(III)
I don’t believe it, Patricia thought. She looked up
the hill, lit by morning sun, and saw what appeared to be a
Squatter family leaving the Point. A ragtag man and woman, plus a
child, trudged up the hill toward the main road out of town,
carrying sacks of clothes and beaten suitcases.
They’re leaving town. . . .
At the end of the
trail she spotted a figure coming her way, a toolbox at the end of
one strong arm. She scarcely had a minute to contemplate the idea
that Squatters were actually moving away out of fear, and now more
of this distraction.
Oh, no, not again.
It was Ernie who
headed toward her. He smiled and waved.
Patricia had hoped
for a nice, leisurely walk by herself, to clear her head. But the
instant she saw him . . .
All that sexual
tension returned.
Damn it.
He wended up the rest
of the trail, the Stanherd house looming in the
background.
“Mornin’,” he greeted
her.
“Where have you
been?”
“I just come from the
Stanherd house. Last week Everd asked to borrow my tools to replace
some missing shingles, so I thought I’d drop ’em off with Marthe
for when he comes back from the boats.” He set the toolbox down,
suddenly looking confused. “But he ain’t there.”
“He works the
crabbing boats every morning, I thought. He’s probably on the
water.”
“His boat’s still
tied up at the dock, and so are half a’ the others. What I mean is
Everd and his wife are gone. They left
town’s, what the men at the pier told me.”
“They . . .” Then
Patricia looked farther up the trail and saw yet another Squatter
family trudging away. “It looks like quite a few clan people are
leaving.”
“Things change. I
guess it was bound to happen.” Ernie’s face looked
deflated.
“I guess if I had a
family, and drugs started popping up in the neighborhood, I’d move
too,” Patricia reasoned.
“The others are
sayin’ that ain’t the real reason,” Ernie said. “I just talked to
some a’ the men at the docks, said a lot of clan are leavin’ ’cos
they’re just plain scared.”
“Scared of
what?”
“Well, it’s like we
were talkin’ the other day. Rumors everywhere—ya never really find
out what the true story is. But some a’ the clan are sayin’ that
this whole drug business is a setup, and that somebody murdered the
Hilds and the Ealds to scare the bejesus out of the rest a’ the
Squatters, to get ’em to clear out.”
“That’s ridiculous,”
Patricia replied. “Nobody wants the Squatters to leave. . . .” But
then the rest of her sentence trailed off as she considered her
words.
“Uh-hmm,” Ernie edged
in. “That Felps fella would love for
the Squats to leave. With nobody to run the crabbing business,
Judy’d be much more tempted to just say to hell with it and sell
the land.”
“To Felps, you’re
right.” A breeze ran through her red hair. “He’s already made
offers. But that’s still crazy. I don’t believe for a minute that
Gordon Felps is murdering Squatters for
the sake of his condo development.”
“Neither do I, but ya
gotta admit the coincidence.” Ernie pointed to one of the shanties,
where a man hauled a suitcase out the front door. “Looks like a lot
of ‘em are figurin’ they’d be safer somewhere else. They don’t
wanna wind up like the Hilds ‘n’ the Ealds.”
Like a chain reaction, Patricia thought.
The murder of the Hilds, plus the fire, has
started a mass exodus. Ernie’s suspicion of Gordon Felps was
an overreaction; nevertheless, she wondered how long it would be
before he came back to Judy with another offer to purchase the
property.
“Let’s just go ask
someone,” she said off the top of her head.
“Huh?”
“Come on. . .
.”
He followed her back
down the trail. High grass on either side shimmered in sunlight,
while lone cicadas buzzed clumsily through the air. Patricia wasn’t
sure what lured her down the hill; perhaps she just wanted to see
more directly for herself. They approached one larger shack made of
roofing metal. Outside was a chicken-wire pen that caged, of all
things, several seagulls.
“Seagulls as pets?”
she questioned.
“Not quite,” Ernie
said. “The Squatters use gull fat to make candles, and they eat the
meat. Roasted gull tastes just like—”
“Let me guess.
Chicken.”
“Naw, tastes like
mallard duck.”
Patricia shook her
head. “I’ve never heard of anyone eating seagull. They’re like pigeons, I thought. Don’t
taste good.”
“They pen ‘em for two
weeks, and feed ’em nothin’ but corn. Just wait till the clan
banquet tomorrow. You’ll have to try some.”
Patricia doubted she
would. “I’d be surprised if they even had this banquet. With four of their own killed in
a couple of days . . . that’s not exactly a festive
occasion.”
“That ain’t how the
Squatters see it. Every day they’re alive they consider a gift from
God.”
Patricia appreciated
the positive philosophy. Eat, drink, and be
merry, she thought, for tomorrow you
may die? But she honestly wondered how many of them believed
the others had been murdered as a scare tactic.
A little Squatter
girl—about ten—moseyed about the pen. She wore a frayed and
obviously handmade sun-dress, and had a mop of black
hair.
“Hi, there,” Patricia
greeted her. “Are these your birds?”
The little girl
looked up despondently and nodded. She looked on the verge of
tears. Then she opened the makeshift door of the pen and began
shooing the gulls out with a branch.
“Why are you letting
them go?”
In a rush, all of the
hefty birds scampered out of the pen and flew off at once. “Cain’t
take ’em with us, my daddy said,” the little girl told
them.
“Where are you
goin’?” Ernie asked.
The girl’s accent
warbled from her small mouth. “Someplace called Norfolk, ‘cos my
daddy says he might git a job on the big crab boats. But we cain’t
stay here, ’cos someone might kill us.” And then the little girl
ran back into the shed.
“That’s so sad,”
Patricia said.
“Yeah, but like I
said . . .”
Patricia tried to
unclutter her mind as they meandered back toward her sister’s
house. She frowned to herself when Ernie turned his back to
her.
It was that same
distraction again—raging, fraying her sexual nerves. Whenever she
tried to focus on something else, his aura kept dragging her eyes
back to his unknowing body: the long flow of his hair, the strong
legs in tight workman’s jeans, the strong back. What if I weren’t married; what if I weren’t. . . ?
Her thoughts kept betraying her.
Just remember what Dr. Sallee said. Women my age
experience their actual sexual peak. It’s normal for me to feel
this way . . . as long as I don’t act on those
feelings.
His boots crunched up
the trail before her, and that alternate voice kept asking her:
What if I weren’t married?
It didn’t
matter.
“Well, how do ya like
that?”
Patricia reclaimed
her attention; Ernie had stopped on the incline of the trail,
looking up toward the main road.
“What are you . . .”
But then she spotted the vehicle herself, a new large pickup truck
parked at the shoulder. Even at this considerable distance she
could see the man sitting in the driver’s seat peering down into
the center of Squatterville, as though he were actually watching
the clan families trudging away from their homes in order to leave
town.
The man in the pickup
truck was Gordon Felps.