(2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery (17 page)

After I patched all the bullet holes, I spent enough money to get the mechanics working. That means that mechanically she works fine, but aesthetically she leaves much to be desired. This point did come to mind as I sat on the bow in my swim trunks watching the sun go down. And it was this thought swirling around my head when I heard my name being called from shore. I turned and saw Mandy Parker standing on the bank waving some papers overhead.

I stood up. "Wait a minute, I'll be right there." I paddled to shore, pulled up into the salt grass, and wondered how she'd found me.

She read my face. "Your Uncle Willee. And Google Earth."

"Oh."

She had to stand on her toes because her high heels were sinking into the mud. She laughed. "You weren't kidding when you said you lived on the water." She held out the folder in her hand. "The judge okay'd them. He can move tomorrow."

"You told the folks that?"

`Just got off the phone. They said they'd have his room ready first thing tomorrow morning." She paused and raised both eyebrows. "I thought maybe you'd like to go with me to take him over there."

"I would. Thanks."

She studied the view, noticed the fact that I had no neighbors anywhere, and looked at me. "How do you live out here? Don't you go nuts?"

"Come on, I'll show you."

She looked at my canoe. 'What, in that thing?"

"Well ... unless you can walk on water."

She stepped into the boat, sat facing me, and said, "If you flip this over and get my new suit wet, I'll ..."

"What?"

She looked at the water around us and then at the shore getting farther away and placed her hands on the gunnels. "Send you the dry cleaning bill."

We tied up, I helped her aboard, and she looked across my home. That's when she noticed the view. "Well ... it's hard to beat that."

It was sundown, and the light reflecting off the marsh had turned from root beer gold to fire red, swirled with violet and light patches of yellow and black. She sat on the bow, kicked her shoes off, and just shook her head.

"You hungry?"

She ran her finger over several of the patched bullet holes. She did not look impressed. "You can actually cook out here?"

"Well ... there are some limitations. But as long as you like grilled fish..."

"I'll try most anything once."

The mullet were coming up river, churning the top of the water like tiny swimmers in a race. Huge schools, three and four times the size of the boat, fed through the grass beds, which brought them within casting distance. I coiled the rope in my hand, bit one lead sinker to help it expand, then threw the cast net off the stern. I let it sink, pulled hard on the rope, and pulled up an entire net full of finger-sized mullet. She watched wide-eyed as I emptied the net onto the back of the boat.

"I guess you've done that before."

I put a dozen or so in a floating bait bucket and pushed the rest back into the water. I grabbed two poles, baited both the hooks, stretched the bobber knots to about six feet, and threw both lines off the bow. The lines landed, the current caught them, and the bobbers danced with the current.

Within a few seconds, both bobbers disappeared. I set both hooks, handed her a pole, and said, "Okay ... reel." In order not to get us tangled, I walked to the bow and gave her space to work the fish from the stern. This meant that, for a second, I turned my back on her. Unc had done this with me a thousand times. It's how I learned to fish. While I thought I was helping, giving her some space, hindsight says something different.

She grabbed the reel, pulled like me, hard against the fish, and the fish pulled back. There were just three problems with that. The fish she was reeling was bigger than mine-a good bit bigger; her drag was set too strong; and her nylons didn't grip the boat all that well. That meant when the fish pulled back, it pulled her. And she, with bad footing and not wanting to let go of the reel, followed the reel-over the railing and into the water.

I heard the splash, and my first thought was Please tell me that she did not just go overboard.

I slammed my rod in a holder, opened the bail to let the fish run freely, and found Mandy struggling to stay afloat on the other side of the boat. I dove in, grabbed her hand, and we pulled against the current toward the stern ladder. The depth beneath the boat at high tide was twelve to fourteen feet, but at low tide, like now, it was closer to six. And the oyster beds beneath the boat rose a good three feet off the bottom. If she kicked too hard and in the wrong place, she'd slice her foot in half.

Somehow in the process of going over and under she had gotten tangled in the fishing line. This meant that every few seconds the fish would pull on her other arm, submerging her just briefly. She reached the ladder, pulled herself up, and stood soaking wet and wide-eyed in the back of my boat. I grabbed a towel and sat her down, checking her feet to make sure she hadn't sliced them all to pieces. When I didn't see blood on her feet, hands, or legs, I stood back and waited for her to lambaste me.

That's when she started laughing. Not only that, but that's when I noticed she still had the rod in her hand. I was wrong. It wasn't that she'd gotten caught in the line-she'd just never let go of the rod. After about three minutes, she was laughing so hard she was crying. Finally she handed me the broken pole and said, "That better be one really big fish." And to her credit, the line was still taut.

By now the fish was exhausted. I netted him next to the boat, laid him on the deck, and shook my head. A thirty-inch red fish that weighed probably eight or nine pounds. That might not sound like much to the non-fisherman, but an eight-pound red can fight like a thirty-pound trout.

I reeled in my fish and held it next to hers. By then, Mandy had caught her breath. She pushed the hair out of her eyes, rubbed her smeared mascara off her cheek, and said, "Mine's bigger." She measured with her hands. "About twice as big."

I dropped the fish into the live well, opened the hatch, and led her downstairs. "There's the shower. It gets pretty hot, so test it before you step in. And in that closet you'll find some sweats and stuff that might fit." I shook my head. "It's a good thing your fish is bigger than mine ... otherwise I'd really feel bad."

I filleted the fish and sparked the gas grill. By the time she surfaced ten minutes later, I'd made cheese grits, sliced a tomato, and was nearly finished cooking the fish.

She climbed out of the hole, followed her nose, and sat opposite me, eyeing my work. "Wow, you really can cook."

I looked around at the mess I'd made and handed her a plate. "More of Uncle Willee's influence."

"He seems like one of a kind."

"Well, I'd hate to think there was more than one of him walking around. I'm not sure the world could handle it."

She eyed the two pieces of fish on the grill and said, "Which one's mine?"

I pointed with my fork. "The smaller one."

She flicked a forkful of cheese grits at me. "Get out of town."

I ducked and laughed.

I pulled up a folding chair for her, and we propped our bare feet on the rope railing and rested our dinner in our laps. We ate and chewed, watching the seagulls ride the breeze. Toward the ocean, ten or twelve porpoises swam upriver, flashing their fins like dolphins while hunting the mullet farther upstream.

Mandy eyed my right foot. "Is that a scar?"

I showed her the scar that ran from the bottom center of my foot and up the side of my arch. "Yeah ... I stepped on a piece of glass when I was about three."

She studied the six-inch scar. "That must have been some glass."

"I used to wish it'd go away, but now that I'm older. . ." I trailed off. "If it weren't for this ... I might forget."

"Forget what?"

"My dad. I only have one memory of him, and this scar reminds me that it was real."

I retold the memory for the ten thousandth time. When I'd finished, we were quiet awhile.

She pointed out into the water where I'd cast for our bait. "Is it always that easy to catch fish there?"

"Not always. Below us, it's pretty level. Maybe six to eight feet now. But out there it drops off like a shelf to maybe fourteen, even at low tide. So the fish hang out right there. It's safe, and there's usually an abundance of bait moving through in the rapid water."

"How'd you learn all this stuff?"

I shrugged. "Everything I know about fishing I learned from Uncle Willee."

"He's pretty good?"

"I swear, sometimes I think that man has gills."

"You know, most of the guys I work with don't ever talk about the men in their lives-and when they do, it's not to speak well of them. Seems like they're always fighting, trying to outdo one another or get away from each another."

"We've had our fights."

"Yeah, but I can hear it in the way you talk about him. You respect him. You spend time with him. And you seem to enjoy it."

I nodded. "When I was a kid, Unc had a boat. More of a big canoe really. Little 5-horse hanging off the back. If you leaned too far one way, it'd take on water. I remember one of the first times he brought me out here. He woke me long before the sun rose, handed me a biscuit, lathered me in sunscreen, baited my hook, and taught me patience. Since then, we've caught a lot of fish together."

"That seems to be the missing ingredient ... together." She shook her head. "In my line of work, I'm surrounded with men who don't care ... and it's the boys they spawn who pay the price for it."

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, trying to figure out how we just went from jumping overboard like Jonah to dissecting the world's problems like Dr. Phil. I motioned with my fork. "Bad day at the office?"

She looked down and stirred the grits around her plate. "Sorry. There ought to be a decompression chamber for DAs at the bottom of the totem pole."

"How'd you get assigned to the kid's case?"

"Oh ... I asked my boss if he'd let me in on it."

"Florence Nightingale?"

She smiled. "No ... it was just that picture of the kid. Sitting alone, in the back of that ambulance. No clothes, his body cut up, shaking, shivering, whatever. I just wanted to know who would do that to a kid. And why. And then I wanted to make sure they spent forever looking out through an iron grid."

"So, you're bent on vengeance?"

She shook her head. "No, justice. There's a difference."

"You learn that in law school?"

"No ... the grammar school playground."

"You want to walk me through that?"

"Somewhere around fourth grade, we were playing on a jungle gym. You know, the kind that looks like a geodesic dome. Anyway, I was hanging, my feet dangling, and this bully ran up and yanked my underwear down and completely off my feet." She shrugged. "All I could think of the rest of the day was how to get him back. He sat behind me, and as the weeks went by I realized that his grades were a lot like mine."

I smiled. "Good eyes?"

She nodded. "Near the end of the year we had those standardized tests coming up that determine whether you're fit to progress to the next grade. I went to my teacher, told her that I'd be out the day of the test, and asked if I could take them a day early. I did, and when his tests came back ... well, he repeated the fourth grade."

I sat back. "Wow ... remind me never to come up against you in court."

"Of course I was mad, but I was fair. He sank his own ship. Should've studied more." She paused to finish her fish. "So ... when I see pictures like that kid in the back of that ambulance, scared out of his mind, I remember the school yard, and that every bully gets his due."

"Let's hope so. Speaking of bullies, any leads on Bo?"

"I think so. If it's the same one, he's already in prison. I'm going to pay him a visit tomorrow." She looked at me. "You want to go?"

I didn't even have to think about it. "Sure ... as long as you promise not to tell Uncle Willee about our first fishing adventure. I'll never hear the end of it."

'When Mandy gave Sketch the good news about moving to Unc's, the kid didn't seem all that impressed. A lot of people worked really hard and fast to make that happen, and based on what little I did know of him, I knew that he knew that. His reaction told me a lot. It said he'd been moved around more than once and he'd stopped getting his hopes up with each new move. I knew because I'd done it too.

Before Willee and Lorna took me in, I'd bounced around a good bit. The first couple of times, I'd go into a new home and open up my heart, and then they'd beat me, or stick me in a corner and collect state money, or feed me food and nothing else. So I turned cold, too. Why? Because you can't hurt cold. If you get all warm and fuzzy for each new set of arms, you learn that most, if not all, are just as cold as the last. So you learn that if you turn cold, they can't hurt you.

At least that's the lie you tell yourself.

As I sat on the bow of my boat, I realized the lie that Sketch was telling. His facade was just as fake as mine had been.

Something told me this kid had been taken, and somewhere out there was somebody who wanted him. They might not be able to keep him, or even to voice it, but somebody wanted this kid. My nose told me that.

I remember my first summer with Unc and Aunt Lorna. We celebrated my birthday on July 31, and Unc gave me two things: a Timex waterproof wristwatch that glowed in the dark and the promise to take me fishing.

He doused us in Muskol bug repellant, and we stepped out the back door at 5:01 Am. I know because I looked. I carried a knapsack filled with lunch, and Unc carried the poles and a flashlight. We walked out the back door, through the back pasture, and skirted the Zuta. There was no moon that I can remember, and it was as dark as I'd ever seen it in the woods. We stepped in under the cover of the canopy of the swamp, and I remember asking, "Shouldn't we wait 'til it gets light?"

Unc shook his head and stepped into the swamp. I remember this, too, because he did the one thing I won't ever forget. He clicked on the flashlight, but rather than pointing it in front of him so he could see, he held it behind him so that I could. We walked nearly a mile, skirting cypress stumps and bog holes and skipping over ditches. Midway through, I tugged on his pant leg. He stopped and waited.