Free Thief by Mark Sullivan Page A

a roof over a man’s head day after day, year after year makes him beholden, submissive, willing to stand in freezing cold water for hours on end if his benefactor says so.
    Arsenault chuckled.
    Then he thought about his interlude with Cassie Knox the afternoon before, how her cocoa buns had looked when he’d been behind her and—
    â€œBig Beau?” his grandson yelled over the drone of the outboard. He was sitting up front, looking back. They’d reached the bayou’s main channel.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Arsenault replied, turning them south.
    â€œSanta coming tonight?”
    â€œYou know he is. Packing his sleigh right now.”
    Little Beau looked concerned. “I can’t figure out how he lands that sleigh of his down south with no snow.”
    Understanding he was now navigating tricky waters, Arsenault hesitated before saying, “Teflon runners. They’re nonskid. Land and slide on anything.”
    â€œOh,” his grandson said, before turning to face the front.
    The mogul smiled as he rounded a bend in the bayou and saw the plantation home he and Louisa had built after Katrina destroyed the old one. Though barely two years old, Twelve Oaks looked like it had been put together in the mid-eighteen hundreds, with a long low veranda facing the water and upper balconies with iron railings that wrapped the entire second floor of the mansion. In the windows, Christmas lights and candles glowed. Louisa loved the holidays and spared no expense decorating. Ever.
    He pulled up to the dock, threw the lines to Little Beau, and made sure his knots were sound. Then he carried the guns and walked with the boy up the slight grade to a smaller structure known as the “shooting house.”
    â€œYou keep practicing, Grandpa will take you down to Argentina next year,” Arsenault said. “See ducks by the thousands.”
    â€œThat true?” Little Beau said.
    â€œSwear on my mama’s grave,” the mogul said.
    â€œDad come?”
    Arsenault hesitated, but then thought of his son-in-law forced to be outside in a duck blind for six or seven days, and said, “Sure, he can come if he can get away from the classroom.”
    They went into the shooting house and sat before lockers just off the main room that featured trophies Arsenault had taken over a lifetime of hunting around the world. He and his grandson stripped out of the heavy jackets and muddy waders, set them out for Cecil and Hank to scrub and dry, and put the guns in the rack for Cecil and Hank to clean and oil. They took hot showers and got dressed in dry clothes, and walked together across the lawn to the main house.
    There was a small army of cooks working in the kitchen under the watchful eye of his wife who was drinking coffee with their daughter, Sophia.
    â€œMom, I limited out!” Little Beau cried.
    Arsenault’s daughter smiled and threw her arms wide. Sophia had his wife’s dark, timeless beauty, the kind that could easily have attracted a man with much deeper pockets. But the mogul threw away that thought and said, “You’d a been proud of how the boy handled that gun, sight better than his daddy.”
    His daughter held Little Beau, asked, “Where is Dad?”
    â€œStill out in the timber,” her son said.
    â€œWanted to fill his limit,” Arsenault said. “Be back with Cecil and Hank.”
    â€œYou’re cruel, you know that, Dad?” Sophia said.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” the mogul said, suppressing a smile. “Peter only gets out once or twice a year.”
    â€œBig Beau said I keep practicing he’ll take me to Argentina next year,” his grandson said. “Dad, too.”
    â€œOh, Dad’ll love that,” Sophia said, rolling her eyes.
    Wanting to change the subject, Arsenault looked to his wife, said, “I think Little Beau’s got his heart set on some of your hot spiced cider, Big Mama.”
    His