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“What color are your buoys?” Emily asked.
They were puttering along at a pretty good clip now, and Emily wanted to know what colors to be on the lookout for.
“Orange and black. My grandfather picked ’em, so don’t blame me for the Halloween theme. And we’re nowhere near them yet. I thought I’d take you for a little spin.
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“To the east side of the island.” He pointed out the sights as they went. His dad’s boat, his buddy’s boat, Thomas’s house, the school, the small public beach. Then he pulled into a little cove and cut the engine.
“What are you doing?” Emily asked, alarmed. “Won’t we drift ashore?”
He chuckled. “No. We’ll be fine. The tide’s going out, and we won’t be here long.”
“Where’s here?”
“Here is the east side of the island. More specifically, this is called “P-I-G—and don’t say that word out loud—Poop Cove.”
“Don’t say what out loud?”
“P-I-G,” he spelled again.
“What?”
“We call it Bacon Poop Cove, because that way we can avoid the p-word and also because it’s funny to say bacon poop.”
“Why can’t you say the p-word?”
“It’s bad luck. So that”—he pointed toward a point of land jutting out into the water—“is Bacon Poop Point. That’s where my grandfather shot his first partridge. And this is Bacon Poop Cove.”
“You don’t seriously believe in bad luck?”
“Of course not.” He sat down on a bench that ran alongside part of the port gunwale and then pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. He had put on the oil pants, and the plastic felt freezing cold through her blue jeans. She shivered, though she wasn’t sure it was entirely from the cold—his thick, long arms wrapped around her waist might have had something to do with it.
“Then why won’t you say the p-word?”
“I don’t think my DNA will allow it,” he whispered into her ear, causing every inch of her body to break out in goosebumps. “Look,” he said. She looked.
The infinite shades of pink that had owned the horizon only seconds ago had been interrupted by a burst of brilliant yellow. A sliver of sun had broken over the horizon and the raw beauty of it stole Emily’s breath. One can photograph a sunrise. One can paint it. One can describe it in a poem. But no one can truly capture it. There’s nothing like seeing it live and in person.
“We are now two of the very first people in the whole country to see the sun come up,” James said in a voice so soft she could hardly believe it was his.
“Aren’t we going to go blind looking at this?”
“If we were, I’d have been blind long ago. Besides, we’re not going to stare at it for long.” He slowly loosed his arms from around her and slid out from behind her, leaving her sitting on the cool wooden bench. Then he knelt in front of her.
Immediately she knew what was happening and immediately her head filled with absurd thoughts: Is he just doing this because Jake asked me out? Is this an April Fools’ joke? She took a deep breath and forced herself to get out of her own head.
“You OK?” He smiled. “You look a little pale.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black velvety box. And then he flipped it open to reveal a dainty golden band with a brilliant sparkling diamond. “As promised, here is your official marriage proposal. I know we haven’t known each other very long, but I have no doubts that you are the woman God wants me to marry. We can have a nice long engagement if you want, but I just wanted to make sure you knew how serious I am about us.” He took a breath. “So, let’s make it official. Emily Morse, will you marry me?”
“Of course!” The words flew out of her as if they’d been held back by a rubber band. She flung her arms around his neck. “Of course,” she said again, softly, her eyes staring at the horizon as it filled with a gold so bright it could only have been supernatural.
––––––––
James had left his mooring with no intention of pulling traps that day, but Emily talked him into it, although she didn’t do any of the physical pulling—he wouldn’t let her. He did offer to let her put new bait in the traps, but she couldn’t make herself do it. As the sun ascended, a quick breeze began to blow, which blew most of the smell away, but she still didn’t want to touch the small, slimy dead fish, even though James offered her gloves.
She was far more content to watch him work and after only about four traps did she realize that the work was indeed repetitive. Still, it was more hypnotically rhythmic than redundant, and when he’d finished pulling up one string, she talked him into another. But then he called it quits. “I’m heading in. I’m spending more than I’m making right now.” She was disappointed, but she was also frozen. And it was true that they hadn’t caught much. He’d put four lobsters in the live tank and thrown far more than that back into the water. She’d been amazed at how quickly he could tell their size.
“Don’t you have to measure them?”
“Sometimes. Not usually,” he’d said and flung a small one over his shoulder, its legs flailing on its way home. “I know a keeper when I see it,” he’d said with a wink.
Now she said, “Not very many other boats out here, huh?”
“Not yet. There will be.”
“Why do you start so early in the season?”
“I don’t know. Just always have. Like to get a head start. Mark my territory and all that. Plus the price is good right now. It’ll drop when we all get out on the water.” He looked at her and gave her a broad smile. “Any other questions?”
“Just one. Do our wedding colors have to be black and orange?”
