can’t take the drowning, Senator. Everyone knows that.”
“I thank you for your understanding. You are a good woman, Rhonda. A good woman. And another thing. I’ve come for a haircut, too.”
“A haircut? Today?”
“Sure, sure,” he said.
Senator Simon, pushing back his chair to get up, bumped into Cookie. Cookie woke with a start and immediately noticed Ruth sitting under the kitchen table. The dog barked and barked until the Senator, with some effort, bent over, lifted the corner of the tablecloth, and spotted Ruth. He laughed. “Come on out, girl,” he said, and Ruth did. “You can watch me get a haircut.”
The Senator took a dollar bill from his shirt pocket and laid it on the table. Mrs. Pommeroy got the old bed sheet and her shears and comb from the kitchen closet. Ruth pushed a chair into the middle of the kitchen for Simon Addams to sit on. Mrs. Pommeroy wrapped the sheet around Simon and his chair and tucked it around his neck. Only his head and boot tips showed.
She dipped the comb in a glass of water, wetted down the Senator’s hair against his thick, buoy-shaped head, and parted it into narrow rows. She cut his hair one share at a time, each segment flattened between her two longest fingers, then cropped off on a neat bias. Ruth, watching these familiar gestures, knew just what would happen next. When Mrs. Pommeroy was finished with the haircut, the sleeves of her black funeral dress would be topped with the Senator’s hair. She would dust his neck with talcum powder, bundle the sheet, and ask Ruth to take it outdoors and shake it. Cookie would follow Ruth outside and bark at the whipping sheet and bite at the tumbling clumps of damp hair.
“Cookie!” Senator Simon would yell. “Come on back in here now, baby!”
Later, of course, the men did visit Mrs. Pommeroy.
It was the following evening. Ruth’s father walked over to the Pommeroy house because it was right next door, but the other men drove over in the unregistered, unlicensed trucks they kept for carting their trash and children around on the island. They brought blueberry cakes and casseroles as offerings from their wives and stayed in the kitchen, many of them leaning on the counters and walls. Mrs. Pommeroy made the men polite pots of coffee.
On the grass outside, below the kitchen window, Ruth Thomas was trying to teach Robin Pommeroy how to say his name or any word beginning with r. He was repeating after Ruth, fiercely pronouncing every consonant but the impossible one.
“ROB-in,” Ruth said.
“WOB-in,” he insisted. “WOB-in!”
“RAZZ-berries,” Ruth said. “RHU-barb. RAD-ish.”
“WAD-ish,” he said.
Inside, the men offered suggestions to Mrs. Pommeroy. They’d been discussing a few things. They had some ideas about dividing the traditional Pommeroy fishing ground among them for use and care, just until one of the boys showed interest and skill in the trade. Until any one of the Pommeroy boys could maintain a boat and a fleet of traps.
“RUBB-ish,” Ruth Thomas instructed Robin, outside the kitchen window.
“WUBB-ish,” he declared.
“RUTH,” she said to Robin. “RUTH!”
But he wouldn’t even try that one; Ruth was much too hard. Besides, Robin was tired of the game, which only served to make him look stupid. Ruth wasn’t having much fun, anyhow. The grass was full of black slugs, shiny and viscous, and Robin was busy slapping at his head. The mosquitoes were a mess that night. There hadn’t been weather cold enough to eliminate them. They were biting Ruth Thomas and everyone else on the island. But they were really shocking Robin Pommeroy. In the end, the mosquitoes chased Robin and Ruth indoors, where they hid in a front closet until the men of Fort Niles began to file out of the Pommeroy house.
Ruth’s father called for her, and she took his hand. Together, they walked to their home next door. Stan Thomas’s good friend Angus Addams came with them. It was past dusk and getting cold, and once they were inside, Stan made a fire in the parlor wood stove. Angus sent Ruth upstairs to the closet in her father’s bedroom to fetch the cribbage board, and then he sent her to the sideboard in the living room to fetch the good decks of cards. Angus set up the small, antique card table next to the stove.
Ruth sat at the table while the two men played. As always, they played quietly, each determined to win. Ruth had watched these men play cribbage hundreds of times in her