Opening the tackle box, she nearly cried with frustration when she saw the contents: a small plastic envelope of shiny gold hooks, some tiny lead weights, a plastic bobber, some gigantic fiberglass lures, and a package of neon-green-and-pink rubber worms. Useless crap, most of it. But she shook a hook and a weight into the palm of her hand and attached them to the line on the fishing reel, with the bobber positioned eight inches above them, then tucked the rest of the hooks into her pocket.
She picked up the ham sandwich and, lacking any other safe place to stash it, tucked it into the neckline of her top.
Then, shouldering the rigged fishing pole and dipnet over her shoulder, she stepped gingerly out of the cart and into the marsh. Fiddler crabs skittered away into their holes, and a startled marsh hen rose from its hiding place in the grass with a sharp, remonstrative cackle.
“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go,” Gina sang softly.
Iris’s walkway was narrow—three feet at its widest, and made of whatever cast-off materials her father had access to: chunks of broken concrete, weathered and rotting boards, discarded rubber tires—even, in one place, what appeared to be a sun-bleached tree trunk. Gina stepped cautiously, looking out at the undulating expanse of greenish gold marsh grass.
A hundred yards out, she saw the faded red paint of a wrecked bateau riding jauntily atop a bleached clump of driftwood. A boat, she thought. What she wouldn’t give for a boat right now.
Five hundred yards out, she found herself standing on a solid mound of oyster shells—with the gray-green waters of Runaway Creek lapping at its edges.
The tide was out.
Holding her breath, she stepped into the creek. The water swirling around her ankles was warm as bathwater. Her shoes made a sucking sound as they sank into the mud, and it was an effort, with each step, to keep them from being sucked right off her feet.
When the water was almost up to her hips, she decided it was time to fish or cut bait. Reaching into her neckline, she brought out the sandwich, pinched off a bit of ham, and threaded it onto the tiny gold hook of her fishing line.
The opposite side of the creek bank was maybe two hundred yards away. She cocked back the bail of the reel and cast her line, letting her wrists flick it, as her daddy had taught her all those years ago.
The bobber landed with a soft plonk, ten yards away. Not her best effort. But the wind was blowing toward her, and the light weight of her tackle and line would not send it any farther.
The little red-and-white bobber did its job, riding gently atop the slow-moving current of the creek.
She watched it intently. ‘Come on, baby,” she whispered, willing it to sink—a signal that she had a bite. “H’yah, fish!” she called.
Within a minute, the bobber dipped below the water’s surface. She felt a gentle tug on the line, and her spirits soared.
The line zigged quickly off her reel for a moment, before she jerked back hard, setting the hook as she’d been taught.
“H’yah, fish!” she called triumphantly, reeling as quickly as she could. In her mind, she was planning her catch. A nice spot-tail, she hoped. There was a cast-iron skillet in her designer kitchen back at Rebeccaville, and with the cayenne pepper and other seasonings she had on hand, she could quickly and easily blacken it on high heat. She’d seen some tomatoes and yellow banana peppers in Iris’s little kitchen plot, and perhaps, if she could talk her out of a couple of them, she could make a quick salsa with them and the onions and peppers from the countertop basket. She would slide the blackened redfish out of the skillet and onto a bed of buttered grits, and ladle the salsa over the redfish.
The fish fought, zigging away from her despite her crazed reeling, and she jerked the pole again, making sure she’d set the hook.
The line slackened a little, and she reeled in quickly. She caught a flash of silver through the greenish murk of the creek water, and then she reeled it up and out.
“Durn!” she cried, as the fish’s silver scales glinted in the sunlight. There was no telltale black spot near the fish’s tail. It was not a redfish. It wasn’t a fat sea trout. It was, she thought, a lowly, stinking, no-good, totally inedible pinfish.
It wriggled enthusiastically on the end of her hook, and she gritted her teeth, clamped her hands around the fish, and carefully extricated the hook from its mouth. She tossed it back into the creek without ceremony, and rebaited and recast.
An hour passed. She caught five more pinfish, each the exact same size as the first. The ham from her sandwich was nearly gone. The sun beat down, and the wind picked up. Something brushed against her ankles, and she let out an involuntary shriek.
Time to go, she thought. She’d wasted two hours, and had nothing to show for it except a nasty sunburn. As she trudged back to shore, she tried to cheer herself up. She still had four hours. Plenty of time.
Time to go to Plan B. She would ride over to the ferry dock and use the string as a crab line, tied around the last bit of her ham sandwich for crab bait. Now she frowned. Why hadn’t she saved one of the pinfish to cut up and use for bait? What had she been thinking?
The mud sucked her tennis shoe clear off her foot. She reached down into the water to retrieve it, and a tiny wave caught her by surprise, knocking her off her feet and into the water.
She came up sputtering, and another wave broke over her head. Perfect. She reached back down into the water. Her $250 shoe was gone, washed away, probably even now providing shade to a whole school of redfish.
Gina struggled to her feet and limped forlornly back to the creek bank and her golf cart. Four hours to go. It was going to be a very long day.
And what about the enemy? What about Tate Moody? She’d seen no sign of him since he’d sprinted out of the ballroom earlier that morning. If there was any consolation, it was in knowing that somewhere on Eutaw Island, Tate Moody was faced with exactly the same equipment—or lack of it—and the same predicament.
Chapter 44
Tate gazed up at the pig hanging from the lowest limb of a hickory tree deep in the interior of the island. Thank God, it was untouched since he’d had to return this morning to the lodge.
Moonpie was untouched too—unconscious was more like it. He slept now, curled up at the foot of the tree. “Some guard dog you are,” Tate said. The dog, hearing Tate’s voice, raised his muzzle sleepily, wagged his tail twice, then went instantly back to sleep. Tate patted his head approvingly. Moonpie had done his job, driving off any marauding animals that would have liked to have dined on that fine wild pig hanging from the tree.
The two of them had spent the previous night beneath that same tree, bunked down on a hastily assembled bed of pine needles and Spanish moss, with only a sheet and blanket swiped from Tate’s room back at the lodge as bedding. It had been one extremely long night. The island’s nighttime creatures—foxes and raccoons—had crept close to where they slept, drawn by the scent of the fluids draining from the pig’s body. Moonpie had barked and growled and driven off the would-be diners who’d come and gone all night long—meaning they’d had next to no sleep.
There was no time to think about that now. He had work to do—lots of work.
Luckily, the pig was a young one—maybe two years old—so its meat shouldn’t be as tough or gamey as that from one of the gigantic feral hogs that roamed the wilder parts of the island, uprooting everything in their paths. From what Inez had told him, wild hogs had roamed Eutaw for as long as anybody could remember.
“My granddaddy hunted hogs here, his granddaddy too,” Inez had said. “The old folks say they’s livestock escaped from the days when Rebeccaville was still farmed. My mama and daddy always had a cow, and some chickens and two-three pigs they raised up for meat, but Daddy still hunted the hogs ’cause they bad to dig up folkses gardens. What he’d do is, our neighbor-man Jimmy, he had a fine coondog. That coondog would get up on the smell of a hog and chase him down, then Daddy, he’d get his dog, BooBoo, you know, BooBoo was one of them pitbulls, and BooBoo wo
uld wait till the other dogs flat wore out that hog, then he would run in, catch the hog by the ear, then Daddy and one of the boys would run up, get the hog, tie it up, and carry it home. They’d pen it up, fatten it up with peanuts and such, and come spring, we’d have us a fine pig-pickin’.”
No time for a pig-pickin’ now, Tate thought. He cut the hog down from the tree and, staggering a little from the weight of it, loaded it onto the back of the golf cart. One whistle, and Moonpie was jumping in alongside him in the front of the cart.
Inez was waiting for him at her cottage, dark eyes shining with anticipation.
“Whoo-eee, that’s a fine fat pig,” she exclaimed as he rode up into her yard. “Bring him on around back. I got everything all ready.”
“This here was my daddy’s fish-cleaning table,” Inez said proudly, gesturing toward the scrubbed board-top table that extended out over a porch railing.
Unrolling the chef’s knives he’d brought with him, Tate made quick work of the pig, handing each sectioned piece off to Inez, who was ready with dishpan and a roll of freezer paper.
“Mmm-mmm,” she said, deftly wrapping the various cuts. “Pork chops, ribs, hams. I’ll make me a fire from hickory wood and smoke us a butt. And I got mama’s meat grinder right inside, I’ll make up some sausage. We gonna have a freezer full from this here pig.”
He kept only the tenderloin for himself.
“That all you gon’ take?” Inez asked incredulously.
“It’s all I’ve got time for,” Tate said, laughing. “I’ve still got the rest of my dinner to take care of.” He leaned over and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Thanks, Miss Inez. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”
“Get on out of here then,” she said, giving him a playful push off the porch. “That little gal will be back up there at the lodge, firing her oven up while you stand around here messin’ with an old lady like me.”
He paused at the edge of the yard, tentatively reaching up to touch the branch of a towering bush that shaded one whole corner of the property.
“Figs?” he asked as a fat greenish brown fruit fell into the palm of his hand.
“Best on the island,” Inez told him. “Mama took a slip from a tree over there at Darien. Iris, she babies that tree somethin’ awful. Every day, she puts a dishpan full of soapy water on that tree. Last year, she canned up near a hundred jars of preserves.”
Tate bit into the fig and savored the grainy, honeyed taste of the ripe fruit. “Think she’ll miss a few?” he asked.
Inez put both hands over her eyes. “I ain’t seen nobody stealin’ no figs.”
As he plucked figs, he planned his meal out loud. “I’ll simmer these with some sugar, and make a glaze with some cracked peppercorns for the tenderloin. But I don’t have a clue about what I’ll serve as side dishes.”
“Sweet potatoes would be good,” Inez remarked.
“You know a potato patch I could raid?” Tate said playfully.
“Nosirree,” Inez said. “Iris, she picks those sweet potatoes in August, and she don’t overlook a single one. After they’re cured, she banks ’em up out in the garden. Later on, she wraps ’em up in croker sacks and puts ’em in the smokehouse out yonder.” With a jerk of her head she gestured toward a crude structure of weathered silver boards at the edge of the sisters’ back property. “They ain’t but a few left now from last year.
“Well,” she said after an exaggerated pause. “I’m goin’ on in the house now. And if I hear them guinea hens settin’ up a ruckus, I’ll just figure it’s a stray cat crossing the yard.”
She wiped her hands on her apron, gave him a wink, and walked slowly inside.
Gina looked down at the blue crabs scuttling around inside her plastic bucket. She had maybe two dozen crabs. Big and fat, they were what her daddy called jimmies—males. On another day, she would have been more than happy about her catch. But this wasn’t just any day. She’d spent the day on and around the marsh, desperately trying to catch a supper worthy of winning the Food Fight. And these crabs were all she had to show for it.
She walked dejectedly down the length of the dock and placed the bucket on the floor of the golf cart. She had only two hours left, but that should be plenty to boil the crabs, pick out their meat, and fix her own version of deviled crabs. She had no idea what else she could serve. The sun had fried her brain.
She was headed back to the lodge when she had an idea. Iris’s garden. Maybe, Gina thought, she could scavenge a tomato or a cucumber—anything to supplement her pathetic offering of deviled crabs.
The cool air rushing past felt good on her sunburned face and shoulders, and her spirits lifted a little when she caught sight of the little cottage and the stoop-shouldered woman standing at the edge of the yard, picking figs from a huge tree.
“Lookee here,” Iris said, setting her plastic dishpan down on the dirt of the yard. “You got you a mess of fish, I hope.”
“Not quite,” Gina said ruefully. “They just weren’t biting. But I did get some blue crabs.” She held out the bucket for Iris to inspect.
“That’s fine!” Iris said. “You done good.” She looked around at the house. “Course, that boy Tate, he ain’t done too bad hisself.”
“You’ve seen him?” Gina asked eagerly. “When was that?”
“Little bit ago,” Iris said. “He was headed to the lodge, fixin’ to start cooking up that pig meat of his.”
“A pig?” Gina was dumbfounded. “Where did he get a pig? How did he get a pig? They didn’t give us any guns.”
Iris shrugged. “He didn’t say. Inez let him do the butchering out on the back porch here. She’s sweet on that white boy! Course, I’m kinda sweet on him now my ownself, since we got us most of a pig now, packed away nice in the freezer. Onliest thing he kept was a tenderloin.”
“A pork tenderloin,” Gina wailed. “And all I’ve got are these stinkin’ crabs. I don’t have a chance against him now.”
Iris stared down at the bucket. “What you fixin’ with these here crabs, girl?”
“I thought I’d do deviled crab,” Gina said halfheartedly. “I don’t have the ingredients for anything else.”
“Hmm,” Iris said, pulling at her bottom lip. “You ever fix crab and corn chowder?”
“Sure,” Gina said. “But I don’t have any corn.”
“Look back yonder in the garden there,” Iris said. “I got me some Silver Queen ready to be picked.”
“Really? You wouldn’t mind giving me some of your corn?”
“Don’t see why not,” Iris said. “Inez done give that boy the last of my sweet potatoes out of the smokehouse. And I know he picked some of my figs. You see anything else you want out there, you pick that too. There’s some pretty ’maters out there. Got some cukes, and some sweet red peppers and some of them little bitty hot finger peppers. Get you some of them. But be quick about it, ’cause Inez is taking her a nap, and I don’t want her knowing what I’m up to out here.”
“Oh, Iris, thank you,” Gina said, throwing her arms around the old woman’s neck. “You have saved my bacon.”
“Bacon! If you had some bacon for real, you’d be all set,” Iris said, smacking her lips. “I like to fry me up some green tomatoes in bacon grease. Fry corn in it too….”
“Well, Tate may have bacon, but I don’t. But it’s just about all I lack, except for some herbs to put in the chowder and the deviled crabs,” Gina said.
“Don’t grow no herbs,” Iris said. “But, tell you what. You go on down this same road here, and you come to a burned-out old house. Burned clear down to the concrete block pilings. That was Miz Chessie’s house. She was from away, and she was all the time growing stuff nobody else around here messed with. When that place burned down last year, she took herself back to where she came from. Ride on down there and walk around back where she kept a garden, maybe there’s something left the hogs and deer didn’t get a hold of.
“Here,” Iris said, reaching in the pocke
t of her apron and handing her a worn plastic grocery sack. “Use this for your pickin’s. And be quick now!”
In ten minutes, Gina had filled her sack. She had six ears of Silver Queen corn, three huge ripe tomatoes, a cucumber, three or four hot peppers, and a red bell pepper, and just as she was leaving the garden, she spied the bright yellow blossoms of a squash vine clambering over the picket fence surrounding the plot. She added them to her stash and ran for her golf cart.
When she climbed in, she found another plastic grocery sack on the floor, beside her crab bucket. Opening it, she found two jars. One held what she decided were fig preserves. The other, which appeared to be an old wine bottle, held a dark liquid and was stopped with a wine cork. She uncorked and sniffed, then tasted. Scuppernong wine!
She glanced toward the cottage and saw a curtain move slightly.
Half a mile down the road, she came to what she decided had to be Miz Chessie’s house. Scorched earth surrounded equally scorched concrete pilings, and a pile of mostly burned furniture. A rusting bedspring marked the entrance to the yard.
She pulled the golf cart up to the remains of the house, got out, and walked quickly to the back of the property.
Although Inez had said the fire had been only a year ago, the former garden was already returning to a wild place. Mimosa trees had sprung up in the middle of the plot, and a network of vines clambered across still-standing corn stalks and whittled sticks that had probably held Miz Chessie’s tomatoes and pole beans.
Nothing edible grew here now, Gina decided. But as she was walking back to the cart, she spied some bright green shoots near the burned-out foundation. She bent down to look closer. Chives! She snatched up a handful and looked around again. More shoots, these broader. She pulled up the whole clump and found herself holding wild onions, the sandy soil still clinging to the white onion bulb.
She inhaled deeply and smiled. Suddenly she found that success smelled sweet—and oniony.
Deep Dish Page 22
