A Matter of Mercy (33 page)

Chapter 30

The day’s warmth was a bonus for late April. Spring was often late, then chilly and damp on the outer Cape. Usually the sea farmers fought rain clouds for breathing space, but this year, they were all coatless thanks to days of robust sun. The lilacs were budding early beneath Caroline and Rid’s window, their fragrance faint but present enough that she and Rid lifted the sash at night for the scent as well as the sound of the bay.

Caroline sat on an overturned milk crate on the beach with a slotted box, culling oysters. Rid, sweaty in waders, bent from the waist in shallows picking stock to fill what order they could. He filled a crate and hauled it up to her. Lizzie thumped her tail where she lay next to Caroline but didn’t get up.

“Yeah girl, I know who you love best now,” Rid said, leaning over to scrub behind her ears. He pulled a treat from his shirt pocket and fed her at the same time he leaned over and gave CiCi a kiss on the mouth. She had sunscreen on her lips which made them slippery as she returned it. “How was that last bunch? Any of ’em need to go back?”

“Those,” she said, pointing. “Not legal size, but all healthy.”

“I can’t figure how those got in that rack. Mario probably,” Rid mused, rubbing his face, tired-sounding.

“I guess we can’t complain about his trying to replace some of the stock you lost, even if he gets it in the wrong cage.”

“There’s no way he can....” He shook his head to cut himself off. “Okay. You all right?”

She pointed at her belly this time, sunk between her spread knees. She wore denim shorts and a green top that revealed advanced pregnancy, swollen breasts. “I can’t sit like this. We need to bring a real chair out here, and find a way to lower the box. Maybe you could dig a hole in the sand?” She stretched, pulling her elbows and shoulders back.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Geez, I should’ve realized.”

He’d told her to stay home and rest for this tide, the second of the day, but she brushed him off, teasing, “You think you’re the only one with the blood?”

Now, with mounting frustration, he said, “Look, there it is again, you’re putting your hand on the same exact spot that asshole broke your ribs. You do it all the time, and I know damn well it means you’re still hurting, no matter what you say. We should’ve pressed charges. We still can. Jerry said so.” He made a visor of one hand to shield his eyes while using the other to stroke her neck and back.

“Haven’t we had enough of the law? Terry seems to have stopped him, and—”

“Except for the air outta the truck tire in February,” Rid interrupted. “The mailbox busted in March. And the skiff loose last week. If Mario hadn’t spotted it on his way in, we’d be doing without.” As he recited this litany, he ticked off the fingers of his right hand.

She inhaled then spoke on the exhale, to calm him. “Sweetheart, you and I both know stuff like that happens all the time. We can’t assume.”

“You’re naïve. You don’t want to believe there’s crazy or evil that can’t be fixed your way. I wish you were right, but look at how things spiral out of control.” This was a practiced conversation he’d not found a way to advance against Caroline’s conviction. He hated it when he begged. “I want to be done with that asshole. What if it’s something bigger and more dangerous next?
Then
will it be time to call up the posse?”

Caroline winked at him. “Hey, I know one asshole we’re done with. Pissario’s whole outhouse of cards—make that glass cards—collapses around him while he sits on the toilet pants down. And here
you
stand, on the flats you three guys
own
. Now how fine is that?”

He let her deflect him for the moment. “Yes ma’am, very fine.” He gave her a quiet, satisfied grin, his eyes joining hers. “That guy who donated the money saved our lives,” he said, and pressed his lips together, nodding slowly for several seconds while he raised his head and scanned the shallows. But then he remembered his point and swiveled back to Caroline. “However owning the flats is not relevant to pressing charges against Terry and her psycho-agent-orange-sniffing cousin.”

He knew she’d won again by the smile she tried to hide. “It’s relevant because things
do
spiral out of control. And how’s this for relevance: you and Tomas and
your
agent-orange-sniffing-psycho Mario could be renting or selling your friends’ grants to them, but are you? Ha! Gotcha. The Indian Neck sea farmers work their grants without paying you a cent. Why? “Never mind—” she said, holding up a hand as Rid started to interrupt. “I’ll tell you the real reason, whatever garbage you’re about to spew. It’s because you three know what it’s like to be down, just like your friends did when they pitched in to help you fight Pissario. So don’t talk to me about what I’m doing, because we’re exactly the same.”

Rid closed his eyes. When he opened them he said, “Look, about the flats. That’s the way it is now, the ‘no charge’ business. That’s the way I hope we can keep it. I’ll really try on my end, but I’m one of three partners, remember. People are people. Hell, nature is nature. Things happen, life gets in the way.”

Caroline ran her hand—a working hand now, calloused, and her nails short and a bit dirty—through hair that needed a cut again, but they’d been so busy out on the grant she’d not gotten to it.
Don’t worry about it. It’s okay if your hair gets long again. You don’t have to keep trying to look like a different person,
Rid said yesterday; Caroline claimed he'd been eavesdropping on her mind.

“And anyway, you gotta stop talking like you’re not part of us on the flats. Don’t say ‘me,’” Rid said, pointing to himself. His face was reddening in the sun, his nose, forehead and neck, and she tossed him the sunscreen, something he’d disdained for years. “Say ‘us,’” he continued, catching the tube.

She smiled at him and pointed at his face, meaning
put that damn sunscreen on.

“I put it on this morning.”

“You need to reapply, my love,” she said lightly. “Always reapply. There’s enough here to fill the orders I think—you need to get raking. Look, it’s the back of the tide already, and we’ve got to get the babies planted. We really got lucky. Have you seen what beautiful seed came in?”

Rid saw how Caroline looked at the sunset over the shallows when the tide was late, how rain didn’t keep her away, the satisfaction she took in planting, how she could pull an oyster and judge it by its heft in her hand. Used to laboring alone, he hadn’t expected this, that she would go to the tides with him. Weeks ago, he'd gone to the town clerk’s office and signed to have her name legally added to his grant without telling her, to seal them in the way that meant most to him. Soon Rid would add another name, as his father had added his, knowing the child’s blood was his and Caroline’s, and the tide always returns.

~
the end
~

Acknowledgements

Special thanks for support and invaluable help along the way to Nancy Pinard. I’m especially grateful to Kristina Blank Makansi, Amira Makansi, Janice Rockwell, Ciera deCourcy, Alan deCourcy, Audra Shields, Brad Cook, and to Barbara Austin and other aquaculturists of Wellfleet, MA, who so generously shared their lives and work.

About the Author

Lynne Hugo is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient who has also received grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She has published five previous novels, one of which became a Lifetime Original Movie of the Month, two books of poetry, and a children’s book. Her memoir, Where The Trail Grows Faint, won the Riverteeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. Born and educated in New England, she and her husband currently live in Ohio with a yellow Lab feared by squirrels in a three state area.

Connect online with Lynne or find
resources for readers and book clubs
at
www.lynnehugo.com.