by Amy Sorrells
“You were there?” Jed asked, unbelieving that scruffy old Larry might be part of such a story.
“Yep. That fish pulled at the line like a team of horses. A good-size snapper can be tough to pull in but ain’t nothing like a marlin. Rey wasn’t about to throw her back after that. Old girl gave him no choice but to stuff her.” Larry rubbed his bearded chin between his fingers. “Say, why don’t you two take my skiff out for a ride?”
“You sure?”
“I am. I ain’t gonna fix all this tackle today. Besides, I can mess with it here on the dock. After all you been through, I’m betting a boat ride’s just what you need. Keys are in the starter.”
And with that, Larry got up and out of his boat in a second. He patted my shoulder as he walked past me. “I sure am sorry, sweetheart. None of you deserved any of that.”
I watched Larry trudge down the docks. He looked back at me and winked as he opened the door to the Crab Shack.
“Who is that?” Jed asked.
“An old friend.”
“Awful kind of him to offer his boat.”
“Larry’s different, but he’d do anything for anybody. He wouldn’t have let us argue with him, either. ”
“Let’s go, then.” Jed jumped in the boat.
I hesitated, remembering I hardly knew much of anything about him. “Should I trust you out in the open sea, Jedediah?”
“Well, let me see. I smoke. I’m a foster kid. I have a crooked eye, and I don’t walk too straight, either. You know nothing about me.” He grinned and held his arms out wide. “Probably not.”
I folded my arms across my chest and studied him a moment, then threw one leg over the side of the gray-painted, box-like vessel. “My mama’d have a fit about this, you know. Thirteen and headed into the open bay with a boy barely more than a stranger.” I reached for Jed’s outstretched hand as the evergreen water threatened to pull me down between the steady safety of the dock and the boat.
“I have no doubt.” Jed grabbed my waist with both hands and pulled me aboard like I weighed nothing more than a bag of cotton candy. He drew me close enough to him that I caught the salty smell of clothes left outside to dry and the smell of tobacco.
“Life jacket?” Jed pulled one tight around his chest and held another out to me. “You better wear one. Besides the fact I’m a bunch of trouble, I don’t swim all that well. If you fall in, don’t count on me to save you.”
“You can’t swim?”
“I can hold my own in shallow water. But no, I never took lessons. Switched families too often. I guess each family thought the one before them took care of that milestone. Among others.”
I put on the life vest and pulled Larry’s old raincoat on over it to keep the wind from getting through to my skin. It smelled like old fish and oyster slime, but I was glad to have it.
The engine chortled to a bubbling growl, and I took charge of the steering. If Jed didn’t know how to swim very well, I wasn’t about to let him drive the boat. At least not in and out of a boat slat. Larry was generous, but he probably wanted his skiff back in one piece.
We putted out from between the docks into the glassy calm of the bay. Almost instantly, liberty ran its fingers through my hair, reaching straight to my soul. I plopped onto a bench next to the motor and watched the rocks and homes we were passing. The late-afternoon sun speckled the water and darted sideways between the thick-trunked palms and beach elder. Stagnant bilge water, bait, and exhaust combined to take me back to that last boat ride with Daddy. The boat pushed the water aside, leaving arrow-shaped ripples in the direction of our journey.
Tired of idling along in the oyster flats and shallow waters, I pointed the boat toward the center of Mobile Bay, where you could go and hardly make out the land. Before we knew it, water surrounded us on every side. Jed turned off the engine, and we floated, the water lapping and licking against the hull. Three or four other vessels dotted the horizon.
“If I could be anything in the world, I’d be a pirate.” Jed propped a floatation cushion on the end of his bench and tossed one to me. We leaned back against them, letting the sun warm our faces, chilled from the windy ride.
“They’re still out there today, pirates. They’re really not nice people, you know.”
“Maybe not. But I’d be a nice one.”
“How can you be a nice pirate? They steal and live like hobos, never staying anywhere long enough to settle down.”
“Then I guess you can say I already am a pirate.”
“You steal?” I wondered for the second time if I’d made a mistake taking this boat ride with him.
“Aw, no. I don’t steal.” He threw his burned-out cigarette butt into the sea.
I felt bad about my assumptions of him stealing all of a sudden and tried to make up for it. “Larry’s a pirate, you know. His full name’s Larry LaFitte. A direct descendant of Jean LaFitte.”
“Jean LaFitte? You’re kidding me. He’s one of the greatest pirates from these parts.”
“Yeah.”
“I read about him when I found out I was getting placed with a family in Bay Spring. Used to be nothing around here but groves of beach elder and sea grass and dunes higher than your head, especially down by the coast. A perfect hiding place for pirates, then and now. Some books said LaFitte floated off and lived his last days on an island. But others say he landed here, his ship and crew drifting into Cotton Bayou down by Gulf Shores. Used his ship as firewood so there’d be no trace of him and he could live in peace.”
“I feel bad for Larry. He’s got a kind of sickness in the head. Daddy explained it to me after the last time we fished with him. Lots of folks who have it live locked away in mental hospitals. But Daddy and my preacher found Larry living under the state pier down in Gulf Shores and took him in. Said he used to be a track star somewhere around these parts. Fought in Vietnam too. Almost died there. His head problems started over there, and he couldn’t find help when he came home. But Daddy and Preacher Beckett found him a place to live. Set him up with a boat of his own so he could make a living oysterin’.” I pointed to a half dozen oyster boats floating near a shallow spot offshore, their captains working stilt-like rakes along the bottom.
“Daddy always liked stories of folks who got second chances. That’s why he liked Larry, I guess. Also why he named his boat The Jubilee, after Leviticus 25:10, when God erased the debts and wrongs of everybody’s past. God gave ’em another chance. That’s what He did for Larry. Gave him a jubilee.”
Jed kept his eye on the clouds shimmering white against the deep blue sky. Although it coulda been the wind, his eyes moistened with what I took to be emotion. He leaned back and pulled his hat down over his eyes.
“Folks around town make fun of him, ’cause of how he is, not talking much and still looking like he’s homeless. It’s like the world sucked the normal out of him and locked him inside some kind of cage in his mind, and now he only comes out when he wants to, and even then, sometimes in pieces.”
“He talked to me.”
“Yeah, he did. Another reason I figured you’d be all right to hang with, at least for one afternoon.” Waves lapped against the sides of the boat, and a barge stacked high with forty-foot containers of all colors loomed on the horizon. “My aunt, Comfort, she’s in a place like that right now. Hasn’t hardly come out of her house ’cept to sit on the rockers with Solly since a few days after Daddy and Uncle Cole shot each other.” I didn’t want to tell Jed why she was having a harder time recovering from everything than the rest of us. Turned out, he already knew.
“I’ve known some girls like her. Girls who’ve been raped.”
“How’d you know Comfort—”
“I read the newspaper.” He rolled over onto his elbow and faced me, his eyes meeting mine for the first time since I started telling him about Larry.
“Princella said they pai
d so no one would put that part in the paper.”
“Must’ve paid them after it went to print. I only saw one report that mentioned it, the day after the shooting.”
So the whole town did know.
“Anyway, I’ve known girls who went through similar stuff. Rape. Incest. You name it. You see it all when you’re a foster kid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s made me realize everybody hurts. And everybody needs a friend. And hurtin’ people, they need friends most.” He sat up and leaned over the side of the boat to let his fingers glide along the water. “You ever been to a zoo?”
“Sure. There’s one over in Gulf Shores with a bunch of exotic animals. Tigers, even.”
“Well, think about those tigers, how they pace back and forth, eyes staring past you, caged up but seeing freedom out past the bars all around them. Think they like living in there?”
“Probably not.”
He sat back up and leaned toward me. “Especially not if they lived free beforehand. But think about if that’s all they’ve known. They might think they want to get out in the world and explore and run like the other cats, but they might find, once they’re out there, the world feels too big and dangerous.”
“What’s that have to do with Comfort?”
“Those are the people who need a friend. I seen all kinds of people get the hope beat out of ’em. Girls like her, even younger. Babies who have their innocence stolen from them. It’s like they’re locked up in a cage of fear. You can see in their eyes they want to get out and taste the world again, but they can’t, because they’re scared. Their prisons feel safe. Sometimes they don’t even realize they’re all locked up until someone believes in them and sets them free.”
“We believe in Comfort. Me, Mama, Ernestine. Especially Solly. They’re supposed to get married this summer. Doesn’t seem to make a difference, though.”
“Don’t give up. It will.” He fiddled with his fishing rod, put a chub on the end of it, and handed it to me. “Here. Let’s see what we can get.”
He pulled two co-colas out of the cooler he’d brought. I waited to sense even the slightest tug or nibble on the line. Fishing bored some folks, but waiting, to me, was the best part. Something about throwing in something small and expecting to haul in something bigger. Something about hope.
The water pulled the fishing line farther as we drifted along, and the wind blew the fine string so it hung and curved on the air. Then, more than a twitch but less than a yank, something tugged my line. I waited to be sure, then it tugged again. “Hey! I think I got something!”
As I reeled in some line, the fish pulled back something fierce. I leaned back and reeled, leaned back and reeled.
“I see it! It’s a snapper! Here, I’ll take it a minute if you want to see.” Jed took the rod from my hands, and I leaned over the side next to him. Flashes of bright pink scales flashed through the froth and foam of the dark teal ocean. The line disappeared in the mad mix of it, and the fighting grew wilder the closer Jed pulled him in. Half the great fish’s body flipped out of the water. One last yank, and it flew over the side of the boat and flipped and flopped across the deck. We scooted and jumped to avoid its sharp spines and spasms until Jed managed to gently step on its head to use pliers to free the beast from the hook.
“Hoo-eee! What a snapper!” Jed hollered.
The fish gasped for air. Its gills yawned open and shut, and its whole body rose and fell, desperate and pleading for a breath. I crouched down close to it, the fish’s eyes glassy with shock. Its body arched and flipped as Jed put one foot across its belly and ratcheted the hook loose. Jed stepped back, and I wrapped my arms around the slimy, wet fish, fighting to keep my balance and stand without letting it slip.
“Anni, what are you doing?”
I pressed my lips against one of its pearly pink gills, then careened the parched fish over the side of the boat. He lay on top of the water, too stunned to move, then turned himself over and swam off in a skitter into the dark safety of the sea.
“What’d you do that for?”
“I don’t know. I just had to save it.” My chest heaved with shock and fear and glee at saving the life of that fish, the smelly goo of it stuck to Larry’s coat.
Annoyance fell from Jed’s face, and for the second time that afternoon, his eyes turned moist and pink. “Yeah.”
I knew then and for sure I could trust this boy.
Yes, I could trust him indeed.
We sat next to each other on the bench in the middle of that small boat as a barge chugged by, story upon story of containers glaring down and mocking the smallness of us, two kids in a boat saving a fish no one cared about but us.
Lè pyebwa jwe ak van, li pèdi fèy li.
“When the tree plays with the wind, it loses its leaves.”
CHAPTER 15
Anniston
After straightening things up in Larry’s boat and thanking him, Jed offered to ride back with me on our bikes.
“Can we stop at your place?”
“Why would you want to do that?” His voice held a sudden coldness.
“Thought it might be nice to see where you live.”
“Not today.”
We rode side by side toward the country and the orchards, avoiding streets that led to the library and the trailer park behind. The silence between us felt awkward. A big crow flew along the edge of the sky, almost as if flying along with us. Never could figure out why folks don’t like blackbirds. They get a bad rap on account of them stealing pecans. Daddy threw fits about them, said they could eat as much as fifteen pounds of pecans a month. Still, they’re so pretty when they fly, ebony wings with deep shades of blue like strong shadows pushing the air behind them. Hawks, too, for that matter, the way they circle and float on the air, hanging there despite the pull of the earth, waiting ever so patient until God gives them something to eat.
I was grateful when we finally reached the end of the driveway shared by Comfort’s house and Princella and Vaughn’s. “Wait here.”
Jed held my bike at the end of the forked, red ribbon of dirt leading to Comfort’s, while I went to her porch to get the empty basket. Empty except for another poem.
a withered leaf
a pale withered fragment
fractured and afraid
a scream in the dark
smothered by hands
covered in riches
buried in sand
a stump of a tree
beat down and thinned
too late for March
or balmy sea winds
no, little girl
you mustn’t say a word
no, little girl
be pretty, not heard
I set the basket on the ground next to my bike. “Let’s stop here a minute. I don’t want to go home yet.”
Jed didn’t ask why, and I felt somehow the fact he didn’t want to show me his home and the fact I didn’t want to go back to mine shared a lot of the same reasons—reasons neither of us had words for yet, and maybe wouldn’t ever. We set our bikes on the ground by a fresh-cut stump of one of the larger pecan trees that had been thinned the week before, and I handed him the poem.
His brow furrowed as he read. “Your aunt wrote this?”
“Yeah. She’s been leaving poems like this for us—well, for me—every time we bring her a basket of things. She’s gotta be getting tired of those walls.”
“Maybe. But if she’s scared, who can blame her?”
“Once in a while, I see Solly there, knocking at her door, then talking at her through it. It’s so sad. I can’t help feeling there’s something we oughta be able to do for her.”
Jed picked a yellow dandelion growing nearby. “Ever done this?” He held the yellow part up near his chin. “See?”
His chin glowed the same color as the dandelion. I giggled, grateful for the change in subject. Then I held one to my chin. “Mine look the same?”
“Yeah.” He laughed.
“Have you done this?” I picked another dandelion and snapped the flower off the stem with my thumb. The flower ball flew into the air and pegged Jed on the shoulder. “Mama had a baby, and its head popped off.” I recited the poem I’d known since preschool.
“Ha-ha. Very funny. Lemme try.”
We picked and popped heads off like crazy, fallin’ on the ground, we were laughing so hard. The fresh-mown grass around us smelled like wild onions and syrup and sass, and the yellow flowers popped out all around us.
“Say, what are you doing next Saturday?”
“Same as always. Working here.”
As fast as I brought up the cotillion, my heart stopped when I thought about actually asking him the question.
“Why do you ask?”
I hoped maybe I could drop it.
“There’s this thing I gotta go to.”
“Thing?”
“Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s something Princella—my grandma’s—in charge of. And I’m supposed to ask a boy to be my date.” The sky started spinning. My legs felt like saplings.
“Supposed to ask a boy? Or you want to ask a boy?” The now familiar tease played in his eyes again.
“Supposed to. I mean, well, I do want to ask you. What I mean is …”
“I’ll go.”
“You will?”
“Sure I will. I can dance.”
“Well, it’s a fancy kind of dance. We have to wear gloves, and you’ll have to wear a suit and tie.”
“I got a suit and tie. Had to go to a funeral for my old foster mom’s uncle a while back. Should still fit okay.”
“Mama and I can pick you up on the way—”
“I’ll come back here after I shower up,” he interrupted. “Just name the time.”
“Okay. But … I don’t care where or how you live, you know.”