Last Light over Carolina (14 page)

“See you tomorrow,” she heard him say. It was clear to her that Lee felt it, too.

Carolina rose slowly to see Lee walking away. Other parents were crowding the stage to pick up their children. She heard high-pitched voices and laughter, sensed the crush of movement around her. Yet Carolina felt rooted to the spot, unsure of what had just transpired. Dangerously intrigued.

When Carolina and Lizzy returned home to White Gables, Bud was sitting in his favorite chair with a plate of food on his lap, watching television. His muscles were clearly visible under the T-shirt when he turned toward them. His eyes were red with exhaustion, and there was a rich stubble on his face.

“Where’s my star?” he called out, lifting his legs off the ottoman and setting the plate down so he could open his arms.

Lizzy stood at the door and pouted. “Where were you? I looked for you.”

“Aw, honey, I was working. But I was thinking of you every minute. In fact, when I saw this shell, I said to Pee Dee, ‘Stop everything! I have to save this beauty for my Lizzy.’”

Begrudgingly, she walked closer. “What is it?”

Carolina leaned against the doorframe and watched Bud work his magic on Lizzy. She adored him, and it was mutual. When Bud pulled a beautiful sea star from a plastic bag on the floor, Lizzy’s sulk vanished.

“Oh, Daddy. That’s a keeper.” Then she gave him a decidedly feminine look of feigned anger. “But I’m still mad at you.”

“I’ll be there next time, okay?”

“Promise?”

Bud didn’t reply. Instead, he gave her a kiss on her cheek. “You better get to bed now, honey. It’s late.”

Carolina pushed away from the wall. “Daddy’s right. Go on up and wash all that makeup off. I’ll bring you up a plate of something to eat.”

When Carolina returned to the living room a half hour later, Bud was nodding off. His legs were stretched out on the ottoman and his arms hung loose. The empty beer bottle had dropped to the floor just beyond his grasp. Looking around the room, she saw his half-eaten sandwich going stale on his plate on the floor, his flannel shirt strewn across the sofa, and his muddy boots lying in a puddle by the door. Was this what their marriage had come to?

She bent to pick up the plate and retrieve the bottle from the floor. Then she gave his shoulder a hard nudge. Bud’s eyes immediately blinked and opened.

“Bud, you should go up to bed.”

He mopped his face with his hands. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Lizzy really missed you tonight. She was great.”

Bud dropped his hands and released a heavy sigh. “Wish I could’ve been there.”

“You could have.”

His sigh this time was born of irritation, not fatigue. “Caro, it’s late. Let’s not get into this now.”

“That’s the problem. You’re never here to discuss it.”

“Hey,” he said sharply. “This is what I do! What do you want from me?”

“I want a little of your time. Lizzy wants a little of your time. Bud, we
never
see you.”

“I told you what it was going to be like,” he said with heat. “It wasn’t going to be country clubs and cocktails.”

Carolina groaned. It was always the same. Whenever there was a discussion of money or the demands of his job, he threw her more privileged background at her as though the fifteen years of their marriage hadn’t carved a dent in her pedigree. The joke of it was, her parents weren’t rich. They were comfortable and could help their children, but far from having any real wealth—even though they sometimes acted like Rockefellers. Yet Carolina knew that beneath Bud’s harangue was a tiny barb of truth that still stung. What he didn’t say
but implied was that she wasn’t from a shrimping family, so she didn’t and couldn’t understand. Otherwise, she wouldn’t complain about his long hours at sea.

“You know what? Tonight there were a lot of guys at that school who took time off the boat to be there for their kids. So don’t give me that old line about being a shrimper.”

“It is what it is.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Just that things aren’t the same now as they were when we got married. We have a child now. That makes things different.”

She saw his big shoulders bow up in defense, and she felt suddenly weary of this old, pointless argument. They’d both thrown the same hurtful lines back and forth so often that they no longer heard the words. It was just annoying, like his mess strewn across the room.

“I’m beat. I’m going up.”

“I know you’re exhausted,” she said with softness. “I don’t think it’s safe for you to be out there so long, and I worry about you.”

His shoulders lowered, and he acknowledged her words with a tired nod.

“I’m just wondering…” She laid the plate on the coffee table and sat down in the easy chair beside it. She rubbed her palms, then clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I know you and Pee Dee have been making plans about taking the
Carolina
to Florida after the season ends.”

“That’s the plan.”

“I know it’s been hard for you since Bobby died, but…”

Bud’s face hardened. “This ain’t got nothing to do with Bobby.”

She didn’t believe him. He’d been struggling with his brother’s drowning, working long hours and brooding in silence. She didn’t want to drag him into that painful topic and changed course. “Maybe if you think about it from my side for a change. From May to December you’re gone, on the water from sunup to sundown. That’s your job, and I know that.” She took a breath. “But you have a duty here, too. To your daughter and to me. Maybe you could find a different job for the off-season? Something that will keep you in town?”

“Don’t want to do anything else.”

“But you’re good at welding, machinery. Bud, you’re smart. You could do anything you put your mind to.”

Her stomach clenched at seeing him already shaking his head. It was this constant roadblock to change that infuriated her.

“But Lee said—” His eyes flashed, and she realized her mistake in bringing up Lee’s name.

“What did
Lee
say?” he asked in a low voice.

She licked her lips. “He just said that it wasn’t a good year. The shrimp aren’t out there.”

“He’s a real genius. Lee says it’s not a good year. Let me alert the media. Maybe if that tight-ass would pay us a decent price for our shrimp, we wouldn’t have to break our backs all day and night out there.”

“Bud, I know better than anyone what you guys are getting for shrimp at the dock. That’s my job. I know who’s having a good year and who isn’t, down to the dollar.”

Bud’s face showed that he didn’t like that she worked at the seafood house, didn’t like the names he heard the guys calling his wife. He especially didn’t like that she had to work for Lee.

Carolina looked in Bud’s eyes. “I’m just saying, business isn’t so good now. Maybe it’s not a bad idea to look for something off-boat.”

Bud raised his eyes and his anger glittered through the red. “I’m no white-collar, part-time hobby shrimper,” he ground out. “And I’m sure as hell not going to trust Lee Edwards’s opinion on how I should run my business.”

“Forget Lee. This is about me and you. And Lizzy. Our family!” She was trembling with suppressed rage. “We need you, too.”

“It’s all arranged, Caro.”

“You can change your plans. You haven’t left yet.”

He stood and made a slicing motion in the air, cutting off all further conversation.

“I don’t want to change them. Now, I’m tired. I’ve got to get up in a few hours. Good night.”

Carolina sat in the front room for a long while, her hands folded in her lap as she stared at the carpet. Generations of feet had trod over that expanse of wool, all of them dead now. Children, parents, grandparents. Couples who had shared long marriages. Husbands and wives who sat here by the television, or the radio, or maybe just the fire, having the same discussion. She was sure they must have. Every family faced the same pains and joys. There’d be talk about their money problems, or laughs over the antics of their children, or plans for their
future. She’d always believed that the glue of any relationship was communication. Sometimes, just sitting side by side without speaking a word was contact enough.

Carolina sat for a long time, not wanting to go up to bed and lie next to the man who was becoming a stranger.

September 21, 2008

McClellanville

A short beep from a car that had pulled up beside her in the parking lot startled Carolina. She looked over to see Georgia Tisdale waving hello. Carolina smiled and waved back, then checked the time on the dashboard. Bud should be arriving at the dock soon. She’d better get moving if she was going to help him unload.

As she drove along the narrow country road that led to the docks, Carolina passed under a thick canopy of leaves tinted with hints of red, yellow, and orange. It was going to be a beautiful fall. Driving through the dappled light, Carolina reflected on how differently things might have turned out if Bud had stayed home in those winter months rather than heading south to Florida on the
Miss Carolina.

September 21, 2008, 1:00 p.m.

McClellanville

P
ee Dee arrived
at the dock as skittish as a feral cat. The tide was low and the tips of countless oysters gleamed in the mud, sharp and menacing. He squinted and looked overhead. The slate-colored sky was now streaked with black clouds, blocking the sun.

He’d awoken to sun shining through the blinds into his eyes and bolted upright in a surge of panic. He’d overslept, and he knew it immediately. Pee Dee didn’t own an alarm clock. He had one of those internal clocks that usually served him well. It had to. With Bud, you were either at your post ten minutes
before you were supposed to report or you were left at the dock. But he’d scored drugs the night before and passed out. It didn’t happen often, maybe once every five years.

Bud Morrison was gonna hang his hide high up on the rigging for making the
Carolina
late. Pee Dee reached beneath his seat, taking a quick glance around for cops, then pulled out a fifth of discount whiskey and took a couple long swallows, his large Adam’s apple pulsating with each gulp. He wiped his mouth, then screwed the top back on and stashed the bottle. There was nothing left to do but face the music.

He peered into the rearview mirror. He looked a good ten years older than his fifty years. Pee Dee smacked his lips, revealing stained and battered teeth. With a withering sigh, he pulled back his thin blond hair into a ponytail, slapped on his cap, pulled the keys from the ignition, and headed toward the dock.

Limping slightly on legs that were scarred from hooks, rope burns, and cuts that just wouldn’t heal, Pee Dee zigzagged across the weedy, gravel-strewn path. As he neared the dock, he felt the wind gust, carrying the scents of salt and fish and the shrill, savage cries of the gulls mocking him for showing up at this late hour.

He paused beside the weathered gray warehouse to pull a solitary Marlboro from his shirt pocket, the last from a crumpled pack. The low voices of several men rose and fell in conversation out front. Pee Dee peeked around the corner. Five old men were clustered under the rusted awning of the
welding shop. He knew them all. Pee Dee also knew they’d take turns assaulting him with their verbal barbs until he was deflated. They sat in cheap plastic garden chairs, beer cans nestled in their gnarled hands, cloaked in thin rain jackets and caps with various insignias.

Pee Dee pulled his head back, safely out of view. He took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling hard from his nose like a peeved bull. These were the old captains, venerable shrimpers too aged, too injured, or too broke to go out to sea. So they sat at the dock, morning after morning, to rage over the regulations and laws that were ruining the industry and to talk about how it used to be “back in the day.” As usual, it was Oz’s voice that boomed loudest. Pee Dee leaned closer.

“Hell’s bells, I give up,” he said, his voice sounding like small pebbles were grinding in his throat. “You used to be able to hunt for shrimp. Use your wits. You can’t afford to ride around no more. You gotta drop your nets and hope you don’t pull up a load of garbage or worthless fish.”

“My boy, Donnie, won’t go to his best spots no more. Can’t.”

Pee Dee recognized Captain Woody’s voice. For thirty years he’d managed to work on a prosthetic foot after a wire cable snapped and lashed off the one God had given him. This was a minor inconvenience for the old sea dog. In a couple of years he’d learned to maneuver around, and if you didn’t know about the accident, you would never have guessed he had just the one. Woody could do most things better than men half his age with two able feet. He danced, sailed, and
helped run the boatyard with an iron fist. But the nickname Woody had stuck.

“He just skims where he can, hoping to catch whatever he can,” Woody continued. “It’s all he wants anymore, just to get by. Don’t think his heart is in it no more.”

“Don’t matter,” a nasal voice replied. It was a beloved old captain known as the Hagg. “The shrimp, they ain’t out there.”

A few other curmudgeons muttered their agreement.

“Oh, they’re there,” Oz pontificated. “But who can afford to go out and get to ’em? It’s a damn crime what they’re charging for diesel. They’re choking us out of business.”

“Don’t go there,” said the Hagg, heaving a sigh. “We talk about the same bullshit every day. We sound like a women’s red hat club, or whatever the hell they call it. My blood pressure’s already sky-high today.”

Pee Dee heard a loud slurp from a can, then Woody said, “Well, there’s no denying, back in the day we caught a lot.”

“A lot of crap,” Oz said with a chuckle. “I remember the time we drew up a twelve-foot shark. Near lost my foot to that son of a bitch. No offense, Woody.”

They chuckled, each having a sea story with some sort of danger attached, usually embellished over the years.

“Shark, hell, that ain’t nothin’,” said Clay Cable. Unlike Woody, whose scruffy hair and clothes had the disheveled look of a man who couldn’t be bothered to look in a mirror, Clay was usually dressed in a tan coverall freshly laundered and ironed by his diligent wife. He still had a twinkle in his eye that
could bring life to any story, even an old one. He chuckled. “Did I ever tell you about the time we drew up an old bomb?”

The men grumbled that they’d heard that story plenty of times before.

“Well, I’ll never forget it, that’s for damn sure,” Cable continued, undaunted. “We all went white, like we was already dead in the water.”

“It was a different world back then,” Woody said. “It mattered if you knew the water. My daddy could read the stars. Used a sextant. Now it’s all GPS.”

“And rules and regulations,” added Oz.

Another round of curses and grumbles. The conversation heated up, one voice talking over another.

“I’m sick of being told how to shrimp. How much I can catch and what I can catch.”

“Crabs are gone.”

“Scallops, too.”

“A man can’t hardly make a living without breaking the law.”

“It’s not worth going out no more.”

“It’s a damn shame.”

Pee Dee leaned against the dry, splintered wood and closed his eyes tight. The familiar smells of the working dock—dead fish, murky water, salt, mold—rose up to choke him. He couldn’t listen anymore to their incessant ramblings. It was always the same. But hate ’em or love ’em, these were his people. Icons of the creek. And what stuck in his craw was that this morning he felt like an intruder.

Pee Dee had been coming to this dock ever since Oz took him on as a striker when he’d run away from home at fifteen. He’d been a skinny, snot-nosed kid with bruises and broken bones from a man he wouldn’t call father and a shrunken woman who couldn’t protect him.

From the moment he’d stepped aboard the
Miss Ann
, Pee Dee felt he’d come home. Long hours in the sun, hot meals on the boat of fish, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, and grits, and nights of sleep unbroken by the cursing and howling of a drunken brawl had filled him out. His wounds had eventually healed. Even after Mrs. Ann died, with the Morrison men he experienced the only real peace he’d ever known. When he was young, Pee Dee had hoped he’d be something like a son to Oz.

But the old man blamed him for Bobby’s death, and now he darkened every time Pee Dee’s shadow crossed his path. Like a black cat or a broken mirror, Oz looked at Pee Dee as the devil’s luck.

Bobby had died more than fifteen years before, but Pee Dee remembered it as fresh as yesterday. Bobby’s mother used to tell the boys not to drink on a boat. She said you never knew what was coming. She was a saint, God rest her soul, but she also knew what she was talking about. She’d worked on Oz’s boat when they were first married and had sewed his nets till the day she died. They should’ve listened to her. Things would have turned out different for everyone.

December 1992

Bulls Bay

It was early winter. Pee Dee and Bobby were looking to make some off-season money, same as usual. Pee Dee had the old bateau he’d bought from Charlie Pickett. Oystering, like shrimping, made for some long and brutal days. They’d been lucky and had made some decent money the week before. So this morning they headed out with high expectations.

It was damn cold, with biting winds that froze his nostril hairs. They wore long johns under their hip waders, and heavy parkas over their slickers. Pee Dee had three or four beers just to wake up, and Bobby was keeping up. By mid-day Bobby was feeling the beer. He started singing to while away the time. Not the heavy metal they liked to listen to, but some ribald songs of the sea he must’ve learned from his dad, or maybe even his grandfather. Bobby had a good voice, though not many knew it. He came across as a charmer, but that hid his gentler side. Few folks but him knew that Bobby was shy about things that mattered to him.

Pee Dee liked to tease Bobby about his romantic soul. For sure, Oz had no inclination to the softer things in life. And Bud? Forget it. He was smart and liked to read books without pictures, but if Bud had a soft side, he was keeping it to
himself. Pee Dee used to catch Bobby squirreled away in his bunk, writing in a notebook he kept hidden under his mattress. Once Pee Dee stole a peek at it, just to see what Bobby was up to. He didn’t know what he expected to find—porn, scribbles, whatever. He sure as hell didn’t expect to find poetry. And it was good, too. Even a know-nothin’ like him could tell that. Pee Dee figured some people felt things more deeply. Bobby was one of those, and he loved him for it.

There was no such clutter in his own mind, Pee Dee thought as he took another swig from his can. He looked over to the other side of the bateau and watched as Bobby hauled a cluster of oysters into the bateau with the tongs, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Bobby knocked one oyster off the cluster, then tugged off his thick rubber glove and pulled out a pocketknife. He slipped the blade inside the edge of the oyster, prying it open, then handed a half shell to Pee Dee, careful not to spill the briny liquor.

Pee Dee cupped the shell and tipped it back, tasting the succulent meat, salty and sweet, as it slid down his throat. He turned and gave Bobby the thumbs-up. Bobby laughed and went back to work.

Man, this was the life, Pee Dee thought. Aside from his work with Bud, this was what Pee Dee lived for. Pee Dee looked up at the clouds gathering close to shore. He didn’t like the looks of them. “We’re done here,” he shouted. “Skiff’s full. We got maybe fifty unculled bushels.”

“Not yet,” Bobby called back. “Just a bit longer. There’s a big demand for Christmas. I could stand to make some money.”

Pee Dee rubbed his back. They’d already spent hours slogging through the soft mud bottoms and swinging tongs to get those oysters out of the cold water, and the tide had turned. It was backbreaking and dangerous work. But he went along, as he always did. And the beer was hitting the spot.

A short while later the wind started picking up and the strong, treacherous tide brought water rushing over the flats. Pee Dee scrunched his face in worry as he looked over his bateau. It was heavy with shells and mud and sat dangerously low in the water. He figured he only had eight inches of freeboard. Any ten-foot wave could sink the bateau.

“We gotta get outta here. Let’s make a run for it!” he called to Bobby.

Bobby was bringing in a load of oysters. He looked up when the wave hit, swamping the low-riding bateau. Pee Dee shouted for Bobby as the boat quickly sank beneath them. He caught a glimpse of Bobby flailing in the water, grasping at the sky. His hip waders were filling fast, pulling him under. Pee Dee’s own waders were dragging him down, too, like they were filled with frigid cement. In a panic, he lurched to grab hold of the gas tank floating by and clung for his life. Pee Dee was tossed around like a bobber on a fishing line. He lost sight of Bobby and tried to call for him, but saltwater scalded into his throat. His chest felt like it wanted to burst.

It all happened fast, but it seemed like slow motion. Maybe a minute had passed from his sight of Bobby until he was gone, but it felt like hours. Hypothermia was setting in fast and the current was pushing him. He was about to give up when he
realized he could put his feet down on the mud. He didn’t remember walking in to shore.

The rest of the day was a blur. Pee Dee awoke in a nearby hospital, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember how he got there. Shortly after he’d regained consciousness, the doctor came to see him. His death was interrupted, the doctor told him. What they called a near drowning. Pee Dee had taken on a lot of water, and some had collected around his lungs. But he was lucky, the doctor told him. He’d survived.

September 21, 2008

McClellanville

Pee Dee leaned his head against the warehouse and felt the sting of salt in his eyes. That sting was one of the most vivid memories of Bobby’s death. The saltwater had burned his eyes, his throat, his chest. The memory still stung like salt on a fresh wound. Time had never dulled the pain. If anything, the pain had intensified. On that day, he’d lost not only Bobby but Bobby’s father. And a good part of Bud, too.

This was what people couldn’t understand. How could two grown men who’d spent their lives on the ocean get caught in such a rookie situation? If it was Pee Dee who’d died and Bobby who came home to tell the story, nobody would have
been talking about it fifteen years later. But it was Bobby who’d died, and Pee Dee would never be forgiven.

Pee Dee couldn’t blame Oz for hating him. He hated himself. Pee Dee still couldn’t look back on the accident without trying to figure what he might’ve done to save Bobby. How he could’ve handed Bobby the gas tank. Not once didn’t he wish it was him who’d died that day, not Bobby.

Pee Dee dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it with his boot. Then he cleared his throat and spat. It was time to face the music. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, feeling the grime, then shuffled with slumped shoulders out onto the dock. He smiled weakly at the old captains, lifting his hand in a meek wave and a show of respect, wincing when all talk came to an abrupt stop. Pee Dee’s gaze went straight to Oz.