The Weir

By Ruth Moore

The Weir, written in 1943, takes place in a small island fishing village during the years before World War II, set against a backdrop of hard work and struggle. Ruth Moore, one of the great regional novelists of the twentieth century, brilliantly and authentically captures not only the characteristics of coastal Maine and its people, but uses them to write a story of universal human drama featuring two primary families who feud, gossip, and struggle while being battered by the relentless tides of change sweeping over their community and their entire way of life. This reissue of Ruth Moore’s debut novel includes a new introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Islandport Press
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952143045

Ruth Moore

Born and raised in the Maine fishing village of Gotts Island, Ruth Moore (1903–1989) emerged as one of the most important Maine authors of the twentieth century, best known for her authentic portrayals of Maine people and her evocative descriptions of the state. She wrote thirteen novels throughout her lifetime, and was favorably compared to Faulkner, Steinbeck, Caldwell, and O’Connor. Moore and her partner, Eleanor Mayo, traveled extensively, but never again lived outside of Maine.

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Novels by Ruth Moore

The Weir (1943)

Spoonhandle (1946)

The Fire Balloon (1948)

Candlemas Bay (1950)

A Fair Wind Home (1953)

Speak to the Winds (1956)

The Walk Down Main Street (1960)

Second Growth (1962)

The Sea Flower (1965)

The Gold and Silver Hooks (1969)

Lizzie and Caroline (1972)

The Dinosaur Bite (1976)

Sarah Walked Over the Mountain (1979)

Collections of Poetry

Cold as a Dog and the Wind Northeast (1958)

Time’s Web (1972)

The Tired Apple Tree (1990)

Islandport Press

P.O. Box 10

Yarmouth, Maine 04096

www.islandportpress.com

[e-mail]

Originally published February 1943 by William Morrow & Co.

First Islandport Edition / October 2020

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2020 The Estate of Ruth Moore

Print ISBN: 978-1-944762-94-0

ebook ISBN: 978-1-952143-04-5

LCCN: 2020932261

The background of this novel is authentic, but I have not described in it any living person, nor would I wish to do so. It would be difficult to write a story about a place so well-known and beloved as the Maine coast without apparent character resemblances; but if anyone feels he recognizes himself or his neighbor in this book, he is mistaken, and such description is only a coincidence.

Dean L. Lunt, Publisher

Teresa Lagrange, Book design

To my mother and father

Table of Contents

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

"That was the place that you were homesick for,

even when you were there."

Part One

Hardy Turner slid out of bed quietly so as not to awaken his wife, but as he put the quilts back around her shoulders, Josie moved a little and said, You goin’, Hardy?

Guess I better.

Well, light the lamp then. No use dressin’ in the dark. I’m wide awake.

She could hear him moving around and presently she leaned over, fumbled for a match on the stand by the bed and lit the small kerosene lamp.

Hardy was standing by the window peering out, his eyes close to the glass. The window faced west and the soft muslin curtains were bowed out against the screen as if glued there. As he turned away, a gust baffled around the corner of the house and sent them flapping wildly out into the room. The window shade bulged, cracked loudly against the woodwork. Then the wind sucked away, drawing the curtains straining against the screen again.

My land! Josie put her feet out of bed, reached for a housedress to put on over her nightgown. ’Tis blowin’, ain’t it? What time is it, Hardy?

It’s half-past one. Wind’s been breezin’ on hard since twelve.

Tch, you been awake all that time?

Off an’ on. No need for you to git up, Josie.

I’ll make you some coffee and fry some eggs. It’ll be cold down hangin’ onto them spilin’.

I’ll drink some milk.

Josie snorted. You won’t drink no milk! She put on her shoes over her bare feet. There’ll be some coals left in the stove, that good fire we had last night. You go down and poke ’em over.

Hardy knew there would be no coals left in the stove, and he would have preferred to drink his milk and leave the house without disturbing anybody. He’d have to wait for breakfast now, he thought, poking the cold ashes down through the stove grate with the hooker, and with this wind breezing on and piling up the tide in front of it, he wouldn’t have much time to spare. He poured kerosene lavishly on the kindling to hurry up the fire.

There! Josie hurried in, jerking her head in the direction of the comfortable roar going up the chimney. Now it won’t take me a minute to have coffee goin’.

She knows damn well I’ve had to build a new fire, Hardy thought. But he said nothing. Josie was just waiting for an opening. She didn’t think much of his dropping down his weir nets every time the wind hauled out southeast.

I think you’d better call Leonard, Josie said, breaking an egg into the big coffeepot, to settle the grounds. The way it’s comin’ on to blow, you’ll need him to help you hold the dory.

Leonard? said Hardy mildly. He just got to bed.

Well, I’ll just call him then.

Chrise, Josie, I can’t wait for him to git squared ’round. You know he was to the movies.

You wait, Hardy. If you’re goin’ to be fool enough to traipse down there in the middle of the night and drop them nets, you ain’t goin’ alone. She stopped and waited, but as Hardy turned silently to his eggs, she went out and he heard her heavy steps going up the back stairs to Leonard’s room.

Hardy scraped his chair back from the table and sat a moment, indecisively. Too bad to get the boy up. Maybe . . . He got up quickly and went to the outside door.

The weather looked bad. Inky clouds raced overhead, but in the west a single star showed for an instant before it was snuffed out. Maybe Josie was right. Maybe the wind was just breezing up with the flood tide and would go down again toward morning. On the other hand, it was the time of year, and it might mean a bad southeast storm. Hardy wasn’t sure. If only a man had a way of knowing . . .

He ought to be starting. The tide was coming and he could hear the rote on the back shore beginning to thunder against the ledges. The higher the tide got, the worse the job of getting the nets down. Still, if Leonard went to the trouble of getting up, he supposed he’d better wait for him. He went back to the table, began to eat his eggs hurriedly and drink his coffee in gulps.

Leonard had pulled the quilts over his head until only a wisp of curly brown hair showed on the pillow. Josie gave his shoulder a gentle push. Leonard! Your father wants you.

Leonard flopped over. Huh?

Wake up. Your father thinks it’s goin’ to blow.

Godsake, Marm, is he goin’ to drop them nets again? He had ’em down all last week.

He thinks he ought to.

How’s he expect a herring weir to fish if he keeps his nets flat all the time? What time is it, anyway? said Leonard crossly.

"Goin’ on for two. It is breezin’ up kinda hard, Leonard."

Leonard sat up in bed and listened. Does sound kinda windy, at that. All right. But, heck, Ma, I ain’t had but a coupla hours sleep. He had been across the bay to the movies at the Harbor, and after the show had taken Alice Lacy home. Ahow-oo, he yawned. Feel’s if somebody’d hit me on the head.

He put his feet grumpily out of bed and followed them with his big lean body, scantily clad in the pants of an old pair of pajamas. Blast and damn that weir, he mumbled, reaching for his undershirt.

I feel the same way sometimes, Josie said. I guess Pa does, too.

Well, he ought to, the work he makes of it.

Josie went back downstairs, feeling her feet clump tiredly on the treads. She had put in a good hard day’s work yesterday, and she felt, herself, as if she hadn’t been to bed at all. She set the coffeepot back on to heat and broke Leonard’s eggs into the frying pan. By the time they had begun to set, Leonard came down, his eyes red with sleep, his hair tousled and on end. He shoved his long legs under the table and ate for a while in glum silence. Pa gone down? he asked finally.

No. He’s out lookin’ at the weather.

How long’s he had that weir? Leonard said suddenly. Seventeen years, ain’t it? He ain’t made enough out of it to keep him in oilpants. I wish the damn thing would blow so far up the bay the devil couldn’t find it to roost on it.

Hardy came in, closing the door behind him. It’s jest about kept you in oilpants, and any other kinda pants you had a notion to buy. You comin’ with me, or are you goin’ to set there pickin’ your teeth the rest of the night?

I got a goddam good mind to go back to bed, said Leonard irritably.

No you ain’t, Leonard. You go with him, Josie said. I ain’t goin’ to have him down in that dory alone.

I ain’t askin’ nobody to go, said Hardy, his hand on the doorknob. It’s my weir, and if I want to drop the nets down in the middle of church on Sunday, or any other time, I damn well will! He stopped suddenly, a little too late to hide the nervous tremor in his voice.

Leonard grinned at him suddenly. Oh, hell, Pa, don’t git all tore out about it. We’ll drop ’em.

Well, git a move on, then. Here it is breezin’ on every minute, and the tide comin’—

Go along, said Leonard. I’ll catch up with you. He buttoned himself into his oilskins and followed his father out into the gusty darkness.

i

The herring weir was built on pebbly bottom, protected by ledges from all but the worst storms, but in a bad southeasterly on a high tide, the sea broke over the ledges and poured down in full force on the structure of brush and tarred nets strung between piles driven into the sand. Twice in the years he had owned it Hardy had lost the weir. Once he had lost two-thirds of his nets through not dropping them down in time.

The wind seemed to gather strength as Hardy and Leonard rowed out from the shelter of the shore. Hardy kept the dory close under the weir wing for lee, but the long whistling gusts sweeping in unchecked from the open ocean to the east tore at the boat, cuffed off the top of the rising tide and sent it down on them in drenching sheets.

Leonard shivered and swore, but Hardy kept his hands steady on the oars and said nothing. Now that he was actually doing a job, not worrying about it, his mind worked keenly and swiftly with his able body.

The tide was already a little too high. He could feel the strong drag of it under the boat as the big swells rolled in, without breaking, to race across the sandbar behind the weir and into the open bay beyond. In another hour, unless the wind moderated, they would be breaking on the bar.

Waited a little long, Hardy thought. Goin’ to have to hustle.

The night was thick and black, and he had to row by the feel of the wind and the push of the tide against the dory. But he thought little of that. As long as he knew which way the wind blew and whether the tide was flooding or ebbing, he knew where he was. Tending weir after dark was second nature to him. Besides, he had seen much worse storms than this, and been out on darker nights. Tonight he could make out the vague tracery of flimsy-looking poles that showed him he was close under the weir wing.

Inside the weir the seine poles with nets strung between them offered a partial windbreak. The water was quieter, but Hardy knew it wouldn’t be once the tide rose over the inner ledge.

He laid the dory against the brush wall of the pound and began untying the tarred gangion that held the nets to the seine poles. The nets were fastened bottom, middle, and top, and the idea was to untie all but the bottom ropes and let the nets fall forward into the shelter of the brush wall. That way a seine pole or two might carry away, but unless the wall itself went, the nets were safe.

Hardy’s hands found the knots and untied them by instinct, but he could hear Leonard fumbling and swearing down in the stern of the dory. Hardy had a special hitch, one he had devised himself, for the net ropes. The sea could maul at it until kingdom come and still it would hold, but a man could find the right end in an instant, give it a twitch, and the whole knot would fall undone in his hand. Except Leonard. Leonard never could seem to make out which end to twitch. Or maybe he could if he wanted to take the trouble, Hardy thought.

He knew Leonard hated the weir. He knew he hated it himself. But it was either tend weir or go lobstering, and he’d be damned if he’d eat salt water summer, spring, and fall and not get his seed back. Tending weir was as near as he could come to a job on the land, and when he’d begun it he’d planned to keep it up only long enough to make some money and set up in business on the mainland . . . a little store, or maybe a small hotel, and somehow get away from this dead hole of an island. He’d had a good course of training as a bookkeeper, in a commercial school when he was young. And he’d had brains enough as a young fellow to get to be first mate of a crack freighter in the South American trade.

What he’d done, Hardy reflected, his hands moving with skill and precision on the tie-ropes, all his life was waste his education.

They were finishing the last of the nets on the inner pound when the first of the big combers reared up over the ledge and came pouring through the weir. Hardy sensed its coming and sat down on the dory thwart, but it took Leonard by surprise. He grabbed the top of the seine pole on which he was working, and the dory lofted from under him and fell away into the trough, leaving him hanging and kicking. Hardy swung the boat back instantly, so that it rose under the next swell and scooped Leonard safely and neatly off the pole.

Chrise sake, Leonard, he said mildly, what you think you are . . . a gull?

Leonard was too wet and too cold to get mad, and too sobered to regard his loss of dignity. He was glad it had been his father in the dory. He had seen Hardy before in some emergency on the water function with split-second precision, as if something outside his brain told him the right thing to do. He had admired his father all his life for that ability and tried to copy it.

No use tryin’ to drop down any more, said Hardy. She’s gettin’ too tough for us.

Take ’em down if you want to, Leonard answered gruffly. I guess I could hold the dory.

No, said Hardy, getting out the oars. Them few left, it don’t matter if they do carry away.

The slow daylight was beginning to creep into the sky as they rowed ashore, so that they could see three miles away to the north the darker line edged with white which was the mainland. Comey’s Island shore, a hundred yards off, was plunged in foam. In the village itself the houses showed whiter, the black spruces blacker in the half-light. Pallid, angry water sluiced through the weir and out across the sandbar into the bay.

’Tain’t breakin’ on the bar, is it? said Hardy meditatively. You run along home, Len. Need your sleep, I guess. I got a few odds and ends to tend to over to the fishhouse.

Oh, come on home, said Leonard impatiently. You ain’t had no more sleep’n I have.

H’m, well, said Hardy. He dropped the dory anchor on the beach rocks, turned and went off along the path to the fishhouse.

Now what can you do? Leonard said exasperatedly to himself, watching Hardy go. I won’t be any more’n out of sight before he’ll be out on Crab Point watchin’ the weather.

The wind was beginning to slacken as Leonard went up the path to the house, and as he undressed in his room he saw that a clear amber streak was showing in the cloudy eastern sky. When he woke up at ten o’clock in the forenoon, the air was flat calm. The tide was low, and Hardy, he saw, was off in the weir, in the dory, tying up the nets again.

i

Josie could not find the set of box tops she had saved, with which she intended to send for six oatmeal dishes. She had her money order for fifty cents all made out, but when she went to get the box tops, they were gone.

I could of swore I left them box tops on the mantelpiece in the green pitcher, she said, puzzled, going back to look again. "I know I left ’em there. Mother, have you seen my Blast Borax box tops?"

What? Grammy Turner, bent over her knitting in the rocking chair by the west window, shook her head irritably and very fast. Shh! I’m countin’.

Well, I don’t see . . . Josie stood in the middle of the room glancing about for any place they might possibly be. She did not miss the sidelong look Grammy gave her, nor the gleam in Grammy’s eye.

Grammy Turner and Josie had never got along. They put up with each other, Grammy because she felt she was entitled to her place in the house as Hardy’s mother, Josie because of her essential kindliness and her sense of duty. Sometimes she felt a little wronged because Grammy did not seem to fail any as old people should. For sixteen years of her married life with Hardy, Josie had had the old lady in her house, and at eighty-six Grammy was as hale in body and lively of mind as she had been at seventy. Each year the tough texture of her face seemed to add another network of wrinkles and her body seemed to shrink a little more on its bones. But her shrewd old mind went daily and in detail over the affairs of each member of the family.

And what she don’t see, Josie told herself grimly, she guesses at.

Nine . . . ten . . . ’leven . . . fifteen, Grammy murmured. She looked up, meeting Josie’s steady regard. What’s the matter with you?

I’ve lost my tops I saved from the borax boxes. You seen ’em?

From what?

From the Blast Borax.

What’n time’s that?

You know what borax is as well as I do, Mother, said Josie patiently.

Oh. That new stuff on the radio, ain’t it? Tallicum powder in it.

It ain’t that old-fashioned kind that took the skin off your hands, no.

S’posed to make your hands smell pretty while it takes the skin off, ain’t it?

Now, look, Mother, we’ve had this all over about that borax. I know you don’t like it, but I do, and I use it. It’s advertised on the radio as the best washin’ borax there is.

You’d use a cow-turd if the feller on the radio said to.

Mother, you watch your tongue. Mildred hears enough of that talk down around the shore.

Yeller soap was always good enough for me, said Grammy. She spread out her dry old claws and regarded them. When you write the feller on the radio after one a them prizes you don’t never git, you can tell him that Mrs. ’Lonzo Turner always used lye soap, and look at her be-yootiful hands today. As for Mid, I guess Mid wouldn’t know what a nasty word meant, now would she?

Josie felt her temper going. She was tired and nervous anyway, what with getting up so early with Hardy and Leonard, and she had promised herself the treat of sending for the new dishes. She liked to keep something nice in reserve against the time when she needed it. And this morning when the wind had gone down and she knew Hardy had dropped his nets uselessly again, she figured she needed it. Grammy knew where the box tops were, she was sure of it, and Grammy knew that she knew.

You never heard any of the children talk nasty around the house, she snapped.

Oh, ain’t I? Hah! That Haral’s foul-moutheder’n a Portygee, and you just ask Mid what she said when she slopped the pot over this mornin’!

Mildred! Josie called. Come in here a minute.

Wha-at? Mildred appeared from the shed, dragging the word and her feet after her. She was a leggy girl of eleven, with a sharp impertinent little face and a cloud of curly yellow hair. Her incessant and violent activity kept her thin and stringy, and a likeness to her grandmother, not apparent in her babyhood, but inherent in the bone structure of the two faces, was beginning to show as they both approached vital turning points in their lives. She had on a pair of ragged overalls outgrown by her brother Haral, and her feet were bare.

What you want, Ma-a?

If there’s anything I’d wallop the stern of, it’s a whiny young one, Grammy observed with distaste.

Mildred, said Josie calmly, not to be diverted. You been talkin’ nasty where Grammy could hear you?

Why, I ain’t! I never did!

Don’t say ‘ain’t,’ said Grammy. It don’t sound good. For the Lord’s sake, Mid, why don’t you go put on a dress like a lady? You look like a dose a salts.

Mildred eyed her grandmother with venom. If you want to know where your box tops are, Ma, they’re in Grammy’s knit-bag.

Why! The idea! Grammy looked incredulous and amazed, but in spite of herself her hand stole down to the knitting bag in her lap.

She took ’em off the mantlepiece and put ’em in there! Mildred danced up and down between her grandmother and the door. I see her do it, but she never see me.

Tch! Grammy shook her head sorrowfully. I dunno what your kids’ll grow up to be, Josie, the way they’ve took up swearin’ and lyin’.

All right, Mother, said Josie. Just let me look in that bag, will you, please?

I got all my private business in this bag, said the old lady. My will and my letters from ’Lonzo before he died. I’ll look myself. She fumbled about, producing a suspicious tearing sound from the depths of the bag. "I declare, Josie. They are in here. Well, we know who done it. The one that knew where they was. And look at that! One of ’em’s tore right in two! If that ain’t the hatefullest young one . . ."

Fault’s in the finder, stink lies behind her, chanted Mildred. She ducked for the door, but too late to escape Josie’s firm hand on her arm.

Tell your grandmother you’re sorry for that sarse, said Josie.

Mildred’s mouth set in a stubborn line. Then she muttered, ’M sorry, under her breath, and slid out the door as Josie let go her hold.

’Praps you can glue that tore one together, but I dunno. It’s tore quite bad, ain’t it? said Grammy brightly.

What’s the matter, Ma? Leonard, in trousers and shirtsleeves, had come down the back stairs. You and Gram havin’ another fight?

No. Just the same one, said Josie. It’s been goin’ on for sixteen years, and I guess it won’t stop till one of us plays out. She went past him into the shed, her firm cheeks bright red with anger.

Don’t count on it’s bein’ me! Grammy shrilled after her. "Shut up, Leonard. I been tryin’ to turn a heel for three hours and can I git a chance to count? I can not!"

Leonard grinned at her. Go on, Gram, you could keep count turnin’ a heel if your pants fell off. You been raisin’ the deuce again?

No, said Grammy. All I ask is to spend my declinin’ days in peace and quiet. I’m an old woman and I don’t amount to nothin’ . . .

Okay, said Leonard. I’m cryin’. What was the idea, you yellin’ down here and makin’ such a racket, when I was upstairs tryin’ to sleep?

What was the idea of spendin’ all your daylight hours sleepin’? retorted Grammy. Her good nature had quite returned to her. Leonard was the apple of her eye. The time to sleep is in the night, when the Lord knows last night I tried to, but the’ was so much noise I couldn’t.

That was me, said Leonard. I fell upstairs.

Rantin’ home from the movies at all hours, sniffed Grammy. Prob’ly drunk.

Mm-hm. Awful drunk. I nigh ended up into the bed with you.

Grammy cackled, delighted. You’da been welcome as the flowers in May. She looked speculative, following out the train of thought this provoked. Where’s your father?

Down tyin’ up his nets, said Leonard, rummaging in the cupboard. Marm! What can I have to eat?

Your breakfast’s in the warmin’ oven, said Josie from the other room. That is, if you could call it breakfast.

Leonard wrinkled his nose at the platter of dried-up baked beans. For gosh sakes!

No, I wouldn’t call it breakfast, either, said Grammy, peering around his elbow. Give it to the cat, Leonard. I’ll fry you an egg.

I had eggs. Look, Gram, I’ll have some doughnuts and coffee. I ain’t very hungry.

He ate in a hurry, knowing that he had already wasted what should have been a busy day. Morris and Joe Comey would have been working on the haddock drag since six o’clock, and he could imagine what Morris would have to say about his being so late.

Where’s Haral . . . you know? he asked Gram, swallowing the last of his coffee and picking up his cap.

Nobody knows, said Grammy. And that’s where he always is. If I was your mother I’d bat them two young ones’ heads together, but, there, the youngest always gits ruint. Your Grampa ’Lonzo and I certainly did spoil an awful good man in your father.

What you want Haral for? Josie called from the shed.

Well, I can’t go out and give Pa a hand, and somebody ought to. I’ve got to help Joe and Morris mend net.

If he comes home, I’ll send him down, Josie said.

She thinks them nets is too heavy for the poor weak little feller, said Grammy sarcastically in a stage whisper. She’s out there writin’ her billy ducks to the feller on the radio. Don’t know what she wants oatmeal dishes for. Ain’t none of us likes oatmeal.

Take it easy, Gram, said Leonard, eyeing her. Marm’ll cut your guzzet out one of these days, and I don’t know’s I’d blame her.

He hastily closed the door behind him and went down the shore path in search of his younger brother.

i

The August morning after the gale had turned clear and cool, with a few shredded clouds drifting across a mildly blue sky. The light breeze barely wrinkled the surface of the broad bay that stretched out to the islands and the mainland, which, on the western side of Comey’s, was fifteen miles away. Canvasback Island, Comey’s nearest neighbor, a mile and a half to the southwest, so called because of a bare granite hill which reared up in the middle of it, showed a light dusting of spray at the foot of its beaches. But that was the only sign of what last night had looked to be the beginning of the early fall gales.

Be good weather for a while longer, Leonard thought. He went steadily down the path, his rubber boots clumping on the hard-packed dirt. He hoped Joe and Morris hadn’t raised too much hell with the dragnet yesterday. It would be good if they could get the benefit of fine weather as long as it lasted.

The New York House, he figured, was the best place to look for Haral. That was where the Comey’s Island males headed for when they were in from fishing, and the regular loafing place of any who felt they hadn’t much to do.

The New York House was a kind of community fishhouse on the east beach of Comey’s Island Pool, the almost landlocked little harbor, where they kept their fishing boats. It was owned by the men of six or eight different families, its gear-cluttered rooms passed along through the years from father to son. An out-of-state man named Gray had built it, long ago, for a summer camp. He had started with a single room, but each year, for a time, he had added on, doing the work himself, and, for some reason of his own—possibly because it was easier—setting his rooms end to end and making them all the same size, until he had a one-storied structure eight rooms long.

Old Man Comey, who had been alive then, had said that the place was a New York house

Reviews for The Weir

[jeffome · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another great Maine island yarn by a newly discovered author. Kind of like Elisabeth Ogilvie with a rougher edge.....her characters that is. Ogilvie's are a bit more refined, Moore's are not. Still love the idea of island life, and thus these books strike an obsessive chord with me. This started a wee bit slow and i was not hopeful for a great read, but some intensity built and i had to sit and finish it this morning, in spite of many other things i really needed to do......the ultimate endorsement!

[cheriedooryard · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You know how some books manage to build up such an ominous tone that you start reading with one eye squinted, just waiting for bad things to happen to good people? This was one of those for me. Honest, bitter, loving... Ruth Moore deserves all the accolades she gets for writing true books about Maine and the people in it. Really enjoyable. (It lost a star because I actually felt it was a bit unresolved for my liking at the end. I suppose that's part of the "trueness," but I can still remove a star for it if I want to.)