“Yeah,” Paul’s father agreed. “I guess it’s gusting about fifty out there, but it’s been holding steady for the past hour. That’s as bad as it’s going to get.” He looked down and took a deep breath. “Our problem is, the bottom’s gone out this tub. Maybe a seam opened in the stern.” The boat pitched forward and a surge of water touched the engine’s flywheel and sprayed around the hold like a pinwheel of sparks.

Paul worked as quickly as he could, trying not to think about what was happening. His arms shook as he heaved the buckets into darkness. He could control many things, but all the water inside and out made him feel helpless and small. He caught himself worrying about how much he had invested in the boat and frowned at his own foolish thought. At the moment, staying alive should be the only consideration, but the dominant feeling he owned was a fear of facing Colette if he let the boat go down.

Chapter Twenty

Twenty

Colette sat out on the porch swing with Matthew lazing in her lap as she watched the drizzle left over from last night’s storm. It had been a bad one, crawling up out of the Gulf on silver legs of lightning, banging the shutters and pelting the roof with pecans for hours. A big limb was down in the side yard, and she took the boy down to explore it. She thought of the big stories the men would have about the weather when they came in, and she smiled, anticipating Etienne’s version. Matthew straddled the limb, pointed to the sky with one hand and made a fist with the other.

After lunch Colette read him a story about a child who won a horse in a contest. She read it with enthusiasm, though the boy was unimpressed with the tale and dozed off, his glossy black curls washing over her lap. She could not believe he was not interested, and she finished the story herself, looking back and forth between the baby and the book. She thought about last night’s lightning and wondered if boats could be struck.

At four o’clock she walked down to the fish dock to see if Paul had come in. Nothing was tied up but a squatty lugger that rolled back and forth as men threw burlap sacks of oysters from the deck to a conveyor. She could see an ascending towboat downriver, and beyond that, the green bulk of the dredge R. C. Canterbury cleaning out the channel below Beewick. The air was a damp shawl, so she walked home, holding Matthew’s hand carefully down the incline of the levee, noticing how the wind was still stirring the weeds.