The Lobster Kings by Alexi Zentner Read Free Book Online

the boat, hit the waves, and sank. “Scotty,” Daddy barked. Scotty had already started to realize what had happened, and I saw the way his face went blank, as if by not acknowledging that he’d thrown away a trap it would mean that it hadn’t happened. “You didn’t tie a line … how could you …” Daddy shook his head and pursed his lips. He didn’t say anything more than that, but he didn’t needto. Even from the cabin I could feel the way Scotty was trying to shrink into himself. It wasn’t the cost of the trap—we lost gear all the time to weather and accidents—but the way that he’d lost it. Such a stupid thing to do. But then Daddy shook his arms, forced a smile back onto his face, and put his hand on Scotty’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, son. Mistakes happen. It’s a good lesson. Always double-check to make sure you’ve got your gear ready to go. It could happen to anybody,” Daddy said.
    Except, I wanted to say, it couldn’t. That wasn’t the sort of thing that I would have done, I wanted to say. I didn’t say any of that. I kept quiet even as Daddy moved the
Queen Jane
to the next spot on his line, even as he pulled the next pair of traps, measured the lobsters, kept one, and threw the rest back. He looked at the two traps and then shook his head. “We’ll throw these ones back in the water and pull the rest of the line. The first two are rebaited, and I’ve got a couple on the backside of the island that will do for the family.” He roughed Scotty’s hair. “Everything else we pull we’ll bring back to land. You kids stack them up and lash them.”
    I didn’t bother moving from the cabin. If Daddy didn’t want me to help when we were rebaiting and dropping traps, I didn’t want to help now. Besides, Daddy was watching, so Scotty was acting the good son, was already dragging the traps across the deck. He was being quick and eager, trying to do the right thing, trying to make Daddy forget his mistake. Daddy came back to the wheel and pushed the throttle. He didn’t say anything to me about not helping Scotty, but he gave Second a tap with his boot. The big Newf uncurled himself from under the wheel and walked over to where Scotty wrestled with the traps and the bounce of the boat over the waves. Second nosed at Scotty and let out a few barks.
    It was the sort of thing that happens all of the time. A mistake. There’s the weather, there’s the waves, there’s the lobsters themselves with their crusher claws. There’s all sorts of hooked and sharp things aboard a fishing boat, and there’s the hydraulic haulers to take a finger off. But most of all, there are the ropes. Warp scatters everywhere; good lobstermen will keep their warpsorganized, lines coiled and out of the way, where they need to be, and so will the bad lobsterman. Highliners and dubs alike, they keep the ropes neat. The only lobstermen who don’t keep their ropes neat are the dead ones.
    Scotty hadn’t bothered taking the floating rope off the bridles on the traps, and he left the pair of traps still lashed together; the warp was tangled up in a bundle around his feet. Scotty was struggling to get one trap stacked up on the other, and the top trap was half on its twin, half on the railing, and that big, stupid fucking Newf, Second, was barking and nosing at Scotty. I can’t remember if I was watching the whole time, if I saw Scotty straining with the traps, a nine-year-old trying to be a man, trying to live up to Daddy, to live up to the name that he carried with him everywhere he went on and off of Loosewood Island. I can’t remember if I didn’t offer to help because I was a twelve-year-old girl and busy with simply not being near him, or if I didn’t offer to help him because I knew that he would never live up to the name that he carried with him, that he wasn’t deserving of it in the same way that I was. What I do remember is the sound of Second’s barking.
    Daddy heard the barking, too,