Dead Low Tide (3 page)

Maybe all this gear and dark-ops night stuff was his way of trying to hold tight to his life, I sometimes thought. Maybe it was all longing for the badass days when he was on the force. Way back when, in that time when he could see and work. Back before his wife, my aunt Sarah, killed herself by burning down their house over to Mount Pleasant.

Back before he’d been blinded in that fire when the window he’d been looking in had exploded, his wife, my aunt, inside and herself on fire. Hence those sunglasses, because they cover up the gnarled and shiny skin from where his eyebrows had been on down to his cheeks, the white marbles he has for eyes held in by eyelids just as gnarled.

I said it was complicated.

And that’s why it scared me when I saw the IR reflected back at me like this: here were those marble eyes of his, taking me in and sizing me up. Me every time, I knew, coming up short.

“What?” I whispered.

He looked at me a second longer, then another. He let out a breath, and I saw him swallow, his mouth a straight line. He seemed about to say something, but then he looked down, those white marbles gone. He cocked his chin again, gripped and regripped the club handle, inched the club head along the ground until it just touched the ball: how he knows where to hit.

I turned, watched for where the next ball would go.

But instead of another one of those missiles taking off, I saw to the left, past that red-brick house with its Parthenon pergola, a growing glow through the trees, a moving green swell of light that grew brighter green, bigger and bigger in just that much time. Then here came around the edge of the house twin explosions of light that swung right through my line of sight, for an instant that porthole gone to pure bright white.

Headlights on a golf cart, speeding along the cart path on the far side of the fairway. Headed for us.

I flipped up the goggles, took off the hard hat. “Time to go, Unc. The muscle’s here,” I said. Here was Security, us about to get caught one more time.

I tried for a second to figure out who was driving—most likely, this being early Wednesday
A.M.
, it’d be either Tyrone or Segundo. If we were lucky it’d be Jessup. But without the goggles on, the world
was back to its plain old darkness, me stuffing the hat and goggles back in the book bag. Unc didn’t want anyone knowing we had them, because it was illegal as hell to be marching around and watching the world, much less golf balls, with those things on. Golfing after hours was one thing, but possessing Gen 4s was another. And so I couldn’t yet tell from here who it was hauling ass along the path past the red-brick cottage, now the Spanish one, and I turned back to Unc.

He was gone.

The club lay on the ground, I could make out in the dark, the ball still teed up too, and I quick looked to my left, saw him already ten yards away, headed fast toward the Dupont house.

“Unc,” I called, and heard my voice way too loud out here. But I didn’t care, because there he was, walking away. Without me.

Usually by this time we were picking up, pretending we were finished and headed out anyway. Of course the guard, whoever it was, would pull up and park the cart, then dutifully walk us, Unc holding on to my belt, back along that brick fence and to the boat, the guard all the while reciting the rules: No golf without signing in at the pro shop; no golf except during regular business hours; no golf in the middle of the night.

Even if you were members. Like us.

Because we live here—Unc, Mom, and me—at Landgrave Hall Golf and Country Club. In a 4200-square-foot cottage that sits on the green of the seventh hole. We’ve even got a dock off the back of the place, right out into Goose Creek, where we keep the jon boat cradled up in the rafters of the boathouse at the end. A dock where we shove off in the middle of the night and snake our way back along Goose Creek, only to put in at the head of a finger creek and sneak back in to golf.

As it turns out, we’ve ended up rich. And discovered we are members of the blue bloods too.

We live here, and act like perps on our own property. We take the jon boat over when we could very well walk because Unc doesn’t
want to chance being seen by any of his neighbors with a golf club in hand. He doesn’t want to be caught, as it were, attempting something he might not be very good at. Something that might make him look like—dare I say it?—a fool.

But Unc’d never taken off like this, him without even the club to help him tap out what was in front of him. It was always with me. Always.

Now here was the golf cart beside me, the sharp crunch of gravel on the cart path as it pulled to a stop off to my right, and I turned, saw it was Jessup driving.

Good. At least he wouldn’t be putting on any airs, talk tough like Segundo and Tyrone did, as though we’d be the ones reporting back to the Homeowners’ Association on what a fine job Security did every time they kicked us off the course.

But even though it was Jessup, and I really
was
glad it was him, there was always this awkward thing between us here at Landgrave Hall, because Jessup and I had gone to grade school and middle school and high school together. He was one of the set I used to run with, those friends who used to make fun of getting an
edumacation
, back when we’d sneak out of our houses at night and sit on the railroad tracks at the end of Marie, and make fun of people who lived in places like this. Now here we were: the landed gentry, and the hired hand.

“What’s he doing?” Jessup said as he climbed out, him in his black windbreaker and pants, that black ball cap they all wore.

“I think he’s pissed off about something,” I said, and started after Unc, the book bag over my shoulder.

Something was wrong, easy enough to see, and I thought of him looking at me as he’d set up for that last shot he didn’t take. I thought of his eyes, those white marbles, and him gripping and regripping the club, saw now the nervous of it all, and those ugly slices the balls had taken. He never hit like that, sometimes only hooked it a little, but usually just hit it straight and high.

There was something. Had to be. And I thought of that light in the window at the Dupont house turning on as Unc’d poled us in, and then me dropping that block on the hull, giving us away even before we’d gotten out here.

Maybe that was it: me. Unc finally tired enough of me and the nothing of my life to decide he could just take off back to the boat all by himself, and that I, this deadweight in his life and mine both, could just take care of myself from now on.

He was across the gravel drive when I got to him, Jessup a little behind me, the two of us walking fast to catch up. I said, “Unc, hey, let’s just relax. It’s Jessup,” and touched his shoulder, made to pull him to a stop. “I’m sorry,” I said.

But he shook off my hand, walked even faster.

“Mr. Dillard,” Jessup said, “no use trying to evade the law like this,” and he let out a small laugh. “Suspect fleeing the premises,” he said, and tried at the laugh again.

“You got you a flashlight, Jessup?” Unc said, and just kept on walking.

We were at the head of the brick fence that led back to the boat now, the white stucco of the Dupont house to our right on the other side, and as though he could see everything, Unc put out his hand, touched the brick just as he came even with it, let his hand pop along the top of it as he moved.

“No sir,” Jessup said, and I could hear a kind of embarrassment for it. Of course Unc would make a remark on that, Jessup and I both knew, something along the lines
And you call yourself Security
.

But Unc said nothing, just kept going.

I glanced to my left over at Jessup, made out in the dark him slowly shaking his head.

“That light still on, Huger?” Unc said, and it hit me, his question to Jessup and me both: he was talking full-voiced, like it was daylight and maybe we were all out on a stroll outside our own cottage, just walking in the yard.

We were even with the back of the house just as he’d said it, and the timing of it—his knowing right when I’d be able to see that upstairs window at the back of the house—didn’t surprise me a bit. I looked up to my right, saw the window up there. Dark.

“Nope,” I said, just as loud. “Unc, it’s Jessup, so ease off,” I said, then tried one more time at what I figured had to be the real problem: “I’m sorry,” I said. “For dropping the block.”

“What light?” Jessup said, then, “Mr. Dillard, I’m just here to tell you you and Huger can’t be out here and—”

“What time is it?” Unc cut in, his hand still popping along the fence.

“Unc,” I said, “can’t we just—”

“Time?” he said. He was slowing down now, his steps the smallest way more tentative. The end of the brick fence was only a few feet ahead of us, and I could see beyond him now the low spread of the marsh, the tree line across it, and here was the narrow gray slab of the plank out to the jon boat, still shoved up into the cordgrass.

I knew then why he was asking for the time: he wanted to know how far off dead low tide we were, so he’d know where the waterline might be for the tide coming in. He didn’t want to get his feet wet before he stepped onto that plank.

“Quarter to three in the morning,” I said, and stopped walking. “But I’m betting you knew that.”

He stopped, turned to me. It was a sudden move, and though I’d been ready, it caught Jessup, who nearly flinched for it. He stopped, too, and we three stood looking at each other there at the end of a waist-high brick fence in the middle of the night, the tide creeping in.

“Maybe two feet in by now,” I said. “No more than that. Plank’s still on dry ground. I bet you knew that, too.”

Unc looked away then, and out to the marsh. He reached up, touched the back of his neck again.

“You may think this is all about you, Huger,” he said, “but the sooner you figure out it ain’t, the better.”

“I said I’m sorry,” I said. “You just tell me what more you want and we can—”

“We got to get to this now,” he said, and turned, took a few more steps toward the marsh before he stopped again, touched the toe of his boot ahead of him, looking for the plank. “You want to give me a hand here, either of you, I’d be obliged.”

“Mr. Dillard,” Jessup said, “it’s just the rules out here. I’m just doing my job.”

“We’re going,” I said to Jessup. In the dark I could see him look at me a long second, then nod once.

“I’ll get that camp chair you left out there,” he said, “have it up to the guardhouse tomorrow.”

“You at least got your radio on you, Jessup?” Unc said, and I turned. He was already across the plank and out in the boat, back at the transom. He had the pole out already, too, and was standing there, waiting. “And I need one or the other of you two lug nuts to give me a hand, and I mean now.”

“Just stop being a jerk, Unc,” I said, and stepped to the plank, balanced my way across it, my arms out to either side, the book bag in my left hand, and heard Jessup say behind me, “I got my two-way up to Segundo at the gate, sir. But I’m not calling this in.”

I stepped in, felt the bow of the boat still stuck hard on the pluff mud, even though I could see the waterline had come in a foot or so, and I said, “What the hell is your problem?”

“Just pull in the plank,” he said, and here he was poling us out, digging in hard to warp us off the mud. Then we were free, and I squatted, set down the book bag and dragged at the plank, heaved it in and under the center seat.

“Get that radio out,” he called to Jessup, his words way too loud. Something was up in him, a rush, I could see with the solid jab he made at the mud beneath us, and the hard lean into the pole, the pull to get us off and out as fast as he could do it.

But then we stopped hard, a sudden cold halt of the boat, and I
looked behind me, back to the few feet of water between us and land. There, taut all the way in, shot a thin ratty line of nylon rope: the cinder block, still back there, still cleated off here.

I turned, ready for whatever shit Unc’d be laying on me now for this next sin against him.

“Don’t matter,” he nearly whispered, still working the pole, but not to move us anywhere now. He held it just like I’d seen when we got here, up like he was gigging a frog, and now I knew what the all of this was about: whatever it was he’d poked and that’d scared him when we were on our way in. “This way we won’t be moving all over,” he said.

“If this is about a gator,” I said, “then you need to get out more often. They’re a dime a dozen around here. You said yourself he’s long gone.”

He said nothing, and now the pole went deep, almost to Unc’s knees, and he pushed down on it, the gunwale of the boat a kind of fulcrum he was working the pole over. He pushed, gave out a grunt, and pushed again, the boat heeling over for it, but still Unc pushed down and down.

“Unc,” I whispered, and sat, leaned out over the gunwale on the opposite side to give him a little more depth.

Because there was something he was after, and he was getting it.

Now a sudden pitch of the boat away from his side toward mine, him nearly falling down for whatever it was being freed of the mud, and here was the sound of water against that side, a push of it against the boat, and the thick stink of pluff mud for all of it roiling up.

“Tell me what it is, Huger,” he said, out of breath. He stood up straight, waggled a moment to get back his balance for the boat righting itself beneath him. The pole was still down in the water, at an angle beneath the thing.

I stood, looked over the edge into the black water there. “Nothing,” I said, and swallowed. “Maybe lift it up a little more, to the surface.”

He grunted again, lifted and lifted, and Jessup called out, “You all right?”

We didn’t answer. Unc pushed down, and still I saw nothing in the water, the black of it so deep. That half-moon we’d had coming in was hidden now behind trees somewhere, and at the same instant the idea came to me, Unc whispered, “Get the goggles.”

I sat, reached to the book bag up in the bow and zipped it open, pulled out the hard hat, the goggles still strapped on.

“What if Jessup sees them?” I said, though I was already putting them on.