“One of these days you’re going to remember that it’s caveat emptor,” said the preacher.
“Nothing wrong with carpe diem,” comforted the pragmatist.
I was already into a Scarlett O’Hara mode on Chet, so I added Kidd to the things I’d think about later and surrendered myself to the delight of feeding gulls on the wing.
One or two are always cruising the shoreline and as soon as the first gull swooped to catch a bread morsel, a dozen more appeared from nowhere until the bright blue air around me was filled with flashing white wings. Playing the wind, they hovered over the water like hummingbirds in midair as I tossed the broken pieces high above me, then they wheeled and dipped and soared again until all my bread was gone.
As I turned back to land, Mahlon Davis greeted me from his porch with a smile that turned to a scowl when two large white trucks pulled into the lot beside his.
They were from that Morehead waste removal service that Linville Pope had hired to clear Mahlon’s debris from her property. One had side railings for hauling, the other held a pint-size yellow bulldozer.
Mahlon’s thin shoulders stiffened angrily as three muscular workmen got out of the trucks and began letting down a steel ramp to off-load the dozer.
“They must not know Linville Pope’s dead,” I said.
Mahlon gave a threatening growl and struck off across the lot. I followed, sensing the beginning of a brawl. And wasn’t I a judge? Didn’t I know how to arbitrate?
By the time I picked my way through the junk and brambles, things had already begun to escalate. Mahlon’s accent was too thick to let me distinguish his stream of angry threats, but evidently the workmen were understanding every abusive term. One of them had grabbed a shovel from the back of the truck and looked as if it wouldn’t take much more before he swung it at Mahlon’s head.
As I approached, Mahlon said to me, “Them bastards’re saying if I don’t move my boat they’re going to push it off.”
“We got our orders from the property owner,” said the beefiest of the three men. He had a clipboard in his hand and he thumped the flimsy yellow top sheet.
“From Linville Pope?”
“That’s right, lady.”
“But she was killed yesterday,” I said.
“See?” said Mahlon. “And she’s a judge. She knows the law.”
“You really a judge?” asked the man.
I nodded.
“And Mrs. Pope really is dead?”
“Yes.”
The man with the shovel lowered it and the other workman loosened his clenched fists. It looked for a moment as if that might be that, but their boss stood firm and said, “Well, ma’am, I’m real sorry to hear she’s dead and all, but she put a deposit down and we signed a contract and far as I’m concerned, that’s something him and the lawyers can work out. I need this job and I’m going to do it less’n you want to serve me with papers to quit.”
He had me there and he knew it. He looked at Mahlon. “We’ll start on the other side, but when we get to this side, mister, if you ain’t moved that boat, I promise you we’re going to move it for you.” Again he thumped his clipboard. “She made a particular point of that boat in this contract.”
“The hell you say!” howled Mahlon. As he stormed across the lot back to his shed, he was cursing so loud and so viciously that I was glad Guthrie was at school and not around to hear or get cuffed in his anger.
“Now listen,” I said to the boss. “Can’t you—”
“Uh-oh!” said the youngest workman and he quickly headed for the near truck, just as a shot rang out.
I whirled and there stood Mahlon at the front of his boat shed with a rifle in his hands and I could only watch in stunned horror as he fired again. As if in slow motion, I heard it hit the truck behind us. Another sharp crack and the boss worker crumpled beside me. Blood splattered across the yellow contract on his clipboard and jerked me back to real time.
“Mahlon, my God! What are you doing?” I screamed and ran toward him. “Stop!”
He banged off another shot at the other two men who were diving for cover, but as I got to him, he suddenly swung the .22 to point straight at me. Such hot rage blazed in his eyes that it hit me I was looking down the barrel at Andy and Linville’s killer.
Oysters, I thought inanely. That’s what Kidd meant. A week into April, on a tide-washed sandbar where oysters don’t grow, yet I’d seen a half-dozen scattered there near the body of a man who would never take a shellfish out of season. And that night Guthrie had come across in the twilight to say “Grandpap brought home some oysters today and Granny says do you want some?”
“Don’t do this, Mahlon,” I pleaded, but even as I spoke, the barrel swung to the right and he fired toward the road. Almost deafened by the explosion, I looked back in time to see Kidd duck down behind a Carteret County patrol car that had pulled up beside the cottage. The shot spiderwebbed its windshield.
Then I felt the hot barrel between my shoulder blades and Mahlon yelled, “Y’all keep away from me! Y’all don’t get back, I’ll shoot her. I swear to God I will.”
I saw Kidd straighten up and I screamed, “Stay back!”
Then Mahlon prodded me. “Walk on the other side of the boat,” he ordered.
Numbly, I went. Around on the seaward side, blocks and boxes formed rough steps that led up to the boat railing for easy access over the side. Prodded by the rifle barrel, I went up and over and Mahlon followed till we reached the unfinished cabin and looked out through glassless window holes.
We were six feet or more above the ground, almost parallel to the shoreline. To the left was the sea. To the right, houses and the road beyond. The man Mahlon had shot lay motionless in the weed-filled lot. Cars were stopping along the road edge beyond Clarence Willis’s trailer, and knots of people stared and pointed to us. I couldn’t see Kidd, but someone was crouched behind the patrol car’s open door and 1 heard the crackle of a two-way radio, so professional help was probably on the way if someone didn’t do something stupid first.
“Mahlon, listen to me,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Shut up!” he snarled. Then almost immediately, “All I ever did was mind my own business and try to make a living and they won’t let me.”
“But Andy lent you money,” I said softly. “He gave you an engine.”
“No, he didn’t!”
“But—”
“I seen him Saturday night and maybe I might’ve had a beer or two too many, but he talked to me like I was dirt. Said I was too sorry to finish a boat. Said if I did, I’d probably wreck it like the other one. Said his mind was full changed and he worn’t gonna throw good money after bad. Next day I’d been out and shot me a turtle and was coming in with some oysters, too, when I seen him over yonder clamming and I went out to talk to him reasonable-like to see if he’d change his mind back ‘cause I had to have that motor and he certainly worn’t using it. I even tried to give him some of my oysters and he started yelling about taking stuff out of season, when hell, season hadn’t even been closed a week. Besides, I didn’t get ‘em to sell, they was for us to eat. And he said men like me was what was holding back his shitty Alliance. Said he’d see me in hell ‘fore I’d get so much as a net sinker out of him so I grabbed out my gun and said well say hello to the devil for me.”
Carefully, I turned till I was facing him and the gun was only inches from my chest. “Mahlon, what you did was in the heat of the moment. I’m not saying you’ll get off scot-free, but it’s not half as bad as if you stand up here and think about it and then shoot somebody else.”