“All right, baby,” he said, throwing down the receiver. He was back on the line in a minute. “It ain’t there no more. What’s going on?”

She put a palm on her forehead. “They’ve got to be going out to look for the boat.”

“Maybe so. But don’t you worry none. The best thing for you to do is go to sleep.”

“Is that what you tell people when their friends’ boats don’t show up?”

“Believe me,” Nerby told her, “I’ve talked to a many of ’em.”

She was one among many, then, a typical silly, worried woman. Going upstairs, she again checked on Matthew, who was snorting gently on his stomach, a little plastic wrench from his play tool set grasped in a sticky hand. To the south, thunder rumbled, almost out of hearing, like someone walking on the porch. Matthew started, the little blue wrench darting into the air. “Shush now.” She put a hand on his back. “It’s all right. In the morning, things will be all right. They have to be.”

*   *   *

At first light, the phone rang, and she rolled over and answered it half-asleep. The Coast Guardsman sounded sleepy also, but he still spoke in his official voice, telling her that Paul’s boat had been seen by another shrimper pulling out of old Lirette Pass two days before. As she listened, she saw through her window the treetops across the street pitching like masts. “But where are they?” she broke in.

“We sent out a helicopter last night, ma’am, to look for lights, and the cutter is still out trying to guess where they went.”

She put her head down and began listening more carefully to what was behind the voice. “What else are you going to do?”

“We’ll get a plane up now that it’s daylight, another cutter will deploy, and we’ll notify any rigs and shipping in the area to keep a lookout. We have a hunch they’re far out.”

“Do you have any idea how long it will take to locate them?”

An unofficial sigh came through the line. “There’re lots of low clouds out there,” the voice said. “It’s a big Gulf.”