He smoothed on some more caulk dots. “Well, it don’t signify. With this boat, me’n my boys’re gonna get ourselves out’n the hole for good and all this time.”
“How
His sun-leathered face crinkled with a gap-toothed grin. “Doing a lot of walking these days.”
“Oh?”
He smoothed another row of nail heads. “Yeah. Got his license pulled again. For a year this time. If he can’t get there by boat or thumb, he has to foot it.”
“So you figure that’ll keep his mind on fishing for a while?” I laughed.
“Should do,” he answered dryly. “If I’n get her done by the time shrimping season starts, the money’ll keep ‘em both in line.”
I hesitated. “I hope I didn’t get Guthrie in trouble yesterday, asking him to take me out for clams?”
Mahlon scowled. “Worn’t your fault. He knowed better’n to take my skiff ‘thout asking.”
“That was pretty awful about Andy Bynum getting shot.”
“Yeah.” He laid aside the caulk gun and began to peel the gummy stuff from his fingers.
“I guess you’re in that Alliance he started?”
“Hell, no!” He saw my puzzlement. “Oh, they tried to sign us all up, but I ain’t never joined nothing yet and I’m sure not going to start with something that don’t give a damn about me.”
“But I thought it was to help the independent fishermen.”
He snorted. “Yeah, that’s what was
Startled, I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Andy linger under Mahlon’s boat shed or seen Mahlon over at Andy’s. “You and Andy weren’t friends?” I asked.
“He was the man,” he said, as if that explained it all.
Well, if Andy was, I guess it did, diesel engine or no diesel engine.
Mahlon wrapped a piece of plastic around the tip of the caulk gun, secured it with a rubber band, then reached over and turned off the light bulb.
“Reckon I’d better get on in to eat,” he said, reminding me of the chowder I’d left simmering on the stove.
It was full dark but there were enough scattered lights from nearby houses to guide me the few feet down the shoreline to the main path once my eyes adjusted. I went slowly, thinking about “the man.” Not a purely local concept, of course. There was that old Ernie Ford coal miner song about owing one’s soul to the company store. And sharecroppers certainly knew about never getting out of debt to the man who bankrolled you to the tools or supplies you needed if you were going to work for him.
Andy Bynum had owned a fish house. Barbara Jean could probably tell me exactly how that made him the man.
As I headed up the path to the cottage, the maniacal cry of a migrant loon rang across the sound.
5
Tuesday’s court began slowly as we finished off the traffic violations and moved on to various misdemeanors (which I could hear) and some extra probable-cause felonies (which would have to be bucked up the next level to superior court).
Despite Mahlon’s optimistic talk, I wasn’t terribly surprised when a familiar figure came up to the defense table and signed the form waiving his rights to an attorney.
Mickey Mantle Davis.
According to the ADA, he sat accused of stealing a bicycle from the deck of the
“How do you plead?” I asked.
He stood up with a happy smile because he had just recognized me. “Not guilty, Judge, ma’am.”
Technically, I could have recused myself right then and there, but Mickey Mantle Davis would’ve had to go over to one of the piedmont or mountain districts to find a judge that hadn’t heard of him. From the time he was fourteen and buying beer with a stolen driver’s license, Guthrie’s father has been smashing up cars and smashing up boats and smashing up every second chance people still try to give him because shiftless as he is, he’s still a likeable cuss. He’d work hard for a week, then lay out drinking for two weeks; steal your portable TV on Friday night, then bring you a bushel of oysters on Saturday—a walking cliche of the good-hearted, good-timing wastrel who had so far managed to stay, if not out of trouble, at least out of a penitentiary.
