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Chapter One
I've never told this to anyone before, at least not all of it. All through Sheriff's investigation and the court proceedings, I only told what they wanted to know, the facts -- what I saw, what I did. I never told all that happened or how I felt about it. A murder comes hard to anyone, especially a twelve-year-old, mixes him up so's it can take years to get straight again. It's been five years now and this is the first time I felt I could lay it all out, just as it happened. I'll start at what feels like a beginning.
It was early spring that year, a season of dangerous skies. I was of an age when I'd wake up before sunrise with nothing but fishing on my mind. Some mornings were so sweet and cold and clear -- still a few stars, a soft thick mist rising up from the glassy water.
I could have the skiff out on the creek in nothing flat. She was a light wooden boat, and low to the water, built with all the skill and love in an Eastern Shoreman's hands. I painted her dark green every year, scraped her clean of barnacles to keep her floating like a feather. My granddaddy'd built her, and she was my proudest possession.
It seemed a sin to turn on the engine in the quiet, with the rails still sleeping in the cordgrass, and the bullfrogs and peepers and other night creatures not up yet from winter. It was about as peaceable as any place on earth.
I could be town at the bend in front of Bartons' dock just before the sun was up, slapping my fingers against my thighs to warm them. The creek meandered down there; the ghosty hulks of old skipjacks run aground showed where the shoreline had been other years. It always seemed sad thosebeautiful old boats would never part baywater again.
Just there the clouds would loom and menace, so cold and wet you could feel them hover. If I kept on, more like than not I'd have a right smart skiff full of icy water to push home.
It was just one such Saturday morning when it all began. Through my bedroom window the faintest tangerine glow marked where the sky met the water. Soon as I threw back my woolen blanket, old Obie's tail whumped the floor. I swear that dog loved fishing more than I did.
By the time I had shivered into my jeans and flannel shirt and town vest, Obie was stretching and making groany noises in his throat, just dying to get out on the Bay.
There was something very special and secret about being quiet in the kitchen before sunrise, with the whole rest of the house asleep above me. My feet knew every chair and table leg, every creaky floorboard; the palms of my hands knew just where each door hinge squeaked. Obie drew in his claws and puffed up the pads on his feet. Every other minute of the day that Lab clattered around like a sackful of oyster shells.
A storm had come up the night before. Branches whipped and broke in the giant cedars all round the house, and somewheres near dawn it went away, suddenly as it'd come on. Limbs littered the winter-brown lawn down to the water, and the cordgrass lay flat at the edge of the creek. Those easterly spells slammed into the mouth of the Chesapeake with ferocity and trapped the high tide in the Bay and creeks like a giant stopper.
Part of our dock was still underwater. The creek was calm and still, but for a fast-moving tide that sucked at the pilings. My rubber fishing boots were slick and wet to the knees by the time we got to the boathouse.
I took my fishing rod, tackle box, net, and sounding pole out of the shed on the shore end of the dock. I could get in a good couple of hours hanging around the inlets up the creek, fishing for flounder or anything that'd bite. I was to meet Tunes at Bartons' dock at eleven. We were headed down to our special place on King's Creek to rake us some clams. April was early for clamming, but we always tried to get out by Easter. Night before, I'd sharpened my knife and could pretty near feel those cherrystones slide one by one, all slick and salty, down my throat.
Tunes Smith had been my best friend ever since I could remember. We'd grown together from infancy. Her daddy, Kneebone, was manager of my father's farm, like his father and his father's father before him, all the way back to the time when they were freed from slavery, which was how they first came to work the Smith land.
Tunes' mama had worked in our house, cleaning and cooking. Once Tunes was born, just a month after me, her mama brought her along and looked after the two of us babies together. After Tunes' mama died some two years later, Gran and Mama looked after Tunes like she was their own. When Tunes and me started school, Mama had Tunes' Aunt Mazie teach her to do cornrows. She sat Tunes before her on a stool and made her recite her times tables while she braided row after row. Mama and Gran gave Tunes over to Kneebone when he came in from the fields each evening.
Mama felt sorry for her. "Poor little motherless child," Mama'd say, packing up nut bread she'd baked extra for them. Sometimes it'd be a slab of ham, or extra crab cakes. She'd hand me the bundle and say, "Take it to them, son. What can become of a girl without a mama?" But it seemed to me Tunes and Kneebone made out just fine.
Nobody knew the Bay and the fish and the tides and winds as well as Tunes. It was all pure instinct with her, like the elements dwelled in her heart, and pure baywater pumped through her veins. She was proud of it and was sometimes right intolerant of folks who didn't know all that she did.
