Bulls Island (10 page)

We passed over the Brooklyn Bridge, and in less time than it took me to reapply lip gloss, a parking attendant was trying to help me gracefully down from my seat in such a way as to prevent my dress from sliding up to my waist. I made a mental note to take my car the next time—if there was a next time.

The hour was late and the dining room was only sparsely filled. Vinny knew the manager, who rushed over when he saw us.

“Frankie, sweetheart! How are you?”

Vinny and Frankie actually kissed each other on the cheek. My imagination expected men in sunglasses and black clothes to appear
and stand by with one hand in their armpit in case they had to defend Vinny’s life. What a thought!

“Why don’t you two sit by the window—sit anywhere you want—and I’ll send you over something special.”

“Great idea,” Vinny said, and took my elbow to lead me to the table. “Thanks, Frankie.”

It was a perfect summer night and the light show of Manhattan’s twinkling skyscrapers opposite us was spectacular. The occasional boat floated by and I had to admit it was a terribly romantic spot.

“Beautiful here, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes, it is.”

A waiter appeared with an ice bucket on a tray and two wineglasses. In the bucket was a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Apparently, Vinny wanted to please me by ordering a wine that I liked. I took that as a good sign.

“Know what, Betts?”

“What’s that?”

“You shouldn’t be getting in cars with strangers. I mean, you don’t even know who I am.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea who you are.”

“Yeah? Well, I know more about you than you think.”

The waiter poured out two glasses of wine; we touched the rims and took a sip.

“Like what?”

“Like you live at 540 Park in a classic six, that you have a teenage son, that there’s never been a husband, and that you drive a beat-up old car. You work for ARC, you are well respected, and there’s not much happening in your private life. How’s that?”

I was flabbergasted. And completely unnerved.

“How do you know all that?”

It was hard to believe those gorgeous eyes belonged to someone from the world of organized crime.

“Google,” he said, and laughed. “And a couple of lucky guesses.”

I smiled, not knowing whether to believe him or not.

“Oh, and by the way, you lied about Atlanta. You’re from Charleston.”

He winked.

D
awn. I was wide-awake. Wide-awake like it was three o’clock in the afternoon. I went to the window of our bedroom and looked outside to see what kind of a day it would become. Steam was rising from the grass. The brown patches on the lawn seemed to have spread overnight like a virus, slowly but surely devouring everything in its lethal path. The day would be brutal, but long ago I had learned how to navigate the heat. Dress light, drink a lot of water, stay inside during the middle of the day. How about just stay indoors in general? It was August in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Of course it was hot. And with the kind of work I did, I didn’t have the luxury of staying indoors all the time. To tell you the truth, heat was like anything else—you just got used to it.

I glanced at Valerie curled up in the bed in her pale blue eye mask and pale blue negligee and wondered if she was happy with her pale blue fluff of a life. She could not have been. Not at any deep level,
anyway. Valerie had probably stopped thinking about happiness a long time ago. She would never have admitted it, but I thought she lived in a constant state of stress and worry that if my mother could do so, she would vote her out of the family, or that I would run away with a girl who could give me children. I wasn’t going anywhere. That’s not how we Langleys were wired.

I dressed quietly and went downstairs to make coffee. I loved this time of day best, before the world woke up and aggravation wound its way to my door. The pot dripped slowly and the air was filled with the rich smells of coffee from somewhere in the mountains of South America. I breathed deeply and told myself that despite my complaints, I was still a very lucky man.

It was time to get in my truck and go down the road to the mailbox to collect the morning papers.

Goober and Peanut were sleeping in their pen outside, but when they sensed my approach they roused, yawned, and began to bark.

“Shhh! Calm down, boys! Everyone’s asleep!” I opened the gate and let them out. “You boys want to fish this morning? What do y’all say we go get us some bass?” I scratched them behind the ears and gave them each a dog biscuit. “Come on, get in the truck.”

Goober and Peanut lived outside most of the time because they loved to roll around in dead things and Valerie said they reeked. They did, but not all the time. I would throw them in the river when they got muddy. Every so often I would slip Mickey twenty dollars to give them a real bath with dog shampoo. Wouldn’t you know, as soon as they were clean, they would find something to roll around in again, like a decomposing skunk, and we would have to pour gallons of tomato juice all over then to kill the stench. Then we would toss them back in the Wappoo. A lot of people might say that dogs were too much trouble, but this was probably the only thing I had in common with Joanie McGee—love of animals. I loved my dogs. I sneaked
them into the kitchen all the time, where they settled under the table by my feet while I read the paper.

Goober and Peanut—which, to the uninitiated and to the dictionary, meant the same thing—were two of the most optimistic dogs I had ever owned. They were always happy to see me. Always. And they were happy simply to be in my company, whether it was riding in the cab or the back of my truck or sitting on the boat while I fished. Goober was six years old, Peanut was eight, and they had never been on a leash, except to visit the vet for an annual checkup. So when they saw the leash in my hand, a little bit of running around ensued in order to get them in the truck. They were smart fellows.

I cranked up my white Ford truck, which also needed a wash, and we rolled down the avenue of miniature live oaks toward the street. I would be dead and buried for a hundred years before those trees would look like they should. Every time I passed them, skinny, wimpy things that they were, I was reminded that Valerie thought she and I were building something from
Gone With the Wind
. I had planted fast-growing pines in between them to play down their scrawniness, and I planned to cut those down at some future time when the live oaks grew to a respectable size. I had to tip my hat to Valerie’s fantasy as she did to my practicality.

So it had become a habit to rise, set up the coffee, liberate my dogs, and go for a quick ride. Once, I had offered to pay a premium to the delivery boy to bring the papers up the drive, but he wasn’t interested, saying if he did that for everyone, he’d have to cut his route in half, as many of the neighboring properties were set back as much as a mile from the road. He was right, of course.

Shortly after seven, as I was finishing up my third cup of coffee, and thanking the good Lord my name wasn’t in the obituary pages, there was a rap on my kitchen door. The dogs got up with me and there was Mickey on the other side of the glass window. Goober and
Peanut began to wag their tails. The advent of Mickey meant fun just might be on the agenda.

“I wanted to come over earlier,” he said, giving the boys a scratch and a pat on their rumps. “Mom said don’t do it. She said everybody needs a little time in the morning to get their motor going.”

“Your mom is a very astute woman. Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes, sir. Four Eggos, a glass of orange juice, and a glass of chocolate milk.”

It sounded to me like a prescription for major rumbling abdominal distress, but what did I know about the gastrointestinal constitution of young boys? Not much except that they were eating machines.

“Okay, then. Let me get my sunglasses and let’s see what we can catch to feed the ladies tonight. Come on, boys.”

As we collected our gear and walked down to the dock with the dogs, Mickey was a chatterbox.

“So, when I got up this morning I loaded the trap with a mayonnaise sandwich.”

“Did you use the right bread?”

“Oh, yeah. Little Miss Sunbeam. Nothing but the best for our mud minnows.”

“Good man! Tide’s getting high, so I brought waders. Maybe get some bass.”

“Mom’s got a hankering for trout, but shoot, she’ll take anything as long as we clean it!”

“Yeah,” I said, “cleaning fish is man’s work. Why don’t you go check the trap?”

Mickey hurried ahead with the fishing rods, reels, and tackle box. We were going out in my Jon boat.

In my grandfather’s day, you would get together with a couple of guys, your sons perhaps, and build your own boat. They weren’t much to look at, just a flat-bottomed rowboat for scooting in and out of the maze of marsh grass. When I was just a little fellow, the
remnants of an old oak one was permanently parked in the boathouse, alongside my father’s treasured Chris-Crafts. As soon as I could toddle around, I remember my father putting me in it and I would pretend to be fishing with a bamboo pole. My love of water sports was hereditary.

Today, things were different. Who had time to build a boat? The Jon boat we used was made of welded aluminum, thickly painted olive drab, and had a Bimini top to avoid that sunburned skillet effect. In theory, it would hold five people, but in my opinion, two people and two canines were a full load. And for the convenience of all involved, I had added a twenty-five-horsepower outboard motor.

Off in the distance, I heard Mickey whoop with joy.

“We got us a mess of minnows, J.D.! Come see!”

It took a minute or two to get to the dock, as I was carrying the cooler and the waders. I dropped it all on the deck and had a look in the trap.

“They sure do love mayonnaise, don’t they? What did you use? Duke’s?”

“Is there any other?” Mickey was so proud you would have thought he had a great white on the hook.

“Come on. Let’s get going,” I said.

I ruffled his hair, and for the next two sticky and humid hours, we caught fish. Mickey got an eighteen-inch trout and six mediumsize bream fish and I hooked four flounder.

“Look over there!” I said.

There was a lot of fluttering going on in the marsh grass and that meant one thing. The spot-tail bass were feeding on periwinkles and you could see their tails wiggling above the waterline. We started to laugh at the sight of them. There were so many I thought we could have just scooped them into the boat with a net.

“Look at these guys! They’re suicidal!” They were practically jumping on the minnows. “So when do you start school?”

“Look at this one!” Mickey held up a fish for my approval and I nodded. “Next week. Ugh. Junior year. SATs.”

“You’re not really worried, are you? You did all right on the PSATs, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did great, but that was a while ago and I need a scholarship, you know?”

“I wouldn’t sweat that too much. There’s always money around for a good kid.”

Mickey gave me a lopsided grin. If you put aside his youth and the thousands of freckles he had inherited from his mother, it suddenly seemed to me that there was almost a resemblance in his bone structure to a portrait of my grandfather that hung in Mother’s house. Probably the heat, I told myself.

There was no way in hell the Langley money would not help Mickey go to the best college that would have him. I would see to that, although Dad had promised to take charge of Mickey’s tuition. Maybe we Langleys weren’t always the nicest and easiest people to do business with, but we believed in education and in taking care of our own. Mickey was practically family.

“It’s getting hot,” I said. “Think it’s enough for one day?”

“Yeah, let’s let ’em live,” he said. “We got plenty for supper.”

“Okay,” I said, and we started back. “Listen, Mickey, I gotta go out to Johns Island to look at some houses we just finished. I’m meeting the architect and the construction manager. Wanna come? You might learn something.”

“Sure!”

When we got back to the dock, we cleaned the fish, threw them in the cooler, and hosed everything down, including Goober and Peanut, who had chased a rabbit into the thicket, winding up in the plough mud.

“Damn dogs,” I said, holding Peanut by the collar while Mickey brushed him with the boat brush and showered him with the hose.
Plough mud was a very sticky and tenacious adversary, renowned for its stick-to-itiveness and fragrance.

“PU!” Mickey’s face was scrunched up with disgust.

“You said it.”

Funny. Neither one of us really cared about the bother and the fumes. For me, it was just nice to spend the time with Mickey. Each time I watched him ever so carefully reel in a fish, my heart would swell with a short blast of delight. He could have been my son.

Finally, when the dogs were passably clean, we let them run back to the house. I divided up the fish and put them into Ziplocs, then handed him two thick packages. It was about ten o’clock or so.

“Mickey, you go on shower up and I’ll meet you back in the kitchen in about half an hour. Is that long enough for you?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Make sure you rinse that fish good, okay?”

As he nodded and ran off in the direction of his house, I spotted my dad’s SUV in my yard.

I put away all the tackle and moved up to the house. Through the windows I saw Dad clicking through the television stations from one news station to another. Big Jim loved to watch the news. He was all but retired, but he would not admit it. He was there to ride out to Johns Island with me and give the job his stamp of approval.

The kitchen door slammed behind me and Big Jim jumped, startled by the noise.

“Fish biting?” he inquired.

“They were practically throwing themselves in the boat.”

Dad clicked the mute button, chuckled, and said, “Well, good. You’ll have a good supper tonight. Rosie can flat-cook some fish, ’eah?”

“That’s for sure. I’ve got some for you, too. You coming out with me to the island?”

“Well, that was the plan.”

“Just give me a few minutes to clean up and we’ll go.”

“No problem. Take your time. I’m watching this idiot who’s making all these dire predictions about the housing market. Incredible. Everybody’s an expert!”

“That’s for sure.”

I checked the garage. Valerie’s car was gone. Probably out shopping. I took the stairs two at a time to get to the shower. I could not have been gone more than fifteen minutes when I came back to find Big Jim napping in the chair.

“Dad?” I shook his arm a little and he stirred.

“What? Oh, I must have dozed off.”

“You want to come or do you want to rest?”

“You know what, J.D.? It’s hot as hell and I think I’m just gonna go home and have a little lunch. I’ll go out there with you next time.”

Dad was nearing seventy, but he had always been spry and eager to do anything, go anywhere, or to try something new. Lately, though, he seemed tired. Maybe it
was
the heat. But seventy on Big Jim had always seemed like thirty on me. Maybe I would talk to him about his health. There was nothing my parents appreciated less than a reminder of their advancing years. I would have to employ some severe diplomacy. Not my greatest strength.

“No big deal,” I said. “I’ll be out there every day this week going over the punch list. It’s supposed to cool off by Thursday.”

“Good. Maybe I’ll go with you then.”

“I’m taking Mickey out there today. Here.” I handed him a bag of fish.