Porch Lights (31 page)

I heard Buster grunt as I left the room. It wasn’t a grunt of disapproval; it was one that sounded like
Well, how do you like that? I can help myself!
Don’t read too much into it, I thought.

I opened Charlie’s door quietly and peeked inside his room. The only movement was the gentle turning paddles of the overhead fan and the rise and fall of Charlie’s back. He was sleeping on his stomach; his torso and one leg were on the bed and the other leg was in midair, hanging over the floor. At some point he had kicked the covers off, and the leg of his pajama bottom was pushed up to his knee. He was a study in boyhood, and if I’d been an artist I would’ve set up my easel right there.

“Charlie?”

“Huh?”

“Time to get up, sweetheart. Gotta go get the dogs. And breakfast is ready.”

“ ’Kay. I’m coming.”

Was it possible that he had grown overnight? He rolled out of bed and walked past me, headed for the bathroom. It seemed that his bottoms were too short.

When Charlie came back with Stanley and Stella and settled them on the front porch, we all sat down at the table. Buster announced that he was going fishing and did Charlie want to come along? I said that I would like to come along too, and they looked at me like I had just said Barack and Michelle were coming for dinner or some kind of crazy thing like that.

“Why can’t
I
fish with y’all too?” I said, feeling a little defensive, but one of the things I’d told myself is that if we should ever flirt with a reconciliation, I would try to find out what it was about fishing that held such an attraction for him and thousands of other men.

“No! Of course you
can
! You just never
wanted
to go fishing before!” Buster said.

“Well, where are you going to fish?”

“I was thinking Breach Inlet,” Buster said.

“Wonderful! Can we stop at Thomson Park for a few minutes?”

“What kind of Thomson Park?” Buster said.

“I like parks,” Charlie said.

“No, no. Not that kind of park. Buster, I’ll bet you a dollar that you never even heard about Colonel Thomson, did you? Because the whole site is pretty new. I just learned about him myself.”

“What is it? More historical markers?”

Buster was highly skeptical about combining a fishing trip with history or anything that smacked of a nonrecreational event. I knew him. I could see disillusionment on his face.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” I said, “if it’s boring, I’ll bait the hooks!”

“I want to see that!” Charlie said. “Glam touch a live wiggly thing? No way!”

“Way! Glam’s not afraid of bait! And this park is not like those boring plaques along the highway,” I said. “It’s an inspiration. No lie.”

“We’ll see about all that,” Buster said.

“Charlie, why don’t you go run the dogs? I’ll clean up the kitchen and get dressed. And Dr. Hemingway? Prepare your mind to be boggled by how many fish I bring home.”

“Yes, but are you going to rise to the challenge of cleaning them?” Buster said.

“Absolutely not! Nasty! That’s a boy job. I cook them. That’s my job.”

“I’m gonna go get everything together,” he said, kind of laughing to himself. “Is my cleaning table still under the house?”

“Well, yes, but it’s been repurposed as a potting table for my plants,” I said.

“What?”

“I guess you can just move everything to the ground and hose it down.”

“Oh, fine. I leave the house for a little bit, and my cleaning table becomes a home to begonias and geraniums.”

“A little bit? How’s eleven years? Should I have made it a shrine?”

“Humph. Well, I’ll just go see about it, then . . .”

“Well, you just go on and do that!”

What did he think? That his slippers were still tucked under his side of the bed and his reading glasses were still on the end table next to his favorite chair?

Even the newly allegedly mellow Buster could be exasperating.

Buster knew a spot on the back of the island where you could throw a cast net and catch shrimp. He intended to use live shrimp for bait. Yikes. I wasn’t so sure that I felt comfortable about stabbing them with a hook and murdering them in cold blood, although I suspected they didn’t even have blood, and if they did, it wasn’t red or warm. In any case, Charlie had never thrown a cast net, and he was excited to try it. I had my camera ready because there was nothing more beautiful than a young boy throwing a net, set against the long green marsh grass and the brilliant blue of the Carolina sky. My camera was the size of a deck of cards, making it extremely easy to carry in a pocket (which was why I ever used it) and it’s the most high-tech gizmo I owned.

Buster began to give Charlie a lesson. “You see, Charlie, you really need three arms for this, but since we only have two, we use our teeth to help. Watch this.”

Buster took his net, which was only about forty-eight inches in circumference and stretched it out between the full breadth of his arm span.

“See? You hold it like this. But you take the middle point in between your teeth like this.” He demonstrated.

Then he took the net out of his mouth; it had surely seen better days and had been in God only knew whose mouths. I was certain that it had never been washed and that it had to be infested with germs.

“I think catching bait with a cast net is a feat better accomplished by males of the species,” I said.

Charlie, who now held the net between his teeth, started to giggle. He looked at me and said, “Gross, huh, Glam?”

“Yes, gross. Just remember to let go with your teeth,” I said, “or it might pull your teeth out.”

“For real?” Charlie looked a little horrified.

“Aw, Annie! Don’t go scaring the boy! I’ve been throwing cast nets since I was half his age.”

“Is it true, Guster? I just grew these teeth, you know. They’re new.”

“Sort of. Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll throw it a few times and you watch. Then if you want to do it, you can give it a try. Watch the timing, okay?”

I pulled out my camera and got ready. Just as Buster sent the net flying across the water, I snapped a picture. Perfect! Buster pulled the net back in, and it had a few shrimp inside.

“See these little guys? This is what shrimp look like before they get their stupid little heads snapped off.”

“Wow! Cool! Look at them jumping around!”

“Well, they prefer water to land, so let’s put some water in that bucket, pick them off the net, and drop them in.”

Charlie was mesmerized by the whole process. And pretty soon, with Buster’s guidance, he was handling live shrimp and throwing the cast net like he’d been doing it all his life too. Within a short period of time they caught plenty of bait. Best of all, I had wonderful pictures to show Jackie. It was so thrilling to witness the patience Buster had with Charlie and just as amazing to witness Charlie’s utter joy at discovering something new that he could now do with very reasonable proficiency for a boy of his age.

“Charlie?” Buster said. “If a man can fish? In this part of the world, he can feed himself and feed his family. It’s important to know how to do these things. Very important.”

Charlie nodded his head in agreement, Buster ruffled Charlie’s hair, and we went back to the car.

Buster started the engine, and as we backed out from the oyster-shell road, I could hear the water sloshing around in the bucket.

“What if that water gets on the floor of your car, Buster? It’s going to smell pretty funky.”

“Ah, Annie, real men don’t worry about that kind of hoo-ha, do they, Charlie?”

“No, sir, especially when the floor of the backseat has these rubber containers that the bucket’s in.” Charlie started to laugh.

“Now, don’t go telling all my secrets, Charlie, or Glam-ma will know too much!”

“Humph. Disrespectful naughty boys,” I said, pretending to be offended. “Let’s park right over there by Thomson Park.”

We did and we unloaded all the fishing gear, letting it rest beside the side of the SUV. The Breach Inlet Bridge was only steps away. We walked over to the tiny park that had been erected to the memory of Colonel Thomson and all the men who had fought with him.

Charlie and Buster looked at the weather-protected placards that told the basic story of the Battle of Breach Inlet, and I could see they were thoroughly uninterested.

“Okay, guys! Listen up! Now! Imagine this! It’s June twenty-eighth, 1776. You’ve got the American patriots on Sullivans Island and the British army on the Isle of Palms. There’re over three thousand Brits and
less than eight hundred patriots
, and we kicked their butts. I mean,
kicked
their butts the whole way back to Buckingham Palace!” God, I missed teaching history. “Right here! Right where you all are standing!”

“No way,” Buster said.

“Really?” Charlie asked.

“I never heard those numbers,” Buster said.

“On this very sandbar. Yep. Right here. Try to envision it. Can you imagine? No wonder Colonel Thomson’s nickname was ‘Danger’! Yep, that’s what they called him. Y’all want to drop a hook in the water now?”

“Wait a minute. Why didn’t they have more men to fight?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah, and how’d they win against odds like that?” Buster asked.

I had them right in the palm of my hand. “Because they outsmarted Major General Henry Clinton every step of the way. They had a few other things working for them too. Number one, part of Thomson’s troops were Indians and excellent fighters in nontraditional ways.
And
all the men were very good shots
and
the hot summer didn’t bother them one bit. Clinton’s men came over here, in
June
, mind you, dressed in big heavy wool uniforms, they had to sleep on the beaches, the alligators and snakes scared the devil out of them, and they were just eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

“Worse than I was?” Charlie said.

“Even worse, Charlie, even worse. But the main thing besides great leadership and knowing the terrain better than the British guys was that the American patriots had a real passion. They wanted their freedom more than anything else in the world, and they were willing to die fighting for it.”

“Wow,” Charlie said.

“Wait a minute,” Buster said. “Where the hell were General Moultrie and all those guys while this was going on?”

“Oh, come on, Buster! You know perfectly well where they were!”

“Yeah, I know, but I want you to tell our boy here.”

“Okay, they were at the other end of the island fighting another battle. You see, Charlie, in those days, this end of the island was all wilderness. There were no houses or anything. It was like a jungle. So, the other battle for Sullivans Island was fought with the British navy, and General William Moultrie was down the island in charge of that.”

“Tell him the best part, you know, about Parker,” Buster said, egging me on.

“Okay, but very briefly. You see the plan was that Admiral Sir Peter Parker and his nine Birtish ships would wipe out Fort Moultrie and then General Clinton’s men would swarm the island, wiping out anyone who was left. But Thomson, who fought against Clinton in this very spot, pushed back Clinton’s troops. So the British navy never got the ground support they were hoping for. And General Moultrie was focused on a couple of the ships in particular and one of them was the
Bristol
. That’s the one Admiral Parker was on. So don’t ask me how they did this, but one of Moultrie’s men shot Parker in the region of his backside and Parker’s fanny was exposed all through the battle.”

“WHAT?”
Charlie yelled, he was getting so excited.

“And his leg was hurt too, but who cares about that?” I added, but Charlie was already gone to heaven on the tidbit about Parker’s butt. I couldn’t blame him. I had not had a class of kids in all my years teaching who didn’t lose it when they heard the Parker story. “But anyway, it was the Americans’ passion for freedom that carried the day in both battles. And better leadership. Now can we go catch a fish? I’m starving!”

“How come I never heard any of this stuff in school?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll give it to you eventually. Pretty exciting, huh?”

“Wow, I’ll say,” he agreed.

“And your Glam has a way of making it all come to life,” Buster said and smiled at me.

Lord, I knew this man too well to think it was a random compliment. He was gunning for a ticket to the Magic Gate in the Master Suite. Uh-huh. I knew him better than I knew my own name. Maybe I’d let him pay a visit.
IF
he was very sweet.

We walked out to the bridge and across it a little ways.

“What are we going to catch, Guster?”

“Oh, we might get us some spottail bass or some trout. They’re running pretty good this time of year. Let’s just see. Can I bait your hook, Annie?”

“If you insist,” I said and was grateful that I didn’t have to put those darling little shrimp on my spit. Privately in my head? I gagged at the thought.

We stood by the railing on the bridge and fished until we had plenty of catch and the sun was becoming too much to bear. When Charlie pulled in his third trout, which had to be at least twenty inches long, we decided it was time to give it up for the day.

“This fishing rod is lucky, Guster! Thanks again!”

“It’s easy to cast, isn’t it?”

“Smooth as silk!” Charlie said, barely able to contain his enthusiasm each time he got a strike. “Ooh! Y’all! I got a whale on the line! I swear it’s a whale!”

“Don’t swear, darling! Let Guster help you!”

And of course, Buster would help him reel in his fish and get it off the hook.

I had caught two lovely bass. Buster caught one. We had enough fish to have a party. We gathered our gear and began to make the short walk back to the car.

“We can give a fish to Deb,” I said.

“And Steve,” Buster said.

“And I can make bouillabaisse. Bass is perfect for that.”

“What the hell is that?” Buster asked, and I was reminded that he despised anything that smacked of pretension. And in his mind
anything
French would meet that criterion, maybe even including Brie.