Anne Bonny's Wake. Dick Elam

in the hatch opening. She held two cups of coffee. Steam rose from the coffee cups and created a witch’s cauldron allusion. Her makeup fit the part of a crone.

      Hell of a makeup job, I thought. The young woman had drawn facial lines with the soft lead pencil from the navigation equipment drawer. The lines extended across her forehead. She’d also marked heavy lines from her nose to below her mouth and drawn small vertical lines on the corner of her lips.

      Her hair stuck together. She had combed streaks of white and gray goo through her black hair. I could smell the acrid resin.

      “What did you put on your hair?”

      “Stuff out of the cans I found. White latex paint came from a bottom drawer, where I also found the fiberglass putty.”

      “You didn’t put the hardener in the fiberglass, did you? You didn’t add the catalyst from the small plastic tube, did you?”

      “No. Would it have made me more beautiful?”

      “Don’t know how you could improve, but your hair would become a ‘permanent’ permanent wave.”

      She handed me my cup of instant coffee.

      “He will come back by here,” I warned.

      She nodded, sat next to the cabin bulkhead, her back to the sun. You couldn’t see much of her unless you looked across my shoulder, and then you would look into the rising sun.

      I waited for her to speak. The coffee wasn’t boiling, but warmed the roof of my mouth. Wished for honey to sweeten the taste. Maybe she would alleviate the synthetic coffee taste if she said something.

      She listened. Her eyes swept the creek banks. She looked past me and over Anne Bonny’s port quarter. Then she looked back toward the channel marker and the river buoy. Finally, she cut her eyes over my shoulder.

      She spoke loudly, in a whining, nasal rasp that matched her hag costume.

      “Damn, lousy coffee. Don’t expect me to cook breakfast. Get it yourself.”

      She warned me we were still onstage.

      “Uh-huh.”

      That wasn’t much of a stage line, but I hadn’t developed my method to play opposite Virginia Woolf. A previous woman, who’d served a kiss with my morning coffee, had spoiled me.

      Resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. Tried to act the dutiful husband contemplating, Why did I marry you? I answered myself: To inherit your father’s business and own the sailboat that I always wanted. Or because I remembered you as a bare-breasted maiden, rising like a goddess from the sea.

      “Don’t hear his motor?” she whispered. “Do you?”

      I listened. Turned so I could hear with my right ear. My left ear misses certain tones. Flying a single-engine, noisy Cessna 172, shooting ducks without earplugs hadn’t helped my hearing. The Navy medic who discovered my hearing loss said he couldn’t qualify me for submariner duty. Hah—a small penalty for taking sky with your water.

      The woman whispered: “He’s ashore. Went ashore up the creek and walked back where he could see your boat. He’s standing in the trees, watching me from over your shoulder. Sit tight. We’ll know in a few minutes.”

      I didn’t turn and look, but I touched the winch handle in my pants. My fingers squeezed the cold brass. With my other hand, I drank weak coffee.

      Then I heard a motor starting. And sounding louder. My eyes focused on the returning motorboat.

      The Bear, again, set a course toward the Anne Bonny.

       CHAPTER 4

      “Watch your damn wake!” she screeched like an owl. The newly disguised hag waved a clenched fist.

      The Bear powered past the Anne Bonny. He throttled back, and his boat’s wake rocked our boat.

      “I said, watch your damn wake! Watch your damn wake!”

      If the Bear didn’t hear her harpy tone, he couldn’t mistake the fist she shook.

      The Bear throttled back, waved a passing salute, and gunned his motor.

      A larger wake rocked the Anne Bonny.

      The Bear looked back, and she raised her middle finger.

      Spirited bluff, I thought. She’s a helluva poker player. She didn’t hesitate to back her hand. Her hand? Hell, she staked herself with my boat, my neck, and didn’t even name the game. She didn’t wait for me to ask.

      “Let’s see what I can cook for my husband’s breakfast.”

      She lowered herself into the cabin, raised the sweatshirt, and extracted the butcher knife. She wiped the knife with a dish towel and laid it alongside the other kitchen knife, then opened the cabinet above the sink.

      I stayed in the cockpit and watched the Bear’s boat return to the Pamlico Sound. I watched until only a wake remained.

      Checked my digital watch. 7:08. Time for breakfast, but I wasn’t hungry.

      “Wait on the breakfast. We need to talk,” I called down.

      “Please. Can’t wait on my empty stomach,” she pleaded.

      Bill Havins would have provided me a country-boy comparison, such as “I been to a pig picking and two county fairs, but I ain’t never seen anything like this.” I needed to talk with Havins as soon as I could sail to Oriental. Might raise him now on the VHF radio.

      Why hadn’t I radioed the Coast Guard when the Bear reached for his shotgun? What would I have broadcast? “Mayday. Mayday. Big Bear with shotgun chasing bare-breasted woman.” That message might lure listeners. I imagined fishing boats rushing to Bear Creek because the mermaids were schooling.

      “You want to come down and light this stove?” she called from the galley.

      I saw the Bear’s motor wake had dissipated. I climbed below. She stepped aside and surrendered the lighting job with a wave of her upraised palm. And I got a lecture.

      “Missed your cue when I asked if you wanted to keep the stove burning,” she said. “When you didn’t answer, I shut the stove off.” She operated as if she had invited me aboard.

      “Lady, pardon me, but you strain my hospitality,” I said. “Would you be kind enough to tell me who you are, what you are doing here, and what the man with the shotgun wanted?”

      She answered, but with a question: “Sure. Where do you keep your matches?”

      “In the bottom drawer.”

      “Got ’em. What next?”

      “Next, you explain what’s happening, and who you are.”

      “Sure. Would you light the fire?”

      I took the matches and fired the burner.

      “Well?”

      “I’m Maggie Moore from Hilton Head. I was swimming to save my life. And that guy chased me because I was trespassing. What’s your name?” She opened the oven, found the skillet, and placed it on the burner top.

      “My name is Hersh Barstow.”

      “Hersh as in Herschel?”

      “That’s right. Maggie as in Margaret?”

      “No way. My dad named me Maggie. Right there on the birth certificate. I’m named after a 1890s Australian stage star. Full name is Maggie Adelaide Moore. My friends call me Maggie.”

      “Tell me about the trespassing.”

      “Women aren’t welcome at cockfights. Especially when their escort carries a news camera.”

      “Where was the cockfight?”

      “Somewhere