‘Baltimore,’ I said. ‘For work.’
‘So it’s just you and me, then?’
I hadn’t thought about it, but Molly was right. Unless someone had come in overnight, Windswept and SouthernExposure were the only homes presently occupied on all of Bonefish Cay.
Molly patted my arm. ‘I vote we have lunch in town. I found another sheet of plywood under the house, so I was going to ask you to join me anyway. Thought we’d take it to Winnie. Game?’
‘You bet.’
As we pulled Good Golly up to the government dock we saw Gator standing at a wooden counter, cleaning a large snapper. The tide was out and Molly’s Zodiac sat so low in the water that I had to crane my neck to see him. ‘Hey, Gator,’ I yelled.
Fine spray misted my face as Gator used a hose to rinse fish guts off the counter. I shivered, thinking about my last encounter with fish parts.
Apparently he hadn’t heard us.
‘Gay-tor!’ This from Molly, using her outside voice. It apparently worked because water stopped trickling through the gaps in the planking.
Gator leaned over, holding on to a piling with one hand. ‘Mornin’ Hannah, Miz Molly.’
Molly pointed to the bow of her boat. ‘Got another sign for you, Gator.’
I helped Molly untie the plywood and hand it up to Gator, who promptly manhandled it down the dock and parked it temporarily against the trunk of a tree.
‘I’m heading over to Tom’s Creek,’ he said when he rejoined us on the deck, standing near the stern of Deep Magic. ‘Got a few lobster traps out that way. Going over to check.’
‘For lobsters?’
Gator picked up a blue plastic case about the size of a lunchbox that had been sitting on the fish-cleaning counter. ‘Hear that Mueller’s started running his desalinization plant. Low-impact, ha ha ha. Want to see what it’s doing to the creek.’
‘Is that a testing kit?’ I asked as we watched Gator climb into his boat. We’d used something similar to test the ancient pipes in our Annapolis home for lead.
‘Yup.’
Molly looked at me and I knew what she was thinking. An adventure. ‘Can we come along?’ I asked.
‘Sure. Hop in.’
While Gator manned the helm and Justice rode on the bow like a figurehead, his ears flapping, Molly and I shared a bench in the stern, our heads just inches away from a honking big Yamaha 225 outboard. If we’d wanted to talk, we’d have had to use sign language. I knew a little bit, but I wasn’t sure about Molly.
Gator throttled down as he guided the boat through the harbor, skirting the Tamarind Tree Marina and its mooring field, but once he nosed out of the cut, he gunned it. Before Deep Magic had even reached twenty miles per hour, she popped up on a plane, dancing over the waves as if they didn’t exist.
We flew past Poinciana Point heading northwest. We passed Kelchner’s Cove, where the family’s locked up cottage lay, rounded the tip of the island and headed into the open sea.
‘How do you know where the traps are?’ Molly screamed over the thunder of the engine.
‘GPS!’ he shouted back. A few minutes later I heard a faint peep-peep-peep as Gator throttled down, cut the engine and dropped anchor in about ten feet of water.
I looked overboard. Bingo! Deep Magic floated almost directly over a lobster trap. A cinder block weighted it down.
Gator donned his mask, strapped on a weight belt, and gathered up his tools – a narrow rod about three feet long called a tickle stick, and a net.
Molly and I knelt on the white vinyl seats, our elbows resting on the gunwale, watching Gator as he slipped over the side. He floated over the trap for a moment, took a deep breath, then dived. We watched him circle the trap, the tickle stick in one hand, the net in the other.
After two circumnavigations, Gator surfaced, spit out his snorkel to say, ‘It’d be easier if you helped, Hannah.’
‘I’d be glad to.’ It was a hot day; the water would feel good.
‘Got a bathing suit?’ he asked.
I tugged on my tank top. ‘Underneath.’ I turned to Molly. ‘Want to come?’
Eyes wide in mock panic, she pressed a hand to her chest and said, ‘Moi? No thanks. I think I’ll just watch.’
It took only half a minute for me to strip to my bathing suit and join Gator overboard.
What appeared from the deck of Deep Magic as an undulating square of metal, I could see clearly now. A forest of long, whip-like feelers and the smaller, spiny limbs that gave the lobster its name, waved at me from the perimeter of the trap. Using his hands, Gator showed me how to plant the net. Meanwhile, he used his tickle stick to entice one of the lobsters out of his hiding place. As I watched, keeping the net firmly pressed against the bottom as instructed, he tapped smartly on the lobster’s white-spotted shell, annoying the creature until it scooted backwards into the net I was holding.
Gator collected the net from me, and we bobbed to the surface. ‘Easy to see if the bug’s legal size,’ he burbled as he popped his snorkel, ‘but we need to make sure it’s not female.’ He turned the brownish-green lobster over while still in the net, examined the shape of the fins, checked for telltale eggs.
‘Good to go! How many you want?’
Looking up into the boat, shielding my eyes from the sun, I had a silent consultation with Molly.
‘Dinner at my place tonight, then,’ Molly said. ‘So four? Five?’
‘You can freeze them,’ Gator suggested.
‘Six, then.’
Gator transferred his catch from the net into a lobster bag hanging from a rope tied to one of Deep Magic’s cleats. ‘Your turn.’ He handed me the tickle stick.
I examined it like some skinny alien being, then handed it back. ‘I’d like to see you do it one more time.’
Gator nodded, dragged his mask down over his eyes and nose, and ducked once again under the surface. I took a deep breath and followed.
Once again, I placed the net and held it steady while Gator used the tickle stick to walk a lobster backwards into it. We shot to the surface to check the legal status of our catch and transferred it to the bag. This time, Gator handed me the tickle stick and we headed back down.
Back at the trap, I picked an unlucky lobster and tried to tease it out from under the trap. It was harder than it looked. Instead of coming out, the creature backed away. I used the tickle stick to probe for it, but he’d disappeared under the siding.
Using a scooping motion that was probably not quite kosher, I swept the stick under the trap, trying to coax the lobster from its hiding place, but it must have scuttled out of range.
I shot to the surface, took a deep breath of air, then headed back down to try again. When I withdrew the stick this time, I’d caught something on it, but it wasn’t a lobster. It was a bit of white knit fabric.
I extended the tickle stick in Gator’s direction, shrugged. He picked the fabric off, and we bobbed to the surface, where Gator slid his mask to the top of his head and examined the object in the sun. ‘Looks like a bit of sock.’
‘You use socks in your traps?’
‘Nope.’ He looked puzzled.
‘Do lobsters drag objects into their dens with them?’
‘Never known it to happen, Hannah. Let’s have a look.’
We repositioned our masks and sank to the bottom again. Gator pushed the cinder block off the trap, and with me standing on one side and he on the other, we lifted the platform.
There were lobsters under it all right. Dozens of them. Startled by the sudden blast of sunlight, they scampered in every direction.
But what they were feeding on made me gag. I spit out my snorkel, shot to the surface, and held on to the swim ladder at the stern of the boat with both hands while I quietly parted company with my breakfast.