Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,24

questioning Hornsby about his relationship with Jesse Barre. I was here to get some goddamn answers. I would be pretty pissed if I spent all day on the S.S. Piece of Shit with nothing to show for it but the vague smell of dead carp.

After a few minutes of feeding the chains into the dark water, Hornsby stopped. He stood there, looking down for several minutes. Finally, after Rollie disappeared back into the olive green depths, I took my opportunity.

“So you know, Clarence thinks you killed her.” I figured what the hell, he wasn’t answering my questions, maybe I could goad him into talking.

The wind ruffled his dark brown hair and he smirked. Well, there went that plan. Pissing him off wasn’t going to be easy.

A flock of gulls screamed overhead and Hornsby stepped closer to the edge of the boat.

“He loved his daughter, I’ll give you that,” he said. “But he never understood her.”

“What didn’t he understand?”

He waved me away like it was a question not worth answering. After a few minutes of staring into the water, though, he did give me an answer.

“He thinks she wanted to leave me, right?”

I waited, not wanting to divulge anything he didn’t already know.

“You don’t have to answer. I know I’m right.” He walked along the deck of the barge to the base of the tower, with me right on his heels. He put his hands on some of the crane’s levers and made a few adjustments. Overhead, I heard the creak of old machinery beginning to awaken.

“So maybe you’re right,” I said. “Do you want to deny it?”

“I want to tell you and Clarence to go fuck yourselves, but I can’t,” he said. “Well, you I can. But not Clarence. She was crazy about him. I wouldn’t want to do anything that would upset him. If Jesse were here, that’s what she’d be saying.”

I took a closer look at him, at his eyes, and for some reason I believed him. Maybe it was the way he said it. Maybe he was just a helluva good actor. Or maybe it was the dark circles under his eyes, the tired, beaten look in his face. It rang true. It looked like the face of a man who’d just lost the woman he loved.

“So why does he think she was leaving you?” I said.

“Who says she wasn’t?”

Okay, he had me there.

“Can we stop playing games?” I asked. “Was she leaving you?”

“She was and she wasn’t.”

I sighed and looked out toward the lake. The wind shifted a bit and a giant wave crashed over the side of the barge. I looked down and the front of my Dockers were wet, like I’d pissed my pants. I glanced at Hornsby. He was dry.

“She was and she wasn’t?” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I walked to Hornsby’s left, trying to get a glimpse of what he was doing. I heard a noise overhead and then Hornsby grabbed me. I thought he was going to throw me in the water. But he pushed me forward just as a large pool of heavy chain dropped onto the deck from the crane overhead. It landed right where I’d been standing.

“Shouldn’t I be wearing a hard hat?” I said. “I’m a bleeder.”

Hornsby appeared not to have heard what I said, nor did he seem to notice the fact that he’d just saved me from grave injury.

“She was taking a sabbatical,” he said. “From the shop. From Grosse Pointe. And from me. But she was coming back. She said so. I think she told the old man, too.” He laughed. “I just don’t think he believed her.”

“What was she going to do on this…sabbatical?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re done,” he said, gesturing toward the water. I looked down, and the first log was ascending to the surface, like an ancient submarine finally coming to port.

“Stay out of the way,” he told me. No problem, Ahab.

The chain around the log was hooked to a winch, and Hornsby crossed the deck, released the chain from the winch and Rollie, in the water, backed away from the log, then disappeared.

Hornsby walked back to the crane’s control center, fired it up, and slowly maneuvered the big arm out over the water. He spread the clamping mechanism open, brought it down on top of the log, closed it, and hoisted the three ton, four hundred year old log onto the surface of the barge.

It lay there, still, like a harpooned whale. It was dark brown