Shooting at Loons (25 page)

Already Lev was taking on the outlines of a Proust novel—something I know that I read and absorbed, yet can no longer remember why, nor even if, I actually enjoyed it.

“See somebody you recognize?” Kidd asked.

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t.”

My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation,
I hear the sweet tho’ far-off hymn
That hails a new creation;
Thro’ all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?

—Anonymous

“All things considered,” said F. Roger Longmire when he finally got through to me next morning, “I’m gonna tell Judge Mercer’s chief to find someone else to sub for Mercer next week. Harrison Hobart can still sit in for you in Dobbs if you want to take a couple of days off.”

“That’s okay,” I told him. “I’ll be fine by Monday, but thanks, Roger.”

While we’d talked, Kidd had cleaned the bathroom and swabbed down the kitchen floor. There was nothing else to do except finish packing and run the vacuum over the carpet in the rest of the cottage. Sue keeps the place like a dollhouse and no way was I going to leave it less than pristine.

Kidd was so anxious for us to get going that he’d already brought in the rocking chair from the porch and had to lift it up while I vacuumed underneath.

“Won’t have to be this fussy at
my
place,” he said as I stashed the vacuum in the closet.

I doubted that. Last night, when he was talking me into finishing the weekend at his cabin on the banks of the Neuse near New Bern, he’d described it with such pride of ownership that it wouldn’t be too many notches below Sue’s standards.

“Long as you have clean sheets,” I said.

We loaded the cars—we’d retrieved his from Shell Point last night and would caravan back to New Bern—and I walked out to turn off the water and lock up the pump house.

I glanced over toward Mahlon’s house where all was silent. Mickey Mantle had gone roaring out alone on his truck an hour or so ago. I couldn’t tell if Effrida was inside there or not, but I spotted Guthrie sitting at the very end of the ramshackle pier gazing over the water to Shackleford Banks and I walked down to join him.

He didn’t look around though he must have felt my footsteps along the rickety planks.

“I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye,” I said.

The empty skiff was tied up to the piling beside him and it bobbed up and down in the gentle waves. I guess it really was his now.

“I never did get you a real mess of clams,” Guthrie said.

“Next time,” I said. “Guthrie, I’m really sorry—”

“Me and Daddy, we’re going to finish the boat and fish her like Grandpap wanted us to do.” There was a fiercely dogged look on his face. The wind whipped his sun-bleached hair straight back and I saw that his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “Daddy says we’ll take her up around Norfolk when she’s finished. Maybe even hire us on a couple of men and go fish off New Jersey. You’n catch more fish up there in one day than you can in a whole week down here ‘cause the water’s colder. We’re gonna do real good.”

I wanted to hug him like one of my nephews. Instead, I held out my hand and he shook it solemnly.

“Don’t you worry,” he said. “We’re gonna do fine.”

At the cottage, Kidd was waiting at the wheel of his car.

I turned the key in the new lock we’d installed, then got into my car and switched on the ignition.

At the end of the driveway, as I waited for Kidd to pull out onto the road, I glanced back in my rearview mirror. Sunlight sparkled on the water, blue sky gleamed through the empty windows of the unfinished trawler, and out on the landing, Guthrie sat motionless with his face to the sea.