“You should come with me,” Adam says to the college-aged daughter. (Maybe she’s older, Huck can’t tell, but he thought he was clear with Adam: pursue girls who show an interest in fishing! This girl, who is scrolling through her Instaface account, is attractive, sure, but she doesn’t even seem to realize she’s out on the water, for Pete’s sake. If it were up to Huck, he’d turn around and take her back to the dock.)
The girl raises her eyes to look at Adam, who is elbow-deep in a bucket of squid, baiting the trolling lines. “Ah-ight,” she says.
Is that even a word? Huck wonders.
“Yeah?” Adam says. “You’ll go? It won’t get good until about ten, but we should plan to arrive around eight, eight thirty.”
“We have a dinner reservation at eight in Coral Bay,” the girl’s mother says. The mother is attractive as well, but she isn’t interested in fishing either. She brought a book—something called Lilac Girls. Huck isn’t against books on his boat; in fact, there was a period of time when he believed that a person reading brought the fish. Huck likes to read himself, though never on the boat, but at home in his hammock, yes. When LeeAnn was alive, she got him hooked on Carl Hiaasen, and from there it was an easy jump to Elmore Leonard and Michael Connelly. Rosie is always telling him he should try some female writers, and he promised her he would read anything she put into his hands, as long as it didn’t have the word girl in the title. Gone Girl, Girl on the Train—and now look, Lilac Girls. The mother—Huck has forgotten her name; he only retains the names of people interested in fishing—seems pretty engrossed, however.
“Dinner reservation?” Dan, the father, says. Dan is a name Huck remembers because Dan wants to catch fish and Dan is paying for the trip. Dan works for the state government of New York—Huck shudders just thinking about it—but he is now on his Caribbean vacation and he wants to catch a fish, preferably a wahoo or a mahi. Huck assured Dan that would happen even though he’s been experiencing something of a dry spell. He hasn’t had a decent haul since the high season started.
Huck has decided to stay inshore—one look at the mother and daughter told him they would not be up for the forty-minute ride south to blue water—so wahoo and mahi are out of the question.
“Yes,” the mother says. “We have an eight o’clock reservation at Shipwreck Landing.”
“Good place,” Huck says.
“But I want to catch a fish and grill it up,” Dan says. “That’s what we agreed on.”
The wife shrugs. “If you catch a fish big enough to feed the three of us, I’ll cancel.”
“Count me out,” the daughter says. “I want to go to the party.”
Hank will have to reprimand Adam for starting this mess. He doesn’t get involved in other people’s family drama. He focuses all of his emotional energy on his own girls—LeeAnn’s daughter, Rosie, and Rosie’s daughter, Maia. Maia, at age twelve, probably qualifies as Huck’s favorite person in the world.
Now there’s a girl who loves to fish.
Huck’s mind wanders as it tends to when he’s captaining his boat, The Mississippi. People always ask if he’s from Hannibal or Natchez, St. Louis or New Orleans, but the answer is no. Huck’s nickname was given to him his first week in St. John, twenty years earlier at the bar at Skinny Legs, by a West Indian fella named Rupert, who is now Huck’s best friend. Rupert saw Huck’s strawberry-blond hair and the nickname fit somehow. Rupert hooked him up with a boat for sale—a twenty-six-foot Regulator—that had been bought by a kid on the island who lost his shirt gambling in Puerto Rico and needed to sell it quick for cheap. The boat had been named Lady Luck, but Huck changed it immediately to The Mississippi to match his new identity.
Who wants to drink from real glasses? Huck wonders. He can do that at home. His favorite thing about this island is that it’s a barefoot, casual place; there isn’t a pretentious thing about it. After a full-day charter, Huck likes to hit Joe’s Rum Hut for happy hour—he gets a planters punch or the local beer—and he wanders to the waterline of Frank Bay for a cigarette, then he heads down to Beach Bar with his drink and he’s allowed to finish it there before he buys his next drink. He knows everyone and everyone knows him: Huck, captain of The Mississippi. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t had a decent catch since Halloween. He always has clients because he’s connected. And he also happens to know what he’s doing.
Huck will spend tonight with Maia because the Invisible Man is on-island. Sometimes, when the Invisible Man is here, Maia will go along with her mother, but tonight is New Year’s Eve. The Invisible Man hasn’t been here for New Year’s Eve in four years, and so Rosie planned a special night of champagne and romance.
Fine. Huck can think of no better person to ring the new year in with than Maia. Huck will stop by Candi’s on the way home and pick up some barbecue.
He anchors the boat at the edge of Mandal Bay, off the north coast of St. Thomas, and helps Adam bait the hooks. The air has been crystalline since Christmas, and today there isn’t a cloud to be seen. The sky is a deep, painterly blue. There are supposed to be thunderstorms tomorrow morning but there’s no sign of them now.
“Who’s casting?” Huck asks. Dan already has his rod at the ready. Mrs. Dan is reading, and the daughter is on her phone. Huck looks between the two of them. Nothing.
Hey, Huck wants to say. You’re in the Caribbean! Look at the string of palm trees backing that platinum beach over there. Look how clear the water is. Days don’t get any more picturesque than this. Now, let’s catch some fish.
Adam taps the girl’s shoulder. “You want to try? I can cast it for you.”
“No, thanks,” she says. She does manage to tear her eyes off her screen long enough to offer him a smile. “This is my dad’s thing.”
How can Adam possibly want to take this girl on a date? Huck wonders. He doesn’t bother asking the wife if she wants to fish. He just casts the line himself.
New Year’s Eve doesn’t change his luck. Dan catches two blue runners and a hardnose. He’s getting visibly discouraged; he’s a hunter with a family to feed. Then, blessedly, he reels in a small blackfin tuna, which will be at least enough for him and Mrs. Dan. This does double duty of making Dan feel like a success and getting the daughter off the hook for dinner.
“Everyone happy?” Huck asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Okay, let’s head back in.”
The town of Cruz Bay is more frenetic than usual. People are flooding the streets, plastic cups in hand, wearing shiny hats and feather boas; women are in black velvet dresses even though it’s eighty-one degrees. Hank couldn’t be happier to get in his truck, stop by Candi’s for one order of ribs and one of chicken, extra comeback sauce, one side of pasta salad, one of slaw and one of plantains, then coax his aging truck up the series of switchbacks that comprise Jacob’s Ladder.
“Come on, chipmunks,” he says, as his engine growls in its lowest gear. He started saying this to amuse Maia when she was little—she loved thinking about a pair of little furry animals eagerly powering the engine of Huck’s truck—and now when he says it out of habit, Maia rolls her eyes.
Maia is standing in the driveway wearing denim shorts that she made herself the old-fashioned way—by taking scissors to a perfectly good pair of jeans—and a gray t-shirt on which she painted what Huck refers to as an iguana on acid: the bugger is a swirl of seventeen different colors. Maia’s hair is out of its cornrows in a bushy ponytail, which is how Huck likes it best. She must be 99 percent her father, whom Huck has never had the pleasure of meeting, but she was gifted with the milk-chocolate eyes of Huck’s late wife, LeeAnn, which is another reason why Maia is Huck’s favorite and basically can do no wrong.
“Hey, Nut,” he says. “Nut” is short for “Peanut,” which refers to a birthmark Maia has on her shoulder. She still tolerates the name, though maybe not for much longer. “Joanie went home?”
“Yes, but I was invited there overnight,” Maia says. “I texted but you didn’t answer. Drive me?” He can see the uncertainty on her face. She knows that they had plans and that she’s now breaking them to go to Joanie’s. What she doesn’t know is whether he’s going to be relieved about this change of plans—because he wants to drink some beers and fall asleep in his hammock long before midnight—or upset, maybe even angry.