Dempsey tried backing away, I grabbed his arm, pulling him tighter still just to keep myself from running or my fingers from shaking something awful.
The river was low this time of year when the hurricane season had yet to start. There would be heavy rains, and storms that would come—one was brewing in the gulf, coming in from Alabama. It had been on the radio and was all my Bastie could talk about and fret over for a week straight. But the boat passing around the riverbank right now had no problems cutting through the dark water.
There were voices and the trickle of water moving as a paddle dipped in and out of the water. I couldn’t make out who they were even as we sidled closer toward the river, staying beneath the heavy limbs of the cypress that skirted toward the end of the trail, but there was definitely more than one voice echoing quietly over the water.
“Poachers, looking for gators from the sound of it,” Dempsey whispered in my ear.
“They not in season?” I only asked to keep Dempsey leaning close to be heard. I did so like the way he smelled and how much heat his body made as he came close to me.
“No. I don’t reckon. If they were, those boys would be out during the day hunting.” The small boat floated further up the river and Dempsey took my hand, pulling me away from the trail and toward the small shack some fifty feet back off the water.
He nodded at the broken cinderblocks Aron had fashioned into a walkway and Dempsey helped me navigate it, stopping to offer me his hand and picking me up a little by my waist to make sure I made it from the path without slipping.
The small front door was made from three thick planks of pine with three smaller pieces nailed across, and as Dempsey grabbed the knotted twine of rope looped into a small hole in the wood that served as handle, the small hinges that had rusted from the weather and moisture in the air made what seemed to be an earth-shattering screech, but probably wasn't all that loud. .
“That Aron is clever.”
“Not so clever.” I nodded a thanks to Dempsey as he held open the door, but I didn’t step inside straight away; instead, we both leaned inward, looking over the small bucket in the corner, upturned, I reckoned, to act as a seat, and the two fishing poles leaned against one corner of the tiny shack. “He comes out here when he’s had too much whiskey and Mimi won’t let him in the house. Drunk fool will throw a line out that window at two in the morning thinking he’ll surprise the catfish when they’re half asleep.”
“Does it work?” There was a little laugh in Dempsey’s voice, like he already knew the answer to his question.
“Comes home with dozens, more than that when he’s good and drunk.”
“Then I won’t fault the man for his drink if it means your Mimi will fry up some catfish for us.”
Dempsey smiled at my shaking head then followed me away from the shack to sit near the bank. “There’s a purple sky tonight.” It was something Bastie liked the best about the spring. The sky on the Manchac was always clearest at night, but in the spring the weather was the brightest, like God settled the seas and calmed the wind so that we could have a clear sight of the most beautiful of his kingdom.
“What did your Bastie say about it? I forget.”
“Purple skies come when God is in court. He comes close to us and the purple we see is the hem of His royal cloak.”
Dempsey shook his head, smiling to himself as we both looked up into the dark sky. It wasn’t only purple, but blue with swirls of gray swimming in the darkness around us. If I looked away from Dempsey, I could only make out his silhouette from the corner of my eye. He looked dark as coal in that purple light.
“If God is visiting, He might not like to see what’s happening here.”
Dempsey was right. The way things were turning, how restless and mean folk had gotten—how our own lives had found the same restlessness, wouldn’t make any God happy looking down on it.
“Maybe He only sees the good among us.”
Dempsey went quiet, slipping his hand to mine to move his palm over the top of my fingers. “Then He only sees you,