Free Where by Kit Reed Page B

OK?”
    Earl grins. “About like you’d think. There are good days and bad days, but, dude. Did you not turn on your car radio?”
    â€œSignal’s all messed up. What’s going on?”
    â€œYou live out there, asshole. You tell me.”
    â€œWasn’t home, can’t get back.”
    â€œOh, crap.”
    â€œIt’s not like I didn’t try. Roadblocks, guards everywhere, all feisty and armed and dangerous. Your old bud Jack Stankey’s holding ’em off at the pass.”
    â€œShuh, that ain’t the half of it,” Earl says, slipping right back into it, talking the way they did, touch of this, touch of that, a little bit of Gullah in the overtones, just enough to signify that they know who they are and who their people are, two twelve-year-olds out in the boat, belching crabmeat and leftover port, same as it ever was. Except it’s not. “Nobody gets on Kraven and nobody comes off of it. There’s some kind of quarantine or embargo or some damn thing. It’s all over the radio.”
    â€œNot mine.”
    â€œCB, dude, coastal band. I’m o’ tell you, you can’t get there from here.”
    Davy looks at the skies. Helicopters circle like angry bees feinting at the heart of Kraven island. “It don’t stop them.”
    â€œUnelse they try to land.”
    â€œI need your boat, Earl, I’ll keep care of it.”
    â€œCoast Guard’s out there, so forget it, police boats circling low and vicious, like sharks.”
    â€œNot if I go around and come in from the ocean.”
    â€œOpen water? They’ll pick you right off.”
    â€œIf I anchor on the far side of the sandbar, bodysurf in, they won’t even know I’m there.”
    â€œUnelse you get caught in the rip.”
    â€œRiptide? Man, everybody knows how to get shut of that. Drop in at the right place and I can ride it until it spits me out pretty much where I need to be. You got an anchor in that thing?”
    â€œShut up, I’ll carry you. Get in.”
    â€œDude!” Davy strips down to his briefs and hesitates, passing his phone and his wallet from hand to hand.
    â€œPut your particulars in here, you’ll need ’em when you get stopped.”
    Davy’s teeth clash and lock tight. “Nobody stops me.”
    Earl throws him the waterproof pouch. “Yeah, right.”
    â€œYou drop me and take off instanter, right?”
    â€œFuck that shit.” Earl hands down his tackle box and the bait bucket and jumps in. “Bluefish are running. Might as well drop a line while I cover you.”
    They’re out on the water just like always, easy together, like nothing else is going on. For the moment it’s so peaceful that when the sound of a remote explosion rocks Davy’s head back on his neck, it picks him up and puts him down in a new place. He flashes on that classic scene in old movies— the party, the dance, the picnic where everyone’s so happy that you know something awful is about to come down: the last good time .
    Boom.
    â€œDynamite.” He snaps back into himself. “They’re sounding the lake.”
    Earl says, “To see what floats up…”
    Davy doesn’t want to finish it for him, but he does. “Because they’re fixing to drag.”
    â€œFor bodies.”
    â€œFuck.”
    â€œGood news, asshole.”
    â€œHow is that good?”
    â€œIt’s almost dark. They’re all over to the lake with their grappling hooks and shit, so nobody cares which way you come in or how you come in and they sure as hell won’t mess with me, cool Gullah-man, wants him some pike. Keep low in the boat, you hear? Roll over and roll out when I tell you, and you’ll end up at Powell’s Inlet, halfway to Powell’s dock.”
    They’re so easy with each other that they go along in silence until it’s time. Earl says, “I’ll wait on you. Come