was blue, so she thought she’d talk to the Senator instead. Maybe he’d show her some old photographs of shipwreck survivors and cheer her up. But when she reached the Addams house, she found only Angus. He was trying to thread a length of pipe, and he was in an appalling mood. He told her the Senator was down at Potter Beach again with that skinny goddamn nitwit Webster Pommeroy, looking for a goddamn elephant’s tusk.
“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