First Light

by Philip R. Craig

  “Oprah?” I said.

  He looked up, grinned, and shook his head. “The news.”

  “What’s the weather report?”

  “Stormy. The island’s expected to catch the backlash of Hurricane Elinore. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Not unless you’re going fishing,” I grumbled. “So what do you folks do about dinner here?”

  He shrugged. “When Grandmother was here, we’d take trays out to the sunroom and eat with her.”

  “We?”

  “Me and my mother, anyway. Not Nate.”

  “What about tonight?”

  “I’ll cook you something, if you want.”

  I fished out my wallet and put a couple of twenties on the counter beside Patrick’s elbow. “Why don’t you go get us all some pizza or something. Let’s see if we can get Eliza and Nate to join us. I need to talk with you guys again.”

  Patrick looked up, arched his eyebrows, then nodded. He picked up the bills and disappeared in the direction of the front of the house.

  An hour later, the four of us were sitting around the kitchen table eating pizza. Eliza looked fetching in tight black leggings and a butt-length yellow sweater. Patrick had changed out of his tennis shorts into a pair of pressed chino pants and a cotton polo shirt. He looked rather fetching himself. Nate wore baggy overalls and work boots and a sweat-stained cap bearing the legend COOP’S BAIT AND TACKLE. Decidedly unfetching.

  “You’re going to win the Derby, huh?” I said to Nate.

  “Betcherass,” he mumbled around a mouthful of sausage pizza.

  “You think that fifty-pounder will hold up?”

  “It was fifty-six, actually.” He shrugged. “Three weeks to go. I’ll get a bigger one.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Unless I get him first. I’m fishing the cove tonight.”

  Nate turned and fixed me with a baleful stare. “The hell you are,” he said softly.

  “The hell I’m not. There’s plenty of room for both of us. Your mother would be disappointed if I didn’t try it there at least once while I’m here, and I’m going to do it.”

  He reached for the can of Coors by his elbow and lifted it to his mouth. His throat muscles clenched like a weight lifter’s arm as he gulped it. Then he slammed it down and leaned across the table to me. “You got the whole fucking island,” he said.

  I smiled. “You got a prizewinner from the cove. I want a prizewinner. That’s how the Derby’s played. I plan to be there at first light, and you better be prepared to share.”

  “Or what?”

  I shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance.

  “I hear you were a Marine, huh?” said Nate.

  “I don’t like to talk about it,” I said.

  He turned to Eliza. “Mr. Lawyer here was some kind of expert at killing people with his bare hands. You wouldn’t know it, lookin’ at him, but it’s true. Wonder if he’s still tough.”

  “Oh, he’s tough,” said Eliza. She flashed me a droopy-lidded smile. “Tough and dangerous.”

  Patrick was watching us with a bemused smile on his face. “Bet he’s tougher than you,” he said to Nate.

  “Lay off,” I said to Patrick. “I’m just a mild-mannered city lawyer. I don’t like violence.” I turned to Nate. “No problems, okay?”

  He tugged at the bill of his cap, then glowered at me from under it. “You keep your distance from me. You cross my line, I don’t give a shit what kind of training you got in the Marines.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. I turned to Patrick and Eliza. “I wanted you all to know that I intend to complete negotiations for the sale of the property this weekend. I’ve told representatives of both the Isle of Dreams golf people and the Marshall Lea Foundation to have their final offers to me on Sunday, and I’ll take it from there.”

  “Meaning what?” said Nate.

  “Meaning, whichever offer is most consistent with your mother’s wishes and is in her best interest is the one I’ll accept.”

  “Yeah, and what about us?”

  I shrugged. “Sarah is my client. I’ve already explained that to you.”

  “And you have Mother’s power of attorney,” said Eliza.

  I nodded.

  “Meaning, you can do whatever you want,” said Patrick.

  “You could put it that way,” I said. “Though I wouldn’t say I’ll do what I want. I’ll do what I think Sarah wants. As long as she’s unable to make her own decisions, I am empowered to make decisions for her. It’s my job, whether I like it or not, and I’ll do it.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, though, do you?” said Eliza.

  “Doing nothing is a decision, too,” I said. “It’s one I’ll have to consider. We’ll see what happens on Sunday.”

  Nate was shaking his head. “It ain’t right,” he grumbled. “She’s gonna die, and our place is gonna be sold right out from under our feet.”

  “Oh, cut it out,” said Patrick. “You’ll inherit the money. It’s Grandmother’s estate, and it’s how she wants it.”

  “Why don’t you shut up, you little pervert.” Nate glared at Patrick for a moment, then turned to Eliza. “And you, too, bitch.” He looked at me. “You’re a smart lawyer. You see it, I bet. These two bloodsuckers. You know what they’re doing.” Nate stood up and leaned forward with his big hands flat on the table. He looked from Eliza to Patrick. “Both of you,” he said, “nosing around my mother, bringing her food, wiping away her spit and drool, pretending to be all worried and lovey-dovey. All the time, all you’re really worried about is your money. You don’t think she sees through the both of you? You ask her who she loves the most. You know who, don’tcha?” He jammed his thumb against his chest. “Me, that’s who. I’m her son, and by Jesus, I’m the one who … who loves her the most.” He ran his hand over his sun-bleached beard and blinked a couple of times. “She’s gonna die. Nothin’ we can do about it. She doesn’t recognize anybody, huh? Guess what? I was at the hospital today, and guess whose name she said? Yours?” He pointed a finger at Eliza. “Not hardly. Or you?” He jutted his chin at Patrick. “No fuckin’ way.” He nodded. “Me, that’s who. She’s asking for me. Nathan, she says. That you, Nathan? So fuck you, all of you.”

  Nate straightened up so suddenly that his chair toppled over backward and crashed to the floor. He stood there rolling his big shoulders and clenching his fists, glowering at Eliza and Patrick. After a minute, he shook his head and sighed. “Mr. Lawyer,” he said to me, “I know you got a job to do. Just keep in mind that I’m the last Fairchild son, and that property’s been in my family for more than two hundred years, and by Jesus, after my mother, I’m the only goddam Fairchild left who cares about it. I love this place. It’s rightfully mine. I don’t want some goddam bird lovers from New Jersey or something prowling around acting like it’s theirs, and I sure as hell don’t want bulldozers coming along, cutting the tops off these pretty hills and filling in the gullies and uprooting the trees that’ve been here longer than my mother.”

  “Nate, listen,” I said. “I—”

  “No, goddammit, you listen. My mother hasn’t been right since she got the cancer, and whatever she’s been tellin’ you, it’s not her. You understand?”

  I looked up at him and nodded. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  He continued to glare down at me for a minute. Then the air seemed to go out of him. He sighed heavily, looked at all three of us, one after the other, then shook his head, turned, and left the room.

  I helped Patrick and Eliza clean up the kitchen. None of us spoke. Nate’s outburst still hung in the air.

  When we finished, each of us wandered off in a different direction. I assembled my fishing gear on the porch outside the front door, fixed the electric coffeepot to start brewing at four-fifteen in the morning, and went up to my room.

  It was not quite nine in the evening. Normally I turn out my light at midnight, but I figured after all the sleep I’d been missing this week I’d be able to conk off in time to give
me some rest before my alarm went off.

  I read for half an hour, and then, despite the fact that I didn’t really feel sleepy, I turned off the light.

  I lay there in the dark with my eyes squeezed shut, listening to the wind wheeze through the trees outside my open window, willing myself to relax. Easier said than done. Nate’s tirade kept replaying itself in my head. What if he was right? What if Sarah’s urgent desire to sell her property did not represent her true feelings? What if I sold her property, and then she recovered and told me I’d made a terrible mistake?

  Nate was a gruff, grouchy, hostile son of a bitch. But it was hard to ignore the emotion he’d revealed in the kitchen. It occurred to me that of the three of them, he was the one who loved Sarah without reservation or expectation.

  I remembered when I’d visited Sarah she had seemed to be asking for Nate. Did she really want to take from him the only thing he cared about?

  Well, she’d repeatedly told me exactly what she wanted, and she’d given me her durable power of attorney. I couldn’t second-guess Sarah Fairchild, and I couldn’t second-guess myself.

  I had a job to do.

  I’d nearly drifted off to sleep when there came a soft rapping on my door. I tried to ignore it, but it continued. Finally, I said, “Eliza, goddammit, I’m trying to sleep. Go away.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Not even Nate has the bad manners to wake up a man who’s getting up at four-thirty in the morning.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Try the door. You’ll notice that for once I had the foresight to lock it. I mean it. Go away. Whatever it is can wait.”

  I heard her chuckle through the door. “It’s been waiting too long already,” she said.

  “Eliza, dammit …”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Your loss.”

  By now I was wide-awake. I listened for a few minutes and concluded that Eliza had left my door. I got a cigarette lit and lay there on my back, smoking in the dark and fuming at Eliza.

  At the same time, I remembered how her rump felt warm and soft against my leg when she sat on my bed, and how her lips moved on mine and her breasts pressed against my chest when she bent to me and brushed me with a kiss, and I was briefly tempted to get up and track her down and take her hand and bring her back to my room.

  I was positive I’d be able to sleep peacefully after making love with Eliza.

  But I stayed right where I was. I finished my cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray beside my bed, rechecked the alarm clock, then rolled over.

  After a while, I fell asleep.

  When I was a kid, the fishing season opened on the third Saturday in April, and on Opening Day morning I always woke up before the alarm. But as the years passed, I pretty much outgrew that restless anticipation of a day of fishing. Too many disappointments, maybe.

  I don’t know what woke me up this time. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was the thought that I was going to fish the same water where Nate had landed a fifty-six-pound striper. Maybe it was fear of over-sleeping and losing my bet with Billy. In any case, the glow-in-the-dark clock beside my bed read three-thirty and, for better or for worse, I was wide-awake.

  So I got dressed, went down to the kitchen, turned on the coffeepot, and waited for it to do its job. Then I filled a thermos, went out the front door, gathered up my fishing gear, got my flashlight turned on, and headed to the beach.

  A sandy path ran from the back of the Fairchild house through a patch of woods and across the meadow to the dirt road that led down to the water. It was a dark night, no moon or stars, and my flashlight beam cut a narrow tunnel in the blackness. The wind was up, and the air was saturated with moisture that wasn’t quite yet rain but felt like it soon would be.

  I’d promised J.W. I’d wait for him at the fork in the road. He was worried about encountering Nate. But Nate didn’t scare me. I figured that all his bluster and hostility were his macho way of covering his actual feelings. The man just loved his mother and loved his land and loved his solitude. Nothing wrong with any of that.

  Besides, he thought I was a tough Marine.

  J.W. wouldn’t be here for a while. So I headed to the water. About halfway down the long slope I passed the old tumbledown stone hut. I stopped and shone my flashlight over it. Empty windows, caved-in roof, vines, and scrubby bushes growing over it. It looked deserted and lifeless and spooky.

  I continued down to the beach. The wind was sharper down there. Fly casting would be difficult, as the wind would be blowing against my right shoulder. Out in the darkness, I could hear the surf crashing over a sandbar and against some rocks. The tide, I recalled, had turned barely an hour earlier. It would be coming in, filling the cove, crawling up over the sand, rising over the rocks, and, I hoped, drawing in schools of bait with hordes of marauding predatory fish right behind them. The wind was right, the tide was right, the time was right.

  And here I was, in the right place.

  I rigged up by flashlight. I tested my knots and honed the points of my hooks. If I encountered a fish to rival Nate’s, I might not land it. But I didn’t want to lose it because I’d failed to take sensible precautions.

  By the time I’d pulled my waders on, the moisture in the air had, indeed, turned into a steady, misty, cold rain. First light on this morning would not come in a great burst of brilliance. It would be a slow, almost imperceptible evaporation of the darkness.

  I waded out to my hips and began casting. Fly casting in the dark is never easy. I like to see the water, see where my fly hits, see the line as I throw it back over my shoulder and then as it unfurls on my forward cast. Casting in the dark—even without wind—makes me feel awkward and amateurish.

  Tonight, with the wind quartering in against the front of my casting shoulder, it was doubly difficult.

  Short casts, I kept telling myself. Keep your rhythm. Don’t force it.

  Easy to say.

  Easy to forget.

  There was, I remembered, a drop-off out there in front of me. Just where the bass would be lurking at this tide. So I lengthened my line to try to reach it.

  But I was fighting the wind, and when I tried to give my forward cast an extra oomph, I did what I’ve done a hundred times. I lost control of my line, which wrapped itself around my neck and snagged my fly on my waders.

  Blame the wind. Blame the darkness. Blame my sloppy casting. It didn’t matter. I’d made a mess.

  I was glad J.W. hadn’t yet arrived to witness it. As it was, he already gave me too much shit about the ineffectual and effete art of fly casting.

  I backed out of the water and turned on my flashlight to assess the damages. My fly had embedded itself up to the bend in my neoprene waders just below my left buttock, and my line was tangled around my shoulders and torso and both my legs, and rainwater was seeping down the back of my neck.

  This was my punishment for trying to get the jump on J.W. I should’ve waited for him.

  I found my thermos where I’d left it on the sand and shuffled up to the stone hut, carrying my rod and thermos and dragging my fly line behind me. I could escape the rain inside the hut, wiggle out of my waders, get myself untangled, and sip some coffee while I waited for J.W. I’d pretend I had just arrived. What he didn’t know he couldn’t tease me about.

  Two wooden steps led up to a rickety porch that spanned the front of the hut. I could imagine the time half a century ago when gentlemanly surf casters and duck hunters sat in rocking chairs here, their feet up on the railing, a glass of single malt in their hands, gazing out over the ocean and telling each other stories about the good old days.

  Now a thick oak door hung half off its hinges, and there was rotting wood planking on the porch floor. I shone the light inside. I wondered what kinds of critters had taken up residence in there. Swallows and owls probably built nests up in the eaves, and skunks and mice and lizards and snakes… .

  Once upon a time there had been a solid wood floor inside, but
now some of the floorboards had grown soft with rot. There was a big wooden table, several wooden chairs, a soot-blackened old wood-stove, and a big soapstone sink hanging off one wall.

  I stepped inside. Despite a few holes in the roof, it was comparatively dry in there. I shone my flashlight around the inside. No glittery eyes stared back at me. There was some junk scattered around, evidence that trespassers had used the place. Beer cans, old newspapers, odd items of old clothing, rusty hunks of iron, and the sour smell of some animal that had crawled inside to die. About what one would expect.

  I laid my flashlight on the seat of one of the chairs and adjusted it so I could see what I was doing. Then I leaned my rod against the table and started to slither out of my waders.

  I had them down around my hips when something hard and heavy crashed against the back of my neck.

  What the hell?

  My first thought was that a beam had fallen from the roof. The force of the blow slammed me face-down on the floor. Pain zipped into my eyes and explosions ricocheted around inside my skull.

  I tried to push myself up. I couldn’t. I had no strength. My arms wouldn’t cooperate. They felt numb.

  The rational part of my brain whispered the word “paralyzed.”

  A blow to the back of the neck, right where those exposed and vulnerable little knuckles of vertebrae pushed against the skin—one good whack in just the right place, and it’s Hello, wheelchair.

  Before I could further analyze my prognosis or survey the condition of my extremities, something heavy rammed into the small of my back and stayed there, pinning me to the floor. It took me a moment to realize it was a man—or a woman, for all I knew— kneeling on me. I heard him breathing through his mouth, a little breathlessly, and I felt his hand, rough on the back of my head, pushing my face onto the floor.

  “Hey,” I tried to yell.

  It came out as a muffled grunt.

  He didn’t say a word. He was kneeling on me, gripping my right shoulder, and then I felt a sudden sharp pain high on the back of my arm, and then a kind of thickening feeling in the muscle.