By way of response, the smaller boy looked up from the exposed tree root he sat on and spat. His older cousin, Darnell, untied the line that attached their aluminum skiff to a pine tree and retied it properly.

As he worked Darnell muttered, “You don’t e’en listen neither. Just set there dumb as dirt lookin’ at what all.”

Casey stared straight ahead as if he was considering something out on the marsh behind his cousin. Then he rocked forward off the tree root on to his feet.

“When they comin?” he said, his voice too high for the gravity he spoke with.

“When they do,” Darnell answered.

Darnell was a tattle-taling, ass-kissing sort of teen who loved the nominal power he had over his little cousin in small matters, exulted in it, but who was not in any way greedy for the type of power that comes with responsibility. Darnell was sixteen. He had a thick build and bright blue eyes, with a curly head of brown hair and a face red with acne.

Casey walked a little circle in the pine needles, his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his cut off shorts. He was a pale freckle-faced little boy with a messy, sandy head of hair and a permanently knit brow. He was eleven. He pulled a well-oiled penknife out of his pocket, brushed a clean circle of dirt in the needles, cut a cross in the middle, and began tossing his knife. He flicked it stiffly into the dirt, withdrew it, cut a slash where the knife had hit, brushed the blade on the thigh of his shorts, and threw again. Darnell watched him throw thirteen times before he got lonely.

“Quit doin’ that. Ain’t time to be playin’ anyhow.”

Casey looked up and spat. He cleaned the knife on his pants, closed it, and slid it back in his pocket.

“I wish they’d get here,” Darnell said.

Darnell was nervous. He untied the knot on the bowline, this time the end that anchored it to the skiff, and retied it again neatly.

“What you think Maurice is up to?” Darnell said, not really expecting an answer.

“Spect we’ll find out,” Casey said.

Casey had reached the apex of his abilities to imitate adults. He lived with his father, a drunk who brought home all kinds of people. Puberty had not yet cast doubt back into Casey’s world. He was a miniature—full of a man’s confidence on a small scale, a man’s wisdom on a small scale, a man’s propensity for quiet on a small scale.

“Spect we will,” Darnell said, not to be outdone. “How come you wear that fool shirt whenever we workin’?”

Casey looked down at the front of his own shirt and studied it. It was a white t-shirt with orange sleeves and it said “Florida Gators” on it. The centerpiece of the shirt was a cartoon alligator wearing a letter sweater and standing in a jaunty pose. Casey didn’t answer the question but he rubbed at a ketchup stain over the gator’s head. It was his lucky shirt. The rattle of an outboard motor interrupted the deep quiet. Both boys stiffened. The rattle grew louder. Darnell, ducking down to peer out from under the boughs of the pine his boat was tied to, looked out across the brown-green marsh grass to the mouth of the water cut.

“That them?” Casey asked.

“Can’t see nobody yet. Wait now… it is. You better be ready,” he added.

Casey walked over and looked through the same gap in the trees. It was high tide and the water shone through the surface of the grass. Casey saw the fiberglass 18-ft small craft with the big outboard turn up the cut, throttle down. The bow wave made a white gull wing in the brown slack water. A blue heron rose at the noise and took off with a few powerful wingbeats. Maurice, a tall copper-skinned black man with a close gray beard, his foot planted on the bow, dwarfed the boat. Clarence, a beat up sunburned white man who always wore the same ball cap advertising fishing tackle, crouched behind him at the tiller. Clarence eased off the throttle and glided along the remainder of the channel lazily. When he was close enough that Casey could see his gold tooth, Clarence buzzed the motor up to speed and ran the boat up right onto the bank next to the tied up skiff. Maurice hopped off the bow, and landed with the heavy agility of a big cat. He drew a long breath in through his nostrils, smiled, and let out a deep-chested smoker’s laugh.