Bret Lott - Dead Low Tide

Dead Low Tide is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2012 by Bret Lott

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lott, Bret.
Dead low tide: a novel / Bret Lott.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-64425-5
I. Title
PS3562.O784D43 2012
813.54dc22 2011006154

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Jacket design: theBookDesigners
Jacket image: Nikki Smith / Arcangel

v3.1

Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord,

and whose deeds are done in a dark place,

and they say, Who sees us? or Who knows us?

Isaiah 29:15

Hold on, Unc whispered, warning me.

I turned, saw him standing there at the stern and poling the jon boat in. He was only a silhouette in this dark, thin stars around him for the half-moon we had out here.

You hold on, old man, I whispered, and turned, looked ahead.

None of this was my idea.

He knew we were almost there for how shallow he had to set that pole and give it the push. But it was me here in the bow about to toss the cinder-block anchor far as I could into the marsh, hoping Id make it onto the dry ground past it. It was me could reach out and touch pluff mud and cordgrass on either side of us, the two of us at the head of this finger creek at dead low tide.

Like always, it was me looking out for the two of us, because Unc is blind.

Two-thirty in the morning, and we were where we shouldnt be. Though a higher tide would have helped us get in a little farther, this was when Unc wanted to be here, for no other reason than two oclock was too early, three too late.

The cordgrass and spartina and salt-marsh hay stood silver in the moonlight, all of it crowding up on us the closer we got in, the thick rim of black pluff mud a couple feet wide beneath it. To the left and above and past the marsh I could see a house a good twenty yards in, another one to the right, back through trees and maybe fifty yards away. All I could see of that one was an outside light, a coach lamp looked like, and the dime-sized halo it cast on the brick wall it was mounted to.

What worried me was the house to the left, the closer one. Like all the houses out herethey call them cottages, only thirty-three of them on this whole parcel of landit was big, this one white stucco and two stories, two chimneys, a circular gravel drive out front.

But I only knew that from when Id seen the place in daylight. At two-thirty in the morning, and creeping in through the marsh at the back of the place, all I could make out was the white of that stucco, and the waist-high brick fence that ran alongside the whole thing almost down to this creek.

And the light in an upstairs window somebodyd cut on a couple minutes ago. A light still on, right now.

Lets go back, I whispered. That lights still on.

We were almost there now, me already up on my knees and leaning a little farther out over the bow. I had the cinder block in both hands, the ratty nylon rope it was tied to trailing back to where Id cleated it off, because I knew we wouldnt be turning back. Id been out with Unc on these efforts enough times to know once we were this close there was no going back, and now here of a sudden and yet no surprise at all was the cold stink of the pluff mud thick around me.

That light probably means ol Duponts nurse is up to change his diaper, Unc whispered. Hes got to be a hundred if hes a day.

And what if his nurse takes a look out the window, sees

Oh, Unc let out then, the word more a solid chunk of sound than a word at all, nowhere on it a whisper, and at the same time I felt a hard shiver through the boat.

For a second I thought wed hit bottom, the creek shoaled in here at the head. But I knew this spot. Id been here before, knew the bottom didnt come up until the very end. I quick turned back at Unc, saw he was looking down and to the left, the bill of the Braves ball cap he always wore part of that silhouette now, him in profile to me.

Hed touched something down there, had the pole up out of the water, held it with both hands like he was ready to gig a frog. And then I could feel that the jolt hadnt meant the bottom at all, and that we were still floating free, still inching closer to that pluff mud and where Id have to heave the block to anchor us in.

Somethingd scared him, made him flinch hard enough to shake the whole boat. Thats what it was, and even though he couldnt see a thing he was still turned to it, ready.

What? I whispered.

Dont know, he said, too fast. He lowered the tip of the pole to the water, eased it down slowly, like he was testing for something. Thought it was a gator, he whispered. But I dont think it was. He let it down all the way, until the top of the pole was even with his chest, let it set there a second. Something, he whispered.

He turned to me, said again, Hold on.

And then we hit ground for certain, and here I was, shoved forward out over the bow for the pitiful bit of momentum we had going in. I let go the cinder block, tried hard to get both hands on the gunwales or on the bow itself or just somewhere, anywhere, to keep me from tipping over and into that mud.

But it was too late, and I heard the huge aluminum donk! of the block hit the hull in the same instant I fell forward and into pluff mud to my elbows.

We were both silent for how loud that sound was, and the way it caromed like a billiard ball one end of the world to the other out here on the water. I already had words lined up in me, pissed-off ones it was everything I had to hold back for the cold of this mud, and the stink of it, and the stupidity of falling in like this when Id been out on jon boats my whole life. I had words for Unc, and this mission, and how none of this was my idea. I had words. But all I could do was swallow them down.

And watch that window up there, past the marsh grass. Somebody had to have heard us. Somebody had to.

Nothing happened. Nothing: no face at the window of that Guatemalan nurse Judge Dupont had taking care of him, or no old Dupont himself, holding close a shotgun. No turning off of the light, or turning on an outside one sos to scare off whatever dangerous intruders these were out here. Nothing.

And so I leaned back as best I could, pulled my arms out of the mud, and whispered Shit! through teeth clenched tight for holding off every other word I had.

I held my hands out in front of me a second, looked at the pure black of them in this dark, whatever moonlight there was soaked right up in that black so that it seemed I had stubs for arms. Shit, I whispered again, though this time there was nothing for it. Just me, pissed off.

Nope, Unc whispered from behind me. Pluff muds only detritus. Organic material breaking down. Maybe youd know this if you hadnt quit college.