Free The Season of Open Water by Dawn Tripp Page A

they drove past? She wonders if he leaves a window open at night to let the sound of the wind on the water and the cold salt air from the outside world press in.
    â€œSo what do you think?” Luce is asking her now.
    â€œYes,” she answers.
    â€œYou weren’t listening.”
    â€œI was.”
    â€œWhat did I say?”
    â€œYou said you’d make off.”
    â€œSaid more than that.”
    â€œA train to California—all the rest of it.”
    â€œI said I might go to Arizona first.”
    â€œThat’s a dumb place to go.”
    â€œHell it is.”
    â€œArizona’s desert.”
    â€œYou can buy a lot for nothing there.”
    â€œNothing’s nothing in a desert.”
    There is a pause. Luce casts out again into the deeper water off the bar. He draws the line in, and she can hear the slow rub of the leader through the metal eye.
    â€œBesides,” she says with a smile, “you’d never leave Ma.”
    He doesn’t answer. He swings the rod back over his shoulder. A long and aching cast. She hears the bait slap the surface.
    â€œYou could come with me,” he says.
    â€œI could,” she replies.
    â€œYeah, you could.”
    They fish in silence. Her feet are numb, the feeling below her ankles sucked down by the cold.
    Once, her hook catches on a rock. She jerks the rod, the line breaks free and comes back to her, aloof and strange over the waves.
    Luce is ahead, and he sees the signal first. The red light blinking off Little Beach at the break in the shore by Allen’s Pond. The light blinks a homemade code, and he can tell by the glow around it that they have set the torch in a box so it cannot be seen from the land. Luce draws in his line without taking his eye off the light as Bridge comes up behind him.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asks.
    He grips her arm and points seaward to the black swift-moving shapes of two craft heading in. “Listen,” he says underbreath, and she listens and she can hear it—that high-pitched, distant, unmistakable sound of engines running, finely tuned.
    â€œThey’re heavy with a load,” Luce says. “Do you see how they ride in the water? That second one there—do you see—how low she goes—watch, when she hits light—there!—do you see the crates in her bow?”
    And she suddenly remembers that she has not told him.
    â€œThey came by today,” she says.
    â€œThirty foot each, at least, they must be. How much do you think it’s worth—that load they’re bringing in? Came down from Newfoundland, I’d bet. Or all the way from France.” Luce’s eyes are fixed on the boats, his face taut, rigid with excitement, his cheeks slashed with moonlight, and for a moment it frightens her, the hunger she sees in his face. “That’s what I should be doing, Bridge,” he says. His voice is hushed.
    â€œTo wind up dead like Asa?” she says flatly.
    â€œI’d do the job ten times better than Asa.”
    â€œDoesn’t mean you wouldn’t wind up dead.”
    But he does not take his eyes off the two boats heading in toward the red blinking signal light on shore.
    â€œHoney Lyons came by today looking for Noel,” she says.
    â€œYeah, what’d he come by for?”
    â€œHe brought three other men.”
    â€œWhat other men?”
    â€œI’ve never seen them before. But they were top-dressed, spats, rake hats. Fancy car.”
    She sees it register then in his face, what she is saying. He looks at her sharply.
    â€œYou think they want him to run?”
    â€œMight.”
    â€œHe’s too old.”
    â€œHe knows the river well as anyone. Can handle a boat better than you.”
    Luce doesn’t answer. He looks back toward the rum-running craft. They have reached the softer water of the bay. They cut off their engines and glide through the darkness on the tide, a strong clear line toward the beach and