“Ray and me, we raise up real easy like and see this man mountain come to the door—bushy red beard, carrying this humongous bowie knife and wearing a tee shirt that says ‘Kill ‘Em All And Let God Sort It Out.’ He’s one mean-looking mother. ‘Where?’ he says.
“‘Over yonder,’ says the skinny one, and he’s laughing and whooping like he’s killed a bear, and here comes that flashlight beam again.”
He savored an olive and took a deep swallow of beer.
“Now Ray and me, we’ve got these riot shotguns, so I shout, ‘State Wildlife Officer! Throw down your gun!’ The big guy runs back inside, but the little guy’s not quite sure what to do. ‘Bout that time, Ray pumps a shell into the chamber and soon as he hears that, the little guy throws down his gun and hits the dirt, yelling, ‘I ain’t done nothing.’
“I run around to the back of the house about the time the door opens and I think for sure I’m gonna see the snout of an M-16 or something. Instead, here comes Man Mountain’s nose, real cautious-like, and this little teeny voice says, ‘Who’s there?’ like he’s expecting the Avon lady.
“I tell him to come on out with his hands up and it’s `Yessir! Yessir! Don’t shoot.’
“So we get ‘em handcuffed, under arrest, down on their knees and all the time they’re swearing they ain’t done a thing. ‘Course Ray and me, we know they have, so we start gathering up the evidence and the first thing we find is this shotgun shell. Only it’s birdshot, nothing that’d bring down a deer. About twenty yards out, we finally find what the little guy was shooting at. Not a deer. A goddamned house cat!
“I mean, here we are: two officers with riot guns, two guys handcuffed and under arrest, and one mangy dead Felis domesticus, which, you being a judge, you know is not against the law to shoot.”
“So what’d you do?” I asked, licking tomato sauce from my fingers.
“Only thing I can do.” He grinned and reached for the last piece of pizza. “I pick up that dead cat and I shake it in their faces and yell, ‘You sorry piece of garbage, you see this?’
“And the little one starts whining, `Yessir, please sir, I didn’t mean to do it.’
“‘You know this is against the law, don’t you?’
“And the big one’s moaning, `Yessir, We’re sorry. We won’t never do it again. I promise you, sir!’
“‘Okay,’ I say, ‘We’ll let you off this time, but we catch you shooting cats again, you’re gonna be in a heap of trouble.’ “
Laughing, I topped his glass from the last bottle of beer and poured the rest into my own. “And cat lovers everywhere salute you, sir!”
“‘Course, we actually did see some guys spotlighting deer a couple of nights later. We eased my state-issue Bronco down into this driveway on a country road and parked facing out. No lights on in the house, people had gone to bed. And we sit there about an hour till sure ‘nuff, here comes a pickup with two jokers sitting out there on the front fenders. One’s working the spotlight and the other has the gun. Well, we scrunch way down in the seat till after they pass, then I switch on the ignition and try to follow them and all of a sudden the whole right side of my Bronco sags down. We got out and find two of our tires melted slam down on the rims. Seems that old farmer was in the habit of dumping his hot coals and ashes in the driveway before he made up the fire and went to bed at night.”
“Bet you had fun explaining that to your boss,” I said as he cleared away the box and paper plates and put the beer bottles in a recycling bag.
“Well, tell you the truth, I could never exactly find the right time to break it to him so I just stole the spares off’n a couple of other officers’ Broncos.”
While I washed our glasses and wiped down the surfaces, he swept the floor.
“You’re right handy around the house,” I commented, spreading the dish towel to dry over the drainer.
“Never been too hung up about the difference between women’s work and men’s,” he said with an easy smile. “Not since I learned about oysters.”
“What about oysters?” I asked suspiciously.
“They flip-flop back and forth on their gender, depending on who’s on top. Grow the lady on top of the gentleman, and a few months later, he’ll be female, she’ll be male and they’ll still get baby oysters.”
“You’re making that up,” I told him.
“There’s a field guide to seashells in the living room,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, go check it out.”
I went and found the book and looked up oysters. After a paragraph or two detailing how oysters grow in the marshes and mud flats of intertidal zones where water movement is gentle, the entry finally got down to their sex life. Guess what?
“You sure you don’t want to stay on down over the weekend?” he asked.
“Positive. Not that it hasn’t been fun.”
He gave me a considering look.
“Forget it,” I told him. “We’re not oysters.”
I went to bed.
Alone.
• • •
Along about two A.M., I woke up thirsty from the anchovies and tiptoed out to the kitchen for a drink of water.
And realized that thirst wasn’t what had waked me.
Kidd Chapin was a dark shape at the back window and I saw him motion for silence through the faint reflected light from up at the store. Outside, a light rain was still falling. The wet live oaks swayed in a strong southwest wind and made moving shadows everywhere. I could hear low waves breaking upon the sand; and every fifteen seconds, a faint gleam from the lighthouse swept through the window over on the east side.
I stood on tiptoe to peer over Kidd’s shoulder, past the bushes, to the road, and whispered in his ear, “What are we looking at?”
“I’m not sure. I went to the bathroom about ten minutes ago and happened to look out and see somebody coming up from the water.”
“Fishermen use the path all times of the night and day,” I told him, “depending on what’s running and how the wind’s blowing or—”
“I know about the wind and spring tides, Ms. Judge,” he reminded me.
“Sorry.”
“Besides, he didn’t walk straight on up the path and down the road like a waterman. He kept so far in the shadows I never did get a clear look. In fact if it weren’t that you never see any blacks on the island, I couldn’t know if he was black or white. He slipped through those bushes and on across the road and now I don’t see him anymore.”
“What’d he have on?”
“I don’t know. It was all dark. Probably a jacket with a hood on it.”
“Maybe you ought to call Marvin Willitt,” I said.
“What for?”
“You just said—”
“Yeah, and I tell Marvin Willitt where I am and half of Harkers Island’ll know it by daybreak. And what if it’s somebody only just out cheating on his wife, trying not to be seen by her husband?
“‘Only just out cheating on his wife?’” I couldn’t help the snide acid.
“Hey, I’m not condoning it, just recognizing the facts, ma’am.”
He stepped back from the window as I opened the refrigerator and squinted against the sudden bright light. “You want a glass of tomato juice?”
“Okay.”
We took our glasses back toward the unlit living room. A stiff April wind was pouring through the south windows straight off the water, thick with rain and salt and funky seaside odors. I shivered in my thin gown.
“Aw, don’t go back to bed yet,” said Kidd. “Is it too cold for you? I’ll put the windows down.”
“No, I like it, but I have to put on something warmer.”
“My sleeping bag zips open to a double comforter,” he offered and I saw white teeth flash in the near darkness.
“I’d hate for you to disfurnish yourself,” I said dryly and went into my room to slip on a fleecy sweatshirt and slippers and to lay hands on a comforter of my own.