He loved it, being there with her. Watch her walk around the little efficiency as graceful a woman naked as God put on the earth, as Eve, he had to think, not an ounce of self-consciousness in her, and just naturally beautiful. Maurier had an old swimming pool out under the oak grove beside the river and she’d put on her pink striped swimsuit, a one-piece, and get onto the diving board and dive into the water and come up wringing her hair behind her neck, then shaking it gently out, resting her arms on the side of the pool, and looking at him.
She looked at him now with those eyes, and a salty gust from off the Sound seemed to nudge him toward her, and she said, Come here. And he did.
FRANK WAS SITTING in the boat at the dock next morning at five. Had the gear loaded, ice chest packed with ham and cheese sandwiches from Maurier’s wife’s kitchen, and bottles of Coca-Cola and ginger ale, crackers, and tins of sardines.
— You drive, Frank.
Frank primed the motor, pulled the cord, and got them going away from the dock. They bumped out through the gentle swells and about two miles out Earl raised his hand and Frank motored down and they dropped anchor.
— Going for trout, Mr. Earl?
Earl nodded. -No cover out here. There’s a channel though.
He rigged his own line with a jig and a worm tail and began to cast.
— You can fish if you want to, Frank.
Always a pause after he spoke to Frank before Frank answered. Nothing you could call insolence, just shy of that, and just enough to establish some of his own purchase on the moment.
— Thank you, no sir. Just feel like sitting here today.
— All right.
Pause.
— I likes to fish but I don’t really like it.
— You mean to eat it?
— Yes, sir. I grew up on the river and seemed like that’s all we eat, fish. -Well you eat it when we cook it up here.
— Yes, sir, I don’t like to be rude. I mean I can eat it and like it all right every now and then but I don’t hardly care for it no more.
He had one of those rusty sibilant voices, like a hoarse whisper, like he liked whiskey too much, but Earl hadn’t ever seen him drink anything but beer, and he’d given him that. Sat there on the bench seat before the motor like a meditation in black, big squared-off head held at attention to something not here in the boat.
— What do you most like to eat?
Blink.
— Oh I like fresh vegetables, you know. And chicken. I love barbeque.
— Me, too, Earl said, reeling in and casting again, jigging the line. -You like, I’ll get a rack of ribs and you can cook em up on the drum grill.
— Yes, sir, sure will.
— We used to keep pigs awhile, when I was a boy.
— Yes, sir, we did too till a flood come and drowned them. We didn’t get no more after that.
— How old were you?
— I guess about nine, ten years old.
— And had to eat fish the rest of your life after that.
Rusty laugh.
— Yes, sir, near bout.
— I reckon I’d hate it too.
He cast. The swells made slurping sounds against the boat. Light coming up behind a gray cloud cover, darker below with silvery metallic openings. Gulls glided past angling their heads at them curiously. Laughing.
— I never liked hog-killing, he said. -All that mess. I wouldn’t keep a pig now.
— No, sir, I didn’t like it either. My papa had a gun, but he wouldn’t use it on his hogs. He used a hammer.
— A hammer? How’d he do that, put them in a chute?
— No, sir, he just hit em with a hammer.
— I mean how’d he get up on them?
— He bait them with corn.
— Bait em? How you mean?
— First time I went out with him, he says to watch this. Got his old claw hammer in his right hand, hid behind his back, like. Got a palm full of feed corn in his other hand, going up to the hog and holding out that corn, saying, Here, pig. Hog watch him, saying, I don’t know. Keep saying, Here, pig, walking up slow. Pig finally inch over there, you know. He trust him. Start nibbling the corn out his hand. That’s when he brung the hammer around and hit him hard square in the forehead.
— I be damned.
— Yes, sir, laid him right out. Like to struck me hard as the pig, to see that. I was just a little old young un. I liked to watch them pigs.
— Probably one of them was your pet.
— No, sir, no pet. But I thought they was interesting, you know. They was like a family, playing all the time. Didn’t fuss and fight, like we did. Just scooting around the pen, chasing each other, squealing. Not that old hog, I mean the young uns. Well, they strung up that hog by his heels, was going to bleed him. I snuck up there and look at him, his old tongue hanging out. Them corn kernels there still stuck to it.
— I be damned.
Frank laughed.
— Yes, sir, took me a while to trust my papa again, too, after that. He offer me a extra piece of gingerbread at Christmas, you know, I be looking for that hammer.
Earl looked at him, then laughed out loud.
— Where in the hell did you come from before you showed up at my place?
— South of here. Florida.
— Turpentine, then?
— Sir?
— You a turpentine worker?
— No, sir. My papa was, for a while. I just wander, do yard work. You know, like for you.
— You plan on staying around?
Frank said nothing for an extra beat, his face got solemn. Looking out over the Sound.
— Well, sir, I’d sure like to make me a little money.
Earl reeled in, set his rod down.
— Get me a sandwich and one of those Cokes.
Frank reached into the cooler and brought them out.
— Get yourself something.
They sat and ate for a minute, sipping the Cokes.
— What you got in mind?
Frank appeared to study the question for a while.
— Well, sir, you know how you get me to help out down to the store every now and then, up in the stockroom where you has your cot.
Earl stiffened a little at that. Let it go.
— Go on.
— Well, sir, I know how you cares for Miss Ann, and she off down there with that store in Tallahassee, and you having to travel down there all the time, and I don’t mean to step in where I oughtn’t but I know you worried about her, yes sir. And I thought maybe you put me to work down there for Miss Ann, make sure nobody gives her no trouble. I could work around the store, and keep up her yard same as I do yours here. I’m from Florida, now, Mr. Earl, I know how to get by in Florida.
— I can see you do.
Frank nodded.
— Yes, sir. Now, you know I wouldn’t ever say anything about Miss Ann and yourself, not to nobody.
Earl lit a Camel and stared at him a minute.
— Don’t recall asking if you would.