Free The Marauders by Tom Cooper Page B

“Why’d I be glad?”
    “Because you were right,” Wes said. “That I wouldn’t finish.”
    His father cut him a look. “I don’t think about the boat.”
    “Because you never took it seriously.”
    “If you don’t take it serious, how you expect me to?”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “Forget it.”
    They stopped and faced one another.
    “Where’s your time go? Your money?” his father said. “I’ll tell you. Screwing around.”
    “I’m working all the time. For you.”
    “Yeah, okay.”
    “If I had more time, the boat would have been finished a long time ago.”
    “With what?” his father asked. “Popsicle sticks?”
    “You want me to steal the wood?” Wes asked. “Go in the shipyard and steal the parts?”
    “Why you getting so nasty? You brought it up.”
    “Loan me the money.”
    “Crazy talk.”
    “Loan me the money and I’ll have this boat done in three months. You’ll see.”
    “What money, Wes? I don’t have a nickel to piss on.”
    “Well, neither do I. When I do, I’m going to finish the boat.”
    Wes’s father only looked at him rankly and shook his head.

    And then the other night at dinner, when Wes mentioned the BP money. He and his father were eating supper when a news story about the oil spill came on the television. The pretty reporter woman was talking about the settlement checks the trawlers and fishermen were getting for their cleanup work and business losses in the spring.
    “That guy come by to talk about the settlement again?” Wes asked.
    “Comes nearly every day, little dapper dickhead,” his father said.
    Wes looked at his father and waited.
    “Why?” his father asked.
    “Why not just take the money?” Wes said. “It’s free.”
    “Free? Is that how you look at it?”
    Wes shrugged.
    “Somebody burns down your house and offers you five dollars. That’s free?”
    Wes kept quiet, already regretting mentioning the subject.
    “Let’s get this straight. It’s not free. Not when they destroy the place you’ve lived all your life. That’s about as far from free as you can get.”
    All of these things were on Wes’s mind when his father drove his truck into the gravel lot at half past nine. Wes was sitting on the dockwith his feet dangling over the side and rose as his father hobbled across the lot and down the dock. His white hair was mashed on one side, like he’d slept on it, and his cranberry polo shirt with the white chest-stripe looked rumpled. He passed Wes without a look or word.
    He spoke only once they were aboard the
Bayou Sweetheart
and he had the engine running. “Your friend came over,” he said.
    Wes looked at him quizzically.
    “The oil guy. Guy you want me to go to prom with.”
    Was said nothing. It was going to be one of those nights.
    “Guy wouldn’t let me go. Real slickster. On and on and on. Try to be polite, people’ll fuck you ten ways to the altar.”
    Wes stooped to untie a mooring rope from a dock cleat.
    “What’s that?” his father said from the wheelhouse.
    “I didn’t say anything.”
    “All right then. It’s already late.”
    Wes checked the nets and trawls as his father piloted across the languorous purple bayou. Wes couldn’t see any oil in the water, not yet. A good sign.
    Once they reached the pass Wes lowered the trawls and Wes’s father steered the boat against the current. Twenty minutes later he shifted the boat into idle and Wes lifted the swollen nets. The haul looked considerable, much better than the night before. His father climbed down from the wheelhouse and put on gloves and helped Wes load the catch onto the sorting table.
    As they picked through the shrimp, a realization struck Wes like lightning. The ice. “Remember the ice,” his father had said.
    He picked through the teeming haul, dread clenching his gut. He braced himself for the inevitable moment, wondered what he could do. He decided he’d play dumb. Pretend that it was his father who was supposed to bring the ice.
    When the