Bulls Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  Goober and Peanut lived outside most of the time because they loved to roll around in dead things and Valerie said they reeked. They did, but not all the time. I would throw them in the river when they got muddy. Every so often I would slip Mickey twenty dollars to give them a real bath with dog shampoo. Wouldn’t you know, as soon as they were clean, they would find something to roll around in again, like a decomposing skunk, and we would have to pour gallons of tomato juice all over then to kill the stench. Then we would toss them back in the Wappoo. A lot of people might say that dogs were too much trouble, but this was probably the only thing I had in common with Joanie McGee—love of animals. I loved my dogs. I sneaked them into the kitchen all the time, where they settled under the table by my feet while I read the paper.

  Goober and Peanut—which, to the uninitiated and to the dictionary, meant the same thing—were two of the most optimistic dogs I had ever owned. They were always happy to see me. Always. And they were happy simply to be in my company, whether it was riding in the cab or the back of my truck or sitting on the boat while I fished. Goober was six years old, Peanut was eight, and they had never been on a leash, except to visit the vet for an annual checkup. So when they saw the leash in my hand, a little bit of running around ensued in order to get them in the truck. They were smart fellows.

  I cranked up my white Ford truck, which also needed a wash, and we rolled down the avenue of miniature live oaks toward the street. I would be dead and buried for a hundred years before those trees would look like they should. Every time I passed them, skinny, wimpy things that they were, I was reminded that Valerie thought she and I were building something from Gone With the Wind. I had planted fast-growing pines in between them to play down their scrawniness, and I planned to cut those down at some future time when the live oaks grew to a respectable size. I had to tip my hat to Valerie’s fantasy as she did to my practicality.

  So it had become a habit to rise, set up the coffee, liberate my dogs, and go for a quick ride. Once, I had offered to pay a premium to the delivery boy to bring the papers up the drive, but he wasn’t interested, saying if he did that for everyone, he’d have to cut his route in half, as many of the neighboring properties were set back as much as a mile from the road. He was right, of course.

  Shortly after seven, as I was finishing up my third cup of coffee, and thanking the good Lord my name wasn’t in the obituary pages, there was a rap on my kitchen door. The dogs got up with me and there was Mickey on the other side of the glass window. Goober and Peanut began to wag their tails. The advent of Mickey meant fun just might be on the agenda.

  “I wanted to come over earlier,” he said, giving the boys a scratch and a pat on their rumps. “Mom said don’t do it. She said everybody needs a little time in the morning to get their motor going.”

  “Your mom is a very astute woman. Have you had breakfast?”

  “Yes, sir. Four Eggos, a glass of orange juice, and a glass of chocolate milk.”

  It sounded to me like a prescription for major rumbling abdominal distress, but what did I know about the gastrointestinal constitution of young boys? Not much except that they were eating machines.

  “Okay, then. Let me get my sunglasses and let’s see what we can catch to feed the ladies tonight. Come on, boys.”

  As we collected our gear and walked down to the dock with the dogs, Mickey was a chatterbox.

  “So, when I got up this morning I loaded the trap with a mayonnaise sandwich.”

  “Did you use the right bread?”

  “Oh, yeah. Little Miss Sunbeam. Nothing but the best for our mud minnows.”

  “Good man! Tide’s getting high, so I brought waders. Maybe get some bass.”

  “Mom’s got a hankering for trout, but shoot, she’ll take anything as long as we clean it!”

  “Yeah,” I said, “cleaning fish is man’s work. Why don’t you go check the trap?”

  Mickey hurried ahead with the fishing rods, reels, and tackle box. We were going out in my Jon boat.

  In my grandfather’s day, you would get together with a couple of guys, your sons perhaps, and build your own boat. They weren’t much to look at, just a flat-bottomed rowboat for scooting in and out of the maze of marsh grass. When I was just a little fellow, the remnants of an old oak one was permanently parked in the boathouse, alongside my father’s treasured Chris-Crafts. As soon as I could toddle around, I remember my father putting me in it and I would pretend to be fishing with a bamboo pole. My love of water sports was hereditary.

  Today, things were different. Who had time to build a boat? The Jon boat we used was made of welded aluminum, thickly painted olive drab, and had a Bimini top to avoid that sunburned skillet effect. In theory, it would hold five people, but in my opinion, two people and two canines were a full load. And for the convenience of all involved, I had added a twenty-five-horsepower outboard motor.

  Off in the distance, I heard Mickey whoop with joy.

  “We got us a mess of minnows, J.D.! Come see!”

  It took a minute or two to get to the dock, as I was carrying the cooler and the waders. I dropped it all on the deck and had a look in the trap.

  “They sure do love mayonnaise, don’t they? What did you use? Duke’s?”

  “Is there any other?” Mickey was so proud you would have thought he had a great white on the hook.

  “Come on. Let’s get going,” I said.

  I ruffled his hair, and for the next two sticky and humid hours, we caught fish. Mickey got an eighteen-inch trout and six mediumsize bream fish and I hooked four flounder.

  “Look over there!” I said.

  There was a lot of fluttering going on in the marsh grass and that meant one thing. The spot-tail bass were feeding on periwinkles and you could see their tails wiggling above the waterline. We started to laugh at the sight of them. There were so many I thought we could have just scooped them into the boat with a net.

  “Look at these guys! They’re suicidal!” They were practically jumping on the minnows. “So when do you start school?”

  “Look at this one!” Mickey held up a fish for my approval and I nodded. “Next week. Ugh. Junior year. SATs.”

  “You’re not really worried, are you? You did all right on the PSATs, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I did great, but that was a while ago and I need a scholarship, you know?”

  “I wouldn’t sweat that too much. There’s always money around for a good kid.”

  Mickey gave me a lopsided grin. If you put aside his youth and the thousands of freckles he had inherited from his mother, it suddenly seemed to me that there was almost a resemblance in his bone structure to a portrait of my grandfather that hung in Mother’s house. Probably the heat, I told myself.

  There was no way in hell the Langley money would not help Mickey go to the best college that would have him. I would see to that, although Dad had promised to take charge of Mickey’s tuition. Maybe we Langleys weren’t always the nicest and easiest people to do business with, but we believed in education and in taking care of our own. Mickey was practically family.

  “It’s getting hot,” I said. “Think it’s enough for one day?”

  “Yeah, let’s let ’em live,” he said. “We got plenty for supper.”

  “Okay,” I said, and we started back. “Listen, Mickey, I gotta go out to Johns Island to look at some houses we just finished. I’m meeting the architect and the construction manager. Wanna come? You might learn something.”

  “Sure!”

  When we got back to the dock, we cleaned the fish, threw them in the cooler, and hosed everything down, including Goober and Peanut, who had chased a rabbit into the thicket, winding up in the plough mud.

  “Damn dogs,” I said, holding Peanut by the collar while Mickey brushed him with the boat brush and showered him with the hose. Plough mud was a very sticky and tenacious adversary, renowned for its stick-to-itiveness and fragrance.

  “PU!” Mickey’s face was scrunched up with disgust
.

  “You said it.”

  Funny. Neither one of us really cared about the bother and the fumes. For me, it was just nice to spend the time with Mickey. Each time I watched him ever so carefully reel in a fish, my heart would swell with a short blast of delight. He could have been my son.

  Finally, when the dogs were passably clean, we let them run back to the house. I divided up the fish and put them into Ziplocs, then handed him two thick packages. It was about ten o’clock or so.

  “Mickey, you go on shower up and I’ll meet you back in the kitchen in about half an hour. Is that long enough for you?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Make sure you rinse that fish good, okay?”

  As he nodded and ran off in the direction of his house, I spotted my dad’s SUV in my yard.

  I put away all the tackle and moved up to the house. Through the windows I saw Dad clicking through the television stations from one news station to another. Big Jim loved to watch the news. He was all but retired, but he would not admit it. He was there to ride out to Johns Island with me and give the job his stamp of approval.

  The kitchen door slammed behind me and Big Jim jumped, startled by the noise.

  “Fish biting?” he inquired.

  “They were practically throwing themselves in the boat.”

  Dad clicked the mute button, chuckled, and said, “Well, good. You’ll have a good supper tonight. Rosie can flat-cook some fish, ’eah?”

  “That’s for sure. I’ve got some for you, too. You coming out with me to the island?”

  “Well, that was the plan.”

  “Just give me a few minutes to clean up and we’ll go.”

  “No problem. Take your time. I’m watching this idiot who’s making all these dire predictions about the housing market. Incredible. Everybody’s an expert!”

  “That’s for sure.”

  I checked the garage. Valerie’s car was gone. Probably out shopping. I took the stairs two at a time to get to the shower. I could not have been gone more than fifteen minutes when I came back to find Big Jim napping in the chair.

  “Dad?” I shook his arm a little and he stirred.

  “What? Oh, I must have dozed off.”

  “You want to come or do you want to rest?”

  “You know what, J.D.? It’s hot as hell and I think I’m just gonna go home and have a little lunch. I’ll go out there with you next time.”

  Dad was nearing seventy, but he had always been spry and eager to do anything, go anywhere, or to try something new. Lately, though, he seemed tired. Maybe it was the heat. But seventy on Big Jim had always seemed like thirty on me. Maybe I would talk to him about his health. There was nothing my parents appreciated less than a reminder of their advancing years. I would have to employ some severe diplomacy. Not my greatest strength.

  “No big deal,” I said. “I’ll be out there every day this week going over the punch list. It’s supposed to cool off by Thursday.”

  “Good. Maybe I’ll go with you then.”

  “I’m taking Mickey out there today. Here.” I handed him a bag of fish.

  “Really? Why? Thanks.”

  Dad seemed annoyed for some reason.

  “Well, he’s a good kid and I think he gets bored out here in the sticks. I mean, there aren’t any kids around, he doesn’t have a license yet…what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I mean, it’s just that Rosie is our housekeeper…”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “You’re right. I’m just being a narrow-minded old fart. Take the boy. It’s nice of you to do it. Besides, I gotta ride down to Hilton Head to see a buddy late this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have a short nap.”

  Dad slapped me on the shoulder in a fatherly good-bye.

  “Say hi to Mom,” I said.

  “She means well, son,” he said, which was what he almost always said.

  “Right.”

  Shortly after Dad left, Mickey and I were on our way, shooting the breeze.

  “So, Mickey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When are you getting your driver’s license?”

  “Six months, two weeks, and five days.”

  “You sound pretty sure about that.”

  “Unless Motor Vehicle is closed that day, I’ll be in there when the doors open. I’m getting my permit this year in school. We all take driver’s ed.”

  “You’ll ace that.”

  “I’ve already taken the test online about fifty times.”

  “And?”

  “I think I got it nailed.”

  I smiled. “Well you know what they say, Mickey, success is about ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent luck.”

  “Yep. That’s true.”

  I gave him a little shove in the arm. “You sound like a grown man over there, kid.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  We drove on for a while, air-conditioning on low and the windows open as well, enjoying the mix of hot salt cut with cooled air. It was good not to let your body become too chilled by the air-conditioning because when you stopped your vehicle and got out, the slam of the heat could almost knock you off your feet.

  I was lost in thought watching the landscape and it seemed that Mickey was as well. We were crawling along Maybank Highway and had just passed the sign for the Angel Oak, which was thought to be around fourteen hundred years old. I remembered taking Betts out there when we were teenagers. I had just attained the same Holy Grail to which Mickey was counting down the days. My license was still warm in my wallet and I was driving my dad’s car. We would walk all around Angel Oak, find a secluded spot, and I would coerce her into kissing and fooling around a little. Hiding in the shadows of a public place meant we could only go so far, but even at sixteen we knew we would wind up in a bed before we found our way to the altar. That was a fact.

  “So, she’s coming back,” I said, without realizing I was talking out loud.

  “Who’s coming back?” Mickey said.

  To say I gulped would be the understatement of the day.

  “My, uh, mother. She’s, uh, out at Kiawah, I think…at a ladies’ lunch or something, and, um, I could have given her a ride home. Poor planning.” I was a terrible liar. Well, not in all situations. Sometimes I could lie like a pro, but when caught by Mickey, I bumbled around like an idiot. I cared what he thought of me, I guess.

  “Uh-huh. Right. Hey, J.D.?”

  “What?”

  “If my momma was in this truck, she’d tell you you lie like a cheap rug. I mean, it ain’t none of my business and all…” Mickey started laughing, knowing he had me in a corner.

  I thought about it for a minute, then against my better judgment, I decided to tell him a partial truth.

  “Oh, Mickey.”

  “Sounds like a woman to me.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because you said she. She’s coming back.”

  “Ah, Mickey. When you’re my age, you’ll understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “That life’s complicated.”

  “I think I already know that.”

  I had no doubt that he understood the many complications life could throw your way. But I said no more.

  We finally reached the finest gated community Langley Construction had built. River Run. It was one of the projects of which I was particularly proud, except for the nasty business of fighting for dock permits and building setbacks and a long list of other details that had cost the family business plenty. At the end of the day, there was only so much waterfront property in the world. My job was to identify what existed in our area, buy it, and develop it before anyone else did. And if some out-of-state developers, like Wall Street boys with buckets of money and upstate developers, beat me to the punch, my family’s attorneys could make it very difficult for them to break ground, since, in such an eventuality, we would suddenly become great crusaders for the cause of conservation. Usually, if we threw enough money
at the problem, it ceased to be a problem.

  “Hey! How’s it going?” I called out to the foreman, climbing down from my truck.

  “Good, good. I think they sold the last unit today, but you’ll have to check with Marianne over in the office.”

  “I’ll do that. I’ll do that today. Everything okay?”

  “The usual—replacement motors for the faulty air-conditioning units not in yet, I don’t like the size screws the men used to attach the shutters on the Dunes Villas…”

  It was the normal list of problems we always faced before the owners would take occupancy, but this time we were thirty days ahead of schedule and that miraculous detail would please our family’s management company to no end. You see, Langley Development bought the land, got the permits, provided the infrastructure—roads, sewage, and so forth—and built the houses and condos. Then we sold the entire kit and caboodle to my mother’s cousin’s real-estate company—Charleston’s Finest Homes—who, in turn, sold the housing to individuals and dealt with everything from mortgages to upgrades on faucets, all the details I could not endure.

  Dad’s real job for the past ten years had been to manage our family’s investments, something that seemed to come naturally to him. He took the profits of our construction business, deposited them in Langley Trust, which was a portfolio of every kind of holding you can imagine, from T-bills to an organic-herb communal farm. The earnings of Langley Trust that were not rolled over were the donations Mother made to charitable institutions. It was a very pleasant merry-go-round and only Langleys were allowed to ride it. So, in essence, as Mother liked to say when she was in her arrogant cups, we didn’t really own Charleston, only the parts we wanted.

  Mickey and I walked around and looked at some of the condominiums. It always amazed me that my opinion of necessary space could adjust itself so easily. At home, Valerie and I easily wandered five thousand square feet in the footprint of our house, but I could walk through a twelve-hundred-square-foot condo and tell myself that it was more than enough. Frankly, it was.

  “What do you think, Mickey?”

  He was staring out a large picture window that overlooked the Kiawah River. The water glistened like a billion shards of diamonds in the afternoon sun and the tall grasses scattered along the water’s edge moved slowly in the quiet breeze.