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and the eelgrass at midtide. He knows every hidden beach and break and cove. He can run the river, from the head to the mouth, with his eyes closed.
    They are playing pitch, and it is Bridge’s turn to deal. Noel watches the swift relentless movements of her hands as she gathers the cards, breaks them apart, bends them back and lets the two halves fall. She slides the deck across the table to be cut.
    The horsehair stuffing in the chair has begun to rot out. Noel can smell it through the cloth. His teeth grind into the stem of his pipe. He can hear the rub of the grinding in his ear. The outside darkness presses up against the curtains, and he realizes that in his heart he has already decided he will do it. He will take the work. He will build them their boat. He will build it to run fast and light. He will tell Lyons he is in for the one job, and the one job only. He will not let himself get yoked in. He will take the work for the daylight reason of the money. It is a good reason. It is why most men of his means and circumstance have stepped into the rum trade. It is an economic necessity—this kind of work—in a day and age when it is not enough to work the river and the land. He will take this one job for the money, and no one will judge him for it. They will look the other way. He packs away his doubts—the decision is made. He smiles quietly to himself—it will be a breath of the old life for him, a little piece of the adventure.
    He looks up at Bridge. She holds her hand of cards close to her, the edges tilted in, her face impassive. She gives nothing away. It is dangerous, he knows, the way he loves her, when life, by nature, is as swift and fleeting as a change in weather—clouds, fog, mist— passing through an empty sky.
    She sets her last card down. “I’ve won,” she says, slamming the table.
    â€œPlay again,” Luce says.
    â€œNo, two out of three already. I’ve won.”
    â€œWe’ll do three out of five.”
    â€œNo good.”
    â€œCome on.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCome on, Bridge.”
    â€œNo!”
    She shakes her head and stands, and Noel sees the ripe and wicked glance she throws back over her shoulder to Luce as she steps through the back door out onto the porch, the tension pulled tight as fresh rigging between them. Luce follows her. Noel watches them through the window that looks out onto the backyard, their shadows moving through the crisp night, as they chase the hens into the chicken shed and then stand for a while, a pair of black knives, looking up into the clear night sky.
    He goes to bed early that night. Just before he sleeps, he has that old sense of someone walking soft across his eyelids. That night, he dreams he is young again, and out on open water. He dreams of the sharp salt wind, the stink of oil and blood baked into the deck wood by the sun, the flap of sails, the rip of water up against the hull. In his dream, he remembers how the hips of the sea thrust up underneath them and their keel ran deep into the gully of her spine.

Bridge
    That night, waiting for Luce in the mud-thick darkness of her room, she lies on her bed, fully dressed, the stolen tin of oysters in the deep pocket of her coat. She hears the trucks pass: the low voices of the men, the tinkle of bottles in their crates, rockweed and salt hay stuffed around them to muffle the sound. Soon after, she hears the low swift knock on her bedroom door. They steal out. Luce carries the pail of baitfish and the poles, and she carries a small sack with two potatoes and the shank spade. They walk down Pine Hill Road in silence, past the houses with their shades pulled, the windows framed by yellow slits of light.
    They walk through the village at the Head, past the closed store and the mail-stop, to Chape Clay’s garage. Luce slides the flat mouth of the spade through the crack in the door. He pulls it down in one swift run and springs the lock. The door swings