The Wooden Nickel (20 page)

“Biggest god damn racket in the history of the world. They’re up there telling you how to live, next moment they’re in the
back room with the altar boys.”

“Lucas, there aren’t any altar boys in the Methodist church.”

He drags his wristwatch out through the blazer sleeve. “Let’s go. I’ll follow you, cause I ain’t even sure where the damn
place is.”

“Lucas, it’s your children’s high school.”

“They should of kept the school right in Orphan Point. Ever seen the cars around there? Range Rovers. Audis. They wouldn’t
let a fish truck in the parking lot.”

“At least you don’t have that awful black one that Virgil Carter lent you, with the muffler scraping the road. Say, maybe
you could get your sternperson to lend you her little Mustang or whatever it is.”

“Come on, Sarah, let it alone. We got a daughter to graduate. We ain’t going to see it if we don’t haul ass.”

He wakes up to this huge noise like a ship is holed and there’s water roaring through the bulkheads both fore and aft. He
clears his eyes and steadies his spine in the folding metal chair. He’s not at sea, he’s in a high school auditorium and everyone’s
clapping so he starts clapping too, Sarah right beside him with Nathan Hummerman on the other side of her, then Mrs. Elsie
Hummerman, a cute little lady with rust-stained hair and diamond earrings and nice plump freckly tits peeping out over the
rim of her summer dress. It’s not clear to Lucky how such a bald owly little guy is married to that red-haired sexy low-cut
woman. Maybe it’s money, you can see she’s a spender. Kristen says she’s remodeling her whole kitchen in polished granite.
Tonight she’s got more jewelry on than Princess Di.

He whispers to his wife, “What’d I miss?”

“It was a very good speech,” she whispers back. “He talked about global warming.”

He puts his hands in back of his head and stretches, cracks his knuckles, tries to glance sidewards around his wife’s neck
and get a better angle on Mrs. Elsie Hummerman’s sleeveless dress. You can see a lot of cleavage any Saturday night in the
RoundUp but it’s mostly on fat women, which doesn’t count. This one has skinny tan arms, probably from tennis, and bony shoulders
like Sarah’s but she’s built like Ronette on top, maybe her husband slipped some of the saline in. Then for no reason his
heart misses a beat, just stops in midair, waits about three seconds, then kicks in hard. He remembers he skipped his pill
this morning because he was getting ready to fire his sternperson and that medicine can soften his will power like ice cream
in the sun. Now he could use one but the pills are in the truck. He closes his eyes and thinks of taking a carburetor apart,
step by step, till the heart rhythm goes normal and he can breathe. Hummerman squints over at him for a moment, then straightens
around again. Short guy like that, hands like a little kid’s, he doesn’t look strong enough to saw your chest open. He must
use a power tool.

Up on the stage, which seems a long distance away, the procession of graduates is filing towards the center, couple of wheelchairs
in front ramping up beside the stairs, then the short kids, then the middle ones, including Kristen, who smiles towards the
sea of parents and takes the diploma from the principal and lifts her long white gown off the floor so she can make the steps.
He’s glad he woke up for it. Grandpa Merritt Lunt didn’t go past the sixth grade. Lucky’s own father, Walter, back in the
Depression, only made it through the eighth. Walter Lunt was fishing full-time by the time he was fourteen. Lucky himself
dropped out right near the end of junior year, not much of a family for the books, but now a Lunt is walking off the stage
with her diploma and sliding the tassel to the other side of her square graduation cap. College track too, course that’s the
easiest, they don’t have to do anything but read.

On the chest of her white gown Kristen displays a small red loop ribbon, probably some kind of award. She did win a bunch
of them, she got the scholarship from the Kiwanis and split the one from the Odd Fellows with some kid who was supposed to
be the smartest one in the school. A few others in the line have the same decoration, mostly girls, not that they’re smarter
but they do have less energy so they can study more. He asks Sarah, “What’s the ribbon for?”

She whispers, “It’s for AIDS.”

A chill goes through him. A bunch of them have those ribbons, and every one of them looks sick. No wonder she’s been acting
strange this spring. He feels the sweat of fear breaking out on his face, then a spike of anger at the perverts and radicals
in that degenerate town. They should have home-schooled her, they never should have put her on the bus. He looks at Sarah
with the sweat flowing over his collar where the shirt is suddenly so tight it’s strangling him. “Goodness,” she says. “What’s
wrong?” She turns and flashes a look over to Dr. Hummerman like she’s glad he’s near.

He manages to whisper, “All of them got it?”

“All who, Lucas?”

“All the ones with ribbons. They all got the AIDS?”

A big smile breaks out on her face and she goes right to work loosening the tie and unfastening the top button while she speaks
close into his ear so he can feel her breath. “AIDS
awareness,
dear. They’re members of a support group.” She gives him a squeeze on the arm as Kristen returns to the rows of seated graduates.
“Aren’t you proud of her, Lucas? Our little girl.”

Dr. Hummerman flashes Lucky a thumbs-up and a big smile like it’s
his
daughter graduating. Then she’s back in her seat and the last of the basketball freaks are striding across the stage and
it’s time for them all to hit the Chinese restaurant, which is okay with Lucky because his child is cured of AIDS and he’s
suddenly starved.

Out in the school parking lot, Dr. Hummerman congratulates him and shakes his hand. In the grip of delicate small fingers
that can slice your heart open and stitch all the little veins back up, Lucky’s own hand feels stiff and useless as a lobster
claw. “This must be a gratifying event for you,” the surgeon says. “She’s a poised and accomplished girl. We already think
of her as one of the family.”

In the Mei Lai Pavilion restaurant, Mrs. Elsie Hummerman orders Moo Shoo Gay Something, her husband orders Straw Mushrooms
with Bean Curd, Kristen orders Tofu Kung Fu, Sarah orders a General Sow’s Chicken but her daughter clears her throat and says,
“Mother, what did you promise me about meat?” She changes it to something that sounds like Bow Wow Fried Rice — and it’s his
turn. The little Chinese waitress stands over him tapping her pencil on her order pad. The menu’s fourteen pages long, mostly
in Chinese, and he’s got to choose, good thing they put pictures beside the drinks. He points to a Fog Cutter that Sarah lets
him order because it’s graduation night. He points to the lobster image and the waitress says, “Lobster Kowloon.”

He’s been handling lobsters all his life but the Lobster Kowloon is like nothing he’s ever smelled or seen. He keeps ordering
Fog Cutters till the food blurs enough so he can approach it. Sarah whispers in his ear, “Try using the chopsticks, Lucas.
You’re the only one at the table using a fork.”

He whispers back, “It’s like going after a dog turd with a pair of oars.” She turns her head away and starts talking to freckly
Elsie Hummerman on the other side.

Kristen, who’s seated on his right, puts the two sticks between his fingers and shows him how. He manages to haul up a small
poisonous mushroom shaped like the umbrella in his drink, not to eat it but to shove it under his dinner plate, but it hits
the rim and falls into his lap. He says to Kristen, “No wonder they’re all starving over there. They can’t pick up their christly
food.”

“They’re not starving,” Kristen says. “Chinese babies learn to use chopsticks at the age of two. Look over there!” Sure enough,
there’s a Chinese family across the room with five or six little Chinese kids, chopsticks in hand, every one of them scooping
up the fried rice like a backhoe.

Lucky’s poking around his plate looking for something to eat, without much success. “Ain’t no lobster in here.”

“Don’t be silly,” Sarah says. “It’s not our kind of lobster. It’s
Chinese
lobster. There’s a world of difference.”

He manages to pick up a dark stringy little knot of something, and with Kristen’s hand beneath it all the way, he raises it
to his mouth. He hails another little Chinese waitress walking past in a red dress. “Excuse me, miss. This ain’t lobster.
It tastes like cocker spaniel.”

“Lucas.”
Sarah hisses at him but the waitress didn’t seem to notice at all.

Dr. Hummerman reaches across the table and puts his hand on Sarah’s to calm her down. “I was in Seoul just a couple of months
ago,” he says, “and I did get a taste of man’s best friend. It was an option on the appetizer list. I didn’t expect I’d like
it but the tenderness surprised me. Like everything else, it’s all in the preparation.”

“See?” Lucas turns in triumph to his wife.

This Hummerman may be all right after all.

Elsie Hummerman says, “Really, Mr. Lunt, it’s a delight to have Kristen working at our house. She’s worth her weight in gold.
We can’t wait till she moves in. We’ve fixed up the old servants’ quarters over the garage.”

“You can call me Lucky,” he says, speaking right to the low-slung diamond of her necklace like it’s a microphone.

“Oh, yes. Very much so, to have a gem of a daughter like Kristen. You are a very lucky man.”

Nathan’s on the other side of Kristen and he’s about to ask him about the Miata when Dr. Hummerman stands up, lays down his
chopsticks, and raises his wineglass in a toast. “To our extraordinary young graduate, Kristen Lunt.”

Hear, hear. Glasses go up. A wandering Chinese photographer slides up to the table and takes a flash shot: that’ll be another
twenty bucks on the check, but what the hell, Hummerman’s paying, few hundred on his platinum, he probably doesn’t even read
the bill.

Kristen doesn’t have a wineglass but she lifts her orange juice and speaks in a voice he can hardly recognize, like she’s
some summer tourist out of Massachusetts. “Thanks, Dr. Hummerman. Here’s to your new boat!”

With a beaming smile like she’s his own daughter, Dr. Hummerman clicks glasses with her. “To the
Zauberflöte.
”

Lucky takes a big slurp out of his Fog Cutter but his throat closes up and it won’t go down.

“She nearly came to grief this afternoon,” Hummerman reveals.

“Oh no,” Kristen says. “What happened?”

“While you were at the beach with Jason and Becky, we were anchored off the point for a little christening. Phil Good — he’s
my naval architect — was up from Sag Harbor. Dave Wong had come all the way from Taiwan, where she was built, and we’re sitting
around the cockpit table when quite out of nowhere a lobster boat headed right for us at full throttle. I honestly thought
the poor fisherman had died at the helm and the bow was going to cut us in two, then he veered off at the last minute, but
the wake knocked the hell out of us. Food went everywhere, Dave Wong got a minor scalp gash on the awning frame. Phil — who
was up on the coaming — practically got knocked overboard. Luckily he caught himself on the lifeline. I had to check Dave
for concussion, so I didn’t even get to see the name on that fellow’s stern, or I would have called the Coast Guard in a minute.
Glass all over the place”— he says directly to Lucky —“Lucas, you’ll laugh at us for having real glass aboard ship, which
we rarely do, just for special occasions.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah says. “Lucas can always find a bottle or two on board.”

“But who
was
it?” Kristen insists. “Can you describe them, even if you didn’t see the name? My father knows every boat in Orphan Point,
don’t you, Daddy?”

“Wasn’t an Orphan Pointer,” her employer says. “I’m glad to say. That boat headed straight east into Split Cove. Full throttle.
They were throwing a wake so high we couldn’t even see the stern.”

Lucky’s chopsticks open by themselves and drop a big chunk of stir-fried dogmeat onto his lap. He shifts his leg and lets
it fall to the carpet between his shoes. “No telling what them Split Cove boys will do,” he says. “Most of them’s pretty much
bottom-feeders over there.”

“Anyway,” Hummerman says, “by the time I got Dave Wong’s skull patched up, the culprit was long gone. But Lucas, you’re a
lobsterman, what would get into someone to pull a stunt like that? Aren’t we all sharing the same ocean?”

“There’s some of them’s don’t care much for pleasure craft, since they see themselves as out there working for a living, and
there’s some of them’s think their lobsters get stolen by the summer crowd, and there’s always some that just don’t give a
god damn.”

His wife says, “Lucas, it’s not funny. Someone might have been seriously hurt.”

By this point Lucky has long since given up on the chopsticks and he’s just forking in the Lobster Kowloon, though it’s got
no more lobster in it than a can of Alpo.

Finally their little waitress shows up with the check in a folder whose gold Chinese letters say
Guess who
really
won World War Two?
He leans back and studies the mushrooms and dog chunks on the floor around his chair, so he doesn’t have to see Hummerman
reach for his platinum card and snatch the check. Beside his plate are four little umbrellas in a row, all that’s left of
his Fog Cutters, and when he gets up he has to hold on to a red lacquered column because it feels like he’s back at sea.

“Good thing you brought your designated driver.” Hummerman laughs. “But you deserve it. It’s not every day a man sees his
daughter graduate.”

Out in the My Lai parking lot, Kristen heads off in the rattly Mercedes diesel to her new family’s house. Then Mr. and Mrs.
Lucas Lunt walk to their vehicles, which are parked side by side, and stand between them. “How many little Chinese umbrellas,
Lucas?”

“Three.”

“Think you ought to be driving home?”

“Hell, dear, I steered through thicker nights than this.”