Winner Take All

by T. Davis Bunn

  Charlie had his pole pointed straight out, just letting the fish whiz out every last inch of line. Marcus scrambled across the deck and came up hard against Charlie’s seat back. He reached over and tilted the pole skyward.

  “What the … Get your hand off my pole!”

  “You’re going to lose the fish!”

  Charlie used one hand to swat frantically at Marcus’ arm. “I been fishing since before you drew your first breath. Let go of my pole!”

  “Jam your thumb on the reel there, you’re down to your last ten feet of line!”

  “You touch my pole again and you’re gonna be driving this rig without some fingers!” Charlie heaved on the pole, finally setting the hook. “Go on, stand back over there outta range!”

  Deacon had one long-fingered hand across his mouth, from behind which bubbled a low humming laugh. His eyes were squeezed almost shut with pure pleasure. “Lay into him now, Charlie. You got him.”

  “Doggoned right I do, if this little child here with milk dribbling off his chin’ll keep his distance.” Charlie reeled and pulled and reeled some more. “Was that fish as big as I thought?”

  “Looked like a silver whale to me.” Deacon wiped his eyes. “My, my, I thought we were gonna have bloodshed there for a minute.”

  “Lucky you didn’t leave the tackle box where I could grab the bait knife.” Charlie was puffing and red-faced but his hands moved with the fluidity of a lifetime’s experience. “ ’Bout to have laid me out in the box, when that thing leapt up.”

  Deacon was up on his feet now, watching as the line angled up higher and higher. His voice rose to pulpit level as he sang out, “Look there, now! He’s coming up again! Hold him hard, Charlie!”

  The large-mouth bass was impossibly huge. It did not leap so much as explode, tossing water across the forty feet separating him from the boat as he furiously sought to throw the hook.

  There was a moment’s gasping silence, then Deacon breathed, “Lawdy mercy, Charlie, you done hooked yourself the granddaddy of them all.”

  “I didn’t see that,” Marcus agreed. “Did I?”

  “Charlie, don’t tug on him quite so hard, else he’ll break your line. Marcus, you unleash us and start that engine.” Deacon never turned from watching the line and the water. “This old man knows his water, sure enough. He’s down there hunting himself a root where he can tie you up good.”

  Marcus hauled up the anchor, moved to the wheel, hit the starter, then turned to follow Deacon’s hand signals. The man kept two fingers resting on Charlie’s line as he held his other hand overhead and directed Marcus. Slow and steady, hard right, hold there, reverse again—his only words directed to Charlie in the chair. “Pull in steady like, wind up that slack, ease off now, let him have his head here, that’s it, okay, he’s breathing easy now. Wind in steady, keep the line taut. He’s hunting still.”

  Charlie was huffing so hard Marcus could hear the bitter phlegm catch and break over the motor’s rumble. But he was winding steady, in tune with Deacon’s words, anticipating the directions even before they were spoken. Which was why Deacon stopped talking at all, doing nothing now but directing Marcus at the wheel, leaning over the rear transom, squinting at the line and the water.

  The fish broke a third time, but it was a feeble effort, for he was tiring. So was Charlie. The old man’s khaki shorts and T-shirt were drenched two shades darker. His breathing was one step away from a constant coughing fit. His arms trembled so from the effort of handling the pole and the fish that his upper body shivered in harmony. But there was no question now. This was his fight. His fish.

  Marcus heard a change to Charlie’s labored breathing, and knew with a friend’s wisdom that he was about to give in. Soon he would have to go back and take the pole, which would break the old man’s heart. He could not decide which would be harder on Charlie, to lose the fish or have somebody else land it. Deacon glanced his way, the same question there on his face.

  Then the pastor turned back and cried, “Hold on, Charlie! He’s coming in now! Marcus, you cut that motor and get back here with the net! Yeah, here he comes, wind hard, Charlie! Wind hard, man! You got him!”

  Marcus gripped the net handle and leaned over the stern next to Deacon. The preacher was hand-feeding the line now, helping Charlie haul in the almost dead weight. The fish came up through the dark waters almost motionless, a flicker of gills and rear fin his only signs of life. “You just watch out, he might break. This is one wily old fish.”

  But the fish waited in weary resignation as Marcus dipped the net. He slipped under the bass, settled him in, and drew him out of the water.

  The bass was so large he filled the net and spilled out both ends. Marcus needed both hands to heft his load over the transom and lay him down on the deck.

  Deacon’s hand slipped back over his mouth as he hummed his deep-throated laugh. Charlie sat in his chair, heaving hard, trembling so that when he tried to set his pole on the deck he dropped it with a clatter. He took three tries to shove his glasses back up his nose. When he reached for a Coke, Marcus needed to unpry the hands and flip the top himself. Charlie took a snorting gulp, choked slightly, drank again. Then he leaned over and stared at the fish. He asked hoarsely, “How big do you reckon?”

  “Got to be near on fifteen pounds,” Deacon said, shaking his head in wonder. “That there is an emperor fish if ever I saw one.”

  Charlie took another swallow, stared at the fish a moment longer, then said, “Slip him back, son.”

  “I don’t have a camera,” Marcus pointed out. “Nobody is going to believe we caught this thing.”

  “Don’t matter a bit, does it, Deacon?”

  The preacher was already bent over the fish, prying loose the hook. “Ain’t no need to say a word about this to a soul. This here’s our tale. Ours and ours alone.”

  As they threaded their way back through sun-dappled waters, Marcus found the day darkened by Kirsten’s absence and his own lack of answers. Charlie must have caught the smoldering drift, for as they approached the Steadman manor he pushed himself out of the rear seat. With Deacon’s help he shifted over to the one directly beside Marcus. “All right, son. Now tell me what’s troubling you so.”

  Enclosed within sunlight and sea breeze and the concern of good friends, Marcus found the ability to say, “I’m afraid Kirsten is going to leave me.”

  Charlie and Deacon exchanged a single look. Charlie said, “She’s always struck me as a fine young lady.”

  “She’s a good woman who doesn’t always do good things. She’s pushed by storms I can only guess at. Which makes knowing what to do here very tough.”

  “Maybe you can’t do a thing, son,” Charlie said. “Except survive her passage.”

  “Listen to you with your doom and gloom. That ain’t what the boy needs to hear.” Deacon reached into the cooler and plucked out one of the cans bobbing in the melted ice. “The question is, are you man enough to love her hard enough? Can you accept your need for wisdom that ain’t yours and never will be? And then can you use it when it’s given?” Deacon said to Charlie, “Now you just tell me I ain’t right.”

  Charlie took the can from Deacon’s hand and raised his face to the sun, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he drank.

  Deacon asked Marcus, “You know why she seems intent on going?”

  “The closer we get, the more frightened she becomes. From some few things she’s said, I gather she’s chased by something in her past. Something bad.”

  “So you haven’t done anything to bring this on?”

  “I asked her to marry me. Does that count?”

  “You’re not hearing what the man is saying.” Charlie leaned forward and poked Marcus in the ribs with the hand holding the can. “Do us all a favor here, son. Try and set the lawyer in your head to one side.”

  Deacon chuckled low in his throat and took a step back, so as to study the two of them.

  “Just for a moment,” Charlie went on, “I want you to put aside
the portion that says, I’m going to think this through and come up with the right course of action, on account of how I’m in control here. Listen to the love in your heart. Don’t even ask for logic. Just listen. See if there’s a different answer waiting for you.”

  The answer sprang up fast and unwelcome. Marcus shook his head, not to Charlie’s words, but to his own internal response. “That’s no help at all.”

  Charlie settled back in his seat, his features clamped tight in the vise of exhaustion and ill health. “Sometimes love is a gift that’s got to be dug from the pit of old woes. When we first fasten on it, what a burden that gift can appear to be.”

  Marcus said nothing more as he slowed and turned into Dale Steadman’s dock. Beyond the emerald lawn, Dale watched through the kitchen’s rear window as Deacon stepped onto the dock and tied them up fore and aft. All Marcus’ present fears seemed crouched beyond the smoke-stained corners, feeding off the mysteries and doubts.

  Marcus cut the engines and handed the first load of equipment to Deacon. He piled the remaining poles and the cooler on the pier, brought a plastic bucket and rag up from the galley, and began sluicing the deck. Charlie remained seated in the white leather chair, his back to the house, sipping occasionally from the soda. As Marcus worked, he found himself recalling a time when he had spent three hours watching the reflections of an afternoon rain form colorless trails down his kitchen wall. There had been a certain comfort in the ephemeral scroll and knowing there was no message to be discerned, no further tragedy to savage him. He let the old man be.

  Marcus drained the bucket over the rear transom. He stepped onto the dock just as Deacon disappeared around the house with the final load of poles. Marcus headed down to where Charlie’s wheelchair waited at the foot of the dock. He knew his current melancholy was partly due to the day now ending and the prospect of summers where Charlie Hayes played no querulous part. But there was more that troubled him, much as he might desperately wish otherwise.

  The response to Charlie’s water-borne question had come to him with the instantaneous force of a bullet to his gut. But it was also precisely what he most wanted to avoid. The answer had been simply, give her up while he still had the power. Let her go. Then if she returned, it would be freely and fully. His entire body clenched tight over the agony of such willful loss.

  He was midway along the dock when the entire world seemed to catch its breath. Then the boat erupted.

  The surrounding marsh grass shone as though the water itself had turned to fire. Then a giant’s hand reached out and slapped him headlong off the pier, and buried him beneath the flaming waters.

  CHAPTER

  ———

  12

  KIRSTEN EXTENDED her morning routine until three in the afternoon. She cleaned her little brick townhouse from top to bottom. Her music system pumped so strongly she could feel the bass rattle the sink through the scouring sponge. The house did not need cleaning and she scarcely heard the music at all. But it reduced the threat of hearing the phone ring, of having to speak with Fay, of someone from church asking where she was. All the things she was desperate to avoid.

  At four she ate a bowl of fresh-sliced fruit and unsweetened yogurt. She took her time dressing. A deft hand with the makeup, just a touch of color, her hair was never a problem, a serious dress and modest jewelry. She put part of the Sunday Washington Post into her briefcase in case the senator’s aide made her wait. She checked her reflection one further time, and saw a lovely and poised young woman whose gaze was the only part of her exterior she could not control.

  At a quarter to five she locked her front door and stepped into the humid broil of another late July afternoon. The one problem with these townhouses was the absence of shaded parking, which meant the car’s seat and wheel were almost too hot to touch. She drove down Glen Eden to where it connected with the Raleigh-Durham highway. The senator’s regional office was on Hargett, five blocks from the capitol, a ten-minute drive in the Sunday afternoon calm.

  The aide was there to greet her at the building’s front entrance. “You couldn’t be anybody but Mr. Glenwood’s new assistant.”

  “Kirsten Stansted.” The phone in her purse began ringing as she stepped into the building’s coolness. She decided to ignore it. “I work with Marcus.”

  “I heard about you, but I didn’t believe it until now.” He was a pudgy man in the way of many political staffers, bound together with nerves and bad diet and too-long days. “Brent Daniels.”

  “Marcus sends his regrets, but he is down in Wilmington meeting with his client.”

  “You just be sure and tell Marcus how much I appreciate him being somewhere else.” He ushered her into the large office behind the receptionist’s desk. “It’s our lucky day, Senator.”

  The bespectacled man raised his eyes from the papers strewn over his desk. “Now isn’t that the truth.”

  “Kirsten Stansted is Glenwood’s right-hand lady, if rumors are to be believed.”

  “The man is a purebred fool to let you wander around on your own.”

  “I don’t give him any choice in the matter.”

  The senator tottered over to compress her hand between both of his. “I don’t doubt that for a second. You take a coffee? How about a cold drink?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  Each of the senator’s steps cast him from side to side, a vessel rocked by time’s winds. “Take a seat wherever you’ll be most comfortable, Ms. Stansted. I hope you won’t mind if we get right on to business. Brent and me, we’ve got families who don’t take kindly to having our Sundays being disturbed. But I wanted to weigh in personally on this matter.”

  “Senator Jacobs is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Brent added. “He’s used his position to press this issue of American children being abducted by foreign parents in custody disputes.”

  “Germany was an original signatory of the Hague Convention on Children. But their judicial system flouts the regulations at every step. We’ve been looking for a landmark case to force the Germans’ hand.”

  “This is a draft of the convention.” Brent Daniels handed her a bound manuscript. “Germany has become a haven for too many parents who otherwise would never be permitted to retain custody of young children. The German court system refuses to relinquish the children to American parents, even when our courts have come down in their favor.”

  Kirsten’s cell phone chimed again. When she made no move to answer, the senator waited until the ringing halted, then went on, “Word is out, Ms. Stansted. News of this loophole is spreading via the Internet. Citizens of EU countries can reside anywhere in Europe they want. If they marry an American, find their marriage in trouble, and see the American court deciding against them, they grab the kids and flee to Germany.”

  “Just as has happened with your client,” Brent finished.

  “We’re in the process of enacting punitive legislation against the German government, and we’re working to obtain United Nations backing. But we need a high-profile case to demonstrate just how the court system is stacked against us. Then lo and behold, what happens but we hear about Dale Steadman. A top-notch fellow who’s got himself in this very plight.”

  Kirsten’s phone began ringing once more. She did her best to ignore it and replied, “I have to tell you, sir, we’re just not certain how solid a case Marcus has.”

  She sketched out what they had discovered. The senator and his aide did not mask their dismay over the news of the fire and the drinking and the local officials’ testimony.

  The two men exchanged a glance before the senator said, “This is the problem with divorce issues. There are seldom any clear-cut rights and wrongs.”

  “Sounds like you’d best not become publicly involved until we see the lay of the land,” Brent suggested.

  “Don’t have much choice in the matter.”

  The aide said to Kirsten, “If you’d be so kind as to keep me informed, my staff will help out any way
we can.”

  “I’ll tell Marcus, but right now I don’t see …” Her cell phone began a fourth ringing.

  “Maybe you best see who that is, young lady.”

  She retrieved the phone, punched the button. “Yes?”

  “Kirsten? Ms. Stansted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, thank heavens.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Dale. Dale Steadman.” The man choked over his own name. He took a broken breath. “Sorry. Sorry. When I couldn’t reach you I feared you were dead as well.”

  Senator Jacobs leaned forward. “You all right, young lady? You’ve gone white as moonlight.”

  CHAPTER

  ———

  13

  MARCUS’ WORLD was made up of fractured images, knitted together without the comfort of time’s steady flow. Hands lifted and dragged him from the marsh grass. A sun beamed down as voices and shadows came and went in frantic haste. A siren scrambled out of the distance. More hands. The siren blared again, this time closer and constant. A needle like a tiny bone became lodged in his vein. He grew fully awake then, in time to see a man with a worried expression and a stethoscope take his pulse and blood pressure. When Marcus coughed weakly and struggled to rise, the man’s gloved palm gently pressed his chest. Marcus stared into the man’s eyes and saw just how lucky he had been.

  The emergency room doctor treated the burns on his neck and scalp, then pulled several pieces of roasted boat from his back. From a filtered distance the doctor spoke to him about possible ear damage and a minor concussion. A policeman came and asked questions that Marcus did his best to answer. But the man recognized Marcus’ state and soon let him be. The doctor, a fussy sort who seemed to enjoy the reflected publicity, gave Marcus a sedative and wheeled him down for a full body scan. Despite the machine’s thunderous noise, Marcus was soon asleep.