“Thanks,” she said, sinking down onto the fiberglass seat.
“You ready?” the boatman asked, and without waiting for her reply, he cast off the stern line and backed away from the Talisa dock.
Brooke clasped her briefcase to her chest and tried to steel herself for another jaw-rattling ride across the river to the mainland.
Instead, C. D. was content to putter across at a leisurely pace.
Brooke tilted her head back to look at the sky. She was running through the list of chores she needed to complete before her return to the island.
“How’s your client doing today, Miss Lawyer?” C. D. blurted. “I saw y’all riding around the island in the truck earlier. That’s good, right? I mean, last time I took her over to the mainland to see the docs down at Jacksonville, she looked like one good breeze might knock her down. She don’t hardly go out of the house at all since she got sick.”
“What?” Brooke was startled by his sudden concern for his employer. “Um, yes, she did seem better today. I think the new medicine is helping.”
He nodded, chewing the plastic filter of his unlit cigarillo.
C. D. was an odd-looking creature, Brooke mused, with his sun-seared skin, bowlegs, and ever-present cigarillo, plus the braided gray ponytail that hung down almost to his waist.
“Hear tell she’s fixing to give Oyster Bluff back to Shug and Louette and the rest of them Geechees living up there,” he said. His aviators shaded his eyes, so she couldn’t tell from his expression whether or not he approved of Josephine’s largesse.
“Where did you hear that?” Brooke asked, careful to neither confirm nor deny.
“Around,” C. D. said. “Next thing you know, she’ll be giving us all raises and insurance.”
“Maybe so,” Brooke said. She stared off into the distance.
“Wait ’til she hears I run off another set of assholes from the state.” He chuckled. “She’ll for sure give me a raise for doin’ that.”
“You saw some people from the state? On Talisa? When was that?”
“Early this morning, right after sunup. Caught a couple of ’em tied up at the dock with a mess of what looked like surveying instruments. One of ’em tried to show me some piece of paper claiming they had a right to be there. Something about an appraisal they needed to do on account of the state making the old lady sell up. I told ’em unless they had the sheriff with ’em, they needed to stay the hell off this island.”
“I certainly hope you didn’t threaten them,” Brooke said.
He patted the holstered revolver on his bony hip and chuckled again. “Hell, I didn’t even draw down on ’em. They saw I was carrying, and that was the end of that conversation.”
“You took a risk, running those surveyors off. It might not have been the wisest thing to do, but I’m sure Josephine would appreciate your loyalty.”
He shrugged. “Her island, her rules. Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask, but I can’t guarantee I’ll have an answer.”
“What happens to all of us, when she dies? Can the state come in and run us all off?”
“When she dies,” Brooke said carefully, “it’s my understanding that the state will still have to negotiate to buy Josephine’s land from her estate. They can’t take the land without fair compensation. That’s the law.”
“And that’s where you come in,” C. D. said. “She wants you to make the state go away. So she can keep the island.”
“Something like that.”
“You say no matter what, the state has to buy the island from her estate. But who’s that? She ain’t got no family I ever heard of.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Brooke said firmly.
“Oh.”
“Are you worried about losing your home on the island, C. D.?”
“I got a little place,” he said. “Comes with the job.”
