The Bourbon Thief(63)

“That’s quite a story,” Levi said. “All true?”

“Every word of it. You see, my great-great-grandfather was the man who dug her grave and watered the oak St. Croix planted by it. Nothing left of that family but one tombstone. But us?” Bowen slapped his chest and grinned like a town mayor at a ribbon cutting. “We’re still here, alive and kicking.” Bowen lifted both hands and both legs in the air and waved them. He was certainly alive and definitely kicking. He was also drunk.

“Is her grave still here?” Tamara asked. “Can I see it?”

“It’s still here if you can find it. I have no idea what’s become of it. Overgrown now, the whole grounds are.” Bowen shrugged and downed the last of his bourbon. “But you can find the house pretty easy if you look. What’s left of it, which ain’t much.” Bowen stubbed out his cigarette, slapped his thighs and stood up. “Now if y’all will excuse me, I must be heading home. It’s been a pleasure.”

“Wait, where’s the house?” Tamara asked him.

He pointed north and deep into the woods. Levi saw Tamara staring into the darkness. He put his hand on her knee, fearful all of a sudden, fearful like she’d go right now this instant and he’d never see her again.

“You aren’t going house hunting,” Levi said. “Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“No. You go when I go,” Levi said. “Tomorrow I’m going with Bowen to the cooperage. If we own this island, I want to know everything there is to know about it.”

“I know everything I need to know about it,” Tamara said.

“I don’t. Now go in the house. Get ready for bed.”

“Do I have to?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, you have to. I’m escorting Bowen home.”

“I am home,” he said. Levi looked at him. Bowen grinned. “I can walk there in the dark with a blindfold on if you made me.”

“We’ll walk there in the dark together. With a lantern.”

“You ain’t no fun,” Bowen said, rolling his eyes. He stepped off the porch, wobbling as he went, but he made it more or less as vertically as he needed to be.

“Can I walk with you?” Tamara asked.

“Bed,” Levi said. “Go to sleep.”

“But—”

“Bed now,” he said. Tamara turned and walked into the house, slamming the door behind her. Levi watched her through the door, watched her disappear upstairs to the bedroom.

“You have it bad,” Bowen said. Levi looked at him and grinned.

“I have a pretty wife and a house and an island. I think that’s the very definition of having it good.”

Levi lit the camp lantern and he and Bowen set off down the little dirt road to the main dirt road.

“You want to see the cooperage, I’ll come get you tomorrow morning.”

“I do,” Levi said.

“I won’t get you too early.” Bowen winked at him, his face aglow in the light of the lantern. Levi swatted at a mosquito and the light danced in his hand, flashing a yellow aura over the knotty oaks and dripping Spanish moss. Levi saw eyes peering out from behind a tree. A raccoon? He hoped so.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can. Can’t promise I’ll answer it,” Bowen said.

Levi asked. “The bedroom upstairs. Tamara’s bedroom. Nash wanted to bring her here?”

Bowen stopped walking. He looked up at a break in the trees where the stars were looking down.

“He did.”

“Why didn’t he do it, then?”

“That house you’re staying in belonged to old Robert Maddox back in the day.”

“Who’s that?”

“Guess he’d be Tamara’s granddaddy.”

“You mean great-granddaddy.”

“Right,” Bowen said. “Robert built that little place in the twenties. A hunting and fishing cabin. George Maddox didn’t use it much, but Nash sure did.”

“What did he use it for?”

“Different kind of hunting. Different kind of fishing.” Bowen grinned at Levi and arched his eyebrows. “I was his big catch.”

“I see.”

“I stayed with him when he came down here and he came down here as much as he could. We’d settled in together real nice. It was safe out here. Safe is hard to find for men like us. Nash wanted a divorce, wanted to start over. And he wanted Tamara, too, but knew her momma would put up a fight. But what’s that they say? Possession is nine-tenths of the law. He was going to take Tamara and get her settled down here, fight it out for her in a South Carolina court that’s going to side with money over Momma.”

“If Nash wanted her down here, if he wanted to get divorced and start over with you...why didn’t he? Why did he kill himself instead?”

They’d made it to the end of the little dirt road and stood in the middle of the big dirt road.

Bowen crossed his arms over his chest and looked up at the night sky. The only light came from their lantern and the stars above that shone through a break in the canopy of trees. A million stars. Levi had rarely seen so many. He knew some people looked at the vastness of the universe and it made them feel insignificant. Not Levi. He looked up and saw only the beauty and was thankful he had eyes to see it.