The Language of Sand (30 page)

“This squares you with me,” he told Nat. “You and Hank, that is.”

Nat thanked him and got into the truck. Abigail did the same, then they drove across the island as they had come, not speaking. He pulled up to the lighthouse and Abigail hurried out.

“What about the furniture?” Nat asked.

“Forget about it.”

“What? No. I’m not welching on my end of the deal.”

“Whatever. I’m too tired to do it today.”

“Okay, I’ll come tomorrow. Hank’s been under the weather. Doesn’t want to take the rig out. I can be here in the morning.”

“Like I said, whatever.”

Abigail went inside and slammed the door harder than she had intended, making it shiver on the hinges. Then she slid down to the floor and cried, also harder than she had intended.

 
quoth
a
(kwō′thə),
interj. Archaic.
indeed! (used ironically or contemptuously in quoting another.) [1510–20; from
quoth a
quoth he]

The house was quiet. The solid stillness was so dense that it filled the
living room and pressed against Abigail as she sat on the floor with her back against the door. When she lifted herself to her feet, her knees cracked. The pain in her arms was intense enough to make her ears ring. She was too tired to sleep, too hungry to eat. On reflex, she drove to Merle’s house and sat outside in the station wagon, baffled as to what had brought her there.

“You’re here. Might as well go in.”

Abigail headed around to the deck, where she could see in through the sliding glass door. The lights were on. She could hear a football game being broadcast. She tapped on the slider and heard Merle ambling toward the door. He noticed she had been crying. Abigail made no effort to conceal it.

“Something wrong?”

“No.”

“Something break?”

“No.”

“Did the lighthouse collapse?”

“No.”

“You want to come in?”

“Please.”

“You eaten?”

“Not much.”

“Got some leftover tuna casserole.”

“Sounds delicious.”

While he reheated the food in the microwave, Abigail took a seat. The kitchen table was covered in hooks and thread for fashioning lures. A miniature plastic beetle was affixed to a stand.

“Used to buy my lures,” Merle said, “but I thought I could make ’em more lifelike myself.”

“You’ve got talent. They look real.”

“Knock on wood the fish concur.” He set a mug of coffee before her. “Had a bad day, huh? I’ve had my share of those. I prefer the good ones.”

“It’s Nat Rhone. He’s so…”

“Arrogant? Obnoxious? Infuriating?”

“Yeah, that.”

“The guy’s not easy to get along with. Never has been. Never will be. He’s had a hard life.”

“Who hasn’t?”

The microwave beeped, giving Merle an out. He spooned a large serving of casserole onto a plate for her. “It’s hot. Don’t need to burn your tongue again.”

Ignoring the warning, Abigail dug into the meal. It tasted wonderful. She devoured forkful after forkful, cleaning her plate. She didn’t dare confess to Merle that it was the first warm meal she’d had since she arrived.

“For such a skinny person, you can really put it away. You’re not one of those, what do you call it, narcoleptics, are you?”

Abigail laughed, nearly choking on her food. “You mean bulimics? No, I’m not.”

She suspected that Merle made the slip on purpose to squeeze a laugh out of her. She appreciated that as much as the food.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Nat’s got a chip on his shoulder. That’s that. Whatever happened to him, he must deserve to be angry.”

“Being that angry usually means somebody’s been hurt. Hurt something fierce,” Merle said, insinuating that he had a full story on the notorious Nat Rhone.

Abigail put up her hands, as if to physically stop him. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business. And Nat would go ballistic if you did.”

“Probably.”

“You’re going to tell me anyway?”

Merle’s expression was impassive. He was going to tell her anyway.

“If you’d confide Nat’s secrets to me, who’s to say you won’t spill mine to him? Or anybody else?”

“S’pose you’ll have to trust me.”

Trust was a tricky concept for Abigail. In the wake of the fire, she couldn’t always trust her senses or herself. Putting her faith in someone else was asking a lot.

“I’ll trade you a little trust for another plate of that tuna casserole.”

“Coming right up.”

The fishing lures and the racket from the football game were the lone strands of masculinity in Merle’s house. An ivy wallpaper border lined the kitchen, the magnets on the fridge were in the shape of watering cans, and the pot holders hanging from the oven had a floral motif. Merle, the strapping embodiment of manhood, was immersed in the girliness of his ex-wife’s possessions. At first, Abigail wondered why he held on to them after what she had done, jilting him and taking his child. Then she realized that if her house hadn’t been destroyed, she would have continued to live in it after the fire. She would have given anything to be reminded of the special times imbued in every wall, banister, and floorboard, willing to look past the sadness that was incised in them as well.

“Is this the kind of story that’ll make me cry? Because I’ve already done my share of that today.”

Merle set the refilled plate of casserole on the table for her. “Depends on what you cry at.”

“Okay, okay. If you’re going to tell me, tell me already.”

“Nat didn’t relay this to me himself, not personally.”

“Is that a preface to the saga?”

“It’s not—what do you call it—hearsay. But it’s not from the horse’s mouth neither.”

“Whose mouth is it from?”

“Hank Scokes.”

Abigail was hazy on the island’s lines of alliance. She was unaware of who was close with whom and who wasn’t. “I didn’t realize you and Hank were friends.”

“Friends in as much as I’ve known him most of my life.”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“A while after Hank’d taken Nat on as his mate, they got to drinking together. Liquor doing what it does, Nat opened up to Hank. Nobody else knew hide nor hair about the guy. Hardly the chitchat type. He’d already been fired by three other captains. Not because he couldn’t handle himself on a rig, but because of his temper. That got rumors swimming.”

“Rumors about what?”

“That Nat was some parolee or an escaped convict or that he’d broken out of a mental hospital with only the clothes he had on him.”

“Was that all he came to the island with?”

“Maybe less.”

“But that’s not what really happened, is it?”

Merle had a seat at the table with her. “Hank said one night after he and Nat drank a few beers—too many, knowing Hank—Nat told him he’d come here from South Carolina. Before that he’d been in Florida. He’d lived in a dozen places on the southern seaboard, taking any job he could get. From menial stuff to things he should’ve had a license for: electrical work, plumbing, engineering, you name it.”

“Wait. You sent someone who’s not a real electrician to check my wiring?”

Caught, Merle’s cheeks went pink. “He
is
the best electrician on Chapel Isle. Having the proper credentials is, um, a technicality.”

“Thanks for explaining. I feel much better.”

“As I was saying, Nat told Hank about how much he moved around, taking the bus if he had the money. Hopping trains if he didn’t. Then Hank asked Nat about his family. Well, Nat got real quiet. Didn’t answer. Thankfully, Hank, drunk as he was, had the sense to keep his trap shut and let the boy speak. Nat told Hank he didn’t have any family. None living, that is. Parents died in a car crash when he was a toddler, both of ’em killed instantaneously. He was strapped into his car seat, made it through the crash without a scratch on him.”

Hearing that, Abigail could have cried. Except she didn’t want to. What she wanted to do was wring Merle’s account from her head. She resented having to pity Nat Rhone, hated having something so personal in common with him. But she did. He’d lost his family and so had she. Abigail wondered if the tale touched a chord with Merle as well. Nat didn’t get the chance to know his parents, while Merle had a son he hadn’t met. She would have liked to ask Merle about it. However, this was Nat’s history he was volunteering, not his own.

“He was sent to live with a relative, an aunt,” Merle went on. “As Nat got older, his temper got worse. The aunt couldn’t get him to mind her and there was no one else, so he was sent to a foster home, then got kicked out and bounced from place to place. Since nobody could control him, nobody would have him. Nat started stealing, getting on the wrong side of the law. Mentioned jail to Hank. Not prison, though. Broke into a car to take the change from the ashtray and got busted. That was when he was seventeen. He drifted from there on.”

“Why are you telling me this, Merle? So I’ll feel sorry for Nat and that’ll absolve his terrible behavior? A bad life isn’t a defense for bad manners or a bad attitude.”

“No, I’m only telling you so you’ll know.”

“How does that change anything?”

“There’s a wide gap between knowing something and not knowing something.”

Abigail pushed her plate aside. “I can’t take many more of these oblique maxims that sound like they came out of fortune cookies. They don’t make any sense.”

“Sure they do. You’re a smart lady. You get the picture.”

She did and she didn’t. Merle took her plate to the sink and washed it, while Abigail sat drumming her fingers. “What do I do when Nat shows up on my doorstep tomorrow to help me move the furniture from the basement?”

“Do what?” Merle nearly dropped the plate.

“We made an agreement. I’d paint Duncan Thadlow’s house with him if he’d move the antiques in the basement upstairs for me. It seemed such a shame to leave them down there. I’m no expert on wood, as you’ve already observed, but the dampness couldn’t be doing the furniture any favors, right?”

Merle was processing what she’d told him. The faucet was running on high. He appeared not to hear it.

“Merle. The water.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He shut off the tap, preoccupied.