T. Bunn - The Great Divide

“This here’s my youngest brother’s boy, Oathell. Mister Charlie, why don’t you join me right over here. Easy now, hold her steady, son.” The pastor slipped into the flat-bottomed boat and reached back, saying, “Hand me the judge’s pole, Marcus. Now Judge, you know I ain’t gonna let you work, so you can set that paddle right back down. You two climb in that other skiff and follow us on up the river.”

The skiffs were both powered by electric trolling motors, silent save for a high-pitched whine. They pushed easily upstream, traveling beneath a canopy of branches and sun-struck leaves. The river ran dark and slow as molasses, shining a ruddy gold whenever sunlight managed to glance through. From the bow of the second boat Marcus could hear the pair up ahead talking softly. Marcus remained content to float in soft silence within this green cathedral. The young man remained silent save for once, when the older pair up ahead almost shouted their laughter. Oathell humphed his disdain and muttered, “Yes sir, Mister Charlie, yes sir. ” Speaking low yet loud, meaning for Marcus to hear and be forewarned.

They followed Deacon into a narrow inlet that Marcus would have taken for merely another crack between oily black roots. Only this one meandered through water-clad groves and veils of Spanish moss before opening into a hidden cove a hundred feet wide and ringed by gray pillars of long-dead trees. Far overhead nesting hawks cried their displeasure at the boats’ arrival. Otherwise the cove was close, fetid, still, and very beautiful.

“They might as well put up a sign,” Charlie said quietly over the water to Marcus. “Bass welcome here.”

“Wasn’t sure what we’d find after the floods. But it seems like all it did was perk the bass up a little.” Deacon ran out his pole. “Ain’t more than five, six people know about this place. So few it ain’t even got a name.”

“Them who know don’t talk about it,” Charlie agreed, grinning and pointing across the water. “Lookit your nephew there. Like he’s done died and gone to bass heaven.”

The pastor glanced over but did not smile. “Mind you don’t tell nobody ’bout this.”

“No sir, Deacon.” Subdued now. Respectful.

The pastor asked Marcus, “You aim on fly-fishing?”

“It’s been a while. But I’d like to try.”

“Run on over to that big cypress there to the other side. There’s fish been playing between them roots I can’t get to with my cane pole.”

Their boat flitted through the circle of sun and heat, then returned to the cool shade on the pool’s far side. Occasionally whoops erupted from the other boat. Marcus remained content with his own boat’s silence. He had more than enough to concentrate on just then, relearning the art of casting.

After he hooked and landed his second fish and Oathell his fourth, the young man said, “Uncle says you want to ask about Gloria.”

“You knew her?”

“Guess I did. We had us a thing going till she left for D.C.”

“What was she like?”

Oathell was using a spinning rod and a top-water plug. He flicked it expertly between cypress roots. Instantly the water erupted furiously. He pulled, hooked, reeled. Marcus plied the net, then raised the dripping prize over his head for the other boat to offer soft accolades. The bass hung over both sides of the net. “Must weigh over six pounds.”

“This is my reward,” Oathell said, accepting the net and fish, drawling the last word so it came out, ree -ward. “Been after Deacon to show me his secret place ever since I could walk.” A dark gaze flitted his way. “Uncle says, I talk to you, he’d bring me along. Wouldn’t tell me why he was letting you in on this.”

Marcus said mildly, “I expect it’s a bribe. He thinks I should accept the Halls’ case.”

The young man stared openly now, then turned back to the lake and the fish with a quiet “Huh.” A few more casts, then, “Gloria had a wild streak in her. She’d hide it good, then something’d set her off. Man, it was like night and day. You ever met her daddy?”

“Last Sunday.”

“What’d you think of him?”

Marcus was abruptly caught by something his grandmother used to say. “He struck me as a man uncomfortable with his own hide.”

Oathell laughed once, a quick bark, but it rang through the quiet air long after the sound was gone. To Marcus it felt like an unexpected compliment. “That’s Austin Hall, all right. But he loved that girl of his. Loved her like a straightjacket, it seemed to me. Sometimes the fit got too tight, and Gloria’d just go crazy.”

“Is that why she went to Georgetown?”

“Partly. Girl was smart, could’ve gone anywhere.” An angry flick of the rod. “I didn’t want her to go. We were young, sure, but I was ready to settle down. We tried to make it, me here at Nash Community College and her up there in the big city. Like to have drove me crazy, trying to keep tabs on the woman. Didn’t like to think about her going wild up there, with me …” Another angry flick of the pole. “That spring I asked Gloria to marry me. She said no way was she ready. We fought. She broke it off.” Another cast. “Maybe she’d already met Gary, but I don’t think so. She says that didn’t happen for another year after we broke up.”

Marcus stopped pretending to pay attention to the water. “Gary?”

“Gary Loh. Oriental guy, Chinese parents, born in this country. Med student up at Georgetown. Man had it all. Looks, brains, money. Ran some kinda campus outreach for a local church.” A glance at Marcus, flicking like the lure. “You a religious man?”

“No.”

“Hear you went to Deacon’s church last Sunday. How’d you find it?”

“My ears are still ringing.”

Another barked laugh, quiet this time. “I hear you. Gloria didn’t have time for no church until this Gary started sniffing around. Then every time she came home it was God this and God that, like to drive you crazy. Then something happened, I’m not sure exactly when it was, maybe a year back. They broke up is what I heard. I tried to get back with her. She wasn’t having none of it.”

Marcus set down his pole and turned to face the stern. His movements were slow, deliberate. He inspected Oathell, who continued casting and reeling, the motions as constant as breath. “How long ago did you two break up?”

Oathell flung the lure far out over the water. “Six years.”

The young man was handsome, even with his features pinched by pain kept fresh with unvanquished love. Oathell was about his own height, a couple of inches over six feet, with broad shoulders and narrow waist. Marcus asked, “What do you do?”

“I’m a technician with IBM out in the Research Triangle. Work on grinding the silicon plates for chips. Been there ever since I graduated from Nash.”

Marcus noticed the slight hunch to the shoulders, realized the young man was dreading a further torrent of personal questions. But Marcus had no desire to cause anyone unnecessary discomfort. So he said, “Why would Gloria take on New Horizons?”

The muscles unbunched, the man took an easier breath. “You know the saying, the thing folks love to hate? That’s New Horizons.”

“So the stories about the way they treat workers are true?”

“Don’t know what you’ve heard, but I imagine they are. Every family in that church has somebody who’s worked over there. And anybody who works for New Horizons is sooner or later gonna come into a story all their own.” He lifted the lure from the water, sat watching the dripping hooks. “My daddy worked there for nineteen years. Hated every minute of it.”

Marcus spoke his thoughts. “So Gloria might have been able to access a lot of in-house data through her contacts inside the church.”