Free The Season of Open Water by Dawn Tripp Page B

trucks waiting on shore.
    Luce and Bridge leave the shallows. They climb back up to where they have left their things—the potatoes and the baitfish pail. They move to a higher point that faces east-northeast. They watch from there.
    Distant black shapes moving against the sand, men working, unloading crates off the boats, crate after crate, passed down a chain, man to man, strung from the shallows to higher ground, and loaded into the trucks. As the boats speed off back out into the black water, the trucks back around, straight in a line. Luce and Bridge can see their headlamps filing up the dirt path around Allen’s Pond toward Horseneck Road.
    The baitfish pail is between them. Bridge crouches down. She puts her hand in and she can feel the shiners, their noses quick through her fingers. They cut, darts of silver through the pail. There is one in particular, smaller than the rest. She tries to follow it with her eyes as it pounds back and forth, a half-mad thing, small nose, small fins, into the sides of the pail.
    Luce says something, but she does not hear him.
    â€œWhat’d you say?” she asks.
    â€œWhat’s up with you tonight?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œYes, there’s something. Something’s been gnawing at you all day.”
    â€œYou’re wrong.”
    â€œSince last night at Asa’s.”
    Her head snaps up.
    â€œThat’s it then,” he laughs. “Dead cousin Asa’s got you spooked.”
    â€œYou don’t know what you’re talking about, Luce.”
    â€œSure I do.”
    â€œI’m quite sure you don’t.”
    He does it then, one swift jerk of his leg, his foot kicks the pail and it turns over on its side, a soft rush as the water empties out, the fish flush into the sand. And perhaps it is what she should have expected. Perhaps it is what she should have known he would do.
    The cry of a nightbird hammers through the stillness.
    â€œYou didn’t have to do that,” she says.
    Luce shrugs. “They’re no use.”
    â€œThat was cruel.”
    â€œBut you forgive me.”
    She shakes her head. “No.”
    He digs a fire-pit in the sand, lines it with rocks, then slips into the brush to gather driftwood. He leaves her there, at the tip of the island, and still she watches them—the baitfish—small, wet-skinned, smooth, flipping slower now, breathless, caked with dirt.
    She looks across the water back toward shore. She can see the hidden curve of Little Beach, quiet now, the empty sand rinsed by the moon.
    She finds a smudge on her wrist. She rubs it out. She crosses her arms under her head and lies back, her thoughts grow liquid, moving dark wind, blue flax, sweet crushed fern, the smells of deep fall, the last smells, bayberry, wild grape, salt rose, pine. The darkness is cold. The stars pierce the sky, harsh white scraps of distant light.
    She had felt the change in her grandfather that morning—he was more quiet, kept more to himself—and she knew it was about the money. Maybe he was kicking himself for not taking the job. He had told her, hadn’t he?—it was a job he wouldn’t take.
    It was not the first time he’d been approached. She knew this. The first time was years back, when the rum trade was just starting up—back when they still used small boats—any craft that would float—catboats, dories, skiffs. It was clear and simple business then— nearly legitimate business. The rum-zone was only three miles offshore and supply ships like the
Arethusa,
with her captain Bill “the real” McCoy, would hang off Nomans Land for weeks. The small boats went out to meet the mother ships, took on their load, then sped back in.
    In those early years, she knew, there was no hijacking, no piracy, no go-through men. It was before the big syndicates, before the mystery sinking of the
John Dwight
and the slaughter of her crew. Bridge was just twelve that afternoon