A trestle had been rigged over the open hole in the deck and now they were waiting for Mickey Mantle, who’d gone off somewhere to borrow a block and tackle so they could hoist the engine into place tonight.
In all the years that I’d been coming down, I’d never seen Mahlon work this steadily in one sustained effort. It was almost as if he believed that getting this boat completed and into the water would somehow put things back the way they were before so many rules and regulations began to endanger the different freedoms that gave meaning and substance to his life.
I could have told Kidd that the reason he hadn’t caught Mahlon shooting at loons was because he was too busy shooting for something more important: his last chance at shaping a destiny for himself and Mickey Mantle and Guthrie, a chance for the two adults to get out from under, a chance for one more generation to live independent and unfettered.
The only fly in Guthrie’s ointment that evening was worrying about how they were going to shift the boat off Linville Pope’s property before she served them with papers for trespassing.
“We’ll do it ‘fore that time comes,” Mahlon said gruffly as he picked up his hammer and fitted another strip of cypress to the hull.
“Didn’t you hear?” I said. “She was killed this afternoon.”
Even Mahlon quit work for that. They listened intently as I described what had happened; and as with Barbara Jean, Guthrie’s first reaction was purely personal. “That mean them garbage men won’t be back tomorrow?” he asked.
“Probably,” I said.
“Good! Right, Grandpap? Now we don’t have to shift her till she’s done, do we?”
“Hand me them nails,” Mahlon grunted. “You keep talking and not working and we’ll never get her finished.”
“Yonder comes Daddy,” Guthrie said.
The truck headlights jounced down the rutted drive and Mickey Mantle made a skidding three-point turn so that the back of his truck was in position.
“Hey-o there, Judge!”
“I thought you had your license pulled,” I said.
He grinned. “Judges don’t write tickets, do they?”
“Daddy!” Guthrie interrupted. “Did you hear?” His changing voice squeaked in his excitement. He clambered up into the truck bed and handed out the block and tackle, chattering the whole time to his father about Linville’s murder.
“Yeah, I just heard it. Sammy said it was on the news.”
“Y’all here to talk or get this motor in?” said Mahlon.
When they had the block and tackle attached to the trestle and a heavy cable fixed to the chain around the engine, they hooked the other end to the pickup. I volunteered to crank up the truck and pull the cable slow and steady for them while the three of them guided the heavy engine up over the side of the boat. Then I backed up so they could lower it into the hold.
“Damned if I don’t feel like busting a bottle of beer over that engine right now!” Mickey Mantle said when the chains and cable were removed and the engine sat squarely where it was supposed to.
“Time enough for beers when we bring in our first catch,” Mahlon said sharply. “Hand me my saw and let’s get these last strips on ‘fore midnight.”
“Before I go,” I said, “I need to ask you. Any of y’all see somebody break in over there this afternoon?”
That got their attention.
“Naw,” said Mickey Mantle.
“I was fishing,” said Mahlon.
“What’d they take?” asked Guthrie.
“Nothing, so far’s I can tell,” I admitted. “But they messed up Carl’s lock and strewed my things around.”
“I worn’t here,” Mahlon said again and revved up his Skilsaw with a conversation-stopping roar.
I waved goodnight and started back to the cottage, but as I circled the boat shed, I heard my name called in a voice so low that the noisy saw almost drowned it out.
It was Mahlon’s wife. White-haired and half-crippled with arthritis, the reclusive Effrida beckoned to me from a darkened side window.
“I heared what you asked them,” she said in an urgent rush of island speech. “I seen him, the man what broke into Carl’s this evening. It was a few minutes after five.”
“Did you know him?”
“I seen him before. Lives over to Beaufort, I think, but I couldn’t call his name.”
She then proceeded to describe Chet Winberry right down to the white fishing cap and navy-blue windbreaker he’d been wearing when Barbara Jean and I met him at their landing.
No wonder he’d caught only three fish all afternoon.
12
