you?'
She turned away from him, watched the ferry bound for Cedar Island chugging out of the harbor. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet and she wiped sweatbeads from her forehead. She glared at Steve. He looked like such a little boy.
'Fine. We’ll
She started back down the pier toward Silver Lake Drive.
Steve called after her.
It felt so good to keep on walking.
# # #
Kim started talking to Steve again an hour later, on the walk over to the Community Store and the boat docks. The day was blue and intensely humid, and the novelty of their marriage and this quaint island, so far from their Wisconsin home, cleansed the rancid taste of their recent quarrel. They were lovebirds again and held hands while they walked.
When they arrived at the parking lot for the Community Store, Steve motioned toward the shack at the end of the dock, pointing out the TATUM BOAT TOURS sign mounted on the side.
'That’s it,' he told Kim. 'Guy said to be there at eleven.'
'How much is it?'
'I think twenty dollars a person.'
'Oh, jeez that’s expensive.'
He chose not to point out that she’d already spent over four hundred dollars on gifts. Kim would certainly have a well-reasoned argument for each and every expenditure.
They walked into the Community Store, a modest, eighty-six year-old grocery offering a modicum of staples, beer and wine, local jams and canned peppers, even several shelves of videos for rent.
Potato chips and beef jerky seemed sufficient to tide them over until evening. Steve paid for the snacks and ten postcards that Kim required immediately. Loading everything into a small backpack, they crossed the burnished wood floor and walked back outside into the ever-thickening heat.
It was nearly eleven, so they headed for the steps leading up onto the dock.
Kim stopped suddenly on the weatherbeaten planks and peered down at the water.
'Will you look at that?' she said, pulling a disposable camera from the front pouch of the backpack she’d recruited her husband to carry. 'He’s not even scared of us. Mom will love this picture.'
She took several photographs of the tattered pelican.
'Look at its wing,' she said. 'I’ll bet it can’t fly anymore.'
'It wants food,' Steve said. 'Should I give him a piece of jerky?'
'Jerky?' She sighed with immeasurable annoyance. 'It would
'No, I don’t think it would—'
'Fine, Steve. You want to kill this sweet old bird, go right ahead. I’m walking to the end of the pier.'
Footsteps clanked toward them. They both turned and watched a tall frail man painfully ascend five steps to the dock. When he reached the top, he stopped and leaned against the railing to catch his breath.
'Sir, you all right?' Kim asked.
'Yeah, I’m just old as shit,' he said, grinning. 'But I’ll make it.' The man took a deep breath and said, 'Whew. Glad I caught you two. You here to take the boat over to Portsmouth with me?'
'We sure are,' Steve said. 'You the gentleman I spoke with on the phone this morning?'
'Well, I don’t know about the gentleman part. What was your name again, young man?'
'Steve.'
Steve reached forward and shook the man’s hand.
'And this is my wife, Kim.'
The old man nodded to the young woman and said, 'A pleasure. My name’s Charlie Tatum. I’ll be taking y’all over to Portsmouth today.'
'Excellent,' Steve said.
'Here’s the thing. See my boat up there?'
He pointed to the thirty foot Island Hopper moored to a rotting beam, where a man with a bushy white beard was busy padding up water on the vinyl seats from last night’s thunderstorm.
'That’s my brother, Wally, and he’s fixin’ to take that motor apart. Old net got caught in the blades when we was coming back into the harbor our last trip out.'
A family of four strolled by, headed for the end of the dock.
'Yeah, Wally’s gonna have to turn those folks down, but look I’m running a ferry from our dock on the sound out to Portsmouth. There’s two more spots if y’all want to go.'
'Steve, maybe we should just—'
'Absolutely.'
That family sat down on a bench at the end of the dock. Wally said something to them, inaudible from this distance.
'Well, if you’ll come with me, I’ve got my truck here, and we’ll get going. We’ve got another couple signed up, too, and since it’s just the four of you, we should be able to make a nice long day of it.'
They followed the old man to his truck—a rusted, dinged relic of a vehicle that seemed to have as much a chance of starting up as its owner did of running a marathon.
Kim sat in the front seat, her husband in the back. As the truck cranked and gargled out onto Silver Lake Drive, she gazed down to the end of the dock, wondering why that family of four was boarding a boat with a busted motor.
# # #
Steve climbed out of the back of the truck and followed his wife and Charlie Tatum through a disheveled front yard of waist-high weeds, around the side of a large and crumbling stone house. From the backyard, the sound stretched out before them, unstirred to the point of appearing frozen in the mounting, windless heat.
The three of them strode down the gentle slope of weeds toward the water’s edge. A decaying dock reached out from the bank, and there were people milling about at the end.
Steve caught up with Kim. Because they were the same height, he put his arm around her waist and they stepped together onto the rickety dock. Charlie led them to the end, pointing out the boards that might not bear their weight.
A twenty-four foot Scout lounged in the calm water, and an exceptionally pale man with long black hair manned its cockpit. Steve nodded to him. The man looked away, set the Yamaha outboard gurgling.
Charlie offered Kim his gnarled hand. She took it and stepped down into the boat. Steve followed, and then the old man untied the rope from a gray timber and hopped with surprising spryness onto the deck that reeked faintly of mildew and the discarded sunspoiled viscera of fish.
Steve glanced at the couple who were already seated on the cushioned limegreen bench that ran along the inner sides of the boat. It occurred to him that they did not appear to be having a very good time, but he introduced himself anyway.
The man was bearded, with a tangle of gray-flecked brown hair and guarded eyes. They shook hands. Steve tried to introduce his wife, but Andy didn’t seem interested in meeting her, so he took a seat, a little embarrassed. Andy’s wife, a young woman scarcely older than Steve, wouldn’t even look at him. She just stared off into the sound, nervously brushing her shoulder-length blond hair behind her ears.
'Glad to have y’all aboard,' Charlie addressed his four passengers. 'It’ll be a thirty minute ride over to the island, so y’all just sit back and enjoy. That’s my son, Luther, at the controls, so don’t worry. We’re in capable hands.'
'Should we pay now?' Steve asked, reaching for his wallet.
'Nah. We’ll settle up later.'
The old man sat down in the jump seat beside his son. He whispered in his ear, and then the motor growled to life and the boat lurched forward. Steve leaned back into the cushioned seat and put his arm around Kim.
The water raced by as they sped parallel to shore. Steve turned and watched the great stone house
