Low Tide

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  She looked in the window, saw the three kids in the backseat in their car seats, no one on the floor. She opened the door and slid into the passenger seat, then slammed the door shut against the rain.

  Grace looked pale and small. She had her back to her door and was still holding her cell phone in her hands. She flipped it over and over in her lap. Maggie looked back at the kids. The baby was facing backwards and apparently asleep. The little girl and boy were watching a video on an iPad that the girl held between them. They barely looked up at her.

  “Hey, kids,” Maggie said anyway.

  The little girl blinked at her before going back to her movie. The boy gave her the hint of a smile before putting his head back down on his sister’s shoulder.

  “Hey, Grace.”

  “Hey. Thank you for coming, ma’am.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Grace looked down at her phone for a minute and seemed to collect herself. When she looked back up at Maggie, her eyes were still wide and afraid but she was sitting up straighter.

  “I need to get away from him,” she said.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to send him back to jail.” She flipped her phone a few more times. “He said if he goes back again, he’s going for a long time. Is that true?”

  “Yes. How long depends on what he goes up for, but it’ll be a while. Three strikes. What do you want me to arrest him for?”

  Grace looked back at the kids before answering, her voice lowered.

  “He’s got something going on Thursday night. I’m not sure what yet, but it’s supposed to be something pretty big. Like, more than they usually deal with.”

  “Okay.” Maggie waited.

  “He works with Joey Truman and Gary Barone, do you know them?”

  “I know Joey.”

  “Well, they’re supposed to come over tomorrow sometime to talk about it. I’ll probably know more about what’s going on then. I could call you.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said without commitment.

  “But, I need to know, you know, would I get in trouble?” Grace looked at the kids again, but they were engrossed in their video. “Can you make it so I don’t get in trouble for knowing about all this stuff? ‘Cause that makes me like an accessory or something, right?”

  “I need to talk to someone in the State’s Attorney’s office,” Maggie said. “But we work with informants all the time. I’m sure we can keep you out of it.”

  “Can you check to make sure?”

  “Yes. But why don’t you just leave? Can you take your kids somewhere?”

  “Well, but Tammi and Jake aren’t mine, they’re Ricky’s kids. I can’t just take ‘em.”

  “Where’s their mother?” Maggie asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Grace whispered back. “He said she ran off two years ago, but, you know…I think maybe...”

  Grace looked into the backseat again to make sure the kids weren’t listening. Maggie sighed.

  “Where are you from, Grace?”

  “Santa Rosa. That’s where I met Ricky. He came into the Denny’s where I worked.”

  “Can you go home to your family after?”

  Grace smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile.

  “My mom died a long time ago and my Dad’s worse than Ricky.”

  Maggie looked at her for a moment.

  “How old are you?”

  “I just turned nineteen.”

  “Why are you with someone like him?”

  The girl shrugged her bony shoulders.

  “I’m not pretty. I’m not even interesting,” she said. “I knew he probably wasn’t a good person, but it seemed kind of exciting at first.”

  “Does he hurt you?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, like it was normal. “The thing is, I can’t lose these kids. His, I mean. They need me. If he goes away, nobody else is gonna want ’em. I’ll have time to figure something out.”

  Maggie stared out the windshield for a moment. Through the rain, she could just see a black-and-white cruising slowly down Water Street, across the playground. She looked back at Grace.

  “Isn’t he going to wonder why you aren’t home yet, with the rain?”

  “Naw. He knows I’m scared to drive in it. He’s probably just glad they’re still out of the house. But I gotta get home and get his supper.”

  “Okay, look. I’ll talk to the Assistant State’s Attorney and my boss. You call me whenever you know something tomorrow and I’ll let you know what they say. But you need to be careful, okay?”

  Grace nodded.

  “Don’t call me if he’s anywhere around.”

  “I won’t. He doesn’t even know I have this phone. I got it at 7-11. I keep it in the kids’ toy box.”

  Maggie almost smiled. This child might not be well educated, but she was smart. Maggie wanted her to be okay.

  “Okay,” she said, putting her hand on the door handle. “You need to get home. I’ll wait for your call, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  Maggie started to open the door, then glanced at the back seat and back at Grace.

  “They’re not going to say anything to him about you meeting me, are they?”

  “They don’t talk to him,” Grace said quietly.

  Maggie wanted to get to her parents’ and hug her kids. She wanted to take these four kids with her.

  “Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  Maggie got out of the car and ran for her Jeep. The rain had let up somewhat, but she was soaked through and cold, despite the temperature.

  She climbed into her vehicle, started the engine, and turned on her heat. While she waited for the warmth to show up, she watched the Monte Carlo pull out and slowly turn right onto 6th Street.

  Maggie backed out and waited at the road for a pickup truck to pass by. As she sat there, the patrol car came by from the other direction. Maggie rolled her window down and waved and Doug Petrie, a friend from high school, waved back and went on his way.

  Maggie pulled out and headed for family, warmth and normalcy.

  Maggie had her right hand clamped so tightly over her mouth that she could feel the outline of every one of her upper teeth on her lip. In her left hand, she squeezed a clump of rocks and twigs.

  She couldn’t seem to breathe fast or deeply enough and the air whistled out of her nostrils with every exhale.

  He was kissing her neck sloppily as he crushed her spine into the dirt and rocks, and she kept herself from retching by staring up at the treetops. It was dark down there on the ground, but the late afternoon autumn sky was brilliant blue and cloudless, as though everything was alright everywhere else.

  Gregory raised up onto his knees and blocked her view of the real world. He looked off to the left and smiled.

  “You want some?” he asked.

  Maggie bolted upright in her bed and heard Coco whimper softly beside her. She looked down at her, and let go of the handful of fur.

  She grabbed her .45 and her phone from the nightstand, and with Coco at her heels, she slipped down the hall and cracked Sky’s door open and made sure she was asleep. Then she stopped in Kyle’s open doorway, soothed just a little by the sound of him softly snoring.

  She walked into the kitchen, turned on the tap, and stuck her wrists under the flow.

  Maggie had had the same dreams and the same flashbacks over and over for more than twenty years. Although her waking memory of the event was spotty, never, not once, had she ever remembered or dreamt that someone else had been there that day.

  She rubbed a little water over her throat and face, then she turned off the faucet and stared past her reflection in the black window.

  She tried to rationalize that it had just been a dream, an only partially real one, and that no one else had been there in the woods. But the moment she’d seen it, she’d known it was true.

  Maggie looked down at her cell phone to check
the time. It was just after 5:30. She flipped the phone open and speed-dialed her Dad. He’d never slept past five in his life.

  “Hey, Sunshine,” he answered quietly.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she said, willing her voice steady. “Are you going out this morning?”

  “Yeah. Come on.”

  Less than thirty minutes later, Maggie parked her Jeep at the Scipio Marina, grabbed her coffee from the console, and headed down the dock. Gray already had the engine going on his oyster skiff, and was winding the stern line around his arm.

  He looked up and smiled as she approached the boat.

  “There’s my girl,” he said. “Grab those tarps on your way aboard.”

  Maggie picked up the gray tarps that Daddy liked to put over his lap when he was culling, then stepped aboard. Once her father had pulled forward a bit and the skiff had drifted from the dock, she pulled up and stowed the bright orange fenders and sat down across the wooden platform from Gray.

  Without any further conversation, they were underway. Maggie took a deep, cleansing breath of brine, and sighed as the breeze kissed her face.

  Ever since she was small, Maggie had loved going out to the oyster beds with her father. In her teens, it became her escape. For more than twenty years, any time she felt overwhelmed or upset, she’d go out onto the bay with Gray.

  He had never asked what was wrong. He had known without her telling it that she just needed to be out on the bay with him, with no sounds but the occasional boat, the ever present gulls, the lap of a wave, and the wet thumping of a clump of oysters hitting the platform.

  Sometimes Gray knew why she needed it, like the day after she’d figured out she wouldn’t be able to pay for law school, or the day before she’d asked David to leave.

  Sometimes she talked to him about what was wrong, but as good and as loving as his advice always was, it was secondary to the grounding that the bay provided. She never talked to him about Gregory Boudreaux. She’d never told anyone, not even David. Especially not David.

  When she’d finally managed to walk out of the woods, to climb onto her bike and ride home, every part of her body swearing it was broken, she’d told her parents that she’d fallen down a bank. They had believed her.

  When the nightmares started, she’d made up a dream in which a nameless woman chased her on the beach. It was the same dream she recounted to David after they got married. He never noticed that they happened mostly in November. The anniversary month was usually her worst, but the dreams gradually lessened, and she’d rarely had them anymore. Until now.

  As her father motored out into the bay that was only knee deep on a tall man, Maggie bent her head back and let the salty, damp air wind its way into her nose and mouth and throat. When they were a good way out, Daddy pointed off the port side, and they watched two dolphins dance a welcome.

  Once Daddy got to one of his favorite beds, cut the motor, and dropped the sea anchor, Maggie dragged her hand through the water and lifted it to her face.

  For the next hour, Maggie watched the sky go from dark to orange to gray and then blue as the sun rose over Apalach to the east. She watched her father walk up and down the sideboards, maneuvering the tongs that were almost triple his height, with two long, rectangular baskets at the bottom. He would sift and touch along the bottom until he found a good clump, then move the tongs like giant chopsticks, closing the baskets together.

  He’d dump the booty on the wooden platform in the center of the boat, then go back to searching the bottom while Maggie tossed out small crabs, rocks, and seaweed. Once the pile on the platform was of a decent size, Gray sat down across from Maggie, handed her a culling iron, and the two of them went to work separating oyster from rock and oyster from oyster, throwing back the ones that were smaller than three inches.

  It was still early yet for some of the oystermen, but they could see a handful of skiffs scattered among the beds in the distance. Here, though, they were alone, and the only sounds were the flat pinging of the culling irons against rock and shell. Every now and then, Daddy made a remark about a particularly nice oyster, which went in the home bucket, while the rest went in the canvas bag.

  Finally, they’d swept the silt and other debris from the platform, and Daddy pulled a quart of freshly-squeezed orange juice and two lemons out of his cooler. He laid them out on an old plastic tablecloth while Maggie rinsed her hands in the bay.

  Within five minutes, Gray had two dozen oysters shucked, their top shells tossed back into the water. The first oysters were always the best that they’d collected thus far, and were always eaten with a little bit of reverence. Gray cut the lemons into quarters, opened the orange juice and set it down between them, then handed Maggie her first. When he’d taken his, they both squeezed just a little lemon over them, closed their eyes, then slowly took the oysters into their mouths.

  The oyster was briny at first taste, then once she bit into it, it had a sweetness that reminded her of creamed corn. She chewed slowly, savoring it before she swallowed. When she opened her eyes, Gray nodded at her.

  “Yep,” he said, as he always did.

  “Yes,” she answered, as she always had.

  They made a little small talk as they ate the rest of their oysters and washed them down with the juice, then they headed back to the marina so that Maggie could go to work.

  As she watched the water sparkle alongside the skiff, Maggie wondered if this was what it was like for farmers. She wondered if they walked out onto land that their fathers and grandfathers had farmed, scooped up a handful of black, loamy dirt and put their noses in it to remind them of what was real, of what was always. To remind themselves of who they were.

  Bennett Boudreaux sat at the round table in the kitchen, reading the paper, eating a slice of wheat toast, and drinking his third cup of chicory coffee.

  Amelia was frying bacon on the cooktop that was built into the island, one hand on her hip and the other holding a spatula. The sun was just coming up good, and it shone through the twelve-pane windows and burst into star showers over her head, reflecting off of the bright copper pots that hung from a huge piece of driftwood Bennett had made into a pot rack.

  Bennett liked eating breakfast in the kitchen, though his wife, and, when they were still home, the boys, had always taken their breakfast at the cherry table in the dining room. Bennett preferred to eat in here, with Amelia and her mother, Miss Evangeline. It scandalized his wife within an inch of her life, which made him enjoy it all the more.

  “You gon’ eat some bacon?” Amelia asked him without looking up from her skillet.

  “Nope,” Bennett told his paper.

  “You gon’ eat some eggs?”

  “Nope.”

  “She gon’ be upset, you don’t eat.”

  “She’ll manage to live another ninety years anyway.”

  Just then, the back door opened and Miss Evangeline’s walker preceded her into the kitchen.

  “Mornin’, Mama,” Amelia said.

  “Mornin’, baby,” Miss Evangeline answered, her voice like yellowed rice paper.

  “Morning, Miss Evangeline,” Boudreaux said.

  “So you say,” she said back.

  Bennett stood and pulled back the chair across from his place, watched her make her way to the table.

  Miss Evangeline was more than ninety years old and she looked every hour of it. She stood just under five feet tall, and her light-colored skin grasped her bones with no apparent flesh between the two. She wore her usual flowered house dress and straw slippers, and her shoes made sounds like sandpaper on wood as she slowly made her way to the table.

  Miss Evangeline had been his father’s housekeeper, but she might as well have been Bennett’s nanny. His mother had been “delicate” and died when he was seven. His father had been too busy raising a business to raise a son. His father had left Miss Evangeline behind when he’d moved to Apalach, but when Bennett had finished college and started his business in Houma, he’d hired both her and Amelia
. Now they were all here.

  Amelia’s job was to cook and clean and take care of her mother. Miss Evangeline’s job didn’t exist anymore, but she did it anyway.

  Once she was abreast of him, Boudreaux leaned down and kissed both of her papery cheeks, then walked back to his seat.

  Miss Evangeline slowly made what added up to a seven-point landing in her chair, and Boudreaux sat back down.

  Amelia stepped away from her stove long enough to bring her mother a cup of tea. Boudreaux went back to his paper. Once settled, Miss Evangeline gingerly took a sip of the tea and then peered across the table, her eyes magnified behind her glasses.

  “What in the papers today?” she asked.

  Boudreaux looked at her over the top of the paper, then turned the page.

  “Tropical Storm Claudette’s not coming, Save the River’s having a pancake fundraiser, and we’re thanking everybody for their condolences on the halfwit.”

  “You don’t keep talking ill of the dead. It’s bad juju.” Her hand trembled as she put the cup back in its saucer.

  “Juju doesn’t get Roman Catholics, Miss Evangeline; karma does.”

  She pointed a bent finger at him, the nail long and yellowed.

  “Juju gets what it gets.”

  Boudreaux winked at her over the paper. “You keep trying to scare me with your voodoo and I’m gonna yank those tennis balls off your walker.”

  “Go on sass me, Mr. Benny. Sass me some more and I pass you a slap.”

  Amelia brought a plate of eggs and bacon to the table and set it down in front of her mother. The old woman looked at the plate, then looked over at the kitchen island.

  “Where his food is?”

  “He said he don’t want anything,” Amelia said, taking the skillet to the sink.

  Miss Evangeline turned her gaze back to Boudreaux. She sat there a good minute, glaring at the newspaper in front of his face.

  “Stop staring at me,” he said pleasantly.

  “Man ’sposed to eat.”

  “I eat.”

  “Mama, go on eat your breakfast,” Amelia said from the sink. “I got to pass the mop before herself come down.”