Willis Hudpeth agreed. “‘I’ll just take ten percent till you work out the boat,’ he’ll say.”
“Only you’ve got to sell your ninety percent to him at his price,” said Telford Hudpeth.
“And his price is lower than what other fish houses might be paying?”
“Some people owe the man all their lives,” Telford answered soberly. “I don’t want to live like that myself.”
Micah Smith paused with a tray of hot crab puffs and we all three took a couple. “May I get you another one of those, Judge?” he asked, pointing to my glass.
I shook my head. “But I sure could use a big glass of ice water.”
“Coming right up. Gentlemen?”
Both indicated that they would nurse the drinks they had.
I bit into the luscious morsel of creamy crabmeat and delicate crust.
“One thing my brother didn’t mention,” said Telford as he downed his crab puff in one mouthful, “is if the man’s a flat-out cheat and his scales are off. In his favor, of course. Because half the time you don’t know what you’ve made till he pulls up on Saturday morning with your money. He tells you what your catch weighed out to. What you get depends on the price the wholesaler pays him and some weeks there’s such a glut of fish you don’t even make your gas money back if you’re working for the man.”
“Was Andy Bynum dishonest?”
Willis looked uncertain, but Telford shook his head. “Never did wrong by me that I know of, but I didn’t have to sell my fish to him, see? A lot of people did.” He paused and added cryptically, “And a lot of people always think it’s the man’s fault when things don’t shake out the way they think it ought to.”
“You must be a member of the Alliance.”
“Yes, ma’am. I don’t know how much seiners have in common with tongers, but all watermen are under pressure, no matter what Willis says. That’s where we’re going to really miss Andy. He could near ‘bout talk a hermit crab right out of its conch shell.”
Micah Smith returned with a large goblet of water and Telford passed it over to me with a troubled look in his clear blue eyes. “You asked me if Andy was dishonest. Not with money, maybe, and not by cheating with his scales, but I have to say that if he knew he might help the Alliance by twisting something around, I believe he’d do it, don’t you, Will?”
Willis Telford’s answer was lost beneath the sudden blast of a shotgun. I jumped up, heard a woman cry, “Pull!” then another crack of the gun and a clay pigeon exploded in midair over the water.
Unnoticed by the three of us, most of the party had drifted out to the landing.
“Trapshooting?” I’ve hunted quail and rabbits with my brothers, but I’d never done any fancy shooting.
“Part of the entertainment,” said Telford Hudpeth. “She’s got a bunch of guns and most people like to shoot, but this is usually where we cut out. Besides, we wait any longer, I’m going to miss the tide.” He held out his hand. “Been a pleasure, ma’am. You’re staying down the island in that little yellow house next to Mahlon Davis, right?”
I nodded, unsurprised that he should know. Fishermen and farmers have a lot in common.
“Maybe I’ll drop you off some fresh shrimp,” he said.
I walked with them as far as the landing so that I could watch the trapshooters who stood on the dock and shot out over the marshes beyond.
There were a couple of men and two women, each with shotguns that our hostess seemed to have provided. One of the women was Barbara Jean and she called, “Come on, Deborah, let’s see how good your eye is.”
I made weak protests. Truth is, it looked like fun and she only had to urge me twice to take her place.
Even a twenty-gauge can give a nice little kick, but I was used to a sixteen so it didn’t bother me. This was a simple contest. Several yards downshore and out of the line of fire, one of the men operated a small mechanical trap thrower, and the four of us fired in rotation till we missed.
I know it’s not politically correct to enjoy shooting, and given the option I’d certainly vote for much stricter gun control; but we all know it’s not a constitutional issue no matter what the NRA says. Why else would so many men use gun images to describe sex?
“Hotter’n a two-dollar pistol.”
“Shot my wad.”
“Firing blanks.”
All that power, all that force and all you have to do is pull a trigger.
To my delight, I hit my first ceramic disk square in the middle. And my second. In fact, I didn’t get put out till the fourth round. It helped my ego that two of the other three missed their fourth rounds, too.
As I surrendered my gun and was heading for the house for another glass of water, I heard Lev’s taunting voice behind me. “Shotguns? You went totally native, didn’t you, Red?”
“Absolutely.” I turned and let my eyes rake the length of his body, from his expensively barbered head to his Italian shoes. “Haven’t you?”
His smile faded. “Touché.”
“I didn’t even recognize you in court today,” I said accusingly. “And it wasn’t just the beard either.”
“I recognized you.”
Despite the blasting guns, an uneasy silence stretched between us as we each examined the other for changes. There were flecks of gray in his dark hair, more gray in a beard that was new to me, lines around those intense deep-set eyes that hadn’t been there when we lived together, an unfamiliar attention to clothes.
And what was he seeing?
My hair—light brown or dark blonde depending on the season—was shorter these days, I was probably five pounds heavier, and my face showed similar signs of the passing years, though I now disguised the lines with makeup I once scorned as completely as he’d scorned name-brand labels.
Then he gave me that funny little scrunch of a shrug and all at once, he was just Lev again.
“Truce?” he said.
“Truce.” Almost against my will, I felt my lips curve in a smile of pure pleasure. “How are you, Lev? And what are you doing in Beaufort with that weird Montgomery gal?”
“Pleasure, mostly. Some business. And Claire’s not really weird.”
“Somebody who can only talk through a hand puppet?” A thought crossed my mind. “You’re not married to her, are you?”
He laughed. “God, no! No, she’s my partner’s sister. They were in court today, too.”
“I saw them,” I reminded him dryly. “I also saw that disgustingly vulgar boat. Rainmaker? Yours or Llewellyn’s?”
He looked embarrassed. “Ours. It was in lieu of some fees actually.”
I remembered now that he hadn’t answered my earlier question. I rephrased it. “What sort of practice are you in that you get boats like that for fees?”
A burst of laughter from the crowd drowned out his answer.
“What?”
“We handle divorces.”
“You’re kidding. That’s your whole practice?”
Okay, we’ve all gotten older, more cynical, more interested in security maybe, less interested in ethics, but to sell out so completely? “Somehow I never pictured you as part of the Me-Me-Me decade.”
Again that quirky shrug. “I thought we had a truce.”
“Sorry.”
“The paper said you found a body Sunday night?”
“Yes.” I didn’t want to discuss it; didn’t want Andy Bynum’s death and the way I’d found him to be part of idle cocktail chatter.
As if he could still read my mind, Lev changed the subject yet again. “Your friend also tells me you’ve been a judge almost a year?”
“Since last June, yes.”
“You like the view better from that side of the bench?”
Another round of shooting began and Lev flinched with distaste. “I’ve heard that every damn pickup in the south has a gun rack in the back, but I didn’t know women got off on guns, too.”