Just before the bus pulled away, Peyton saw him step onto the platform, where a woman threw her arms around his neck. The man just stood there with his hands at his sides. The couple got smaller and smaller as the bus moved on, leaving Jacksonville and everybody in it behind. Peyton could only wonder about the boy his age waiting at home for his father to return from Milledgeville, oblivious to what was happening on the bus platform as his parents, now strangers, struggled for reunion.

eleven

Peyton knew his father had biked down A1A, the coast road that hugged the Atlantic. Unfortunately, the bus route followed US 1, a faster interior highway with less enticing views—mostly Florida scrub pine, a wilderness area or two, and a gas station here and there. He had boarded in Atlanta before daylight. Since then the bus had made stop after stop at a strand of little towns until the driver at last called out, “St. Augustine station!”

Peyton and several other passengers stepped off the bus and waited at the luggage bay while the driver located their suitcases. Before Peyton could decide whether to wait on the platform or follow the others inside, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see a man who looked like he had just stepped off a boat. His overalls were neatly tucked into tall black rubber boots, and the sleeves of his blue cotton shirt were rolled up to his elbows, revealing tattoos up both arms—an anchor on one and the lower half of a short-skirted woman in cowboy boots on the other. Her torso disappeared under that rolled-up sleeve. The man’s skin was deeply tanned and craggy, but he was clean-shaven. Silver hair peeked out from beneath his fishing cap, which shaded eyes the color of aquamarines.

“You the boy come to see Gert?”

“Yes, sir,” Peyton answered.

“Ha!” the man exclaimed with a big smile. “Ain’t nobody called me ‘sir’ in a long time. Name’s Leeward Finnegan, but ever’body just calls me Finn.”

“The Finn?” Peyton couldn’t believe he was shaking hands with the fisherman who had helped his parents get married.

“Well, I don’t know about that. Are you tellin’ me I’m famous in some quarters?”

“You could say that,” Peyton answered. “Nice to meet you, Finn. My name’s Peyton Cabot.”

Finn looked him up and down as they shook hands. “Now there’s a puzzle.”

“Sir?”

“What I mean is, when I look past your big-house manners and really eye you good, I’d swear you got a little bit o’ Gert in you—way down in there somewheres.”

“From the way Mama talks about her, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Oh, it’s intended as one. Speakin’ o’ Gert, I reckon we’d best shove off. She’ll be lookin’ for us.”

Finn loaded Peyton’s suitcase into a battered Ford pickup truck that smelled of fish, and they both climbed in. All Peyton got to ask was, “How do you know Aunt Gert?” That set off a monologue that lasted from the bus depot, through downtown St. Augustine and all along the harbor, past the bridge with the lion statues, and onto a side street where an oyster-shell driveway led to a Florida bungalow surrounded by palm trees and banana plants. The house backed up to a river.