Coasters. Gerald Duff

love life, is it, even if we wanted to,” Waylon said. “It’s out of our hands.”

      “Something you can do,” Beth said. “You’re going to have a ringside seat for the foreseeable future, and you can watch what’s going on.”

      “So I watch the lovebirds,” Waylon said. “Maybe see what’s happening between Dad and his English lady friend. What’s that going to do?”

      “Information,” Terry said, “is good.”

      “You said it, little sister,” Beth said. “What we don’t know does hurt us. And what we do know can help us know how to plan.”

      “I’m not going to be a spy on what Charlie’s up to. It’s not any of my business and I’m not involved in it.”

      “Oh, you’re involved, all right,” Beth said. “Want to be or not. It is your business, and you’re living there now, and all Terry and I want you to do is keep your eyes and ears open and let us know what you see going on.”

      “Want me to keep a notebook?” Waylon said. “Hide it under the bed?”

      “Don’t be silly,” Terry said. “We want you to be sensible and think about yourself and about your family, that’s all.”

      “Us,” Beth said and paused, as though waiting for somebody only she could hear to whisper something to her. “And Dad, too, of course.”

      “Oh, yes, I know Charlie McPhee’s welfare’s heavy on your minds,” Waylon said and stood up, Bip and Bop backing away a step in unison as he did so. “I’ll tell you what, girls. I’ll think on what you said, and if I see anything weird going on, I’ll sure take notice.”

      “That’s all we’re asking,” Beth said. “But we’re not looking for weird. We’re looking for changes in financial status. Don’t kick at the dogs, Waylon. My Lord.”

      As Waylon went through the front door, Terry was asking her big sister if there was maybe a bagel or two or an English muffin in the kitchen and Bip and Bop were running pell mell to crash their heads into the bottom of the screen closing before them.

5

      Waiting for the traffic on the Port Arthur highway to clear enough to venture out into it, Waylon looked at the puffy banks of cumulus clouds on the horizon and decided to turn left toward Sabine Pass rather than heading back home immediately. The clouds were a pure unmoving white against the blue sky, brilliant this time of morning, and the way they looked led him to hope that maybe there would be a few fishing boats that for one reason or another hadn’t left the dock at Bud’s Marina yet for a day on the Gulf.

      Latecomers would be milling around the provisions store, buying bags of ice and six packs of beer and Gatorade, checking their gear and updating their licenses, asking the charter boat captains dumb questions about bait and sunscreen ratings and limits on redfish and sea trout and grouper, and he would enjoy watching the daytrippers from Beaumont and Port Arthur and Orange readying themselves for the chance to kill a boatload of something.

      Preparing for a thing to happen had always pleased Waylon more than the actual experiencing the object itself, whatever it was. A barbecue brisket sandwich, say, or a cocktail made up in a bar from several ingredients by a skilled mixologist, a woman fully clothed willing and waiting to be undressed, or a car all gassed up sitting in the driveway before being cranked for the trip to somewhere he thought he wanted to go.

      Beginning to hum, Waylon leaned forward in the Chevrolet and flipped on the radio, pre-set to an oldies station, catching the last part of the instumental section of the Doors begging for somebody to light their fire, and the image of his father with a lady friend rose in his mind with the beat of the music.

      Charlie McPhee must be truly excited, he considered, having lived over fifty years with one woman, the last three of which he spent seeing her fade away in one hospital bed and another until she finally died in the one at home. He must have felt like his own life was over with, surely, at least that part of it involving another person being with him not because she had to be, but because she wanted it. Not kin to him by blood. Not his daughters or sisters or grandchildren, but another human being not related to him at all.

      Here he was, Waylon thought, as the oldies deejay yammered about a mystery tune coming up, Charlie McPhee, a widower in his seventies looking finally toward that big blank spot, all of a sudden presented with a new chance. Another life opening up before him, a way to look at where he is rather than where he used to be or is going to end up.

      No wonder he’s wearing new pullover T-shirts with emblems on the pocket and worrying about getting grease marks on his clothes. The old boy’s back in the hunt, getting ready to do something, looking forward to the next few minutes because they might be different from the one right now.

      The mystery tune on the car radio was “Earth Angel” and Waylon knew it before the lead singer got first groan out of his mouth. “Give me something hard, jerk,” Waylon said aloud to the deejay. “Make me work for it. Why don’t you get some real mystery going in your music for a change?”

      The parking lot at Bud’s Marina was bigger than it had been the last time Waylon saw it, and it was crowded with the pickups and stationwagons of the people already out in the charter boats on the water. No improvements had been made to the building, though. Palm-sized flakes of paint hung from its walls and lay in crumbles where rain water had dripped from the eaves, the single gas pump in front of the building still hadn’t been updated since the fifties, and the same woman was working behind the counter, squinting down at a calculator through a plume of cigarette smoke.

      She didn’t look up as Waylon opened the screen door and stepped inside, and it was not until he had rummaged through a soft-drink box and placed a bottle of Diet Mr. Pibb on the counter that she acknowledged him.

      “Fifty cents,” she said. “I hope that’s the last one of them suckers in the box. Nobody’ll buy a Mr. Pibb.”

      “I had to hunt for it,” Waylon said. “It was hid way in the bottom under the ice. You got an opener?”

      “Ain’t it twist-off?”

      “No,” he said. “It was probably bottled before they discovered twist-off. This here Mr. Pibb’s real low-tech.”

      The woman handed him an opener from beneath the counter, and Waylon drank his soda while he wandered around the store, inspecting the boxes of plastic grubs, spools of line, lead weights, leaders, peanut-butter crackers, and filet knives. When he finished the Mr. Pibb, he turned back to speak to the woman studying her calculator.

      “Everybody’s gone already, huh?” he said. “All the charters?”

      “Nope,” she said. “It’s one boat at the far end still tied up. Party from Beaumont’s not figured out what they’re going to do yet.”

      “What’s slowing them down?”

      “I imagine they’re like everybody else,” the woman said, punching at the calculator and then looking up at Waylon. “Still trying to get things counted up.”

      “It’s the figuring’s slows a man down,” he said, nodding toward the counter. “All right.”

      “A woman, too, Buddy-Ro,” she said and lighted a new cigarette.

      The boat at the end of the dock was dark yellow and looked homemade, its finish rough textured and the supports of its sun roof two-by-four planks rather than marine lumber. The nameplate at the rear of the vessel was the work of a professional painter, however, declaring the identity of the Gulf Princess in script letters, and Waylon could hear the low mutter of a large inboard engine as he walked toward the group of people gathered on the dock near the fishing boat.

      Nobody looked his way as he approached, and Waylon didn’t expect them to, he not being part of the event transpiring near the waters of the Gulf