bait dealer. She said she would put up the money for a building to be constructed on the Fort Niles dock, and she would buy the scales and freezers, as well as the heavy boat needed to transport the bait every few weeks from Rockland to the island. She showed them the numbers, which she had been juggling for weeks. She had everything figured out. All she wanted from her father and Angus Addams and Babe Wishnell was their commitment to buy her bait if she gave them a good low price. She could save them ten cents on the bushel right away. And she could save them the trouble of having to cart the bait from Rockland every week.
“You three are the most respected lobstermen on Fort Niles and Courne Haven,” she said, running a light finger over her son’s gums, feeling for a new tooth. “If everyone sees you doing it, they’ll know it’s a good deal.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Angus Addams said.
“Take the money and move to Nebraska,” Senator Simon said.
“I’m in,” Babe Wishnell said, without the slightest hesitation.
“I’m in, too,” said Ruth’s father, and the two high-line fishermen exchanged a glance of recognition. They got it. They understood the concept immediately. The numbers looked good. They weren’t idiots.
After six months, when it was clear that the bait dealership was hugely successful, Ruth founded the cooperative. She made Babe Wishnell the president but kept the office on Fort Niles, which satisfied everyone. She hand-picked a council of directors, composed of the sanest men from both Fort Niles and Courne Haven. Any man who became a member of the Skillet County Cooperative could get special deals on bait and could sell his lobster catch to Ruth Thomas-Wishnell, right there on the Fort Niles dock. She hired Webster Pommeroy to run the scales. He was so simple, nobody ever accused him of cheating. She appointed her father to set the daily lobster prices, which he arrived at by haggling over the telephone with dealers as far away as Manhattan. She hired someone completely neutral-a sensible young man from Freeport-to operate the pound Ruth had had built for storing the lobster catch before it was carted over to Rockland.
There was a good payout for anyone who joined up, and it saved weeks out of each man’s year not to have to haul the catch to Rockland. There were some holdouts at first, of course. Ruth’s father had rocks thrown through the windows of his house, and Ruth got some cold stares on the street, and someone once threatened to burn down the Natural History Museum. Angus Addams did not speak to Ruth or her father for over two years, but, in the end, even he joined. These were, after all, islands of followers, and once the high-liners were on board, it was not difficult to find members. The system was working. It was all working out just fine. Mrs. Pommeroy did all the secretarial tasks in the Skillet Co-op office. She was good at it, patient and organized. She was also great at calming down the lobstermen when they got too worked up or too paranoid or too competitive. Whenever a lobsterman stormed into the office, howling that Ruth was ripping him off or that someone had sabotaged his traps, he was sure to walk out happy and pacified-and with a nice new haircut, besides.