ordered me to stay behind. Glaring balefully at the full moon, he muttered, “Row then.”
There was no wind. I rowed upriver on the rising tide. Drunk though he was, he had planned for that tide, staying our departure until after midnight. Leaving Possum Key to starboard, I rowed south down Chevelier Bay, and all that hour, silhouetted on the moonlit water, he sat motionless, jutted up in the stern like an old stump. Sometime later, we went ashore on Onion Key. It was still dark when he woke me. Exhausted, I protested: it was not yet daybreak. His silence warned me not to speak again. He had sobered some by now but his mood was ugly.
We descended Lost Man’s River on the falling tide as he had planned. I rowed hard anyway just to keep warm. Soon there was breeze. He pointed at the mast and I raised her small canvas. With the dark bulk of him hunched at the tiller, the old skiff whispered through cold mists across broad discs of current, westward over the gray reach of Lost Man’s Bay.
At daybreak, we slid the skiff into the mangroves on the inland shore of Lost Man’s Key. Telling me to wait there, he set off at once, rounding the point to the Gulf beach. I followed. My teeth chattered in the damp and my voice shook when I nagged him: Why were we sneaking up in darkness? Why not just run them off our claim? Distracted by my pestering, he stepped into a hole and twisted his ankle and cursed violently in pain.
Where Tucker’s small sloop on her mooring could be glimpsed through the big sea grape leaves, he dropped two shells into the chambers of his double-barrel. On the beach ridge, a small thatch roof had come in view. One last time, I begged him not to harm them. He fixed me with a look I could not read. Was it contempt? I don’t think so. Then he limped forward.
The Tuckers had no lamps; they lay down at dark and rose at daybreak. Wally was already outside, perched on a big driftwood tree mending his cast net. His rifle leaned against the silver trunk beside him. It was too late to warn him: if he laid one finger on that gun he would be killed.
Favoring his bad ankle, your father moved out of the sea grape in stiff short steps like a bristled-up dog. I heard no sound though I was close behind him but Tucker picked up some tiny pinching of the sand. His hand dropped the net needle and flew for his rifle, only to stop short in midair and sink back slowly as he raised his hands.
“You people get the hell off of my claim,” your father said-something like that. He tossed his head toward the shack. “Tell your bitch to clear her trash out before I burn that pigsty to the ground.” Wally Tucker went all pale and blotched like someone slapped, but sensing perhaps that this man had spoken brutally to provoke an attack he only blinked back tears of rage and fear.
“Go get her,” Papa ordered me. “Trot her out here.”
I shook my head. “Please, Papa, I can’t do that-”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. Keep him covered, then,” Papa said, disgusted. He tossed me the shotgun. Hungover and exhausted, he was jumpy, on the point of rage. He drew his revolver and limped toward the shack. Wally whispered, “Please, Rob. Don’t let him harm Bet.” I sensed a distraction and backed off a step, yelling, “Don’t try it, Wally!” but he had lunged and grasped the barrels. The morning exploded in red haze. In the same moment that I shrieked, your father shouted with great violence. “SHIT!” Fucking Sonborn! Hadn’t he told me not to come? Now we were ruined-all that was included in that one furious word.
Having spun toward Wally, he had not seen Bet rush outside, clutching a pot. At the sight of her man’s body twisting on the sand she moaned and staggered, but she kept her head; she did not run to him but dropped her pot and fled for the shore wood. I see her still, round with child in her white shift, sailing away like a child’s balloon over the sand.
I believe murder might have been his intention when he left Chatham Bend, but after he’d sobered during the long hours of the river journey-who can say? Perhaps he never knew himself. He looked bewildered, unimaginably weary. He did not rage at my inattention, only said dully, “Damn fool tried to kill us.” He eased himself down like an old man on that same limb on which the dying man twitching on the sand had bent to his mending moments earlier, as if considering how we might start over and relive this sunrise scene in a sane way; he sat with his hands square on his knees, boot toes not five feet from the body, which he didn’t look at. Only then did he recall Bet Tucker; he turned in time to glimpse her before she disappeared. Realizing I must have seen her flight-seen it and not warned him-he said nothing, simply handed me the revolver. Still in shock, I dropped it. He picked it up, thrust it at me again. Imagining that out of his remorse he was inviting me to kill him, I raised and pointed it at his unblinking eyes. “No, Rob,” he said. I lowered the weapon. Would I have shot him? I don’t know. In the expression on his face, this man enthroned on the silver tree seemed stranger than any stranger. He had called me Rob.
“He attacked us, you said!”
“Yes, he did. The gun went off by accident. Who will believe that?”
The families on Lost Man’s Beach, his voice said urgently, might come to investigate the shot; we could not stay long enough to make a search, we had to catch her quick; if she got too deep into that scrub, we just might lose her. I stared after her, unable to take this in. Then his voice broke through. “You hear me, Rob? We have to finish what we started.”
I could not look at Wally’s death throes without retching. My agony burst through. “What you started, Papa!”
“I can’t catch her,” he said calmly, after getting to his feet, testing his ankle. “I’m too fat and too lame. I’m sorry, boy.”
Swallowing and shivering, teeth chattering, I protested wildly. To shoot Bet Tucker in cold blood would be terrible and crazy, we would burn in Hell! He folded his arms upon his chest, saying, “Well, boy, that is possible. But meanwhile, she is the only witness and if she gets away, we are going to hang.”
All was unbearable, every breath. To run that girl down, put this hard heavy weapon to her head and pull the trigger-I wept helplessly. “Don’t make me do that, Papa. I can’t do it.”
He was losing patience, though still calm. “Why, sure you can, son,” he told me then, “and you best jump to it. It’s her life or ours.” That exhausted look returned into his face. “You are innocent in all this, boy, no matter what becomes of us. But will that save you?” He turned away, looking toward the wood edge. “Too late for tears,” he said.
I was running, I was wailing. Unless it was only in my heart, my wail could be heard as far off as South Lost Man’s.
Bet had not run far. In the thick tangle, she had no place to go. Small footprints, prints where she had fallen to her knees, hand prints-some animal on all fours-then the whiteness of her shift in the cave of vines where she had crawled, trying to hide. She lay panting on her side in tears of shock, her wet cheek stuck with sand.
Somewhere Papa’s voice was calling, coming closer. I sank to my knees beside her, fighting for breath. “Please, Bet, don’t look.” She gasped, “Oh Rob, we never done you harm.”
I crept forward. Her eye was fixed on the root and sand inches away, her lips parted by whimper, the soft skin pulsing at the temple, the life blood pink in the transparent ear-the new life in her…
At the sound of sand crushed by oncoming steps, that eye flew wider and her whole body trembled. I bent to her, whispering, “Please, Bet. Forgive me.” Forcing my will-oh Christ be quick! -I grasped my wrist to steady my hand, touched the muzzle to her temple, sucked a breath deep to lock my nerve in place, and squeezed the trigger.
A crimson spatter in my eyes as all went black.
Round sea grape leaves in a sunrise dance of shadows on the sand. I lay suspended, praying that this dream of bright water might not end. It was too late. Before squeezing my eyes shut again, I’d seen those boot prints where the girl had lain, the darkened sand kicked over that blood shadow, the stained face of earth. Rob Watson was dead from that day forward and forever. What had taken place was drawn over my corpse like a leaden shroud. I could not move.
The boots returned. He leaned and shook my shoulder. “Time to go.” I struggled away from him, struggled to stand and run. I could not. I was too weak. Get away from me! Were those the last words I ever spoke to him?
He bent then and with one hand under my armpit lifted my weight without effort, stood me on my
