“I didn’t let him off, son. The prosecution didn’t prove its case.”
He looked dubious but didn’t comment.
More doors banged further up the path, near the road. Mark Lewis waved, then hopped in the car where his mother was waiting to drive him to school off-island. Another house over, Makely’s mother, too, was already backing the car out of their garage. I’ve sat in too many juvenile courts to think that every woman who bears a child is ipso facto a loving mother out of a Hallmark commercial; nevertheless, seeing those two boys with their mothers made my heart ache for Guthrie, raised by a reclusive grandmother and a short-tempered grandfather.
If it bothered Guthrie, he didn’t show it. Somewhere, not too far away, we heard a school bus horn.
“Reckon I better go.” As he started up the path toward the road, he paused and said, “You ever get any clams? I told Mark and Makely to get you some.”
“Another lie,” sighed the preacher disapprovingly.
“But think why,” urged the pragmatist.
“That was real thoughtful of you,” I told Guthrie. “Thank you.”
He nodded and hurried on. A moment later the big orange school bus gathered him up and rumbled on down the road.
As I lingered, Mahlon came out, cast a weather eye toward sky and water, then walked on down to where I stood.
“Getting ready to turn,” he said. “Be raining by nightfall.”
“With the sun this bright?”
“She can change quicker’n a woman’s mind.” He gave a sly, gap-toothed grin, but it was too early in the morning to annoy me.
“Well, looky yonder!” he said abruptly, pointing to a pair of waterfowl heading up the shoreline. “Loons!”
They passed us almost at eye level and less than fifty feet out. I’d never seen any up close and I was delighted by their beauty: soot-black heads, crisp black-and-white checkered backs. But there was something about their awkward silhouette—head lower than the humpbacked body, legs trailing along behind—that reminded me of a mourning dove’s not-quite-got-it-together flight. They didn’t seem to fly much faster than a dove either.
“Wisht I had my gun,” said Mahlon.
“You’d shoot a loon in front of a judge?” I asked.
Again that sideways grin. “Ain’t against the law to shoot at ‘em. Only if you hit.”
As the two loons disappeared into the distance, Mahlon followed their flight with a wistful yearning. “Lord, but they’re a pretty sight.”
“Then how come you shoot them?”
“Been doing it all my life,” he said. “Mostly they come along the shoreline like them two, only a little farther out, right at the edge of your gun range, just teasing you. And it’s sorta like they harden their feathers or something so the bird shot just slides off. I tell you, first time a youngun brings one home, he thinks he’s a man sure enough.”
Rites of passage may be important, “But they’re an endangered species,” I argued.
He gave an exasperated snort. “They ain’t no more endangered than turtles and I wish to hell turtles ate people, then maybe some folks’d get some sense about it. Turtles and loons ain’t endangered—we’re the ones in danger.”
With that, he stomped off toward the boat shed and a moment later I heard the steady pounding of his hammer.
• • •
The shoreline in front of the cottage is too narrow and too cluttered with rocks or piers to make walking any distance very pleasant, so I walked back up the path, left my cup on the porch, then cut through the Willises’ side yard and hiked on up to Cab’s, my favorite store on the island. In addition to Seven-Eleven type groceries and housewares, one side room of the store is devoted to heavy-duty fishing gear: rubber boots and waders, ropes and nets of all gauges, floats and sinkers of every size, clam rakes and flounder gigs; the other side room holds every kind of rod, reel, and lure known to man or fish, as well as electronic fish finders and other boat-related gadgets.
It’s an education just to walk up and down the aisles and look at the six or eight different kinds of cotton, leather, nylon or rubber gloves—some thick for handling oysters, others heavy and rough-textured for dealing with slippery fish and eels.
It’s also a place where an upstater can hear Down East locals gossiping with each other, once your ear ratchets up a notch to translate the rapid flow of that wonderful accent.
I bought an eastern edition of the News and Observer and was over by the Tshirts (“I’m Mommicked!” said one), half eavesdropping and half reading the headlines, when someone said, “Morning, Judge.”
It was Jay Hadley with a jug of milk in her hands. “How’s it going?” I said.
She hefted the jug. “Fine, if you don’t count kids waiting for milk for their cereal.”
I stepped back to let her pass, but she hesitated. “Look, I don’t have time to talk right now, but you going to be at Andy’s funeral this evening?”
“Remind me again when it is,” I hedged.
She named a church on the west end of the island. “At four o’clock.”
I told her I certainly hoped to be there if I could adjourn early.
“Good.” She gave a brusque nod and hurried on up to the cash register.
• • •
As I drove out of the yard forty minutes later, Mahlon was still hard at work on the trawler. At Andy’s house diagonally across the road, I noticed a patrol car and a pickup that belonged to one of the Bynum boys. Good thing Jay Hadley had reminded me about the funeral. My cousin Sue would appreciate it if I went.
“Sunshine along the Crystal Coast this morning,” said the announcer on my radio, “with clouds moving in this afternoon. Fifty percent chance of rain, increasing to eighty percent by midnight.”
Score another for Mahlon.
At the courthouse, when I popped my head into Chet’s chambers, he said he planned to adjourn early, too. “Barbara Jean wants to go to the funeral.”
“How is she this morning?” I asked.
His face was a bit drawn and his smile didn’t quite reach all the way to his eyes when he said, “I hope you didn’t take her seriously last night. She always lets Linville upset her for some reason.”
“Well, I know how crazy she is about y’all’s daughter,” I said diplomatically.
“I’ve tried to stay out of it,” he said with sudden determination, “but if Linville’s going to keep bugging Barbara Jean... I swear to God I really wish Midge Pope’d gone on and lost that motel of his before he ever met Linville. Or if I’d blocked the sale of the Ritchie House, hell, she’d be waitressing out at the Sanitary right this minute.”
“You really think so?”
“Naw, probably not. But that was the push she needed and without it, I honestly don’t think she’d be where she is today, messing with Barbara Jean’s head and getting her all wound up.” He sighed. “The thing is, far as I’m concerned, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Barbara Jean did sell Neville Fishery. Jill doesn’t want to run it. Her husband’s a biologist with Duke’s marine lab here. He doesn’t want it.”
“Your grandson?”
“He’s one year old, for Christ’s sake! Who knows what he’ll be doing in the year Twenty-Fifteen? I seriously doubt if it’s messing with menhaden.”
I thought how I’d feel if I had to sell Knott land. “But won’t it kill Barbara Jean to give up her father’s factory?”
“Only if it’s to Linville Pope,” he said grimly.
• • •
The morning session was mostly domestic. A young woman came forward and petitioned the court for an uncontested divorce. She was twenty-two, they had been married fourteen months according to the papers, and everything seemed in order.