“Yes, I do know a card trick.” He shoved a pack of cards in Ruth’s face and slurred, “Pig a card.”
She wouldn’t pick one.
“Pig a card!” shouted Chester Pommeroy, the Gypsy Bandoleer Bandit.
“Why should I?”
“Pig a fuggin’ card! Come on! I already planted the fuggin’ card, and I know it’s the three of hearts, so pig the fuggin’ card, will ya?”
She wouldn’t. He threw the deck at the wall.
She asked, “Can I please try some pot now?”
He scowled and waved her out of his face. He kicked a table and called her a stupid bitch. He had really turned into a freak, Ruth decided, so she stayed out of his way the rest of the week. That all happened when Ruth was sixteen, and it was the last time she saw Chester Pommeroy. She heard he had a bunch of children but wasn’t married to anybody. She never did get any of his marijuana.
With four of the Pommeroy boys off the island for good, that left three living at home. Webster Pommeroy, who was the oldest and smartest, was small, stunted, depressed, shy, and gifted only at plowing through the mudflats for artifacts for Senator Simon Addams’s future Museum of Natural History. Webster brought no income to his mother, but he didn’t cost much. He still wore the clothes of his childhood and barely ate a thing. Mrs. Pommeroy loved him the most and worried about him the most, and didn’t care that he made no contribution to the family, as long as he wasn’t spending day after day on the couch with a pillow over his head, sighing mournfully.
At the other end was the well-known idiot Robin Pommeroy, the youngest. At seventeen, he was married to Opal from town and father of the enormous baby Eddie. Robin worked as a sternman on Ruth’s father’s boat. Ruth’s father more or less hated Robin Pommeroy because the kid would not shut up all day. Since overcoming his speech defect, Robin had become a ceaseless motor mouth. And he wouldn’t talk just to Ruth’s father, who was the only one there. He would talk to himself, too, as well as the lobsters. He’d get on the radio during breaks and talk to all the other lobster boats. Whenever he saw another lobster boat cruising nearby, he’d grab the radio and say to the approaching skipper, “Don’t you look pretty, coming along?” Then he’d turn off the microphone and wait for a reply, which was usually along the lines of “Stuff it, kid.” Sadly, he’d ask Ruth’s father, “How come nobody ever tells us we look pretty coming along?”
Robin was always dropping things off the boat accidentally. He’d somehow let the gaff slide out of his hands, and then he’d run down the length of the boat to catch it. Too late. This didn’t happen every day; it happened almost every day. It was a real annoyance to Ruth’s father, who’d back the boat and try to catch up with the tool. Ruth’s father had taken to keeping spares of all his tools, just in case. Ruth suggested that he attach a small buoy to each tool so that at least it would float. She called this “Robin-proofing.”
Robin was tiresome, but Ruth’s father tolerated the kid because he was cheap, cheap, cheap. Robin accepted much less money than any other sternman. He had to accept less money, because nobody wanted to work with him. He was dumb and lazy, but he was strong enough to do the job, and Ruth’s father was saving a lot of money off Robin Pommeroy. He tolerated the kid because of the bottom line.
That left Timothy. Always the quietest, Timothy Pommeroy was never a bad child, and he grew up to be a pretty decent guy. He didn’t bother anybody. He looked like his father, with the heavy doorknob fists and the tight muscles and the black hair and squinty eyes. He worked on the boat of Len Thomas, Ruth Thomas’s uncle, and he was a good worker. Len Thomas was a windbag and a hothead, but Timothy quietly pulled up traps, counted lobsters, filled bait bags, and stood in the stern while the boat was moving, facing away from Len and keeping his thoughts to himself. It was a good arrangement for Len, who usually had trouble finding sternmen who’d put up with his legendary temper. He once came at a sternman with a wrench and knocked the kid out for the whole