Nineteen Days

The motel on Broadway had not changed since January, down to the ice machine that hummed outside room 9. Nell left the key at the desk at twenty to five on Friday morning and drove the half mile to the yard with her window down. It was fifty-two degrees and nearly light. She had come for her work, and she kept that in front of her like a straightedge.

Faye had telephoned on Thursday at eight, as soon as the store opened.

“It’s in the rack,” she had said. “Front page, under the fold. Shipping Heir’s Contract Bride. They’ve got your name, your father’s name, the note to the dollar and your rate. Half the town’s furious. Marge Staples wants to cancel her subscription and she delivers the thing.”

“And the other half?”

“The other half wants to know if a hundred and eighty-five an hour is for the welding or the marrying, because Arlene at the store says it’s cheap for either. Somebody’s cousin has a photographer coming up from Rockland.”

Nell had gone into the office then. Her own ring had been in the second drawer since the night of the second of June, in the folder with the January envelope. She had picked Win’s up off the blank plate and put it in with it, and laid the cardboard tube on top. She was not having a stranger photograph them through the glass. She had shut the drawer, and then she had read the Courier standing at the store counter with Arlene watching, and bought it, and taken it home to her father.

The Petrel lay at the fitting-out pier with her deck lights on. Her blue hulls were clean and her fenders were new. Danny Arsenault was on the foredeck coiling a line, and he had a folded newspaper sticking out of his back pocket. He saw her and tried to push it further down.

“I’ve read it, Danny.”

“It’s a rag,” he said hotly. “They spelled Skerry with one r in the second paragraph.”

“Then they can’t have checked my rate either. Is Ms. Nadeau aboard?”

Vera Nadeau was at the wheelhouse table in her grey parka, with her glasses on their cord and a document in a blue cover. Toby Keegan stood beside her with his hard hat off. Lyle Sprague was warming the engines.

“Structure, machinery, stability, safety equipment,” Vera said. “I went through the after seats last night. They’re bolted to something now.” She uncapped a pen and signed the last page in three places. She tore nothing out this time. She closed the blue cover and held the whole thing out to Toby. “That’s her class certificate. She’s a boat.”

“Thank you,” Toby said. He sounded hoarse.

Vera looked at Nell over the glasses.

“I read the newspaper. I’ll tell you what I’d tell anyone. It doesn’t alter four millimetres.” She picked up her bag. “I’ll want the sequence diagrams on hull 2 before a single frame goes in. Good morning.”

Nell went out on deck to take the stern line, and Win was on the pier.

He had the canvas coat on over a shirt and tie, and the tan boots. He was holding a flat envelope. His left hand was bare. She had her gloves on, and she was glad of it.

“Good morning,” he said. “Those are the builder’s certificate and the bill of sale. Toby’s to carry them. I’m not coming. I’d only be sick on Ms. Baptiste’s seats.”

“I’ll give them to him.”

He handed the envelope up across the gap. He was careful that their fingers did not meet, and she saw that he was careful.

“She’s nineteen days ahead of her date,” he said. “That’s yours, and the floor’s. I wanted to say so before she left.”

“It’s mostly the floor’s.”

“They’d tell you otherwise. I’ve heard them.”

She waited for the rest. He had asked her on Monday whether she wanted to be at the meeting, and she had said she would think. A week was gone. A man with seventy votes to find would ask again.

He did not ask. He looked at the boat for a moment, bow to stern, and then he said, “Danny, which one do you want off first?”

“The spring, Mr. Lathrop. Then the bow.”

Win bent and took the spring line off its cleat and passed it up, and then the bow line. He did it correctly. Somebody had shown him. He stood on the pier with his hands in his coat pockets while Sprague backed her out, and he was still standing there when they turned downriver.
***
They cleared Portland Head at twenty-two knots with the sun coming up astern of the light. Nell had the laptop strapped down at the engineer’s station and the gauge on frame 14 recording. She did not need it any more. She wanted the trace for the file.

At seven Toby brought her a coffee and sat down on the settee across from her.

“You haven’t looked at the helm,” he said.

“I’ve looked at the helm. I spent a week in that wheelhouse.”

“Look at the bulkhead by it.”

She got up and went forward. Sprague leaned aside without being asked.

There was a plate screwed to the bulkhead at the height of a seated man’s eyes. It was aluminium, the size of a paperback, and the lettering had been cut into it by hand with an engraving tool and filled with black.

Petrel. Hull No. 1. Lathrop Shipbuilding, South Portland, Maine, 2027. Lines: Corliss & Hand, Naval Architects. Structure and wheelhouse: N. Thibodeau. Built by the day shift and the night shift.

She read it twice. She put her glove against the bulkhead beside it.

“Brackett cut the letters,” Toby said behind her. “It took him three nights, and he swore the whole time. The floor passed a hat for the plate and the paint. I put the screws in myself Wednesday.”

“Does he know?” She did not need to say who.

“He saw it Tuesday. He stood and read it, and then he came and found me and asked whose it was to do. I said it was ours. He asked could he put in like everybody else, and Brackett told him it was five dollars and no more. He paid his five dollars.” Toby scratched his jaw. “He didn’t say you’d want it. He didn’t say anything about you. He’s been careful about that.”

She went back to her stool and sat down. In Anacortes she had read a plate with two names on it and driven home to give her notice. This one had forty-odd people’s work in it and her name in the middle, and nobody had asked her permission, and she found she did not mind that at all.

“There’s something else you haven’t seen,” Toby said. “You’ve been up north. I’ll tell you, because I’d want telling.”

“Go on.”

“He’s stood at that board by the door at every shift change since Monday. Six in the morning, half past two, ten at night. He’s got no table and no paper. He stands there and anybody who wants to can say what they like to him.”

“What do they say?”

“Monday night it was ugly. Hebert on the plasma table asked did he think they were stupid. He said no, he’d thought they were a column, which was worse. One of the engineers asked for the hundred and three thousand back. He said the audit committee would rule and he’d pay whatever they ruled. Somebody on nights asked was any of the marriage real.” Toby watched the water. “He said that was yours to answer, and he’d answered for you once already and lost a ring by it.”

Nell held the coffee in both hands.

“Somebody pinned the Courier up yesterday, right over his three papers. He read it and left it. And he knows names now. I don’t mean off a list. Tuesday he asked Dunphy what his boy was called. Thursday he asked how Colin got on at the hospital in Boston. Dunphy about fell over.” He shook his head. “Dunphy told him straight he’s still voting for the money. Lathrop said, ‘Good. Tell Colin I asked.’ I’ve been thirty years in that shed, Thibodeau. I never thought I’d see that man stand still to be shouted at.”

“He went out on the Honor L. Wednesday,” Sprague said from the wheel, without turning. “Four in the morning, with the day crew. My brother-in-law’s her mate. He was sick over the rail before they passed Bug Light, and he stayed out the whole tow. The deckhand held his coat. They’ve talked about nothing else on the berths.”

“Did it do him any good?”

“With that crew? Some. A man who’ll be sick in front of you isn’t hiding much.”

“And he asked me for Tierney’s number,” Toby said. “He’s driving to Scarborough Sunday. That’s the thirteenth, two years to the day. I told him Tierney might shut the door on him. He said he’d expect it.”

She looked at the green line on her screen. It ran flat and low and had nothing to tell her.

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because he won’t.” Toby stood up. “He’s said he’s not going to guess for you again, and he means it so hard he won’t even put his own case. Somebody ought to give you the numbers. That’s all I’m doing. What you do with them is your business.”
***
They came through the Cape Cod Canal at slack water and raised the hurricane barrier at New Bedford a little after noon. Ursula Baptiste was on her dock in the navy windbreaker with a flashlight in her hand.

She took an hour and fifty minutes. She went through both engine rooms and under every seat, and she had Sprague run the fire pump. Nell stood on the working deck and did not follow her about. Either the boat was right or it was not.

At ten past two Ursula came up out of the port hull and switched off the flashlight.

“I had a list started,” she said. “I always start one. There’s nothing on it. I’ve never taken a boat off a builder without a list.” She took the envelope from Toby and signed the acceptance against the wheelhouse door. “That’s the eleventh of June. I said lunch if it was the eleventh. There’s linguiça rolls and chowder for eleven people in my shop, and I counted the boy twice.”

Danny went scarlet and happy.

Ursula kept Nell back on the deck when the others had gone up the ramp.

“I was sent that newspaper story three times,” she said. “Once from Louisiana, which I thought was cute. I’ve been called worse than a contract. It’s an honest word in my trade.” She put the pen in her pocket. “I haven’t changed what I told your husband. If that yard’s standing on the nineteenth, I sign for four more. If it isn’t, I’ve got one very good boat and a long drive south.”

“I know.”

“Here’s the other thing. A man named Harry Soule rang my office on Tuesday. He’s president of the pilots at Bath. They saw this boat on her trials off Portland Head, and they asked around about who drew her frames. I gave him your name. I didn’t give him your number. I don’t hand out a woman’s number.”

Nell had gone very still.

“The Kennebec pilots.”

“You know them?”

“I know their boat. She’s thirty years old, and she squats so badly off Fort Popham you could surf behind her. I’ve stood on the beach and watched her do it.”

“They want a new one. Forty-six feet, he said, and something that doesn’t smoke out the man on the ladder.” Ursula studied her face. “What have I said?”

“I’ve got her in my shed. She’s forty-six feet and she’s plated. She’s got a battery in her for exactly that.”

Ursula laughed until she had to hold the rail.

“Nobody ordered her?”

“Nobody yet.”

“Then you ring Harry Soule on Monday, and don’t you dare quote him by the hour.” She wrote a number on the back of a card. “And eat something. You’re as bad as he is.”

Her brother was at the head of the ramp when she came up, leaning on the yard truck with his arms crossed. He had said he would come for her, and it was five hours each way.

“She took her?”

“With no list.”

“Huh,” Rémy said. He opened the passenger door, which he had not done for her since she was in a cast at fourteen.
***
He said nothing until they were north of Boston. She let him get to it.

“I was wrong,” Rémy said, somewhere past the New Hampshire line. He was looking straight down the road. “About keeping quiet. I said sorry in the office and that’s not the same thing. I knew for two weeks. I watched you walk down the ways with him. I gave my word to the wrong person, and I kept it because I liked how it felt to be the one who knew something.”

“He asked you to.”

“He asked. I could have said no. That’s on me, not him.” His hands shifted on the wheel. “I hate that. I’d got used to everything being on him.”

“I’m not angry with you.”

“You ought to be, some.”

“Some,” she agreed. “It’s used up.”

He drove a mile.

“I don’t like him. I want that understood. He grinds like a banker and he counts everything.” He scowled at a tollbooth. “But he got up on a table and told three hundred men you’d called his money an insult. Walt Brackett told me he said coward about himself and didn’t dress it. And Monday he put a blank piece of paper on Grandpa’s bench and shut his mouth while you wrote on it. I was standing in the door. I’ve never seen that man not have a number.”

“He had one. Fifty-four thousand and sixteen.”

“And he ate it.” Rémy shook his head. “Carrie says I’d have said all this a week ago if I weren’t pigheaded.”

“I like Carrie.”

“You haven’t met Carrie.”

“I like her anyway.”

It was twenty to ten when they came down the hill. The lilacs were over, and the kitchen light was on.

Her father had waited up. He was at the table with a mug of tea and the cribbage board, and the Courier lay folded beside it with the headline showing. Rémy took one look at him, said good night and went up.

Nell sat down. She told him about the certificate and the acceptance with no list, and the plate by the helm, and Harry Soule. Leon listened to all of it. At the pilots he thumped the table once with his good hand.

Then he laid a finger on the newspaper and pushed it aside, as if it were a card he had no use for. His jaw worked. She gave him the time.

“He asked,” Leon said. He drew a breath and went after the rest of it, slowly. “Now you.”

“Me?”

He nodded. He pointed at her chest, and then south, toward Portland.

“I haven’t got anything to ask him, Dad. He’s told me everything. He told the whole yard.”

Her father looked at her. It was the look he gave a customer who said twenty-eight feet when he meant thirty-four. She had been on the wrong end of it since she was eleven, and she had never once outlasted it.

“All right,” she said. She put her hands flat on the table. “All right. He lied to me, and he went round me, and that’s his. I’m not taking it back off him. But I’ve been sitting on that boat for six hours being told what he’s done this week, and I know what I’ve done this week. I’ve filed a stem fitting.”

Leon waited.

“I came home from Seattle and I decided nobody would ever get near enough to put their name on anything of mine. I called it standing on my own feet. I didn’t show you a bid for a year and a half. I sat at Cy’s desk at two in the morning choosing between the payroll and the note, with you forty feet away and your numbers whole. I heard you tell him Tell her in April, and I never asked him what. I was too proud to ask. I left doors open and waited to be given it.” Her throat hurt. “I told him in January I’d rather owe him money than anything else. I thought that was a fine thing to say. It means I’ll only take what I can count and pay back. He does that. I gave him hell for it.”

“Seattle,” her father said gently.

“Seattle. I’ve been making pride do the job of trusting somebody ever since, and it does it badly.” She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. “There’s a meeting a week from today. If I walk into it, I’m the contract bride in front of a thousand people, and I’m asking them for something, and I’m asking him. If I stay here, he loses his votes and I lose nothing they can see. I’ve been leaning toward staying. I’d sooner lose by myself than win and owe for it. I’d never said that out loud until now, and it sounds like a fool talking.”

Leon reached across the board and took her wrist. His grip was as hard as it had been over the bronze in January.

“Friday,” he said.

“Friday. Will you come?”

“Yes.”

She kissed his forehead and went out across the yard.

The shed was dark and smelled of cut plate. Bilge thumped his tail by the cold stove. She walked past 212 without putting on the lights and let herself into the office, where the lamp over the door came through the window onto the blank bronze on the sill.

She opened the second drawer.

The cardboard tube lay on top. She drew the vellum out far enough to see her own hand on it, with one line ruled through and six standing, and slid it back. Under the tube was the folder, and in the fold of the folder were the two bands. She tipped them into her palm. One was small and still bright. The other was scratched, with a flat on one side where it had met a grinder.

She put her own back on. It went over the knuckle and sat where it had always sat.

His she buttoned into her shirt pocket, behind the steel rule. Then she took the tube under her arm and shut the drawer.
***